claver morris, an early eighteenth-century english physician and amateur musician ...
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Claver Morris, an EarlyEighteenth-Century EnglishPhysician and Amateur MusicianExtraordinaireH. Diack JohnstonePublished online: 29 Jan 2009.
To cite this article: H. Diack Johnstone (2008) Claver Morris, an Early Eighteenth-Century English Physician and Amateur Musician Extraordinaire , Journal of the RoyalMusical Association, 133:1, 93-127, DOI: 10.1093/jrma/fkm010
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Claver Morris, an Early Eighteenth-CenturyEnglish Physician and Amateur Musician
Extraordinaire
h. diack johnstone
In memory of Stanley Sadie, who was first to explore the riches of provincial concert lifein eighteenth-century England, and did so much to dispel the pernicious notion of this as a‘Dark Age’ in our musical history. He died on 21 March 2005 at his home in Cossington,near Bridgwater, on the western perimeter of the area in which Claver Morris practised.
GIFTED amateurs have long been the salt of the musical earth, and nowhere moreso perhaps than in these isles. Only rarely, however, are their activities recorded.Except for the occasional letter or two, hard documentary evidence is almostentirely lacking. That is why, for the musicologist (and social historian too),the journals of John Marsh (1752–1828), sometime lawyer and keen amateurmusician, musical animateur and composer, are so very interesting and import-ant.1 But for the early years of the eighteenth century the only comparable thingwe have are the diaries and account books of Dr Claver Morris (1659–1727), anOxford-trained physician who spent almost the whole of his professional life inthe West Country city of Wells, where, for 20 years at least (and probably more),he was the leading light of the local musical society. That these are not entirelyunknown (and are indeed quite often cited by modern musical scholars) is duesolely to the fact that a heavily pruned volume of extracts was published in 1934.2
Its editor, Dr Edmund Hobhouse, was a member of the family among whosepapers the diaries and accounts books had been found, and in whose keeping they
1 The John Marsh Journals: The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752–1828), ed. BrianRobins (Stuyvesant, NY, 1998). See also my review in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 125(2000), 306–14. The amateur musical activities of another late eighteenth-century family, theSharps, as portrayed by Zoffany in his well-known painting of 1781, have been ably charted byBrian Crosby in his ‘Private Concerts on Land and Water: The Musical Activities of the SharpFamily, c.1750–c.1790’, RMA Research Chronicle, 34 (2001), 1–119.
2 The Diary of a West Country Physician A.D. 1684–1726, ed. EdmundHobhouse (London, 1934; 2ndedn 1935). Hobhouse naturally concentrates almost entirely on the diaries, and prints only a verysmall selection of accounts. For fuller details of the latter, some grouped thematically in units eachconcerned with a single item of domestic expenditure (wine, clothing, horses, pictures, etc.),see ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 22 (1936–8), 78–81,100–2, 147–51, 172–5, 199–203 and 230–2; 23 (1939–42), 40–1, 100–3, 134–40, 164–6, 182–5 and345–7.
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 133 no. 1 93–127
� The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Musical Association. All rights reserved.doi:10.1093/jrma/fkm010
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still remain.3 Four manuscript volumes were discovered, one of diaries coveringthe period from 25 June 1718 to 12 August 1726, and three of accounts (in one ofwhich there is also a diary for the year 1709–10).4 As the first of the account bookswas evidently taken over from the guardians of the wealthy young lady hemarriedin October 1685, some of its entries relate to the ten-year period before ClaverMorris appeared on the scene. The last runs out in November 1723. Given theirextremely detailed nature – Morris meticulously records virtually every item ofincome and expenditure (including his losses at such games as ‘tables’, i.e. back-gammon) – it is sad to report that, some time during the last 60 years, one volumeof accounts covering the period 1698–1708 has gone astray, and that all efforts tolocate it have so far failed.5
Though Kenneth James clearly had recourse to the surviving originals when hewas preparing his London Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Bath’ (1987), it seems that the only other person, myself apart, to haveconsidered this material in any detail is Professor Paul Hyland of Bath SpaUniversity, to whom I am hugely indebted not only for his generous sharing ofresearch materials, but also for the many stimulating discussions we have hadabout matters of common concern. So far, much the fullest account of ClaverMorris’s musical activities is that by Michael Tilmouth introduced en passant aspart of his fascinating article ‘TheBeginnings of Provincial Concert Life’.6 In sucha context, however, the author could obviously do little more than draw attentionto some of the more interesting aspects of musical life in early eighteenth-centuryWells and thus whet the appetite for some rather more detailed survey of the sort
3 I ammuch obliged toNiallHobhouse, ofHadspenHouse,Castle Cary, Somerset, for his kindnessin allowingme to inspect the originalmanuscripts in the summer of 2004. For EdmundHobhouse(1888–1974), a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, see Munk’s Roll, vi: Lives of the Fellows ofthe Royal College of Physicians of London Continued to 1975, ed. Gordon Wolstenholme (Oxford,1982), 247.
4 This section of the diary runs from 25March 1709 (Lady Day, then normally reckoned to be thebeginning of the year) until 24March 1710. Whether or not Morris went on in another book, orsimply (thoughmost improbably) abandoned the diary at that point, is not known. But, having inthat same year’s accounts declared that he can see no reason why ‘the Christian Epoch’ shouldbegin at any time other than ‘the Day of the Nativity, or Circumcision’, all later diaries (andaccount books too) treat the year as starting on 1 January.
5 Photocopies of the three remaining volumes are held by the Somerset RecordOffice (in Taunton),the diaries on microfilm and the account books on microfiche. The original manuscripts are allvery narrow, upright folio volumes bound in vellum; they measure between 6 and 6½ inches inwidth and between 14½ and 16½ inches in height. The missing volume, we may suppose, wassimilar. The days of the week are indicated by the standard astrological signs and, from 1718
onwards, the daily weather too is summarized by the diarist in pictograph form. Fortunately a listof the books (though not alas themusic) purchased between 1698 and 1708may be recovered fromEdmund Hobhouse, ‘The Library of a Physician circa 1700’, The Library: Transactions of theBibliographical Society, 13 (1932), 89–96 (pp. 90–2); for a random selection of other things, see‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’.
6 Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. ChristopherHogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge, 1983), 1–17 (esp. pp. 8 and 12–14).
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which is attempted here. That there is a good deal more to the story than has yetbeen revealed will, I hope, become evident as we proceed.Quite when the local music society first got started is not entirely clear, but it
seems to have beenmeeting regularly in ‘Close-Hall’ (a building which still standsand is now known as the Vicars’ Hall) as early asMay 1709. It was almost certainlyfounded some years earlier still,most probably byMorris himself (as his purchase,in March 1696, of four desks for Close Hall might possibly suggest).7 Meetingswere regularly held on Tuesday evenings throughout the year, public holidays notexcluded, and from this it may perhaps be inferred that most members wereresidents of the close (or lived nearby) and were not dependent on the light ofthe moon to see them safely home afterwards. Though we have no idea how largea group they were, it is clear from the diaries that there were both performingmembers and members who came simply to listen;8 also that, among the latter,there were a surprisingly large number of women.9 Since members were charged6d. to introduce a guest, there must, almost certainly, have been some annualmembership fee, but what it was does not appear. Whenever he was in Wells,Claver Morris usually attended. Only rarely does he tell us what was actuallyperformed – but when he does, it is nearly always something of considerableinterest (as we shall presently see). Sometimes, as at a meeting on 26 September1721, ‘there was a great appearance of Company’; and sometimes too, though onlyrarely, very few people turned up and, as on 9 July 1723, ‘we had notHands enoughfor a Consort’. Just occasionally there were distinguished visitors to be enter-tained, most memorably perhaps on 8 July 1718, when Lord Harley (the Earl ofOxford) and his lady were in attendance together with ‘Mr Prior’; the latter wemay safely assume to have been Matthew Prior (1664–1721), the poet and
7 On 3 August 1708Morris paid 9s. for ‘six brass candlesticks for the use of the musick club room attheDeanery’, but it is not clear why the clubwas thenmeeting there rather than inCloseHall. Thisreference from themissing account book is in ‘Dr. ClaverMorris’ Accounts’,Notes and Queries forSomerset and Dorset, 23, 101. An obviously similar music club meeting in the college of the vicarschoral in Hereford was evidently already well established; see Elizabeth Chevill, ‘Clergy, MusicSocieties and the Development of a Musical Tradition: A Study of Music Societies in Hereford,1690–1760’, Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Susan Wollenberg and SimonMcVeigh (Aldershot, 2004), 35–53. Also dating from the early 1690s was another (and probablyrather smaller) provincial music society based in Stamford; see Bryan White, ‘ “A pretty knot ofMusical Friends”: The Ferrar Brothers and a Stamford Music Club in the 1690s’, Music in theBritish Provinces 1690–1914, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman (Aldershot, 2007), 9–44.
8 As appears from a diary entry for 4 June 1723, when they ‘had a very good full Consort, but noAuditors’.
9 Though the performers were normallymen, as was usual in all such clubs, the ladies toomight veryoccasionally be heard (as on 6 December 1720, when ‘Miss Catharine Layng [daughter of thearchdeacon of Wells] & a YoungWoman, who was a Limner [i.e. a portrait painter] in Hereford-shire who had an extraordinary fine Voice, & a very good manner, Sung’). The ‘young Ladies ofWells and Shepton’mentioned byHobhouse (The Diary of a West Country Physician, 39) as havingperformed on 6 August 1719 were actually ‘young Ladds’, and their music on that occasion was,says Morris, ‘very mean’; in his transcription of the diary itself, however, Hobhouse has it right(ibid., 71). When choral items were included, the treble parts would most probably have beentaken by two or three cathedral choristers.
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diplomatist who, withHarley, had been deeply involved in negotiating the Treatyof Utrecht, publicly celebrated just five years previously.The ‘Musick-Clubb’ (as it is often referred to in the diaries) must obviously
have been heavily dependent not only on the enterprise and enthusiasm of ClaverMorris himself, but also on the active participation and good will of the 12 vicarschoral, several of whom (like Morris) not only sang, but played a variety ofinstruments too. Bothmusical and social harmonywas rudely shattered, however,when, in June 1726, a long-running and increasingly acrimonious disputebetweenMorris and the vicars over access to the Close through a nearby propertywhich had been leased to him by the dean and chapter some years earlier came toa head. Egged on, it seems, by the bishop (George Hooper), the vicars took it allthe way to the High Court in Chancery – and won.10 Thus the club was shortlyafterwards disbanded, and its funds (which had for years apparently been admin-istered by Morris) given to charity.11 Undaunted, Morris and some at least of hismusical friends carried on at the Mitre, but how long they survived we do notknow. The records break off shortly after that, and eight months later Morrishimself was dead.The son of a West Country clergyman, Claver Morris was born in Caundle
Bishop in Dorset. Educated locally, we presume, he went up to New Inn Hall,Oxford, in March 1676 and proceeded thence at three-yearly intervals to thedegrees of BA, MA and BM, and subsequently (in 1691) to a doctorate in medi-cine.12 In 1683 he became an Extra Licentiate of the College of Physicians, bywhich stage it appears that he was practising in Salisbury, where he had a cousin(James Claver) who was an apothecary. On 13October 1685, he married a wealthyyoung London heiress, Grace Green, who, on her death just four years later, lefthim two valuable properties inCraneCourt, just to the east of St Paul’s Cathedral.In the spring of the following year the couple moved toWells where, living at firstwithMrCupper, the local apothecary, and later in rented accommodation, ClaverMorris set up in business and quickly established himself as a successful physician(that is, as a general medical practitioner who treated his patients by issuingprescriptions, but did not himself operate – a dispensing chemist in effect).Widowed for the first time in 1689, he then went on, in 1696, to contract asecond and no less advantageous marriage which brought him property closeto land that he had already acquired at West Bradley, 12 miles south of Wells.In the meantime, however, it appears that he had been courting the daughter of
10 There is a nineteenth-century copy (and also a modern typescript transcript) of the Vicars’ Bill inChancery in the Wells Cathedral Archives. For more on Claver Morris’s relations with BishopHooper, and this episode in particular, see William M. Marshall, George Hooper, 1640–1727,Bishop of Bath and Wells (Milborne Port, 1976), 122–4.
11 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 133–4, for details. Nearly four yearsearlier, inOctober 1722,Morris had ‘pay’d out of our Stock’ £1 0s. 3d. towards the cost of buryingMr Hill, the local harpsichord-maker.
12 The costs of taking his Oxford doctorate are spelt out in great detail in the accounts (see ibid.,147–8). A loose sheet dated 8 July 1692 and certifying that Claver Morris was now a doctor ofmedicine of the University of Oxford is tucked in at the front of the first volume of accounts.
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Richard Kidder, the then current bishop of Bath andWells, whose account of theaffair, if true, casts a rather dark shadow over the moral scruples of our man,Claver, whom he describes as ‘a profligate wretch’, presumably on the groundsthat he (Morris) had evidently decided she was not worth pursuing further.13
In 1699 Claver Morris was widowed again, and in that year, with a number ofother properties now safely under his belt, he began building himself a very grandhouse at the northern end of the East Liberty (then called Mount Royal Lane);recently renovated, it is known locally as theClaverMorrisHouse, and now formspart of the complex set of buildings in which the Wells Cathedral Music Schoolis housed (see Figure 1).14 His house finished (at a cost of some £807 14s. 634d.),he then remarried in 1703, and, third time lucky, his new wife not only broughthimmoremoney (a dowry of £3,000),15 but also survived until 1725 and bore hima son (William) as well.He had amuch-loved daughter (Betty) by his secondwife,too, but these were the only two of his children to make it beyond infancy.
Figure 1. The Claver Morris House, Wells (built 1699–1702). Photograph: PeterPenfold.
13 SeeThe Life of Richard Kidder, D.D., Bishop of Bath and Wells, Written by Himself, ed. Amy EdithRobinson, Somerset Record Society, 37 (1924), 134–44. The bishop and his wife were both killedby a falling chimney stack in the great storm of November 1703.
14 For a detailed history of the house (and earlier dwellings on the same site), see Derrick SherwinBailey, The Canonical Houses of Wells (Gloucester, 1982), 178–83; for the photograph I amindebted to Peter Penfold of the school’s bursarial staff.
15 Worth something in the region of £750,000 in present-day terms. For more on the value ofmoney during this period, see headnote to Appendix.
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Somewhat surprisingly, Betty was not only taught to sing, dance and play theharpsichord, the last by William Broderip, one of the vicars choral and laterorganist (from 1713) of the cathedral, but she was also, most unusually for a girl,given violin lessons as well.16 Another of the vicars choral, Thomas Gravell, wasemployed to teach the boy to read, while yet another, the Revd Francis Franklyn,was usher of the local grammar school to whichWilliamwas sent before going onto Sherborne. In due course, he too learnt to play the violin (and also to dance).Politically speaking, as is evident from the following quotation, taken not from
the diary but from a chance remark in his 1713 accounts, Morris was (and alwayshad been) a pretty stiff-necked High Church Tory. So too, it seems, were many ofthe townspeople of Wells (including Bishop Hooper). 7 July 1713 was a day ofnational celebration for the recently concluded Peace of Utrecht, by which thelongWar of the Spanish Succession had finally been brought to an end. AndwhileMorris himself was happy enough to contribute a shilling for the Morris dancersand ten shillings towards the cost of the bonfire on the occasion, it was hisconsidered view that this ‘long an[d] Insidious War’ had been fought ‘for theadvantage of the Dutch, fomented by the Dissenters & tre[a]cherous Low-C[h]urch-men, for the Destruction of the True Church of England’.17 Fromthe immediately preceding entry (6 July) it appears that the peace was alsomarked by the performance of a ‘Thanksgiving Anthem’, presumably withinstrumental accompaniment, in the cathedral; thoughMorris does not mentioneither the words or the composer, this must almost certainly have been WilliamBroderip’s God is our hope and strength, which is known to have been written tocelebrate the Peace ofUtrecht.18 The only other anthemmentioned in the diary isone by John Jackson, who had been organist of Wells when the Morrises arrivedthere in 1686. Given that it was performed at Dr Morris’s request to celebrate hisrecovery after a long illness in the summer of 1709, this has to have been Jackson’sI said in the cutting off of my days; written in 1685, it is described in a Wells organbook of the period (now Royal College of Music, MS 673) as ‘An Anthem ofThanksgiving, for recovery from a dangerous sickness’.In addition to his medical practice (which took him – on horseback – all over
the county, and occasionally even as far afield as Exeter and Gloucester), Morriswas also active (from 1706) as a Commissioner for the 4s. Land Tax, and (from1709) as a Commissioner for Sewers (dealing with such matters as land drainage
16 In 1708 she was sent away to school in Salisbury for the best part of two years; while there she wastaught by the cathedral organist, AnthonyWalkeley, a former vicar choral of Wells who was wellknown to Claver Morris. Some years later (in April 1720) Morris claims to have ‘sorted ToxeyWalkeley’s Sonatas’ which, following the composer’s death (on 16 January 1718), had been handedover to him by his brother, Joseph Walkeley (of Bristol).
17 ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 23, 139. Referencesdrawn from the account books (but not obviously so) are hereafter distinguished by an asterisk inparentheses: (�).
18 See Ian Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995), 360; and for Utrechtcelebrations elsewhere, H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Music and Drama at the Oxford Act of 1713’,Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed.Wollenberg andMcVeigh, 199–218 (pp. 199–200).
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and the maintenance of local waterways, as also the repair and building ofbridges). In November 1717 he was not only made a burgess of the city, but wasalso at the same time admitted to membership of its Company of Mercers.19
Rather curiously, perhaps, in view of the fact that, from January 1716 untilhis wife’s death in April 1725, he had harboured a known Catholic widow(Mrs Evans) as a paying guest in his own home, Claver Morris was also toserve as one of the District Commissioners responsible for collecting the specialtax levied by parliament on papists. But much the most interesting (and histor-ically important) of his various public duties was as one of the Commissionersresponsible to parliament for the implementation of the Enclosure Acts, nowregarded by most modern historians as ‘the final stage in the evolution of flexiblefarming’.20 At the time, however, almost the only persons to view the forcedenclosure of hitherto common land in such altruistic terms were those locallandowners who, like Claver Morris, stood to benefit most by such schemes.In the long term itmay well have been a shot in the arm for the national economy,but it was also, as Roy Porter has pointed out, ‘a kick in the teeth for manyrural workers’.21 The two acts in which Morris himself was directly involved(Baltonsbury Northwood in 1720 and Glastonbury Common two years later)are among the first of the century, and his diaries are full of administrative detailrelating to these (as also the disputes, protests and other socially disruptive prob-lems which followed in their wake).22 And as if all this was not more thanenough to keep anyman thoroughly occupied, he also (fromApril 1724) regularlygave up his Saturday evenings to attend the meetings of a ‘Weekly Society’ whosemembers took it in turn to provide hospitality.23
But perhaps enough has now been said to show that ClaverMorris was not onlyvery well off, but also a figure of some power and influence in the community.Though short – just over five foot six and a half inches by his own reckoning – andrather fat, he must have been a man of enormous energy too, since, on average,he seems to have spent something like 40 hours a week in the saddle,24 dealt with
19 The latter made him free of the city, and thus a member of its common council. An earlierapplication (in 1705) had evidently been rejected (information from Paul Hyland).
20 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783, The New Oxford History ofEngland (Oxford, 1989), 436. For a good short account of the pros and cons of enclosure, see BasilWilliams, The Whig Supremacy 1714–1760 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1962), 107–9; also Jeremy Black,Eighteenth-Century Britain 1688–1783 (London, 2001), 35–8. On the mechanics of enclosure, seeWilliam E. Tate, The English Village Community and the Enclosure Movements (London, 1967),esp. Chapter 10.
21 Roy Porter, England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1998), 194.22 The number of such parliamentary acts escalated rapidly during the century, from amere seven in
the period 1702–20 to 67 in 1721–40, and a staggering 1,247 over the next 40 years. These arethe figures given in Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 108. In Somerset there were apparently onlyfour such acts in the first 70 years of the century.
23 Earlier social functions of a similar nature (generally referred to in the diaries as ‘our MutualEntertainment’ and sometimes as ‘The Moon Feast’) were evidently held on a monthly basis.
24 SeeThe Diary of a West Country Physician, ed.Hobhouse, 26. At one point,Morris also records hiswife’s height, and, quite regularly at the beginning of each year’s accounts, the height of each of
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his patients (and the various public duties alreadymentioned), yet still had plentyof time left tomanage the affairs of theMusicClub, whosemoving spirit he clearlywas. No doubt he also bought much of the music that they performed, and theaccounts contain details of many items, chiefly solos and trio sonatas, but alsosome concertos and vocal music, which he ordered and had sent from London(or, just occasionally, from Bath);25 likewise various instruments, ‘Knotts’ ofstrings, harpsichord wire, oboe and bassoon reeds, etc., some of which wereobviously purchased on behalf of other local enthusiasts who were most probablyalso members of the club.26
Amongst the music which Morris owned (see Appendix for a complete list)were solo sonatas by Mascitti (opp. 2–5), Giuseppe Valentini, Giovanni Reali(op. 2), Corelli (‘12 Solos with his graces to them’; op. 5), Bonporti, Gasparini andVisconti (op. 1), and a volume of ‘pieces’ by ‘Mont de Caix’ (surely the Premierlivre de pieces de viole by Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, published in Paris in 1708);also trio sonatas by Tibaldi, Robert Valentine, J. C. Schickhard, James Sherard(op. 2), Bonporti and Finger, and William Corbett’s ‘5th opera’ (which hebought from the composer himself in Bath in September 1712).27 Vocal musicincludes the songs in the operas of Thomyris and Almahide, a volume of ‘Purcell’sSongs and book of Descant’ as published by ‘Mr. Plaiford’, Galliard’sCalypso andTelemachus, Handel’s Rinaldo and motets by Alphonse d’Eve, Cherici, Fiocco,Scarlatti and Steffani; also Bassani’s ‘opera 20th’ which, if accurately listed, mustbe the Messa per li defonti concertata published in Bologna in 1698. There wouldalso, of course, have been a good deal of music in manuscript (such as the thirdand fourth of Bassani’s sonatas which, ‘with the graces’, Morris paid someone tocopy out in 1711). No doubt all this was readily accessible to club members, and it
his two children. It is interesting too to note that his fee for professional services rendered alwaysreflects the social standing of his patients; thus an ordinary man or woman in the town would becharged 2s. or 2s. 6d. per visit, whilst members of the gentry might expect to pay as much as3 guineas or more.
25 His London supplier of both music and instruments was Edward Lewis at the Harp in St Paul’sAlley. In Bath Morris dealt mainly with a bookseller by the name of Hammond.
26 For details see my article ‘Instruments, Strings, Wire and Other Musical Miscellanea in theAccount Books of Claver Morris (1659–1727)’, Galpin Society Journal, 60 (2007), 29–35.
27 It is clear fromMorris’s description of them (as ‘6 sonatas of 3 parts for violins and 6 for flutes’)that this must be the set listed as op. 4 in Owain Edwards, ‘Corbett, William’, The New GroveDictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and JohnTyrrell, 29 vols. (London,2001; hereafter New Grove II), vi, 446 (where the date of publication is given as c.1713). Likewisewith Reali’s op. 2 set of Sonate da camera e basso, which Morris acquired in September 1711.According to Alberto Basso in his Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti,13 vols. (Turin, 1985–90), x, 261, however, these ten sonatas were published in Venice in 1712. Theapparent discrepancy can no doubt be accounted for by the anomalies of the Venetian calendar.What is astonishing in so many cases is just how quickly after publication Morris – isolated (onemight think) inWells – had acquired copies. He kept up with the national (and European) newsthrough newspapers which were available to him at the Mitre, the Crown and the local coffeehouse and paid for by subscription. The Crown (in the Market Place) still stands, but the Mitre(in Sadler Street, more or less directly opposite Brown Gate or the ‘Dean’s Eye’) does not.
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may just be that two or three pocket-sized volumes which survive in the Libraryof the Vicars Choral (containing earlier music by John Banister, Clayton,Colman, Lawes, Jenkins, Simpson and Young among others) were used bythem as well.28
From May 1709 until June 1726 the club’s regular meeting place was themedieval ‘Close-Hall’ (see Figure 2), which stands over the arch leading fromSt Andrew’s Street to the Vicars’ Close, a lovely group of 42 houses originally builtin the late sixteenth century, and set either side of a pedestrian thoroughfarerunning northwards to ‘the Liberty’, at the eastern end of which stood ClaverMorris’s grand Queen Anne mansion. Much the most important date in themusical calendar was the celebration of St Cecilia’s Day (22 November), forwhich at least one preliminary rehearsal was usually called, and for which theynormally had a fee-paying audience. The model in this case was presumablySalisbury, whither, in November 1700, Morris rode over to hear the musicthere.29 In 1709 the club performed ‘Purcel’s Cecilia Song & much othermusic’ – which sounds rather like the short 1683 ode Welcome to all the pleasuresor one of the other two smaller odes, since the great ode for 1692 must surelyhave been beyond their capabilities. In 1718 they had the assistance of NathanielPriest, Dr Barret and Messrs Clark, ‘Dingleston’ and Shittleworth, all fivefromBristol;30 also the celebrated blackamoor trumpeter,MrDouglas, describedby Morris as ‘one of the best in England on that Instrument’.31 With two
28 Wells Cathedral Archives, Library of the Vicars Choral, MSS 5–9 in particular.29 ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 23, 100.30 Nathaniel Priest, organist of Bristol Cathedral from 1710 to 1734, was one of the two sons of Josias
Priest for whose dancing school (in Chelsea) Purcell was formerly thought to have composed hisopera Dido and Aeneas. His brother (another Josias) was currently organist of Bath Abbey. Clarkmay well have been the man of that name who (in a somewhat dubious printed source of 1744 ) issaid to have been a violinist and music master to the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton; there is,however, nomention of him in the archives there. John FriedrichDinglestadt (d. 1745) either was,or was soon to become, one of the Bristol waits (for whose wages he signed in 1720–1). Forinformation on bothClark andDinglestadt I am indebted toDr Jonathan Barry of theUniversityof Exeter (Department of History).
31 For William Douglas, a pupil of John Grano, see A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses,Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, ed. PhilipH. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans, 16 vols. (Carbondale and Edwards-ville, IL, 1973–93), iv, 458–9. According to Burney (A General History of Music, from the EarliestAges to the Present Period, ed. Frank Mercer, 2 vols., London, 1935, repr. New York, 1957, ii, 994)he was ‘commonly called the Black Prince’, while his teacher, John Grano, Burney describes as‘a kind of mongrel dilettante’. Both Clark and Douglas (who ‘Sounded Two Sonatas very finely’)were given hospitality (i.e. put up for the night) byMorris, who also tells us that, after the concertwas over, ‘Mr Nooth [one of the Vicars Choral] came& Supp’d with them,&we sate up ’till onea clock’. Such late hours after an evening’s music-making were by no means uncommon in theMorris household; sometimes indeed he and his guests sat up until 2 or 3 a.m. Grano himselfMorris heard on a visit to Bath on 22 May 1724, when ‘in the New Dining-Room at the ThreeTuns’ he entertained Morris and a small group of friends ‘with his Trumpet, German-Flute &Small Flute [i.e. recorder]’. Four years later Grano was committed to the Marshalsea Prison fordebt, and while there he kept a diary which has recently been edited by John Ginger andpublished as Handel’s Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano (Stuyvesant, NY, 1999).
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Figure 2. The medieval Vicars’ Hall, Wells. Photograph � the Chapter of WellsCathedral.
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trumpeters (Clark and Douglas) present, it is not impossible perhaps that theyhad a go at Hail, bright Cecilia, but this seems highly unlikely given the otherdemands of the piece. The following year it was ‘Dr Crofts’s Song for his Degree,& a great Deal of otherMusick’, presumably one or other of his two Oxford odes(Laurus cruentas or With noise of cannon) written in celebration of the Peace ofUtrecht; the first is the more likely, but either way it had to have been from amanuscript source, since Croft’s Musicus apparatus academicus was still as yetunpublished.32 The cost of tickets was evidently advanced to 2s., notwithstandingwhich they ‘had as much Company as the last Year’.Among those present on the occasion was a German musician named
‘Dalaron’ (or ‘Dalarone’), whom Morris also entertained.33 On 21 November1720, Morris went as usual to ‘our Practice of the Caecilia Song for tomorrow’;and once again (as in the two previous years),MrDingleston (sic) was summonedfrom Bristol ‘to assist our Consort with his Basson, Trumpet, or Hautboy’.(He was presumably adept at all three.)34 The following day Claver Morriswent to the cathedral ‘& join’d in the Practice of the Anthem’ which was per-formed later in the day. And later still he ‘went to our Caecilia-Meeting at Close-Hall where we had very goodMusick, & we perform’d every Piece exactly’.Whatthe anthem and other pieces they played were he does not say, but for themusic inthe cathedral he had ‘a new Hand made of Deal, [. . .] put into the Time-Beater’.This must obviously have been some kind of mechanical device by means ofwhich a wooden hand (or ‘manuductor’), presumably attached to a pedal (oper-ated, one assumes, by the leader of the band), conveyed the beat visually to thevarious performers spread over a somewhat larger performing space than usual.35
32 For the actual date of publication see Johnstone, ‘Music and Drama at the Oxford Act of 1713’,205–7. An autograph copy of Laurus cruentas has recently (summer 2006) been acquired by theBodleian Library, Oxford, and is now catalogued as MS Mus. d. 271.
33 Tilmouth, thinking perhaps that Hobhouse had it wrong, turns this into Dahuron (a Frenchflautist active in London during this same period). But Dalaron(e) it is, and while there is no oneof that name to be found in either New Grove II or Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart:Allgemeine Enzyklopadie der Musik (2nd edn, Kassel, 1994–), as ‘Delaroon’ he turns up again inFebruary 1720, and appears then to have been resident, or at any rate temporarily active, in Bath.A ‘Saxon Organist’ whose name, unfortunately, is not given is also mentioned as having beenpresent at the 1709 festival.
34 And, once again, Morris provided hospitality. (On 15 November Morris had written to JosephWalkeley asking him ‘to send Dingleston with his Bassoon to improve our Consort on Tuesdaynext’.) Later on in the diary Dingleston is more commonly (and now correctly) referred to asDinglested (or Dinglestedt). On 16November 1722, five days before he came over for that year’sSt Cecilia Musick, Morris had called in at a house in Shepton to collect a ‘Sackbut & 2 Cornets’which were ‘to be try’d by Mr Dinglestedt’.
35 Elsewhere, as at the annual Sons of the Clergy festival in St Paul’s Cathedral, the usual method ofco-ordinating such forces was for the ‘conductor’ or person in charge of the performance to standamid the troops and beat time with a roll of paper in his right hand. According to New Grove II(s.v. ‘Conducting’) a pedal-operated device like that used by Claver Morris in Wells is describedby Johann Beer in his posthumously published Musicalische Discurse (Nuremberg, 1719).
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For the evening concert in the Vicars’ Hall, they had an audience of 33 (at 2s. ahead), a rather disappointing turnout by comparison with 1709, when, withnearly 100 auditors in addition to the performers, the hall must have beenfilled to capacity.And so things continued every year right up to and including 1725. This last
apart, the only other St Cecilia’s Day celebration mentioned in the Hobhousetranscription of the diaries took place in 1724, when Morris and his ‘clubbers’performed a previously unnoticed setting of Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast byWilliam Broderip, whose music, alas, does not survive. In actual fact, it is clearfrom diary entries hitherto unpublished that Broderip’s ‘Caecilia-Song (on theFeast of Alexandre)’ had been done in 1722 and 1723 as well, and that, on all threeoccasions, the Bristol bassoonist John Dinglestadt had been called over to assist.Dinglestadt also played in 1721, but of the ‘Caecilia-Musick at Close-Hall’ thatyear, Claver Morris says only that it ‘was very fine’.36 As a composer, Broderip isknown only by the ‘Utrecht’ anthem previously mentioned and a Service in D,both of which found their way into the sixth and final volume of the greatcollection of church music compiled by Thomas Tudway for Robert Harley,Earl of Oxford, between 1714 and 1720. Another work by Broderip, also lost,was a ‘Christmas-day Song’, which was performed in Morris’s own home on 25
December 1720 and again in 1722, 1724 and 1726.37
ThoughMorris himself appears tohavebeenprimarily a stringplayer, andmorespecifically a violinist,38 he also sang and played both the ‘flute’ (i.e. recorder) andthe harpsichord. He had not only several violins (including two by John Barrett,and a rare ‘mute violin’ acquired in 1687) but also his own double bass, a bass violand a ‘tenor violin’ (i.e. viola), together with an oboe ‘with ivory joints’, a bassoon,a two-manual harpsichord and at least one spinet. He was also, it seems, regarded
36 Another West Country musician who, from 1721, regularly takes part on these occasions (andstays chezMorris) is a certainMr Spittle. Identified at one point as a trumpeter, it is clear that thiswas not the only instrument he played; he also acted as a music copyist. Like Dinglestadt, he toowas (or later became) one of the Bristol waits, and I am told (by Jonathan Barry) that, as AugustusSpittel, his signature appears in the corporation vouchers of 1729–30 and 1732–3. For more onSpittle see below, note 64.
37 Though the composer is not actually named, it appears from the accounts that there was anothereven earlier performance on 25December 1718, and indeed it may soon have become a tradition.The Morrises were generous with their hospitality, and on Christmas Day each year they hadmost of the vicars choral and a couple of ‘quiristers’ (four in 1718), together with a small party offriends, round for dinner (then a midday meal). Then, after the Broderip ‘Song’ or ‘ChristmasAnthem’ had been performed, they all went to church and later returned for the evening ‘consort’(and supper). And sometimes, as in 1722, ‘the Company stay’d till after 1’. In 1724 the evening‘consort’ involved two Albinoni concertos, two more by Valentini, and ‘Bassani’s 1st Motette settoMr Chreyghton’sWords’. The Creightons, father and son, had dominatedWells cathedral lifefor the best part of a century, and it must be Robert Jr, precentor and canon residentiary for60 years (1674–1734), who is referred to here; he also composed anthems, and one short canonicpiece of his (I will arise and go to my Father) is included in a recently published collection ofRestoration anthems edited by Keri Dexter and Geoffrey Webber for the Church Music Society(Oxford, 2003).
38 He had lessons from a Mr Hall (seemingly in London) in the mid-1680s.
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as being knowledgeable about the organ. Thus, on 22 September 1709, he wasinvited to give his opinion of the new organ being opened that day in the parishchurch at Shepton Mallet. (The builder is not known.) He was accompanied onthe occasion by a party of musical friends (mostly club members) from Wells,where afterwards, in the home of a local resident, they ‘made a very good Consortof Musick’ and ‘there was a great deal of Company to hear us’. Ten years later(in February 1719) the club had the pitch of the organ in Close-Hall made ‘a noteLower’ to ‘Consort Pitch’ and, at the same time, they got ‘Mr Swasbrook’ (sic)to install both a bassoon and an oboe stop.39 The instrument was still said to be‘in tolerable Repair’ in 1790, but whether it stood on the floor of the hall or wasplaced in an east-end gallery long since demolished is not entirely clear.40
Thomas Swarbrick (c.1679–1752) is one of several rather shadowy figures inthe history of eighteenth-century organ-building. Trained by Renatus Harris,he set up on his own in 1705, and in 1717–19, just before he turned up in Wells,he built a new organ for St Mary Warwick.41 He is first mentioned in the diary(on 6 December 1718) in connection with some work which Claver Morris washaving done on his harpsichord, and thereafter (until December 1725) his nameappears regularly, most frequently as a guest in Morris’s home (quite often fordinner on Sundays). Clearly the two men were good friends. And, though he didnot attend as regularly as Morris, Swarbrick was also a member of the sameSaturday ‘Mutual Meeting’ that Morris went to. Alone among the group, how-ever, he never himself offered hospitality (from which we may perhaps infer that,while living locally, he was probably in digs). In the summer of 1722, Swarbrickadded a trumpet and a cornet stop to the organ in St Cuthbert’s church, and theinstrument thus ‘alterd& improv’d’ was officially opened by EdwardThompson,the organist of Salisbury Cathedral, in mid-September. There was a concert inClose-Hall on the 13th, and the following morning Claver Morris went to hearit played (by Thompson). Three years later, in December 1725, Swarbrick was
39 The bassoon stop was evidently not installed until 1721, as appears by an unpublished diary entryfor 19 September of that year when, Morris tells us, many came to hear it. An earlier entry(for 5 September) refers to ‘the first time of using the Organ, after the Pitch of it was tuned alesser third’ (i.e. a minor third) lower, but Morris, in his first reference to the altered pitch ofthe instrument (10 February 1719), says that it was played on then too. Four years earlier(on 1 September 1715) he had evidently given £1 1s. 6d. ‘towards the Improvement of theOrgan in Close-Hall’.(�) With nine stops (including those added by Swarbrick) it must presum-ably have had two manuals.
40 The decision to erect a gallery in Close-Hall was taken after a rather jolly meeting of the musicclub on 27 December 1709, but there is no later mention of the organ being moved there.L. S. Colchester, in his unpublished ‘Notes on the History and Development of the Vicars’Close,Wells’ now in the cathedral archives, claims the organ was in the gallery, but there is no realevidence for this. The 1790 reference to the state of the instrument (also in Colchester) evidentlycomes from a manuscript which was then (in 1974) owned by the Glastonbury AntiquarianSociety.
41 Much the fullest account of Swarbrick and his work so far published is BettyMatthews, ‘ThomasSwarbrick – The End of a Line’, Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans, ed.Robert Judd (Oxford, 1992), 95–112. But this is ignored in New Grove II (which still lists him asThomas Schwarbrook). For more up-to-date information I am indebted to Dominic Gwynn.
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responsible for moving it to a gallery at the west end. A new case was providedat the same time, but the organist appointed (one Joseph Millard) was, Morristhought, ‘but a mean Performer’.42 Whilst there is no mention of this in thediaries (lacking for the period between 23 February 1710 and 25 June 1718), itshould be noted that Swarbrick had also been in charge of the tuning and main-tenance of the cathedral organ since 1707 or thereabouts. On 8 June 1724 he puta scheme for a general overhaul of the instrument to the dean and chapter.Though this was accepted and the work soon put in hand, it was not actuallyfinished until 1728, by which time Swarbrick was clearly living elsewhere,most probably in Bristol, where, following the death of Renatus Harris (on6November 1724), he appears to have taken over that end of the family business.43
Whilst based inWells, Swarbrick also built an interesting claviorgan which wasunusual in that it was apparently the harpsichord rather than the organ whichwas the upright half. Such an instrument would doubtless have appealed toClaver Morris, who was endlessly curious about how things worked.44 He went tosee it for the first time on 4 February 1723 and described it then as a ‘Harpsichordwith Flute Pipes for a Principal in it, almost finish’d’. Two and half years later(on 30 September 1725) he took his son-in-law and another member of thefamily ‘to see the Painting of Mr Swarbrick’s upright Harpsichord mix’d withan Organ’ – presumably the same instrument now in the final stage of beingdecorated (and not merely a pictorial representation of it). If this instrument wasa commission, we have no idea for whom it was built, and it was certainly a longtime in the making.With an ‘elaboratory’ (not to mention a ‘reverbaratory furnace’) in his own
home,Morris was much given to experimentation. He had a naturally inquisitivemind, and was clearly fascinated by things of a mechanical nature. His time-beating ‘Handmade of Deal’ has already beenmentioned, and, though there wasnothing mechanical about them, he also had two ‘Stands to set a Bass-Viol on tomake it sound louder in playing on it’.(�) These must have been a pair of woodenresonating chambers which he had sent from London in December 1716. Threeyears later Morris began experimenting with various ‘improvements’ to his harp-sichord. These evidently involved fitting brass plectra to the jacks, and this was(he says) his own invention designed ‘to strike the String [sic] with Brass, without
42 When Broderip died (on 31 January 1727)Millard stood in as cathedral organist until the electionof his successor (William Evans) three months later.
43 Renatus Harris is generally thought to have retired to Bristol in 1721 or thereabouts, and his wifedied there in July 1724. The year after his parents’ death, John Harris went into partnership withhis brother-in-law, John Byfield. In 1726 they built an important instrument for St MaryRedcliffe, Bristol, and a couple of years later they transferred the business back to London,leaving Swarbrick (we assume) in charge of the western front. Of the five London papers tonotice the death of Renatus Harris, only one (the Evening Post of 7–10 November) provides theactual date (which has hitherto been unknown).
44 InKensington Palace there is evidently a ‘press’ which was converted from a vertical harpsichord-with-organ in 1763, and an actual surviving instrument made byWoffington in Dublin in 1785 isnow in the National Museum of Ireland (information kindly supplied by Dominic Gwynn).
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a Quill’.45 Not surprisingly perhaps, the idea did not work, and Morris laterabandoned it. In August 1724 (and with some assistance, it seems, fromSwarbrick) he began fitting a series of ‘Spring-Jacks’ (as he calls them) to theinstrument; these too he claims to have invented, but whether they were moresuccessful or not he does not say.46 Two other gadgets ‘of mine own contriving’were a pocket device for removing stones from horses’ hooves and, rather moreinterestingly, an early form of milometer which, affixed to the wheels of hiscarriage, enabled him to calculate exactly how far he had travelled.From the evidence thus far presented, it will be clear thatWells in the early years
of the eighteenth century was by no means the cultural backwater one mightinitially have assumed. Even the odd theatrical performance, though rare, was notunknown. InNovember 1722Morris went to see ‘a Play call’d the Yeomen of KentActed by Lewis’s Company at the Crown’ (a local hostelry), and, in August 1725,he attended a benefit performance of Nicholas Rowe’s ‘Tragedy of Jane Shore’.It was not the first time the play had been done inWells, however; Claver Morrishad been to see it nine years earlier, in December 1716, when (again at the Crown)he also saw one of Thomas D’Urfey’s Don Quixote plays and a play called ‘TheUnhappy Orphan’ (presumably Thomas Otway’s The Orphan of 1680 ).(�)47
Other passing entertainments included cudgel players (in 1719, 1721 and 1726),a French juggler (in 1715), itinerant harpers (in 1712 and 1713) and, rather morecolourfully, ‘The Governour of Libanus [Lebanon] in his Turkish Habit withhis Interpitor [sic] & Servants’ (in June 1726). The latter ‘(turned out of hisGovernment by the Basshaw) came with the Secretary of State’s Pass & [a]Recommendation for Charity’ to which Claver Morris responded by givinghim half a guinea.
45 This was neither the first nor the last attempt to substitute metal plectra for quill. In December1730, William Barton took out a patent for ‘Pens of Silver, Brass, Steel, and other Sorts of Metall’which would, he claimed, not only ‘improve the Tone of the said Instruments’ but ‘last manyYears without Amendment’; see Donald Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord1440–1840, 3rd edn, ed. Charles Mould (Oxford, 1995), 12. This reference too I owe toDominic Gwynn.
46 Both diaries and account books record work done on his harpsichord between October 1718 andJanuary 1720, and again between November 1723 and December 1724, but there is no morespecific evidence than that quoted here.
47 ‘The Yeoman of Kent’ (as Professor Robert Hume kindly informs me) is the subtitle of ThomasBaker’s Tunbridge-Walks (1703). Other named plays also performed in Wells were EdmundSmith’s Phaedra and Hippolytus (by boys of the local grammar school in 1712),(�) Addison’sCato (also by schoolboys in 1715),(�) Congreve’s Love for Love (‘by Poor’s Company’ (sic) in July1725 and again the following summer), and Thomas Southerne’s Oroonoko (in July 1726).Though neither of the two travelling theatre companies cited here is mentioned in SybilRosenfeld, Strolling Players & Drama in the Provinces 1660–1765 (Cambridge, 1939), Lewis’stroupers were evidently based in Bristol (see Jonathan Barry, ‘The Cultural Life of Bristol1640–1775’, D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1985, 188); and so too, it appears, wasthe other team.Mr Power (correctly named byMorris in July 1726) was the manager of the DukeofGrafton’s Servants, a theatrical groupwhich performed in Bristol, and constantly attempted toset up a theatre there in the first two decades of the eighteenth century (information kindlyprovided by Dr Jonathan Barry).
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Other en passant diversions include several very accomplished professionalmusicians, some of whomwere enticed over from Bath by ClaverMorris himself.First to appear (in 1709) was the lutenist Thomas Deane, Jr, who spent ten daysin Wells as his guest and took part in the music club’s meetings on 20 and27 September of that year. There was a large audience on both occasions, andsome evidently thought the music on the 20th ‘was the best they ever heard inClose-hall’.48 When, on 2October, Deane left to return to London, Morris lenthim three guineas (then valued at £3 4s. 6d., the guinea being worth £1 1s. 6d.).Having been asked for five,Morris, one suspects, never saw it again. As a spa townwhich was, even then, a favourite watering-hole of the aristocracy, Bath attractedmore than its fair share ofmusical talent, some of which doubtless appeared in theretinue of itsmore socially distinguished visitors.On 15 September 1709, just a fewdays before returning to Wells with Thomas Deane in tow, Morris had riddenover to hear Nicolini (Nicolo Grimaldi), ‘the most admired singer that ever washeard in England’. Alas, hemissed him, as also in September 1723 he did FrancescaCuzzoni. But he did manage to hear William Douglas, the trumpeter, again inApril 1719, and John Grano too in May 1724 (as we have already seen);49 also, inOctober 1721, FrancescoGeminiani (whomMorris describes as ‘the best Player ona Violin in Urope [sic]’). The latter he actually met at the home of a certainMr Stagge, where he (Geminiani) ‘entertain’d us with the utmost Civility aswell as his wonderful Hand on the Violin’.It was on a visit to Bath in September 1718 that ClaverMorris first encountered
Geminiani’s pupil, the young Matthew Dubourg (then aged 15); also three otherLondon musicians of note. These were the violinists John Shojan and JohnWalter, together with the bassist David Beswillibald.50 Morris was then staying(as he usually did) at the Three Tuns, where, on the evening of the 26th, in ‘thegreat newDining-Room’, he ‘entertain’d themwith 3 Fowles &Wine’ and ‘had aPerformance of Musick by these extraordinary Hands’. Two days later, he per-suaded Shojan, Walter and ‘Mr David Baswilwaldt’ to return with him to Wells.He put them up in his own home, and after dinner on the 29th ‘we had a fine
48 SeeThe Diary of a West Country Physician, ed.Hobhouse, 56; alsomy article ‘Dean(e), Thomas’ inNew Grove II, vii, 91. Deane’s presence in Bath at this time is otherwise unknown. He was alsoamong the performers who took part in the concert at the opening of the new organ in SheptonMallet on 22 September (see above). Though it says London in the diary, the accounts have himreturning to Bath.
49 See note 31 above.50 For the first two, see A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, xiii, 364, and
xv, 247; also iv, 485–6, for Dubourg. Very little is known about Beswillibald, who, with variousweird andwonderful spellings of the name, played as a double bassist forHandel andGeminiani,andmust, somehow, be related to the singer Giorgio GiacomoBerwillibald, who took part in the1716 London revival of the pasticcio Lucio Vero and is described in the papers as ‘Servant to hisSerene Highness the Margrave of Brandenburg’. Some years later (and unmentioned byDeutsch), David Beswillibald subscribed for six copies of Handel’s Rodelinda (1725), six ofScipione (1726), three of Alessandro (1726) and five of Admeto (1727). Shojan also took a singlecopy of the first three of these works; also Galliard’s Hymn of Adam and Eve (1728) and, in 1730,two copies of the first set of sonatas for violin and continuo by Michael Christian Festing.
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Consort of Musick’. The following day (a Tuesday) they all went ‘to our Musick-meeting,&we perform’dConcertos very exactly,&had the 6thMottet of Scarlati[sic] which was very fine’.51 After dinner on 1October ‘Mr Walter & Mr Baswil-waldt play’d Schenk’s Sonatas for 2 Viols, which were very excellent’ and theyall ‘sate up ’till past 2’.52 The next day they had another ‘Consort’ and then, onthe 3rd, Shojan, Walter and Beswillibald went back to Bath, Shojan on a horsewhich he had borrowed from Claver Morris and which was returned to him thefollowing day.This was not the first time, however, that Shojan had been toWells, norWalter
either, it seems. Though both men had played in the Haymarket opera orchestrasince 1708, they must have found themselves with no regular source of incomewhen the company collapsed at the end of the 1716/17 season, and it was conceiv-ably this (if not themovements of a patron towhom theywere both attached) thattook them to Bath later in the year. The reader will perhaps recall that, as a child,Claver Morris’s daughter (Betty) had been taught not only to sing and to dance,but had also had violin and harpsichord lessons. Now, aged 20, she was living athome and still having lessons on the spinet with Broderip. It was on 22 January1718, at her father’s behest, that ‘Mr Shoian’ evidently moved in ‘to Teach her, &perfect her Hand on the Violin’.(�)53 He was paid two guineas a quarter, a gooddeal less than he had been earning in London, but he was obviously given freeboard and lodging as well; no doubt he was also at liberty to take other pupils inthe area and/or to accept professional engagements elsewhere (as in Bath and alsoperhaps in Bristol). That he was actually living en famille is clearly suggested by acouple of bills whichMorris paid for the washing of his shirts and linen. It wouldappear that John Walter too was still in the vicinity since, on 7 April, Morrisrecords giving each of them a copy of a book of prayers ‘for the Sacrament’.(�)Lessons with Shojan continued for about eight months, but must have beenbroken off when, in late August, Betty secretly married. Her father did notlearn of this until 1 December, at which point he was so incensed that he imme-diately turned her out of the house. It was to be another nine months before they
51 This would have been Quae est ista, the sixth of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Concerti sacri published byEstienne Roger in Amsterdam (1707–8) and scored for SAT, two violins and continuo. ClaverMorris acquired his copy in June 1713, but the only one now extant is in the Royal Library inBrussels. I am grateful to BartOp de Beeck for providingmewith both title and details of scoring.
52 For Johannes Schenck, the famous viola da gamba player, see New Grove II, xxii, 473–4. It is notclear which of his several publishedworks were performed on this occasion, but from the fact thatWalter was a violinist andMorris describes them as sonatas, wemay perhaps hazard a guess that itwas some if not all of Schenck’s op. 7 which so delighted them. If, on the other hand, the musicplayed really was for two viols, then it ismore likely perhaps to have been some of the Select Lessonsfor the Bass Viol of 2 Parts printed by Walsh in 1703. My thanks to Peter Holman for thissuggestion, and for the reference to Brian Boydell’s book which follows in note 53.
53 Female violinists were very rare at this date; indeed, the only one known to have performedpublicly during this period was a pupil of Dubourg’s by the name of Elizabeth Plunkett(1725–44), for whom see Brian Boydell, A Dublin Musical Calendar 1700–1760 (Dublin, 1988),287, and A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, xii, 37.
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were finally reconciled, and then only in response to a concerted appeal by herstepmother and other female members of the household.54
It is not clear how long Shojan and Walter remained in the area, but Shojanmust have returned briefly in the summer of 1720, not long after both he andWalter had signed on as members of the orchestra for the recently establishedRoyal Academy ofMusic.OnTuesday 2August therewas ‘muchCompany’ whenClaver Morris and his clubbers ‘tried Handel’s Anthem (my song shall be King)’(sic).55 The following day Morris ‘had a Consort at my House’. No fewer thanseven of the performers who took part in the concert are named in the diary, and,though Shojan curiously is not one of them, hemust surely have been there, sinceon the 6th, just three days later, Morris records that ‘Mr Shojan’s Gown[,] Fiddle& Slippers were this morning sent him by his Messenger’.For themusic lovers ofWells there were several further treats in store.Much the
most notable of these took place in early July 1724, when ‘Signior Fransichelle &Viocca, Two ItalianMusicians’ came to town.OnSaturday the 4th,ClaverMorristook them to see the cathedral, and after dinner they ‘had aConsort’ at which fourof the vicars choral and one other local musician had been invited to assist. SignorFransichelle has to have been the Italian cellist Francesco Alborea (1691–1739),while Signor Viocca (sic) must surely have been the young Belgian organist,harpsichordist and composer Joseph-Hector Fiocco (1703–41), whose father(Pietro Antonio) was Italian by birth. Neither man is known to have visitedBritain, however.56 What brought them to Wells we do not know. It may bethat they had previously played in Bath, but if soMorris does not mention it (andindeed he himself had not been there since late May when, on the 22nd, he hadheard Grano at the Three Tuns). On 7 July they attended the usual Tuesday nightmeeting of the music club and, two days later after dinner, ‘The two ItalianMusicians, & I went to the Hall in Close-Hall & I got Mr Brodrip’s Spinette,
54 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 15–16, for details; also p. 66. It was notonly the clandestine nature of the affair but also the hurt of being denied the pleasure ofpresenting a much-loved daughter’s hand in marriage that so upset him. Later on, once thewound had healed, Morris and his son-in-law (John Burland) appear to have become the best offriends.
55 This should of course be My song shall be alway (HWV 252), the third of the so-called ‘Chandos’anthems. The parts (in nine books) had just been copied by ‘Mr Spittle’ (for whom see notes 36above and 64 below). That this was by no means the only music by Handel to have beenperformed in these parts long before it became publicly available is a matter to which I shallreturn later in this article.
56 For biographical details seeNew Grove II (s.v. ‘Alborea’ and ‘Fiocco’). Ten years earlier, in August1714, Morris had purchased a volume of Fiocco motets, presumably the Sacri concentus, op. 1, byJoseph-Hector’s elder brother, Jean-Joseph, and seven years later, in 1731, Joseph-Hector suc-ceeded Willem de Fesch as organist of Antwerp Cathedral. Interestingly, there is a good deal ofmusic by Jean-Joseph Fiocco and his father (Pietro Antonio) in the library of YorkMinster, someof it adapted to English words byValentineNalson (1683–1723), a clergyman (subchanter at York)who, like Robert Creighton in Wells, also composed; see Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music,402–6, and David Griffiths, ‘Music in the Minster Close: Edward Finch, Valentine Nalson, andWilliam Knight in Early Eighteenth-Century York’, Music in the British Provinces, ed. Cowgilland Holman, 45–59 (esp. pp. 52–4).
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& all Our Musick-Clubb Assisted in Performing Signior Viocca[’]s Serenade, &some other of his Compositions’. For this event, tickets (at 2s. 6d.) were sold, but,saysMorris somewhat disappointedly, ‘just 32were deliver’d and used’, so the sum‘rais’d for the Italians’ (allowing presumably for unspecified expenses) came onlyto about £3 14s. 0d.57 As for the serenade, Morris is almost certainly wrong inascribing it to Fiocco who, so far as is known, composed no such piece. Alborea,on the other hand, most certainly did. It seems likely, therefore, that it was one ofthe two manuscript serenatas attributed to Francischello in the library of theNational Museum in Prague that must have been performed on this occasion.The summer of 1724 was also memorable for a military presence at several
meetings of the club. Thus, on 28 July, just three weeks after the appearance of the‘two Italian Musicians’, there was ‘a very great Company[,] especially of Ladys[,]Colonel Brown, & many of the Officers of General Evans’s Regiment beingthere’. The following week, they had ‘General Evans’s Hoboys’ performingwith them, and, as Claver Morris records,
there was a very great Appearance of Company [�] more than could sit at theTable & Round the Hall, So that a long Forme was brought in & fill’d the Middle ofthe Hall. The General, Colonel Brown, Major Garey & most of the Officers were there,and many Women.58
The fortuitous conjunction of Colonel Brown and General Evans enables us toidentify the regiment involved as the 4thDragoons (laterHussars).59 I am reliablyinformed that a careful search of theWarOffice records (in theNational Archivesat Kew) would almost certainly reveal the reason for their posting, but that seemsto me beyond the call of duty in the present context.60 My guess is that they werethere to curb and deter smuggling, of French wines and spirits in particular.61
This was in fact the 4th Dragoons’ second Wells posting. They had also beenthere for four months in the summer and early autumn of the previous year.
57 Compare the figures cited above for the St Cecilia’s Day festival in 1720.58 There was also rather a crowd on 11 August when, once again, they had Evans’s ‘Camp Hoboys
joining with us, in the Performance of our Musick’. Two years earlier, on 4 September 1722, theclub had entertained ‘15 or 16 Officers of the Foot-Soldiers lately come from Ireland’.
59 The standard regimental history is D. Scott Daniel, 4th Hussar: The Story of the 4th Queen’s OwnHussars, 1685–1958 (Aldershot, 1959). For the careers of General Evans and Colonel Brown, seeCharles Dalton, George the First’s Army 1714–1727, 2 vols. (London, 1910–12), passim. WhereasHorse Guards were allocated a kettle-drummer and trumpeters as part of the establishment, thepaid musicians for a mounted troop of dragoons were one or two side-drummers and a singleoboist.
60 For much help and friendly advice in what is, for me, unfamiliar territory, I am indebted toDr Alan Guy of the National ArmyMuseum, StephenWood, and especially Dr JohnHoulding,author of Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army 1715–1795 (Oxford, 1981).
61 In 1726 some ofClaverMorris’s relations on his late wife’s side were fined a huge sum (£1,200) forsmuggling, which, as Hobhouse (The Diary of a West Country Physician, 23) points out, just goesto show ‘the extent of the contraband trade then carried on and patronised by quite respectablecitizens’ (including, one might add, Morris himself ).
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They are first mentioned in a diary entry for Monday 22 July when Morris ‘wentto Close Hall & heard a Consort of Lieutenant-Colonel Brown’s (of Evans’sRegiment’s) Hoboys’. The next day ‘Colonel Brown’s Hoboys’ turned upat the music club and ‘Assisted us in our Consort’. The following week, on20 August, a group of soldiers and ‘5 Hoboys’ were there – and so too was one‘Colonel Blathwait’. This entry (not in Hobhouse) is particularly interesting inthat the person named must have been Colonel John Blathwayt (1690–1754) ofDyrham Park, who (Hawkins tells us) had been something of a child prodigy onthe harpsichord. Whilst on the Grand Tour with his elder brother William(in 1705–8) he is said to have studied with Alessandro Scarlatti, but there isno evidence of this in any of his or his tutor’s letters home; in 1707 he did,however, have harpsichord lessons with Pasquini in Rome (where he also metboth Nicolini and Corelli).62 In 1712, his father (a former secretary-at-war toWilliam III) bought him a commission in the First Troop of Horse Guards; hewas also (from November 1719) a governor of the Royal Academy of Music, and,two years later, he subscribed for five copies of Bononcini’s Cantate e duetti. Buthowmuch, if any, of this was known to ClaverMorris we cannot tell.63 Had JohnBlathwayt himself assisted in their music-making it would surely have beenmentioned.On 21 August 1723, the day after Blathwayt’s visit to the music club, Morris
prescribed for ‘two of Brigadier Evans’s Musick’ whom he identifies by name as‘Mr Collier & Mr Lemp’. Three weeks later, on 10 September, General Evans’sHoboys were formally ‘enter’d Clubbers’. On 8 October, the ‘Camp Musicians’(and Mr Spittle) again took part, and Morris had both Spittle and ‘Mr Lamp theGerman’ to dine at home.64 The latter, surely, can only have been John Frederick
62 See Sir JohnHawkins,A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776;repr. of the 1853 edn, 2 vols., New York, 1963), ii, 806n. and 860. John Sonmon’s portrait ofBlathwayt as a child seated at the harpsichord currently hangs in theMusic Faculty atOxford, andis said to have been given to the university by Blathwayt himself. Another portrait painted inRome in 1707 is to be seen at Dyrham Park, now aNational Trust property, near Chippenham. P.de Blainville’s fascinating account of the Blathwayts’ Grand Tour was published in The GrandTour: Letters and Accounts Relating to the Travels through Europe of the Brothers William and JohnBlathwayt of Dyrham Park 1705–1708, trans. and ed. Nora Hardwick (Bristol, 1985).
63 For more on John Blathwayt’s continuing musical interests and, more particularly, his Italianoperatic experiences whilst on theGrandTour, see ElizabethGibson,The Royal Academy of Music(1719–1728): The Institution and its Directors (New York, 1989), 53–61. Several years later, he wasthe dedicatee of Charles Avison’s first set of Six Concertos, op. 2 (1740). According to BennettMitchell Zon, ‘Avison, Charles’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford,2004), ii, 1027–8 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/925, accessed 13 October 2007),Blathwayt supported him whilst he (Avison) was ‘in the service of the Newcastle merchantRalph Jenison, MP for Northumberland’.
64 ‘Mr Spittle’, several timesmentioned in the diary, is clearly the same Augustus Spittel, most likelya violinist, who surfaces in Salisbury 20 years later; see Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill,Music and Theatre in Handel’s World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780 (Oxford, 2002),169, 229 and 261–2; also note 36 above. He first appears (in the accounts) as a copyist when,on 8November 1717 ‘at Mr Harrington’s’ (of whommuchmore anon), Morris paid him 10s. 9d.‘for Pricking 2 of Stephani’s Mottets’. Later that same year he also copied for Morris ‘1 more of
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Lampe (c.1703–51), who turns up on the London musical scene for the firsttime (as a bassoonist) a couple of years later. For someone who had read law atthe University of Helmstedt (in Brunswick) to have become an oboist in theBritish army so soon after graduating seems a very strange choice of career.65
Even stranger is the fact that he should find himself in Wells at the same time asJohn Blathwayt, to whom, in 1737, he would later dedicate his treatiseA Plain andCompendious Method of Teaching Thorough Bass. Four days later, on 12 October,‘Mr Lemp’ came again with three other of General Evans’s Hoboys ‘to take theirleave of me being going fromWells’. Whether or not Lampe was still part of theteam when, in July 1724, the 4th Dragoons returned, we do not know.In addition to the regular Tuesday-night meetings of the music club and quite
frequent private concerts in ClaverMorris’s own home, there were also occasionalmusical gatherings hosted by Broderip and various other friends who lived inthe town and surrounding area. A few of these sported military titles (usuallyColonel) but were, we may suppose, no longer in active service. Having beenmade redundant by theUtrecht peace settlement of 1713, they were probably whatcontemporaries knew as ‘half-pay officers’, that is, inactive officers of disbandedregiments collecting pensions. In the eight-year period covered by the diaries,Morris lists over 20 such ‘consorts’ which he attended, but never once are we toldwhat music he heard or took part in, only that, on one occasion, he sang threesongs ‘as it came to my turn’. Fortunately we are rather better informed about hisown domestic music-making, and a few of these performances have already beennoted. Among others which, for the sake of completeness, ought also perhaps tobementioned is ‘a goodConsort ofMusick’ given on the evening of 26April 1721,when before an audience of a dozen or so guests, mainly vicars choral and theirwives, they played three of Alberti’s concertos, presumably from the op. 1 setpublished at Bologna in 1713. On 31October 1722, in similar circumstances, they‘play’d 2 of Vivaldi’s Consertos [sic]’. Four months earlier (on 5 June) Vivaldi’s‘Concerto Extravaganza’ had been performed at a music-club meeting. It is notimmediately obvious which of the op. 4 concertos this was, but in claiming this tohave been the first time he had played it, Morris had obviously forgotten that‘Vivaldi’s Concerto call’d the Cuckoe [sic] & the Extravagant’ had been per-formed at a meeting on 27 September 1720 and were, he says, ‘very well play’d’.66
Stephany’s Mottets, with Mr Clark’s Symphonys, & Interludes; & Hendle’s Anthem in Score’.Though Spittle’s labour was evidently paid for by Mr Harington, Morris ‘gave him a Guinea’nevertheless.On 1August 1720,Morris also paid Spittle a guinea ‘ForHandel’s Anthem in 8parts,(My Song shall be) prick’d out in 9 Books’ and, three years later, another guinea for six concertosby one ‘Backlehamble’ (sic), a composer whom I have so far been unable to identify. As we havealready seen, the Handel anthem was tried out by the music club in Wells on 2 August.
65 That Lampe was obviously subject to regimental rules should not, however, be taken to implythat he was necessarily inmilitary service and subject to formalmilitary discipline. Hewas almostcertainly a civilian simply hired (by General Evans) to do a particular job, as also were his threeoboe-playing colleagues.
66 The concerto (RV 335) ‘commonly call’d the Cuckow’ was quite extraordinarily popular in earlyeighteenth-century Britain, and was, says Burney (A General History, ed. Mercer, ii, 445),
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At home on 20 November 1725, just two days before their annual ‘CaeciliaEntertainment’ and 16months before he died,Morris ‘made a Consort’ at which,in company with Messrs ‘Spittel’, ‘Dinglesteadt’ and ‘Broad’ (the first two ofwhom we have already met), they ‘play’d the 6
th Opera of Bonporti [10 triosonatas] all over, Finger’s two Sonatas which I would should be play’d at myFuneral, & two of Bassani’s Sonatas’. Quite which two of Finger’s sonatas he hadin mind we do not know, but that his wishes do seem to have been respectedis clear from an entry in, of all places, the diary of the gossipy Oxford antiquaryThomas Hearne.67 Claver Morris died not in Wells (as the Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography and all other reference works would seem to imply) but in thevillage of Eynsham, seven miles west of Oxford. He was on his way home fromhaving delivered his son,William, to Balliol College as a first-year undergraduate.So far this article has focused almost entirely onMorris’s activities inWells. But
some of his most interesting and rewarding musical experiences took place at thehome of John Harington (1680–1725), a wealthy Somerset landowner who livedin the village of Kelston, some four miles northwest of Bath. FromWells it was agood three- to four-hour journey on horseback, so whenMorris went over, some-times taking two or three of the vicars choral with him, they generally stayed for acouple of days of intensivemusic-making.68Quitewhen or inwhat circumstancesthe twomen firstmet we do not know, but their friendship was well established bythe summer of 1709, when on 30AugustHarington is recorded as having attendeda meeting of the music club and, three days later, an after-dinner concert chezMorris. In November John Harington and his wife, his mother and one of hisfour surviving brothers all went over toWells to hear the Purcell ‘Song’ performedat the 1709 St Cecilia’s Day festival.69 The following day (23 November) theyall dined with the Morrises and later went ‘to Close-Hall, & had a very goodConsort’. On Friday (the 25th) Morris prevailed on the Harington party‘to suspend their Journey home’. This they evidently agreed to do; and so, afterdinner, Morris had five of the vicars choral in to join them and they ‘had a great
‘the wonder and delight of all frequenters of country concerts’ in the days of his youth. The twohad been published as a pair by Walsh just six months previously (and advertised as having beenperformed ‘by Monsieur Duburge [sic] at his late Consort’). The ‘Extravagant’ is actually op. 4no. 5 (RV 347), as Michael Talbot kindly informs me.
67 His will (see The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 48) requests ‘a Consort ofMusick of three Sonatas at least in the Roomwheremy Body is placed before it be carried [out] ofmy House to be Interred’. For Hearne see the Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed.Charles Edward Doble et al., 11 vols. (Oxford, 1885–1921), ix, 295 (under the date 7 April 1727).The ‘Mr Broad’ mentioned here may well have been the musician who, the following year, lostout to Nathaniel Priest in a disputed election for the post of organist at All Saints, Bristol(information from Jonathan Barry).
68 And just occasionally (as in 1710, 1716 and 1717) Claver Morris paid for the hire of their horses.69 Also present at the 1709 festival was the Revd ThomasNaish, subdean of Salisbury Cathedral; see
The Diary of Thomas Naish, ed. Doreen Slatter, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural HistorySociety (Devizes, 1965), 66. ‘Mr sub-dean Naish’ is also mentioned in Claver Morris’s diary,seemingly as one of the performers on the occasion (as was John Harington too).
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deal of excellent Musick of many Authors, & did not part ’till past 12’. In themeantime (on 15 September) Claver Morris had ridden over to Bath in hopes ofhearing Nicolini. While there he also visited Mr Harington in Kelston, wherehe ‘heard a Consort of Musick [. . .] perform’d by his Brother, [and] his Sister(who plaid a very good Thorow-Bass)’.Unusually perhaps among the landed gentry, the entire Harington family was
keenly interested in music (or so it would appear), and three of the five brothers(John, Henry and William) all played.70 The latter two were later to appearamong the subscribers to several important musical publications: Henryto four of Handel’s operas (Rodelinda, Alessandro, Scipione and Admeto) andworks by Croft (Musica sacra), Corelli (the op. 5 violin sonatas arranged as con-certos by Geminiani), William Hine (Harmonia Glocestriensis) and Chilcot (theSix Suites of Lessons for the Harpsicord or Spinet andTwelve English Songs);Williamto Handel’s Alexander’s Feast and the op. 6 concertos, the same Hine volume andWilliam Boyce’s 1747 set of 12 trio sonatas. John also took a copy of the firstvolume of Croft’s Musica sacra, and it was probably this copy, given to himperhaps when Harington died in June 1725, that Claver Morris took with himto the Wells music club just six weeks later.71 The sister who was so good at‘Thorow-Bass’ was almost certainly Helena (1681–1748), the only one of the fourHarington girls to survive childhood. Two years later (in 1711) she married thelocal rector, LawsonHudleston, who subsequently became vicar of St Cuthbert’s,Wells, and, as archdeacon of Bath, a canon of Wells Cathedral. The family’snatural musical talents surfaced even more positively in the next generation,when Henry Harington and his wife Mary (nee Bakewell) produced anotherHenry (1729–1816), a physician by profession, but also sufficiently well knownas a composer to make it into New Grove II and the Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography.By 1716 Claver Morris had become the family physician and over the next
nine years several times rode over to Kelston to treat not only JohnHarington andhis wife Dorothy, but also her mother (Mrs White) and Edward, the youngest ofthe Harington boys (b. 1697), who was later himself to become an Oxford doctorof medicine (in 1726) and an F.R.S. (in 1734). On his visits to Kelston, he oftenplayed tables withMrsHarington and alsowithRobertHarington (b. 1689), who,it appears, did not go to university and, though married, continued to live atKelston. The two families, the Morrises and the Haringtons, were obviously onterms of some intimacy. Thus Claver Morris’s wife, Mary, spent a week with
70 Originally they were six, but one (Gostlett) died (aged 24) in 1706. Their father, John Harington(1627–1700), sometime MP for Somerset and captain of a county troop of horse for OliverCromwell, had sired no fewer than 14 children, the last ten of them by Helena (nee Gostlett),his fourth wife; for details see Francis John Poynton, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical,Relating to the Parish of Kelston, in the County of Somerset, 4 vols. (London, 1878–85), esp. ii, 30–4;also, though it is pretty thin on the period which we are concerned with here, Ian Grimble, TheHarington Family (London, 1957). The Pedigree of the Harrington Family (London, [1931]) wasdirectly culled from Poynton.
71 On 3 August; the second volume was not published until January 1726.
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Mrs Harington at Kelston in the summer of 1718. And in early October 1722,Mr and Mrs Harington, together with Edward and Robert’s wife, Susannah,spent five days with the Morrises in Wells. They arrived on the 9th, and on theevening of the 10th,Morris had a ‘Consort ofMusick’ involving four of the vicarschoral at home. The next day, the Harington party, together with Claver Morris,his wife and daughter, all went to Glastonbury ‘to see the Ruins of the Abbey, &the Torr’. On the 12th ‘Mr Harington, his Brother Edward, & I went to ChedderCliffs’ (i.e. Cheddar Gorge), and the day after that, in his Elaboratory at home,Morris ‘shew’d Mr Harington, his Wife, & my other Company the Lucta &Flame produc’d by putting Oyl of Turpentine to Spirit of Nitre’.As we have already seen, it had been on a visit to Bath in late September 1718
that Morris first encountered Messrs Dubourg, Shojan, Walter and Beswillibald,and shortly afterwards had taken all but Dubourg back with him for a week inWells. Summoned over from Bath to Kelston to prescribe for JohnHarington onthe 26th,Morris took the others with him and, after dining there, they (needless tosay) ‘had a Consort ofMusick’ before returning. ClaverMorris met up with themall again at Kelston on 8 October, just five days after Messrs Shojan, Walter andBeswillibald had left Wells. Among the other performers on this occasion were‘Mr Perry of Durham, Mr Harrison of Christ-Church College, Mr WilliamHarington, besides Mr Dingleston [sic], & Mr Spittle’; also two of the vicarschoral from Wells.72 The music was by ‘Mr Handle’, various ‘Anthems andSymphonies, chiefly’. The following day they were joined by ‘Mr Clark’ and
MrDuBurg[,] a Boy of 16 or 17 years old whoseHand on theViolin was perfected by SeniorGeminiani & is the best on that Instrument in England. We had Musick in the utmostperfection all day, excepting while we Dined, till past Mid-night.
Dubourg, Shojan and Beswillibald (and presumably Walter too) left the nextmorning, but Morris and the two vicars choral stayed on until Saturday, the 11th.His diary entry for 10October reveals the charmingly relaxed nature of Morris’srelationship with the childless senior Harington couple:
I continued atMrHarington’s[,] his Lady as well as himself very earnestly importuningmystaying; & she at last snatching my Hatt &Whip out of my Hands & locking them fromme. She and I playd Tables most part of the day.73
72 I have not so far succeeded in identifying Mr Perry of Durham, though John Harington hada friend by the name of Perry who ismentioned byMorris in connectionwith the 1709 StCecilia’sDay festival in Wells; there is, however, no mention at that stage of his being ‘of Durham’.Mr Harrison was probably the Revd John Harrison, vicar of St Mary Magdalen Church inOxford from 1716 until his death five years later. Dinglestadt must have travelled over fromBristol.
73 On another occasion (5 April 1723) ‘Mrs Harington & the Family at Kelston lock’d from me mySplatterdashes [i.e. puttees or leggings to protect one’s lower legs from mud], & made me staythere this day also’. It was the end of a three-day visit. The day before the company ‘perform’d agreat deal of excellent ItalianMusick’, and on the 5th it was ‘Concertoes, &much Vocal Musick,exactly well’.
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The next such feast of music-making on which Morris reports took place on21April 1720, when themusic (unspecified but ‘very exactly perform’d’) was in thehands of ‘Mr [John] Harington, Mr Wm Harington, & sometimes Mr HenryHarington’, assisted by (among others) Messrs Spittle, Dinglestadt and Broad,the mysterious ‘Mr Delaron’, ‘Mr Priest’, ‘Priest’s Boy’ and a certain ‘Mr Ash’,surely the violinist James Ashe of Bradford (in Wiltshire) who would, on7 October of the following year, introduce Claver Morris and his friends toGeminiani.74 The ‘Mr Priest’ referred to here would have been Josias Priest(d. 1726), then organist of Bath Abbey (cf. note 30 above), and his boy one ofhis choristers (or an articled pupil, conceivably Thomas Chilcot). With so manyfine players involved, we can only suppose the music to have been somethingrather grand. The next day, Morris ‘danc’d withMrs Harington’, and on the 23rdhe returned to Wells. Three months later (on 1 August) Augustus Spittle arrivedfrom Kelston, bringing with him ‘the Treble Voice-Part of Handel’s Anthem’which he and Claver Morris then took round to Mr Broderip’s, obviously to becopied out or at any rate rehearsed with those of his choristers who were tobe involved in the following evening’s initial try-out by the music club of Mysong shall be alway. Earlier the previous year (on 17 February 1719) and also inWells, Morris and his clubbers ‘had the first tryal of Hendels Pastoral’. This canonly have been Acis and Galatea, as premiered at Cannons, the country seat of theDuke of Chandos, in the summer of 1718.The only other work by Handel mentioned in the diaries forms part of
the ‘Grand Consort’ at Kelston on 1 May 1724 when, ‘after 2 of Valentini’sConcertos’, Morris and two vicars choral from Wells together with others ‘per-form’d very justly Hendel’s Oritorio, & some of his Anthems’.75 The ‘Oritorio’has, of course, to be the original version of Esther, also probably first performed atCannons about the same time asAcis and Galatea.76 Among the other performerswere ‘Mr Ash’ and ‘DrHarrington’, the latter presumably EdwardHarington, theyoungest of the Harington brothers, who had taken an Oxford BM in 1722 butwas not actually doctored until 1726. The day before they had also had ‘a fineConsort the greatest part of the day’ and evidently carried on ‘till 11 at night’. Suchenthusiasm in a so-called ‘Dark Age’ of British music is quite remarkable. And noless so is the speed with which these various works, Esther, Acis and at least two orthree of the Chandos anthems, became available for performance so far from the
74 In themid-1730s Ashe and his familymoved to Salisbury, where he (and later his sonRobert) wereto become heavily involved in their local musical society. For details, see Burrows and Dunhill,Music and Theatre in Handel’s World, passim. Ashe, Delarone and Spittle had also taken part in aKelston concert on 25 February; so too a ‘Mr Stagge’ at whose house in Bath the meeting withGeminiani was later to take place.
75 On an earlier occasion (8 January 1723), also at Kelston, nine of Valentini’s concertos had beenperformed.
76 On the chronology of the Chandos anthems and the other works mentioned here, see GraydonBeeks, ‘Handel andMusic for the Earl of Carnarvon’, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti Tercentenary Essays,ed. PeterWilliams (Cambridge, 1985), 1–20; alsoDonald Burrows,Handel and the English ChapelRoyal (Oxford, 2005), 144–66 and Table 6.1 in particular.
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composer’s then current base in London. Given that none of this music had yetbeen published, as also the fact that the celebrated Smith scriptorium was thenonly just about up and running, how did John Harington (who seems the mostlikely agent) come by his performing materials? The answer has to have been viaHenry Brydges, an aged cousin of the Duke of Chandos who lived only a fewmiles away at Keynsham,more or less halfway between Bath and Bristol. Thoughold Harry Brydges (as he is always referred to by the Bakers in their standardbiography of the duke)77 is not known to have had any particular interest inmusic, he was certainly known to the Haringtons of Kelston at whose dinnertable he appeared on Friday, 1 September 1721. He was then at least 70. ClaverMorris, William Broderip and three other Wells musicians were there too (andhad been for two days already). Thus ‘betwixt Breakfast & Dinner’, as Morrisrelates, ‘we had a Consort of 3 hours’ followed, after dinner, by a further twoand a half hours of music.78
It was in the late spring or early summer of 1725, just over a month after thedeath (on 5 April) of Claver Morris’s wife, that his good friend, John Harington,fell seriously ill.Morris (though he had himself in themeantime been ‘very sick ofa Continued Tertian Fever’) was called over to treat him on 9May and stayed forthree days. He was there again on the 21st. On 11 June he ‘sent [his] Servant toKelston to knowhowMrHarington was’, and on the 14thMorris rode over again,returning to Wells the following day. Two weeks later, Harington was dead.He was buried at Kelston on 29 June, but there is curiously no mention of thisin the diary. Morris evidently carried on visiting the widow until, in July of thefollowing year (1726), she too died. Shortly after this Claver Morris himself againfell ill, this time of what he himself describes (on 8 August) as ‘a Consumption &a growing Phthisis’ – and this, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biographyexplains, was probably tuberculosis. Though the diary runs out four days later(on the 12th), there is no evident sign of weakness in the handwriting. It may be,therefore, thatMorris carried on in another volume, but if so it no longer survives.His long-running and increasingly bitter legal dispute with the vicars choral,
not to mention the consequential break-up of the music club which he hadcarefully nurtured over so many years, can have done absolutely nothing toimprove the state of Claver Morris’s health. Indeed it must have been so deeply
77 Charles Henry Collins Baker and Muriel I. Baker, The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges,First Duke of Chandos, Patron of the Liberal Arts (Oxford, 1949).
78 Legend has it that Handel was an occasional visitor to Keynsham, and that he played the organ inthe local church (of St John the Baptist) where there evidently is, rather surprisingly, a brassoffertory plate inscribed ‘S. Johns Church Keynsham G. F. Handel 1750’. He is also supposed tohave given them a bell. Both theHarington house at Kelston and the Brydges house at Keynshamhave long since been destroyed. According to Lady Caroline Brydges (granddaughter ofthe duke), writing (it appears) in the summer of 1751, there were ‘about 14 of the commonpeople that sing in the Church [at Keynsham] all Handel’s Anthems & with out any instru-ments’; for further details see Graydon Beeks, ‘A Curious Handel Performance at Keynsham’,Newsletter of the American Handel Society, 13/2 (August 1998), 5–6.
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dispiriting as to hasten his decline.79 Morris was subpoenaed on 23 June 1726,and five days later, without even waiting for the case to be heard, he summoneda meeting of the clubbers ‘at the Mitre in Saddler’s-street’. It was a normalTuesday club night, and of the 14 members who turned up four were actuallyvicars choral. Morris must have made it clear that, without the active support ofthe vicars, the society could no longer continue as it had done in the past, and also,though he does not actually say so, that because of their decision to take him tocourt, he no longer wished to be associated with them. Having asked the meetingwhat it wished done with the money which, as treasurer, he still held in its name,it was agreed (on a vote) ‘to give it to some Indigent Persons’ among the localcommunity.80
Wounded perhaps, but never beaten, Morris was clearly determined to carryon. Thus all present (save the vicars choral) ‘agreed [. . .] to have a Clubb everyTuesdayNight (as before) at theMitre,&whenwe hadHands [sufficient] to haveMusick’. Alas, that would seem seldom to have happened, for, at the four meet-ings tabled in the diary before Morris himself fell ill at the end of July, music ismentioned only once (on the 12th); and when they met again the following weekthey ‘had no Consort’. Without the active participation of the vicars choral, thereis no reason to suppose that things would ever improve. Thus this remarkablechapter in the history of West Country music-making came suddenly to an end.With John Harington gone, and in March 1727 Claver Morris also, there was,it seems, no one with the energy and enthusiasm needed to carry on. Having hadhis three trio sonatas played in the room in which he lay before he left his grandhouse in the East Liberty for the last time, he was buried in the cathedral on29March. A simple slab marked ‘Claver Morris M. D. 1726’ (Old Style) directlybehind the high altar marks the spot; his first child, a daughter (Mary) who diedin infancy, lies there too.81
It is now almost 50 years since Stanley Sadie delivered his pioneering paper‘Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century England’,82 and 35 sinceMichael Tilmouthfollowed it up with the article referred to in note 6 above. In the meantime, the
79 Though the action was brought by the vicars choral, it would appear that the bishop was theactual driving force behind it. According to Morris, two of their number (Messrs Nickells andNooth) came to see him on 30October 1725 and told him ‘that they& others of the Vicars wouldif I pleas’d refuse to Join in the Action they were commanded by Bishop Hooper to Commence(with their Brethren) against me, [. . .] [but] I desir’d them they would join in it, & not incurr theBishop’sDispleasure’. See alsoThe Diary of a West Country Physician, ed.Hobhouse, 123–5, underthe dates 22October, 1November and 15November 1725; it is clear from the diary itself that thingsturned quite nasty in the spring of the following year.
80 For the names of the beneficiaries and how much each got, see ibid., 134.81 A rathermore elaboratemonumentwas later erected, and, surmounted by a bust,may still be seen
on the east wall of the cloister. Its Latin text, together with an English translation, can be foundibid., 46–7 (Appendix A), and is a noble testament to a life which, though it did not quite attainthe biblical three score years and ten, was nevertheless lived to the full, and to considerable effectin the local community. For the bust see Tony Scrase,Wells: A Pictorial History (Chichester, 1992),Plate 81; Plate 80 provides another (and somewhat earlier) view of the Claver Morris house.
82 Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 85 (1959), 17–30.
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cultural life of provincial England in the eighteenth century has attracted a gooddeal of scholarly interest, and particularly among social historians, most notablyPeter Borsay in his bookThe English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in theProvincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989). And to that now-classic text both RozSouthey’s Music-Making in North-East England during the Eighteenth Century(Aldershot, 2006) and Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman’s even more recentMusic in the British Provinces 1690–1914 are very welcome additions. In his sectionon music and the arts in general (pp. 117–49), Borsay has several references toClaver Morris and/or to Wells, but is naturally constrained, as have been allcommentators hitherto, by what is available in the 1934 Hobhouse edition ofthe diaries. Just how much more they (in conjunction with the account books)have to reveal will by now be readily apparent, not only from the present articlebut also from that cited in note 26.Unlike his more or less exact contemporary, Roger North (1651?–1734), Morris
appears to have had little interest in musical theory or in the more intellectualaspects of the subject. Given his keen interest in natural philosophy and in findingout (if he could) just how things worked, this is perhaps a trifle surprising;nevertheless, his boundless enthusiasm for music in performance is everywhereapparent, and his practical experience of the contemporary repertory was, I daresay, a good deal wider than was North’s. We knowwho supplied him with music,but just how Morris came to be aware, and in some cases so quickly after pub-lication, what was available to him remains a mystery. He can hardly have reliedon advertisements in the London papers (to at least some ofwhich he had access inlocal hostelries). Perhaps he had an arrangement with Edward Lewis to keep himabreast of the latest items to appear in print. His connection with JohnHaringtonin Kelston (who also kept his ear close to the ground) must have helped, butwhatever the explanation the range and variety of music performed by ClaverMorris and his ‘clubbers’ in Wells during the first quarter of the eighteenthcentury is quite extraordinary. Also worthy of closer inspection, though byothers better qualified to do so, isMorris’s role in those various civic commissionson which he served, the two early Somersetshire enclosure acts in particular. As adiarist, Claver Morris is certainly no Pepys. He was not writing for posterity,however, and the style is distinctly pedestrian; like Thomas Turner, the Sussexvillage shopkeeper, undertaker, schoolmaster, etc. scribbling away some 40 yearslater,83 he is chiefly concerned with the trivia and humdrum routine of the dailyround. Though that has a certain fascination of its own, and tells us much aboutwhat life was like at the time, it is the range and variety of Morris’s musicalactivities which clearly justify the attention given him here. Together with theaccount books, his diaries are an unrivalled (and hitherto neglected) source for thefirst quarter of the eighteenth century.
83 See The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754–1765, ed. David Vaisey (Oxford, 1985).
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ABSTRACT
Claver Morris (1659–1727) was a West Country physician and keen amateur musician.Based inWells, he was the moving spirit (and possibly founder) of the local music society.A filleted version of his diaries and account books was published in 1934, but the originalshave not been closely examined since. They offer a wealth of information about musical(and social) life in the provinces, and fascinating details of themusic he heard, performed,bought and had copied.
H. Diack Johnstone ([email protected]), Emeritus Fellow of St Anne’sCollege, Oxford, was formerly a University Reader in Music, and is currently GeneralEditor of Musica Britannica. Co-editor of volume 4 in the Blackwell History of Music inBritain series (1990), he has recently co-edited the complete keyboard works of ThomasRoseingrave. An edition of the complete chamber music of William Croft is in the press.
APPENDIX
The following is a list (chronologically arranged in each of several genres) of all the musicbought by (or copied for) Claver Morris; some is mentioned only in the diaries, but mostof it is tabled in the account books. When considering the figures given here (and else-where in this article), the reader ought to bear in mind the relative spending power of thepound in 1700 as compared with now. Such equivalencies are notoriously difficult tocalculate, but for such luxury items as printed music, it seems we shall not go far wrong ifwe reckon an early eighteenth-century shilling to have been worth not less than £10 inpresent-day values. Thus for an item priced at 5s. here, one might now expect to pay atleast £50, and possibly as much as £60–70. For the evidence, see Robert D. Hume, ‘TheEconomics of Culture in London, 1660–1740’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 69 (2006),487–533 (esp. pp. 490–2).84 Until the decimalization of English currency in 1971,one pound sterling equalled 20 shillings, and each shilling 12 pence; the value of theguinea, normally 21 shillings, was not stabilized until 1717, and had previously been worth£1 1s. 6d.85
1. VOCAL MUSIC
1701 An entry in the now-missing account books for 1698–1708 shows thatMorris bought various pieces of music from ‘Mr. Vaillant FrenchBookseller [. . .] in the Strand’ and at ‘Mr. Plaifords in the TempleChange, Purcell’s Songs and book of Descant’.86 ‘Purcell’s Songs’ is
84 I am indebted to one of my two anonymous referees for bringing this important article to mynotice.
85 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 36.86 See Hobhouse, ‘The Library of a Physician’, 90; among other music apparently purchased by
Morris during this periodwere items byByrd,Croft andHandel (see ibid., 95). There is, however,no sign of any music by Byrd or Croft in the surviving accounts, and the Croft ‘Song for hisDegree’ mentioned in the diary was in any case not written until 1713. In his chapter on ‘Music inWells’ (p. 39) Hobhouse also mentions three other composers ([Angelo] Maria Fiore, Petz (sic)and Torelli) whose music he claims Morris to have owned; if so it must have been acquiredbetween 1698 and 1708, and have been listed somewhere in the now-missing volume of accounts.The Fiore would almost certainly have been his Trattimenti da camera a due stromenti
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most likely to have been the first book of Orpheus Britannicus (1698–1702),and the book of descant must undoubtedly have been ‘An Introduction tothe Art of Descant: or, Composing Musick in Parts’, as published by JohnPlayford as the third part of An Introduction to the Skill of Musick (12th edn,London, 1694) or one of the next two editions, most probably the 14th(1700). However, as the work is paginated continuously and there is noevidence that the third part was ever sold separately, it must be that Morrisis here using the title of part 3 to refer to thewhole.We do not knowwhat hepaid for either, but the advertised price ofOrpheus Britannicus, Book 1, was18s. (bound).
1708 (May) Songs in the Opera of Thomyris (1707); the symphonies in Thomyris hebought a month later (in June 1708). He paid 9s. for the first and 4s. for thesecond. It is not clear to which of several issues of the songs (as arranged byPepusch) this refers, but it seems most likely to have been either item 246
or 254 in Smith’s Walsh Bibliography (see note 86); for the symphoniessee item 256, and for further details of the songs, David Hunter, Opera andSong Books Published in England 1703–1726 (London, 1997), items 40, 40aand 42–5.
1709 (Sept.) A recently appointed vicar choral, the Revd Francis Franklyn, returningfrom a visit to Exeter, ‘brought me an [unidentified] Anthem from Mr
Langdon’. This would have been the Revd Tobias Langdon (1683–1712),a priest-vicar and master of the choristers at the cathedral there.87
1709 (Dec.) D’Eves motets (12s.). These must be either the op. 1 or op. 3 of Alphonsed’Eve, who was succeeded by Defesch as maıtre de chapelle of the cathedralin Antwerp in 1725. D’Eve’s style is said in New Grove II to be markedlyCorellian. His op. 1 (Genius musicus) published in Amsterdam (c.1700)contains a Mass (once attributed to Arne) and ten motets, his op. 3(Philomela delectans) published in Antwerp (1708) a Mass and fivemotets. The latter (bought from Edward Lewis in London) would seemto be the more likely candidate.
1711 (Sept.) The ‘Opera call’d Almahide’ (published by Walsh in February 1710); alsoBassani’s ‘opera 20th’ which, if accurately described, must be the Missa perle defonti concertata (Bologna, 1698). These too he bought from Lewis,paying 9s. for Almahide and 18s. for the Bassani. For bibliographical detailsof the first see Hunter, Opera and Song Books, items 64, 65 and 68.
(Lucca, 1698), and the Pez possibly his Duplex genius (Augsburg, 1696) but much more probablyone or other of the two volumes of sonatas and airs for two flutes and bass published by Walshearly in 1707 (items 231 and 242 in William C. Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical WorksPublished by John Walsh During the Years 1695–1720, London, 1968). The Torelli could havebeen any one of his opp. 1–6.
87 For what little is known of the composer, grandfather of Richard Langdon (later organist ofExeter Cathedral), see John S. Bumpus, A History of English Cathedral Music, 2 vols. (London,1908), ii, 344–5. Like Claver Morris, Langdon was an arch High Church Tory (as is evident fromthe text of two of his catches in Oxford, Christ Church, MS Mus. 1219 (f )).
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1713 (June) Scarlatti’s motets (10s.). These had been bought for him by a Wells viol-playing friend (Mr Prickman) on a visit to London, and must be theConcerti sacri, motetti a una, due, tre e quattro voci con violini, e SalveRegina a quattro voci e violini published by Estienne Roger inAmsterdam (1707–8). Earlier in the year (on 30 April) Morris paidMr Nooth, one of the vicars choral, for ‘Pricking out the Bass ofPoliroldis Mottets’. These he had previously borrowed from JohnHarington, whose servant was paid 2s. 6d. for bringing them over on27 September 1711. The composer in this case is most likely to have beenGiovanni Antonio Pollarolo (1676–1746), whose unpublished motets forsolo voice and two or three instruments are now to be found only in Berlin(see New Grove II).
1714 (Aug.) Fiocco motets (10s.). These must be the 12 Sacri concentus for four voicesand three instruments (op. 1) by Jean-Joseph Fiocco, which had beenpublished in Amsterdam (n.d.). They were bought for him by anotherfriend (Mr Odingsells). Jean-Joseph Fiocco (1686–1746) was maıtre dechapelle at Notre-Dame de Sablon (and at the ducal chapel) in Brussels(where his father, Pietro Antonio Fiocco, had succeeded not Alphonse butHonore Eugene d’Eve). It was most probably his younger brother, Joseph-Hector Fiocco (1703–41), who visited Wells in the summer of 1724.
1716 (Dec.) Morris had several items fromMrs Lewis (whowas now running the familybusiness ‘at the Harp in St Paul’s Alley’). Among these was ‘Cherici’sMottets’ (11s.). These must have been either one of his op. 4 (1686) orop. 6 (1695), both scored for two or three voices, a couple of violins andcontinuo, and both entitled Motetti sagri a due, e tre voci, con violini. Op. 4was twice reprinted, and it was probably the most recent edition (Bologna,1700) that Morris had. For the composer, Sebastiano Cherici (1647–1703),seeNew Grove II. As part of that same consignment,Morris also had a copyof Handel’s Rinaldo (1711) and Galliard’s English opera Calypso andTelemachus (1712); they cost him 9s. each.
1717 (Nov.) Morris had two of Steffani’s motets copied for him byMr Spittle, who alsocopied another one for him in December. Presumably these were all takenfrom the Sacer Ianus quadrifons for three voices and continuo, published inMunich in 1685. It could well be, however, that these were the same threeLatin motets for two voices and continuo (doubtfully by Steffani) as werebequeathed to the library of DurhamCathedral in 1722 (see Colin Timms,Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and his Music, Oxford, 2003, 174and 327). The parts of Handel’s anthem (My song shall be alway) copied bySpittle at the same time are most likely to have belonged to JohnHarington, even though Morris contributed a guinea toward the cost.
2. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
(a) Solo sonatas
1686 (Oct.) Morris had his copy of Courtly Masquing Ayres bound at a cost of 1s. AsPeter Holman kindly informsme, this must almost certainly have been the
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volume published by Playford in 1662 and not the work of the same title bythe London wait, John Adson, first printed in 1611.
1709 (Dec.) ‘Massiti’s 3dOpera being Solos’ has to have been the 12 Sonate da camera forviolin and continuo byMicheleMascitti published in Paris in 1707. It musthave been this edition, costing 8s., that Lewis supplied, since the Englishedition (byWalsh) had not yet appeared.88 At the same time he also paid 7s.for ‘Valentine’s Sonatas’ which, if by Robert Valentine, must be either the12 trio sonatas op. 1 or the 6 recorder sonatas op. 2, the latter published inRome in 1708. Morris does not say which, but ‘Valentine’s Sonatas’ wereplayed at a meeting of the music club on 3 January 1710.
1711 (Sept.) Among the music which Claver Morris had sent from London withBassani’s ‘opera 20th’ and ‘The Opera call’d Almahide’ (see above) were‘Valentini’s Solos’ (7s.) and ‘Reali’s Ten Sonatas’ (also 7s.). The formermust be Giuseppe Valentini’s 7 idee per camera for violin and continuo(op. 4), since his only other set of violin pieces (op. 8) was not publisheduntil 1714. Giovanni Reali’s op. 2 was a set of 10 Sonate da camera e bassopublished in Venice in 1712. The disparity in date is probably to beaccounted for by the anomalies of the Venetian calendar; nevertheless itshows, better perhaps than any other single example, just how wellinformed Morris was about the latest music being turned out by bothEnglish and foreign presses.89 Two months earlier (on 10 July) Morrishad paid a ‘Mr Gibbons’ 10s. 9d. (a surprisingly large sum) for ‘PrickingBassanies [sic] 3 & 4th [violin] Sonatas, with his Graces expressd’. Noornamented versions of any of the Bassani sonatas are now known,however.
1712 (May) Morris paid Mr Hammond in Bath 6s. ‘for Corelli’s 12 Solos, with hisGraces to them’. But whether this was the original Roger (Amsterdam)edition of 1710–11 or the Walsh piracy of c.1711 we do not know. Later thatyear, also in Bath, and this time from the composer himself, Morris boughta copy of William Corbett’s op. 5 (see below).
1713 (June) In addition to the Scarlatti motets (see above),Morris also acquired (for 6s.)a copy of ‘Bomporti’s [sic] Sonatas transpos’d for the Flute’ which he then‘gave to Colonel Berkeley’. But since no recorder transpositions of any ofthe Bonporti solo sonatas are known, it is more likely that what Morrisactually purchased was the ‘6 sonates a 2 flutes & basse continue compo-sees par Mr. Bomporti & transposees sur la flute par Mr. Corbet’ pub-lished by Estienne Roger in 1707–8. (Information by courtesy of PeterHolman.)
1713 (Nov.) Morris had from Hammond in Bath ‘the 2d & 4th Operas of Massiti’s
Solos’, for which he paid 10s.; also ‘Gasparini Visconti’s 1st Opera ofSolos’ (3s. 6d.). Mascitti’s op. 2 was a set of 15 Sonate da camera published
88 See Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh, 129 (item 432).89 For Reali (who does notmake it intoNew Grove II), see Basso,Dizionario enciclopedico universale,
x, 261; also Eleanor Selfridge-Field,Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (3rd edn,New York, 1994), 194.
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in Paris in 1706, and op. 4 (1711) a volume containing eight sonatas forviolin and continuo plus six for two violins and continuo. Visconti’s sixviolin sonatas op. 1 were published in Amsterdam in 1703, and also byWalsh in London the same year.
1714 (Aug.) The ‘Mont de Caix Pieces’ which, with the Fiocco motets, Morris’s friendMrOdingsells brought back from London (at a cost of 9s.) can hardly havebeenmotets (as Tilmouth, ‘The Beginnings of Provincial Concert Life’, 13,describes them), butmust surely have been thePremier livre de pieces de violeby Louis de Caix d’Hervelois (c.1680–1755) published in Paris in 1708; thesecond book was not published until 1719.
1717 (Dec.) Though Morris paid Mrs Lewis 6s. ‘for Massiti’s Sonatas, his 5Opera’, heobviously meansMascitti’s 12 violin sonatas op. 5 since he already had opp.2 and 4 (see above).Whilst it could have been the original Paris 1714 editionhe bought, it is more likely perhaps to have been the Walsh edition pub-lished the following year.
1718 (July) Morris paidMrHammond of Bath 6s. for ‘Albinoni’s Solos’. These mightwell have been the six Sonate da chiesa first published in Amsterdam c.1709and by Walsh in 1710, but, at 6s., are more likely perhaps to have been theTrattenimenti armonici per camera, op. 6 (Amsterdam, c.1712). As it hap-pens, theWalsh edition (item 541 in Smith’sWalsh Bibliography) came outin early July 1718, but ClaverMorris can hardly have been that quick off themark. A month earlier he had purchased, also from Hammond, ‘Babel’s3Collection [sic] of Lessons for the Spinnet’ (9s.). This is the only keyboardmusic mentioned anywhere in the diaries or the accounts and is obviouslyitem 505 in Smith’s Walsh Bibliography.
(b) Trio sonatas
See note 86 (above) for details of chamber works by Fiore and Pez probably acquired byMorris between 1698 and 1708.
1708 (Nov.) ‘Tibaldi’s Sonatas’ (brought back from London by one Edward Smith)must beG. B.Tibaldi’s Sonata’s or Chamber Aires, op. 1, published byWalshc.1708.90 A set of Bassani sonatas acquired for ‘Mr Mills’ on the sameoccasion cannot readily be identified.
1711 (Sept.) In addition to various works already mentioned, Claver Morris also hadJ. C. Schickhard’s op. 7, a set of 12 trio sonatas for two oboes or violinspublished in 1710. They cost him 7s.
1712 (Sept.) William Corbett’s ‘5th Opera being 6 Sonatas of 3 Parts for Violins & forFlutes’ were acquired directly from the composer himself at a cost of 8s.This must be the work listed in New Grove II as Corbett’s op. 4 and theresaid to have been published c.1713.
90 In the last of themanyConsorts ofMusick recorded in the diary and given byClaverMorris at hisown home (on Monday, 11 July 1726), all 12 of Tibaldi’s trio sonatas were played, whilst many ofthe company ‘stay’d till past 1 a clock’. See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse,134, for what they ate and drank on the occasion.
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1717 (Dec.) Morris paidMrs Lewis 11s. for ‘Sherard’s Sonatas, his 2d Opera’; these werea set of 12 trio sonatas by James Sherard (1666–1738), a composer andapothecary whose brother William, a notable botanist, founded theSherardian chair of botany at Oxford.
1719 (April) ‘Ravenscrofts Airs’, for which he paid Mr Hill (not the local harpsichord-maker but another friend of the same name who had recently been up toLondon) 4s., were probably the ‘Sonatas or Chamber Aires for two Violinsand a Through Bass Composed by the late Mr. Ravenscroft OperaSeconda’, published by Walsh c.1708.
Though there is no evidence of purchase, it is clear that Morris also owned Bonporti’s 10Sonate da camera, op. 6 (1705), and at least one collection of Gottfried Finger’s sonatas(two of which were played beside his coffin before it was taken off for burial).
(c) Concertos
1719 (April) Morris paid Mr Hill (see above) 15s. for ‘Vivaldi’s Concertos (8 Books)’.This was almost certainly the ‘new Edition’ of Vivaldi’s op. 3 (‘L’Estroarmonico’) advertised byWalsh in September 1717 and originally publishedby him in two instalments, the first (nos. 1–7) in October 1715 and thesecond (nos. 8–12) in April 1717.
1720 (Sept.) ‘For Vivaldi’s 2Concertos, the Cuckow,& the Extravagant’Morris paid 5s.These are the ‘Two Celebrated Concertos’ published by Walsh in April ofthat year (and also a month or so earlier by John Jones).
1722 (June) ‘For Vivaldi’s Concerto Extravaganza, his 3rd & 4th Opera’ (one guinea).
Op. 3 Morris already had (see above). From the reference to two opusnumbers, however, as also the price, we may safely suppose that the word‘Extravaganza’ here actually means the op. 4 concertos (‘La stravaganza’),published in two books by Roger in Amsterdam six years earlier (and byWalsh not until 1728).
1723 (Sept.) Morris paid Mr Spittle a guinea for copying ‘six Concertos’ by‘Backlehamble’ (sic).
Among a number of the other orchestral pieces mentioned are ‘4 Sets of Play-House Airs’for which (in October 1711) Morris gave ‘MrMills’ 6s., and these he (Mills) had evidentlyacquired ‘from Hammond in Bath’; for Mills see section (b) above.
Though there is no evidence of purchase, it would seem thatMorris also ownedGiuseppeAlberti’s 10 Concerti per chiesa e per camera, op. 1 (Bologna, 1713; also Walsh edn, 1718),since three of them were performed at a concert (at home) on 26 April 1721; likewiseAlbinoni’s Concertos in Seven Parts, op. 2 (published by Walsh in 1709 and reissued in1717), two of which were heard by the Morrises’ guests on Christmas Day 1724.
The nine concertos by Valentini played at Kelston on 8 January 1723 (and two on1 May 1724) must be part of Giuseppe Valentini’s op. 7 set (Bologna, 1710) and wereprobably part of John Harington’s library (though two were also played chez Morris on25 December 1724).
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‘Mr Clark’s Symphonys, & Interludes’ (copied for Morris by Spittle in December 1717)seem likely to have been the work of the Bristol musician who is said to have servedas music master to the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton; it was presumably this same‘Mr Clark’ who played for John Harington at Kelston on 9October 1718, and for ClaverMorris in Wells six weeks later.
3. TREATISES
1701 Purcell, ‘ABrief Introduction to theArt ofDescant: or, ComposingMusickin Parts’, in Playford, An Introduction to the Skill of Musick (12th edn,London, 1694); see vocal section above.
1723 AlexanderMalcolm,Treatise of Musick: Speculative, Practical and Historical(Edinburgh, 1721), which Morris bought of ‘Mr Cook of Sherborn’ for 7s.in August 1723.
Also quite interesting, though not strictly speaking relevant, is the fact that, in September1697, Claver Morris paid someone 2s. ‘for making my Instrument to RuleMusick-Paper’(i.e. a rastrum).
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