james hobson, phd thesis, 'musical antiquarianism and the madrigal revival in england,...
TRANSCRIPT
MUSICAL ANTIQUARIANISM AND THE
MADRIGAL REVIVAL IN ENGLAND, 1726–1851
JAMES HOBSON
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE
FACULTY OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC
OCTOBER 2015
Word count: 78,051
ii
ABSTRACT
The history of the madrigal in England is a significant one, traversing the final decades of
the 16th century to the present day; as a vehicle for music, the madrigal has been an
inspiration to composers and singers alike. This thesis surveys the revival of interest in
the madrigal from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century; it investigates the
madrigal's resurrection through a seminal period of English musical history, and
examines its rise in artistic and social contexts where nexuses are established with the
Gothic Revival and the re-accommodation, from the late-18th century onwards, of
Roman Catholicism in England.
The examination of contemporaneous newspapers, musical journals, minute
books and other operational apparatus that relate to both metropolitan and provincial
madrigal societies has not only revealed how extensive are the existing archives, but has
also allowed in-depth investigation and discussion of their meaning and impact.
A core group of five antiquarians is also examined: Sir John Leman Rogers
(1780–1847), William Hawes (1785–1846), Edward Taylor (1784–1863), Thomas
Oliphant (1799–1873), and James Turle (1802–1882). These men were brought together
by their fascination for old music under the aegis of the Madrigal Society (whose
continuous existence of over 270 years makes it the oldest music-performing society
today); they saw themselves as restorers of a long-lost national heritage, and as advocates
of a return to excellence in musical composition. The composer Robert Lucas Pearsall
(1795–1856), the most prolific of madrigal writers in the 19th-century, was caught up in
the tide of the five men’s work; the outcome was his production of some of the most
exquisite vocal writing of his century. All six of these men are discussed in detail within
the thesis.
The end of this thesis gathers together the evidence examined, and arrives at the
conclusion that despite the consistently small circle of amateurs and connoisseurs for
whom madrigal singing was an interest and pastime in the 18th and early 19th centuries,
their efforts nurtured and sustained the madrigal, and promoted it as a patriotic emblem
of musical achievement. In so doing, they laid the foundation for a second wave of
interest that rose again in the early 20th century, and established firmly the madrigal as a
constituent part of English musical ipseity.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is not an easy task to find the right place to begin to acknowledge the time and support
that I have been given in order to complete this doctoral dissertation. So many people
have helped me in many and such diverse ways. First, I thank those friends who
provided me with space where I could settle and write: Andrew Sharkey at
Shirehampton; Dr Suzanne (Sue) Cole, who put up with me for over two months at her
home in Melbourne, Australia; Avril Wright at Snettisham in Norfolk; and most recently,
Irene and John Willis in St Albans.
I am very grateful for the unfailing support of Professor Stephen Banfield at
Bristol, whose supervision has made my efforts come to fruition. He provided me with
the skills necessary to complete this dissertation, and gave me the confidence to continue
working when I might have otherwise given up.
I also wish to recognise those institutions that gave me financial support: the
Musica Britannica Trust, whose Louise Dyer Award enabled me to travel to Einsiedeln in
Switzerland to inspect Pearsall’s working library at the Benedictine monastery there; and
for awards from both the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust, and Quaker Adult
Education, which enabled me to purchase research material.
My thanks to the President and Committee of the Madrigal Society, who have
given me unlimited access to papers that have not yet been deposited at the British
Library. At the same time, I wish to thank Richard Crewdson, who introduced me to the
Madrigal Society, and who passed on his own transcriptions of some of the
correspondence of Robert Lucas Pearsall.
I am very grateful to the remarkable music librarian, Pater Lukas Helg, O.S.B., at
Einsiedeln for his help and advice whilst I undertook research at the monastery's music
library. My thanks also to Nigel Cochrane, Deputy Librarian at the Albert Sloman
iv
Library at the University of Essex, who patiently helped me with my enquiries. In
particular I thank Dr Peter Horton, Deputy Librarian (Reference and Research) at the
Royal College of Music, who helped me many times in the location of material, and gave
me unlimited access to items in the College's collection.
Two individuals have often been at the back of my mind when writing about
Pearsall and madrigals: the erstwhile Director of Music at Millfield School, Geoffrey
Keating, who encouraged me in my love for part-singing; and Dr Judith Blezzard, who,
almost twenty years ago, placed into my hands a pile of photocopied Pearsall madrigals
that have remained a precious possession and reference guide ever since.
My sincere gratitude is due also to Dr Paul Rodmell for many cups of coffee and
lengthy discussions in Caffè Nero on Frith Street. Likewise I am further indebted to the
aforementioned Sue Cole, whose advice, time, conversation, and shared interest of the
music revival in 19th-century England was invaluable.
I thank also my family who have waited patiently while I completed this
dissertation.
Finally—but in reality, first—devoted thanks to my beloved Wayne, whose
constant support and understanding made it possible for me to get to the finishing line.
DECI.ARATION
I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the
requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Ptactice fot Research Degree
Programmes, and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award.
Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own
work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as
such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author.
SIGNED:..... DATE, JQ:!.!,....P/ {
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
NOTE ABOUT EDITORIAL POLICY – TABLE OF CURRENCY –
EQUIVALENT MONETARY VALUES
ix
x
xi
xii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and Background I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
The Rise and Fall of the Madrigal Revival
Personal Motivation, Limits of Research, and Primary Sources Used
Review of Scholarly Literature
Romanticism, Antiquarianism, and Gothic Revival
Earlier Accounts of the Madrigal Revival
The Rise of the Glee
Preview of Chapters
1
8
11
16
20
30
33
CHAPTER 2
‘Dress’d Up in Cobwebs and Powdered with Dust’: the Creation and Operation of
the Madrigal Society in the 18th Century I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
The Academy of Vocal Music
John Immyns, the Foundation of the Madrigal Society, and its Archive
The Procedural Contents of the Madrigal Society Archive to 1800
Repertoire and Performance Practice in the Earlier Years
Membership and Roman Catholicism
Music in the Madrigal Society Archive, and Madrigals Circulating Elsewhere
36
44
49
56
66
70
CHAPTER 3
‘Haunting the Gothic Aisle’: the Madrigal Society from 1792 to 1841
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Changing Times and Discontinuous Records
The Early Years of the 19th Century
The Role of the Anniversary Dinners
Membership Matters and Their Effect on the Madrigal Society
74
76
81
85
vii
V.
VI.
VII.
Madrigal Publication
The 1811 Madrigal Prize Competition
The Madrigal Society in the Press
95
105
110
CHAPTER 4
Two Provincial Madrigal Societies: Devon and Bristol
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Introduction
The Devon Madrigal Society
The Bristol Background
The Founding of the Bristol Madrigal Society
120
122
133
138
CHAPTER 5
Five Leading Music Antiquarians and their Work
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
Introduction
Sir John Leman Rogers (1780–1847)
William Hawes (1785–1846)
Edward Taylor (1784–1863)
Thomas Oliphant (1799–1873)
James Turle (1802–1882)
Conclusions
156
156
164
171
180
189
194
CHAPTER 6
Formalising the Musical Antiquarian, Going beyond the Early Societies
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
The Musical Antiquarian Society
The Western Madrigal Society, the Prize Competition of 1841, and the
Downfall of Edward Taylor
Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856)
Pearsall’s Madrigals
Pressures for Change—the Manchester and Leicester Madrigal Societies
196
201
206
210
215
CONCLUSION
221
Appendix 1
A List of the Musical and Antiquarian Societies Mentioned in this Thesis in
viii
Chronological Order of Their Foundation
Appendix 2
Transcription of Arthur Fox’s Handwritten Notes, Taken from the Now-Missing
Minute Book, 1828–1859
Appendix 3
Published Collections of Madrigals, 1800–1850 – Publications Containing Words
of Madrigals – William Hawes’s Madrigals, Series 1 and 2
Appendix 4
Publications of the Musical Antiquarian Society, 1841–1848
Appendix 5
Article in the Courrier de l’Europe (published in London), on the Subject of
Edward Taylor and the Western Madrigal Society Prize
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Manuscripts and Archives – Other Unpublished Materials – Newspapers
Published Editions of Music
Secondary Sources
Books and Articles
Dissertations
Websites
226
228
236
239
240
245
246
248
260
261
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
2.1 The Locations of Meeting Places of the Madrigal Society in London during
the 18th Century
53
3.1 [Anniversary] Festival of the Madrigal Society in Freemasons’ Hall. Illustrated
London News, 24 January 1846
115
x
LIST OF TABLES
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
6.1
Programme from the Academy of Ancient Music, 24 April 1746
The Ten Madrigals Performed Most Frequently between 1744 and 1770
Music First Recorded in the Minute Book, 1744
Immyns’s Selection of Music at Meetings, 1745–1747
Members of the Madrigal Society from 21 March to December 1764
Madrigals Included in Warren’s Collection
The Ten Most Frequently Performed Works at Anniversary Dinners
between 1802 and 1821
Annual Membership and Quarterly Fees
The Twelve Works Most Frequently Performed at the Madrigal Society,
1821–1828
The Most Frequently Sung Work Each Year, 1821–1828
Contents of Richard Webb’s Collection of Madrigals (1808)
Contents of Joseph Gwilt’s Collection of Madrigals and Motetts (1815)
List of Entries for the Madrigal Society Prize Competition, 1811–13
Members of the Devon Madrigal Society, 1827
Members of the Bristol Madrigal Society Present at the First Singing
Meeting, Wednesday 1 March 1837
List of Works Sung at the First Meeting of the Bristol Madrigal Society,
1 March 1837
Three Madrigal Societies’ Meetings in 1838
The Twenty-Five Works Most Frequently Included at the First Twenty
Public Meetings and Concerts Given by the BMS, 1838–1856
Pearsall’s Madrigals
41
57
59
61
67
72
83
86
89
90
98
101
108
127
148
149
152
154
213
xi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EFP Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post
FFBJ Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal
ML Music & Letters
LIBRARY SIGLA
GB-EXro Devon Record Office, Exeter
GB-Lbl British Library, London
GB-Lcm Royal College of Music, London
xii
A NOTE ABOUT EDITORIAL POLICY
The titles of madrigals and the names of composers have been tacitly corrected and
modernised throughout, with minor exceptions, which are indicated in the text.
Titles of madrigals and other works are capitalised following the recommendations of the
16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (2010).
TABLE OF CURRENCY
1 pound (£1) = 20 shillings (20s)
1 shilling (1s) = 12 pence (12d)
1 guinea (1gn) = £1 1s
EQUIVALENT MONETARY VALUES
An online currency-conversion tool, <www.measuringworth.com/calculators>, has been
used for data relating to the cost of Madrigal Society and other membership fees. The
website calculated that the commodity value of 8s in 1745 equates to £58.95 in the
Retail-Price Index (RPI) in September 2015. Measuringworth defines the RPI as ‘the
most useful series [of statistics] for comparing the cost of consumer goods and services.
It can be interpreted as how much money you would need to buy an item in the year in
question if its price had changed the same percentage as the average price change.’
Measuringworth is an American website, created by Lawrence H. Officer, Professor of Economics at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, and Samuel H. Williamson, Emeritus Professor of Economics, the University of Miami, Florida.
Year RPI Equivalent of 8 Shillings in 2015
1745 £58.95
1775 £45.58
1800 £28.84
1825 £29.32
1850 £38.20
1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and Background
I. The Rise and Fall of the Madrigal Revival
In the closing paragraphs of his 1962 survey of the composers and poetry of 16th- and 17th-
century English and Italian madrigals, Joseph Kerman concluded that, ‘to an English musician,
the study [of madrigals] implies first of all a loving examination of a musical tradition, every
detail of which has an almost sacred meaning for him. . . A kind of personal contact with men of
the past is gained through an understanding of their artistic expression.’1
In this conclusion, Kerman was echoing thoughts and feelings of madrigal ‘revivalists’
who more than a century before his own publication had made their own ‘loving examination’ of
the same music and same ‘men of the past’. Kerman’s investigation and comparison of 16th- and
17th-century English and Italian madrigals was the first of its kind to survey in detail the Italian
madrigal’s slightly later English counterpart, but Kerman’s perceptive understanding and
promotion of madrigals contributed to an already-established canon of literary works. Just
thirteen years earlier, in 1949, Alfred Einstein had published a three-volume survey, The Italian
Madrigal, acknowledged by Kerman as ‘the first and only book (or rather set of books) to
examine the whole of this crucial topic of musical history with depth and authority.’2 Einstein’s
detailed survey of the history of Italian madrigals covered a period of over one hundred years,
and laid the foundation for Kerman to begin his own analysis. In his preface Kerman also
recognises the contribution to madrigal scholarship of a handful of editors of the mid-19th
century, including William Hawes (1785–1846), Thomas Oliphant (1799–1873), and Edward
1 Joseph Kerman, The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study (American Musicological Society, Studies and
Documents, 4; New York, 1962), 256.
2 Kerman, xviii. Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, in three volumes, (Princeton, 1949).
2
Rimbault (1816–1876), all of them musicians who ‘learned to admire madrigals and spread their
admiration by means of critical writings and musical reprints’.3 He omits, however, the names of
two other protagonists, synonymous with the madrigal revival in the 1820s and ’30s: Sir John
Leman Rogers, Baronet (1780–1847), and Edward Taylor (1784–1863). As this thesis will
demonstrate, Rogers and Taylor were crucial to the success of the madrigal’s revival and its
popularity later in the 19th century.
In January 1825 Rogers made a lengthy speech at the opening night of the Devon
Madrigal Society; in it he outlined his belief in the importance of acquiring the art and skill of
singing madrigals. Flindell’s Western Luminary recorded his words:
In allusion to one of the resolutions, which declared the society to be formed for the
encouragement of the practice and science of harmony, he [Rogers] said that ‘this was
certainly the general object, but that the design of the society was more particularly the
cultivation of that description of harmony, which, without such an institution, could
never have been known in Exeter, and which, without the existence of a similar society
in London would be dormant even in the Metropolis.’4
The Devon Madrigal Society was the first known organisation outside London to dedicate itself
in both name and intention to madrigal singing expressly at the expense of other forms of music;
item 13 of the society’s resolutions of 6 January 1825 stated that ‘No instrumental music or
songs to be allowed’.5 This exclusion sought also to banish catches and glees from their
meetings. Such a wish to nurture the madrigal in an exclusive environment is evidence of the
status to which Rogers and others accorded it.
3 Kerman, xvii. 4 Flindell’s Western Luminary, 11 January 1825. 5 ‘Devon Madrigal Society and Glee Club Minute Book’, Devon Record Office, Exeter (GB-EXro) Z19/48/1.
Although the catalogue entry suggests that the business of a glee club is also recorded, it is erroneous.
3
Rogers sought to introduce madrigals to those who had never heard or sung them, and
he identified contact with them as a means to improve musicianship: ‘as a school for sight-
singing, the practice of madrigals was the best that could be found, and as a model for
composition [those singing boys present, who would go on to pursue the life of a professional
musician] would feel indebted to the formation of this society for the eminence which they
might hereafter attain in that branch of their musical career.’6 Rogers’s words were ambitious,
but his prophecy would eventually be proved in the works of the composer Robert Lucas
Pearsall (1795–1856), whose output of madrigals—one of the real high points of personal
expression and informed taste in Victorian music—may be considered a first fruit of the revival.
Nearly a century and a half later, Kerman’s work was not directed at a readership
ignorant of English and Italian madrigals, but was written at a time when the madrigal’s
popularity had already seen its zenith and was waning. In his foreword, Kerman describes the
work of the indefatigable editor of English madrigals, Edmund H. Fellowes (1870–1951), as
having ‘made the English madrigal almost literally a household word’.7 Perhaps, then, Fellowes
afforded the second peak of the madrigal revival—a peak that he created almost single-handed.
Fellowes’s signal achievement, his edition of thirty-six volumes of madrigals, The English Madrigal
School, published between 1913 and 1924, followed in the wake of a select few madrigal
publications by Godfrey Arkwright (1864–1944), editor of The Old English Edition, which was
published between 1889 and 1902.8 Between 1891 and 1897 Arkwright published seven volumes
of madrigals by Ferrabosco, Kirbye, Pilkington and Weelkes, and an edition of Byrd’s ‘Songs of
Sundry Natures’. Fellowes’s volumes went much further in reviving unknown madrigal
repertoire, and encouraged a whole new revival in interest in the early 20th century.
6 Devon Madrigal Society minute book, GB-EXro Z19/48/1. 7 Kerman, xii. 8 E. H. Fellowes, The English Madrigal School, thirty-six volumes (London, 1913–24). G. E. P. Arkwright, The Old
English Edition, twenty-five volumes (London and Oxford, 1889–1902).
4
After Fellowes, the cultural capital of the English madrigal has slowly ebbed away, and
‘madrigal’ is no longer ‘almost literally a household word’. In the early 20th century, madrigals,
with their ‘fa-la-la’ refrains and overtones of hey-nonny-noism, became a satisfying target for
satirical inspiration. Such examples exist in the performance of madrigals and Morris-dancing
dreamt up as a backdrop to Mrs Lucas’s self-glorifying Elizabethan fête in E. F. Benson’s Mapp
and Lucia, or later, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, where the agonising experience of Professor
Welch’s madrigal weekend brings to the fore the ridiculousness and conceit of over-enthusiastic
amateurs who perform badly.9 ‘Good music badly sung would seldom obtain for a composer so
much public applause as bad music well sung’, Rogers had opined to his Exeter audience in
1825.
By the time of the ‘New Elizabethan Age’, supposedly inaugurated by the accession of
Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, Britain had had more than its fill of ‘Tudorism’ in music, which, as
Kerman’s words and Fellowes’s monuments amply demonstrate, had enjoyed a very good run of
cultural popularity.
Stephen Banfield has argued that the more than one hundred-year dose of English Tudor
music, administered until well into the 1950s, had outlived its effectiveness: ‘creative voices were
not lacking to point out bluntly that the new reign of 1953, far from heralding a second
Elizabethan age, must recognize that in music the “merrie England” myth…had long run its
course.’10
Production of madrigal-related scholarship has been thin since Kerman published his
study; Stephen Banfield, in his chapter ‘Form and Formula in the English Madrigal: Some
Parameters’, deplores the lack of theoretical analysis of this genre, suggesting that its appeal to
scholars has been lost, due to a (mis)conception that such work was long ago exhausted by
9 E. F. Benson, Mapp and Lucia (London 1931), Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (London, 1953). 10 Stephen Banfield, ‘Tudorism in English Music, 1837–1953’ in Tatiana C. String and Marcus Bull (eds.), Tudorism:
Historical Imagination and the Appropriation of the Sixteenth Century (Proceedings of the British Academy 170; Oxford,
2011), 59.
5
Fellowes and Kerman.11 ‘Is the dull familiarity of “Now Is the Month of Maying,” “Fair Phyllis”
or “Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees” alone to remain unsaluted, unrescued by the fresh observation,
the novel insight, the new or even just the more thorough approach?’, he questions before
presenting his own detailed analysis of Tomkins’s madrigal, ‘O Yes! Has Any Found a Lad?’12
Since Banfield’s 2007 chapter, Routledge has published a detailed gazetteer of madrigal-related
research: Susan Lewis Hammond’s The Madrigal: a Research and Information Guide, published in
2011, has brought together, across twelve chapters, a corpus of books, articles, chapters and
dissertations that discuss aspects of Italian madrigals of the renaissance, and their English and
other European counterparts.13 Such a publication marks an important shift in the reassessment
of madrigals for which Kerman and Banfield have begged, although Lewis Hammond recognises
that a lacuna in madrigal scholarship still exists: ‘there remains much work to be done. The study
of the madrigal outside Italy still has many pockets that demand further study…’14 Lewis
Hammond’s gazetteer also indicates that interest in the madrigal in England in the 18th and 19th
centuries has long been overlooked, as there are no indexed references to any of the madrigal
revivalists who are the focus of this thesis.
The early 19th century was a period of cultivation of interest in the past; both secular and
church music became rich areas of study and performance for many antiquarians. But the
‘revival’, in the sense of bringing something back to life from the dead, is perhaps a misleading
term when applied to the madrigal. The madrigal had not truly ‘died’ in order to be truly ‘revived’
in the 19th century, though in truth it was known only to a small but influential circle of
musicians. One of the earliest documenters of the early music revival, Harry Haskell, argued also
that there was a difficulty in applying the term ‘revival’ to something that had not actually died or 11 Stephen Banfield, ‘Form and Formula in the English Madrigal: Some Parameters’ in William A. Everett and Paul
R. Laird (eds.), On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark. Detroit Monographs in Musicology, Studies in
Music, 50 (Sterling Heights, MI, 2007), 159–168. 12 Banfield, ‘Form and Formula’, 160. 13 Susan Lewis Hammond, The Madrigal: a Research and Information Guide (Abingdon, 2011).
14 Lewis Hammond, xiv.
6
gone away from people’s consciousness; it was his assertion that the revival of early music was
‘part of a continuous interpretative tradition.’15
This is true, but at the same time the notion of a revival movement rightly raises
questions about public reception of music and a demand for it. The madrigal revival began in the
narrow confines of a small (though not socially elite) group of men and boys—the use of boys’
voices to sing vocal harmony, rather than admit ladies to sing, is a constant pattern throughout
the story of the madrigal revival, despite, as will be seen, calls by contemporaneous writers to
disallow the practice.
Individual political and socio-economic factors can influence perception of musical
meaning when applied to a topic of research as slender as this. Katharine Ellis writes in the
introduction to her study of the early music revival in 19th-century France that ‘the forces that
underpin revivalist activity have much more to do with cultural politics: questions of national
pride (or inferiority), and national identity, education and the democratization of musical
experience, decadence and regeneration (whether religious or moral), and perceptions of musical
style as embodying (value-laden) stereotypes of gender.’16 In the case of the madrigal’s revival,
her theory is confirmed: the madrigal was seen by its advocates to embody the glory of the
Elizabethan age, and with its restoration and propagation, so came a need not only of
guardianship of the past, but also a sense of owning it.
In 1844, Edward Taylor, introducing a series of publications that included sets of
madrigals, expressed the following belief in print:
The total want of regard or respect to works of art of a remote date is giving way to a
just and discriminating appreciation of their value, and by the commendable exertions of
societies, corporations and individuals, the progress of destruction will now be, in part at
least, arrested . . . The same feeling which is accomplishing this reform is working out a 15 Harry Haskell, The Early Music Revival: A History (London, 1988), 9.
16 Katharine Ellis, Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2005), xvi.
7
similar good for music. We have no national depository for our national music, much of
which is now only known historically, and every year the store is lessened. A desire to
preserve in existence compositions of such intrinsic excellence, as well as national
interest, led to the formation of the Musical Antiquarian Society . . . A number of the
classical compositions of our country are thus rescued from impending extinction, and
their permanent existence is secured.17
One of the key figures in encouraging appreciation of both English and Italian madrigals, Taylor,
who will be met many times in the course of this thesis, wrote the article in support of a project
with which he and other music historians were involved, to edit and publish 17th-century
English madrigals and historical vocal music that was felt to be of national importance.
The period between the formation of the Musical Antiquarian Society (see Appendix 1
for dates of this and all the societies mentioned in this thesis) in November 1840 and the
publication of Taylor’s article in February 1844 marks an ending and a new beginning in the
history of the madrigal revival. As will be demonstrated later, those four years surrounded an
episode in 1843 when Taylor was accused of dishonesty in a case of putative plagiarism in his
entry for a composition competition, and his subsequent misappropriation of the prize money.
Although discharged of any wrongdoing, those events undoubtedly blackened Taylor’s name and
his credibility amongst many of his musical contemporaries; they also marked the end of an era
at the Madrigal Society in 1842 with the retirement from office of the President, Sir John Rogers.
This thesis accordingly deals with the 18th- and earlier 19th-century phases of the madrigal
revival that take it from the founding of the (London) Madrigal Society, and that society’s
17 [Edward Taylor], ‘Works Printed for the Members of the Musical Antiquarian Society. London: Chappell. 1841–
1843.’ British and Foreign Review, or European Quarterly Journal (London, February 1844), 397. Leanne Langley identified
Taylor as the author of the articles in the British and Foreign Review in ‘The Musical Press in Nineteenth-Century
England’, Notes 2nd series 46 (1990): 583–92, cited in Suzanne Cole, Thomas Tallis and his Music in Victorian England
(Woodbridge, 2008), 33.
8
precursors in the Academy of Ancient Music, to this transition in the 1840s to something more
mainstream than an artisanal or elitist antiquarian movement.
II. Personal Motivation, Limits of Research, and Primary Sources Used
The first time that I sang a madrigal was at school, at the age of eleven. Singing in a small group,
with one voice per part, resulted in an enchantment by the music, whose spell has never worn
off. By the time I was in the Sixth Form, at fifteen years old, I was conducting the school’s
madrigal choir, and had a carte blanche to select the music that was rehearsed and performed. The
pieces came, almost exclusively, from the Oxford Book of English Madrigals,18 probably the best
known of madrigal anthologies, whose editorial notes by Philip Ledger contributed to increase
the thirst for knowledge of this Somerset schoolboy. We frequently sang Gibbons’s ‘The Silver
Swan’ and Bennet’s ‘All Creatures Now’, both of them magical works, published within eleven
years of each other, and yet so different in style and mood. Our programmes of public
performance were punctuated with motets and anthems, in particular Gibbons’s ‘Almighty and
Everlasting God’, sung from the madrigal book’s sister anthology, The Oxford Book of Tudor
Anthems.19 With just a little frisson of excitement, we imagined ourselves as part of an unbroken
tradition that reached back to the first English madrigal-singers of the late 16th century.
Research for this thesis has shown that the truth was far from this notion. It transpired
that madrigals had begun to achieve only a limited popularity amongst singers by the mid-19th
century, rather than being a centuries-old, universally cherished, musical activity. My love of
madrigals motivated me to study their revival and to enrich my knowledge of them. As my work
progressed I felt that the topic might be of interest to others, and I discovered that as an area of
research, it appeared to have been overlooked by scholars. The deeper my research went, the
more I uncovered about the way in which the revival had involved some of the key figures in
18 Philip Ledger (ed.), The Oxford Book of English Madrigals (Oxford, 1978).
19 Christopher Morris (ed.), The Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems (Oxford, 1978).
9
British music history in the 18th and 19th centuries—composers, professional performers and
keen amateurs all met together, at the Madrigal Society in particular.
The material that has emerged from researching the madrigal revival in the earlier 19th
century demonstrates a complex, and socially motivated, musical development. It was led by the
example of a musical and passionate few; and its impact is felt far beyond the 19th century, into
the 20th, and now into the 21st. It has also revealed that it was not just madrigals that were being
sung at meetings of the Madrigal Society—and also, later, in the provinces. Motets and anthems
for the church formed part of the music sung at almost every meeting, and it was at the meetings
of these secular societies that long-lost, forgotten, and simply unknown ecclesiastical choral
works were re-discovered; the revival of church music was taking place not only in the cathedrals
and churches of 19th-century England, but also in the secular setting of the madrigal societies.
The thesis covers more than one hundred years, from the late 17th century to the 1850s,
although the main focus of the work is the first half of the 19th century; it surveys the rise in
popularity of madrigal singing and the establishment of formal groups in London and the
provinces, stemming from the ‘father’ of them all, the Madrigal Society, whose documented
existence begins in 1744. The discussion of the period before the founding of the Madrigal
Society provides background evidence for the core material of this work. Madrigal singing was a
movement that gained popularity in the British Isles during the earlier 19th century. It reflected
an upwardly mobile society, peculiar to the social changes that characterise this period of British
history.
This thesis will attempt to reassess the existing literature that is relevant to the 18th- and
19th-century madrigal movement in England, and to examine the older and more recent
responses to it. It will be shown how Hawkins’s one-man history was significant in shaping all
other subsequent histories of the Madrigal Society, and by an unpacking of Hawkins’s account, a
revaluation of its accuracy will be posited.
10
The archival material and other resources that have been the foundation of this research
are rich and varied. Most important to this thesis is the archive of the Madrigal Society, housed
at the British Library. It comprises over forty volumes of minutes, accounts and music, and is a
remarkable record of the society from its first recorded meeting in 1744. Very fortunate, also, has
been unlimited access to the archive of the Bristol Madrigal Society in the Special Collections of
the University of Bristol Arts and Social Sciences Library, and to the minute book of the Devon
Madrigal Society, deposited at the Devon Record Office in Exeter.
A further rich resource has been concert programmes and contemporaneous newspapers,
access to which has been facilitated by the digitisation of archived newspapers, which has
increased exponentially over the past six years. The number of ‘hits’ when conducting a simple
word-search in the British Library’s online digitised newspaper archive six years ago was meagre
in comparison with the multiple results that can be achieved now.20 The improvement in the
quality of digital OCR (Optical Character Recognition), the continual correction of orthographic
errors by those who use it, and the ever-increasing number of historical newspapers that have
been digitised, have provided an almost overwhelming source of searchable material. The vast
and exciting nature of the digitised newspapers is both bane and blessing to the researcher: on
one hand performing a keyword search can produce myriad results that might previously have
been missed by a non-digital enquiry; on the other hand, investigating those legion ‘hits’ can
evaporate precious time in the fruitless pursuit of minute details. University libraries across the
globe now make freely available their digitised collections of periodicals, books, sheet music and
programmes through their own portals, and conglomerate hubs. It is now almost impossible not
to be able to see books that might once have had access to them restricted by their location or
their rarity.
20 The online resources of other institutions such as the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America: Historic American
Newspapers: <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov>; the National Library of Australia’s Trove portal:
<http://trove.nla.gov.au>; and the websites <http://openlibrary.org>, and <http://archive.org>, now provide
extraordinary access to digitised, searchable text.
11
Further material came to light in October 2013: a tin trunk containing previously
undocumented papers and paraphernalia belonging to the Madrigal Society. The front panel of
the black trunk is painted in impressively large white letters, ‘H. P. FINN / The Madrigal
Society’. Patrick Finn was Librarian of the Madrigal Society until the 1970s; he appears to have
been a tireless documenter, whose interest in the society manifested itself in creating a new
catalogue of the archive in 1972. It is the initial letter of his surname, ‘F’, which now precedes
the index numbers of all of the society’s books at the British Library. The Madrigal Society’s
archive at the British Library is discussed in Chapter 2. Finn’s trunk contains a full set of high-
quality, xerographic copies of the three extant earliest minute books of the society;
correspondence and transactions of the society in the mid-20th century; printed programmes for
society dinners; and twenty-two volumes of Edmund Fellowes’s English Madrigal School. One item
of particular interest in the trunk was a brief, hand-written outline of the contents of a volume of
significant importance to my research: the contents of the minute book for 1828 to 1859
(described as the ‘Fifth Minute Book’). Why this is so important is explained in Chapter 2. And
while it records little or no indication of the society’s repertoire—a regrettable loss of
information in such a formative period of the Madrigal Society—it has provided other useful
pieces of evidence in this thesis, for example the only existing confirmation that Pearsall had
attended two meetings of the Madrigal Society in the summer of 1839.
III. Review of Scholarly Literature
As a research topic, the madrigal revival has been overlooked—the limited number of scholarly
sources that engage with it demonstrates this omission. Amongst the newer works is Brian
Robins’s Catch and Glee Culture in Eighteenth Century England,21 where careful examination of clubs
and societies in London and the provinces provides myriad details about the all-male, largely
amateur singing clubs that were to be found in many British towns and cities. To illustrate the
21 Brian Robins, Catch and Glee Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (Woodbridge, 2006).
12
operation of musical clubs in the 18th century, Robins regularly refers to the records of the
Madrigal Society, recognising that a close relationship existed between the revival of interest in
madrigals and the emergence of catches and glees in the 18th century, ‘emphasised by the long
list of composers and others associated with the [glee and catch] repertoire that became
members [of the Madrigal Society] or were noted as frequent visitors’.22 Robins acknowledges
that he has not, however, examined the extent to which such interest in antiquarianism
influenced the generality of glees composed for the Catch Club (see Appendix 1).’23 He
continues that it ‘is a topic beyond the remit of the present study. Certainly, it is also reflected in
the large number of historic texts drawn upon by the glee composers, but this may be part of the
more general trend to revive interest in the Gothic.’ Robins refers in particular to the elegy and
the epitaph, both of them taken up by glee writers as a vehicle for setting words with an
antiquarian subtext; one such example is a work by Benjamin Cooke (1734–1793), ‘Interred Here
Doth Lye’, a setting of Thomas Tallis's epitaph, published in 1768. Cooke, a member of the
Madrigal Society from 1769 and conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music for much of the
second half of the 18th century, had begun transcriptions in the 1770s of vocal pieces by the late
15th-/early16th-century composer Robert Fayrfax. Tim Eggington, a recent biographer of
Cooke, has observed that ‘Academy influence is also evident in Cooke’s composition of glees. By
invoking carefully observed stylistic references to the genre’s supposed madrigalian roots, the
glee afforded Cooke an altogether more sophisticated context in which to deploy his learning.’24
Cooke’s compositions emphasise the propinquity of madrigals and glees, which seem to
complement one another with ease. However, as it will later be seen, it is clear that there was an
intention in the 18th and 19th century to divorce the glee from the madrigal—most probably
22 Robins, 25. 23 Robins, 71. 24 Tim Eggington, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England: Benjamin Cooke and the Academy of Ancient Music
(Woodbridge, 2014), 176.
13
driven by a desire to achieve a pure environment for the appreciation of the antique madrigal,
unsullied by the newer and fashionable glee.
Amongst the broader studies of interest in the madrigal is Vernon Opheim’s 1971 DMA
thesis, ‘The English Romantic Madrigal’.25 The work includes a survey of more than ninety
madrigals composed between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century.
Opheim’s research provides an overview of madrigal-related material that has been examined
little in the intervening forty-four years; through the exploration of the social context of the
madrigal revival in 19th-century England, he considers the part played by the Madrigal Society,
the Bristol Madrigal Society and several other societies of whose histories had been scarcely
examined at the beginning of the 1970s. Opheim’s principal argument attempts to establish the
romantic madrigal compositions as the main outcome of the madrigal revival in England during
the 19th century. By means of descriptive and structural analysis Opheim compares and
contrasts a handful of romantic madrigals, written between 1770 and 1900, with twelve English
madrigals of the ‘Golden Age’. Through such comparison he is able to align the similarities with,
and to show the differences between, the stylistic approaches of romantic composers in
comparison with their 17th-century counterparts. My dissertation seeks not only to affirm the
importance of the madrigal as a model for inspiration to new madrigal composition in England
in the 18th and 19th centuries but also to go further in an assessment of the work and
achievement of the revivalists of the old music itself.
Since Opheim’s dissertation, there have been only two further published works devoted
exclusively to the history of the English madrigal in the 19th century: the later work, by Michael
Hurd, published in 1981, and the other, an essay published slightly earlier in 1977, by Percy M.
Young.26 Young’s work was shortly followed by the publication of a collection of his own edition
25 Vernon Opheim, ‘The English Romantic Madrigal.’ DMA dissertation, University of Illinois (1971). 26 Michael Hurd, ‘Glees, Madrigals and Partsongs’ in Nicholas Temperley (ed.), Music in Britain: The Romantic Age,
1800–1914 (Blackwell History of Music in Britain 5; London, 1981), 248–254; and Percy M. Young, ‘The Madrigal
in the Romantic Era’, American Choral Review, 19/4 (1977).
14
of fifteen romantic madrigals (also under the title, The Madrigal in the Romantic Era), which he
described as ‘Mingling naiveté and sophistication, simplicity and pretentiousness, these examples
of a by-gone age’s nostalgia for a by-gone age are as much fun to perform as they are to listen
to.’ 27 Young lighted upon a point with which Opheim also agrees: that the madrigal in the 19th
century was a response to the demands of the fashion for nostalgia. In his introduction, Opheim
says:
A large share of the Romantic aesthetic philosophy centered on antiquarianism, the
cause of which was not necessarily a serious love of history but was a fad that often, but
not exclusively, was associated with the fashion-conscious aristocracy—a fad frequently
manifested as ostentatious archaism. The madrigal was well suited to this purpose; that
is, it was an anachronism in the nineteenth century. This antiquarianism emerged as
compositional attempts to recreate the style. If a composer spent the extra effort trying
to imitate the “old” techniques, he ensured recognition of this effort by including the
word “madrigal” somewhere on the title page.28
However, both Opheim and Young appear to pass over a vital point: that the revival of interest
in the madrigal was part of the much greater anti-Enlightenment movement in Britain. Debate
around Enlightenment principles of rationalism, freedom, democracy, tolerance, and secularism
had emerged in England by the middle of the 18th century. This discussion was embodied in
works such as Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry of 1756, an investigation of the ‘beautiful’
versus the ‘sublime’, pleasure versus pain.29 Broadly speaking, Burke concluded that the
conjunction of reason and passion needed to respond not only to the aestheticism of beauty, but
also to the fear-driven sublime.
27 Percy M. Young (ed.), The Madrigal in the Romantic Era (New York, 1977). 28 Opheim, 2. 29 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: with an Introductory
Discourse Concerning Taste, and Several Other Additions. (London, 1756. Republished 1757 with large additions).
15
Such discussion and distinction was manifest not only in music and the arts, but also in
politics and religion, education and literature. In fact it affected every facet of social life in the
19th century, and was clearly not just a display of ‘ostentatious archaism’, as Opheim would have
it. Furthermore, the briefest consideration of the list of names of those intimately involved in the
early years of the madrigal revival quickly dispels the myth that it was an aristocracy-driven
venture. If anything, the madrigal revival in the 18th century belongs to a group of true music
enthusiasts—very ordinary, untitled men—whose rediscovery and performance of old music
encouraged musical scholarship and research in the 19th century.
The question of sacred music and the madrigal is a relationship of two contiguous and
inseparable elements; throughout the discourse of this thesis, sacred music reappears in the same
context of revival as its secular counterpart. Motets and anthems by the same composers as
those of the madrigals were included in programmes of meetings at all of the madrigal societies
that are surveyed in this work. This close working relationship between the sacred and secular is
borne out, for example in Suzanne Cole’s Thomas Tallis and his Music in Victorian England, which
provides a detailed analysis of the reception history in the 19th century of several works for
church use by Tallis. Cole’s work encompasses case studies of Tallis’s output, and in one chapter
focusses on the revival of Tallis’s forty-part motet, ‘Spem in Alium’, the revival of which took
place at the Madrigal Society in 1836. In her study of the historical reception of Tallis, Cole
reveals ‘the significant changes in attitudes towards the music of the past that took place during
the nineteenth century.’30 Although there is no overlap in the material in Cole’s work and this
thesis, parts of Cole’s research is germane to it: several of the principal players—notably Sir John
Rogers, Thomas Oliphant, and James Turle—in Cole’s story of revival and establishment are
examined in Chapter 5 of this work. Their role in the promotion and performance of madrigals,
and, more broadly, older music, certainly furnished the impetus behind their advancement of
Tallis’s church music.
30 Suzanne Cole, Thomas Tallis and his Music in Victorian England (Woodbridge, 2008), 191.
16
James Garratt’s Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination, has provided insightful
context for the issues of historicism in music in the 19th century. As well as investigating the
revival of Palestrina in Germany, Garratt also discusses the nexus between older, historical music
and the means by which it would interact with the ‘Romantic postulates of originality,
authenticity and contemporaneity in the art-work’, a description that could well be used to
identify Pearsall, who embodied the romantic paradigm.31 Garratt argues that ‘history becomes a
strategy of retrieval and repossession: the cherishing of objects from the past represents an
attempted return to origins, an endeavour to deny the pastness of the past by asserting the
pastness of the present.’32 Such appropriation of ‘pastness of the present’ can surely be seen in
the endeavours of the 19th-century revivalists who sought to increase the madrigal’s popularity,
privately and publicly.
IV. Romanticism, Antiquarianism, and Gothic Revival
The gothic revival, particularly in architecture, embodies many aspects of the romantic
movement in the fusion of nature and liberal human spirit, where aspirational ideals shunned the
rigid formality and conventions of the Enlightenment, and found new expression in both secular
and ecclesiastical neo-medieval buildings. The madrigal was another means of providing a link to
a distant era that was attractive to many in the early days of the 19th century, whose world was
rapidly changing through processes such as the mechanisation of industry and the explosion of
urban centres. Some sought refuge in the memory of a past before mechanisation. The success
of Walter Scott, whose literary work—especially The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Ivanhoe (1819)
and Kenilworth (1821)—often recalled and embellished a period of English medieval chivalry, was
indicative and enormous. Scott nourished his audience’s desire for something that came to be
31 James Garratt, Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music
(Cambridge, 2002), 1. 32 Garratt, 12. ‘Pastness of the Present’ is an expression used by Richard Taruskin in his article, ‘The Pastness of the
Present and the Presence of the Past’ in Nicholas Kenyon (ed.), Authenticity and Early Music (Oxford, 1988), 137–207.
17
perceived as not only good and wholesome, but also exciting and romantic. While Scott fed his
literary flock with medieval-inspired romances, a visual counterpart was also being supplied
through the publications of the topographer John Britton (1771–1857), whose nine-volume
Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain was published between 1805 and 1814, and the fourteen-
volume Cathedral Antiquities of England, which appeared between 1814 and 1835. The lavish
illustrations in Britton’s works were provided by a cohort of some of the best-known engravers
and ‘scientific artists’ (as they are referred to in the introduction33), including Augustus Charles
Pugin (father of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the undisputed Father of the gothic revival
in both ecclesiastical and secular design and architecture), Humphry Repton (whose son, also
Humphry, was a member of the Madrigal Society), John Nash, Samuel Prout, John Cotman and
some twenty others. Walter Scott, who was also a keen topographer, made literary contributions
to Britton’s series; the two men were responsible for whipping up a frenzied enthusiasm for the
gothic and the antique in early 19th-century Britain. This zeal for antiquarianism had its roots
firmly in the 18th century, but it was in the 19th that it reached fever-pitch.
In the 18th century, antiquarian research was the principal channel through which study
of the past was shared. One body in particular, the Society of Antiquaries (see Appendix 1), was
founded in London in the early decades of the 18th century—although the exact founding date
of the society is not confirmed. A first meeting was held in London in 1707, but a society was
only formally constituted in 1717.34 As Rosemary Sweet indicates, ‘The antiquary’s supposedly
omnivorous consumption of every morsel of the past, however, detracted from the regard with
which the study of antiquities was held, and made it vulnerable to ridicule in print and graphic
satire.’35 It was noble to be concerned with the interpretation of classical antiquity, but to be
interested in the recent past was almost despised.
33 John Britton, Cathedral Antiquities of England, 14 vols (London, 1814–1835). 34 Susan Pearce (ed.), Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries, 1707–2007 (London, 2007), 1–2.
35 Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: the Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2004), 4.
18
The membership lists of the Society of Antiquaries in the first half of the 18th century
suggest that there were no professional musicians among the fellows or members, and neither
was there any attempt by the society to engage with musical matters.36 The waft of
antiquarianism, however, pervades throughout the madrigal revival. Two doctoral dissertations
have been of equal relevance in my consideration of the importance of antiquarianism as a causal
effect in the madrigal revival: Kelly Eileen Battles, ‘The Antiquarian Impulse: History, Affect,
and Material Culture in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Literature’, PhD dissertation
(Michigan State University, 2008), which focuses on the figure of the antiquary in literature, who,
during the progress of the 18th and 19th centuries, loses respect in the face of the professional
discipline of the historian. Battles’s thesis furnishes a rich source of material that provided a
literary underpin in the earlier days of research for this thesis. Second, but of no less importance,
is Rosemary Hill’s ‘Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789–1851’ (Queen Mary, University
of London, 2011), which engages with issues of antiquarianism in a somewhat touching way—
constructing a sympathetic perspective of the work of fourteen antiquaries, and taking into
consideration the rapidly changing world in which her chosen set of antiquaries lived. Ranging
from antiquarianism in France, and John Britton’s publications, to the literary creations of Walter
Scott, Hill’s dissertation paints a broad picture of romantic antiquarianism around which the
solid frame of reference has been an inspiration in the structuring of my work. Hill’s discussion
considers the decline of the British antiquary from the end of the 18th century to 1851, charting
the twilight of the antiquary and the modern replacement in the historian.
There are parallels to be drawn between Hill’s handful of antiquarians, whose principal
interest was in the study of ancient buildings and remains, and the musical antiquarians whose
biographies are discussed later in Chapter 5. Hill identifies that the credibility of the antiquarian
was already on the wane by the 1780s, and that ‘by the 1830s the end of the age of romantic
36 I am very grateful to Heather Rowland, BA, MCILIP, Head of Library and Collections at the Society of
Antiquaries, for her help in locating the members’ lists of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House, Piccadilly.
19
antiquarianism was in sight. The image of the antiquary was becoming … a cliché and the reality
was under threat … from academic specialisation and High Victorian taxonomy’.37 In this light
the creation and operation of the Musical Antiquarian Society in the early 1840s, dedicating itself
by name to the promotion of music in a dwindling discipline, is all the more remarkable for what
might be seen as a lack of foresight in the age of the decline of antiquarianism.
Antiquarianism and the gothic revival complement one another, therefore: Chris Brooks,
an historian and documenter of the gothic revival in Britain, describes the gothic as ‘national,
[and] patriotic . . . it symbolized legitimate authority, a chivalric social order based on land, both
medieval pageantry and medieval chivalry; it connoted religion, learning, the law . . . gothic was
the stylistic language of government in Britain.’38 The antiquarian passion for the past could be
poured out into the gothic vessel of revival. Nowhere perhaps is this to be seen more forcefully
than in the combined work of Charles Barry and A. W. N. Pugin in the Houses of Parliament
(1840–1868) demonstrate undeniably the strength of gothic architecture to affirm symbolically
the nation’s seat of power. The theatrical exteriors and interiors articulated within the walls the
Palace of Westminster represent the pinnacle of the secularisation of gothicness in the 19th
century. Brooks concludes that ‘in the Houses of Parliament, the Gothic Revival created the
most abiding architectural icon of British national identity.’39
The detailed analyses, compendiums and gazetteers published from the 1960s onwards,
discussing the gothic movement in architecture, literature and painting, exhaustively explore the
historical influences in creating the style and the ways in which those art forms manifest
themselves. The madrigal revival, especially in the 19th century, is reflected in a similar way by
the contemporaneous gothic revival in the arts and architecture. The quest of the madrigal
37 Rosemary Hill, ‘Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789–1851’. PhD dissertation, Queen Mary, University of
London (2011), 33. 38 Chris Brooks, The Gothic Revival (London, 1999), 207.
39 Brooks, 220.
20
revivalists to breathe life back into old, dignified music that was seen as forgotten or ‘unknown’
(as Rogers had described it), seems to embody the romantic ideal.
Pugin’s earliest approach to the gothic was also, perhaps not surprisingly, romantic too.
In a letter to his friend Mr Osmond of Salisbury, sent some time around 1834, Pugin wrote: ‘I
expect to sail next Thursday for France, and if the wind proves fair I shall soon be up to my ears
in dilapidated chateaus, ruined abbeys, ancient libraries, venerable cathedrals, ancient towers, and
splendid remains of every description of the middle ages. Leave your blisters, leave your Doric
porticoes, leave all and follow me.’40 Pugin’s evaluation of old order being preferable to classical,
is also apparent in both the gothic and madrigal revivals—reinforced in the latter by the strong
link with the revival of 16th- and 17th-century English church music from the 1820s onwards.
Later in this thesis we will see that several of the practitioners and enthusiasts for the madrigal, in
particular Rogers, Taylor and Turle, were amongst those who sought also to re-establish English
church composers of the 16th and 17th centuries within the canon of English music.
V. Earlier Accounts of the Madrigal Revival
Since the publication in 1776 of his General History of the Science and Practice of Music, Sir John
Hawkins’s account of the Madrigal Society has been the principal source relied upon by others
for research concerning the society in the 18th century. The truth behind many of the images
painted by Hawkins of the humble nature of the Madrigal Society is somehow undercut when
the more subtle elements of the intellectual nature of the society emerge. Although Hawkins was
not a founding member, the minutes record that he was an early one, elected to the Madrigal
Society on 19 October 1748.
Hawkins’s association with the Madrigal Society in its infancy renders his account of the
society a valuable source. The expressive and lyrical tone with which he writes when describing
40 Benjamin Ferrey, Recollections of A. N. Pugin and His Father Augustus Pugin; with Notices of Their Works (London, 1861),
90.
21
the society and its founder, John Immyns (ca1700–1764), suggests that the period of his
membership had been an important and pleasant part of his life. This is further evidenced in the
minute books that record not only the generous gifts of music that he made to the society’s
library, but also an impressive level of attendance during his eighteen years of membership. To
confirm Hawkins’s affection for the Madrigal Society conclusively, one need only consider his
cold description of another London musical establishment which he apparently did not hold in
high regard: his description of the Castle Concert, an organisation of musicians and subscribers
who met at the Castle Tavern in Paternoster Row from 1724 onwards. Hawkins’s disapproval is
clear when he says of the performers and patrons of the concerts, ‘they hired second-rate singers
from the opera; and many young persons of professions that depended upon a numerous
acquaintance, were induced by motives of interest to become members of the Castle concert.’41
On the other hand, there lies a potential difficulty with such emotional prose where fact
may be compromised or excluded in favour of nostalgic window-dressing. No better is this
illustrated than in the continuation of Hawkins’s description of the foundation of the society.
The description raises some interesting points, and possibly obscures others:
In the year 1741 he [i.e. Immyns] formed the plan of a little club, called the Madrigal
Society; and got together a few persons who had spent their lives in the practice of
psalmody; and who, with a little pains, and the help of the ordinary solmisation, which
many of them were very expert in, became soon able to sing, almost at sight, a part in an
English, or even an Italian madrigal. They were mostly mechanics; some weavers from
Spitalfields, others of various trades and occupations; they met at first at the Twelve
Bells, an alehouse in Bride Lane, Fleet Street, and Immyns was both their president and
instructor: their subscription was five shillings and sixpence a quarter, which defrayed
their expenses in books and music paper, and afforded them the refreshments of porter
41 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776), introduction by Charles Cudworth, 2 vols
(1853; repr. New York, 1963), 808.
22
and tobacco . . . The meetings of the society were on Wednesday evening in every week;
their performance consisted of Italian and English madrigals in three, four, and five
parts; and, being assisted by three or four boys from the choir of St. Paul’s, they sung
compositions of this kind, as also catches, rounds, and canons, though not elegantly,
with a degree of correctness that did justice to the harmony; and, to vary the
entertainment, Immyns would sometimes read, by way of lecture, a chapter of Zarlino
translated by himself.
The persons that composed this little academy were men not less distinguished
by their love of vocal harmony, than the harmless simplicity of their tempers, and their
friendly disposition towards each other.42
Hawkins states that the beginnings of Madrigal Society lay not in the stellar intellectual elite, but
rather in an eclectic group of men under John Immyns’s ardent leadership. It is tempting to see
in his cosy description of the early days of the society some similarity with Nicholas Yonge’s
preface to, and description of, his own group of enthusiastic amateur musicians in the ‘epistle
dedicatorie’ to his Musica Transalpina (1588):
Right honorable, since I first began to keep house in this Citie, it hath been no small
comfort unto mee, that a great number of Gentlemen and Merchants of good accompt
(as well of this realme as of forreine nations) have taken in good part such entertainment
of pleasure, as my poore ability was able to affoord them, both by the exercise of
Musicke daily used in my house, and by furnishing them with Bookes of that kind
yeerely sent me out of Italy and other places.
Hawkins knew Yonge’s preface to Musica Transalpina well; he quotes at length from its foreword
in a footnote in Chapter 104 of his History, when recounting the story of the introduction of the
42 Hawkins, General History, 887.
23
madrigal to England in the late 16th century.43 Perhaps Hawkins was trying to align some sense
of the non-pretentious aim of Immyns and his group of harmony-loving madrigal singers with
Yonge and his ‘poore ability’ in affording them entertainment. Whether or not Hawkins was
intentionally trying to rhyme with Yonge, it is his suggestion that Immyns’s humble madrigal-
singing group was established as much for its entertainment of pleasure as for any antiquarian
pursuit.
Tensions arise from within Hawkins’s account: the absence of women from the outset of
the founding of the society, for example, confirms that the society conformed to the
arrangement typical of small clubs in London at this period. Describing the membership of the
Academy of Ancient Music, Tim Eggington points out that in the issue of women members, the
Academy was similarly disposed to the Madrigal Society: ‘it perhaps goes without saying,
however, that in its early days at least, the Academy was near-exclusive preserve of men (and
boys). Club culture being largely confined to men, women had their own sociable spaces in
assemblies, neighbourly circles and, later on, in concerts.’44
Hawkins mentions that Immyns would sometimes read to the members from his own
translation of Zarlino, the music theorist and contemporary of Palestrina. They must have been a
musically skilled audience to be able to follow Zarlino’s discussions, whether they concerned
polyphonic modality or the rules of counterpoint.45 The notion of the public lecture was also
pursued in other societies contemporary with the Madrigal Society; in particular the debating
societies that were beginning to appear in London by the early 1740s. One of these was the
Robin Hood Debating Society, which Hawkins mentions towards the end of his description of
Caleb, brother of Samuel Jeacocke, a founder member of the Madrigal Society described further
43 Hawkins, General History, 509.
44 Eggington, 8. 45 According to Palisca, Zarlino’s best-known work was Le Istitutioni Harmoniche (1558), where he ‘aimed in it to unite
speculative theory with the practice of composition’; Claude V. Palisca, ‘Zarlino, Gioseffo [Gioseffe]’ Grove Music
Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com>, accessed March 2013.
24
in Chapter 2. Caleb Jeacocke, a baker, as was his brother, was a long-standing president of the
Robin Hood Debating Society, which met weekly near the Strand. As well as encouraging public
debate, readings were often given by members from political and philosophical publications.
This wellspring of the Enlightenment may have been a model for Immyns, who perhaps
attended the Robin Hood Debating Society with Samuel Jeacocke.
Hawkins also refers to some of the early members of the Madrigal Society as ‘weavers
from Spitalfields’;46 it seems possible that Immyns came from a family of silk weavers for whom
Spitalfields was the industrial centre in the 18th century. Reginald Nettel discovered that
‘Immyns . . . was possibly come of a weaving family, for the name Immins appears in 1712
among these workers when one Thomas Immins tried to obtain an arts master’s post at
Bridewell Hospital. He is described as a broadsilk weaver.’47 Furthermore, there was certainly one
silk weaver amongst the early members of the society, Peter Nouaille, who belonged to a
Huguenot silk-weaving family that had settled in London, presumably at the end of the 17th
century. Nouaille’s name first appears in December 1744, and he remained a member of the
society until the 1760s; he must have been well known to Hawkins, but he certainly was no
ordinary ‘mechanical or weaver’. Nouaille was one of the most successful producers of silk in the
south east of England in the mid-18th century, credited with the invention and patent of an
indestructible fabric.
The fusion of Immyns’s enthusiasm for old music that he was able to share with his
fellow members, and their own interest in participating in the revival of this music, is also
indicative of the vein of antiquarianism that would fully bloom at the Madrigal Society in the
19th century.
46 Hawkins, General History, 887. 47 Reginald Nettel, ‘The Oldest Surviving English Musical Club: Some Historical Notes on the Madrigal Society of
London’, Musical Quarterly, 34 (January 1948), 100.
25
As has been previously mentioned, all of the subsequent histories of the Madrigal Society
in the 18th century, without exception, rely heavily upon Hawkins’s paragraphs of 1776. The
three main post-Hawkins chronicles are Thomas Oliphant’s monograph, A Brief Account of the
Madrigal Society From its Institution in 1741, Up To The Present Period (London, 1835); Reginald
Nettel, ‘The Oldest Surviving English Musical Club: Some Historical Notes on the Madrigal
Society of London’ in the Musical Quarterly (1948, 97–108); and James G. Craufurd, ‘The Madrigal
Society’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (1956, 33–46). Each reflects a different bias in its
interpretation of Hawkins. The commonly accepted foundation date of the Madrigal Society is
1741, but Hawkins’s prose is ambiguous and tells us only that Immyns had the ‘idea’ of gathering
his madrigal singers in 1741—he does not confirm that the first meeting was in 1741, and the
records of the Madrigal Society, as will be seen in Chapter 2, record the earliest meeting taking
place in 1744. Problems with Hawkins’s accuracy of dates given in his History is further
highlighted in his discussion of the founding of the Academy of Ancient Music (after its initial
foundation as the Academy of Vocal Music), which he records as 1710. Hawkins had previously
documented it as 1728 in his history of the Academy, published in 1770; the correct date is most
certainly 1726.48
Only Craufurd questions, albeit tentatively, Hawkins’s founding date of 1741, and the
apparent lack of evidence in the first minute book of the existence of the mechanicals and
weavers from Spitalfields, who are significant in Hawkins’s narrative. Craufurd does not quite
dare to suggest that Hawkins might have been wrong in his attribution of 1741, but he goes as
far as to venture, ‘It seems that the society began as a periodical assembly by Immyns of his
musical acquaintances and only gradually developed into an independent society. The record of
meetings begins on 16 July 1744…. It seems that by the middle of 1745 the independent society
48 Hawkins, An Account of the Institution and Progress of the Academy of Ancient Music (London, 1770).
26
had been established. There is no record of the Spitalfields weavers. They seem to have
disappeared before minutes were kept.’49
Oliphant accepts Hawkins’s date without question, ‘ . . . but as Sir John (then Mr.)
Hawkins, who was elected a Member in 1748, distinctly states that it [the Madrigal Society] was
founded in the year 1741, at the Twelve Bells in Bride Lane, I think we cannot have better
authority for dating its commencement at this period. I see no ground for supposing that a
specific society, under that name, had previously existed.’50 Oliphant’s Brief Account is at times just
as lyrical as Hawkins in his use of prose to romanticise the naïve nature of the early members—
there is no doubt that the early members were working men, but, as will be seen in Chapter 2,
rather than ‘base mechanicals’, they were tradesmen, merchants and musicians. In support of
Hawkins’s claim that the members were ‘men not less distinguished by their love of vocal
harmony, than by the harmless simplicity of their tempers’, etc., Oliphant continues:
If we may judge from some of the specimens to be found in the minute books, many of
them were certainly not learned clerks. Yet how great must have been their refinement
of mind and taste, when such men could thus meet, after the fatigues of the day, to enjoy
(as is well said in the Rules) more intellectual pleasure than that of eating and drinking!
limiting their expenses to a sum that would barely pay for a morsel of bread and cheese,
with the accompanying luxuries of a glass of porter and a pipe, which tradition has
handed down as being the ‘ne plus ultra’ of their refreshments.51
Exactly what Oliphant means in his unsupported reference to the ‘specimens to be found in the
minute books’ is not difficult to elucidate; in the earliest minute book there are many
inconsistencies from week to week in the spelling of members’ surnames, e.g. Jaycock (Monday 1
49 J. G. Craufurd, ‘The Madrigal Society’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 82 (1955–6), 34. 50 Thomas Oliphant, A Brief Account of the Madrigal Society (London, 1834), 2.
51 Oliphant, Brief Account, 9.
27
October 1744), Jeacock (Monday 8 October 1744) to Jeacocke; and, less surprising, the titles of
Latin motets and Italian madrigals, such as the madrigal ‘Due Begli Occhi’ (probably the setting
in three parts by Giovanni de Castro), that can err from ‘Duo Bellochi’52 to ‘Duo Be Gloca.’53 It
seems somewhat supercilious on Oliphant’s part, however, to suggest that a lack of skill in
written Italian or criticism of non-standardisation of the spelling of surnames is evidence that
some members of the Madrigal Society were not educated. In the first minute book, it is evident
from the different handwriting that the task of recording each weekly meeting was shared,
probably in rotation, as was the presidency for each night. It is not surprising that there is
discrepancy in the entries. Nor was the cultural project for standardising spelling fully
accomplished at this date.
But the question of social inclusiveness has refused to lie down; a mid 20th-century
chronicle of the Madrigal Society, that of Reginald Nettel, raises an engaging idea of certain
aspects of its social organisation.54 In what is essentially an article charged with social message,
Nettel appears to accept at face value Hawkins’s description of the society, going as far as to say
that ‘Hawkins description of this club is authentic for he was himself a member at a later date. It
is the best insight we can get at this time into an aspect of 18th-century life that has been too
often overlooked.’55
Nettel was an avid documenter of social elements of traditional musical life in England;56
it appears, however, that he may have overlooked, or not had access to, the evidence in the
primary sources: since his references to the minute books are few in his article, it is likely that
52 British Library (GB-Lbl) Mad. Soc. MS F2, 20 September 1758.
53 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F2, 29 June 1768. 54 Nettel, 97–108. 55 Nettel, 100.
56 Nettel’s publications include: Music in the Five Towns, 1840–1914: a Study of the Social Influence of Music in an Industrial
District (London, 1944), The Orchestra in England: a Social History (London, 1948), The Englishman Makes Music (London,
1952), Sing a Song of England: A Social History of Traditional Song (London, 1954), and Seven Centuries of Popular Song: A
Social History of Urban Ditties (London, 1956).
28
Nettel never gained access to the Madrigal Society’s records (they were not deposited at the
British Museum until 1954), and that his article was derived from Hawkins and Oliphant alone.
In his exegesis of Hawkins’s description, Nettel contends that ‘Immyns found it possible
to interest certain of the working classes in intellectual and aesthetic pursuits of a high order. He
did this by appealing to a demand that was already there, but that would in the ordinary way be
unnoticed by London intellectuals. Immyns had been brought up amongst these people.’57 It is a
compelling idea that Immyns was somehow able to reach out to a group of labourers, who had
simple musical skills, and thirsted after intellectual stimulation, thus firing their enthusiasm to
sing madrigals, and Nettel was convinced in his discussion of the facts that this was unarguably
the case. From Hawkins’s description that Immyns lacked flexibility in his singing voice, Nettel
goes many steps further to conclude that because Immyns’s voice was compromised, he must
therefore have changed the madrigals to make them less challenging and simpler to sing, thus
‘the inference is that Immyns and the Madrigal Society sang madrigals without the customary
“graces” that were the fashion of that time, which supports our view of Immyns as an artistic
reformer carrying out his work among these working people.’58
Putting aside Nettel’s claim of the establishment of the Madrigal Society as a working-
class achievement, he nevertheless makes an important point in highlighting this act of clubbing
together in the interest of a common cause or pursuit, perhaps defined better as a culture of
association. In the introduction, Nettel asks the reader to ‘remember . . . what our conception of
democracy owes to the tradition of free-association—the right of groups of people to gather and
discuss points of common interest.’59 It was Nettel’s belief that the membership of the Madrigal
Society, which he acknowledges had changed towards the end of the 18th century, soon lost its
working-class membership because the silk-weavers of Spitalfields had refused to accept
57 Nettel, 100. 58 Nettel, 101.
59 Nettel, 97.
29
mechanisation, rendering them penniless and unable to pay their dues to the society. His
conclusion is that ‘in discarding the working-class members in the late 18th-century, the Madrigal
Society, may be charged with short-sightedness, since the unifying social influence of music is
valuable, yet the society was only following the trend of the age.’60 It seems possible, in the light
of the evidence explored in the chapters of this thesis, that Nettel’s message was serving political
motive rather than historical accuracy.
The act of groups of people gathering and discussing points of common interest, was an
important social marker of Georgian Britain. The social historian Peter Clark estimates that there
were more than 130 different kinds of associations and societies in 18th-century Britain, which
ranged from mathematics, sports and horticulture clubs to literature and alumni societies,
masonic and pseudo-masonic lodges and music clubs, to list but a very few. The image and
concept of this voluntary society, says Clark, ‘increasingly penetrated every nook and cranny of
British social and cultural life.’61 Clark has identified that the 18th century witnessed a shift of
emphasis from the ‘stress on public and personal improvement, which, in turn, was
complemented towards the end of the century by a growing stress on moral and social reform.’62
Such social reform was clearly reflected in the shifting membership of the Madrigal Society
towards the end of the 18th century, but there was an apparent movement within freemasonry
that also attracted a large number of London’s professional musicians.
Philip Olleson has identified several members and associates of the Madrigal Society with
William Preston’s Lodge of Antiquity, a London freemasons’ lodge, whose membership included
Thomas Attwood, John Jeremiah Goss, William Hawes, William Linley, Samuel Webbe, both
senior and junior, and Samuel Wesley.63 In a chapter discussing musical freemasonry in 18th-
century London, Simon McVeigh points out that masonic ritual frequently called upon the
60 Nettel, 107. 61 Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: the Origins of an Associational World (Oxford, 2000), 4. 62 Clark, 470.
63 Philip Olleson, Samuel Wesley: the Man and his Music (Woodbridge, 2003), 38.
30
services of musicians—either to compose music for ritual, or to perform it. Many of the London
lodges appear to have appointed professional musicians as ‘honorary members’, who performed
at lodge meetings, and McVeigh lists thirty-eight musicians admitted to the Somerset House
Lodge between 1777 and 1800.64
McVeigh contends that as 18th-century freemasonry strived to revive the classical age, so
it also swept along with it the ‘eighteenth-century appreciation for ancient (i.e. renaissance)
music, which, at least in the form of madrigals, was certainly a feature of masonic meetings.’65
However, McVeigh mentions only that Benjamin Cooke (a member of the Somerset House
Lodge), wrote madrigals to be sung at meetings, but there is no further mention in McVeigh’s
chapter of any older madrigals sung within a masonic context.
VI. The Rise of the Glee
The emergence of the glee in the 18th century also requires some consideration alongside the
contemporaneous revival of the madrigal; our discussion of Robins has already made this
evident. The two forms of composition were regularly published in the same collections—
perhaps most visibly in the compendium of vocal works assembled by Edmund Thomas Warren
(ca1730–1794), his Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees. Although, as we will explore in Chapter 2,
the distinction between the two forms was sometimes blurred by Warren when Elizabethan
madrigals were published as ‘glees’.66 Warren was not the only compiler of such collections in the
late 18th century: other publications of glees and madrigals were also to appear in the century’s
64 Simon McVeigh, ‘Freemasonry and Musical Life in London in the late Eighteenth Century’ in David Wyn Jones
(ed.), Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot, 2000), 92. 65 McVeigh, 74. 66 Edmund Thomas Warren, A Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees for Three, Four, Five, Six and Nine Voices, Never
Before Published. Issued in thirty-two instalments from 1763 to 1793.
31
three final decades, and in them were juxtaposed new compositions with (largely) English
madrigals of the late 16th and early 17th century.67
In an article published in the Musical Times in 1979, David Johnson argued that the
development of the glee ‘after 1769 may well have been due to a conscious effort to recapture
the madrigal’s elegance and expressiveness.’68 It is certainly true that the words of many glees
developed what might be considered ‘madrigalian’ ideals: shepherds, Diana, and unrequited love
populate the glees, such as John Wall Callcott’s ‘In the Lonely Vale of Streams’, and Thomas
Arne’s ‘Come Shepherds, We’ll Follow the Hearse’. These often fuelled the imagination of glee
composers, but the glee appears to have been marginalised in its relationship to the 16th- and
17th-century madrigal.
Some madrigal societies in the 19th century expressly excluded glees from their meetings.
The first set of rules drawn up by the Western Madrigal Society (see Appendix 1) on 24 February
1840 makes it clear that their inclusion in an evening’s music was not welcome: ‘Ninth [rule]:
That the performances of the society be confined to Madrigals, Anthems and that style of music;
and that no Glees be sung at the meetings, under any circumstances.’69 The disapproval of glees
was probably due to musical snobbery, notably because the glee had developed within the same
milieu as its often bawdy counterpart, the catch—most commonly associated with the culture to
be found in those exclusive bastions of male supremacy, the coffee-houses and taverns of
London.
67 Three prime examples of published collections of madrigals with glees are James Sibbald’s four-volume Collection of
Catches, Canons, Glees, Duetts, &c, Selected from the Works of the most Eminent Composers Ancient and Modern, (Edinburgh,
1780); Bland’s A Collection of Catches, Glees, Canons, Canzonets, Madrigals &c. Selected from the Works of the Most Eminent
Composers, (London, 1785); and An Amusement for the Ladies: Being a Selection of Favorite Catches, Glees and Madrigals,
Several of Which Have Gained the Prize Medals, (London, 1785). 68 David Johnson, ‘The 18th-Century Glee’, Musical Times, 120 (1979), 200–202. 69 From the first set of rules recorded in the minute book, 24 February 1840 to 24 March 1843, Western Madrigal
Society Archive, Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex.
32
The Catch Club, founded in 1761, and later known as the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s
Catch Club, was one of the main promoters of glee composition, particularly after the
introduction in 1763 of its prize competition, which encouraged entries in four categories:
serious and light glees, canons and catches. In an outline history of the glee in the New Grove
Dictionary, David Johnson says that ‘the main inspiration behind the 18th-century glee was the
English madrigal of 1590–1630, which was being rediscovered…. To a generation whose
experience of partsongs was largely limited to obscene catches, the flowing lines, sensuous
textures and poetic seriousness of the Elizabethan and Jacobean madrigal came as a revelation
and challenge.’70 More recently, Brian Robins confirms Johnson’s analysis, adding that glees took
their root from madrigals, in particular because of the treatment of text ‘with due regard for its
expressive qualities.’71 Robins also refers to a much older source of 1801, Callcott’s ‘Essays on
Musical Subjects’: Essay III—On the Catch Club,72 in which Callcott stated that ‘the madrigal is
the original source of [the] glee.’ Madrigals though, as Robins explains, are generally more
contrapuntally complex than glees, which, by contrast are more episodic; glees have a ‘looser
musical form,’73 where solo and exposed passages are often subject to key and tempo changes.
Most glees in the 18th century were written for men’s voices only—the Catch Club did not
employ boys’ voices until the early 19th century, and Johnson suggests that ‘male falsettists’
always took the top line.74 Glees, then, lacked the historical integrity of the madrigal, and were
not introduced into the programmes of the Madrigal Society—and later flatly banned by the
Western Madrigal Society (see Appendix 1).
The two worlds of the madrigal and glee were not totally divorced, however.
Membership of the Madrigal Society and Catch Club often overlapped—in the 18th century the 70 David Johnson, ‘Glee’, Grove Music Online, accessed November 2013. 71 Robins, 3.
72 John Wall Callcott, ‘Essays on Musical Subjects’, Essay III, ‘On the Catch Club’, 31 August 1801, GB-Lbl Add.
MS 27646. Fol. 148, in Robins, 3. 73 Robins, 4.
74 Johnson, ‘Glee’, Grove Music Online, accessed November 2013.
33
previously mentioned Edmund and Benjamin Cooke, with several others, were both members of
the Madrigal Society and ‘privileged and professional members’ of the Catch Club;75 likewise in
the early 19th century, William Hawes (1785–1846), Thomas Greatorex (1758–1831) and James
Bartleman (1769–1821) enjoyed membership of both organisations. Later, in 19th-century
Exeter, Roger’s Devon Madrigal Society meetings always took place on the night following the
meeting of the Devon Glee Club. As will be seen in Chapter 4, the membership of the two
Devon societies was formed of the same core of people, but the separation of the two club
nights is an indication of the sense of ceremony in singing madrigals without ‘contaminating’
them with glees.
The popularity of the glee increased as the 19th century progressed; Johnson states that
according to a list drawn up by David Baptie in 1885, over 23,000 glees and partsongs had been
published since 1750, and that as many more had been composed but were unpublished.76 Such a
statistic indicates the overwhelming and enduring popularity of the glee as a vehicle for
composition.
VII. Preview of Chapters
After this discussion of some of the more important contexts for the study of the madrigal
revival, a preview of the structure of the remainder of the dissertation can now be given. Chapter
2 begins with an examination of interest in the madrigal from the late 17th century, when groups
of enthusiastic students and musicians gathered to sing in Oxford, drawn together by Henry
Aldrich (1647–1710), the music-loving Dean of Christ Church. Developing the thread from
Aldrich’s enthusiastic singing amateurs in 17th-century Oxford to London in the 18th century,
the history of the Madrigal Society is continued in the second and concluded in the third chapter.
75 Robins has also identified that George Berg (ca1730–ca1770), Jonathan Battishill (1738–1801), Thomas Arne
(1710–1778), Luffman Atterbury (1740–1796), and R. J. S. Stevens (1757–1837), were also members of both
organisations; Robins, 25.
76 Johnson, ‘Glee’, Grove Music Online, accessed November 2013.
34
Through close examination of the society’s archive of music and administrative records, and a
review of relevant journalism and literature, its operation and influence across two centuries is
exposed and analysed. Also included in Chapter 2 is an examination of the Roman Catholic
membership of the Madrigal Society, which appears to have been a considerable element by the
late 1760s.
Chapter 4 is a survey of provincial madrigal societies, most notably those of Exeter and
Bristol. Their repertoire, performance practice and membership is considered, demonstrating
their structural similarities and differences and highlighting issues of provincial culture, in
contrast with their metropolitan counterpart.
The protagonists of the 19th-century madrigal revival are discussed in Chapter 5, with
particular reference to Sir John Leman Rogers, mentioned above. Rogers revolutionised the
Madrigal Society in addition to founding the first provincial society dedicated to the study and
singing of madrigals. Also, Edward Taylor is discussed in Chapter 5. It was his touring lecture-
recitals that gave the inspiration and impetus for the founding of new madrigal societies across
England, most notably that at Bristol. Also discussed are Thomas Oliphant, Honorary Secretary
of the Madrigal Society, whose meticulous cataloguing and editing for publication of works in
the society’s library was amongst the first to make madrigals widely available to the public in
printed form; William Hawes, whose first edition since the 17th century of the great madrigal
collection the Triumphs of Oriana in 1817, and later the publication of individual madrigals, paved
the way for Oliphant and Taylor; and James Turle, successor to William Hawes as Musical
Director of the Madrigal Society, and friend and ally of Sir John Rogers.
The final chapter, Chapter 6, considers the Musical Antiquarian Society, formed in 1840;
it also examines three later-developing organisations—the Western, Manchester and Leicester
Amateur madrigal societies (see Appendix 1)—and surveys the 1843 plagiarism scandal that
shook the reputation of Edward Taylor. There is a brief review of Pearsall’s legacy as the 19th
century’s most prolific and certainly its finest composer of madrigals, but the music itself is not
35
the main focus of the dissertation, and the thesis concludes rather by outlining what Pearsall’s
production of a canon of work indicated in terms of where the madrigal revival had led and what
its later transformations were and meant in a rapidly changing society.
36
CHAPTER 2
‘Dress’d Up in Cobwebs and Powdered with Dust’: the Creation and Operation of the
Madrigal Society in the 18th Century
I. The Academy of Vocal Music
Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who has been mentioned in the previous
chapter, was not only a collector of music, but also a performer. Describing Aldrich and his
musical milieu, William Weber wrote that ‘Christ Church and its Dean . . . were the focus of
the movement of taste for ancient music.’1 Around himself, Aldrich gathered a circle of
university students and musicians; exactly who attended the weekly musical meetings is not
recorded, but research has shown the existence of a music club in Oxford that met monthly
at the Mermaid Tavern: many of them were ‘lay clerks, chaplains or musicians at Christ
Church and would undoubtedly have attended Aldrich’s meeting as well.’2 Amongst them
was Sampson Estwick (1657–1739), an undergraduate at Christ Church before ordination
and appointment to a minor canonry at St Paul’s cathedral in 1692. Estwick was evidently
well known, a favourite even, to Aldrich, as evidenced by the organist and composer William
Hayes, who wrote of him:
He was a good Man and a worthy Clergyman: I do not assert that he was a Chorister in
Dean Aldrich’s Time, but a Chaplain he certainly was, and an intimate Friend of the
1 William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: a Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford,
1996), 32. 2 Margaret Crum, ‘An Oxford Music Club, 1690–1714’. Bodleian Library Record IX/2 (1974): 83–99. Robert Shay, in
his article, ‘“Naturalizing” Palestrina and Carissimi in Late Seventeenth-Century Oxford: Henry Aldrich and His
Recompositions’, ML, 77 (1996), 376, draws frequently on Crum’s research, that also provides important reading for
Elizabeth Jane Chevill’s PhD thesis, ‘Music Societies and Musical Life in Old Foundation Cathedral Cities 1700–60’.
PhD dissertation, King’s College, London, 1993.
37
Dean; as appears by his famous smoking Catch, wherein he is called upon by the Name
of Sam; for Samson was his Christian Name.3
Later, in London on 7 January 1726, the same Sampson Estwick was recorded in the minutes
of the Academy of Vocal Music (known after 1731 as the Academy of Ancient Music—see
Appendix 1): ‘A Musick Meeting being held at ye Crown [and Anchor] Tavern near St.
Clement’s, Mr Galliard at ye head of it, and chiefly for Grave ancient Vocall Musick. Wee
begann it with ye following Song of Lucas De Marenzio.’4 This particular music meeting was
the first of the Academy of Vocal Music, which convened on alternate Fridays. In choosing
to style themselves an ‘academy’ of vocal music, the members reflected their musical
objective, and gave themselves an edge of intellectual purpose in reference to the cultural
academies of renaissance Italy, appearing classical in both pedigree and name.
The list of the members that assembled on 7 January, and who contributed two
shillings and sixpence apiece for the first meeting of the Academy, is recorded as thirteen
men and ‘The Children of St Paul’s Cathedral’.5 How Aldrich had arranged for the upper line
to be sung at his meetings in Oxford, assuming that the music called for sopranos, is not
recorded, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the boys from the choir at Christ Church
were employed. What became a ‘tradition’ for trebles to sing the upper line in madrigal
societies must stem from those earliest meetings in Oxford, which were later translated to
1720s London. The resolutions of the Academy, agreed to and recorded at the meeting of 7
July, are precise in the rules that they imposed. As well as admitting ‘any Gentleman of his
Majesty’s Chappel Royal, or of the Cathedrals . . . and no other person but such as profess
3 [William Hayes], Remarks on Mr Avison’s Essay on Musical Expression with related writings by William Hayes and Charles
Avison (London, 1753), 45. The ‘famous smoking catch’ to which Hayes refers is ‘Good, Good Indeed’, which
appeared in Henry Playford’s Second Book of the Pleasant Musical Companion: Being a Choice Collection of Catches, for Three
and Four Voices, the second edition (London, 1695). 4 Minute-book, Academy of Vocal Music, f1, GB-Lbl Add. MS 11732.
5 Minute-book, Academy of Vocal Music, f1, GB-Lbl Add. MS 11732, 2fl.
38
Musick . . . ’ (Second Resolution), it was also allowed that ‘Composers . . . may be admitted,
tho’ not Vocal performers’ (Sixth Resolution). The latter resolution poses an interesting
question as to who or what constituted a ‘vocal performer’ (in contrast to those people ‘such
as profess Musick’ or any of the gentleman of the cathedral and chapel choirs). The most
likely kind of people were theatre singers, but the considerable number of Italian ‘stars’ of
the opera who sang at meetings suggests that the resolution was a flexible one in its
interpretation.
An outstanding fact of the meetings in 1726 was the diversity of representation of
London’s musical society: Italian theatrical musicians, notably Giovanni Bononcini (a
principal rival of Handel), the castrato Pier Tosi, the composer Agostino Steffani (elected
Honorary President in absentia), and the violinist-composer Francesco Geminiani; a large
number of church musicians who came from the choirs of the Chapel Royal, Westminster
Abbey and St Paul’s, including the organist of St Paul’s, Maurice Greene; the composers Dr
Johann Christopher Pepusch and William Croft; Bernard Gates, the Master of the Children
of the Chapel Royal; and a handful of musical amateurs including John Perceval, another
attender of Aldrich’s Oxford meetings, who became one of the senior patrons of the
Academy.
Of those first members, the most influential of them was undoubtedly Pepusch, a
German musician who had arrived in London from Berlin in the early 1700s. He was a
composer, teacher and avid music collector with a passion for the music of antiquity.
Hawkins records that Pepusch had tried to persuade him that the term ‘ancient’ should also
apply to music from ancient Greece and Rome, but Hawkins firmly rejected the idea: ‘where
are those productions of the ancients that must decide the question? Lost, it will be said, in
the general wreck of literature and the arts. If so, they cease to be evidence.’6 Despite
6 Quotation cited in Percy Lovell, ‘“Ancient” Music in Eighteenth-Century England’, ML, 60 (1979), 402.
39
Hawkins’s dismissal of Pepusch’s claims, Pepusch was probably the greatest influence behind
interest being maintained in old vocal music in the first half of the 18th century.
Sadly, no music lists survive that record what was sung at each meeting of the
Academy of Vocal Music, but Pepusch’s own library was vast and varied in its collection of
old music, and it was clearly not collected in any distinctive favour of sacred over secular
music. Furthermore, a lengthy transaction and resolution of a passing-off action, which
began shortly before 1731, confirms that secular music had been sung at meetings from the
Academy’s early days. The case in question concerned the madrigal ‘In una Siepe Ombrosa’,
which was presented as the work of the Academy member Giovanni Bononcini, but was
shown to be by Antonio Lotti. Maurice Greene had brought the madrigal to the Academy in
1727 or 1728, but a lengthy correspondence ensued between senior members of the
Academy and Lotti, where affidavits were sworn in Venice and Vienna that confirmed Lotti’s
authorship. Throughout the proceedings, Bononcini remained silent, refusing to answer or
acknowledge any communication from the Academy.7 Just over a hundred years later, the
outrage caused by Edward Taylor in his alleged act of copying old music and passing it off as
new would be an important moment in slowing down the madrigal movement; this will be
discussed later in the thesis.
The 1731 scandal saw a change in the way the Academy was run; Maurice Greene,
who was also seen to be complicit in Bononcini’s deception, was already in dispute with
Bernard Gates over the leadership of the Academy, which ended in Greene withdrawing
himself and the services of the boys of St Paul’s from the Academy’s meetings, leaving only
the boys of the Chapel Royal, under the direction of Gates. Greene then set himself up in a
rival but short-lived venture, the Apollo Society, which met at the Devil Tavern in Temple
Bar. As will be seen later through the peregrinations of the Madrigal Society, the taverns and
inns of London were important meeting places for musical clubs and societies, places in
7 A longer account of the episode is to be found in an anonymous article in the Musical Times, 33 (1892), 12–14.
40
which they could both rehearse and give concerts. The Crown and Anchor Tavern in the
Strand was perhaps the most commodious of them, and it became the permanent home for
the meetings and concerts of the Academy of Ancient Music.
The precise date that the Academy of Vocal Music ceased to exist, giving way to its
reinvention as the Academy of Ancient Music, can be elicited from the account book at the
British Library. Although there is no formal notice of termination, the last entry is dated 26
May 1731, and is followed by the remark, ‘N.B. By the Compositions of the Ancients is
meant of such as lived before the end of the fifteenth sixteenth century’.8 It would appear
from the other resolutions in the same document that the new arrangement also excluded
Greene, from whom Pepsuch was to ask the return of six motets that had been sent to the
Academy.
Although there is no weekly account or list of music performed by the Academy of
Ancient Music, some two-dozen programmes, from their concerts between 1746 and the
1770s, are held at the British Library. They provide a clear account of the music that was
performed: one component always included in the programmes was sacred music of the 16th
or early 17th century, in particular motets, psalm settings, services or anthems, by Palestrina,
Victoria, Lassus, Allegri, Tallis and Byrd. Recently published research by Harry Diack
Johnstone, in which he has been able to bring together remnants of the Academy’s library,
demonstrates the breadth of its repertoire, encompassing unaccompanied vocal works from
the 16th century to works by Handel and other contemporaneous composers.9
A concert programme of the Academy, dated 24 April 1746—the earliest held in the
collection at the British Library—illustrates the diversity of the music performed.10 It is
reproduced, using the modern convention of composers’ names, as Table 2.1.
8 Minute-book, Academy of Vocal Music, f1, GB-Lbl Add. MS 11732, fl15. 9 Harry Diack Johnstone, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music: a Library Once Lost and Now
Partially Recovered’. Music & Letters 95 (2014): 329–373
10 Motets, madrigals, and other pieces performed by the Academy of Ancient Music, April 24, 1746. GB-Lbl 1042.i.8.(2–6,8).
41
Table 2.1: Programme from the Academy of Ancient Music, 24 April 1746
Motets, Madrigals, and Other Pieces, Performed by the Academy of Ancient Music,
Thursday April 24 1746.
Part the First
Palestrina [1525–94] Motet for five voices, ‘Angelus Domini’
John Travers [1703–58] Canzonet for three voices, ‘Old I Am, Yet Can, I Think’
Henry Purcell [1659–95] Fifth Act in The Indian Queen, ‘While Thus We Bow before Your Shrine’
Part the Second
Duarte Lobo [ca1565–1646] Kyrie Eleison for four voices
Thomas Morley [1557/8–1602] Madrigal for four voices, ‘Say, Gentle Nymphs’
Johann Pepusch [1667–1752] Magnificat
Part the Third
Tomas Luis de Victoria [1548–1611] Motet for four voices, ‘Quam Pulchri Sunt’
William Byrd [1543–1623] Madrigal for three voices, ‘The Eagle’s Force Subdues Each Bird that
Flies’
G. F. Handel [1685–1759] Te Deum
‘Byrd’ Canon, ‘Non Nobis Domine’
Every programme of the Academy was just such a mixture of ‘ancient’ (by their definition)
and modern music—that of composers contemporaneous to them, such as Handel, Greene,
Bononcini and Pergolesi. Of the nine pieces performed on this particular date (excluding the
‘Non Nobis’, which was attributed to Byrd in all programmes of the Academy), five were for
church use, one from the theatre, and the remaining three—a canzonet and two madrigals—a
regular ‘ancient’ inclusion of the Academy’s programmes, which remained so into the
concerts of the 1770s. Composers such as Bennet, Morley, Wilbye, Marenzio and Farmer
42
make frequent appearances. Every performance by the Academy ended with the canon,
supposed to be a composition of William Byrd, ‘Non Nobis Domine’.11
However, it appears that the members of the Academy were not seen to be quite so
eclectic in their tastes by certain of their spectators. In the 1734 satirical pamphlet Harmony in
an Uproar, a letter from ‘Hurlothrumbo Johnson’ to ‘F-d-k H-d-l, Esq.’ warns Handel of the
opposition in London to his music, and cites the Academy of Ancient Music thus:
As for that indefatigable Society, the Gropers into Antique Musick, and Hummers of
Madrigals, they swoon at the Sight of any Piece modern, particularly your [Handel’s]
Composition, excepting the Performances of their venerable President [Pepusch], whose
Works bear such vast Resemblance to the regular Gravity of the Antients, that when
dress’d up in Cobwebs, and powdered with Dust, the Philharmonick Spiders could dwell
on them, and in them, to Eternity.12
This vituperative description of the Academy rejecting contemporaneous music was
historically incorrect. The first performance of Handel’s oratorio Esther had been given by the
Academy in 1732 at the Crown and Anchor tavern; but the overriding sense of an academy of
‘ancient’ music evidently permeated its outward image.
In 1734 the services of the boys of the Chapel Royal were no longer forthcoming at
meetings of the Academy when the Master of the Children, Bernard Gates, withdrew from
membership. According to John Hawkins, it was caused by ‘some disgust taken by Mr
Gates’,13 at which point Pepusch decided that the Academy would train its own boys in
11 The ‘Non Nobis’ canon first appears in the ‘Bull’ manuscript (completed ca1620) at the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge, MS782, f. 122v. No composer is given, and the earliest attribution to Byrd stems from Pepusch in his
Treatise on Harmony (1730), and reproduced in the Academy’s programmes. Philip Brett examined the canon in his
article ‘Did Byrd Write “Non Nobis Domine”?’, Musical Times 113 (1972), 855–7, and concluded that Byrd was not
the author, and Brett did not venture the name of any alternative composer. 12 Author unknown, Harmony in an Uproar, privately printed pamphlet (London, 1734).
13 Hawkins, General History, 885.
43
musicianship as a ‘seminary for the instruction of youth in the principles of music and the
laws of harmony.’14
Pepusch appears to have continued to direct the Academy until his death in 1752, but
after thereafter the emphasis of the programmes shifted away from ‘ancient’ music, and the
repertoire of the Academy shifted towards the music of Handel and composers of the 18th
century.
The great religious reformer John Wesley (1703–1791), who recorded a meeting with
Pepusch in June 1748, captured Pepusch’s feelings about the music of his contemporaries.
Pepusch clearly expressed to Wesley his thoughts on the music of his day, and it can only be
assumed that the example of the 1746 programme (shown earlier) is an illustration that he was
bending to accommodate the taste of the Academy’s members:
I spent an hour or two with Dr Pepusch. He asserted that the art of music is lost: that
the ancients only understood it in its perfection; that it was revived a little in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge and a patroness of it; that after her reign it sunk for
sixty or seventy years, till Purcell made some attempts to restore it; but that ever since,
the true, ancient art, depending on nature and mathematical principles, had gained no
ground, the present masters having no fixed principles at all.15
That the Academy was in some way abandoning the objective it had set out to achieve in
1726, becomes further apparent from inspection of the programmes after Pepusch’s death,
and by the 1790s, nothing of any ‘ancient’ (by its 1730s definition) stature was being included
in their concerts. The only requirement made by the Academy was that the music they played
14 Hawkins, General History, 885. 15 The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Four volumes. Vol. II, ‘From
November 25, 1746, to May 5, 1760’ (London, 1827), 61.
44
needed be more than twenty years old, and music by Handel, Haydn, Boyce and Purcell
populates the lists most frequently.
It is of little wonder that by the early 1740s, some members of the Academy must
have felt that their needs were no longer being served by the all-embracing repertoire that was
being adopted. In his History, Hawkins describes an Academy member who was a loyal copyist
and amanuensis to Pepusch:
[his] taste was altogether for old music, which he had been taught to admire by Dr
Pepusch; and this he indulged to such a degree, that he looked upon Mr Handel and
Bonocini as the greatest corrupters of the science. With these prejudices, it is no wonder
that he entertained a relish for madrigals and music of the driest style. 16
This is Hawkins’s description of John Immyns, founder of the Madrigal Society.
II. John Immyns, the Foundation of the Madrigal Society, and its Archive
The first recorded meeting of the Madrigal Society took place on 16 July 1744; three people
were present: Mr Sells, Samuel Jeacocke and John Immyns.17 Immyns was the society’s
founder, but little biographical detail exists about him except his description in Sir John
Hawkins’s A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, first published in 1776. Hawkins,
who briefly joined the Madrigal Society in 1748, and was re-proposed by Immyns in 1752,
first introduces him:
Mr. John Immyns, an attorney by profession, was a member of the Academy [of Ancient
Music], but meeting with misfortunes, he was occasionally a copyist to the society and
amanuensis to Dr. Pepusch; he had a strong counter-tenor voice, which being not very
16 Hawkins, General History, 887.
17 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F1, 16 July 1744.
45
flexible, served well enough for the performance of madrigals. Of this species of music
he in a short time became so fond, that in the year 1741 he formed the plan of a little
club, called the Madrigal Society . . . 18
Hawkins teases the reader with the expression that Immyns had met ‘with misfortunes’,
offering only a little more information a page later that he ‘had been guilty of some
indiscretions which proved an effectual bar to success in his profession, and reduced him to
the necessity of becoming a clerk to an attorney in the city.’19 Hawkins does not clarify what
the indiscretions were that had caused the handicap to Immyns’s career, but his financial
circumstances appear to have been compromised, ‘having a family, he lived for some years in
extreme poverty, the reflection on which did not trouble him so much as it did his friends.’20
It seems that Immyns did not manage to improve his finances until 1752 when he was
appointed to the sinecure post of Lutenist of the Chapel Royal, on the death of Serjeant
Shore. Hawkins says that ‘at the age of forty, he would needs learn the lute’,21 presumably to
be eligible for the Chapel Royal post (that paid a good stipend of £41 10s per annum);22
Immyns and Pepusch seem to have remained lifelong friends.
Continuing his account, Hawkins describes how Immyns (who in this later reference
in the History, is referred to as ‘the lutenist’23) was one of three select friends that Pepusch
kept for conversation and games of chess; the other two friends were John Travers, organist
of the Chapel Royal, and Ephraim Kelner, a member of the band at Drury Lane Theatre and
sometime amanuensis to Pepusch. In 1734, after Bernard Gates withdrew his choristers from
18 Hawkins, General History, 886–7.
19 Hawkins General History, 887. 20 Hawkins, General History, 887. 21 Hawkins, General History, 887.
22 R. O. Bucholz (ed.), ‘The Chapel Royal: Lutenists and Violists’, Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised):
Court Officers, 1660-1837 (London, 2006), 290–91. Digitised and available online: <http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/office-holders/vol11/pp290-291#h2-0001, 291> accessed April 2010.
23 Hawkins, 907.
46
the Academy of Ancient Music, Pepusch had taken responsibility for training the voices of
new boys. A letter, estimated to date from around 1735, exists at Stanford University Library,
and was sent from a sickly Pepusch to Immyns, introducing to him a piece of music, ‘Vobis
Datum Est’ by Costanza Porta, and making reference to Immyns’s care of the children, due to
his (Pepusch’s) indisposal.24 In the letter, Pepusch warns Immyns not to overlook the other
boys by favouring any individual: ‘I am exceeding glad to hear of your having found a good
voice, but I recommend you not to neglect the other Children.’ Evidently Immyns possessed
skills in the training of boys’ voices from an early stage, but Pepusch’s tone suggests that a
relationship of master and quasi-apprentice existed between them. Any other communication
between Pepusch and Immyns is not known to exist, but Hawkins’s account of the founding
of the Madrigal Society suggests that Immyns relied heavily on the help of Pepusch, and of
access to his collection of music as a source for copies to be made for use at the early
meetings.
However, for one whom Hawkins suggests was such an intimate friend to Pepusch,
Immyns is conspicuous by his absence from Pepusch’s will: at his death in 1752, Pepusch
bequeathed his library to be ‘divided up between . . . Ephraim Kelner and John Travers, and
the Academy of Ancient Music’.25 Although there is no evidence to suggest that there was any
falling out between Pepusch and Immyns, it has to be wondered if Immyns felt a sense of
exclusion at not being a beneficiary.
At this point it will be helpful to summarise the sources that supply our knowledge of
the new venture, a venture whose history is central to this thesis. Most of the Madrigal
Society’s archive was deposited, on loan, at the British Museum in 1954, and further added to
in 1981. It comprises a large and important collection of music, and also the paraphernalia
24 ‘Autograph letter from Pepusch to Mr Immins, and transcription of composition, n.d.’ Stanford University
Library, Special Collections, MLM/10/814A.
25 H. Diack Johnstone, ‘The Genesis of Boyce’s “Cathedral Music”’, ML, 56 (1975), 35.
47
associated with the administration of a long-established club, in particular account books,
attendance records, rules, minutes, members’ lists and meetings records. The collection has
been added to since 1981 as the Madrigal Society (still very much in existence) has released
more material when it has no longer been required for its immediate access. It comprises over
two hundred separate volumes of printed and manuscript music, and over twenty-five
account and minute books covering the period 1744 to 1955.
The society’s activities in the 18th century are recorded in the books F1 to F6; the ‘F’
cataloguing was attributed in 1975, when H. Patrick Finn, Honorary Secretary to the Madrigal
Society 1950–1972, received the papers of Sir James Craufurd, an erstwhile member of the
Madrigal Society. Finn had spent many years carefully cataloguing the archive, and gave his
own initial letter to his system of coding. The books relating to the operation of the society in
the 18th century run, accordingly: F1, attendance and programmes, July 1744–December
1757; F2, attendance and programmes, December 1757–March 1770; F3, account book,
1750–1758; F4, account book, 1758–1778; F5, attendance and transactions, December 1785–
1828; and F6, rules, loans, forfeits, etc., 1748–1759.
Each of the volumes is quite different, not only in the nature of its contents, but also
visually and tangibly. F1, the oldest book belonging to the society, is a solid, two-hundred-
leaf, vellum-bound volume, some nine inches tall and seven inches wide, bearing a cipher on
the front and back covers, ‘AW’, hand-drawn in ink. The vellum is soiled from nearly three
centuries of being handled, and it is remarkable for its survival. Thirteen years after the first
entry, in 1744, a handsome volume, now known as F2, succeeded F1. It is some eleven inches
tall, bound in leather and velvet, with a gold-embossed label placed square on the front board
announcing ‘Madrigal Society, Xmas 1757’. Its format and status is in obvious contrast to its
predecessor, and bears with it the weight of quality—not just for its velveted cover, but also
for the paper, which is markedly superior to that of F1.
48
F5, begun in December 1785, is larger still, approximately fourteen inches by seven
inches, and although it does not enjoy a velvet cover, it is bound with leather on the spine and
hinges, with leather-covered end boards and bears a gold-embossed red leather label,
‘Madrigal Society’. The end papers are marbled, and the overall effect is one of great quality.
F5 was in use for forty-three years, a far longer period of service than either F1 or F2, but it
contains approximately the same number of pages as F2. It reflects the fact that the records
of meetings became far less detailed than in previous years, which is all the more frustrating
when the period covered by the latter years recorded in the book are so informative to this
thesis.
The volumes most frequently consulted in this research have been F1, F2 and F5,
because it is in them that are recorded the names of the members, their guests and the music
sung at meetings of the society in the period under study. As will be seen, these records were
not strictly kept in any particular format, and one generation’s customs were not necessarily
adopted by its successors. This applies most particularly to noting what was sung at meetings,
which was sporadic in its record. As has been discussed previously, there is an evident gap in
time which neither the accounts nor the attendance records are able to fill: between the
account book, F4, ending 1778, and the attendance and transaction records, F5, beginning
1785, seven years have gone astray.
Until 1941, the Madrigal Society possessed five minute books: i) 1744–1757; ii) 1757–
1770; iii) 1785–1828; iv) 1828–1859; v) 1859/60–1915; the last two, and the society’s singing
books, were stored at the Carpenters’ Hall in the City, on London Wall. However, on the
night of 10/11 May 1941, an incendiary bomb fell close to Carpenters’ Hall, igniting a gas
main, the explosion of which tore through the building. The entire singing library of the
Madrigal Society and the two minute books from 1828 to 1915 were lost in the blaze. Only
the 18th- and early 19th-century records and music survived, having been stored elsewhere.
49
Only a collection of notes, summarising the contents of the two missing minute
books, survives—thanks to the efforts of another Honorary Secretary of the Madrigal Society,
Arthur Fox, who began to compile a new history in the 1930s. Fox recorded what he
considered to be key moments from the minute books, noting them into an exercise book,
which is now held in private hands.26 A transcription of Fox’s handwritten notes, recording
the contents of the minute book for 1828–1859, forms Appendix 2 of this thesis.
III. The Procedural Contents of the Madrigal Society Archive to 1800
Below is an outline of the principal information contained in the volumes relating to the
Madrigal Society in the 18th century. Until 1752, the dates entered into the minute book
followed the Julian calendar, where the New Year began on Lady Day, 25 March. For the sake
of clarity, I have changed any dates between January and March of any year, up to and
including 1752, to reflect the Gregorian calendar (where the year change takes place on 1
January), and to which all entries in the minute books refer after March 1752—the year that
the Gregorian calendar was adopted.
On the first page of F1 (16 July 1744 to 28 December 1757), a detailed entry in a
flowing and confident hand records a meeting at the Crown and Anchor tavern: ‘Mr Cook at
/ The Anchor and Crown / White Fryars [lateral space] Immyns Esqr. / Monday Night
Club’. Below it, in a different hand, are the names of fourteen members, preceded by the
legend ‘½ an hour after 6th Mon’. The members, all ‘Mr’, were Immyns, Latiné, Noaille,
Poker, Stiegler, Caton, Green, Cleaver, Richards, Newman, Davidson, Bradshaw, Gilbert, and
Waters.
The evidence, suggested by the location and the names on the list of the attendees, is
that this first page was written about four months after the first meeting of the Monday Night
26 I am grateful to the President, Committee and Members of the Madrigal Society for unlimited access to their
documents not yet deposited at the British Library.
50
Club. The real first entry, dated Monday 16 July 1744, records what appears to be the first
meeting of a club, formed to sing madrigals, that was convened by John Immyns. This idea
contradicts all of the previous histories that repeat Hawkins’s founding date of 1741. There is
nothing in F1 to suggest that the minute book forms the continuation of a previously
established club. The pattern of speedy growth of membership also strongly suggests that the
first meeting was of just three people and therefore 1744 is the correct year of foundation. On
16 July 1744 only three people were present: Sells, Jeacocke, and Immyns. They grew to six
the week following (Kemp, Potter, Gilbert, Ratcliffe, Randall, Immyns), and had expanded to
fifteen by 12 November: Immyns, Potter, Jeacocke, Ratcliffe, Sells, Phillips, At[t]wood,
Randall, Kinnersly, Jones, Brett, Reynolds, Cooper, Phillips, and Goodwyn (president).
Furthermore, to add to the theory of the 1744 start date, the apparatus of the organised
society took a year to evolve: the first mention of a subscription does not appear until the
following 29 January 1745 [1744], and the first set of rules was created very close to the
anniversary of the first recorded meeting. It seems reasonable to think that a year is enough
time to set up a society and allow it to settle down.
The membership was also expanding and accommodating professional musicians; 27
August 1744 marked the first appearance of the organist and composer John Worgan (1724–
1790), who remained a member of the society until March 1762. On 12 November 1744, a
Thomas Attwood, possibly the father of the composer, also Thomas (1765–1838), made his
first appearance. He attended only twelve meetings before his name disappears from the
records in April 1745.
At first, the Monday Night Club met weekly, at half-past six in the evening, and John
Immyns, as evidenced by his steady hand making the weekly entry, seems to have taken sole
responsibility for filling in the minute book from 16 July to 24 September 1744. However,
from 1 October the handwriting changes almost weekly. It is on 1 October that the first
mention of a ‘president’ is recorded, and it appears that the president (thereafter changing
51
every week in rotation) was responsible for recording the proceedings in the minute book—
here then we see the evidence of the evolution and beginning of an established procedure.
Meetings moved from Mondays to Tuesday evenings the following January, and then
to Wednesdays from April 1746. The weekly meetings were replaced by fortnightly gatherings
from August 1745, although there was a return to weekly meetings two years later in
September 1747.
Only in February 1745 for the first time was any rule recorded in the minutes,
regarding the operation of the society. It required that members pay eighteen pence in
advance for the six meetings ensuing.27 The first set of rules—‘for the better management of
this society’28—was not established until 31 July 1745, but it is clear from amongst the five
articles (later expanded to ten in August 1746) that certain laws of conduct needed to be
defined. The first of them dictates that the membership of the society ‘shall consist of twenty-
one members and no more.’ The other rules are largely preoccupied with the business of
subscriptions and honouring them in advance; only the fourth mentions music: ‘In order for
the preservation of the regulation of this society, as to keeping good hours, it is agreed that all
music and vocal performance shall cease half an hour after ten o’clock unless some of the
members shall be cheerfully incited to sing catches, in which case it shall be a rule to end all
performances by eleven o’clock’.29 Later rules would dictate the singing of catches to be
forbidden at meetings, but the 1745 rules give a picture of very convivial meetings, with time
set aside for singing madrigals, and later hours kept for further music-making.
Outside the regular tavern meetings, the society also organised extra-mural activity: On 27
May 1751, as recorded in the cash-book (F3), there is the mention of a summer outing, which was
made to Richmond by barge. Fourteen members paid three shillings a head for the river trip and
27 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F1, 29 January 1745. 28 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F1, 31 July 1745.
29 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F1, 31 July 1745.
52
the itemised bill records that they took breakfast at Wandsworth, dinner at Richmond, and further
drinks at Mortlake.
The expedition was evidently a success, because it was repeated the following year on Whit
Monday, 18 May 1752, and again on Whit Monday, 11 June 1753; both of them trips to the Green
Man on Black Heath. Twelve members and friends were present on the first Black Heath trip, then
twenty-three in 1753. No record survives of the musical activities on those days; leaving open
tantalising questions as to whether music books were taken by members on their outing, or if
music had been learnt by heart, or whether madrigals were completely abandoned for the day.
Throughout the 18th century, meetings took place in a public house every fortnight. The
account book dated 1758 (F4) lists the different meeting places of the society in London from
1744 to 1795. Until 1745, it met at Founder’s Court [Founder’s Arms], Lothbury. In August
1745 it removed to the Twelve Bells, Bride Lane, then on 21 December 1748 to the Queen’s
Arms, Newgate St. The entry for 10 May 1769 records a meeting at the Feathers Tavern in
Cheapside, October 1775 at the King’s Arms Tavern, Cornhill, and 1778 at the London Tavern.
Before 1792 it had moved to the King’s Head in Poultry, and thence to the Globe in Fleet St
and, in 1795, to the Crown and Anchor, where the society remained until 11th June 1816. See
Figure 2.1 (below) for the whereabouts of these locations.
Whether moving about London destabilised or possibly strengthened the society in any
way is not clear. At the end of his account of the Madrigal Society (while the society was holding
its meetings at the King’s Arms Tavern in Cornhill—No. 5 on the map), Hawkins wrote in his
General History that the society was, in his opinion, being mismanaged, and the outlook for it was
not very bright: ‘The Madrigal Society still subsists, but in a manner very different from its
original institution; they meet at a tavern in the city, but under such circumstances, as render its
permanency very precarious.’30
30 Hawkins, General History, 887. It must be assumed that Hawkins wrote this opinion sometime in the 1770s, if not
in the publication year of his History in 1776.
53
Fig.
2.1
: The
Loc
atio
ns o
f M
eetin
g Pl
aces
of
the
Mad
rigal
Soc
iety
in L
ondo
n du
ring
the
18th
Cen
tury
1.
1744
, the
Tw
elve
Bel
ls, B
ride
Lane
2.
1744
–174
5, th
e C
row
n an
d A
ncho
r, W
hite
fria
rs
3.
1745
–174
7, F
ound
er’s
Arm
s, Lo
thbu
ry
4.
1747
–174
8, th
e Tw
elve
Bel
ls, B
ride
Lane
5.
1748
, the
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en’s
Arm
s, N
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54
Contrary to Hawkins’s woeful warning, the membership records and accounts of the
Madrigal Society for the last thirty years of the 18th century show that attendance at meetings
was good and the finances were very stable. There is evidently a book of transactions gone astray
that recorded meetings and music between the years 1770 and 1785, although the last dated entry
in the account book (F4) is 1778, two years after Hawkins’s General History. This missing volume
(or volumes) had obviously disappeared by the 1830s when Oliphant compiled his history of the
society. Writing about the meeting places of the society and the gap in the records, he wrote:
‘between which period [1778] and 1785, I find no memoranda.’31 Oliphant goes further in an
interpretation of Hawkins’s remarks, noting that: ‘About this time, Mr Hawkins was knighted
and had some accession of property, besides being made a magistrate. May not this have had
some influence on him? It is too often the way of the world for men to look down on an old
acquaintance when they themselves are elevated to a higher sphere. His mechanical friends were
then perhaps not genteel enough for him.’32
Craufurd, when writing his history, interpreted the lack of any account or minute book to
be indicative of the chaotic organisation of the Madrigal Society, possibly to support Hawkins’s
prediction that things were ‘very precarious’. However, the final entry in F4 (account book 1758–
1778) attests a healthy balance of £42 7s 9d ‘carried to New Book’, suggesting that the
subsequent volume went astray, rather than an ensuing period of disarray. Craufurd also posits
that due to the absence of full records between 1778 and 1785 there may have been difficulties
encountered and the society did not manage to stabilise itself until 1785, when its finances
became better assured from the collection of more subscriptions.33
Book F2 (28 December 1757 to 14 March 1770) begins with a recapitulation of twenty
rules for what is styled (presumably by Immyns, who wrote them out) the Madrigalian Society,
31 Oliphant, Brief Account, 13. 32 Oliphant, Brief Account, 13.
33 Craufurd, 42.
55
and signed by the members on 8 December 1757. Mostly, the rules lay down the hours to be
kept: ‘All musical performance shall cease at half an hour after ten o’clock, unless some of the
members shall be chearfully incited to sing catches . . . ’ (Rule 3); forfeits to be imposed: ‘if any
member being elected President in his turn shall be absent on that night, he shall forfeit
sixpence’ (Rule 6); and the only clue to the operation of the evening: ‘ . . . the performance of the
night shall be divided into two acts, with the interval of about half an hour between each act, and
that four madrigals shall be performed (if time will permit) in each act . . . ’ (Rule 9).
The thirteenth of the new rules allowed ‘that any of the Gentlemen of the Academy of
Ancient Music shall be at liberty to visit this society, whenever they think fit. Gratis.’ Evidently
the relationship between the Madrigal Society and the Academy was cordial. No rules of the
Academy survive to see if such a reciprocal rule existed, but presumably there was already some
crossover in membership between the two organisations. The diary of a member of the Madrigal
Society, William Mawhood (1724–1797), who joined the society in October 1764, recorded in his
diary: ‘Wed. 20 Nov. Came this day to town. Went to the Madrigall and Thursday to the Crown
and Anchor Consert’.34 In fact, Mawhood remained a member of the society until 1773, allowing
through his diary, just a little glimpse beyond where F2 ceases on 7 March 1770. Mawhood does
not, alas, ever record any music that was sung at Madrigal Society meetings, nor at those of the
Academy of Ancient Music. He became a subscriber to the Academy of Ancient Music on 5
December 1771, and did not attend, or made no mention in his diary of, any meetings of the
Madrigal Society in 1772 (he had spent much of 1772 with his family at Douai, in France). His
last entry regarding the society was on 5 May, 1773: ‘was at the Madrigal. Few members and no
singing.’35 Mawhood did return to the Madrigal Society, appearing in the subscribers’ list in April
1791 in F5.
34 E. E. Reynolds (ed.), The Mawhood Diary: Selections from the Diary Note-Books of William Mawhood, Woollen-Draper of
London, for the Years 1764–1790 (Catholic Record Society Publications, 50; London, 1956), 23.
35 Reynolds, 60.
56
F5 (December 1785–17 July 1828) records just the members’ names and their payments
to the society between December 1785 and Midsummer 1792. When this book commences, after
the gap in the records of 15 years mentioned earlier, there are twenty-three members, of whom
eight had been members in March 1770. These minutes for the end of the 18th century are
disappointing when compared with the record-keeping from 1744 onwards. F5 is the largest
volume of the three minute books. Members’ subscriptions are listed across twenty-five pages,
and it appears that meetings took place fortnightly, but neither music nor attendance is recorded
until January 1802. The next chapter will pick up where F5 resumes its record.
IV. Repertoire and Performance Practice in the Earlier Years
The first record of the music sung at a meeting is dated 10 December 1744, some six months
after the first meeting. The music was recorded once more, the week following, on 17
December, but this practice was discontinued until 8 August 1745. The most likely reason for
making a record of the music performed was threefold: first, to indicate to the keeper of the
music books what should be prepared for a meeting; second, as a reminder to future presidents
what had been chosen on previous occasions; and third, to leave a record for posterity. This last
may be the most fanciful, but the members of the society were undoubtedly conscious of the
value of traces of the past to future enquirers, and they possibly envisioned the merit of their
actions in leaving a record.
From the entry of 8 August 1745, until the last entry in the second minute book, F2, on
14 March 1770, a clear record was kept of the music chosen by the presidents in rotation for
each meeting. Over 600 separate music lists are recorded over the span of the two minute books,
detailing nearly 4,000 entries of music during this twenty-five year period.
The repertoire of the society was not confined to the secular madrigal; from very early
on, programmes for an evening’s singing often included motets and movements from masses by
Palestrina and Tallis. Immyns had had access to Pepusch’s library, and presumably copied those
57
things that he liked. The first recorded motet at a meeting is Palestrina’s five-voice ‘Sicut Lilium’
on 21 August 1745; from then onwards, sacred music appears in most programmes—a tradition
that continues to this day at the Madrigal Society.
Taken from the entries in F1 and F2, Table 2.2 shows the ten madrigals that were most
frequently performed at meetings of the society between 1744 and 1770:
Table 2.2: The Ten Madrigals Performed Most Frequently between 1744 and 1770
Position Title Composer
1 Dissi a l’amata mia lucida stella Marenzio
2 Prima che spunt’il Ruffo
3 Veramente in amor Victoria
4 Come Shepherds Follow Me Bennet
5 Ye Restless Thoughts Farmer
6 Thyrsis, Sleepest Thou Farmer
7 Flow O My Tears Bennet
8 O che splendor de lumino de Wert
9 As Fair as Morn Wilbye
10 Chi salira per me Antonio Duetto
As can be seen, Marenzio’s 4-part ‘Dissi a l’amata’ was the work most frequently performed. The
entries in F1 confirm that it was first performed on 21 August 1745, and it was thereafter
selected at regular intervals. All of the madrigals listed above appear in books A1 to A4, except
Wilbye’s ‘As Fair as Morn’. Wilbye’s ‘Lady When I Behold’ only appears in the music lists from
20 September 1758 onwards, although it evidently became an established favourite very quickly.
Also of note is that half of the madrigals in the table are by continental, not English composers.
The fact that the music was always sung from manuscript copies allowed greater freedom in
choosing what was going to be included in the books of the society, rather than being confined
to the limits of a printed collection of pieces. It is not clear, even from the books extant, whether
members crowded around the small (in the case of A1–4) copies, or if there were other books
58
privately owned by members, but the taste for Italian (and Spanish and Flemish) madrigals was
presumably heavily led by Immyns’s preferences. A set of Italian madrigals was presented, also in
manuscript, by John Hawkins to the Madrigal Society in 1757, and was frequently chosen
thereafter as a source of music for meetings.
It had also been entered into the society’s rule book (F6) on 11 July 1750,36 that each
time a member took his role as president, he had to ‘present to the society a score and parts of a
madrigal ready for the members to perform, under the penalty of forfeiting a penny extra-
ordinary to the plate every night until such score and parts be presented.’37 This practice was
abolished in September 1752, but reinstituted in 1754, although it was not mentioned in the rules
of December 1757.38 On 15 September 1756 the members of the society agreed to subscribe to
William Boyce’s Cathedral Music.39 Immyns continued to furnish meetings with music—and to
charge the members for it. The minutes record on 20 May 1752, ‘Seven books transrib’d Mr J.
Immins, amounting to £3, 19 shillings, and 7 and a half pence’, which amounted to a set of
music in four-parts (cantus, altus, tenor and basso), and a set in three parts (altus, tenor and
bass). After 1802 the rules required the president merely to have a madrigal scored in the books
of the society, and by 1818 a payment of five shillings was taken for scores to be copied.
In the first twenty years of the society, the role of ‘president’, the sole officer at
gatherings, was taken in turn by members for one or sometimes two meetings. The duties, as laid
out in the first set of rules was clear: to ensure that there was no unnecessary expenditure
(presumably on refreshment) that evening, to register the names of members present and to see
that the books of the madrigals chosen for the evening were laid out ready for use at the
meeting. It was also up to the president-elect, four weeks in advance, to select the pieces to be
sung on the night of his presidency, so that every member should have advance notice of the
36 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F6, Rule 14, 11 July 1750. 37 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F6, 11 July 1750. 38 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F2, 8 December 1757.
39 Boyce’s Cathedral Music was published in three volumes, (i) 1760; (ii) 1768; and (iii) 1773.
59
music to be performed. The practice of rotating the presidency continued until 1827, when the
first permanent president was appointed.
In 1750 it had been agreed that each meeting should be divided into two distinct ‘Acts’,
with a half-hour break between the two; that four madrigals should be performed in each Act, as
long as time permitted; and ‘that the President should endeavour to begin the First Act half an
hour after eight and the Second Act at half an hour after nine.’40 Three works were sung in each
Act, expanded to four from 21 Aug 1745; between eight and nine pieces seems to have remained
the average for an evening’s entertainment thereafter. Every person present at the meetings was
expected to sing—there was no audience.
Table 2.3 details the first music recorded at the 1744 meetings. The minute books record
that on 10 December 1744 there were eight members present, and on 17 December there were
four. Although the music lists lack specific detail, it is still possible to create a limited snapshot of
the society on those two separate occasions: there is no repetition of music from 10 December
on 17 December. The minutes record only the titles of the works sung, and there is no indication
of the composers. However, the names of the composers have sometimes been added in a later
hand, making it possible to include them here. The composers are recorded in square brackets in
the right-hand column, and any additional information, such as the number of voices for each
work, is included in round brackets.
Table 2.3: Music First Recorded in the Minute Book, 1744
10 December 1744 Beauty is a Lovely Sweet (3 voices) [Thomas Bateson]
Come Shepherd Swains (3v) [John Wilbye]
N— (illegible) ?
Now in the Break of Morn [probably
When Loe, by Break of Morn] (2v)
[Thomas Morley]
This Mournfull Shadow ?
40 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F6. 11 July 1750.
60
Turn, Amaryllis, [to thy Swain] (3v) [Thomas Brewer]
17 December 1744 Cease Now Thy [Mourning] (4v) [John Farmer]
Cruel, Unkind, [My Heart Thou Hast
Bereft Me] (4v)
[Bennet]
Exaltabo Domino ?
Qui Loquitur ?
Sweet Nymph, [Come to thy Lover] (2v) [Morley]
Whom Art ?
Most of the music is for three, or fewer, voices; this is certainly true on 10 December, which
suggests that there was no treble line yet. The four of them at the meeting on 17 December must
have been reasonably accomplished in order to perform Farmer’s four-part ‘Cease Now Thy
Mourning’, and perhaps for its rehearsal an instrument was used—or the music transposed down
to accommodate a countertenor’s range. Just one entry, that of 22 January 1745, records who
sang which part. Fourteen members attended, two countertenors (one of them Immyns), two
altos, four tenors, and six basses.
Over the next two years, from August 1745 to July 1747, the Madrigal Society met forty-
eight times, and only once was the music not recorded. As suggested by Table 2.2, a canon of
favourite works quickly emerged; very often one or two of the same pieces were sung in
subsequent weeks. It being the duty of the President for each meeting to select the music to be
sung a week in advance, any repetition of music might suggest its popularity amongst the society,
and not merely a desire to repeat something just to get it better on a second occasion. Until
September 1747, the presidency rotated weekly (following the seniority of membership of the
society, the longest serving member first, the most junior last), after which the presidency was
held for two weeks or meetings. The same music was sung at both meetings under one
presidency, which might also indicate that the level of musical competency was not very high,
although the records suggest that more members preferred to attend the first, but miss the
second meeting.
61
Between July 1745 and September 1747, Immyns was President four times, and his
choice of music reveals a little more about his taste for older music (see Table 2.4).
Table 2.4: Immyns’s Selection of Music at Meetings, 1745–1747
18 September 1745 As Fair as Morn (3v) [Wilbye]
Cease My Eyes (3v) [Morley]
Come Shepherd Swains (3v) Bollo [Wilbye]
Lugo questo Marcam
O What Shall I Do (3v) [Wilbye]
Thyrsis, Sleepest Thou (4v) Bollo [Bennet]
Veramente in amore (4v) Palestrina
Ye Restless Thoughts (3v) [Wilbye]
6 August 1746 A Sea Nymph (3v) [Wilkinson]
Come Shepherd Swains [Wilbye]
Donne secours LeJeune
Insques à quand LeJeune
Thyrsis, Sleepest Thou (4v) Bollo [Bennet]
Veramente in amore Palestrina
Dieu de tout Palestrina
As Fair as Morn LeJeune
24 December 1746 Cease My Eyes [Wilbye]
Come Shepherd Swains [Morley]
Crudel acerba (5v) [Wilbye]
Lugo questo [Marenzio]
To You the Fairest [?]
Veramente in amore Palestrina
Ye Restless Thoughts Palestrina
Come Lovers, Follow Me (4v) [Wilbye]
8 July 1747 Flourish, Ye Meadows (3v) [Morley]
Lo for My Dearest [Wilbye]
Love would Discharge (3v) [?]
Non mi fogli [Bateson]
Qual piu crudel à 4 [?]
Thyrsis, Sleepeth Thou à 4 [Bennet]
62
Immyns’s preferences remain fairly constant for his presidential turns over this two-year period.
As the Madrigal Society was his own invention, one might expect his choices of music to be
experimental and not at all repetitive, but there is something quite touching about his returning
to Wilbye’s ‘Come Shepherd Swains’, chosen on three successive occasions, likewise Palestrina’s
madrigal, ‘Veramente in amore’ (never spelt the same for any of the three entries). All of the
madrigals by Wilbye are taken from his Second Set of Madrigales to 3. 4. 5. and 6. Parts, Apt Both for
Voyals and Voyces (1609). It is quite possible that a combination of not viols but modern stringed
instruments and voices served to perform the music on the early occasions when the Madrigal
Society appears not to have had any help from trebles. Samuel Jeacocke, one of the earliest
members of the society, was a baker who not only sang bass, but also played the ‘tenor-violin’.
Hawkins explains: ‘In the choice of his instruments he was very nice, and when a fiddle or
violoncello did not please him, would, to mend the tone of it, bake it for a week in a bed of saw-
dust.’41 It is quite possible, therefore, that Jeacocke, or another member, played the treble line on
an instrument. In a recent social history of the British viola da gamba, Peter Holman briefly
discusses the issue of viols and gambas at the Madrigal Society, with reference, in particular to an
entry in the account book (F3) on 24 January 1753, when one shilling and sixpence was entered
as ‘Paid Mr Veck for a string to his bass viol he having lent it to the society’. This evidences a
continued practice of instrumental accompaniment at meetings, but Holman admits that ‘there is
no sign…that John Immyns…got his fellow-members to indulge in consort playing as well as
madrigal singing during their meetings.’42 In the matter of the string to the bass viol, Holman
concedes: ‘we cannot be sure that this instrument really was a gamba, or that it was being used in
old consort music.’43
41 Hawkins, 887. 42 Peter Holman, Life After Death: the Viola da Gamba in Britain (Woodbridge, 2010), 306.
43 Holman, 306.
63
It was not until the meeting on 24 November 1756, during the second week of a turn of
Hawkins at being president, that the question of employing boys to sing was settled in the
minutes. Until then, it seems probable that the music had been sung by men’s voices alone. It
was agreed ‘that two boys sufficiently skilled in the music from the choir of St Paul’s or
elsewhere be procured to sing every night of performance . . .’44 Why such a discussion had been
left so late might be explained by the death, just a year before, of the Organist of St Paul’s,
Maurice Greene, who as described earlier had fallen out with the Academy of Vocal Music in
1731, withdrawing the boys of St Paul’s from it and setting up a short-lived rival organisation.
Possibly Immyns’s old association with Pepusch and the Academy had queered the possibility of
cooperation between Greene and the Madrigal Society.
From 1756 until 1940, when the Second World War made meetings impossible, the
Madrigal Society only used boys’ voices to sing the upper line. Drawing on the choirs of St
Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, and the Chapel Royal, the foremost choral foundations of the
capital, the Madrigal Society provided the opportunity to the boys not only to earn a little money,
but also to improve their sight-reading and musicianship. R. J. S. Stevens (1757–1837), organist
and composer, maintained a connection with the society from childhood into adulthood, first as
a chorister hired out to sing the treble line, and then as an adult member. His Recollections,
published in 1825, provide a rare insight to the operation of the Madrigal Society in the 18th
century. He first mentions singing with the society when he was a chorister at St Paul’s in 1773:
Mr Savage [the Master of the Children at St Paul’s] was a Member of the Madrigal
Society; where four of the Choristers regularly attended every fortnight; and to their
credit be it said, always behaved with great respect, and modest deportment to the
Members of it: there we were obliged to transpose many of the Madrigals, and frequently
to sing them at sight; and this, of course, was a great improvement to us in our
44 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F1, 24 November 1756.
64
performance, as was the hearing some of the first Vocal Harmony extant, in forming our
taste for composition. The Secretary of the Society every quarter gave to the Head Boy
five shillings for our attendance. By Mr Savage’s command, the two Seniors had eighteen
pence each; and the two other boys one shilling each. This with a Banbury Cake, or two
penny Cheesecakes each night, was all the remuneration we received from the Society
for many years.45
The idea put forward by Stevens that singing early music formed an impression on his own
compositions is informative in understanding the potential impact of association with the
society; a brief look at a list of Stevens’s compositions—most of them glees and songs—shows a
heavy bias towards pastoral, madrigalian texts: ‘Belinda see from yonder flowers’ (1793), or
‘Come hither, shepherd’s swain’ (1795), give a flavour of his preference, without mentioning his
many settings of words by Shakespeare. Stevens also refers to ‘Vocal Harmony’ to describe
unaccompanied vocal music. It is of interest that Edward Taylor succeeded Stevens as Gresham
Professor of Music on the latter’s death in 1837, for as we shall see in a later chapter, he was
responsible for the propagation of the madrigal in many of the great industrial cities of England
with his lectures on English Vocal Harmony.
There will have been many further examples of taste formation from youthful inclusion
in the society. We know that Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–1876), as a chorister in the Chapel
Royal choir under the direction of William Hawes, was taken to sing at the society in the 1810s,
but the attendance of many other trebles from the metropolitan choral foundations who went to
the Madrigal Society was never recorded. The minute books do not elucidate the names of the
choristers who sang at any meeting—the first minuted mention of their attendance is not until
the Anniversary Dinner in 1802, when Richard Guise, Master of the Choristers at St Paul’s, was a
45 Mark Argent (ed.), Recollections of R. J. S. Stevens: an Organist in Georgian London (London, 1992), 10.
65
visitor with four boys.46 Only the names of the organists and choirmasters included in the
members lists suggests from where the choristers were being drawn at any time. William Savage,
the Master of the Choristers at St Paul’s (1748–1773), who took Stevens to Madrigal Society
meetings, appears on the members’ list, apparently without election, from 2 November 1757
onwards.
It is difficult to interpret from the minute books how, if at all, meetings were ordered.
The two ‘acts’ into which the music was divided are the only clue in the minute books that show
the arrangement of a meeting. Stevens’s account of his attendance at meetings as a chorister in
the 1770s gives the impression of an ad hoc arrangement—and reveals that choral singing was
not the only part of the evening’s entertainment: ‘I recollect that one evening particularly, we
were very much diverted and entertained with the performance of Dr Arne and Charles Dibdin.
Dibdin sang many humorous songs, accompanying himself upon the harpsichord. Doctor Arne
accompanied some glees, but his method of playing the harpsichord, and his figure at the
instrument rather ridiculous, could not but tickle the fancy of us boys: we also particularly
noticed his bad habit of swearing.’47 Neither Thomas Arne (1710–1778) nor Charles Dibdin
(1745–1814) appear in the membership lists before they come to an end in 1770, and therefore
Stevens’s accounts of his experiences as a treble at the Madrigal Society provide a helpful record,
filling in important information that is otherwise not clarified or referred to in the rules or
minutes.
The only known reference to how pieces were rehearsed and performed also comes from
Stevens: ‘John Soaper (who had been a boy in St Paul’s choir) used generally to beat the time
with a parchment roll, and when ‘Quam diligit Mariam’, a Motett of the celebrated Steffani was
performed, he used to take to the harpsichord, with considerable credit to himself, and
46 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 19 January 1802.
47 Argent, 10–11.
66
entertainment to the members of the society.’48 The fact that the harpsichord was being used to
underpin rehearsal and performance (as well as the inclusion of accompanied songs during a
meeting) in the 1770s is clearly different from the Madrigal Society as it had been in Immyns’s
day.
V. Membership and Roman Catholicism
The attendance records for the society were particularly important in ensuring that
subscriptions, fees for forfeits, and payments for guests and visitors were collected; so was the
careful creation of the society’s rules, which fixed the terms of governance and the collection of
monies. The first rules were recorded in F1 in July 1745, one year after the first recorded
meeting; the number of members was limited to sixteen, which steadily increased, and by 1803
it stood at thirty-six.
Analysis of the membership lists between 1744 and 1800 reveals that many of the men
elected to the society were leading London musicians—church musicians and/or composers
(most commonly they are both)—and men belonging to the ‘professional’ classes. Indeed, there
is no sense of the continuation of the ‘weavers and mechanics’ who were amongst the initial
membership as described by Hawkins. The temptation is to consider Hawkins’s description as a
work of poetic licence—perhaps specifically to emphasise the plebeian membership of the
society that distinguished it from other London musical clubs at the time of his 1776
publication.
As to the musical ability of the membership, the rules of 1753 required that any
candidate for membership should attend a meeting two weeks before his proposal for
membership to test-run a madrigal with other members, between the two acts of the evening, to
see if he were capable of it. The rules also allowed that any member of a cathedral choir might
48 Argent, 11.
67
attend meetings of the society without notice. By 1803, as will be seen later, professional visitors
would be encouraged and later paid for their attendance.
Table 2.5 shows the members of the society, transcribed from a list in the minutes dated
21 March 1764, but the list seems to have been added to by later hands, and covers a longer
period—at the latest May 1765—when Luffman Atterbury was elected a member. Immyns’s
death on 15 April 1764 is recorded retrospectively.
Table 2.5: Members of the Madrigal Society from 21 March to December 1764
Luffman Atterbury [1740–1796, composer and
builder] 24 years old in 1764.
Francis [Francesco] Barsanti [Italian composer
and musician, came to London with F. Geminiani
1714]
Jonathan Battishill [deputy to Boyce at the Chapel
Royal in 1757]
John Bradshaw
William Brooks
Lewis Caton
Pasco Crocker [Bapt. St Mary’s Whitechapel, 1717],
approx. 47 in 1764.
William Evans
Peter Godard
James Green [possibly the psalmodist, baptised
1692?]
John Hawkins [the historian]
John Immyns [society founder]
James Jennings
Samuel Long
William Mawhood [woollen draper and diarist]
John Newman
Peter Nouaille, junior (Peter Nouaille (1723–
1809) was one of the earliest members of the
society. Huguenot. He owned silk mills at
Greatness in Kent.)
William Potter
James Randall
Daniel Richards
William Richards
John Riegler
William Savage [Master of the Choristers, St
Paul’s from 1748]
John Selby [prob. brother of above, organist,
emigrated to Boston, 1771] (b.1735) 29 in 1764.
William Selby [organist and composer, emigrated
to Boston, MA, in 1773] (1738–1798), 26 in
1764.
Revd. Charles Torriano [Regius Professor of
Hebrew at Cambridge, 1753]
John Veck
Edmund Thomas Warren [editor of Warren’s
Collection]
The social breadth of the membership of the society is evident: where it has been possible to
glean biographical information we see that of these twenty-eight names, ten are known musicians
68
working in London; the others are probably not professional musicians, and include an Anglican
priest, Charles Torriano, and the woollen draper and diarist, William Mawhood.
Despite Immyns’s death in 1764, the society operated just as it had done before, its
membership remaining strong and loyal. F2 records it meandering its way through the late 1750s
to the early 1770s, with a slow turnover of membership. Meetings are held every fortnight; the
role of president endures for two consecutive meetings; and there is always a mixture of
professional musicians with amateurs. One event, though, is outstanding: the sudden cessation in
attendance of John Hawkins, continuous member and frequent attender since 1752. Until 13
March 1765 he is recorded as a regular attender at meetings, and ceases thereafter. Although he
continued to pay his subscription for a year, he was struck out of the members’ list in March
1766.
In his General History, Hawkins said of the Madrigal Society that it ‘still subsists, but in a
manner very different from its original institution; they meet at a tavern in the city, but under
such circumstances as render its permanency very precarious.’49 A combination of factors might
explain why Hawkins should have believed this: first, on 10 October 1764, William Mawhood
was proposed and elected a member of the society; on 6 March 1765, the composer Michael
Arne, son of Thomas Arne, and friend of Mawhood, was elected. Both Mawhood and Arne were
Roman Catholics, the practice of which religion was still outlawed in the United Kingdom at this
period, and could only be lawfully observed in the chapels of embassies in London. As Philip
Olleson observes in his essay on the Roman Catholic embassy chapels in London,50 ‘chapels
became places in which Roman Catholic rites could be celebrated openly and without fear of
prosecution, and over the years they became the main centres for Roman Catholicism in
London.’51 Mawhood sang in the choir of the Sardinian Embassy chapel at Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
49 Hawkins, 883. 50 Philip Olleson, ‘The London Roman Catholic Embassy Chapels’, in David Wyn Jones (ed.), Music in Eighteenth-
Century Britain (Aldershot, 2000), 101–118.
51 Olleson, ‘London Roman Catholic Embassy Chapels’, 101.
69
where the organist was Thomas Arne, father of Michael. As a first explanation for his departure,
it seems quite possible that Hawkins—the Tory magistrate, later knighted by George III for his
assistance in quelling public revolt—was uncomfortable in his membership at the Madrigal
Society with certainly two, and possibly others of Mawhood and Arne’s Catholic friends
attending meetings of the society. In his diary, Mawhood mentions that a Mr Bromfield, his
sponsor at baptism in 1760, on 6 April 1769 ‘was at the Madrigal. Mr Bromfield is to pay my
quarterly subscription as I paid for him last quarter.’52 There is no record of Bromfield anywhere
in the society accounts or membership list; he was perhaps one of the regular performing visitors
whose names were not recorded in the 1760s, but it suggests that the Catholic element was
broader than just Mawhood and Michael Arne—it is also known from Stevens, quoted above,
that Michael’s father, Thomas, was attending meetings after 1770. One further pointer towards
Hawkins’s possible dislike of his new co-members is the total omission of Thomas and Michael
Arne’s names anywhere in his General History. Thomas Arne was one of the most popular English
composers of the 18th century—Burney, who had been apprenticed to Thomas Arne, makes
several references to him in his General History of Music (1776)—yet Hawkins acknowledges
contemporaneous composers, but mentions neither Thomas nor Michael Arne.
Another potential factor is political: although the meetings of the society are
unrecorded after 1770, both Mawhood’s diary and Stevens’s Recollections corroborate
membership that would otherwise be unknown. In his diary entry for 3 February 1773,
Mawhood wrote, ‘Was at the Madrigall. Lord Sandwich there. A grand night.’53 Stevens
recalled, ‘The late amiable Dr Cooke . . . was made a member of this society, during the time of
my attending it as a soprano; as was also Joah Bates, Lord Sandwich and Lord Dudley.’54 The
52 Reynolds, 30.
53 Reynolds, 59. 54 Argent, 11. The records show that Benjamin Cooke, Organist of Westminster Abbey, was elected on 9 August
1769. Where GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F2 ends on 14 March 1770, there is no mention of Bates, Sandwich or Dudley.
None of them was a member when records began again in December 1785.
70
lords Sandwich and Dudley were both Whig Members of Parliament, and Joah Bates, a
musician, was in Sandwich’s employment.55
It seems wholly plausible that Hawkins’s awful warning to his readers was that the
Madrigal Society was harbouring Catholics and Whigs sympathetic to their cause, and that in
his condemnation of it, he was dissociating his past membership from the members of the
1770s.
VI. Music in the Madrigal Society Archive, and Madrigals Circulating Elsewhere
The collection of printed and manuscript music belonging to the Madrigal Society is important not
only for the madrigals within it but also the many motets and masses. The British Museum’s 1955
catalogue of the Madrigal Society’s collection of printed music lists over two hundred separate
items, ranging from Marenzio’s Primo and Secondo libro di madrigali a cinque voci of 1601, to multiple
sets of the mid-19th century publications of the Musical Antiquarian Society. The manuscripts are
collected in over 172 volumes (the handlist compiled in 2003 by Chris Banks notes some missing
volumes from the collection)56 and include music of considerable importance, such as an early copy
of Thomas Tallis’s forty-part motet ‘Spem in Alium’.57 Immyns, as has been noted previously, was
a prolific copyist, and many of the pieces in manuscript amongst the earliest sets of music (notably
A1 to A4) belonging to the Madrigal Society are in Immyns’s hand. Although the ‘A’ books are
undated, it seems that they may have only come into use by the society as late as 1757; the gold-
embossed leather labels on the covers, Canto-Alto-Tenore-Basso, are very similar to that of the
minute book, F2 (marked ‘Xmas 1757’). The music library of the society has also been shown as an
55 In 1776, Lord Sandwich, Joah Bates, and Sir Watkins Williams Wynn were the leading founders of the Concert of
Antient Music (see Appendix 1), which largely produced performances of selections from Handel’s oratorios. It was
patronised from 1785 by George III, thereby assuring a prestigious reputation on the society.
56 Music Library Loan - The Madrigal Society, handlist compiled by Chris Banks, 12 June 2003. Uncatalogued, but
available for inspection on request from the enquiries desk in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room at the
British Library.
57 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS 114.
71
important archive for modern researchers of old music, demonstrated more recently by Owen
Rees, tracing the threads of Lobo’s motet ‘Audivi Vocem de Caelo’, important sources for which
are in the Madrigal Society’s archive.58
The ‘A’ books contain 59 hand-copied pieces to Italian or Latin words, and 34 to English
words (the contents of the ‘A’ books are listed in a separate back appendix in their pages). There is
a mixture of sacred and secular works, although secular predominate. The books are small—
approximately six inches by four inches—and each book contains 199 leaves. The Italian and Latin
madrigals and motets open each book, and turning the book upside down and opening the back
cover gives access to the music to English words. Most of the works with English words are by
English composers of the early 17th century, most notably the madrigalist John Bennet, but there
are also two pieces by Marenzio and two by Prenestini [Palestrina], one of which ‘We Have Heard
With Our Ears’ is recorded as ‘from the Latin of Prenestini, English’d by Dr Aldrich’. These ‘A’
books were evidently used in performance; many of the pieces have ‘forte’ and ‘piano’ pencilled in,
and there are occasional remarks such as ‘good’ or even ‘very good’ written at the end of pieces in
the ‘Canto’ (A1) by an unknown hand. There are also changes in the musica ficta in several pieces,
but there is no indication at what date any of these alterations may have been made.
These were, however, by no means the only performance copies of early music circulating
in London in the later 1700s, for by the end of the century it was not only the Madrigal Society that
was singing madrigals. The Nobleman and Gentleman’s Catch Club had been formed in 1761; the
first secretary to the Club was Edmund Thomas Warren, mentioned previously in Chapter 1, who
was elected a member of the Madrigal Society on 22 December 1762. In 1763, Warren’s Collection of
Catches, Canons and Glees was first released in monthly numbers, although this was changed shortly
after it began, and was then published annually until 1793. It consists of thirty-two separate
numbers—the first number being divided into two parts with separate pagination. The majority of
58 Owen Rees, ‘Adventures of Portuguese ‘Ancient Music’ in Oxford, London and Paris: Duarte Lobo’s ‘Liber
Missarum’ and Musical Antiquarianism, 1650–1850’. Music & Letters 86 (2005): 42–73.
72
pieces in the collections are catches and glees, but eight pieces listed as ‘madrigal’ are included, plus
six others now commonly considered madrigals but indexed by Warren as ‘glee’ (see Table 2.6).
On 12 April 1769, there is a receipt, signed by Warren, for £1 1s ‘for seventh collection’. It is the
only mention of Warren’s Collection in the records of the Madrigal Society—there are no copies
amongst the British Library deposit—but affords an affirmation that the society was making use of
the work. The British Library does however hold a set of proof sheets for a project by Warren to
publish a six-volume collection of motets and madrigals by 15th and 16th-century composers;
however, it never came to fruition.59 Also at the British Library are Warren’s manuscript copies of
works by Wilbye and Marenzio, some of which were used in his collections. Particularly fine is
Warren’s working manuscript of Wilbye madrigals copied into full score; it would seem that
Warren may have planned to publish the complete madrigalian works of Wilbye, though only
fourteen madrigals, for three voices, were ever published by him.60 Faithful copies, however, they
were not: in some cases the contents differ from the 17th-century sources, especially in the texts.
They are, as Warren states, for instance, on top of page 5: ‘somewhat alter’d from the original’. As
we will see in Chapter 3, Warren’s liberal editorial method would later come under scrutiny when it
was felt that there was need for a faithful republication of some of the works with which he had
interfered.
Table 2.6: Madrigals Included in Warren’s Collection
Title Composer Indexed Voices Number Page
Ah Me, My Wonted Joys Weelkes Madrigal 4 13 38
Cor mio, deh, non languire Scarlatti Madrigal 5 28 12
59 ‘A set of proof-sheets of a collection of motets and madrigals, by composers of the 15th and 16th century, edited
by E. T. Warren, being the only part engraved of a work intended to have been published in six volumes. GB-Lbl
Music Collections K.7.i.12. 60 Madrigals for Three Voices Composed by John Wilbye, First Published by Himself in 1598 and 1609. Revised, Corrected and Put
into Score by Thomas Warren. (Longman and Broderip: London, ca1790).
73
Down in a Valley Wilbye Madrigal 5 21 18
Fair Phyllis I Saw Morley Glee 4 5 22
Fair Sweet Cruel, Why Ford Madrigal 4 15 14
Flora Gave Me Fairest Wilbye Madrigal 5 8 26
How Merrily We Live Este Glee 3 6 26
Lady When I Behold Wilbye Madrigal 6 10 36
The Nightingale Weelkes Glee 3 3 22
The Silver Swan Gibbons Glee 5 1 18
When All Alone My Pretty Converso Madrigal 5 14 23
When as I Look’d on Bennet Glee 4 1 24
Whither Away so Fast Morley Madrigal 3 18 38
Within an Arbour Morley Glee 4 9 24
The madrigals selected by Warren for his Collection distinctly show a preference for the works of
English composers, with the exception of Scarlatti’s ‘Cor mio, deh, non languire’, a five-part
madrigal originally scored for upper voices but arranged here for four countertenors and bass.
All of the madrigals in the Collection could be sung by men’s voices, and as such, reflect the
intended market at which the music was aimed. The character of most of these madrigals is
doleful and introspective, lightened by the inclusion of the more joyful ‘Fair Phyllis’, ‘How
Merrily We Live’, and Weelkes’s ‘The Nightingale’. It would suggest that Warren’s inclusion of
these pieces was to show the contemplative side of the madrigal, and to contrast them with the
newer catches in the Collection.
This provides us with a snapshot of the practice of singing renaissance madrigals in
London as it had begun and developed in the 18th century. The proponents, procedures,
repertoire and influence have been detailed insofar as the sources allow. From its beginnings in
Oxford in the late-17th century, and further nurtured by the Academy of Vocal Music in the
1720s, the revival in madrigal singing had evolved significantly by the end of the century. The
formation of a favourite repertoire and the establishment of a ritual of performance provided the
secure footing on which the continuing madrigal revival would stand. The next chapter will carry
the story forward into the 19th century.
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CHAPTER 3
‘Haunting the Gothic Aisle’: the Madrigal Society from 1792 to 1841
I. Changing Times and Discontinuous Records
The scope of this chapter, which studies the society to 1841, the year of its ‘centenary’
celebrations, covers a remarkable period of English history. For the music historian, it too is
surely one of the most substantial periods of change: the rapid expansion of public interest in,
and access to, music through the opening up of a market for less expensive, and eventually
cheap, musical scores; education by public performance-lectures in the Mechanics’ Institutes and
literary and philosophical societies up and down the land; and of such importance to the issue of
reception, the establishment and rise of musical journalism in the explosion of newspaper
publishing. All these are the marks of the new world of political and social changes that were
wrought in Britain in the early 19th century, and all are reflected in the Madrigal Society. The
membership and the changes in the administration of the Madrigal Society in the 19th century
are a reflection of the mobility of society in Britain. As will be seen and explored in this chapter,
the institutionalisation of so many aspects of cultural life redefined the meaning of belonging to a
certain club or organisation. This culture of association would take the Madrigal Society to a new
social arena—one that would shape and inform musical taste, and whose impact is still apparent
in the 21st century.
In the 18th century, the Madrigal Society had been a forum for professional and amateur
musicians; it had provided some inspiration in musical composition to one or two of its
members (vide R. J. S. Stevens’s glees, discussed in the previous chapter), and knowledge of its
music had provided a useful resource for those volumes of Warren’s Collection that included a few
examples of this old music, but strongly diluted by the contemporaneous glees that were the
main part of the publications. By contrast in the 19th century, new collections of solely 16th- and
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17th-century English and Italian madrigals, prepared by members of the Madrigal Society, began
to appear, and the society also took the opportunity to launch a competition for new madrigal
composition.
Glee and catch clubs were among the principal meeting places of professional singers in
London in the second half of the 18th century. Brian Robins has identified that the members’
and visitors’ lists of the foremost clubs—the Catch Club (founded 1761), the Anacreontic
Society (1766), and the Glee Club (ca1777)—show that a very small circle of professional singers
regularly crossed one another’s paths (see Appendix 1).1 The same singers were also attending
meetings of the Madrigal Society. It is not surprising to see similarities in the way in which the
clubs functioned, with the proposal and election of members, the order for the evening with
times regulated for dining and singing. An important development at the Madrigal Society in the
early 19th century, following a model already established at the Catch Club, would be a
formalisation of the participation of professional singers at meetings—although, as will be seen
later in the chapter, the most effective reforms were achieved by the society in 1827.
The main primary source for over half of the period covered by this chapter continues to
be F5, the minute book beginning December 1785, ending 17 July 1828. It provides weekly, then
monthly, summaries of meetings, members, their home addresses and attendance record, and, at
first, sporadic music lists, with a more regular habit of recording the music at every meeting
established from 1821 until the end of the book. F5 also records extraordinary events such as
new rules and any subsequent amendments to them, gifts of music to the society, and, in 1811,
the details of the Prize Cup and the competition for the best new madrigal, for which it was
awarded.
After July 1828, there is a serious gap in such detailed information until 1916, due to the
loss of the records in the fire at Carpenters’ Hall (discussed in Chapter 2). The only description
1 Robins discusses the shared membership of these clubs throughout Chapter 4, ‘The Expansion of London Catch
Club Culture’, in his book.
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of the missing books is in Arthur Fox’s notes for his history of the society, prepared in the
1930s. Fox’s notes are brief and do not mention any music sung at the meetings; he does,
however, highlight key moments of change in the society’s structure, and mentions a handful of
visitors received at meetings. Fox says that what he describes as the ‘the fifth minute book’ (to
take into account the presumed single book of minutes, 1770–1785) begins with a revised set of
rules, dated 4 February 1828. The book slightly overlapped therefore with F5, whose last entry is
July 1828. The practice of copying the rules at the start of the minutes seems to have ended with
this set, and they were printed thereafter—Fox notes that the first set (of which no copy seems
to survive) was printed in 1834. Between 1828 and 1841, Fox made a note of just twelve events
in the minutes that he (presumably) felt were of interest to the creation of his planned history.
Notices in musical journals provide further accounts of the annual feasts from 1825
onwards, with occasional descriptions of ordinary meetings that were included in the Spectator, as
is described in the discussion of Edward Taylor’s work in Chapter 5. These, in fact, provide the
only regular ‘window’ into the society’s proceedings after the end of F5. Thomas Oliphant’s A
Brief Account of the Madrigal Society, published in 1835, adds a little further information where the
newspapers are unable to provide it—in particular, the lists of new members after 1828. Only
one diary, that of R. J. S. Stevens, furnishes extra information about (just a handful of) meetings
in the first decade and a half of the 19th century (Stevens resigned his membership on 8
February 1814), but the newspapers and musical journals provide commentary on the
Anniversary Festivals (which, until the late 1820s were referred to in the minutes as ‘Anniversary
Dinners’), allowing snapshots of the society in its moments of festivity.
II. The Early Years of the 19th Century
When F5 opens in December 1785, twenty-three members are listed in order of seniority of
length of membership, according to the custom established by Immyns from the earliest minutes
of the Madrigal Society onwards. The most senior among them, Granville Sharp, had been a
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member since November 1768. It seems reasonable to believe that the society had changed very
little during Sharp’s membership. Meetings still appear to have been held weekly, although there
is no indication what was sung, or who even turned up at them. As already stated, until 1802 F5
provides almost no details of the operation of the Madrigal Society—the page for December
1785 to 14 February 1786 lists just the dates across the top of five columns, and the members are
listed with their quarterly dues (of 10s 6d per person). A similar practice was carried on until
Midsummer 1792, followed by a gap of ten years. The account book, F9 (1794–1798), provides
little information regarding the musical activity of the society, but Oliphant states that there was
‘a dinner festival for which the Members paid 15s.’2 Oliphant goes on to say that ‘about this time
there was occasionally not a sufficient number present to sing a Madrigal complete in all its
parts,’3 although the source of that last piece of information is not to be found in any existing
record. It seems plausible that a librarian’s record may have existed informally—at least to record
the music for forthcoming meetings—but if such a record existed, it has long been lost.
In that ten-year gap from 1792 to 1802, individuals who would go on to be part of the
future of the society in the early 19th century founded two organisations. The first was the Vocal
Concerts (see Appendix 1), which began in 1791 and was set up by Samuel Harrison (1760–
1812) and Charles Knyvett senior (1752–1822). These concerts were noteworthy because they
offered programmes that included unaccompanied vocal music, a repertoire that was almost
exclusively the reserve of gentlemen’s glee clubs. The concerts were given at the highly
fashionable Willis’s Rooms (known prior to the 1780s as Almack’s Assembly Rooms)—capable
of holding up to 1,000 people—on King Street in St James. The introduction to the West End of
such music, hitherto known only by societies and clubs based almost exclusively in the City, is an
important moment in bridging the gap between the private and the commercial: essentially the
east and the west of London. Simon McVeigh points out that ‘it was regarded as worthy of
2 Oliphant, Brief Account, 14.
3 Oliphant, Brief Account, 14.
78
comment during the 1780s that the “rage for music” was spreading eastwards to the City’,4 but it
is also arguable that the Vocal Concerts were taking the City’s music westwards. In both cases it
is quite noticeable that in the 18th century London’s musical activities were geographically
definable. The City sheltered music societies that rarely admitted any audience, but from the
Strand westwards, encompassing the theatres in Covent Garden and Haymarket and the smaller
concert rooms around, the ticket-purchasing public could gain admittance to a diversity of
concerts and spectacles. A programme of unaccompanied vocal music, usually only ever heard
by its participants in the City, was a novelty.
The eight concerts of the first season of the Vocal Society were oversubscribed, and an
apparent success; season tickets for all eight concerts were offered at three guineas each, and
subscribers were promised ‘several new songs, duets, catches and glees by favourite composers,
which will be written expressly for this entertainment’.5 The Vocal Concerts continued for four
seasons, ‘until they ceased to be popular’6 when Harrison withdrew. Brian Robins points out that
apart from the glees and catches that formed the main parts of the Vocal Society’s concerts, ‘the
greater surprise is . . . the remarkably strong showing of older repertoire [which included works
by] Weelkes, John Hilton, Simon Ives, John Wilbye, John Eccles and William Byrd. Only within
the confines of the Madrigal Society would one otherwise find such a comprehensive listing of
16th- and 17th-century composers at this date.’7 Robins goes on to say that including the old
music in the programming was a confirmation of ‘the preservation of an indigenous repertoire
viewed not as part of a nostalgia for the past, or in a dry academic sense, but as a living heritage.’
Thomas Oliphant, in the dedicatory passage of his collection of madrigal poetry, La Musa
Madrigalesca (1837), believed that the Vocal Society’s concerts were responsible for the 4 Simon McVeigh in Nicholas Temperley, et al., ’London 2. §V: Musical life: 1660–1800, 2. Concert Life’, Grove
Music Online, accessed October 2014.
5 Morning Chronicle, 31 January 1792. 6 L. M. Middleton, ‘Harrison, Samuel (1760–1812)’, rev. Anne Pimlott Baker, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford, 2004), <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12444> accessed November 2014.
7 Robins, 121–122.
79
inauguration of public interest in madrigals: ‘no sooner were they [madrigals] properly performed
before a public audience at the concerts of the Vocal Society, than their perfection as specimens
of musical art and their truth in regard to a just expression of nature were universally felt and
acknowledged.’8
There is no record of how the older works in the programmes were received, but it is
known that the pieces were performed without women’s voices; trebles were always employed to
sing the top line at the concerts. Many of the principal singers—James Bartleman, John Sale,
John Danby, John Page, Thomas Greatorex, Samuel Webbe, and Knyvett and Harrison
themselves—appear in the minutes of the Madrigal Society, either as members or regular
professional visitors, through the first two decades of the 19th century.
The resumption of regular entries in F5 on 12 January 1802 reflects the good health of
the Madrigal Society. There are twenty-seven members, ten of whom had been members at the
last entry in 1792, and amongst the names of post-1792 members are some of the most visible
members of the musical fraternity of London, including James Bartleman, R. J. S. Stevens,
Reginald Spofforth, Stephen Horsfall and Robert Cooke. Meetings were still being held weekly at
the Crown and Anchor Tavern. The next dated entry, for 19 January 1802, simply records
‘Dinner’. The minute book shows that on this occasion the music, seventeen pieces in total, was
sung in three ‘acts’, and that nineteen members were present with five guests, including Samuel
Harrison. This was the occasion, mentioned in the previous chapter, when Guise, master of the
choristers at St Paul’s Cathedral, brought along four of his choristers. The music included four
madrigals in Italian and four motets, and the remaining pieces were madrigals in English by a
mixture of Italian and English composers.
Such a signal jump in the administrative records of the society may be due to the activity
of one member in particular: the previously mentioned Granville Sharp (1735–1813). Sharp was
8 Thomas Oliphant, dedicatory preface written to Sir John Rogers, La Musa Madrigalesca; or a Collection of Madrigals,
Ballets, Roundelays, etc. Chiefly of the Elizabethan Age with Remarks and Annotations (London, 1837), iv.
80
an extraordinary individual: a member of a wealthy, musical family, he was a committed social
reformer, well known as an advocate for the abolition of slavery. He and his brothers, William
and James, appear throughout the members’ and guests’ lists of the previous forty years.9 On 6
April 1802, Sharp was in the chair at a general meeting of the society to confirm the society’s
rules of operation. Essentially, they re-iterate the previous rules, and deal with issues such as the
election of potential members to the Madrigal Society, allowing black-balling to exclude a
candidate for admission (Rule 1), and establishing a quarterly subscription of half a guinea per
member, ‘exclusive of the expense of supper (2s 6d)’ (Rule 2). The seventh rule allowed
‘Professional Gentlemen’, referring to professional musicians, to be invited by members, without
any restrictions, to meetings of the society; the professional gentlemen were liable only to pay for
their supper and wine. This last rule continued a tradition long established by the Madrigal
Society of professional assistance at meetings, and assured the maintenance of links with such
musicians, who drifted in and out of attendance at meetings over many years.
Granville Sharp continued to chair meetings when any amendments to the Rules were to
be made. Sharp must have acted as a presidential force within the society, although the actual
role of President continued to be rotated at each meeting. A secretary, treasurer, and librarian
were elected annually at the beginning of January, and presumably the society’s dinner was
intended in part to dine-in the new officers, but Sharp appears to have held none of these
positions. The evidence in F5 points towards his being the society’s main cause for re-
galvanisation from 1802 onwards.
Another dinner meeting was held in January 1803; the music was recorded once more in
the minutes, no details of the music sung at the society’s meetings having been registered in the
intervening twelve months. On this occasion twenty-five members attended, with eight guests,
9 The Sharp family, with their musical instruments, was captured by the artist Johann Zoffany (1733–1810), aboard
the family’s barge on the Thames, in a painting worked by him between 1779 and 1781. It is currently on loan to the
National Portrait Gallery, London, by the Trustees of the Lloyd-Baker Settled Estates.
81
most of whom were prominent musicians, including Callcott, William Horsley, Samuel Webbe
junior, Richard Guise, John Sale (a gentleman of the Chapel Royal), and eight boys. There were
fewer pieces than at the previous year’s dinner, a mere twelve: two Italian madrigals, three
motets, and seven English madrigals.
In the intervening twelve months, meetings took place twice a month, and attendance
was constant: nearly every meeting attracted at least ten members and three or four visitors,
including John Stafford Smith, organist of the Chapel Royal, on 5 October 1802, and Humphrey
Repton (son of the landscaper of the same name), who was elected a society member on 30
November. The good health of the society is confirmed by the corresponding account books for
the period, F10 (1798–1802), and F11 (1802–1811), which show a comfortable quarterly balance
throughout their pages.
III. The Role of the Anniversary Dinners
The first two recorded annual dinners, in January 1802 and 1803, have been mentioned. After
these, no further one was held (or mentioned in the minutes, at least) until 1808, when the term
‘Anniversary Dinner’ appears for the first time, with the information that it was ‘fixed for the
10th January 1809.10 The minutes do not record the dinner, but R. J. S. Stevens’s journal
confirms that it did take place: ‘Tuesday January the 10th, I dined with the Madrigal Society,
being the Anniversary. The performance of the Madrigals was tiresome in the extreme. They
were badly selected, and wretchedly performed. (Beal in the Chair).’11 The dinner meeting must
have been treated as an extra-curricular event from the regular meetings of the year, so it is not
10 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 22 November 1808.
11 Argent, 165. The composer William Beale was apparently not very highly held in Stevens’s estimation. Stevens
later described him (in another Madrigal Society meeting where Beale is again in the Chair) as ‘a consequential
forward young man’; Argent, 198. Nowhere in his journal does Stevens explain his apparent disdain for Beale, but
he evidently had little time for him.
82
even possible to see how many members might have attended it, nor how they affected the
performance in order to receive such condemnation from Stevens.
The following year, a note records, ‘On Tuesday 9 January 1810 the society dined
together: present 24 members, 3 visitors (Andrews, Vaughan and Goss) and 8 of Mr Cooke’s
choristers. Performed 11 pieces of music, 5 of them repeated.’12 The individual pieces were not
recorded, and it was not until 22 January 1812 that the music at Anniversary Dinners was
recorded in the minutes.
Although an Anniversary Dinner at the Madrigal Society was a night of feasting and
singing, the role of President continued in its regular rotation, so that the music sung on an
anniversary night was the choice of the evening’s president (there is nothing to suggest that any
committee or other body had the privilege of selecting the music). The minutes give the
programmes of music at the dinners from 1812 to 1821, comprising the only musical account for
this period. (From 1821 onwards the programme of every Madrigal Society meeting was
recorded.) Understanding that these were nights to entertain and impress visitors, clear evidence
of a canon of favourite pieces emerges from the data.
At first the dinners were mainly attended by members and a handful of guests—in 1813,
for example, there were nineteen members present and four guests. A curious footnote was
added to the record of the dinner on 10 February 1817, ‘This anniversary dinner was but thinly
attended, owing to some peculiar circumstances not at all connected with the concerns of the
society.’13 There were indeed only eight member and three visitors present. The following year,
however, the organisation of the dinners changed under the influence of the Secretary, Orlando
Crease. On 20 December 1817, he sent an invitation to twenty-four past members and
‘Professional Visitors’, inviting them to attend on 14 January 1818. From that year onwards, the
12 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, entry beginning 7 November 1809. 13 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 10 February 1817. It has not been possible to identify any disruptive event in London
on that day.
83
annual dinner became a much bigger affair: at the 1818 meeting there were nineteen members
and eleven visitors, in 1819 twelve members and twelve visitors, and in 1820 fourteen members,
seven visitors and eight boys.
Table 3.1 shows the ten pieces most frequently performed, taken from a combined list of
the two documented dinners in 1802 and 1803 and the Anniversary Dinners from 1812 to 1821.
The six-part madrigal ‘Die Not, Fond Man’ emerges as the favourite; it was included at every
dinner from 1812 to 1817, after which it ceased to feature at the anniversaries for four years,
though as will be seen later in the chapter, it was re-adopted as a regular addition to programmes
after 1821. Tying for second place are another six-part madrigal, Weelkes’s ‘As Vesta Was’, and a
four-part motet for the Feast of St Andrew, ‘Doctor Bonus et Amicus Dei Andreas’ by
Palestrina, subsequently ‘Englished’ to ‘We Have Heard with Our Ears’ by Dean Aldrich in the
late 17th century.
Table 3.1: The Ten Most Frequently Performed Works at
Anniversary Dinners between 1802 and 1821
Performances Title Composer
6 Die Not, Fond Man Ward
5 We Have Heard Palestrina
As Vesta Was Weelkes
4
Gettano i rè dal soglio Steffani
The Silver Swan Gibbons
Softly, O Softly Wilbye
3
Awake, Sweet Muse Beale
Laudate Dominum Rossi
Sister Awake Bateson
The Waits Savile
Of the ten works in the table, only the Palestrina appears in the music lists of meetings in the
18th century—first noted in February 1759. The other pieces reflect the enduring eclectic taste
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of the society: a Latin motet, an Italian madrigal, three English madrigals of the early 17th
century, and two newer works. The fact that two of the most popular works in the list, ‘Die
Not, Fond Man’ and ‘As Vesta Was’, are in six parts, reflects the special nature of an
Anniversary Dinner, when vocal forces were at their strongest. ‘Die Not, Fond Man’ had
appeared in Richard Webb’s 1808 Collection of Madrigals (see Table 3.5), but ‘As Vesta Was’ did
not. Beale’s ‘Awake, Sweet Muse’ is the newest work in the list; it was the winning madrigal
composed for the Prize Competition of 1811, to be discussed later in this chapter, and it
continued to appear regularly on the society’s Anniversary Dinner programmes until the early
1840s (and possibly later; such detail is now lost). Savile’s four-part work is often recorded in
the minutes as ‘Fa-La-La’, which are the only words of the piece. ‘The Waits’ has a particular
resonance for the Madrigal Society, even to this day, as it rounds off the music at the end of
every dinner. It seems that it was only introduced in the 19th century, and recorded only for
the first time at the Anniversary Dinner of 10 February 1817. It may well already have been in
the repertoire of the society and sung at other, non-dinner meetings, and indeed it was
included in Joseph Gwilt’s madrigal collection, published in 1815 (see Table 3.6).
When the society moved to monthly dinner-meetings in 1821, the Anniversary Dinners
continued to be marked at the beginning of the calendar year. However, the anniversary music
does not seem to be different from that sung at meetings during the rest of the year. The
attendance of members and visitors at monthly meetings increased markedly in the 1820s—
typically there would be between twelve and fourteen members and four or five guests at a
monthly dinner in the mid-1820s, compared to six or seven members (and sometimes as few as
three or four) at the bi-monthly meetings of the 1810s. Greater attendance at meetings meant
that music for more ambitious forces could be sung, and therefore the 1820s Anniversary
Dinners no longer stood out for their repertoire. The term ‘Anniversary Dinner’ changed in
the minutes to simply ‘Anniversary’ in 1825 and 1826; no special heading in the minutes marks
the anniversaries of 1827 or 1828. Fox’s notes reveal that ‘Anniversary Dinner’ was still in use
85
in the rules drawn up in 1828 (see Appendix 1), but press references call the dinner the
‘Anniversary Festival’.
The full music records cease with the end of F5 on 17 July 1828, and thereafter the
reports of the anniversaries in the musical and broader press are the sole source for compiling
a continuing repertoire list. Helpfully, the earliest record in the notes made by Arthur Fox of
the destroyed volume of minutes from 1828 onwards is for 19 February 1829, the Anniversary
Dinner/Festival. Although Fox did not record the full programme, he noted that ‘sixteen
madrigals were sung, five of them being encored, including Croce’s “Cynthia, thy Song” and
Gibbons’s “Dainty fine Bird”, and “O That The Learned Poets.”’ After 1829, the Anniversary
Dinners were reported, largely as puff pieces, across a variety of English publications,
including the Harmonicon, the Musical World, the supplement to the Musical Library, and a daily
newspaper, the Morning Post. The Anniversary Festivals became the opportunity for more
dazzling and challenging music in the 1830s. These will be discussed in the final section of this
chapter.
IV. Membership Matters and Their Effect on the Madrigal Society
The first set of rules, created in 1745, set down the cost of membership of the Madrigal
Society, per individual, per annum. Admission was set at 8s per member, which went towards
the copying of music and care and increase of the society’s library; the quarterly subscription
paid for supper and beverages. The sum of 8s was the equivalent of a commodity value of
approximately £60 in 2015—although the equivalent labour value was calculated to be just
over £700.14 Membership, therefore, was the privilege of those with financial means. Table 3.2
records the cost of membership of the society from 1745 to 1838; the current value, in 2015,
of the Retail-Price Index (RPI) is shown in brackets.
14 See the Table of Currency in the preliminaries of this thesis, xii.
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Table 3.2: Annual Membership and Quarterly Fees
Year Annual Membership Quarterly Fees Supper
1745 8s (£58.95) 3s —
1749 8s (£55.38) 4s 6d —
1756 8s (£51.91) 6s 6d —
1785 10s 6d 2s (£11.05)
1795 — 2s 6d (£11.27)
1814 £3 (£172) 15s 6s (£18.13)
1821 £4 (£280) — 7s 6d (£27.89)
1828 £4 (£281) — 7s 6d (£28.02)
The annual membership fee of the Nobleman and Gentlemen’s Catch Club in its first year, 1763,
was 5 guineas per individual—a completely different financial requirement from the Madrigal
Society, and one that contextualises the elite nature of the Catch Club.15 The expression of
membership dues in guineas may also be seen as a class indicator: the professional fees of
lawyers, doctors, etc., and for the transfer of land and horses were habitually charged in guineas
(1 guinea = £1 1s) rather than in pounds and shillings. It may be that in setting their membership
charges in guineas, the Catch Club sought to indicate its social distinction from other clubs such
as the Madrigal Society. With such financial means at their disposal, the Catch Club had been
able, from the outset, to enlist the help of singing professionals, to fund its annual prizes, and to
pay the club’s secretary, Edmund Thomas Warren, substantial sums for his work as their copyist.
The dramatic increase in the cost of membership of the Madrigal Society in the early
19th century corresponds with an increase in the length of the membership of the waiting list. It
seems that the more expensive the cost of membership, the greater was the desire to join. The
first such list of candidates for membership was written into the front of F5, and indicates some
forty-five names with the names of the two members by whom the candidates were proposed. 15 Robins, ‘Table 3: Income of the Catch Club 1763–1765’, 62.
87
By the time F5 draws to a close in 1828, the membership stood at thirty-two, with a waiting list
of four candidates, who would only be able to join the society on either the death or resignation
of other members.
A distinct shift in the social composition of the membership of the society can be
observed in the minutes from 1821. The initial change came on 10 April 1821 when it was
recorded that ‘Mr Bayly gave notice of the following motion: “that the meetings of this society
which have hitherto been had at the hour of 8 o’clock in the evening, once a fortnight, be
changed to the hour of 5 o’clock once a month to dinner, and under such regulations as may be
agreed upon.”’16At the four meetings previous to 10 April, members’ attendance had been very
poor; of the membership of twenty-five, three had attended on 13 February, four on 27
February, and eight members and four visitors on 13 March. At the meeting on 27 March there
were just four members with four trebles; it was probably the last straw, and forced the
suggestion to change the way in which the society met. Amongst the four at that meeting were
Richard Taylor, an industrious publisher and keen musician, and the bachelor-baronet Sir John
Rogers, a passionate amateur of singing and singers. Rogers, a member of the society since
February 1819, had recently launched his own glee club, which met and dined together monthly
at Exeter, close to his home at Blachford in Devon. Mindful of his own club, Rogers may well
have been the force behind the motion that Mr Bayly announced, thus steering the Madrigal
Society towards a new existence, and breathing new life into it. The members approved the
proposal for a monthly dinner meeting on 21 June 1821, and the first dinner was held at the
Crown and Anchor on 27 September. Subsequent dinners were held on the last Thursday each
month, with a summer recess during August and September.
The change to the new monthly dinner-meetings appears to have encouraged members
to introduce guests more frequently to meetings; a small surge in membership followed from the
first dinner meeting, when, with two others, William Linley was re-elected to the society after a
16 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, minutes beginning 15 February 1821.
88
seven-year absence. Linley had first joined the society in 1809, and remained a member until he
resigned on 26 July 1814. An older brother of Linley, Ozias Thurston (1765–1831), organist of
Dulwich College, joined the Madrigal Society on 3 June 1818. The Linley family’s connection to
the society could almost be considered dynastic when Sir John Rogers proposed William and
Ozias’s nephew, Thomas Welch, for membership on 26 June 1823. At the same meeting, Rogers
also introduced and proposed the Hon. George O’Callaghan; both Welch and O’Callaghan were
elected members unanimously on 31 July.17
From the first dinner meeting in September, there was a return to the practice of
minuting the music that was sung. This remained the custom of the society for the remainder of
F5, and it was possibly continued into the next, now missing, minute book. Now that we have
been afforded a glimpse of what the society was singing at the intermittently recorded
Anniversary Dinners over the previous twenty years—the range of the music sung was further
limited to the personal choice of individual and ever-changing Presidents—the new system of
noting fully the evening’s music allows us an uninterrupted view, until the end of F5, of the
development of the changing taste of the Madrigal Society’s members.
Table 3.3 shows the most frequently performed works between 27 September 1821 and
17 July 1828, during which time the music of 55 dinner meetings was recorded, at which 589
pieces were sung. The record is incomplete for several years, in particular 1821, for which only
four months were recorded, and 1822, when only two months were noted in the minutes. The
remaining years, though, record the ten monthly meetings per year.
17 Thomas Welch (sometimes ‘Welsh’, 1780–1848) was the grandson of the composer and theatre impresario
Thomas Linley the elder (1733–1795). The Hon. George O’Callaghan (1787–1856), younger son of Lord Lismore,
was mentioned in Walter Scott’s diary, 29 November 1825, where Scott described him as ‘an agreeable man, whom I
met at Lowther Castle this season. He composes his own music and sings his own poetry—has much humour,
enhanced by a strong touch of national dialect, which is always a rich sauce to an Irishman’s good things. Dandyish,
but not offensively; and seems to have a warm feeling for the credit of his country—rather inconsistent with the
trifling and selfish quietude of a mere man of society.’ J. G. Lockhart (ed.), Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.,
7 vols (London, 1837), vi. 141. Few other details of O’Callaghan’s life have been found. He died, unmarried, on 13
March 1856.
89
Table 3.3: The Twelve Works Most Frequently Performed at
the Madrigal Society, 1821–1828
Position
(Performances)
Title Composer
1 (19) Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees Wilbye
2 (18) All Creatures Now Bennet
The Waits Savile
3 (15) O that the Learned Poets Gibbons
4 (14) God is Gone Up Croft
5 (13) Die Not, Fond Man Ward
6 (11)
Almighty Father C. S. Evans
Dissi a l’amata Marenzio
Lady, When I Behold Wilbye
Siat’avertiti Ferretti
The Silver Swan Gibbons
Sister Awake Bateson
Comparing this with Table 2.2, which lists the madrigals most frequently sung at meetings in the
18th century, there is a notable move away from Italian madrigals in the programmes, including
music by Italian composers to English words, which had been a popular device where works by
Marenzio, amongst others, were performed. Italian madrigals and Latin motets were still being
included at meetings—Marenzio and Ferretti share an equal position in the table above—but
English composers of the late 16th and early 17th century were successfully elbowing their way
into the evening’s selections at the dinner meetings. Croft’s anthem ‘God Is Gone Up’ is the only
other religious work in the table, but it is an important reminder that religious works were always a
part of the Madrigal Society’s repertoire.
The only ‘modern’ interloper in the table is Charles Smart Evans (1778–1849), a
Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, organist, and composer (most frequently of glees). Evans was a
regular Professional Visitor at the Madrigal Society, and it seems that his anthem was often brought
out at meetings when he was singing. The same practice occurred with Samuel Wesley and his
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madrigal ‘O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie’, and William Beale and ‘Awake, Sweet Muse’. As it is not
known whether Professional Visitors attended meetings with prior notice, or ad hoc, such a practice
of composer-flattery suggests either the unlikely possibility that copies of the society’s music were
always to hand, or that both the music had been selected in advance for the Librarian to prepare it,
and that the Professional Visitor had signified his intention to be at a meeting. If the latter is true, it
clarifies the procedure of the monthly dinner meetings that was not previously known.
Table 3.4 also relates to the dinner meetings, reflecting the work most frequently sung at
meetings each year between 1821 and 1828. The same lack of information for the years 1821 and
1822 that limits the comprehensiveness of Table 3.3 applies here. In particular, the paucity of
information for 1822, drawing on just two meetings, inevitably gives an inaccurate result—
although Ferretti’s ‘Siat’avertiti’ does appear amongst the top twelve works in Table 3.3, thus its
position as the most popular work in 1822 is plausible.
Table 3.4: The Most Frequently Sung Work Each Year, 1821–1828
Year Performances Title Composer
1821 3 All Creatures Now
God Is Gone Up
Bennet
Croft
1822 2 Siat’avertiti Ferretti
1823 4 Die Not, Fond Man
Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees
Ward
Wilbye
1824 5
Almighty Father
O that the Learned Poets
Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees
The Waits
C. S. Evans
Gibbons
Wilbye
Savile
1825 5 Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees Wilbye
1826 4 All Creatures Now Bennet
1827 4 Domine Deus Clari
1828 4 Almighty and Everlasting God Gibbons
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It is no surprise that the overall favourite from Table 3.3, ‘Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees’, is
revealed as the most frequently appearing in this table too—for three years running, from 1823
to 1825. However, in the subsequent two years, it was performed only once. Perhaps even
dedicated madrigalians could tire of a work when it had been repeatedly sung. Again as in Table
3.3, Italian composers are far fewer than their English counterparts, and a predisposition for
singing church music—the anthems of Croft and of Evans, Gibbons’s ‘Almighty and Everlasting
God’, and Clari’s motet, ‘Domine Deus’—highlights the exceptionalism of the repertoire of the
Madrigal Society in the 1820s. Such an eclectic mixture in its musical taste set the society apart
from any other coeval amateur singing club in London, a reminder that the music sung by the
Madrigal Society was still little-known beyond the walls of its meetings, and was still in the
infancy of its broader appeal.
During the first three decades of the 19th century, the membership of the Madrigal
Society began to encompass a different social spectrum. As will be seen, this mostly due to the
circle of friends introduced to membership by Sir John Rogers. Rogers was not the first member
of the society with a title; there had been another baronet, Sir Richard Kaye (1736–1809), who,
when he joined the Madrigal Society sometime between 1779 and 1783, was styled the Reverend
Doctor Kaye.18 He inherited his baronetcy in 1789 on his brother’s death,19 and remained a
member of the society until he resigned on 28 May 1805. Kaye attended meetings infrequently:
he came on average three times a year between 1802 and 1805—he was obviously a busy man,
being simultaneously Dean of Lincoln, a royal chaplain, Archdeacon of Nottingham, and Rector
of Kirkby-in-Ashfield—and he does not appear to have brought guests on those occasions when
he did attend.
18 Oliphant records Kaye joining between 1779 and 1785. Kaye’s name is recorded in the first membership list of
Mad. Soc. F5 above that of Newman, whose year of membership was recorded as 1783 in the 1811 members’ list;
Oliphant, Brief Account, 21.
19 The baronetcy of Kaye of Woodescombe, created 1642.
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Members at an ordinary meeting on 30 June 1825 might have been gratified when forty-
three guests attended, twenty-eight of them Professional Visitors, the remaining fifteen were
ordinary (nevertheless singing) guests. Only twelve society members were present, but Sir John
Rogers was in the Chair. For the first time in the society’s history, the meeting was reported in a
musical journal, the Harmonicon. The article covered an entire page of the monthly magazine, and
the author, ‘G. N.’ (possibly a member of the Newman family, whose connection to the Madrigal
Society had begun in the late 1740s), remarked that ‘Probably so numerous and efficient a body
of vocal talent has never been collected together by this society since its first establishment.’20
Such a large assembly for an otherwise ordinary dinner, and such an effusive journalistic puff,
might suggest that Rogers engineered this opportunity to shake up the society publicly, and to
push it in a new direction.
If it were Rogers’s intention to reshape the Madrigal Society, his opportunity came only
two years later in 1827: Stephen Groombridge, the most senior in length of membership of the
society, announced his resignation on 17 May 1827; incorrectly, Craufurd describes
Groombridge as having been made ‘President, apparently for life, sometime after the beginning
of 1825’.21 Almost immediately, Groombridge’s resignation set in motion a decision to make Sir
John Rogers the first permanent President of the Madrigal Society. The minutes record that on
21 June 1827 a resolution was passed to summon all members to ballot for a president of the
Madrigal Society ‘ in the room of Mr Groombridge, who from ill health has resigned.’22 There is
no record of the ballot in the minutes, but on 17 July, it was recorded that Rogers wished to
summon an open committee meeting nine days later, on 26 July, to discuss his proposal to
employ professional singers at meetings. In the minute of 26 July 1827, Rogers is referred to, for
the first time, as ‘the President, Sir John Rogers, Bart.’ The committee, in the absence of Rogers,
20 Harmonicon, 3, 1 (1825), 134. 21 Craufurd, 36.
22 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 21 June 1827.
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resolved to suggest that six singers, [Charles S.] Evans, [Edward] Taylor, [Frederick W.]
Horncastle, [Thomas Forbes] Walmisley, John Goss and Hadly, be invited to become Honorary
Members instead.23 Finally on 22 October, the committee agreed to three new resolutions: 1) that
William Hawes be appointed Musical Director; 2) that the President, Treasurer, Librarian,
Secretary, and Musical Director be appointed the regulatory body for the affairs of the society
(and that any three of them together were considered competent to act); 3) that a list be formed,
‘including the organists and professional members (principals) of the three choirs [St Paul’s,
Westminster Abbey, and the Chapel Royal] and of the Catch, Glee, and Concentores Clubs (see
Appendix 1), not exceeding six of whom be invited by the committee in rotation.’24 Further
recommendations included inviting two trebles from each of the choirs of St Paul’s, Westminster
Abbey, and the Chapel Royal, and placing them under the care of William Hawes. Hawes in
response promised the help of boys from St Paul’s and the Abbey.
Rogers clearly had a very precise idea of how to run the Madrigal Society effectively. It
seems that he may have been waiting for his moment—whether the expectation of
Groombridge’s retirement was the trigger, or that it was simply an opportune moment is not
evident from the minutes. Rogers, however, had experience of running a madrigal society. He
was already president of two societies in Exeter: the Devon Glee Club that he had founded in
1821, and the Devon Madrigal Society, founded four years later. The Devon Madrigal Society is
discussed in detail in the next chapter, but it is obvious that Rogers was well-prepared for taking
on the mantle of President of the Madrigal Society too. The strict nature of the new operation of
the committee also reflects the structure for the management of the gentlemen’s clubs that were
fast opening in the capital.
23 Only Goss is identified in the list by his first name; the others, whose first names are in square brackets, had
previously attended meetings of the society. The identity of Hadly is not known.
24 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, committee minutes, 22 October 1827.
94
Once Rogers had put the Madrigal Society onto a new footing, the records suggest that
he began to attract new membership: on 21 February 1828, Major-General Sir Andrew Barnard
(1773–1855), a Waterloo hero, recently appointed equerry to William IV, was proposed by
Rogers and immediately elected a member of the society, along with seven other new members,
including R. J. S. Stevens, rejoining the society after his resignation in 1814, and Philip Salomon
(1797–1866). Barnard had been elected a member of the Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Catch
Club in 1825, and was a visible supporter of music and musicians in London, including being a
committee member of the Royal Academy of Music. Shortly after his election, Barnard proposed
for election another musical friend, Sir George Clerk (1787–1867), a Scottish baronet, Member
of Parliament and sometime Chairman of the recently founded Royal Academy of Music; he was
elected unanimously.25 When the last complete list of members was entered into the minutes on
17 July 1828, the thirty-two names, amongst them three baronets and two sons of noblemen,
reflected that the Madrigal Society was a socially different place in comparison with the first
members’ list that had opened F5 in 1785.
Another new social factor within the membership may have been commonality in
education. On 18 November 1830, Thomas Oliphant was elected to the society. Without the
minutes, it is unlikely that it will ever be known by whom he was proposed, but it is quite
possible that Rogers knew him previously. Both men were former pupils at Winchester College
(1799–1873), and although Rogers was nineteen years his senior, the Wykehamist link may have
bound them together. Oliphant, whose life and work for the Madrigal Society are discussed in
25 In an illustration of how small musical circles in London could be at this time, Christina Bashford has identified
that Clerk, with Barnard and Lord Saltoun (a later member and president of the Madrigal Society), had been
persuaded by John Ella (1802–1888) to act as patrons of a series of instrumental concerts in London in the early
1830s. Ella, a director of concerts and violinist (teaching at the Royal Academy of Music, where Barnard had been
on the first sub-committee from 1823) was also closely involved with Lord Saltoun’s musical club that met at
Saltoun’s home in Mayfair, and of which Clerk was a member, playing the viola with Philip Salomon (an erstwhile
pupil of Dragonetti), playing the double bass; Christina Bashford, The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber
Music in Victorian London (London, 2007), 45 and 61.
95
Chapter 5, was a driving force of the society; he and Rogers were tireless in their search for new
‘old’ repertoire. Although the record of the music at the ordinary monthly meetings is gone, the
Anniversary Festivals sometimes produced new surprises—in particular Tallis’s forty-part
anthem, ‘Sing and Glorify’ (the English-texted version of ‘Spem in Alium’), in 1836. Oliphant’s
Brief Account Of The Madrigal Society shows that Vincent Novello had also become a member of
the society in 1830, although his membership seems to have been short, as he was no longer in
the society by 1834. Oliphant also reveals that Lord Saltoun (1785–1853), a friend of Barnard,
Clerk, and Salomons, joined the society in 1831. Saltoun’s membership was to be long, and he
became President of the society on Rogers’s retirement.26
V. Madrigal Publication
Two important factors assured the Madrigal Society’s survival into the 19th century: the
influence of its members, and its library. The work of Immyns and subsequent copyists meant
that the society owned an unparalleled collection of madrigals, and members of the society
enjoyed the privilege of being able to borrow copies. As early as the rules of 1757, the use of the
library by members had been regulated thus:
That every member of this society on every night of meeting shall be at liberty to borrow
(for his own private use only) any one number contained in the catalogue of the library
26 Like Barnard, Saltoun was a high-ranking army officer who had served courageously at Waterloo, and had had a
gallant career thereafter, rising to the rank of Major-General in 1837. In 1841 he was sent to China, in command of
a brigade to fight in the First Opium War. While there he was stationed in Hong Kong. In a column entitled ‘Old
Hong Kong’ in the South China Morning Post, published on 24 November 1933, it reported, ‘Apparently there had
been an old madrigal society in Hong Kong in its early years, but unfortunately the records of that organisation are
missing. We merely know, from an old reference [which is not given], that such a society existed here in 1843, for it
is stated that in November of that year, the Madrigal Society elected Major-General Lord Saltoun to be its president,
and he made himself very popular in that position’. Although the establishment of an overseas madrigal society
would have been an exciting discovery, it seems that the news of Saltoun’s appointment as President of the Madrigal
Society in London had filtered back to the colony, but was later confused as a Hong-Kong event.
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except Marcelli’s [Marcello’s] Psalms, Orpheus Britannicus and Dr Croft’s Anthems (which
are to be borrowed only by single volumes), and no one shall be intituled to this
privilege, unless he does before the delivery of such number, subscribe a receipt for the
same . . . which I promise to return in one month and in default thereof to pay to him
for the use of the Society one shilling or every week I shall default the same after the
expiration of the said month. (Rule 18)27
Such a rule continued into the 19th century; the ninth of the society’s Laws of 1802 provided
similar library access to members, with the usual forfeits for lateness in returning borrowed
books. The most probable use for taking them was to make copies for personal use, or library
collections, as the sale catalogue of James Bartleman’s collection of music suggests.28 Many of the
collections of madrigals in the sale were in Bartleman’s own hand, in particular three volumes of
Marenzio’s madrigals, catalogued as ‘put into score by Mr Bartleman…in his own MS’, that
parallel earlier copies, in Immyns’s and Warren’s hand of Marenzio’s music (mentioned earlier) in
the Madrigal Society’s own library.29 Many of the other manuscript copies of madrigals and
motets in Bartleman’s collection were in the hands of Warren and J. Paul Hobler (1754–1794),
the latter a watchmaker active in St James and a member of the Glee Club, of which Bartleman
was an honorary member.
As we have seen previously, madrigals had made an appearance in 18th-century
collections of rounds and glees, sometimes destined for the drawing-room or library, rather than
the tavern; others had been included in the annual fascicles of Warren’s Collection. Although never
realised, Warren had also projected a six-volume collection of madrigals and motets, but when in
27 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F2, 8 December 1757. 28 A Catalogue of the Very Valuable and Celebrated Library of Music Books, Late the Property of James Bartleman, Esq. (deceased),
Comprehending a Very Extensive and Matchless Assemblage of the Most Choice and Scarce Productions and Works of all the Great
Masters, Ancient and Modern, Rich in Every Class, but particularly Church Music, Masses, Motetts & Madrigals, (London,
1822).
29 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. C16 MS 277.
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1801 an edition of Morley’s canzonets and several of his madrigals was published, it took the
accolade of being the first publication of a book exclusively of madrigals since the 17th century.30
The publication of Holland and Cooke did not open a sudden floodgate of response in
other works, however, and it was a full six years until a committee meeting at the Madrigal
Society agreed on 3 February 1807 to ‘a motion made by the Revd Mr Parker, seconded by Mr
Horsfall and carried, that the Revd Mr Webb have access to the music books of this society for
the purpose of copying some of the madrigals and publishing the same.’31 Richard Webb
(1770/1–1829) had been a professional visitor to the Madrigal Society from some time before
1802; he became a member (proposed by the Revd Mr Parker) in January 1803. A priest-in-
ordinary to the Chapel Royal and minor canon of St Paul’s, Webb also sang in the cathedral
choir: ordained priests as professional singers were not uncommon in the early 19th century, a
canonry or parochial living of any description providing income where the stipend of a vicar-
choralship was not enough to live on. Nor was it uncommon for members of the choir of the
Chapel Royal to hold other posts simultaneously, so Webb’s position at St Paul’s must have been
comfortable in comparison with other members of the choir.32 It is not clear from the Madrigal
Society’s accounts if Webb were selected as editor, or offered himself to fulfil the role, nor
whether the selection of madrigals was left to his discretion, but the first print of his collection of
30 The Canzonets and Madrigals for three and four voices, of Thomas Morley, arranged from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library and
several others of established authenticity by W. W. Holland and W. Cooke, Cramer & Co., (London, 1801). 31 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, motions and resolutions recorded after the laws of the society had been laid down in
1802.
32 The singer Thomas Vaughan (1782–1843) is a good example of plurality in holding musical posts in London; he
was simultaneously a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, vicar-choral of St Paul’s and lay-clerk in the choir of
Westminster Abbey. Vaughan was not alone; Deborah Rohr, discussing the lives of London church musicians,
draws attention to this issue: ‘In the 1790s several musicians sang in more than one of the leading London choirs
and sometimes at Windsor as well . . . In the early 1800s John Jeremiah Goss [a regular Professional Visitor at the
Madrigal Society] obtained appointments to the Chapel Royal, St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey,’; Deborah Rohr,
The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: a Profession of Artisans (Cambridge, 2001), 95.
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madrigals appeared in 1808.33 The title is misleading by dating the music to the 15th and 16th
centuries when they are all, in fact, 16th- and 17th-century works. The collection comprises
nineteen madrigals, all of them regularly appearing in the music lists at meetings in the 18th
century and confirming a kind of madrigal hit-parade for 1808 (see Table 3.5).
Table 3.5. Contents of Richard Webb’s Collec t ion o f Madrigals (1808)
No. Title Composer Voices
1 Come, Shepherd Swains Wilbye 3
2 The Nightingale, so Soon Bateson 3
3 When Flow’ry Meadows Deck the Year Palestrina 4
4 Awake, Sweet Love Dowland 4
5 So Lovely Is Thy Dear Self Bennet 4
6 Laudate Nomen Domini Tye 4
7 Weep, Silly Soul, Disdained Bennet 4
8 Come, Shepherds, Follow Me Bennet 4
9 O that the Learned Poets Gibbons 5
10 Cynthis, Thy Song and Chanting Croce 5
11 Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees Wilbye 5
12 Siat’avertiti Ferretti 5
13 In Pride of May Weelkes 5
14 Dainty Fine Bird Gibbons 5
15 Due begl’occhi lucente Pizzoni 5
16 I Follow, Lo, the Footing Morley 5
17 Die Not, Fond Man Ward 6
18 So Saith My Fair and Beautiful Licoris Marenzio 6
19 Stay, Corydon, Thou Swain Wilbye 6
The footnote to the index promised that ‘a second collection, never before printed in score,
extracted from the original books, will be engraved as soon as an adequate number of names are
received’. The three pages of approximately 250 (entirely British) subscribers to the first 33 Richard Webb (ed.), A Collection Of Madrigals For Three, Four, Five & Six Voices Selected From The Works Of The Most
Eminent Composers Of The Fifteenth And Sixteenth Centuries, Carefully Extracted From The Original Books As Preserved In The
Madrigal Society, And Dedicated To The Members By The Revd Richard Webb, A.M., Minor Canon Of St Paul’s Cathedral And
Priest-In-Ordinary Of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, London, (London, 1808).
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collection are impressive; the Madrigal Society ordered six copies, and other copies went far and
wide across the nation, many to the homes of cathedral clergymen and musicians in the
provinces. Several individual members of the Madrigal Society also subscribed, as did a handful
of aristocrats, including the Duke of Argyll and Earl of Dudley, both of them sometime directors
of the Concerts of Ancient Music, whose professional connection to the Madrigal Society was
clear through the names of Bartleman, Harrison, and Knyvett.
No second collection of madrigals appeared, possibly because there was insufficient
interest in such a venture, but a second edition of Webb’s work was published in 1814 by
William Hawes (1785–1846), a member of the society from 11 April 1809 until his resignation on
27 October 1823. (Hawes returned as the society’s Musical Director on 22 October 1827; a more
detailed biography of him appears in Chapter 5.)
Hawes had possibly seen the potential of a new market for editions of previously
unknown and unseen madrigals in John Stafford Smith’s two-volume Musica Antiqua, published
in 1812, and endowed with a title that leaves the reader in no doubt as to its contents.34 Smith
(who will also be discussed in Chapter 5) was tapping into a market of music collectors who were
curious to inspect older works, though not necessarily with admiration. The reviewer of new
musical publications in the Gentleman’s Magazine disdainfully remarked of Musica Antiqua that it
was ‘calculated to interest exclusively the antiquary or the lover of musical history. The copious
title of the work renders a description of it on our part unnecessary, but we remark, to prevent
disappointment, that, although the compositions here published are exceedingly curious, very
few of them will be pleasing to the ear.’35 It is not clear whether the reviewer regarded the
antiquary and the ‘lover of musical history’ as mutually exclusive people; the latter could easily be 34 John Stafford Smith (ed.), A Selection of Music of This and Other Countries from the Commencement of the Twelfth to the
Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Comprizing Some of the Earliest and Most Curious Motets, Madrigals, Hymns, Anthems,
Songs, Lessons and Dance Tunes; Some of Them Now First Published from Manuscripts and Printed Works of Great Rarity and
Value. The Whole Calculated to Shew the Original Sources of the Melody and Harmony of This Country, and to Exhibit the Different
Styles and Degrees of Improvement of the Several Periods, (London, 1812).
35 The Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1813, 60–61.
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a subset of the former, and therefore the advertising pitch aims to garner as wide a public as
possible.
The (approximately) 120 subscribers to Musica Antiqua include several members of the
Madrigal Society and the musical fraternity associated with it: the names of Dr Allot (the Dean of
Raphoe, in Co. Donegal), Attwood, Bartleman, Goss, Hawes, Harrison, Linley, Granville and
Benjamin Sharp, and Samuel Wesley all appear in the two pages of lists in the first volume. Smith
included just four madrigals, ‘Diti me o si’ by Morales, ‘Come si m’accendete’ by Zarlino, and
two works from Vecchi’s 1589 Libro primo, ‘Quella ch’in mille’ and ‘Leggiadretto Clorino’.
Hawes’s second edition of Webb’s Collection made no changes to the original plates,
continuing the promise of a second series, which was noticed in the review of new musical
publications in the Gentleman’s Magazine in July 1814: ‘we strongly recommend this work to those
musical societies for whose use and pleasure it is adapted, and hope the very musical editor will
be induced to publish a second collection.’36 In fact the gauntlet seems to have been picked up
by another Madrigal Society member, Joseph Gwilt (1784–1863), an architect and Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries, and a member of the Madrigal Society from 1812, a year after his brother
George had joined. Gwilt was a generous benefactor of the Madrigal Society, and would go on to
purchase and present to the society the manuscript of Tallis’s forty-part ‘Sing and Glorify’. He
had also undertaken the cost of engraving and publishing Samuel Wesley’s madrigal ‘O Sing unto
Mie Roundelaie’ when it failed to win the Madrigal Society competition that was judged in 1813.
A minute of 13 June 1815 records that ‘it was proposed by Mr Beale and seconded by Mr
Williams that the society become subscribers to a collection of madrigals edited by Mr Joseph
Gwilt, which was negatived.’37 Apparently, Gwilt persevered with his project despite the society’s
lack of support, and his volume of twenty-three madrigals and two motets appeared later that
36 The Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1814, 59.
37 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 13 June 1815.
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year.38 No subscribers’ list follows the title-page, but Gwilt introduces the madrigals that are to
follow. He explains that ‘In offering the few following madrigals to the public, the editor’s sole
object is to add his mite to the revival of a taste which has long been declining . . .’
A short preface provided short biographies of the composers, taken from Hawkins’s
General History, and some explanations of editorial decisions regarding the orthography of the
poetry. It seems that Gwilt had in mind that this was to be the complement to the Webb/Hawes
Collection of 1808; there is no repetition of works, but the decision to concentrate on four-voice
pieces must have been motivated by the consideration of targeting a market that would find
four-part music of greater practicability than those of five and six parts. More than a half of
Webb’s madrigal collection had been for five and six voices, which had possibly dented the
marketability of the music for the societies for whom it was purportedly adapted. In the preface,
Gwilt states that ‘The present collection has been confined to pieces of four parts, and those
chiefly for equal voices, as being more easily got up in private parties, where there is no treble
voice.’ Table 3.6 reproduces the list of contents of the book.
Table 3.6: Contents of Joseph Gwilt’s Collec t ion o f Madrigals and Motet ts (1815)
No. Title Composer
1 Our Country Swains Weelkes
2 Happy Streames Whose Trembling Fall Wilbye
3 I Wander up and down Bennet
4 Veramente in amore Wilbye
5 When Cloris Heard Wilbye
6 Hey Trola (Hunting Madrigal) Piers
7 Thus Saith My Cloris Bright Wilbye
8 The Waits Savile
9 Come Again, Sweet Love Dowland
38 Joseph Gwilt (ed.), A Collection of Madrigals and Motetts, Chiefly for Four Equal Voices by the most Eminent Composers of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the Greater Part of which have not been hitherto Published in Score; Carefully Collated and
Extracted from the Original Editions in Parts by Joseph Gwilt, Architect, F.S.A, (London, 1815).
102
10 Loe Cuntrie Sports Weelkes
11 O Vos Omnes Victoria
12 It Chaunced in Iconium Tye
13 Defyled Is My Name Johnson
14 Dame Venus Hence to Paphos Goe Bateson
15 As Matchlesse Beauty Wilbye
16 Heare the Voice and Prayer Tallis
17 Sing Loud, Ye Nymphs Bennet
18 Perche tormi il cor Morley
19 Cruel Unkinde Bennet
20 Thirsis, Thy Absence Farmer
21 What Can I Do, My Dearest Kirbye
22 Thirsis, Sleepest Thou Bennet
23 Fly Not so Swift Wilbye
24 Whither so Fast Bateson
25 False Love, Now Shoot Palestrina
Many of the pieces are to be found in the list of works sung at the Anniversary Dinners
through the 1810s, and although the two motets (No.11, ‘O Vos Omnes’, by Victoria, and
No.16, ‘Hear The Voice And Prayer’, by Tallis) have no record of being sung at the Madrigal
Society prior to Gwilt’s publication, the sporadic record-keeping does not necessarily mean
that they had never been performed at meetings. Gwilt says that he took the Tallis motet from
Burney’s General History of Music, and presumably the Victoria motet was borrowed from one
of the society’s library manuscripts.39 The two oldest pieces, by Tye and Johnson, are taken
from Hawkins’s History. Gwilt’s work, therefore, is several steps further from Webb’s in
attempting to encompass a broader scope of music. Gwilt’s synthesis of motets published
with madrigals in his Collection is a reinforcement of the idea outlined in the introduction to
this thesis that old sacred and secular music should stand (and be sung) alongside one another,
regardless of their original purpose.
39 Charles Burney, A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1776–89), Frank Mercer (ed.) 2
vols (London, 1935).
103
In the creation of a collection of four-voice-only pieces, Gwilt was pushing himself to
step outside the usual orbit of works in the Madrigal Society’s repertoire. There is also one
particularly telling sentence, betraying Gwilt’s feelings, and possibly those of others at the
Madrigal Society, about Warren’s attempt at publishing madrigals in the various editions of his
Collection: Gwilt explains that he is republishing the madrigal ‘Loe Cuntrie Sports’, by Weelkes,
which Warren had printed as ‘Now Country Sports’: ‘it is much to be lamented, that not one
of the madrigals of the old masters has been published correctly by the said Mr Warren.’
Warren’s publications were not always accurate transcriptions from older sources—as
evidenced in one of his publications in a collection of madrigals by Wilbye (discussed at the
end of Chapter 2); Warren freely admitted that he had altered the original, an editorial decision
with which Gwilt evidently did not agree.
Gwilt’s careful, considered approach to disseminating rare music, correcting the
mistakes of others in previously printed work, and carefully choosing works that could be
sung by groups of people (rather than producing a volume of historical works to be studied,
not heard), establishes his little-known Collection as an important publication in the canon of
early works in the revival of the performance of madrigals and other vocal music in the 19th
century. It comes as a surprise, then, to read in the work’s introduction that just fifty copies of
the madrigals were printed, and then the plates destroyed. Gwilt can have been under no
illusion where the limits of interest in such a publication lay. There appears to have been no
public response to the Collection, and, unlike so many of the works of other members of the
Madrigal Society, the minutes do not record any gift of a copy to the society; none appears in
the society’s archive at the British Library. To date, the only traceable copy is held at the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, where it has been digitised and made available online.40
40 Digitised copy: http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11147064_00001.html. The
original copy is catalogued as D-Mbs, shelfmark 4 Mus.pr.32809.
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A third volume of madrigals appeared in the mid-1810s: an edition of The Triumphs of
Oriana, edited and published by William Hawes, who had undertaken the reprinting of Webb’s
Collection in 1814. The Triumphs was a collection of madrigals, collated by Thomas Morley in
1601, and believed in the 19th century to have been published in honour of Elizabeth I, the
supposed ‘Oriana’ of the work’s title.41 Hawes’s work was in preparation for some time before
its appearance—Joseph Gwilt referred to it in the introduction to his Collection in 1815, saying
that ‘The Editor [Gwilt] feels also much satisfaction in noticing that Mr Hawes, a most
respectable and ingenious professor, is now publishing the set of Madrigals written and
composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth, intitled the “Triumphs of Oriana.”’42 It seems that
Hawes’s edition of the Triumphs may have had a false start in its publication; Joseph Kerman
acknowledges it having been published ‘as early as 1814’;43 the British Library catalogue offers
two dates for two listings of the same work: 1814 and 1815, although the latter is probably
erroneous.44 In fact the evidence is that Hawes intended to print his Triumphs in two parts;
only the first part appeared complete in 1814, but test-papers were also published for the
second part. Possibly a lack of subscription held up the complete work, but the minutes of the
Madrigal Society confirm that in December 1817, the ‘thanks of the society voted
unanimously to Mr Hawes for his handsome present of his book of Orianas.’45 The
presentation of the work to the society does not seem to have encouraged a response to
perform the madrigals in the Triumphs, although four of them had been selected by Stephen
Groombridge, in the Chair for the dinner meeting in February 1803, the first recorded time
41 It has more recently been argued by Jeremy L. Smith that ‘Oriana’ may have been Anna of Denmark, wife of
James VI of Scotland (later James I of England); ‘Music and Late Elizabethan Politics: The Identities of Oriana and
Diana’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 58 (2005), 507–558. 42 Gwilt, A Collection of Madrigals and Motetts (London, 1815), 4. 43 Kerman, 195.
44 The two catalogue references at the British Library refer to: GB-Lbl Music Collections I.430, whose date of
publication is catalogued as 1814, and the Madrigal Society’s own copy, GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. 39, whose publication is
given as 1815.
45 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 9 December 1817.
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that Bennet’s ‘All Creatures Now’, Weelkes’s ‘As Vesta Was’, and Morley’s ‘Hard By A Crystal
Fountain’ had entered into the society’s regular repertoire.46 Only ‘Sing Shepherds All’, a five-
part madrigal by Richard Nicholson, emerged from the Triumphs at the Anniversary Dinner on
25 April 1824.
After Hawes’s edition of the Triumphs, there seems to have been no further interest in
publishing collections of madrigals for nearly thirteen years. Only a reference to a new set of
‘7 Madrigals By Old Masters’ was made in the minutes of 28 February 1822. No copy of ‘7
Madrigals By Old Masters’ has been found to exist; nor is there any indication of its contents.
The minutes only record that Richard Taylor presented it on behalf of his brother Edward.
Edward Taylor had first attended a meeting of the society on 20 December 1820, as his
brother’s guest. He would eventually become a key figure in the promotion of the madrigal
both inside and outside London from the 1830s onwards.
VI. The 1811 Madrigal Prize Competition
From 1763 to 1793 the Catch Club had offered annual prizes for the composition of a canon,
catch, and two glees (one serious, one cheerful);47 the winning entries were regularly published as
part of Warren’s Collection—although there were occasional law suits of copyright brought against
Warren by prize-winning composers who objected to Warren’s monopoly over their
compositions.48 Between 1793 and 1818 the Catch Club ceased to offer any prize, but in 1811
the Madrigal Society, clearly inspired by the Catch Club’s model, announced its intention to hold
its own competition.
46 The fourth madrigal from the Triumphs was Wilbye’s six-part ‘The Lady Oriana’, which does not seem to have
been repeated after its performance on 20 January 1803. 47 A full table of the prizes and their winners is given in Appendix B in Robins, 160–161. 48 A full discussion of the in and outs of Warren’s disputes over the publication of prize-winning composers appears
in Robins, 49–51.
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The motion was put to a committee of the Madrigal Society on 4 November 1811,
proposed by Stephen Groombridge, and seconded by Robert Cooke, the organist of
Westminster Abbey. The proposal was carried unanimously, but it was also decided that a ballot
of the full membership should be held on 19 November. The ballot was also carried
unanimously. Hawes and Cooke proposed that a committee be appointed consisting of Sharp,
Horsfall, Newman, Groombridge and Parker, all of whom accepted, and it was decided that the
whole society should meet together on 17 December to settle on and carry out the organisation
of the competition. Five resolutions governing the competition were passed at that meeting:
1. To present a silver cup of the value of ten guineas to the composer of the best
madrigal that shall be approved in not less than four, nor more than six, parts—the
upper part or parts to be for one or two treble voices.
2. The character of the composition to be in the manner of the madrigals of Bennet,
Wilbye, Morley, Weelkes, Ward, Marenzio and others, and each part to contain a certain
melody either in fugue or imitation, therefore a melody harmonised will be inadmissible.
3. The poetry is recommended to be of the pastoral kind, in English, Latin or Italian, and
the composer to send one fair and legible copy in score with a sufficient number of
single parts for the performance upon ten- or twelve-staved paper—the score being
ruled lengthways.
4. The madrigals to be rehearsed in the order of their delivery being sent (carriage-free)
on or before the 24th day of March 1812, addressed to Mr Horsfall, Cloysters,
Westminster Abbey, with a motto or character thereon referring to the composer with a
letter sealed up. The letter only of the successful candidate will be opened and the others
delivered up to the respective composers on them being demanded by the private mark.
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5. That no composer do send more than two madrigals for the prize. The copyright
whereof shall remain with the composer—the society retaining a copy of that which
shall be successful.49
The rules are generally clear, although there is a sense in the second rule of the difficulty in trying
to put into writing what it was that separated a madrigal from an ordinary piece of fugal or
imitative music—therefore avoiding homophony and fugue—and the broad sweep of composers
that were suggested as compositional guides provides little clarity. Only the recommendation for
pastoral poetry helps the potential difficulty of defining whether a submitted composition
qualified or not. The last regulation must have been drawn up with the echoes of the occasional
deluge of compositions from individual composers for the Catch Club prizes in the previous
century;50 a desire to avoid the kind of quarrels over copyright ownership encountered with
Warren must also have been going through the minds of the committee when they settled the
final regulation.
The entries for the competition were by invitation; a list of twenty-one suitable
candidates was drawn up on 14 January 1812, and printed letters were sent to them, inviting
them to compose madrigals. Charles Hague (Professor of Music) and John Clarke-Whitfeld at
Cambridge headed the list of invitees, followed by Samuel Webbe (both father and son),
Benjamin Jacob, William Russell, William Crotch, Matthew Cooke, Samuel Wesley, William
Horsley, Johann Peter Salomon, James Elliott, Charles Evans, Charles and William Knyvett,
James Bartleman, William Carnaby, John Stafford Smith, Thomas Attwood, Reginald Spofforth
and John Sale. The majority of these had been to meetings of the Madrigal Society at one time or
another, and presumably they were chosen because they were considered to have compositional
49 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, beginning 17 December 1811. 50 In 1786 John Callcott submitted over 120 compositions for the Catch Club prizes that year. The Catch Club
secretary, Thomas Warren, was instructed to write to potential contestants the following year, informing them that a
maximum of three compositions per prize was the new regulation. Robins, 50.
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sympathies that would allow them to compete with a sensibility within the rules. It is not clear
from the minutes whether non-invitees might also submit compositions—or even if they could
recommend other candidates; the question needs to be asked, because the actual winner of the
competition did not appear in the above list, although he was already a member of the society.
Three months passed before any further mention in the minutes of the competition; on
21 April 1812, the following was minuted: ‘Notice to be given to absentees that a rehearsal of the
new madrigals be proposed at the next meeting, and it is desired that no visitors be present.’ It
was not until 2 June that it was decided to further postpone the rehearsal of the new madrigals
until the first meeting in October.51 A further hitch—the fact that there were only nine members
of the society at the meeting on 6 October—meant that it was at the second meeting of the
month, on 20 October, that four of the new madrigals were rehearsed. Fourteen madrigals had
been received and their merits were to be considered by the members, who sang through them
during the course of three meetings. As the names of the authors of the madrigals would not be
revealed until a winner had been chosen, the pieces were simply referred to in the minutes by the
numbers allotted to them. It was only in the minute of 1 December 1812 that the titles of the
works were recorded and the pieces then voted for. There were nineteen members at the
meeting, and they must have been given three votes a-piece. The results of the first round of
voting are given in Table 3.7.
Table 3.7: List of Entries for the Madrigal Society Prize Competition, 1811–13
No. Title Votes in 1st Round
1 From All Creatures 1
2 Fly Swiftly 6
3 Ah Me, Quoth Venus 3
4 When Love and Truth 5
5 Sweet Philomela 8
51 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 2 June 1812.
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6 O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie 4
7 Awake, Sweet Muse 6
8 Rise Shepherds 1
9 Rise up Thou Mournful 3
10 Prithee, Youth 6
11 Providebam Dominum 3
12 I Pierced the Grove 8
13 Whence Comes 1
14 Hail to the Chief 0
Numbers 8 and 14 were rejected, as they did not qualify as madrigals; 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 12 were
rehearsed again in the second decisive round on 15 December, but the minutes do not clarify
when the winner was announced. Quite probably the winning madrigal was only revealed at the
Anniversary Dinner, held on 20 January 1813, when an unusually high proportion of members—
twenty-three out of thirty-six—was present. No. 7, ‘Awake, Sweet Muse’, won the prize, and it
was revealed that William Beale, a member of the Madrigal Society, was its composer. Other
madrigals were by William Linley (no. 3 and possibly no. 10), William Hawes (no. 5), Samuel
Wesley (no. 6), and Samuel Webbe junior (no. 12); the authorship of the other works remains
unknown. Beale’s success was rewarded with the ten-guinea silver cup, and the honour of having
his madrigal sung at the beginning of the dinner.
Linley’s madrigal, ‘Ah Me, Quoth Venus’, with Beale’s prizewinner, became an
established part of the society’s repertoire (both composers presented copies to the Madrigal
Society a little later in 1813); so too did Wesley’s ‘O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie’. Wesley, though,
was evidently upset at not winning the competition: Philip Olleson cites a letter of 17 February
1813, sent from Wesley to Vincent Novello, in which he tried to disguise his disappointment
‘under a show of indifference, saying that he could not “prevail upon [himself] to scrawl absolute
Nonsense, even for a silver Cup.”’52 Wesley did, however, present five manuscript copies of his
madrigal to the society on 9 March 1813, a full month before Beale provided two copies of
52 Olleson, Samuel Wesley, 128.
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‘Awake, Sweet Muse.’ At the Anniversary Dinner on 19 January 1814, Wesley’s and Beale’s
madrigals were both performed (and repeated). Confirming the popularity of Wesley’s madrigal,
Oliphant wrote of the 1813 competition, ‘Amongst the unsuccessful compositions, “O sing unto
my Roundelay,” by Mr S. Wesley, was much admired; indeed, I believe most people are now of
opinion that it was the best.’53
VII. The Madrigal Society in the Press
The loss of the minutes after July 1828 is by no means the end of the possibility of a narrative
concerning the Madrigal Society’s next decade and beyond. Fox’s notes continue the story;
they are, however, merely sketches of the minutes concerning the ordinary meetings of the
society, and they do not record the music lists of individual meetings. Salvation (of some of
the music lists, at least) comes with the steady rise of musical journalism from the mid-1820s
onwards, which ensured that many of the Anniversary Dinners/Festivals were reported in the
press, following the Harmonicon’s innovation mentioned above.
After the Harmonicon, other journals began to include notices of dinners, most notably
the contributions of Edward Taylor in the Spectator. The precise date that Taylor began
working as a musical journalist is not known, although he has been identified possibly writing
in the Atlas early in 1828, and shortly afterwards for the Spectator, as an opera reviewer, having
followed the editor of the Atlas, Stephen Rintoul, who had left after a disagreement.54 Rintoul
set up the Spectator as a rival instrument, and set Taylor to writing for the unauthored column,
‘Topics of the Day’.55 The first report of an evening at the Madrigal Society appeared, also
unauthored, in the Spectator on 23 January 1830, but to describe the society as a ‘perfect
53 Oliphant, Brief Account, 15. 54 Theodore Fenner, Opera in London: Views of the Press, 1785–1830 (Carbondale, IL, 1994), 44–45. 55 Leanne Langley, ‘The English Musical Journal in the Early Nineteenth Century.’ PhD dissertation, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1983, 543–544; quoted in Fenner, 46.
111
republic’56 is really a give-away trait of the dissenting Taylor. He was later described as ‘proud
. . . of his ancestors, whose religious and political opinions he inherited. Hence, he was a
Dissenter of the Unitarian School, and what was then called a Radical Reformer.’57 His sense
of radical reform spilt over, certainly at this period of his life, into his writing and into his
work.
The flattening of social rank, as Taylor saw it, commended the Madrigal Society as a
place to make music. He continued in his 1830 article that the members of the society were
‘classed, not by the Court Calendar, but by the Gamut. They take rank according to Clefs.
Not Peers, Baronets, K.G.C.s, M.P.s, Aldermen and Common Councilmen; but “Counters,
Tenors, and Basses.”’58
Taylor faithfully reported the Anniversary Festivals through the 1830s, and always
with the greatest show of affection for Sir John Rogers. In 1834, for example, he wrote of
Rogers, ‘We have the satisfaction of seeing a member of our aristocracy giving the influence
of his rank, talents, and character, to the promotion of English music; not by an empty and
supercilious vouchsafing of patronage when least needed, but by active, well-directed, cordial
assistance, through a long series of years.’59 Rogers’s reshaping of the Madrigal Society also
received praise from others in the musical press. The Harmonicon’s anonymous author
discusses Rogers, ‘who, to a competent knowledge of music and zeal for its promotion, adds
suavity of manner and firmness of purpose.’60
56 ‘The Madrigal Society’, Spectator, 23 January 1830. 57 A. D. Bayne, A Comprehensive History of Norwich, Including a Survey of the City and Its Public Buildings; Civil and Municipal
History: Including Complete Lists of Mayors and Sheriffs, and Notices of Eminent Citizens; Political History: Including Complete
Election Returns and Lists of Members of Parliament; Religious History: Including Memoirs of Bishops and Deans—Rise and
Progress of Nonconformity; Commercial History: Including the Substance of Prize Essays on the Manufactures and Trade of Norwich
(London, 1869), 477–8. 58 ‘The Madrigal Society’, Spectator, 23 January 1830. 59 ‘Anniversary of the Madrigal Society’, Spectator, 18 January 1834, 12.
60 ‘The Madrigal Society’, Harmonicon, 1 (1830), 81.
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As the 1830s progressed, the broader public enjoyed a view of the Madrigal Society
from the articles published in the press; many of the pieces may have been from ‘insiders’,
which naturally requires some scepticism on the reader’s part in the interpretation of the
writer’s remarks on the quality of performances. Nevertheless, those writers who were keen to
share some of the smallest details about procedure at meetings have greatly benefitted our
understanding of the way in which the musical part of meetings were organised. The
contributor of the article in the Supplement to the Musical Library in 1835, for example, described
how the music at the Anniversary Festival that year was performed:
The practice now established is to sing ‘Non Nobis’ after dinner. The company then is
divided into altos, tenors, and bases [sic], the sopranos, boys, having a table in the centre
of the room, at one end of which sits the Director, who gives the pitch from a pipe, and
the time by a baton. Music-books are distributed to parties of two or three, and all who
continue at the principal tables are expected to take a part. A separate table is prepared
for such as have no confidence in their vocal powers—the mere hearers—at which they
take their seats after the grace is sung.61
Such detailed performance practice had not been recorded in the minutes.
A report in the Musical World in October 1838, of the opening evening of the new
season of the Madrigal Society, sheds light on performance practice before the appointment
in 1827 of Hawes as official Director of Music and conductor of the society. Because there is
no indication in the minutes how pieces of music began, nor whether a simple beat was given
throughout the work, the article is significant, at least in clarifying that there had been a
conductor before Hawes’s appointment. The Organist of Westminster Abbey, Thomas
Greatorex, who is referred to earlier in this chapter as a provider of trebles to the society
from the Abbey choir, was evidently the de facto conductor. The 1838 article provides the first 61 ‘Madrigal Society’, Musical Library, Monthly Supplement, 11 (February 1835), 7.
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evidence of this. However, it comes as a peripheral fact in the context of recounting a story of
the impatience of Samuel Wesley. The extract is given in full:
The madrigal [‘O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie’] of the late Samuel Wesley [d.1837] was
repeated and very finely performed. It is a composition of excessive difficulty, but by
the assistance of Messrs. Elliott, Turle, King, etc., who kept the amateurs to their
parts, it went well. This work contested the prize given by the Madrigal Society in
1811, but either from its difficulty or some other causes failed—and Beale’s madrigal,
Awake Sweet Muse, proved the successful one. The impetuous genius of Wesley
stood probably in the way of his gaining many prizes, which good temper joined to
his great merit, would have secured to him. It is well remembered of this very
madrigal, that in the time of Mr Greatorex’s conductorship of the Madrigal Society,
the composer stopped the performance before it was gone through—vowing that he
would not sit to hear his composition spoiled—a declaration which every one will
perceive to have been more candid than complimentary, and certainly in no respect
calculated to put either the conductor or his choir at their ease. But this was Wesley.
With the best natural disposition he was unable to control any feeling that
immediately pressed upon him; out it came under any circumstances, no matter whom
he offended or how he himself suffered for it… 62
Michael Kassler and Philip Olleson have discussed Samuel Wesley’s unfortunate volatile
nature in previous publications, but here it serves—even if, in this situation, the
circumstances were regrettable—to provide evidence that music was being consistently led by
an appointed individual.63
62 ‘Madrigal Society’, Musical World, [new series] 3:43 (25 October 1838), 112–113. 63 Michael Kassler, ‘Samuel Wesley’s “Madness” of 1817–18’. History of Psychiatry 14 (2003): 459–474; and Philip
Olleson, Samuel Wesley: The Man And His Music. Boydell, 2003, both of which further elucidate Wesley’s erratic
behaviour.
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On 24 January 1846 the Illustrated London News published a short report of the
Anniversary Festival held at the Freemasons’ Hall; the report was accompanied by an
illustration of the evening (Figure 3.1). It provides a detailed image of the layout of the tables
at which the singers sang, and where the conductor (in this case, James Turle, who was
standing in for an ailing William Hawes) was placed. The boys are clearly shown seated
separately at a central table with Turle, standing, conducting with a baton held in his left
hand. The men, seated at the tables that form a ‘U’ around the trebles, are singing from
individual scores, and as the boys are singing together to form a single voice part, it would
follow that the men are most likely to be arranged in divisions according to their voices; those
who are not seated facing the conductor are illustrated holding their scores, but with their
backs decisively turned on him. The President sits in a throne-like chair at the centre of the
furthest table—he also appears not to be looking at Turle—a few men are milling around in
the foreground, engaged in conversation, and other of the gentlemen are stirring from their
seats. A further table, about which is seated at least seven other men (perhaps non-singing
spectators), is located in the alcove behind the President. Interpreting the moment that the
illustration captures is therefore not straightforward: Turle is perhaps asking just the trebles to
sing before the general performance; he certainly appears to be conducting, and the rest of
the assembly may be preparing for the performance of the next piece. There is potentially
some artistic licence too in the represented gathering of members and guests, who appear
more numerous in the illustration than the report suggests. It is worth noting that the
Madrigal Society continues to sit and sing in this exact formation to this day. The only change
is that women now sit at the centre table.
115
Fig. 3.1: [Anniversary] Festival of the Madrigal Society in Freemasons’ Hall
Illustrated London News, 24 January 1846
(detail, above left) (detail, above right)
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The writer of an article in the Atlas, reporting the Anniversary Festival of 1836, allowed
fanciful thoughts to carry him away in his prosy description of the evening. Such thoughts might
have been provoked by the monumental work included in the programme that evening: Tallis’s
forty-part motet, ‘Spem in Alium’, sung to the text ‘Sing and Glorify’. Another journalist had
failed to be impressed by the work,64 but the Atlas’s correspondent came away espousing the idea
that ‘the true madrigalian lives not far from the cathedral door; he is a haunter of the gothic aisle,
and exchanges his musical reverence indifferently between mitre and the lawn sleeves. His faith
in semi-breves, breves, and lozenge notes, is right Catholic, and he attacks the same, not
concerning himself about the hierarchy, with lungs of leather. Popish or Protestant, all is fish
that comes into his net.’65Although the image conjured up of the madrigal-lover may be a slightly
gloomy one, the writer articulates the essence of being a madrigal enthusiast in the 19th century,
embracing both secular and religious music. As early as 1825, Sir John Rogers had expressed his
opinion that it was important to sing and study religious music with madrigals, saying that ‘our
vocal church music is for the most part sufficiently excellent to stand upon the basis of its own
intrinsic merit.’66
Towards the end of the 1830s, a journalist in the Morning Chronicle wrote: ‘It gives us great
pleasure to observe that the annual festivals of the [Madrigal] Society are every year becoming
more and more attractive. The effect of its exertions is strikingly apparent. The works of the
Augustan age of English vocal harmony, which, a few years ago, were all but forgotten, are now
not only performed at our public concerts, whenever a vocal strength sufficient for their
performance is assembled, but are frequently to be met with in our private musical circles.67 It is
clear to this journalist at least that the public revival of madrigals was complete by 1837. Yet at 64 Supplement to the Musical Library 23 (1836), 43–4. The writer said of ‘Sing and Glorify’, that its ‘deficiency in
melody and modulation is undeniable. Hence it seems tediously long’. Suzanne Cole discusses the Madrigal Society’s
performance of ‘Sing and Glorify’ in close detail: Cole, 110–117. 65 ‘Madrigal Society Anniversary Dinner’, Atlas, 18 February 1836. 66 Flindell’s Western Luminary, 11 January 1825.
67 ‘Anniversary Meeting of the Madrigal Society’, Morning Chronicle, 26 January 1837.
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the same time, as will be explored further in Chapter 5, selling scores of madrigals for domestic
use as well as to music clubs and societies had proved very difficult. The ‘private musical circles’
were apparently not as receptive as the journalist might have suggested.
The Madrigal Society’s popularity was not in any doubt, however. Successive Anniversary
Festivals in the 1830s continued to fill newspaper columns with their reports, and sometimes
encouraged playful debate. The issue of barring women from singing at Anniversary Festivals,
allowing them only to sit in a gallery to listen to the performance, occupied the mind of John
Hullah, who opined thus in 1837:
Where are the ladies? Oh, Madrigalians! With what countenance can ye, month after
month, and year after year, continue singing Fair Oriana’s praise, and bewailing the
cruelty of your Phillises, and Cynthias, and ‘Nymph of Diana’ when you thus close up
the fountain of all your inspirations? Is your by-law, forbidding all speechifying, a tacit
confession of fear lest some gallant visitor, fired with your own sweet songs, should
spring on his legs and propose ‘The Ladies’? . . . To do our friends justice, they have
made a step in this matter. At the annual festival . . . the ladies are admitted; but, alas!
They are perched up in a gallery ‘all by themselves’. And even this bird’s-eye view of
gentlemen eating and drinking, comes like ‘the grotto’ only once a-year.68
Hullah’s call for equality at the Madrigal Society would not be heard for over a century, although
with the help of Edward Taylor and others he went on to establish the Ladies’ Madrigal Society
in 1840.
It is appropriate that the press should have the last word in this chapter, in its account of
the Madrigal Society’s centenary. ‘After passing many eulogiums upon the memory of the
humble individual who exerted himself to rescue from oblivion the imperishable productions of
the great masters of old,’ wrote the Morning Post, ‘Sir John proposed that it [the toast] should be
68 [John Hullah], ‘A Visit to the Madrigal Society’, Bentley’s Miscellany, 1 (January 1837), 468–469.
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drunk standing, and in solemn silence.’69 In that manner, the name of the founder of the
Madrigal Society, John Immyns, was recalled at the dinner to mark the society’s 100th
anniversary in 1841. Eighteen trebles, twenty-three altos, thirty-five tenors and fifty basses made
up the gathering at the Freemasons’ Tavern. The programme of pieces chosen for the dinner
included some of the society’s most frequently sung works—Wilbye’s ‘Sweet Honey-Sucking
Bees’, and Bateson’s ‘Sister Awake’. Of the fifteen pieces, there were three anthems, and one
motet, and none of the music was any later than the 17th century. In fact, not a single work of
the 19th century was sung at any of the Anniversary Festivals throughout the 1830s, and only a
handful of works (mostly by Greene) intruded from the 18th century. Presumably this reflected
Oliphant and Roger’s combined taste for older music.
The Morning Chronicle wrote of the same occasion:
The Madrigal Society has existed during periods when musical taste and knowledge were
at the lowest ebb in England, and at those times its own fortunes were equally low. But it
was always able steadily to pursue the object for which it was formed; and it gave the
first impulse towards the musical reaction in this country which is now producing such
remarkable effects . . . and it is entirely owing to its exertions that a taste for the grand,
profound and beautiful works of the old madrigalists is spreading over every part of the
kingdom—a taste which is calculated not only to elevate the art, but to elevate the minds
of its votaries.70
From its beginning, the Madrigal Society had been a forum of learning and appreciation, but it
was Rogers who had eased it along its way as that quintessentially Victorian thing, a vehicle for
self-improvement. Association with the society was, certainly in the mind of the reviewer in the
Morning Chronicle, a means to enhancing intellectual capacity, as well as promoting an important
69 Morning Post, 22 January 1841.
70 Morning Chronicle, 22 January 1841.
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musical genre. It was in that same year, 1841, that the first publications of the Musical
Antiquarian Society would appear—a major thread in the continuation of antiquarian research.
Only a brief record in Fox’s notes reveals Rogers’s departure from the Madrigal Society:
‘At the General Meeting on 3 February 1842, Sir John Rogers finally retired from the Presidency,
and Lord Saltoun was elected. The sum of £50 was unanimously voted for the purchase of a
testimonial to be presented to Sir John on his retirement.’71 An extraordinary era at the Madrigal
Society came to an end and, as we will see later, it marked the beginning of the final chapter in
this story.
71 Arthur Fox, notes for a history of the Madrigal Society, 1930s [hereafter ‘Fox’s notes’]. Never published. Private
collection.
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CHAPTER 4
Two Provincial Madrigal Societies: Devon and Bristol
I. Introduction
The Madrigal Society served as the paradigm for several societies dedicated to madrigal singing
that were founded outside the capital in the first half of the 19th century. Many of them appear
to have survived only for as long as the novelty of singing madrigals lasted amongst the founding
members of each society. Effectively, some of these societies disappeared as quickly as they
came, and the only traces of their existence are to be found in short references in
contemporaneous newspapers, a few printed programmes in county archives, even more rarely
in diaries and memoirs, and in subscribers’ lists—most notably those in the front pages of the
publications of the Musical Antiquarian Society, which existed from 1840 to 1848.1
Cathedral cities and metropolitan centres are where they flourished: by 1841 Manchester
and Liverpool both boasted madrigal societies, as did Bristol, Ely, Norwich, and Salisbury (see
Appendix 1). As well as to the Madrigal Society, London was home to at least four other
madrigal societies: the Western, the Kennington, the Ladies’ and the New Madrigal societies
(also recorded in Appendix 1), and they too were subscribers to the publications of the Musical
Antiquarian Society.
Meetings of the Manchester Madrigal Society are recorded in contemporaneous
newspapers, and the Henry Watson Music Library at Manchester holds a bound volume of
programmes of the Manchester society from 1842 to 1864.2 The Liverpool society is recorded in
1 In the endpapers of the fourth volume of the Musical Antiquarian Society, Gibbons’s First Set of Madrigals (1841), the
subscribers include no fewer than twelve dedicated madrigal societies in cities across England. For a distinguished
account of the life and work of the Musical Antiquarian Society, see Richard Turbet, ‘The Musical Antiquarian
Society, 1840–1848’, Brio, 29/1 (1992), 13–20.
2 ‘Manchester Madrigal Society (1842–1864)’, Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester, R780.69 Me77.
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the Bradford Observer, 2 April 1840: ‘A madrigal society is established at the Mechanics’ Institute
there [Liverpool]’. This may have been in response to Taylor’s lecture there in February 1839.
Other societies appear to have left few records, if any, and their traces are often
obscure—a programme of words to a concert given by the Norwich Madrigal Society in 1841,
for example, was once catalogued amongst the archives of the Norfolk Record Office, but has
now disappeared. Listing the programme as for the fourth season, it suggests that the Norwich
Madrigal Society was founded in 1838, but it appears to have been disbanded by 1860.3 A few
traces of the Ely Madrigal Society (active ca1841 to 1843) are found mentioned only obliquely in
contemporaneous newspapers, and in the subscribers’ lists in the first few volumes of the
Musical Antiquarian Society between 1841 and 1843. Similarly, only a little is known about
Salisbury’s madrigal society: the Salisbury and Winchester Journal reported on 25 April 1836 that the
‘members of the Salisbury Madrigal and Glee Society held their first meeting at the Black Horse
Inn on Tuesday evening’, but did not give any indication as to what was sung or who was behind
the venture. A report in the Musical World, April 1837, reported that about ‘thirty members sat
down to supper’,4 presumably to celebrate the society’s first anniversary, and there is a brief
further reference to it in the minutes of the Bristol Madrigal Society in 1838, when, at that
society’s first anniversary dinner,5 a toast was drunk to the health of the Salisbury Madrigal
Society, and to that of its President, Arthur Corfe, Organist of Salisbury Cathedral, and brother
to the Musical Director of the Bristol Madrigal Society, John Davis Corfe, Organist of Bristol
Cathedral. The last traceable references to the society at Salisbury appeared in the Salisbury and
Winchester Journal on 17 December 1838, announcing the next meeting of the Salisbury Madrigal
Society at the Assembly Rooms two days later, and the Hampshire Advertiser and Salisbury Guardian
on Saturday 22 December 1838:
3 Nicholas Temperley, et al: ‘Norwich’ Grove Music Online, accessed March 2010. 4 Musical World, 5:59 (28 April 1837), 110. 5 BMS Archive, University of Bristol, Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library, DM2114/1/1/1. Minute
Book, 1837–1840, 10 January 1838.
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MADRIGAL SOCIETY.—Wednesday evening last was the ladies’ first evening. On this
occasion many very suitable pieces were selected. The performance of the following
chorusses and glees were very deservedly encored, namely ‘O the Pleasures of the
Plains!’; ‘Happy, happy we’; ‘Galatea, dry thy tears!’ [all three from Handel’s Acis and
Galatea] and ‘You gave me a heart t’other day.’ [A glee by Samuel Webbe] An excellent
supper was served up by Mr Rogers, of the New Inn.
Whether the Salisbury Madrigal Society existed into 1839 is not recorded in any newspapers or
other journals that have been found to date. Judging however from the lack of madrigals in the
programme of 22 December, it seems plausible that the society simply disbanded, or reinvented
itself under another title.
The two most significant, well-documented societies were the Devon Madrigal Society
and the Bristol Madrigal Society; both of them were created in the image of their parent, the
Madrigal Society, but neither shared the same father. They were the product of two madrigal
enthusiasts, met several times already in the course of this work, Sir John Rogers and Edward
Taylor. This chapter focuses on the madrigal societies in Devon and Bristol, and includes an in-
depth examination of the social and musical background from which the Bristol Madrigal Society
grew.
II. The Devon Madrigal Society
Exeter was the most important town for the county of Devon in the early 19th century, serving
as home to the regional assizes, the seat of the bishopric, and an important cultural centre for the
south-west of England. Exeter was more market town than industrial centre, and with its
cathedral and associated community of clergy and musicians, it profited from its intellectual and
artistic milieu. The Devon Madrigal Society (hereafter the DMS) was founded there on 7 January
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1825. The society met a total of eighty-nine times between its first meeting in 1825 and its last in
1839, a comparatively short life in contrast with that of the Madrigal Society.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the DMS was born out of the already-established Devon Glee
Club. We have already noted in Chapter 1 that no instrumental music or songs were allowed at
meetings, and a letter published in 1901 in Devon Notes and Queries states ‘that it was firmly ruled
that it was no place for politics’.6 The Devon Glee Club first met at the New Subscription
Rooms in December 1821; subsequent meetings were held on Friday evenings from the autumn
until the beginning of the summer of each year. There appear to be no surviving minutes, rules,
accounts or music books of the Devon Glee Club; only the reports in the local newspapers
provide any consistent information about the club’s activities (Flindell’s Western Luminary and the
Exeter Flying Post are the most helpful).
Glee and catch clubs were common in most English towns and cities at the beginning of
the 19th century. Brian Robins’s Catch and Glee Culture in Eighteenth Century England provides an
excellent overview of the proliferation of these clubs, and the ways in which they were organised.
The most successful provincial clubs were undoubtedly those in the cathedral cities, where a
ready supply of singers who were able sight-readers ensured that the meetings of the clubs would
be musically satisfying and interesting. The nexus between cathedral musicians, glee clubs and
the madrigal societies that are under consideration here is in no doubt. In the societies at
London, Exeter and Bristol, choristers assured the treble line; there seems to have been no
discussion anywhere that women might replace or sing alongside them. The Madrigal Society set
the pattern for these two provincial daughters, and the cathedrals in both cities provided a ready
and able supply of choristers and choirmen to emulate it.
6 P. F. S. Amery, John Amery and J. Brooking, (eds), Devon Notes and Queries: a Quarterly Journal Dedicated to the Local
History, Biography and Antiquities of the County of Devon, 1 (Jan 1900–Oct 1901), 29 and 72.
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The DMS’s archive is held at the Devon Record Office;7 it consists of one single vellum-
bound volume in which are recorded the minutes of the society between its foundation in
January 1825 and the final entry on 5 January 1839. It contains the attendance records for each
meeting and the list of music sung. A bookplate and newspaper cutting pasted into the
frontispiece of the minute book records that it was presented to the library of Exeter’s Royal
Albert Memorial Museum in 1908. If the part books ever accompanied the minute book, they
were separated long ago. An article published by a Devon historian in January 1931 reported
inspecting the collection of minute books and music belonging to the DMS (and those of a later
madrigal society in Exeter) in the collection of the Exeter Free Library. He reported that the
collection comprised ‘twelve scores, thirty books of special vocal parts, and an index’.8 Sadly, just
as had happened in 1940 to the collection of the Madrigal Society, all of the music was destroyed
in the blitz on Exeter in May 1942, when the Central (Exeter Free) Library was hit; it was there
that the Royal Albert Memorial Museum’s book collection had been transferred in 1931. No
comprehensive catalogue had been kept, so the exact extent of archival losses may never be
known.
Thankfully, the minute book survived. Pasted inside its front cover is a cutting from
Flindell’s Western Luminary, dated 11 January 1825; it reports on the opening meeting of the DMS
held at the New Subscription Rooms four days earlier on Friday 7 January, and it quotes Sir John
Rogers’s address to the DMS at length (to be discussed in Chapter 5). Rogers claimed that
without the formation of the new society dedicated to madrigals in Exeter, such music would not
have had the opportunity of being sung there.
By establishing the DMS at Exeter, it seems that Rogers was indulging his own
enthusiasm for the same music-making activities that he enjoyed in London; but having his own
smaller madrigal society allowed him to experiment with a model which he would later apply to
7 ‘Devon Madrigal Society and Glee Club Minute Book’, GB-EXro, Z19/48/1.
8 ‘Exeter Notes’, Western Morning News, 27 January 1931.
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the Madrigal Society when he became President in 1827. Like its London counterpart, the DMS
was established with no intention of public performance; it existed simply to provide pleasure,
and to some extent education, to its members.
Not only did Rogers intend that his society would introduce madrigals to Devon, but
also to expand knowledge of English church music: he promised that the DMS would explore
‘the sacred works chiefly of our English composers.’ Alluding specifically to the works of,
amongst others, Gibbons, Battishill and Purcell, Rogers’s address reflected the fact that at
Exeter, the diet of music sung at services at the cathedral relied heavily on anthems and services
written in the 18th century, and only the handful of older works included in Boyce’s Cathedral
Music.
The minutes of the DMS record that at the first meeting of the society in January 1825,
there were eleven men in total: nine members, two ‘musical visitors’, and nine choristers from
the cathedral. Of the nine society members, five were lay vicars from the cathedral choir; in fact
the lay vicars remained the backbone of the society right until the last recorded meeting in 1839.
Although the number of attendees at meetings fluctuates across the years from twenty-seven
men at the end-of-season dinner in 1830 to the meeting in October 1838 at which there were
just eight men and no boys, the cathedral choirmen remained stalwart. Meetings were held
monthly at the New London Inn on the Thursday evening preceding the Friday meeting of the
Devon Glee Club, which seems generally to have been on the first Thursday of the month, and
sometimes the last Thursday, whichever Thursday was nearest the first of each month. The
formula remained the same until November 1834, when the DMS meeting was transferred to the
Saturday evening following the glee club’s Friday meeting. Presumably, the two nights were held
consecutively for Rogers’s convenience—and that of anyone else who may have had to travel to
Exeter for the two nights of the meetings. Such an arrangement also meant that Rogers could
easily travel to and from London, for meetings of the Madrigal Society, which, from July 1826,
were on the third Thursday of the month.
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Although the music library of the DMS has disappeared, it might be reasonably assumed
that the provision of music followed the same practice as that of the Madrigal Society: hand-
copied, individual part books. The minutes of December 1830 state:
• Much valuable music having been already procured at a considerable expense by
the old members of the society, it was resolved that all members elected or to be elected
or joining from the glee club since the commencement of the present season, shall pay in
addition to their 1st subscription a sum to be determined on at the next meeting.
• That the Treasurer do make a report at the next meeting of the value of the
music now possessed by the society.
Alas, no report of the music is recorded in the minutes of the next meeting, but this entry
suggests that the library had grown considerably in the society’s first five years. A single slip of
paper, inserted but not bound into the pages of the minute book of the DMS, lists the music to
be sung at a meeting in 1835. Against the name of each piece is a reference number, beginning
with either ‘A’ or ‘B’, indicating that the society’s music books were organised in the same system
as was in use at the Madrigal Society —and, as will later be seen, at Bristol. The individual pieces
of music were copied by hand (or bound from loose sheets) into volumes, identified by letters:
‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, etc. Because the music was only copied out in full score for the conductor, each set
of ‘A’ books, for example, would comprise an ‘A’ book for basses, an ‘A’ books for tenors, etc.,
and one ‘A’ book in full score for the conductor. The contents, nature and running order of the
music appears to have been arbitrarily assembled in both London and Bristol, presumably as new
works were required or asked for; in all likelihood it was probably as inconsistent a system at
Exeter too.
The DMS members at Exeter were drawn from a variety of professions—provincial
membership would suggest the potential for a wider social mix than in the capital. Within the
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first two years, membership included father-and-son wine merchants, a coal dealer, a
bookbinder, a bookseller, a lath-maker, an attorney, and a shoemaker. Of the lay vicars, most are
listed in contemporaneous directories as music masters or voice teachers, although there are one
or two exceptions in a librarian and bootmaker. Many of the other society members are listed in
directories as ‘Gent.’; there is a handful of clergymen and one, sometimes two, army officers
occasionally appear, although they are rarely recorded present at consecutive meetings. Table 4.1
provides a snapshot of the membership of the DMS in 1827, detailing their professions (where
known). Nearly half of the twenty-strong membership were members of the cathedral choir.
Table 4.1: Members of the Devon Madrigal Society, 1827
Name Profession Lay Vicar
Abbott, Rev. John Clergyman
Cole, Charles Yes
Hallett, John Coal dealer
Hamlyn Yes
Hirtzel, Frederick Wine, spirit, and porter merchant
Hirtzel, George Wine, spirit, and porter merchant
Hirtzel, Henry Wine, spirit, and porter merchant
Kendall, William Gent.
Moore, W.D. Attorney
Moxhay, Richard Music master
Paddon, James Music master and organist Yes
Pidwell, Benjamin Lath-maker
Quantock, Capt. John Gent.
Risdon, John Bookseller Yes
Risdon, Thomas Boot and shoemaker Yes
Rogers, Sir John Gent.
Salter, Philip Music master Yes
Spark, William Bookbinder and librarian Yes
Tootell, Wm. Henry Engraver Yes
Turner, Thomas Music master Yes
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The membership fee was first fixed in 1825 at one pound per annum, plus five shillings for
books. How much money the choristers received is unknown until the minutes of October 1832
record that the boys ‘shall receive the sum of 1/6 a night each in lieu of suppers. The two senior
boys being allowed 2/- each.’
From the opening meeting James Paddon (1768–1835), the cathedral organist, acted as
conductor of the DMS; the minutes show that Paddon usually brought an average of ten boys
with him to each meeting; although a resolution in the minutes of October 1832 says that the
number would be reduced to six, this does not seem to have happened.9 Paddon was present at
the majority of meetings up to January 1835—but he died in June that year. Samuel Sebastian
Wesley (1810–1876) succeeded him as organist at the cathedral in August 1835.
Wesley first appears in the minutes of the DMS as a guest of one of the members on 7
November 1835, although monthly meetings of the society had resumed in September that year,
and several cathedral boys had been present (seven in September and eight in October). Kellow
J. Pye (1812–1901), a prominent musician and concert-promoter in Exeter, had acted as
conductor in October 1835, but when Wesley appeared in November, Pye was acting president
in the absence of Rogers, and no conductor was recorded for that meeting. Wesley, according to
the minutes, was elected ‘by acclamation’ to the society at that November meeting. It is unclear
whether Wesley (renowned for being controversial in his dealings with other musicians, and
jealously protective of his rights) was entirely happy about the DMS encroaching on the boys’
time, but perhaps his record of attendance speaks for itself: he missed only two meetings of the
DMS from his election in November 1835 until the final meeting in 1839. In contrast to the
seeming liberality with which Paddon had made the boys available to the DMS, Wesley was quite
9 Paddon also seems to have a successful career promoting festival concerts in Exeter throughout his tenure at the
cathedral, including one in 1822, ‘under the patronage of the Devon Glee Club and the Devon and Exeter
Harmonic Society’. Nigel Browne, ‘Organs, Organ-Builders and Organists in Nineteenth-Century Devon’. PhD
dissertation, University of Exeter, 2005, 206.
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strict in letting out his choristers, who never exceeded six at any meeting after his election to the
society.
Wesley took the chair several times in the absence of Sir John Rogers; possibly, the chair
for the evening chose the music to be sung at ‘his’ meeting, and presumably it was chosen in
advance to give the choristers the chance to learn their notes. At the seventeen meetings that he
attended, Wesley sang countertenor nine times, bass six times and tenor twice, and took the chair
five times. Wesley’s choices of music are interesting; assuming they reflect his personal
preferences, his favourite madrigal composer was Dowland, whose madrigal ‘Awake, Sweet
Love’ was selected for four of his five presidencies, followed by Morley’s ‘Now Is the Month of
Maying’, which was sung at three. Wesley selected his father’s ‘O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie’ only
once, although it had been an established favourite of the DMS, first appearing at the second
meeting in February 1825, and being sung at a further twenty-five meetings.
Another 19th-century piece that the society favoured was a setting of the ‘Tantum Ergo’
by Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856), who will be discussed in Chapter 6. This is worthy of
singular mention because the DMS seem to have been the first musicians in England to sing any
published music by Pearsall. Pearsall, who figured large—but significantly later—in the English
19th-century madrigal revival movement, left his native Bristol in 1825 to pursue a new artistic
life on the continent. In February 1831, the DMS sang three of his works that had recently been
published by Schott in Mainz, the ‘Tantum Ergo’, Graduale pro Festo, and Responsorium, all of them
written for 4 voices, SATB. How they came to be sung at that February meeting in Exeter
remains unclear. Sir John Rogers was absent that evening and James Paddon took his place;
presumably Paddon selected Pearsall’s new works, but how he came by them has no obvious
answer. Only the ‘Tantum Ergo’ seems to have met with the society’s approbation: it was sung at
a further six meetings, selected on one occasion by Wesley when he was acting president.
The DMS survived long enough for some of the choristers who had sung at its earliest
meetings to grow up and become adult members. For that reason alone it might have been
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hoped that the future of the society was assured, but the enthusiasm of the members for turning
out on a monthly basis seems to have dwindled, and more probably because of a case of growing
professional jealousy, discussed below, directed by Wesley at Kellow Pye, the musical director of
Rogers’s other musical society, the Devon Glee Club.
Although the last meeting of the DMS is recorded in the minutes as 5 January 1839, the
actual last meeting of the DMS was reported in the Exeter Flying Post on 7 March 1839; it detailed
that the DMS had held its last gathering of the season on Saturday 2 March, the habitual evening
following the meeting of the Devon Glee Club. The March meeting, and presumably the
preceding one in February, obviously escaped the minute book, or were possibly not worth
recording. It is perfectly clear from the newspaper report that, despite Rogers’s veiled words,
Wesley was refusing to participate in the activities of the glee club, and that Kellow Pye was
suffering because of Wesley’s behaviour:
DEVON GLEE CLUB—This delightful society concluded its season on Friday the last
instant, Sir John L Rogers, Bart, was in the Chair. . . The selection of the glees was of the
first order, and the manner of their performance afforded abundant evidence of the
attention and care with which they had been prepared by the musical members. The
President made this the subject of an elegant and well deserved compliment, in
proposing the health of Mr Pye, observing to the effect that this society had been
instituted for the promotion and enjoyment of an art which might well be called divine,
by collecting its true admirers in social communion, into which every professor and
every amateur, would be cordially received; with these views he could not regret that
feelings of professional rivalry, or any other cause, should keep aloof from the society
gentlemen who might be at once its ornament and support—this reflection only added
to the need of thanks due to their present musical director, who through good report
and ill report, and in opposition to every species of difficulty, had at all times rendered
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his most cordial and most liberal aid, and had succeeded in laying before the society a
style of selection and performance long unknown within their walls….
The Devon Madrigal Society held its last meeting for the season on the
following evening. We remember this society in the its flourishing days, and it is with
regret we observed a thin attendance, and we are sorry to add a not very perfect
performance; we sincerely hope another season will witness some successful efforts of
the members to restore this society, which so closely combines utility and enjoyment, to
its pristine vigour; and we trust the remarks of the President of the Glee Club, which are
equally applicable to the Madrigal Society, will not be lost upon those who desire to see
the promotion of so pure and enjoyment as that within the scope of these harmonious
meetings.10
How Wesley’s dislike of Pye manifest itself is not certain; Wesley’s most recent biographer, Peter
Horton, demonstrates that although relations between Wesley and Pye were cordial on the
surface, Wesley ‘invariably viewed professional colleagues with suspicion and was always ready to
believe that their actions were determined by ulterior motives—a trait which worsened as he got
older. Whether Pye, who had offered the hand of friendship by proposing him for membership
of the [Devon] Madrigal Society, gave rise to such feelings of paranoia is not clear…’11 Clearly
there was a problem between Wesley and Pye. In an incident the following year, in October
1840, Horton recounts how Wesley had assaulted two of his choristers, reprimanding them for
rehearsing music that they were preparing in the cathedral singing school to sing under Pye’s
direction at a forthcoming meeting of the Devon Glee Club.
A logical conclusion about the demise of the DMS, so reliant on the support of
musicians from the cathedral, is that it collapsed amidst the fracas between Wesley and Pye. The
membership of the Devon Glee Club, unlike that of the DMS, was not entirely reliant on the
10 EFP, 7 March 1839.
11 Peter Horton, Samuel Sebastian Wesley: a Life (Oxford, 2004), 122.
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cathedral’s lay vicars, and it continued into a new season: however, it was announced in the
Exeter Flying Post on 31 October 1839 that the habitual Saturday evening meeting of the DMS
would follow that of the Devon Glee Club the night before. It seems that the Saturday meeting
may not have taken place at all—subsequent announcements for the meetings of the Devon
Glee Club never again mentioned the DMS. Confirmation that the DMS had truly disbanded
came in an editorial in the Exeter Flying Post on 12 November 1840:
Why are the good old madrigal meetings discontinued? Is it possible that Exeter no
longer furnishes musical capability in sufficient quantity for their support? Where are all
the professionals—where are all the amateurs who formerly crowded the soirées of
Morley, Gibbons, Benet and Wilze? [sic] Surely this apathy cannot continue. The Devon
Madrigal Society was the first of the kind established in the Provinces; and, for the
honour of the county, we hope the musical world of Exeter will not allow it to be the
first to perish.
Alas, the musical world of Exeter did indeed allow the DMS to perish. Wesley left Exeter in the
spring of 1842, but there does not seem to have been any motion to rekindle madrigal singing in
the wake of his departure. The Devon Glee Club continued for another season until February
1843. Beyond then, no further reports or announcements of meetings can be found. An
unfortunate death occurred after the meeting on 3 February 1843, when Thomas Ware, a lay
vicar from the cathedral returning home to Okehampton after the evening meeting, slipped into
a river and drowned.12 An announcement to postpone the March meeting was made on 25
February,13 and it seems probable that the club was thereafter wound up, coinciding with the
withdrawal of Sir John Rogers from public life at around this time.
12 ‘Devonshire—Melancholy Occurrence’, Cornwall Royal Gazette, Falmouth Packet and Plymouth Journal, 10 February
1843.
13 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 25 February 1843.
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Its existence was relatively brief, but the DMS marks an extraordinary episode reflecting
Rogers’s vision and enthusiasm; his energy and influence pushed forward the revival of interest
in early music at a pivotal moment in time. Rogers’s work, however, only achieved fuller
recognition beyond London and Exeter thanks to the work of a madrigal society acolyte whose
own influence burned Rogers’s brand onto another madrigal society, that of Bristol.
III. The Bristol Background
Bristol, the principal city of the west of England, was a place where musical activity in the early
years of the 19th century was mostly domestic or religious. The cathedral supported a music
foundation of organists, choristers and lay clerks, and the many city churches provided a living
for other musicians. However, a critic of the city, who wisely chose to remain anonymous,
complained in the Monthly Magazine of 1799: ‘Perhaps there is no place in England where public
and social amusements are so little attended to as here. From this circumstance, the inhabitants
have been stigmatized with a want of taste, and described as the sordid devotees of Pluto.’14
Bristol’s principal newspapers of the early 1800s, in particular Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal
and the Bristol Mercury, confirm that concert life in the city was limited to a small series of
subscription concerts and a handful of ‘benefits’ for the principal hospital, the Bristol Infirmary.
Fashionable society apparently no longer attended the recitals and concerts of chamber music
that had been the mainstay of both domestic and public life in Bristol during 18th century.
Towards the end of 1811, the old Assembly Rooms in Prince Street—opened in the
centre of the city in 1754—underwent considerable internal alteration and were reopened the
following year under the name of the Regency Theatre. However, the first season of concerts
was a failure with poor attendance and by 1813, ‘it was noticed in the newspapers that the theatre
had sunk to giving entertainments on the musical glasses.’ 15
14 The Monthly Magazine or British Register, 1 June 1799.
15 John Latimer, Annals of Bristol In the Nineteenth Century (Bristol, 1887), 48.
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Others tried and failed to stimulate musical life in the city: subscription concerts had
once attracted keen audiences, but by the early 19th century their popularity had all but gone.
Andrew Ashe, for example, a celebrated Irish flute-player, had become director of the Bath
Subscription Concerts in 1810. With successes in Bath behind him, he organised a series of
concerts at the Assembly Rooms in Prince Street in the winter of 1820/21. However, he faced
competition from another series organised by Mr Greethead in Bath that same season. As a
result, Ashe’s own concert series suffered. Early the next year, Ashe announced another series of
subscription concerts, but there were complaints about the choice of programme, and the series
was cancelled due to insufficient patronage. Disappointed, Ashe decided to depart for Dublin,
but not before giving one final concert at the Theatre Royal on the 7th February 1822. The
concert received a very generous notice in Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, but the correspondent also
wrote: ‘Mr Ashe, having bid us adieu we must heartily wish him every success in his future
progress through life, and sincerely hope Thursday’s profits may prove some slight remuneration
for his losses in this city. But are we never again to be delighted with sweet sounds? Is Bristol
really to be without her entertainments? We trust not; if not for the pleasure, for the honour of
our city.’16
Undoubtedly, in the 1820s and early 1830s, Bristol was a less attractive place for musical
entertainment than it had been before. The city’s population was rapidly increasing, but its means
of accommodating it were not. Between 1801 and 1830, Bristol’s population was considerably
enlarged. This increase of population was slightly below the national average—from 61,000 in
1801, to 104,000 by 1832—but it still reflected an important rise of 42%.17 Questions arise as to
how Bristol coped with this explosion: how and where the city housed its new inhabitants; what
sort of infrastructure existed for provision for the poor? Unfortunately, Bristol did not have
16 FFBJ, 10 February 1822. 17 Figures sourced from national censuses. I am very grateful to Dr Alan Jocelyn at the University of the West of
England for this information.
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answers. Little new building had occurred in the first few decades of the 19th century, except in
Clifton, where the new merchants’ houses were built away from the city centre; thus the
increased population was squashed into and around the old mediaeval city.
The increasing population is also reflected in the fact that by 1817, two years after the
end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain had demobilised 300,000 soldiers and sailors, all without any
pension or gratuity for their services, whilst the post-war government struggled with an
enormous national debt of £861,000,000. By 1830, the result of this, together with a succession
of poor harvests, was a national state of economic distress, resulting in the worst depression of
the 19th century. The depression was particularly widespread in the south and west of England,
and Bristol had a dense and pauperised population that lived in and around the city centre. To
make matters worse, the city centre’s floating harbour, created in 1809, had become a huge
cesspool. Despite the brilliance of the engineering, which allowed ships to remain afloat at low
tide, the natural removal of effluent from the city had ceased, and at the height of a cholera
epidemic in 1832, 600 people died.
However, it was not be a permanent state of affairs, and the early 1830s saw both a
cultural and financial revival. Concerts began to be advertised more regularly in the newspapers:
churches in Clifton held benefit concerts; balls were held weekly at the Assembly Rooms; the
Theatre Royal had a constant stream of visiting acts and travelling theatre troupes; in 1835 the
first season of the Bristol and Clifton Philharmonic Society was announced in the press,18 and
just two years later, in 1837, the Bristol Madrigal Society would be formed.
As will be seen later in this chapter, the Bristol Madrigal Society was created by a group
of like-minded men, whose had previously sung together in other Bristolian groups that
stemmed directly from the Bristol Catch Club, founded in 1774 (see Appendix 1). The club’s
history is recorded in notes written by the eminent Bristol surgeon, Richard Smith, junior (1772–
1843), into the opening pages of the first of a set of five volumes containing twenty editions of
18 FFBJ, 23 December 1835.
136
Warren’s Collection; four of them (one having been unaccountably lost) are now in Bristol Central
Library.19
In his notes, Smith tells us that his father had joined the Bristol Catch Club in 1785.
Further, he writes that other members included four clerics; two attorneys-at-law; a merchant; a
silk mercer; Colonel Andrewes of the Somerset Militia; the organist, director, composer and
publisher Robert Broderip;20 and the cathedral organist, Rice Wasbrough.
When Smith joined the club in 1796, several of his father’s contemporaries were still
members, and they were joined by other members of the Wasbrough family and also a customs
officer; James Hillhouse, Esq, a shipbuilder; a doctor; an attorney-at-law; Dunbar, ‘a private
gentleman’ and Applewaite, ‘a West Indian’.21 These men, who demonstrate a diversity of
professions, brought together by music making, were able to benefit from the social, and
potential business opportunities afforded by these clubs and societies; a point which is as
important a consideration as their musical purpose. Robins quotes from the preface to John
Arnold’s collection of partsongs, catches, canons and glees, The Essex Harmony of 1769, making
the point that the cultivation of singing in the provinces served a social purpose:
It would not only prevent the many Accidents, Mischiefs, and other bad consequences,
generally attending those Diversions of Heroism, Cudgeling, Football Playin[g] etc. but
would be a means of encouraging the practice of one of the greatest of Sciences. What
can be more agreeable or commendable for Country Choirs, than to meet [ . . . ] and
19 Bristol Central Library, bl 21952. 20 Robert Broderip (ca1758–1808) was brother of Francis Fane Broderip of the London publishing houses,
Longman and Broderip, and Broderip and Wilkinson. He was appointed organist of the Mayor’s Chapel in Bristol in
1780. In 1795 he published A Collection of Duets, Rotas, Canons, Catches & Glees Selected for, and Most Respectfully Inscribed
to, the Members of the Bristol Catch Club, and the Cecilian Society. By the Editor [Robert Broderip].
21 Graham Hooper, ‘A Survey of Music in Bristol with Special Reference to the Eighteenth Century’, M.A.
dissertation (University of Bristol, 1963), 200–205. ‘Applewaite’ was most likely Edward Applewhaite, born into a
Barbadian plantation-owning family. His memorial tablet in Bristol Cathedral records that he was a barrister and
died in Bristol in 1803 at the age of 34.
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thereby entertain themselves and Friends, with such harmonious and inoffensive Mirth;
which may not only introduce Peace and Tranquility in a Neighbourhood, but the
Practiceing of Part-Songs and Catches, which will be a means of greatly improving
several Country Choirs in their Knowledge of Musick. 22
The Bristol Catch Club survived into the early 19th century.23 In 1804 Richard Broderip issued a
second Collection of Duets, Rotas, Canons, Catches and Glees, dedicated to ‘Members of the Catch
Club and the Cecilian and Amphion Societies’. Little is known about these latter two societies,
and how, or when, the Bristol Catch Club came to an end is not recorded, but no newspaper
references to it appear after 1810.
According to Smith’s account, there was a subsequent twenty-two year break, consistent
with the decrease in other musical activity in Bristol. He then goes on to describe the founding
of a new glee club, the St Austin’s Glee Society, which met at his home, and he records the first
and subsequent members of the society:
The St Austin’s Glee Society began at my house, 38 Park Street on the 22nd of Sept.
1832. Present, Austin Phillips played the piano, Robert Nokes Williams, Joseph Wilcox
of the Cathedral, Edward Gee, surgeon. In October, George Edwards at the Music
Warehouse, Upper Arcade. William Lye Seagram joined, now a surgeon at Warminster.
William Turner, a visitor. 10th November, Alfred Bleeck, whom God preserve, joined.
December, William Goldyer, Hotwells, joined. May 1833, Charles Turner was engaged.
Stephen Pratton, a visitor. James England joined in January 1833. George Turner, visitor.
22 Robins, 89. 23 The Bristol Catch Club also seems to have been ‘available’ for other events. Reference to them appears in Bonner
and Middleton’s Bristol Journal of 3 June 1786 for an evening of entertainment advertised at the Old Trout Tavern in
Cherry Lane, off Stokes Croft when ‘Comus’ Court’ would be held on 6 June. It stated that ‘the Gentlemen of the
original Catch-Club, Castle Ditch, have generously offered their kind Assistance for that Night only’. In 1795, they
appeared at the Theatre Royal in King Street, giving a programme of music between a performance of King Lear and
a farce called The Positive Man. Also, a Ladies’ Night concert was given on 29 March 1810. Hooper, 206.
138
Thomas Browne, Schoolmaster at Brislington. Thomas Muller Evans, attorney, joined.
Charles J. Fripp, Architect, joined. The last meeting was 13th of March 1834, the 50th
time, when to be rid of a troublesome member the society was dissolved—but it soon
rose again from its ashes and the new Club was therefore called the Phoenix Glee
Society. The first meeting was at my house the 20th of March 1834 – it was formed by
Richard Smith, Alfred Bleeck, J. Wilcox, G Edwards, James England, WL Seagram.
Master William Pratten was made honorary member, also CJ Fripp. PHS Marsh joined—
a teacher of music, William Strong, Book Seller. 1835 Stephen Pratten—teacher of music
joined. The last meeting was the 19th of July 1838—when will the next be?
R. S. 25th December 1842
It seems that the Glee Society continued to sing from Warren’s Collection, as the inscription of
presentation of the volumes from Richard Smith to Alfred Bleeck—on Bleeck’s birthday, 25
December 1842—informs Bleeck that he may keep them on condition that he sing certain of the
catches nominated in the volumes, and to drink to the memory of his old friend, Richard Smith.
Smith went on to stipulate ‘that the said worthy camarado, Alfred Bleeck, Esqr, shall not part
with them, so long as he is able to bear a bob in a catch, glee or madrigal.’
Most of the men in Smith’s Phoenix Glee Society were among the earliest members of
the Bristol Madrigal Society, founded after Edward Taylor came to Bristol in January 1837.
IV. The Founding of the Bristol Madrigal Society
The profusion of madrigal societies in the late 1830s is due almost without exception to Taylor,
who is discussed in some detail in Chapter 5. Taylor was a musical journalist and singer, erstwhile
member of the Madrigal Society, and, by 1837, a seasoned touring lecturer. Wherever he
lectured, he enlisted the help of local singers to illustrate his musical examples. His lectures had
enjoyed particular success in London because they reflected a growing interest in the study and
revival of old music.
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The circumstances of Taylor’s arrival in Bristol in January 1837 were recalled in a letter
from George Powell, a sometime manager of the Bristol Mercury and Post, sent to Dan Rootham,
conductor of the Bristol Madrigal Society, on 13 January 1885:
So far as memory serves me touching the matter I named to you when speaking of the
origin of the Madrigal Society, the facts were as follows. Near the close of 1836, I
received a letter from a friend in London informing me that Mr Edward Taylor, a
musical gentleman of eminence (I do not think that he was at that time Gresham
Professor), was endeavouring to awake an interest in English Chamber Harmony and
that he purposed lecturing in Bristol on the subject.
The letter asked me if I would send the names of a few citizens who would be
likely to lend a helping hand to such an object; this I did. Shortly afterwards Mr Taylor
came to Bristol and brought a letter from Mr Henry Phillips stating that the Lectures
were of much interest and social value and asking me if I would give good notices of
them in the Mercury and endeavour to induce the other Bristol papers to do the same.
At that time, I had not the pleasure of any personal acquaintance with Mr Phillips but he
said he wrote to me as being known to some Bristol families. I readily complied with his
request.
I attended and reported the Lectures. They were illustrated musically and a
selection of Madrigals sung by Miss McMahan, Mrs Hardwick, Mr Wilcox, Mr George
Turner, Mr James England, Mr Austin Phillips and the Lecturer himself. I well
remember the solemn dignity with which Mr Taylor pleaded the cause of the Madrigal,
the only description, he contended, of genuine English Music. About that time, Mr
Bleeck . . . was in the habit of having glee parties at his residence . . . I believe that the
formation of the Madrigal Society grew out of Mr Edward Taylor’s lectures and Mr
Bleeck’s Glee parties. I do not recall any positive personal evidence of that fact, but it
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has always been a belief with me and I fancy that I have said so much to Mr Bleeck
himself.24
Henry Phillips (1801–1876), referred to by Powell, was a well-established opera and oratorio
singer in London. Bristolian by birth, he had been the protégé of the conductor Sir George Smart,
who himself had made several connections with Bristol’s music since the 1820s.25 We do not
know what Henry Phillips’s association was with Taylor, but it would indicate that he had both
knowledge of the content of the paper with which Taylor was touring, and of Taylor himself.
On Saturday 24 December 1836 the Bristol Mercury announced that Edward Taylor would
imminently visit the Bristol Institution to deliver his course of English vocal-harmony lectures,
promising that the subject would be very attractive ‘to the lovers of English music, and to all that
are interested in British art.’ The newspaper boasted that Taylor had been ‘called on to deliver
this course in London no less than five times, and to increased audiences.’ It claimed that the
origins of the madrigal would be traced from its roots in Italy, through Flanders, and on to its
flowering in Elizabethan England, and from where it would eventually evolve into the form
claimed by the English as ‘exclusively national’: the glee. The sextet of singers, supplemented by
Taylor, ‘whose powers as a bass-singer are well known in the musical world’, would provide
examples of music throughout the course of the lectures. Of the six singers employed at Bristol
by Taylor, three of them, George Turner, Mr (Joseph) Wilcox and Austin Phillips were lay clerks
in the cathedral choir;26 the fourth singer, James England, may have been a lay clerk, although if
24 Letter preserved in the Bristol Madrigal Society archive, Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library,
University of Bristol, DM2114/7/2/1/folio 6.
25 Sir George Smart (1776–1867) conducted concerts in aid of the Bristol Infirmary in 1814 and 1821, and in 1832
he organised a series of subscription concerts at the Theatre Royal in King Street. 26 Corroborated with a list of lay clerks of Bristol Cathedral held in the Bristol Record Office. The list itself is by
another lay clerk, E. T. Morgan, compiled in 1912 from existing Cathedral records. The lay clerks are listed by date
of employment by the Cathedral. However, there is a noticeable gap in the records between 1829-1836, possibly due
to loss of some records in the riots of 1831, and fires later in the 19th century. Bristol Record Office,
DC/A/7/14/1.
141
he were employed between 1829 and 1836, a period unaccounted for at Bristol Cathedral, then it
can only be conjecture.27 The two ladies, Mrs Hardwick, née Josephine Phillips, who was the
sister of the previously mentioned Austin, and Miss McMahon, were famous for their concerts of
popular ballads and songs at Bristol’s several assembly rooms and theatres.28 Although his singers
were few, Taylor asserted that a madrigal was composed as much for its choral effect as for any
other considerations of musicality, and that the greatest effect could only be achieved if it were
sung with many voices to a part. This was not a unique idea: in an account of an evening spent at
the Madrigal Society in 1837, John Hullah wrote, ‘ . . . to a chorus of Handel, or a madrigal of
Gibbons, perfect justice could only be done by a body of singers that would fill St Paul’s, or
cover Salisbury Plain.’ 29
Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal of Saturday 31 December 1836 announced Taylor’s arrival:
‘Bristol Institution. On Thursday, January 5th, 1837, at Two o’clock, Mr EDWARD TAYLOR, of
London, will commence at the Bristol Institution, Park Street, a course of four Lectures on
ENGLISH VOCAL HARMONY, with numerous Illustrations. An editorial puff on the same page,
clarified what the attendees might expect to hear:
In the approaching course, (to commence next Thursday) Mr Edward Taylor will give a
history of madrigal and glee singing. The subject has never been treated connectedly by
any of our musical historians, and there is no work from which the matter of the lectures
can be derived. The illustrations extend, in an almost unbroken series, from the middle
of the sixteenth century to the present time; and the performance of these enables the
lecturer to point out the varied graces, or it may be the defects, of the respective 27 His name does appear in the Cathedral records of 1825 on a certificate of apprenticeship: ‘I hereby certify that Ed.
Turner [a chorister] was bound apprentice to James England to learn his business of piano forte tuner and repairer
for 6 years by indenture. 1 June 1825. Chas. Hodges.’ Bristol Record Office, DC/A/11/1/1.
28 ‘Concert Room, Royal Hotel, Clifton. Miss A McMahon has the honour of announcing to the Nobility and
Gentry of Clifton and Bristol, that her CONCERT will take place on THURSDAY EVENING, the 19th of January,
1837.’ FFBJ, 24 December 1836.
29 [Hullah], 465–469.
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compositions. Besides several of our chief provincial towns, the course has been given in
five of the metropolitan Institutions, and always to crowded audiences. The subject, in
Mr Taylor’s manner of treating it, has uniformly proved attractive and entertaining, and
when the nature of the course is fully known among us, there is no room to doubt but
that it will be highly popular here as it has been on all other places, through its novelty
and its sources of interest and information.30
The Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts was founded in
1822, as was the Bristol Literary and Philosophical Society under its wing, by a group of men,
many of them clergymen. We know that the Bristol Institution and Society were very broad in
their combined interests, hosting an annual art exhibition, encouraging scientific research, and
founding a museum—in whose collection of fossils Charles Darwin took an interest in the
1850s31—and providing historical artefacts for researchers of antiquity.32 Taking into
consideration the advertisements for forthcoming lectures and talks, to be found most
particularly in the Bristol Mercury and Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, the Bristol Institution was the
most likely, perhaps the only place in Bristol where Taylor’s lectures would be given.33
Taylor appeared to sell-out audiences at the Bristol Institution on Park St on eight
separate occasions, between 5 and 17 January 1837, giving four lectures—one day for each of
them—with a repeat performance on the day following. According to the printed syllabus, the
30 FFBJ, 31 December 1836.
31 Darwin corresponded with the curator of the museum of the Bristol Institution, Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859).
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that ‘In 1831 Stutchbury became curator at the Bristol Institution,
where he published significant papers on conchology and palaeontology and made the museum one of the best in
Europe.’ D. F. Branagan, ‘Stutchbury, Samuel (1798–1859)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)
<www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38030> accessed July 2012. 32 ‘Many sculptures extant in public and private collections, especially those splendid casts from the island of Egina,
now in the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Institution, represent several archers drawing the bowstring.’ George
Agar Hansard, The Book of Archery (London, 1840), 428. 33 Any of the advertisements for public lectures in Bristol to be found in either of these newspapers clearly signal the
Bristol Institution as the prime venue.
143
musical illustrations included works by composers from Fayrfax, Palestrina, Weelkes and Purcell
to William Horsley and Henry Bishop. It was in the content of the second lecture that Taylor’s
message struck home in Bristol:
Biographical and critical notices of the most eminent Composers of that time [the reign
of Elizabeth I]—Gibbons, Wilbye, Morley and Weelkes—their consummate excellence
in the construction of Vocal part Music—the study and practice of their works
recommended—34
This last part, ‘the study and practice of their works recommended’, was taken as a signal of
encouragement by a group of amateur and professional musicians in Bristol, who were enthused
by Taylor’s words and musical examples. With Taylor’s guidance, they decided to form a singing
group in Bristol, dedicated to the performance of madrigals. There is no specific reference in the
minutes as to whether any discussion took place in the decision not to include women’s voices,
but the formation of the new madrigal society at Bristol, modelled on the example of the
London and Devon societies, would suggest that boys’ voices were preferred for the experiment.
The first entry in the minute book of the BMS provides a clear précis of the events that
followed second Taylor’s lecture:
On the 14th January 1837 some Gentlemen who were very desirous to promote
Madrigal singing in this City, met at Mr Austin Phillips’, to consider of the practicability
of forming a society for that purpose.
Mr Edward Taylor of London was present, who imparted much information on the
subject.
It was admitted that a Madrigal Society could be established in Bristol . . .
34 From Taylor’s Prospectus of a Course of Four Lectures on Vocal Harmony. A copy exists in the archive of the Bristol
Madrigal Society: ‘Prospectus and syllabus of lectures on vocal harmony by Edward Taylor’, BMS Archive, Special
Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol, DM2114/7/2/1/folio 4.
144
It was Resolved:
That the following named gentlemen be appointed to wait upon Mr Corfe [the organist
of Bristol Cathedral], to request he will allow his name to put upon the provisional
Committee:
Mr Phillips, Mr Turner, Mr Salter
It was Resolved:
That the following gentlemen who have signified their intention of joining the society be
considered Members, from this day:
Mr Bleeck, Mr Corfe, Mr Coles, Mr Geo Barrett, Mr Jnr[ ?] Barrett,
Mr Geo Edwards, Mr T Edwards, Mr Harwood, Mr Hardwick, Mr F Jones, Mr
Kingdon, Mr Machin, Mr TB Miller, Mr T Miller, Mr A Phillips, Mr RL Pearsall, Mr CM
Powell, Mr E Rankin, Mr TW Rankin, Mr Trimnell, Mr Geo Turner, Mr Salter, Mr
Willcox, Mr Cowley’
February 24 1837
The twenty-two men who were assembled at Alfred Bleeck’s house on 28 January 1837, having
signified their intention of joining the new Bristol Madrigal Society, were as diverse in their
trades and occupations as the members of the original Madrigal Society in London. Within the
list of intended members, above, there are only five gaps where it has not been possible to
identify who they were—there are, for example, seven ‘F Jones’ in Mathews’s Directory; not
surprising in a city so close to Wales. The seventeen known members, however, encompass an
interesting cross-section of trades and backgrounds. As Bristol was a port, it seems only natural
to find a wine and spirit importer in their number and there are tradesmen who could be found
145
in any town: saddler, saddle-tree maker,35 bookseller and lawyer. The extraordinary man in their
midst was the Bristolian barrister Pearsall. As already stated, Pearsall had left for Germany in
1825, in pursuit of a new life of musical study, composition and research. The death of his
mother in 1836 caused Pearsall to return to Bristol to tie up the affairs of her estate, and his
extended stay coincided with Taylor’s lectures.
There are two possibilities for John Barrett. A John Barrett is recorded as having entered
the cathedral choir as a lay clerk in 1796 and he remained there until his death in 1842. His son,
John Barrett, junior, sang as a chorister in the cathedral from 1815–1823.36 Thus, John Barrett is,
presumably, either the son of or brother to the BMS member. He is not listed with a profession
in Mathews’s Directory for 1837.37 George Edwards had already appeared twice before, once as a
member of St Austin’s Glee Society, which he joined in October 1832, and then as a founding
member of the new Phoenix Glee Society in 1834. His address is given in Mathews’s 1837 as the
Music Warehouse, 31 Upper Arcade – and similarly by Richard Smith in his account (although
Smith appears to have compiled his history in 1842 for presentation of the volumes to Alfred
Bleeck). Whether Thomas and George Edwards are related is not clear. The fact that they are
both piano teachers and founding members of the BMS may be sheer coincidence. Mr Hardwick
is possibly the ‘J.’ Hardwick listed in the Directory – although he is the only Hardwick in the book.
His premises were at 7 Corn St, where he is listed as an English and Foreign Bookseller,
Printseller, Stationer and Binder; he might possibly have been the husband of Mrs Hardwick, the
singer.
35 A saddle-tree is the wooden frame around which the leather for a saddle is placed and stitched by a saddle-maker,
thus forming the foundation of the saddle. 36 Receipts from the cathedral archive, now held at Bristol Record Office, show that John Barrett, junior, received
£27 10s from the cathedral as his ‘augmentation’ – or salary – for services as a chorister between 21 December 1815
to 3 April 1823. It is signed by him and witnessed by his father, John Barrett, senior. Bristol Record Office,
DC/A/11/1/1. 37 George Barrett was paid £19 10s for his services to the cathedral as a chorister between 1823 and 1830. Bristol
Record Office, DC/A/11/1/1.
146
Whether any light will be shed on the remaining Messrs. Coles, Harwood, Miller and
Salter remains to be seen, but the other members mentioned are confirmed. They form a
truly broad spectrum from a lawyer, to a wine merchant, a saddler, a saddle-tree maker, a
surgeon, two gentlemen and a gentleman-composer.
Both Joseph Wilcox and Austin Phillips had made previous appearances in the St
Austin’s Glee Society, from the society’s inception in 1832, although of the two of them,
only Joseph Wilcox is listed as a member of its subsequent re-invention, the Phoenix Glee
Society. Richard Smith’s note concerning the transition from St Austin’s to The Phoenix
Glee Society tantalisingly refers to the need ‘to be rid of a troublesome member.’ It might
well have been Austin Phillips: Mathews’s 1836 directory describes him as ‘Organist of St
Michael’s’, but a previous owner of the copy held at Bristol Central Library has written,
indelibly, ‘dismissed’ beside it.38
Phillips appears to have emigrated (or perhaps fled) from Bristol to New York on
the S. S. Great Western in September 1838—suggested by the publication of a work
composed by Phillips, ‘Farewell Awhile, My Native Isle’, a song written by John Wilson, ‘on
board the Great Western Steam Ship on her Voyage from Bristol to New York’.39
It appears to have been perfectly commonplace—and logical, really—that in many, if
not all, provincial cathedral cities, members of the cathedral choir, and often the organist,
were of some importance to their local musical societies and concerts. Robins points clearly
to instances of this, particularly in connection with catch clubs, in several British cities in the
late 18th century. Norwich Cathedral lay clerks founded Norwich’s Harmonic Society, while
38 The marked copy of Mathews's Directory for 1836 is uncatalogued, and kept on the open-shelf of the Reference
Library, Local Open Access, Bristol Central Library.
39 From 1841 onwards, Austin Phillips appears as a composer of music for songs published by Atwill of New York;
throughout the 1840s he continued writing and publishing songs for the American market. His last known work,
was published in 1847, ‘Buena Vista’, a song of the Mexican-American War of 1846. He died in New York on 8
April 1851.
147
at Salisbury, the four main singers in the catch club were all cathedral songmen, and the
clubs at Lichfield and Chichester were equally well supported by cathedral musicians.40
The archive of the BMS is now deposited on loan at the University of Bristol, and
comprises minute books, part books, scrap books, photographs, programmes and
recordings, all collected in ten boxes, twenty-eight volumes and five bundles; it provides an
exceptionally rich and important source for musicologists and historians alike. The first rules
of the BMS are no longer with the minutes; where a printed copy had once been pasted a
hand-written note now deplores their removal. Also missing is a letter written in 1837 by Sir
John Rogers, to whom the committee had appealed for advice in the establishment and
running of the BMS. Taylor undoubtedly knew Rogers well, and Taylor’s promotion of the
Madrigal Society in his lectures and his subsequent encouragement to the newly formed
committee of the BMS to approach Rogers for advice stands as testament to the high regard
in which Taylor held him.
The proceedings of the BMS were very similar to those of the Madrigal Society. It is
regrettable not to be able to consult Rogers’s views of how he recommended a madrigal
society should be successfully conducted, but the minutes of the DMS in 1837 confirm a
contented, smooth-running organisation, so it is reasonable to conjecture that Rogers
probably suggested a model based on his own, which by then had proved successful in both
London and Devon.
A president was elected—the Bristol surgeon Alfred Bleeck; a Director (of music)
appointed (who would also provide the boys)—J. D. Corfe; two vice-presidents and a
secretary, electable on an annual basis; these formed the committee of the new society.
Table 4.2, below, shows the initial membership, whose parallels with that of the
DMS are striking. Eight of the founding members were members of the cathedral choir,
including the organist, John Davis Corfe, who was also requested to provide the service of
40 Robins, 93.
148
the boys from the cathedral choir. Unlike the glee club at Exeter, the boys’ voices had not
been used in the amateur glee societies at Bristol.41
Table 4.2: Members of the Bristol Madrigal Society Present at the
First Singing Meeting, Wednesday 1 March 1837
Name Profession Lay Clerk
Bleeck, Alfred Surgeon
Corfe, John Davis Professor of music and organist Yes
Barrett, John Pianoforte seller and tuner
Coles Yes
Edwards, George Teacher of the pianoforte Yes
Edwards, Thomas Teacher of the pianoforte Yes
Harwood
Hardwick, John English and foreign bookseller
Jones, F.
Kingdon, John Sadler
Miller, Thomas B. Gent
Miller, T.
Phillips, Austin Singing teacher and organist Yes
Pearsall, Robert L. Gent
Powell, Charles M Gent
Rankin, Edward Solicitor
Rankin, Thomas W. Wine importer and dealer
Salter Yes
Trimnell, Thomas Saddle-tree maker Yes
Turner, George Teacher of the pianoforte Yes
Willcox Yes
The first set of rules that exist for the BMS were drawn up in 1858, revising those of 1837.
It is not clear how old was the ninth clause of these, but it allowed something never
41 For a broader account of musical activity in early 19th-century Bristol see: James Hobson, ‘Bristol and the
Foundation of its Madrigal Society’, and Stephen Banfield, ‘They Came, They Stayed and They Went: Musicians and
Bristol in the Nineteenth Century’; both in M. J. Crossley Evans (ed.), ‘A Grand City: Life, Movement and Work’: Bristol
in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Essays in Honour of Gerard Leighton, F.S.A. (Bristol and Gloucestershire
Archaeological Society: Bristol, 2010).
149
admitted in either Devon or London: that members each subscribe two guineas annually,
which was to be paid back to members for their attendance at meetings—two shillings per
meeting to ordinary members, and four shillings ‘if he belong to the music profession.’42
At the first singing meeting of the BMS on Wednesday 1 March 1837, there were
seven boys, four altos, eight tenors and seven basses. The first few meetings were held a the
home of Alfred Bleeck, although not long afterwards, meeting places changed for the first
few years until the society settled in a room at the Montague Inn, a large Bristol hostelry,
where the BMS continued to meet well into the 20th century.
The membership of the BMS increased quickly, and by 1839 it had reached thirty-six.
Meetings were held on the second and fourth Wednesdays every month, except July, when
there was no meeting. There was only one meeting, on the second Wednesday of the
month, in May, June, August and September.
Music was at first copied by hand into individual part books, ‘A’ and ‘B’; some of
these books, ‘B’, and the later ‘C’, introduced in 1848, remain in the archive of the BMS.43
They reflect a similar diet to the madrigals sung at meetings of the DMS and the Madrigal
Society, although religious works were less common in the programmes of the BMS than
those of the Madrigal Society, and even at the first meeting of the BMS, of the fourteen
works sung, only two were religious, highlighted in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3: List of Works Sung at the First Meeting of the Bristol Madrigal Society, 1 March 1837
All Creatures Now Are Merry Bennet
I Will Arise Creighton
Cynthia, Thy Song [Cinthia il tuo dolce canto]
Croce
42 Minute Book 2, 8 January 1845–19 December 1860. BMS Archive, Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences
Library, University of Bristol, DM2114/1/2.
43 BMS Archive, Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol, DM2114/5/3.
150
Down in a Flowery Vale [Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella]
Festa
O, That the Learned Poets Gibbons
Hosanna to the Son of David Gibbons
So Saith My Fair [Dice la mia belissima Licore]
Marenzio
April Is in My Mistress’ Face Morley
I Follow, Lo, the Footing Morley
The Waits Savile
To Shorten Winter’s Sadness Weelkes
In Pride of May Weelkes
Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers Wilbye
The preference at the BMS was for secular music over sacred, and for ‘old’ over ‘new’ music,
with the exception of the madrigals written for them by Pearsall, who, between 1837 and 1841,
composed some remarkable madrigals for the BMS, and which have remained core pieces of
their repertoire. Detailed notebooks kept by Alfred Bleeck, who was privately recording details
of the meetings of the BMS, elucidate that in the first ten years, the society had access to 202
works, contained in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ part books. No ‘A’ books survived a thorough clear-out in
1952 of moth- and worm-eaten copies of books belonging to the BMS, but Bleeck’s notes, in
conjunction with the minute books, have allowed a reconstruction of the contents of the first set
of books.44
The BMS celebrated its first anniversary with a dinner given on 10 January 1838; Sir John
Rogers and the Secretary of the Madrigal Society, Thomas Oliphant, were honorary guests, and
the whole company of members and their guests was a total of 66—it must have been an
unbalanced blend of voices, as there were only seven boys singing the top line!
Table 4.4 allows for comparison between music sung at a meeting each of the BMS, the
Madrigal Society and the DMS, all within a 4-week period in January and February 1838, and all
44 The tireless effort of a member of the Bristol Madrigal Society/Bristol Chamber Choir, Donald Gugan, has
produced excellent handlists with detailed commentary that have brought the BMS archive to life. His notes can be
accessed through the website of CHOMBEC at the Department of Music at the University of Bristol:
<http://www.bristol.ac.uk/music/CHOMBEC/archivesources.html>.
151
attended by Sir John Rogers. The programmes of music at Bristol and Exeter have been taken
from the minute books in the archives of each society, and the programme for the Madrigal
Society was reported in the Morning Post on 19 January 1838. Of the three programmes, Rogers
was most likely responsible for selecting the music sung at Exeter; but as a guest at Bristol he
probably had no say in the evening’s music; the programme for London must have been created
in collaboration with Oliphant. Great care seems to have been taken in the devising of the
programme for London, as the programme for the Anniversary Festival in 1837 shared with the
1838 dinner only Morley’s ‘Arise, awake’, and Savile’s ‘The Waits’ (the ‘signature’ ending to
proceedings at the Madrigal Society from the 1830s, adopted also by the BMS). It would suggest
that the choice of music was determined by a decision not to repeat items from the previous
year, rather than an indication of favourite works.
152
Table 4.4: Three Madrigal Societies’ Meetings in 1838
The Bristol Madrigal Society. Wednesday 10 January 1838. First Anniversary Dinner. Alfred Bleeck presiding (Hon. guests, Sir John Rogers and T Oliphant). 7 boys, 66 members and guests.
The Madrigal Society. Thursday 18 January 1838. Anniversary Festival. Sir John Rogers presiding. 20 boys, 20 altos, 30 tenors, 40 basses.
Devon Madrigal Society. Saturday 3 February 1838. Ordinary Meeting. Sir John Rogers presiding. 6 boys, 4 altos, 5 tenors, 5 basses
All Creatures Now Bennet Sing Praises (Canon in 21 Parts) Bevin Flow, O My Tears Bennet
Come, Shepherds, Follow Me Bennet Lullaby Byrd Amen (in A) Cooke
Flow, O My Tears Bennet I Will Arise Creighton I Will Arise Creighton
When All Alone [Sola soletta]
Converso We Will Rejoice Croft Come Again, Sweet Love Dowland
Cynthia, Thy Song and Chanting [Cinthia il tuo dolce canto]
Croce Within a Greenwood [In un boschetto]
Ferretti Almighty Father Evans
Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part Dowland Roundabout Her Chariot Gibbons Down in a Flowery Vale [Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella]
Festa
Down in a Flowr’y Vale [Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella]
Festa The Silver Swan Gibbons Almighty and Everlasting God Gibbons
O That the Learned Poets Gibbons When April Deck’d [Nel piu fiorit’ Aprile]
Marenzio Let Me Careless Linley
So Saith My Fair and Beautiful [Dice la mia belissima Licore]
Marenzio What Saith My Dainty Darling Morley I Love, Alas Morley
Stay, Limpid Stream [Rive e fontane]
Marenzio The Waits Savile Fair Phyllis Morley
April Is in My Mistress’ Face Morley Clori, son fido amante Stradella April Is in My Mistress Face Morley
Arise, Awake Morley O God of Bethel Tye Now Is the Month of Maying Morley
I Follow, Lo, the Footing Morley Phyllis, Go Take Thy Pleasure Weelkes Tantum Ergo Pearsall
I Saw Lovely Phillis Pearsall Draw on Sweet Night Wilbye Welcome, Sweet Pleasure Weelkes
The Waits Savile Oft Have I Vowed Wilbye
Like Two Proud Armies Weelkes
To Shorten Winter’s Sadness Weelkes
Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers Wilbye
Lady, When I Behold Wilbye
Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees Wilbye
The Lady Oriana Wilbye
153
In 1838, the three societies were very similar in their organisation and repertoire,
although each of them was at a very different point in its growth. The Madrigal Society was
approaching its centenary year, its membership was strong and its future sure; the DMS was
approaching the end of its days, witnessed by the irregularity of meetings and the dwindling
attendance at them. Just a year after the meeting of February 1838, the DMS had ceased to exist.
The BMS, however, was in its infancy and it was to go on to be one of the most popular music
societies in Bristol in the second half of the 19th century. The success of the first anniversary
dinner in 1838 led to pressure being put upon the committee of the BMS to arrange a public
concert. In this respect, preparing performances for a fee-paying audience, the BMS is set apart
from its London and Devonian counterparts.
After 1839, the society’s anniversary dinner gave way to two Visitors’ Evenings per
year—admitting a small audience into the large room at the Montague Inn, where the members
of the BMS, still seated at their tables, sang from their part books, as for an ordinary meeting.
However, demand for audience places at these evenings forced a move to a larger room,
culminating in the removal for the first annual Ladies’ Night, on 21 December 1842, to the
newly opened Victoria Rooms. The performances still continued with the members seated,
singing from part books, and for these special occasions the choir was embellished further with
the participation of choristers and lay clerks from the cathedrals at Wells, Salisbury, Gloucester,
and Worcester.
The Ladies’ Nights became so successful that by 1854 a huge paying audience was
recorded at the Victoria Rooms, with tickets over-subscribed and only available by ballot.
Although local newspapers, in particular the Bristol Mercury and Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, gave
lengthy accounts of the annual Ladies’ Nights, press attention to the society outside Bristol
seems to have been very rare—between 1837 and 1851, only the Morning Chronicle reported the
Ladies’ Night on 22 January 1849. The BMS seems to have held only local interest.
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By the late 1830s, the Anniversary Festival at the Madrigal Society had become an
opportunity to revive music of historical interest; in 1836, Tallis’s forty-part motet ‘Spem in
Alium’ (sung to the words ‘Sing and Glorify’), and in 1838 the item of special note, Bevin’s 21-
part canon, ‘Sing Praises’. At Bristol, however, the Ladies’ Nights seem to have had a reverse
effect on the expansion of new repertoire: they were socially popular events, and this seems to
have dictated a core repertoire of madrigalian ‘lollipops’, with the slow ingress of Mendelssohn
partsongs—resulting in an indignant outburst in January 1851 by Pearsall to the editor of Felix
Farley’s Bristol Journal, railing against such musical pollution, although the article was not
published until January 1858, two years after Pearsall’s death. In the first eighteen years of their
public events, from 1838 to 1856, the BMS gave twenty concerts, with an average of eighteen
works sung at each. Eighty-nine works were sung, of which twenty-five re-appeared as many as
ten times over the course of the twenty concerts, and a distinct canon of favourite works
emerges from this information. Table 4.5 lists those works, and the number of performances at
public concerts between 1838 and 1856 in which they were included.
Table 4.5: The Twenty-Four Works Most Frequently Included at the First Twenty Public
Meetings and Concerts Given by the BMS, 1838–1856
Composer Title of Work Number of
Performances
Barnett Merrily Wake Music’s Measure 6
Bateson Have I Found Her 6
Bennet All Creatures Now 7
Bennet My Mistress Is as Fair 5
Festa Down in a Flow’ry Vale [Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella]
5
Ford Since First I Saw Your Face 9
Ford There Is a Lady Sweet 7
Gibbons The Silver Swan 6
Linley Let Me Careless Lie 6
Marenzio Lady, See on Every Side 5
155
[Dissi a l’amata mia]
Marenzio The Shepherds’ Pipes [Strida faceva]
5
Monteverdi Thine Am I, Dearest [T’amo mia vita]
5
Morley My Bonny Lass 5
Morley Now Is the Month 5
Pearsall Great God of Love 6
Pearsall I Saw Lovely Phillis 7
Pearsall Norse Melody 8
Pearsall Who Shall Have 5
Savile The Waits 20
Weelkes As Vesta Was 6
Wesley O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie 5
Wilbye Flora Gave Me 10
Wilbye Lady When I Behold 9
Wilbye Sweet Honey-Sucking bees 10
The five ‘Englished’ madrigals, by Festa, Marenzio and Monteverdi, were all derived from
editions of music published by ‘friends’ of the BMS—the setting by Festa, and Marenzio’s ‘Lady,
See on Every Side’ were Thomas Oliphant’s, the madrigal by Monteverdi, and Marenzio’s ‘The
Shepherds’ Pipes’ taken from Edward Taylor’s The Vocal School of Italy in the Sixteenth Century,
published in 1839. Nearly all of the English works are familiar from the lists of the most popular
repertoire of the Madrigal Society and the DMS. With the exception of John Barnett’s ‘Merrily
Wake Music’s Measure’, the ‘madrigal-finale’ taken from his 1837 opera, Fair Rosamund, those
works that were not familiar to either of the other societies at this period are the four madrigals
by Pearsall; a survey of his work forms part of the sixth, the final, chapter.
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CHAPTER 5
Five Leading Music Antiquarians and their Work
I. Introduction
Five men with strong antiquarian interests and credentials hold an especially important place in
the madrigal revival. The names of most of them have been mentioned already. They were Sir
John Leman Rogers, William Hawes, Edward Taylor, Thomas Oliphant, and James Turle. This
chapter will investigate and interrogate their labours in detail and in turn. Among the things all of
them except Rogers had in common, were that they published editions of renaissance madrigals;
those of each man will be considered after his biographical trajectory has been outlined. Their
appreciation for old music united them at meetings of the Madrigal Society in the 1830s where,
presumably they discussed and exchanged ideas—expressed by four of them in their
publications. Just as there was commonality amongst them, so were there differences; Rogers
was allied through friendship with all the other four men, demonstrated in their dedications to
him of music and books, and collaboration with him; but only Taylor and Turle worked together
in partnership, as will be seen towards the end of this chapter. Taylor and Turle’s achievement in
promoting madrigals together is the point at which this history neatly comes to an end.
II. Sir John Leman Rogers (1780–1847)
Rogers was born on 18 April 1780 at Plymouth. He was the son of Sir Frederick Rogers, fifth
Baronet of Wisdome, Devon, and entered Winchester College as a Commoner in 1795, and in
1796 and 1797 he was a Commoner Prefect of the College.1 In 1797 he succeeded his father as
sixth baronet, and he joined the Queen’s Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards), a cavalry regiment, as a
1 I am deeply grateful to Suzanne Foster, Archivist at Winchester College, for her help in identifying Rogers in the
College archives.
157
captain in 1798.2 Rogers entered Parliament in October 1812 as MP for the rotten borough of
Callington in Devon. His parliamentary record in Hansard demonstrates that he made no
contribution during a short political career that lasted fewer than six months, between October
1812 and March 1813.3
There is little other information about Rogers’s early life, and no evidence that he might
have kept a journal. His direct family line died out in 1895, resulting in the extinction of the
baronetcy and the dispersal of his estate. However, in 1996 the Sibley Music Library at the
University of Rochester, New York, acquired some of Rogers’s collection of music (detailed
below), allowing an insight to his interests beyond the facts recorded by other biographers.4
On 14 February 1809, Rogers was a visitor at the Madrigal Society, although whose guest
he was is not recorded; at the same meeting the landscaper Humphrey Repton was a guest of
Repton’s son (also Humphrey). Whether Rogers and Repton met is not recorded, although it was
evidently a busy club night with fifteen members and seven guests present, which may have
made their meeting less likely. Although Rogers appears occasionally as a visitor during the
intervening years of the Madrigal Society, it was not until 19 January 1819 that John Hayward,
seconded by John Bull, proposed him for membership; he was elected on 2 February. His
London address then, and for the next twenty-one years, was Stevens’s Hotel on New Bond St.
In early December 1821 Rogers established the Devon Glee Club5 at Exeter, where it
met monthly; he had called upon the lay clerks of the cathedral to provide some stability in the
lower parts, and the cathedral choristers to provide a top line. The club evidently enjoyed an
2 G[eorge] E[dward] C[okayne] (ed.), The Complete Baronetage, 5 vols (Exeter, 1900), iv. 178. 3 Information taken from Hansard online: <http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/sir-john-rogers>, accessed
24 February 2014. 4 John Leman Rogers Collection, Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections, Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of
Music, University of Rochester, SC 1996.3. A description of the collection is available at:
<http://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/specialcollections/findingaids/jlrogers/#Descrip>. 5 It is described, diminishingly, by the Exeter Flying Post as the ‘Devon and Exeter Catch and Glee Club’ (13
December 1821), the ‘Devon and Exeter Glee Club’ (12 December 1822), and the ‘Devon Glee Club’ (13
November 1823).
158
immediate success, according to an enthusiastic account in the Exeter Flying Post, which
announced that ‘the company was numerous, and the dinner, which consisted of every delicacy
of the season[,] was served by Mr Clench of the New London Inn in admirable style.’6 In
contrast with the Madrigal Society, the Devon Glee Club periodically threw its doors open to
give concerts to a paying public. In January 1825, Rogers formed the Devon Madrigal Society as
previously discussed.
It is not until the speech made by Rogers in January 1825 that any sense of his thoughts
or voice has been found documented. The speech he gave on the inaugural night of the DMS is
the first of several recorded in contemporaneous journals, showing Rogers’s unwavering
dedication to vocal music, and above all to madrigals. Parts of it were quoted at the outset of this
thesis in Chapter 1. Rogers also stated:
It might be said, ‘do madrigals possess, in reality, the merit which is ascribed to them?’
To this he would reply that their existence for two hundred years was a sufficient proof
of their excellence. ‘Why then,’ it would be asked, ‘had they become nearly obsolete?’ He
would answer, ‘Because at the period of their composition, music formed a part of
general education. Every gentleman was then as capable of taking a part in a madrigal at
sight as he would be at the present time of taking part in a game at cards or billiards.’
This fact, if he rightly collected was authenticated both by Burney and Hawkins. ‘Good
music badly sung would seldom obtain for a composer so much public applause as for
bad music well sung.’
It appears that this ‘oration’ was typical of Rogers; the later accounts of his addresses to the
Madrigal Society also recount his willingness to speak at length—at the Anniversary Festival in
1836, his introduction to the evening’s music was described as a ‘long but interesting,
entertaining, well-delivered speech, abounding in historical information, and enlivened by those
6 EFP, 13 December 1821.
159
sallies of wit and humour which on these occasions the worthy baronet so judiciously blends
with the directions which officially it is his duty to give.’7 Although he may have been lengthy in
his delivery to the first meeting of the DMS in 1825, Rogers’s belief in the value of madrigal
singing as a school for learning, and a footing for a career as a musician, is clear. He continued:
“Gentlemen . . . there is another description of music, not less worthy of our notice; I
allude to the sacred works chiefly of our English composers. These are known only to
the frequenters of cathedrals, and can be by them only appreciated. I am in the habit of
attending most of the sacred concerts in London . . . where I have heard the best of
Mozart and Haydn’s masses, and I hope I speak without prejudice when I give a
preference to the composers of our church music. [Then after praising Handel, Boyce,
Jeremiah Clarke and Maurice Greene for their anthems] . . . I might further enumerate
the works of Aldrich, Croft, Blow, Purcell, Orlando Gibbons, Battishill and others
whose works are not embellished by the gaudy effect of a full orchestral accompaniment,
by that adventitious aid which an eccentric friend of mine denominates Nebuchednezzer
[sic.] music . . . Our vocal church music is for the most part sufficiently excellent to stand
upon the basis of its own intrinsic merit unassisted by any other support than that of the
organ.” 8
A madrigal society was for, Rogers, at least, a place where church music should be revived
alongside madrigals. Nearly fifteen years later, he was still confirmed in his conviction that ‘the
fine compositions of the old masters were the root of all vocal music; a vast deal of their best
sacred writings had been preserved in our churches, but their secular works owed their rescue
from oblivion to the Madrigal Society.’9 Rogers was also a composer of church music—the
7 Supplement to the Musical Library 23 (1836), 43. 8 Flindell’s Western Luminary, 11 January 1825.
9 EFP, 19 January 1839.
160
majority of the manuscripts of his original compositions, held in the collection at the Sibley
Music Library, are completed anthems and psalms, plus an Evening and Morning service in F.
It seems that Rogers formed a close bond with the cathedral choir at Exeter, whose lay
vicars sang in both the Devon Glee Club and Devon Madrigal Society. In particular Rogers
singled out Philip Salter (1804–1834), one of the lay vicars, who had also prepared the cathedral
choristers for meetings of the DMS. Rogers’s attachment to Salter was strong; he had presented
a setting by Salter of the Collect for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, ‘Almighty and
Everlasting God’, at the Madrigal Society’s Anniversary Dinner on 28 January 1825. When Salter
died tragically in a coaching accident on 21 July 1834, Rogers presented to the College of Lay
Vicars a portrait of him to hang in their Hall, and composed an anthem, ‘Hear the Right, O
Lord’, a lament on his death.10
The DMS continued to flourish under Sir John’s patronage until February 1839, when
the last meeting was held. The Exeter Flying Post of 7 March 1839 laments the poor attendance at
the meeting held the week previously. The Devon Glee Club, however, continued apace, well
beyond Sir John’s withdrawal from public after 1841.
In October 1827, as stated in Chapter 3, Rogers was made the first permanent President
of the Madrigal Society. On his election, Rogers appointed the first musical director of the
society, William Hawes. Up until that time the director of music had not been an official post,
although it was often the case that whoever had provided the choristers for each meeting of the
society was responsible for their musical conduct, but not that of the adult singing-members.
Rogers, however, ensured that rather than the music being led from the top, the musical director
attended to every part. This had been common practice at Exeter from the beginning of the
DMS, but it was not the case in London.
When in 1830 Thomas Oliphant became a member of the Madrigal Society, he and
Rogers rapidly formed a strong bond. The two men, both of them confirmed bachelors, were
10 John S. Bumpus, A History of English Cathedral Music: 1549–1889, 2 vols (London, 1908), ii. 456.
161
bound together in a mutual love for madrigals and ‘old’ music. Within the first four years of their
association, Oliphant had assisted Rogers in preparing and publishing a large volume of Rogers’s
own compositions in 1834—chiefly madrigals and partsongs, and settings of the communion
service for Anglican use. Oliphant’s magnum opus, his volume of madrigal verse published in 1837,
La Musa Madrigalesca, discussed below, was dedicated to Rogers; Oliphant delighted in the
success that he and Rogers had had, ‘conferring our notes together at the meetings of the
Madrigal Society. I am almost surprised to find how soon our predictions with regard to the
superior merits of “auld sangs” over new have been verified.’11
Due to the careful fostering and stewardship of Rogers and Oliphant, the Madrigal
Society became an important and influential musical forum in the 1830s, as has already been
discussed. Oliphant and Rogers were also responsible for the performance of Tallis’s forty-part
motet ‘Spem in Alium’ at the Anniversary Festival of 1836. This composer association was
reinforced by Husk’s 1878 entry in Grove for Rogers describing him as an ‘ardent admirer of the
compositions of Tallis.’12
Rogers also befriended James Turle, the assistant organist at Westminster Abbey, who
had attended meetings of the society since 1819, when he took the singing boys to meetings in
the absence of the organist, Thomas Greatorex. On the death of Greatorex in 1831, Turle had
been made organist of the Abbey in his place, and was made an honorary member of the
Madrigal Society in 1832. Turle and Rogers formed a productive friendship; in his History of
Cathedral Music, John Bumpus described how Rogers was a ‘constant attendant at Westminster
Abbey, and after the services was fond of strolling about the cloisters with his friend Turle.’13
The ‘Tallis Days’ held at Westminster Abbey in the early 1840s were apparently a direct result of
Rogers’s and Turle’s collaboration, and it was for these that Oliphant prepared scores of the ‘Full
11 Oliphant, La Musa Madrigalesca, iii. 12 W. H. Husk, ‘Rogers, Sir John Leman, Bart.’, in George Grove (ed.), A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 3,
‘Planché to Sumer is Icumen In’ (London, 1878), 145.
13 Bumpus, History of English Cathedral Music, 457.
162
Cathedral’ service published by Lonsdale.14 What eventually became a public veneration of Tallis
probably stemmed from Rogers’s encouragement of church music at Exeter. Records show that
‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell’ by ‘Tallis’ was sung frequently at meetings of the DMS,
but appears neither in the Madrigal Society’s monthly programmes when they cease in 1828, nor
in the reports of the Anniversary Festivals thereafter. ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell’ must
have been a work reserved for Rogers’s pleasure in Exeter. Paradoxically, Dean Aldrich, not
Tallis, most probably composed the work, in imitation of an old style.15 What became such an
important part of Rogers’s musical identity had quite probably begun as an encounter with the
counterfeit.
The affection with which his contemporaries regarded Rogers is in no doubt. Oliphant in
his Brief History, said that Rogers was a man ‘to whose persevering zeal in the cause of music, the
society mainly owe their present flourishing condition.’ He continued:
We need only look for proof of the fact to the minutes of the anniversary in 1834, where
it will be seen that accounts of that event were deemed worthy of filling columns in the
leading newspapers of the day; that peers of the realm and privy councillors; men of
peace and men of war; masters in chancery and briefless barristers; whigs and tories,
without distinction, joined in chorussing the self-same strains that were chanted in 1741
by the weavers and spinners of Spitalfields.16
At the Madrigal Society’s Anniversary Festival in 1837, Lord Saltoun, Vice President of the
society, toasted Rogers, saying that ‘whether Sir John Rogers was looked upon as a country
gentleman, a musician, or as a member of that society, he was equally worthy of admiration. Sir
14 Cole, 38.
15 Cole discusses several Tallis myths, including ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell’, in the first chapter of her
book. She concludes that on stylistic grounds, the work is dubiously ascribed to Tallis, and on forensic evidence
gathered from 17th and 18th-century manuscripts and publications, draws the same conclusion. Cole, 44–48.
16 Oliphant, Brief Account, 16.
163
John came there for the sole purpose of supporting the madrigalists, and he was therefore quite
certain that his health would be drunk in a bumper. (The toast was then given amidst the most
deafening cheering, prolonged for some time.)’17
At the beginning of 1842, due to ill health, Rogers retired from the Madrigal Society. It
was announced that ‘Sir John Rogers has resigned the office of President of the Madrigal Society,
which he filled for many years. Lord Saltoun is named as the baronet’s successor.’18 A dinner was
held in his honour in May 1842, at which he was presented with a silver flagon: ‘the massive
flagon was passed around the festive board, out of which the company, amounting to upwards
of forty, drunk “health and long life to Sir John Rogers.”’19 Rogers retired to Blachford, where he
died on 10 December 1847 at the age of 67. His contribution to English musical life continued
to be recognised until the end of the nineteenth century, but with the passage of time, and the
style and genre of his own compositions becoming increasingly unfashionable in the twentieth
century, he fell from sight.
As for the John Leman Rogers Collection at the Sibley Music Library, the library’s
catalogue details that the collection was donated in 1996 by Wm A. Little, who had acquired it
from Lisa Cox, the now-retired dealer in antiquarian music, from Exeter in Devon. It comprises
‘25 of Rogers’s works in manuscript: 10 glees and madrigals, 12 psalms and anthems, a few
pieces for the ordinary Anglican service and several drafts and revisions of a “Morning,
Communion and Evening Service in F.” It also contains 31 printed music items arranged
alphabetically by composer. The only printed music in the collection by Rogers is the “Morning
Communion and Evening Service in F.”’20
17 Morning Post, 20 January 1837. 18 EFP, 13 January 1842. 19 Morning Chronicle, 21 May 1842.
20 Description of the scope and content of John Leman Rogers Collection, Ruth T. Watanabe Special
Collections, Sibley Music Library, University of Rochester, SC 1996.3.
<http://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/specialcollections/findingaids/jlrogers/#Descrip> accessed September
2013.
164
The collection is divided into three series; the first (Series 1) is manuscript music
composed by Rogers, the majority of which is music for church use, and the rest secular vocal
music. The majority of the latter appears to have been written for men’s voices—the top lines of
all but one of the settings are expressly for countertenors, rather than sopranos or trebles—and
they are set to madrigalian texts, such as ‘Flocks are Sporting’, ‘See, Flora Fair, ‘Archly Smiling,
Dimpled Boy’ and the five-part ‘O Say Ye Saints’—the work sung in memory of Sir John at the
Madrigal Society’s Anniversary Festival, on 20 January 1848, the year following his death.21
Many of the 31 printed items (Series 2) are signed by or dedicated to Rogers, including
two glees, one by Hawes, ‘Requiescat in Pace’ (1831), the other by Kellow Pye, ‘Spirit! Serene
and Pale’ (1832). There is also a madrigal for five voices by T. A. Walmisley, ‘Slow, Slow, Fresh
Fount’ (ca1840), and a signed copy of R. L. Pearsall’s ‘In Dulci Jubilo’, published by D’Almaine
and Co. (1837).
The final part of the collection (Series 3) is entitled ‘Records Concerning Rogers’
Activities as Pres. of Madrigal Society’. It contains just one item, the Supplement to the Musical
Library, No.23, of 1836—the description of the Anniversary Festival at which Tallis’s 40-part
‘Sing and Glorify’ was sung. It would be misleading if Rogers’s work at the Madrigal Society—
and elsewhere—were only recognised in such a slender work.
III. William Hawes (1785–1846)
Hawes was born in London in June 178522, was a chorister of the Chapel Royal under William
Ayrton from 1795 to 1801, and was appointed a violinist in the band at Covent Garden in
21 ‘The Madrigal Society’, Morning Post, 22 January 1848. 22 According to two disagreeing authorities, his birth is listed as 24 June in the members’ list of the Royal Society of
Musicians in Betty Matthews, Members of the Royal Society of Musicians, 1738–1984 (London, 1985), 69; and 21 June,
according to William Husk in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1878 (and retained in subsequent revisions).
165
1802.23 In 1805 he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and stepped up in 1806, with C. S.
Evans, to become a Privileged and Professional Member of the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s
Catch Club.24 Hawes became a member of the Royal Society of Musicans in 1807, where his
record confirms him ‘a married man . . . Performs on the Piano Forte, Violin, has an
appointment in the King’s Chapel, is engaged in the orchestra at Covent Garden Theatre, the
Antient and Vocal Concerts.’25
Hawes’s experience as a child and adolescent had undoubtedly brought him into regular
contact with those who moved in the early music circles in London. The Vocal Concerts were
the dominion of William Knyvett, son of Charles Knyvett, one of the two organists of the
Chapel Royal, and with James Bartleman (whom Hawes would later honour in naming his
second son Thomas Bartleman); both Knyvett and Bartleman were often at meetings of the
Madrigal Society. Hawes became a member of the society in 1809; his association with it would
last until the end of his life.
In 1812, on the resignation of John Sale (1757–1828), Hawes was appointed Almoner
and Master of the Choristers at St Paul’s, and in 1817 he was also appointed Master of the
Children of the Chapel Royal, taking the place of John Stafford Smith, who had resigned the
post.26 Hawes also accepted a short-lived post as a lay vicar of Westminster Abbey, which he
retained for three years. Such pluralism was not uncommon, especially within the singing
fraternity of London’s churches. Many of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal were also
members of the choir at St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey—John Jeremiah Goss, uncle of John
23 ‘Hawes, William’, in A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel
in London, 1660–1800, Philip Highfill Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans (eds.), vol. 7, ‘Habgood to
Houbert’, (Carbondale, IL, 1982), 193.
24 Viscount Gladstone, Guy Boas and Harald Christopherson, Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club: Three Essays
Towards its History (London, 1996), 118. 25 Betty Matthews, Members of the Royal Society of Musicians, 1738–1984 (London, 1985), 69.
26 Smith remained at the Chapel Royal as one of the organists, until his death in 1836.
166
Goss, the organist of St Paul’s, held posts at all three establishments simultaneously.27 Hawes
remained at both St Paul’s and the Chapel Royal until his death in 1846.
Whilst holding prestigious church appointments, Hawes was also occupied as a
composer, and was also involved with the theatre and with several publishing ventures. From
1824 to 1836, he held the post of Musical Director at the Lyceum Theatre—an association that
saw early London productions of works by Mozart and Weber, and also provided Hawes with a
stage for his own works in the early 1830s.28
John Bumpus recalled that as a member of many London-based music clubs and
societies, including the Philharmonic Society, the Glee and Catch Club, the Madrigal Society, the
Western Madrigal Society, the Concentores Sodales and the Melodists’ Club (see Appendix 1),
Hawes had ‘received from more than one of these societies some handsome and valuable pieces
of plate, in recognition of his services to art; and was also presented by Her Majesty the Queen
with a richly-chased silver inkstand, on the occasion of her marriage in 1840.’29
Hawes began his work as a composer and publisher early in his career. His earliest
recorded publication, a rondo for voices from an operetta, ‘The Gay Deceivers’, dates to 1804.30
His publications shortly afterwards indicate that Hawes was aware of the demands in the musical
market in the early 1800s, and wrote and published glees—individually and in sets. In 1823, in
partnership with Thomas Welsh, Hawes took over the ailing Royal Harmonic Institution’s Argyll
Rooms, and in 1825 the Institution’s corresponding publishing venture.31 Hawes’s partnership
with Welsh came to an acrimonious end in 1827, when Hawes was declared bankrupt.32 Leanne
27 Rohr, 95.
28 W. H. Husk, et al. ’Hawes, William.’ Grove Music Online, accessed October 2012. 29 John S. Bumpus, The Organists and Composers of St Paul’s Cathedral (London, 1891), 143. 30 William Hawes, William’s Wedding Day, Rondo from The Gay Deceivers (London, 1804).
31 Leanne Langley, ‘The Life and Death of The Harmonicon An Analysis’ Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 22
(1989), 158. 32 Contemporaneous press reports in the Morning Chronicle, 10, 11, and 12 January 1828, ‘Court of Chancery’, reveal
that Welsh and Hawes partnership in the Argyll Rooms and Royal Harmonic Institution’s publishing business had
167
Langley’s 2013 article, ‘A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic
Society of London’, provides a detailed account of the interaction of Welsh and Hawes, and the
others with whom the men had formed a consortium to manage the Argyll Rooms.33
Hawes’s work as an editor and publisher would remain a constant occupation long into
his association with the Madrigal Society. The minutes of the society record that Hawes was
proposed and elected a member on 11 April 1809.34 The records also show that his subsequent
attendance at the fortnightly meetings was very infrequent—of the twenty-six meetings recorded
in 1810, Hawes was at just two of them on 23 October and 18 December. For the rest of
Hawes’s time as an ordinary member of the Madrigal Society—until 1825—he remained a
sporadic attender at meetings, rarely taking part more than once every four meetings.
Hawes’s association with the Madrigal Society was, though, to be a fruitful one. In 1814
he had taken and re-issued Richard Webb’s Collection of Madrigals, first published in 1808, and in
the same year had begun his venture in publishing his own edited edition of Morley’s Triumphs of
Oriana (both ventures previously mentioned in Chapter 3). Hawes’s study and work on the
Triumphs had enlarged Morley’s 1601 publication of twenty-five madrigals to twenty-nine, which
Hawes asserted had been Morley’s original intention, thereby achieving a work similar to an
earlier Italian collection of 1592, Il Trionfo di Dori. Even a century and a half after Hawes had
published his edition of the Triumphs, Joseph Kerman praised the introduction to his edition for
its excellence and depth of investigation. Kerman did assert, though, that the four madrigals
selected and added by Hawes into the 1814 project were a ‘pretty theory . . . [but] cannot be said
to have much foundation.’35
been unbalanced since 1826. Hawes had been trying to extricate himself from the partnership for at least two years
before bankruptcy released him. 33 Leanne Langley, ‘A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London’, Electronic
British Library Journal, Article 12, 2013 <http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2013articles/article12.html>, accessed November
2014. 34 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, minutes, 14 March–9 May 1809.
35 Kerman, 198.
168
Hawes had also entered the Madrigal Society Prize Competition in 1811, and although it
was not the winner, his madrigal for four voices, ‘Sweet Philomela’, was included in evening
programmes thereafter.36
Hawes’s appointment as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal in 1817 was also to
have an effect on the life of the young Samuel Sebastian Wesley, who had joined the Chapel
Royal choir as a chorister in 1817.37 S. S. Wesley was declared by Hawes to be ‘the best boy he
had ever had’,38and Hawes was hiring him out, amongst other of the boys from St Paul’s and the
Chapel Royal, for extra-mural engagements. The young Wesley possibly sang as a treble at the
Madrigal Society,39 although there is no record in the minutes between 1817 and early 1826
(when he left the choir of the Chapel Royal) that Hawes had provided any boys at all. Between
1817 and 30 June 1825—the date when Hawes’s name was struck through in the members’
register—Hawes had attended a total of four meetings in eight years. Although the register never
lists the names of the boys, it is usually clear from where they had come, and in this period they
came exclusively from Westminster Abbey, under the supervision of Thomas Greatorex or
James Turle.
When Sir John Rogers reshaped the Madrigal Society in 1827, Hawes’s reappearance at
the first meeting under the new regime, on 22 November 1827, broke his term of absence from
any meeting since 26 June 1823. Evidently his work at the Lyceum Theatre had taken much of
his time, but on returning to the Madrigal Society, he was noted in the minutes at the eight
remaining meetings before the end of the F5 minute book. Thereafter his record of attendance
was lost forever with the destruction of the following minute book in 1940. However, Fox noted
(quoting directly from the minutes, it would seem) that on 15 March 1832, ‘a handsome and 36 In fact Hawes published ‘Sweet Philomela’ in 1813 in a collection of other works by him: A Collection of Five Glees
& One Madrigal: for 3, 4, & 5 Voices, Composed & Inscribed to the Noblemen & Gentlemen of the Catch Club, to Whom They
Were Principally Sent as Candidates for the Prizes Given by Them in 1811 & 1812. 37 Olleson, Samuel Wesley, 157. 38 Peter Horton, Samuel Sebastian Wesley: A Life (Oxford, 2004), 11.
39 Horton asserts that the Madrigal Society was amongst the places to which Hawes was hiring his boys; Horton, 12.
169
massive snuff box was this evening presented to Wm Hawes, Esq., the Musical Director of this
Society (for many years) as a mark of esteem for his valuable and gratuitous services.’40 This is
also confirmed by Oliphant in his Brief History, who wrote of Hawes’s snuff box, ‘If being made
of gold could have enhanced its value in Mr Hawes’s estimation, his constant attention to the
interests of the society during many years, richly deserved the gift.’41
Sadly, the next mention of Hawes in Fox’s notes is his death, at the age of 61, on 18
February 1846: ‘Thursday, Feb. 19th. There was no meeting (and none in the month) by virtue
of the death of William Hawes, Musical Director of the society. On July 23rd, Mr Turle was
elected to succeed Mr Hawes as Musical Director.’
The long period between the two noted entries in 1832 and 1846 seems partly to have
been devoted to the editing and production of two separate sets of madrigals. Since his
publication of the Triumphs of Oriana in 1817, Hawes, although prolifically publishing ballads,
glees and other music for and related to the stage, had not published any madrigals. It may well
have been with the encouragement of either Rogers or Oliphant, both tireless explorers of
madrigals, that Hawes began to edit and publish a set of individual madrigals from the collection
of the society.
The first notice of such an idea appeared in the Exeter Flying Post, doubtless on the
instruction of Rogers, within the column of a report of the proceedings of the DMS:
. . . We believe that the only other society of this kind is the London Madrigal Society,
to which the Musical World is indebted for the preservation of many most valuable
compositions of the Old English School. It is understood to be the intention of that
society to commence a publication of the rare compositions in their Library, which will
indeed be an important present to all lovers of really good Music; and many an Amateur
who has been in the habit of undervaluing the compositions of our own countrymen will
40 Fox’s notes.
41 Oliphant, Brief Account, 16.
170
be astonished to find how much his opinions have depended on his want of
acquaintance with Old English Masters.42
The first series comprised thirty individually printed madrigals under the title, A Collection of
Madrigals for Three, Four, Five & Six Voices Selected from the Works of the Most Eminent Composers of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, from the Original Books, as Preserved in the Madrigal Society. They were
engraved from plates, and were marked for sale at two shillings per copy. The individual titles of
Hawes’s madrigals are listed, with other madrigal publications of the first half of the 19th
century, in Appendix 3. Hawes’s publications comprise twenty madrigals by Elizabethan
composers, six by Italian madrigalists, one by a Flemish composer, and three by ‘modern’
composers: Hawes, Beale and Evans. The individual copies were beautifully produced as clear
vocal scores, and with no introductory notes or preamble, they were evidently intended to be
sung from, and not merely library copies.
How well the first series sold only became clear nine years after the Devonian
announcement, but in the intervening period, Hawes embarked on a second series of madrigals.
Exactly when the project of the second series began is unclear, but it was certainly before 1842.
Presumably it was Hawes’s intention to print as many as thirty once more, but only nine seem to
have appeared. Of those copies that have survived (no sequence of the run of the Second Series
has been identified in this research, only numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 have been traced) all of
them are by English composers of the late 16th to early 17th century.
Hawes’s adventure with madrigal publication did not end happily. A letter written on 7
December 1842 from Hawes to Vincent Novello is held in the collection of the Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York.43 Hawes’s tone is sad, declaring that he could no longer afford to
publish his madrigal sets. He wrote:
42 EFP, 7 March 1833. 43 ‘Letters (Unbound) Joseph Bennett’s Dramatic and Musical Correspondence, second series, 27.’ H391.N939.
Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, Dept. of Music Manuscripts and Books, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
171
Dear Novello,
The heavy loss I have suffer’d by my Madrigal publications have determin’d me to
relinquish entirely any further speculation, either in score or parts.
At the same time, you, or anyone else, have my full permission to publish my
collection in single parts, or, if they like to purchase, they may have plates and copies at
the most moderate prices, of all the first sett [sic.]
Yours very truly,
William Hawes
So ended Hawes’s endeavour as a madrigal publisher; the plates do not appear to have been
taken up by any other publisher. What public interest there was in publishing madrigals had been
turned towards the Musical Antiquarian Society, which will be discussed in Chapter 6.
IV. Edward Taylor (1784–1863)
Taylor was born into a prominent and prosperous family belonging to the Unitarian community
in Norwich. His father, John Taylor, was a composer of hymns and political songs, and was
active in Norwich politics, promoting civil liberties for dissenters. Edward Taylor’s dissenting
background would inform much of his work in later life.
Most of the biographical details of his early life come from a memoir of him, published
anonymously in the Norfolk News on 28 March and 4 April 1863, later condensed as part of a
chapter in A Comprehensive History of Norwich, published in 1869.44 As a child, Taylor was a pupil of
John Christmas Beckwith, organist of St Peter Bancroft, one of the city’s churches, and later
organist of the cathedral (from 1808–9). Taylor was not a chorister, though, presumably by
virtue of his Unitarianism. Long before his career as a musician, he had kept an ironmonger’s
44 Bayne, 475–482.
172
shop in Norwich, from 1808 until 1815. He, like his father, took an interest in local politics, and
was made one of the two annually elected sheriffs for the city in 1819.
In 1824, he had been instrumental in organising the first Norwich and Norfolk Triennial
Festival, for which he had trained the chorus, fixed the instrumentalists and organised the entire
programme.45 In 1825 he moved to London to join his brother Philip and a cousin in their civil
engineering business, but it was not a success. Taylor found himself in need of work, and turned
to music, as a teacher, writer and singer. His biographer in the Comprehensive History of Norwich
says that ‘It is certain that when he went to live in London, nothing was further from his
thoughts than that he would ever embrace music as a profession.’46
By 1827, Taylor had begun to make himself known as a soloist—he sang at the second
Triennial Festival at Norwich. As a singer he received mixed reviews. The entry in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography describes his as a ‘fine rich bass voice and commanding presence’,47
but it was also described as ‘a bass of great depth, though somewhat wanting in resonance, his
style pure perhaps to severity.’48
Edward Taylor’s brother Richard played an important part in the development of his
brother’s musical career in London. Richard (1781–1858) had established himself as a printer in
London by the early 1800s; his press was successful in preparing scientific works, and also
publishing magazines. Richard Taylor had been elected to the Madrigal Society on 1 February
1820. Edward had been his guest on three occasions (5 December 1820, 30 May 1822, 27 May
1824), culminating in his election as a member of the society on 28 July 1825, after his removal
to London.49
45 F. G. Edwards, ‘Taylor, Edward (1784–1863)’, rev. David J. Golby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford,
2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27025> accessed September 2013[. 46 Bayne, 480.
47 F. G. Edwards, ‘Taylor, Edward (1784–1863)’, rev. David J. Golby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford,
2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27025> accessed September 2013. 48 Obituary, ‘Edward Taylor’, Bury and Norwich Post, 17 March 1863.
49 Taylor’s visits as a guest were minuted by the Madrigal Society in GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 1785–1828.
173
In 1822, Edward Taylor had presented to the society, through Richard, a copy of 7
Madrigals of Old Masters, of which no record or copy can be found. It is the earliest reference to
Taylor as an editor of vocal music, but exactly what the contents might have been is not
elucidated by the society’s minutes.
Edward’s membership of the Madrigal Society did not last long: his request to resign was
accepted on 14 November 1826, just a year and four months after his election. On 29 March
1827, Taylor made his first professional singing appearance in London. The writer of Taylor’s
memorial piece recounted that ‘his debût [sic.] was at Covent Garden, at the Oratorios under the
management of Sir H. R. Bishop . . . and the reception he received from a very crowded
audience was exceedingly favourable.’50
Taylor also returned to the Madrigal Society as his brother’s guest three times in 1827,
and on 21 December 1827, he was noted for the first time in the minutes as a ‘professional
visitor.’ He reappeared, just once more, in January 1828, before the minute book comes to an
end in July that year.
As we have seen earlier, in Chapter 3, Taylor began writing for the Spectator in 1830, and
he continued to contribute reports concerning the Madrigal Society until he left the magazine in
1843.51 His admiration for the President of the society never diminished: ‘Morley and Bateson
would have been delighted to hail Sir John Rogers as a brother musician. Without these adjuncts,
we really doubt whether the rank, the polished manners, the unabated zeal and liberality of the
President united, could have placed him in that situation. Fortunately for the society, he
combines every requisite. But with him every distinction of rank ceases’ (23 January 1830); and
later: ‘Sir John Rogers, of course, presided; and with the urbanity, zeal, and talent for which he is
so eminently distinguished’ (21 January 1837).
50 Bayne, 480. 51 Reports, mostly of Anniversary Festivals, appeared in the Spectator on 23 January 1830, 23 November 1833, 18
January 1834, 17 October 1835, 22 October 1836, 21 January 1837, 21 October 1837, 19 January 1839, 18 January
1840, 23 January 1841, and 21 January 1843.
174
During August 1832, Taylor organised concerts for a new singing venture, the Vocal
Society. He used the Spectator as a vehicle to launch the society, introducing its twenty-four
members, all of them well-known professional singers, whose collective aim was to ‘present as its
principal feature, the vocal music of the English school, both ancient and modern . . . with the
addition of foreign compositions of excellence.’52 Quite possibly Taylor’s premise for setting up
the Vocal Society was more driven by the desire to challenge the hegemony of the Vocal
Concerts that still ruled the concert room. After the first season of the Vocal Society, Taylor
wrote (anonymously) once more in the Spectator, ‘ . . . we have a hundred times asserted that the
London public had no access to the finest specimens of classical vocal music . . . The Vocal
Concerts are the most popular as well as the best exhibitions of the art; and the society,
encouraged by the well-earned fame which has attended their efforts, will be stimulated to fresh
exertions in the honourable and successful career on which they have entered.’53
There seemed to be enough room in London in the early 1830s to sustain both the Vocal
Concerts and Vocal Society; although they both appear to have collapsed in 1837. A
contemporaneous reviewer, Henry Chorley, congratulated the Vocal Society on its daring to
produce an entire and new oratorio, Spohr’s Crucifixion (the text translated by Taylor): ‘Nor
should we forget, in taking leave of the Vocal Society, that its leave-taking was marked by a piece
of enterprise such as never would have occurred to its ancient brethren [the Vocal Concerts]’.54
Taylor then turned lecturer. In January and February 1833, he delivered a series of
lectures at the London Institution, an organisation founded in 1806 by Richard Sharp (brother of
Granville Sharp, and sometime member of the Madrigal Society), providing access to education
to those who were otherwise barred from it—dissenters, in particular. Taylor’s lectures, entitled
‘English Vocal Harmony’, were delivered as a series of four, and included examples of music,
52 ‘The Vocal Society’, Spectator, 25 August 1832. 53 ‘The Vocal Concerts’, Spectator, 23 March 1833.
54 Henry Chorley, ‘Concerts and Operas’, London and Westminster Review, 29. July 1837, 62.
175
sung by a sextet of singers. Although a great success, Taylor was following in the footsteps of
others who had lectured at the London Institution and elsewhere.
The 1835 library catalogue of the London Institution gives a short history of events and
proceedings at the Institution, and shows that Taylor’s lectures came after a series of six lectures
on vocal music delivered in 1828 by Samuel Wesley, ‘when he was assisted by several eminent
singers, and his examples were performed upon an organ and a pianoforte.’55 Wesley’s lectures
had been preceded by some thirty-eight lectures given by William Crotch between 1820 and
1831; they had covered subjects from differing styles of composition to ‘various general features
of the science [of music]: the materials of all which are to be found in his published Specimens of
Various Styles of Music and Lectures on Music.’56 Taylor had apparently first participated at a soirée at
the London Institution in 1829 given by George Birkbeck, a Quaker philanthropist, who had
founded the London Mechanics’ Institute, a similar educational establishment to the London
Institution.57 It was perhaps there that the grain of the idea to lecture had been sown.
From London, Taylor took his lectures on English vocal harmony on tour. His lecture
notes survive in two archives: at the Royal College of Music (RCM) Library,58 and at the Norfolk
Record Office in Norwich.59 The RCM also holds Taylor’s notes for lectures on English church
music, English opera from the 16th to 19th centuries, the ‘Italian School’, and the ‘German
School’. As noted in Chapter 4, the lectures on English Vocal Harmony had the greatest impact
on his audiences, encouraging the formation of madrigal societies in several of the towns and
cities where he lectured.
55 ‘Introductory Preface’, vol.1, Catalogue of the Library of the London Institution: Systematically Classed (1835), xxxvii.
56 ibid, xxxvii. 57 ibid, xxxviii. 58 Collection of manuscripts of Edward Taylor in library of the Royal College of Music, London (GB-Lcm) ET
MS2153. 59 Norfolk Record Office: 1996 accessions, ‘Edward Taylor, Gresham Professor of Music (addnl): lecture notes and
papers c1825-60’, MC 257/107-169.
176
At the collection at the RCM library, pasted inside the front cover of the volume
containing the first lecture, is a list compiled by Taylor of the places where he delivered his
lectures between 1832 and 1848. It forms a gazetteer of the principal industrial towns of England
in the mid-19th century, including Halifax (1832), Birmingham (1833), Oxford (1834), Norwich
and Brighton (1835), Liverpool (1836 and 1839), Manchester, Leeds and Bristol (1837), Bradford
(1841), Sheffield (1842), Hull (1845), Nottingham (1846), and finally Gresham College in
London (1848). In nearly all of the northern cities, he lectured at Mechanics’ Institutes, and in
the south, at philosophical and literary institutions.
One contemporaneous writer described the content of Taylor’s lectures as ‘a complete
and most interesting view of the state of vocal harmony in England from the earliest records of
the art, down to the present time.’ The writer continued:
Mr Taylor gives a full account of the constellation of great madrigal writers who
flourished in the time of Elizabeth; and traces the progress of the English glee . . . The
lectures are learned, and full of sound and excellent criticism . . . Mr Taylor’s style is
simple and perspicuous—always pure and often eloquent. The lectures are copiously
illustrated by specimens of the compositions of the different authors who come under
review.60
Taylor’s success as a lecturer was confirmed in December 1837, when, on the death of R. J. S.
Stevens, who had held the post since 1801, he was elected Professor of Music at Gresham
College, where his brother Richard was one of the Trustees. Both Sir George Smart and the
composer Henry Bishop had been candidates for the post, which offered a small income in
return for the annual delivery of a lecture (in Latin and in English), and also conferred an
emblem of status on the bearer of the professorship. Taylor’s first engagement after his election
to the professorship was at the Edinburgh Philosophical Association, once again delivering the 60 ‘Lectures on English Vocal Harmony’, Standard, 23 October 1834.
177
lecture series on English vocal harmony: ‘the eminent lecturer at once arrested the attention of
his hearers by his distinct enunciation, and the finely modulated tones in which his eloquent
remarks were delivered . . . All lovers of harmony should attend the eloquent lectures of Mr
Taylor, and partake of the delicious musical banquet by which they are garnished.’61
Once Taylor had been elected Gresham Professor, his lecturing and travelling slowed.
His activities became concentrated within the metropolis, and his editorial output increased, as
will be discussed below. However, in 1843 a hiatus occurred in Taylor’s life: the British and
foreign press judged him severely for his alleged act of plagiarism; consideration of this will form
part of the conclusion in Chapter 6. Although his withdrawal from the public eye was not
absolute, Taylor began to diminish his activities from 1843, the year he ceased writing for the
Spectator and completed his work for the Musical Antiquarian Society.
As for his publications, during the 1830s Taylor had worked on a number of translations
of texts for songs and large-scale choral works, notably those of Louis Spohr—whose oratorios
he had presented at the Triennial Festivals at Norwich—and a new word-setting of Mozart’s
‘Requiem’, re-titled ‘Redemption’. In 1839 he published a collection of madrigals by Italian
composers, entitled The Vocal School of Italy in the Sixteenth Century. It appears to have been his first
work of edited music since the 7 Madrigals by Old Masters, presented to the Madrigal Society in
February 1822 but now lost.
For his new publication, Taylor collected together twenty-eight works, including four by
Palestrina and six by Marenzio, and allowed one work by the Spanish composer Victoria to creep
in. He re-set all of the music to new English texts that he had composed; all but two of the
works were madrigals (the exceptions being the work by the interloper, Victoria, ‘Sing Ye
Praises’, and Palestrina’s ‘Exaltabo Te Domine’, set to a text beginning ‘I Will Praise Thy
Name’). On the dedicatory page—to Richard Taylor—Edward wrote, ‘This Collection will serve
to remind you of the many delightful hours, which, in common with your worthy brethren, and
61 ‘Philosophical Association’, Caledonian Mercury, 14 December 1837.
178
under the guidance of our excellent and accomplished President, we have enjoyed during the last
thirty years, in the Madrigal Society.’ The thirty years referred, slightly deceptively, to neither of
the Taylors—who had not had a connection to the society before 1820—but presumably to
Rogers, who had first visited the society in 1809.
Taylor promised of his new work that ‘if the loss attendant on its publication be not too
severe, I shall turn my attention to the madrigals of the English school, which may almost be
said to be unknown in the land of their birth.’62 He follows this with a note of gratitude to
Hawes for his publication of The Triumphs of Oriana, and acknowledges the collection of Morley
canzonets by Holland and Cooke, ‘published about thirty years since by two Oxford amateurs’,63
but ignores the collections by Webb, Hawes and Oliphant, presumably because they were not
complete sets of madrigals by individual composers. He ends the paragraph with the
admonishment, ‘no collection of the works of our English madrigal writers has appeared during
the last two centuries; and yet Wilbye, Gibbons, Bennet, Ward and Bateson were of that
honoured fraternity. This is not very creditable to the musical taste or patriotic feeling of
England.’ Just two years later, the Musical Antiquarian Society would undertake the task of
producing new collections of English madrigals (and beyond, including the volume of Purcell’s
King Arthur which Taylor was to edit and was publish in 1843). Whether or not this was in direct
response to Taylor’s censure is not known.
In 1844, Taylor wrote two articles, published anonymously, that tackled the poor state of
cathedral music in England in the first half of the 19th century. Despite Rogers’s support from
the gentlemen of the cathedral choir at Exeter, and the support for the madrigal societies by the
cathedral choirs in provincial towns such as Bristol and Salisbury, the overall standard of church
music was seen to be either deficient or poor. Treatises and complaints had been published since
the early 19th century deploring the conduct of choral services, the misuse of choir funds that
62 Taylor, Preface to The Vocal School of Italy in the Sixteenth Century (1839).
63 Taylor, Preface to Vocal School.
179
had been siphoned off by the clergy, and the lack of the practice of religion. One of the earliest
articles, ‘On the Present State of Church Music in England’, was written in 1824, followed
shortly afterwards, in 1827, by the publication of A Brief Account of Cathedral and Collegiate Schools
by Maria Hackett, the indefatigable fighter for the better treatment of cathedral choristers
nationwide.64 Additionally, in 1832, John Latrobe published his Instructions of Chenaniah, a guide to
the accompaniment of plainchant, which, although not written to bewail the poor condition of
church music, joined the sequence of publications that sought to improve the state of music in
church.65
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners Acts of 1836, revised in 1840 and 1841, had further
suppressed and sequestered large incomes from canonries and sinecure benefices, the intention
of which was to ‘set about rectifying the grosser abuses connected with the cathedral system,
reducing the inordinate revenues enjoyed by some foundations and using them to supplement
poorer parochial livings and establish much-needed new churches in the growing industrial
towns.’66 Church music suffered: in the late 1830s, a number of treatises bemoaning the state of
church music in England followed one another: the Bristolian John Peace’s An Apology for
Cathedral Service (1839), John Jebb’s The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland
(1843) and William Burges’s On the Choral Service of the Anglo-Catholic Church (1844). It was Jebb’s
work that prompted Taylor to write two articles, published anonymously in the British and Foreign
Review in 1844, and revised, enlarged and published in 1845, under Taylor’s name, as The English
Cathedral Service, Its Glory – Its Decline, and Its Designed Extinction. In it he made an impassioned plea
to restore cathedrals to places of musical excellence, reminding his readers of the musical
64 ‘On the Present State of Church Music in England’, Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review 24 (1825) 159–160; Maria
Hackett, A Brief Account of Cathedral and Collegiate Schools; with an Abstract of their Statutes and Endowments (London,
1827).
65 John Antes Latrobe, Instructions of Chenaniah. Plain Directions for Accompanying the Chant or the Psalm-Tune, to Which Are
Annexed the Canticles of the Morning and Evening Church Services, so Arranged as to Enable All Persons to Unite in the Chant
(London, 1832).
66 William J. Gatens, Victorian Cathedral Music in Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 1986), 8.
180
heritage of the church, that ‘our madrigal writers, for instance, the successful rivals of their great
Italian and Flemish contemporaries, were the offspring of our cathedrals.’67 Writing not as a
member of the Church of England, but as an advocate of the music that the church preserved,
Taylor was able to argue objectively for the music and musicians whose livelihoods were being
stripped away by church reform. Provocatively, he suggested that if a cathedral was not a place
to maintain a choir, but was only to be regarded by money-saving clergy as a place to confer a
title on a bishop, then he concluded, ‘a barn will answer that purpose as well. There is no tenable
ground, no safe position, no consistent middle course, between the destruction of cathedrals
altogether, and their retention in their designed magnificence.’68
Taylor, who edited three final works in collaboration with his old friend James Turle
(discussed below in the context of Turle’s biography), continued lecturing well into his 70s—
including a final return to Norwich in 1857 to deliver a lecture on ‘the Music of the Elizabethan
Age’.69 He died at his home in Brentwood, Essex on 12 March 1863.
V. Thomas Oliphant (1799–1873)
Oliphant was baptised at Condie in Perthshire on 25 December 1799. He was the fifth son of
Ebenezer and Mary, the daughter of Sir William Stirling, Baronet, of Ardoch, Perthshire. Details
of Oliphant’s early life are scarce—he is cited in the 1895 Dictionary of National Biography as having
been educated at Winchester College,70 but there is no record of him entering the college as a
Commoner.71
67 [Edward Taylor], The English Cathedral Service, Its Glory,—Its Decline, and Its Designed Extinction (London, 1845), 68. 68 [Taylor], English Cathedral Service, 77. 69 Bayne, 482.
70 Sidney Lee (ed.), ‘Oliphant, Thomas (1799–1883)’, Dictionary of National Biography, vol.42, ‘O’Duinn—Owen’ (New
York, 1895), 137. 71 However, the name of Thomas’s brother James is entered in the Commoners’ register at Winchester from 1810 to
1811. Evidently a family connection to Winchester existed.
181
At some point Oliphant went to work at the Stock Exchange in the City, but in what
capacity is not known. In 1841 he was employed as a temporary assistant at the British Museum,
and began the catalogue of the increasingly overwhelming stock of music that was in disarray. He
completed a catalogue of the manuscript music in 1842 and with the support of Antonio Panizzi,
the Keeper of Printed Books, started the comprehensive catalogue of printed music. Oliphant
remained at the British Museum for nine years, until 1850. The exact circumstances of his
leaving the post are blurred, although an 1853 article describing the music catalogue records that
‘Mr Oliphant, to whom the musical public owes not only the catalogue of the library, but all the
really valuable additions that have been made to it for many years past, has long since left it,
having (it is believed) retired in disgust.’72 It is also said that he resigned following the rejection
by the trustees of his memorandum for the development of music in the collections.73
The earliest known association of Oliphant with madrigals is on his election to
membership of the Madrigal Society on 18 November 1830.74 The circumstance of his
introduction to the society is obscured, though; in his notes, Fox did not record who had
proposed or seconded Oliphant for election as a member. The next reference to Oliphant in
Fox’s notes says that he was made Honorary Secretary of the society on 18 October 1832.
Thereafter, Fox remains silent on the Honorary Secretary’s activities for nearly forty years until
his election as Vice President in 1871 and President in 1872.
Despite Oliphant’s absence from the remaining Madrigal Society records, his work for
the society was considerable. In the first ten years of his association, he produced three
important madrigal-related works: the first two, his history, A Brief Account of the Madrigal Society,
published in 1835 (discussed in Chapter 1); and also a slim volume (with a surprising pairing of
subject-matter): A Short Account Of Madrigals From Their Commencement Up To The Present Time: With
72 ‘The Catalogue of Music in the British Museum’, Daily News, 1 February 1853. 73 W. H. Cummings, ‘Oliphant, Thomas (1799–1873)’, rev. David J. Golby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20713> accessed September 2013.
74 Fox’s notes.
182
Some Remarks On Chamber Music In The Nineteenth Century. This latter provides a brief discussion of
the etymology of the word ‘madrigal’, and a description of its musical boundaries. The coupling
with the essay on 19th-century chamber music appears to have been far from an effort to
reconcile the ancient with the modern. In fact, Oliphant does quite the opposite, and holds up
modern music as an example of how poor it is compared with its ancient counterpart. The work
was published in 1836, the same year as Pugin’s Contrasts, a polemical study that compared
modern with ancient buildings to advocate the return to medieval principles for living. There is
no evidence to confirm that Oliphant’s work was inspired by Pugin’s publication, but the
ideological vein that is shared here is certainly worthy of note. Both men believed that the past
was a better place than the present, and both of them felt strongly enough to put that belief into
print.
Oliphant’s final madrigal-commentary work was published in 1837: La Musa Madrigalesca;
Or a Collection of Madrigals, Ballets, Roundelays, &c., Chiefly of the Elizabethan Age; With Remarks and
Annotations, which is discussed below. Oliphant was also the anonymous author of the Comments
of a Chorus Singer at the Royal Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey (1834), published under the
pseudonym Solomon Sackbut. The festival, a series of four concerts spread across almost a
week, had taken place in June that year; Oliphant had sung bass in the 358-strong chorus, and
William Hawes, Musical Director of the Madrigal Society, was on the festival’s committee. In his
remarks, though, Oliphant could hardly have concealed his identity any less discreetly. Of
Haydn’s National Hymn, sung on the third day of the festival, he complained: ‘why did not the
Directors choose something in the style of Orlando Gibbons’ Hosanna to the Son of David, and
thereby show the pre-eminence of their own countrymen in church music, for I do maintain,
without fear of contradiction, that we have in this country, from the time of Tallis and Bird . . .
183
finer music in the true ecclesiastical style than all the masses of Hayden [sic.] and Mozart put
together.’75
Oliphant was also a prolific provider of English texts, in particular to Italian madrigals
and German lieder, and also large-scale choral works, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio and The Mount
of Olives, both of them published in 1840, and sections of Wagner’s Lohengrin, in 1855. A one-
time colleague from the British Museum, Francis Espinasse, reminisced of Oliphant:
Tom had, I think, been in business in the City or elsewhere, and was unsuccessful; but
he retained some private means, and added to his income by song-writing. He became
known as a musical expert . . . and to his reputation in this way he owed his post in the
[British] Museum. Many a popular drawing-room song of those days bore on its title-
page the intimation, ‘Words by Thomas Oliphant, Esq.’ Tom knew no German, and
when he was told of a song in that noble tongue which was likely to suit him
commercially, he asked me to give him a bare English prose translation of it.76
The list of works associated with Oliphant confirms Espinasse’s assertion: there are at least 150
songs and madrigals to Oliphant’s name, published between 1835 and 1850. His re-setting of
English words in 1840 to a collection of six songs by Schubert attracted an (almost) kind notice
in the Morning Post: ‘The words of Mr Oliphant, written in imitation of the German school of
poetry, are a little above the milk-and-water mediocrity of everyday song-writing. They flow
easily and gracefully, and are free from overstretched absurdities. It must not be inferred,
however, that they are of high pretension, or possess any remarkable excellence.’77
The partnership of Rogers and Oliphant at the Madrigal Society in the 1830s was an
exceptionally productive one. The music correspondent for the Spectator (undoubtedly Edward
75 [Thomas Oliphant] Comments of a Chorus Singer at the Royal Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey by Solomon Sackbut
(London, 1834), 12. 76 Francis Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches (London, 1893), 23.
77 Morning Post, 16 March 1840
184
Taylor, the magazine’s long-standing musical correspondent) commented of the society in 1833
that ‘the Madrigalians have ceased to be a set of musical outcasts, neglected by professors and
disowned by fashionables. It is no longer considered disreputable to belong to them, since
Princes and Peers have been seated at their festive and harmonious board . . . ‘78
The ambitious programmes sung at the Anniversary Festivals, attended by upwards of a
hundred people, year after year, attest to the work and zeal of Oliphant and Rogers. Rogers
described Oliphant as his ‘first lieutenant’,79 and only such a determined partnership could have
organised the performance of Tallis’s forty-part ‘Sing and Glorify’ at the 1836 Anniversary
Festival. The writer for the supplement to the Musical Library reported that there were more than
a 150 members and visitors present on that evening. Oliphant’s work in preparing the Tallis, the
journalist goes on to say, was described by Rogers in the following terms: Oliphant ‘had
undertaken the Herculean task of making a magnificent copy of this grand score, and a sufficient
number of single parts for the present occasion, which, he said . . . seemed to have been effected
by magic—a work only to have been achieved by a Talisman.’80
In 1837, Oliphant performed an experiment on the unsuspecting members of the
Madrigal Society, at the Anniversary Festival: he composed the words and music to a madrigal,
‘Stay One Moment, Gentle Sires’, which he produced as the work of an unknown 17th-century
composer, Blasio Tomasi. According to Oliphant, ‘this practical joke (after the authorship was
announced) amused some, and, I believe, offended others; but as it fully satisfied my mind upon
a point I wished to ascertain, and which I leave to the conjecture of my readers, Signor Tomasi’s
Madrigal may (for what I care) be consigned to the “tomb of all the Capulets.”’81 Exactly what
Oliphant was trying to achieve is not obvious; perhaps he was testing the expertise of fellow- 78 ‘The Madrigal Society’, Spectator, 23 November 1833. 79 Report on the Madrigal Society Anniversary Dinner, Morning Post, 18 January 1834. Rogers and Oliphant
apparently dismissed the assembled company from the Freemason’s Hall after the dinner, but before the singing, so
that he and his ‘first lieutenant’, as the journalist reported, could arrange the tables to the best effect for the music. 80 Supplement to the Musical Library 23 (1836), 43–4.
81 Oliphant, La Musa Madrigalesca, 330.
185
members in recognising a forgery. John Hullah, writing a piece for Bentley’s Miscellany, was at that
same Anniversary Festival in 1837; he describes Oliphant (whom he does not name) after the
deception was revealed at the dinner: ‘the individual rises, and upwards of a minute and some
seconds, is supposed to occupy himself in making observations germane to the present subject
[his madrigal], but which, from his state of nervous trepidation, are quite inaudible.’82 It is a
fascinating observation about Oliphant, who seems to loom so large in the success of the
Madrigal Society, that his demeanour in real life was reportedly so timid, and hiding himself on
two occasions—at the 1834 festival and in this instance—behind assumed names.
In 1844 Oliphant’s name (amongst those of many others) was tossed about by the press
in discussion of the appointment of a new Reid Professor of Music at the University of
Edinburgh. Sir Henry Bishop had vacated the chair in 1843, and the appointment was in full
discussion in 1844:
But there is Mr Oliphant, the musical librarian to the British Museum, and worthy
secretary of the Madrigal Society. ‘We must earnestly censure,’ says the Musical World,
‘the appointment of any amateur. Mr Oliphant interferes too much already with the
interests and pursuits of the profession, by his dabbling in madrigalian resuscitations without
intercepting the very little, easy, and dignified bread and butter, which it is in the power of
the Government to rain into the mouth of a musician. This gentleman is so completely
an amateur, even in his antiquarian researches, that his qualifications are as questionable as
his appointment is unjust.’83
The Edinburgh professorship had been the subject of protracted debate since the 1830s, and,
due to the ambiguous wording of the will of the chair’s benefactor, it had proved contentious in
82 [Hullah], 465. 83 ‘The Edinburgh Professorship of Music and Gems of Musical Criticism by Professors’, Morning Post, 8 February
1844.
186
defining the duties expected of the incumbent. Rosemary Golding has demonstrated that the
issue of the Edinburgh professorship was particularly important as ‘a remarkable case study of
the efforts of “inventing” music for the university environment.’84 Issues of academic standing,
and discussion around music as a science or philosophical subject had all been turned over and
minutely examined in Edinburgh. The outburst against Oliphant in the Musical World, rejecting
him on the grounds of amateurism is the first indication of journalistic dissent against the quality
of both the work and a member of the Madrigal Society. The provocation is directed straight at
Oliphant himself, and not specifically at the Madrigal Society, but the highlighting of a
distinction between amateur and professional clearly articulates the tension between the two
worlds that music inhabited.
Oliphant did not become Reid Professor (nor, probably, had he ever been a candidate:
John Donaldson was appointed to the chair); he remained at the British Museum for a further
eight years.
Between the 1840s and 1870s there is a lacuna in sources that indicate Oliphant’s activity.
His name occasionally surfaces in newspaper reports of his lecturing activities—for example,
giving a paper on the incidental music to Macbeth by John Locke at the Saturday evening weekly
meeting of the Musical Institute of London,85 or active with the Madrigal Union, to whom he
became Honorary Secretary—but beyond these there is little known about his more mature
years.
Fox’s notes reveal little about Oliphant (or the Madrigal Society) after the 1840s, and
only confirm Oliphant’s election as Vice President on 27 July 1872. But then, ‘Mr Oliphant was
made President on Oct 17 1872, and died on March 9th 1873. The meeting was omitted in
March.’86 Oliphant did indeed die, unmarried, on 9 March 1873, at his home at 35 Great
84 Rosemary Golding, Music and Academia in Victorian Britain (Farnham, 2013), 15. 85 Daily News, 6 December 1852.
86 Fox’s notes.
187
Marlborough Street, London, and in the April following his death his collection of music, which
included many first and early editions of madrigals, was auctioned by Puttick and Simpson.87
Amongst Oliphant’s achievements was his publication of a large number of madrigals
that either he re-arranged, set new words to, or both. There are at least 70 known, catalogued
madrigalian works, without even considering the parlour songs and lieder for which he wrote so
much verse.
The earliest of his publications was a set of Ten Favourite Madrigals, published by James
Howell in 1835 (republished by Bates in 1840). They are all works by Italian composers,
Marenzio in particular, and set to Oliphant’s words. They differ from Hawes’s set of thirty
madrigals (published around the same time) by having a piano accompaniment, here a simple
reduction of the score, below the stave. Such a device could only broaden the market for
Oliphant’s sales—and perhaps explains why Hawes’s set, which had no accompaniment, was not
successful (see Hawes above). After his initial work with James Howell, Oliphant seems to have
remained loyal to one publishing house, through its various changes, Cramer, Addison and Beale
(then later Addison and Hodson), although he entrusted his literary works (and a very few
madrigals) to Calkin and Budd.
Oliphant also turned his hand briefly to publishing church music: in 1840 he published
an adaptation of a four-part canon by a 17th-century composer, Elway Bevin, and in 1841, under
the auspices of the Madrigal Society, he published, an adaptation of Tallis’s Short Service.88 James
Turle had instituted Tallis Days at Westminster Abbey in the early 1840s. Suzanne Cole discusses
them in depth in her book, explaining that the days, which were dedicated to Tallis’s music, had
been set up by Turle ‘at the urging of his friend and President of the Madrigal Society, Sir John
Leman Rogers, Bart.’
87 Catalogue of the Important Musical Collections Formed by the Late Thomas Oliphant, Esq. … (London, 1873); in Cole, 120. 88 Thomas Oliphant (ed.), ‘A Canon, Four Parts to the Plain Song’, in Catches and Rounds by Old Composers, Adapted to
Modern Words (London, 1840); and The Full Cathedral Service, as Used on the Festivals and Saints’ Days of the Church of
England, (London, 1841).
188
In the preface to La Musa Madrigalesca, Oliphant argued that Elizabethan poetry was
equally capable of expressing the depths of human sentiment as any poetry of the Classical or
modern age. In a similar vein to his 1836 study in the contrast between madrigal music and 19th-
century chamber music, he asserted in La Musa Madrigalesca that ‘human feelings of every kind;
joy, grief, fear, hope, love, hate, etc.; all the every-day thoughts and actions of mankind, were as
well (if not better) expressed in poetry and prose, centuries ago, than in the year of grace 1837.’89
The volume was dedicated to Sir John Rogers, and included a list of subscribers who
were largely connected to the Madrigal Society, and the madrigal societies in Bristol and Devon.
Oliphant provided a compendium of 397 sets of verse, taken from madrigals by English
composers. The verses are arranged under the headings of the composers of sets of madrigals,
with a short biographical introduction to each section, and Oliphant provides brief context and
exegesis of each set. Where the English poetry has been re-set to music by Italian composers,
Oliphant also gave the original Italian verses—there are many such examples by Morley in his
Balletts to Five Voyces (1595), of whom Oliphant says, ‘I am constrained to say that Morley has
been guilty of several barefaced plagiarisms. Imprimis, from the madrigals of Felice Anerio, which
he has dished up by wholesale in his Canzonets for two voices; and secondly from the Balletti of
Gastoldi, which have furnished him with musical ideas . . . ‘90 Oliphant observes disbelievingly
that Morley should have needed to ‘have had recourse to foreign aid.’91
Oliphant’s work was not the first of its kind—Richard Clark (1780–1856), the Secretary
of the Glee Club, had published in 1814 a collection entitled The Words of the Most Favourite Pieces,
Performed at the Glee Club, the Catch Club, and Other Public Societies, which was reprinted and enlarged
in 1833. Clark’s collection had also included the words to the madrigals published in The Triumphs
of Oriana (previously discussed in Chapter 3 and under ‘William Hawes’, earlier in this chapter),
89 Oliphant, La Musa Madrigalesca, viii. 90 Oliphant, La Musa Madrigalesca, 64.
91 ibid, 64.
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and the words to twenty madrigals by Gibbons. However, Clark’s work had not provided the
context, or any biographical details, of the madrigal composers, which Oliphant’s publication set
out to do.92
In 1847, Edward Rimbault (1816–1876), music historian and one of the founders of the
Musical Antiquarian Society, published his catalogue of Elizabethan and early 17th-century
madrigal verse, the Bibliotheca Madrigaliana, which organised in chronological order the
publication of sets of madrigals—from Byrd’s Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Piety (1588) to
Este’s Seventh Set of Bookes (1638)—with a short contents list and an index of first lines (but not
the full poetry).93 In his ‘Introduction’ Rimbault looked back at Oliphant’s La Musa Madrigalesca,
barely ten years old, but found little to recommend: ‘it is to be regretted that the editor has so
frequently modernised and interpolated his text as almost to destroy its character as a collection
of Elizabethan poetry. The remarks and annotations contain some valuable matter; but are too
frequently disfigured by frivolity unworthy of the subject.’94 Despite Rimbault’s negative
assessment of Oliphant’s publication, La Musa Madrigalesca remained the only published
collection of madrigal poetry until Edmund Fellowes’s English Madrigal Verse, published in 1920.95
VI. James Turle (1802–1882)
Turle was born at Somerton in Somerset on 5 March 1802 into a musical family.96 His father,
also James, was an amateur cellist, and his younger brother Robert (1823–1872) would become
organist at Armagh Cathedral.
92 Curiously, Oliphant’s discussion of The Triumphs makes no mention of Hawes’s 1814 project—unlike Clark, who
had announced that Hawes was shortly to publish the madrigals; Richard Clark, The Words of the Most Favourite Pieces,
Performed at the Glee Club, the Catch Club, and Other Public Societies (London, 1814), 427. 93 Edward Rimbault (ed.), Bibliotheca Madrigaliana: A Biographical Account of the Musical and Poetical Works Published in
England During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Under the Titles of Madrigals, Ballets, Ayres, Canzonets, Etc., Etc. 94 Rimbault, Bibliotheca Madrigaliana, xii. 95 Edmund Fellowes, English Madrigal Verse, 1588–1632, Edited from the Original Song Books (Oxford, 1920).
96 Gerald Norris, A Musical Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (Newton Abbot, 1981), 337.
190
James was a chorister at Wells Cathedral from 1810 to 1813 and at the age of eleven
he was sent to London, articled to John Jeremiah Goss (1770–1817), the alto and member
simultaneously of the choirs of the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s
Cathedral already mentioned. Turle was a student at the same time with John Jeremiah’s
nephew, also John Goss (1800–1880), with whom Turle was to collaborate so often during
the course of their careers.
In 1819 Turle was appointed organist of Christ Church, Southwark, a position he
maintained until 1829, when he was appointed to St James’s, Bermondsey, a post he held
from 1829 to 1831. He also acted as music master to the School for the Indigent Blind from
1829 to 1856.
Turle’s connection with Westminster Abbey began in 1817, when he became a pupil
of and assistant to George Ebenezer Williams, the Abbey organist, and member and
librarian of the Madrigal Society since 1815.97 It was, however, to be a short-lived
partnership, for Williams died on 17 April 1819. Thomas Greatorex, whose association with
the Madrigal Society had begun almost as soon as he had taken the post at the Abbey,
succeeded Williams as organist. A minute was noted in the records of the society on 22 June
1819, ‘Resolved that Mr Greatorex be respectfully invited to become a member of this
society and lend the aid of his presence with the boys of the Choir of Westminster Abbey.
The society remembering with feelings of gratitude the services that have been rendered to
the society by the kind attentions of his predecessor in the Office of Organist and Master of
the Choristers of Westminster Abbey.’98 Greatorex accepted the Madrigal Society’s
invitation, and attended for the first time on 20 July 1819, where the minutes also record
that ‘Mr Turle attended as Assistant to Mr G—with 5 of the boys.’ If Turle had attended
meetings with any of the boys during Williams’s time, it is not recorded in the minutes, but
97 Elected 2 May 1815.
98 GB-Lbl Mad. Soc. MS F5, 22 June 1819.
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after the election of Greatorex, Turle frequently attended meetings with boys from the
Abbey choir.
After Rogers’s re-arrangement of the Madrigal Society in 1827, Greatorex (whether
consulted with or otherwise) was no longer needed to conduct, under the new direction of
William Hawes. Greatorex’s name disappears from the members’ lists in the minute book,
and it would suggest that Turle was no longer needed to bring boys, as Hawes had his own
resources at the Chapel Royal and St Paul’s. Greatorex died in July 1831, and Turle was
appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers, an office which he would hold for fifty-
one years.
Turle re-appears several times in reports of the Madrigal Society in the 1830s. He
was one of the seven sub-conductors at the Madrigal Society’s performance of the Tallis
forty-part ‘Sing and Glorify’,99 and he sang as a professional visitor on several other
occasions. Turle was also playing at concerts of the Vocal Society,100 musical festivals, in
particular at Norwich, doubtless at Taylor’s invitation, and as one of the organists at the
Royal Musical Festival at Westminster Abbey in June 1834 (as noted by Oliphant, above).
With Sir John Rogers, he established the ‘Tallis Days’ at Westminster Abbey in the
early 1840s. After the death of Hawes in 1846, Turle was appointed Musical Director of the
Madrigal Society at some point in late 1847/early 1848.101 However, Turle resigned the post
on 18 October 1849.102 He remained Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster
99 Turle was named with Bellamy, Goss, Lucas, Elliott, Jolly, and Sir George Smart; Spectator, 23 January 1836. 100 At one particular concert of the Vocal Society in 1833, as noticed in the Harmonicon, he was one of four
pianists/organists, including his old co-student Goss; Harmonicon, 21 January 1833. 101 The exact date of Turle’s appointment is not known, but it had certainly taken place by the time of the January
meeting in 1848, when it was reported in the Spectator that the music for the evening ‘contained some of the finest
works of the Italian and English madrigalists; and the improvement in the manner of their performance, consequent
on the accession of Mr Turle as conductor, was the theme of’ general remark throughout the evening.’ Spectator, 18
January 1848.
102 Fox’s notes—there is no indication why Turle resigned.
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Abbey until his death, although in reality he had been released from duty, at his request, in
1875.103
When the Musical Antiquarian Society was founded in 1840 (its first publication
appeared only in 1841), Turle and Taylor were among the twelve members of the
committee. The society is discussed in Chapter 6, but Turle’s association with it needs to be
examined at this point because he was the editor of its second publication, John Wilbye’s
First Set of Madrigals, issued in 1841.104 The edition, which contains all thirty madrigals, is
prefaced with a short introduction by Turle, who admitted that little was known about
Wilbye, and thus explains that paragraphs taken from ‘Professor Taylor’s Inaugural Lectures
at Gresham College . . . may be appropriately prefixed to the first set of Madrigals . . . as
illustrative of the state of musical cultivation at the period when Wilbye and his eminent
contemporaries flourished.’105
Of his editorial approach to the madrigals, Turle is almost apologetic in his words of
explanation, and adopts a passive tone. His remarks are brief:
It has been thought expedient to make the addition of piano and forte to the several
madrigals . . . as no two persons would probably agree as to the precise mode in
which it should be accomplished, it has been thought advisable, in order to secure
uniformity in all the copies, that the editor of the present work should make the
required additions. This he has endeavoured to do according to his best judgment,
although he is aware that, in a matter simply of taste, others may differ from him.106
103 Watkins Shaw, The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal and the Cathedrals of England and Wales from c.1538
(Oxford, 1991), 337. 104 The First Set of Madrigals for Three, Four Five and Six Voices, Composed by John Wilbye, Now First Printed in Score from the
Original Part Books, A.D. 1598, Edited by James Turle, Organist of Westminster Abbey (Musical Antiquarian Society;
London, 1841). 105 Turle (ed.), The First Set of Madrigals, 2.
106 Turle, 2.
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There is little more that can be said about Turle’s editorial practice in the volume of
madrigals by Wilbye, and it was his only contribution as an editor to the Musical Antiquarian
Society.
Taylor and Turle went on to publish two large works together. The first, The People’s
Music Book, was published in three volumes in 1844; the second, The Singing-Book: the Art of
Singing at Sight Taught by Progressive Exercises, in 1846. Turle and Taylor said in their preface to
The People’s Music Book that their aim was ‘to produce a work which should meet the growing
demand for music among all classes of the community . . . [and] form a brief epitome of
vocal composition.’107 It was arranged in three parts. The first was a collection of psalm and
hymn tunes, the second a collection of English cathedral music from the 16th to 19th
centuries, Italian and German church music, English dramatic music, and Italian and
German opera. The third part comprised secular music: ‘a collection of glees, catches,
rounds, duets, trios, of the English school of vocal composition; madrigals by the best
English and Italian composers, and songs and concerted pieces, from the dramatic
compositions of Italy, Germany, and England, with an arrangement, wherever needed, for
the pianoforte’. This third volume, comprising 360 pages, contains just twelve madrigals by
Weelkes, Bennet, Bateson, and Morley. The objective of The People’s Music Book to provide a
broad collection of works was certainly achieved, but could not claim to have been an
important publication in the promotion of the madrigal. In fact it stands as an example of
the way in which madrigals could be successfully diffused to the public on the back of more
popular works.
Turle’s work as an editor and publisher of madrigals was not large, but that fact itself
shows that the publication of sets of old madrigals was still not going to be a profitable
commercial venture.
107 ‘Preface’ to The People’s Music Book (London, 1844), iii.
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VII. Conclusions
These five madrigal ‘revivers’, brought together by the Madrigal Society, all shared an aim to
endorse the popularity of the madrigal; together as antiquarians they desired to collect and
present their anthologies of old music as evidence of the overlooked musical heritage of England
that was bound up in its composers and their madrigals. Rogers and Taylor often emphasised the
importance of looking at church music alongside the madrigals that they sought to revive,108 and
Oliphant, Hawes and Turle, through their writing, researching and publishing, knit together this
quintumvirate.
There are two other music editors who fall outside the scope of this thesis, but who
cannot be passed over in the discussion of the madrigal revival. The first of them is John
Stafford Smith (1750–1836), organist, composer and editor, whose two-volume Musica Antiqua
(1812) has been discussed earlier in this thesis. Smith’s antiquarian musical bent first took its
form in print in 1779 with a Collection of English Songs.109 There are seventeen works in total: the
first of them, the ‘Agincourt Song’, precedes fourteen pieces taken from the Fayrfax Manuscript,
and with two interlopers: an anonymous French song and a short work by Jean Mouton.
Although Smith did not disclose his sources, he does seems to have taken great care in the
preparation of the volume, giving the original texts to the songs in the preface and indicating
those works where he had transposed their pitch. Smith’s Collection was one of the earliest to
publish works by Fayrfax, and it was an important resource of early music in the first half of the
19th century—in particular, Edward Taylor used works from Smith to illustrate his lectures, and
108 Rogers’s opening address to the Devon Madrigal Society, and Taylor’s remarks in his English Cathedral Service
(1845), both discussed earlier, are good examples of their emphasis on the need to study the music of the church
alongside the madrigal. 109 A Collection of English Songs, in Score for Three and Four Voices, Composed about the Year 1500, Taken from M.S.S. of the
Same Age, Revised and Digested by John Stafford Smith (London, 1779).
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Robert Lucas Pearsall, whose treatment of one of the pieces in Smith’s work is discussed in
Chapter 6.110
The second editor is Edward Rimbault (1816–1876), whose research into music and his
subsequent publications are remarkable in the second half of the 19th century. For the reason
that the majority of his publications took place so much later than those of the five principal
figures in this chapter, he has not been treated here. However, Rimbault was one of the founding
members of the Musical Antiquarian Society—he edited their first publication, the ‘Mass for Five
Voices’ by Byrd (1841), and eight other volumes, including Morley’s First Set of Ballets (1842) and
Bateson’s First Set of Madrigals (1846). In 1847, he published The Ancient Vocal Music of England,111
a collection of twenty-four pieces, including works by Fayrfax and Byrd, with piano
accompaniment. Also in 1847 he published his catalogue of madrigals, Bibliotheca Madrigaliana
(1847), discussed earlier, which was dedicated to Edward Taylor, ‘not only because he has ever
been the staunch advocate of English vocal harmony, but because to him is due the credit of
resuscitating some of its finest specimens.’ Rimbault was the only public defender of Taylor in
the scandal of 1843, which will be examined in the following chapter.
110 Taylor’s notes for the first part of his series of lectures on English vocal harmony reveal his disdain for what he
describes as ‘curious relics’: ‘The first example of English Vocal writing which I shall produce, is a composition in 3
parts by Fairfax . . . It is contained in a very curious collection of English Songs for 3 and 4 voices, made some years
since by Mr Stafford Smith, to whose industry and learning we are indebted for the presentation and the deciphering
of these curious relics. The stile of this composition is stiff, formal and graceless. It is scarcely correct, and it has no
other merit. There is no attempt at a proper arrangement of the parts, or at giving them a melodious character. It is
worked out by line and rule, and bespeaks the very infancy of the art . . . It is sung, not to give pleasure, but to
exhibit English Vocal Harmony in its first crude and almost shapeless form.’ 111 Edward Rimbault, The Ancient Vocal Music of England: a Collection of Specimens Referred to in a Series of Lectures, and
Adapted to Modern Use (London, 1847).
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CHAPTER 6
Formalising the Musical Antiquarian, Going beyond the Early Societies
I. The Musical Antiquarian Society
The 1830s madrigal publications of Hawes, Oliphant and Taylor had gone some way in
providing access to music that had until then been difficult to obtain, but as Hawes had found,
the demand for such work was small. Expensive single editions of vocal works, for upwards of
four parts, had a limited appeal in a market dominated by ‘modern’ songs with piano
accompaniment. As has been discussed in earlier chapters, madrigal societies relied on hand-
copied part books to sing from, not multiple printed copies of the same work.
The challenge of editing and publishing old music, and finding a receptive market for
it, was taken up late in 1840 by William Chappell (1809–1888)—the son of Samuel Chappell, a
prominent London music publisher and instrument dealer—and a cohort of musicians who
styled themselves the Musical Antiquarian Society.
With an interest in old English music, Chappell had begun work in 1838 on a volume,
A Collection of National English Airs, which contained 245 songs; he published it in 1840.1 In the
same year Chappell had been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and was involved
with the formation of the Percy Society, serving on a council of twelve, amongst whom were
several members of the council of the Camden Society—another literary body, set up by
several members of the Society of Antiquaries in 1838, publishing early English historical
works and fragments.
1 William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs, Consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad, & Dance Tunes, Interspersed with
Remarks and Anecdote, and Preceded by an Essay on English Minstrelsy. The Airs Harmonized, for the Pianoforte, by W. Crotch,
Mus. Doc., G. Alex. Macfarren, and J. Augustine Wade (London, 1840).
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By the late 1830s to early 1840s, the popularity of the Society of Antiquaries had
moved into a steep decline. The historian Rosemary Sweet describes the members as being ‘in
despair; the society appeared to serve no useful function and the meetings were held to be
insupportably dull.’2 Sweet posits that the Camden Society was amongst other organisations
that were siphoning antiquarian investigation and publication away from the established
channel of the Society of Antiquaries and its journal, Archaeologia.
Like the Camden Society, the Percy Society’s interest was in antiquarian matters: its
objective was to produce publications consisting of ‘Ancient Ballads, Songs, Plays, minor
pieces of Poetry, and Popular Literature, or works illustrative of the above-mentioned
subjects.’3 Amongst the twelve members of the council of the Percy Society was the music
historian Edward Rimbault, mentioned above, who was elected the society’s first Secretary.
For the payment of one pound per annum, members of both the Camden and Percy Societies
received one copy of each of the society’s publications.
In November 1840, Chappell set up the Musical Antiquarian Society for the
Publication of Scarce and Valuable Works by the Early English Composers. The conditions of
membership and the structure of the society were very similar to those of the Percy Society—
in fact this was elucidated in its prefatory notes, acknowledging that ‘the experiment has been
tried, in reference to historical literature and early poetry, with extraordinary success; and it is
now proposed to adopt the plan of the Camden and Percy Societies with reference to music’.4
Twelve members would form a council, including a Treasurer and Secretary, and an annual
subscription of one pound was to be collected from each member, entitling them to a copy of
each of the works published by the society. It seems, therefore, that Chappell’s motivation to
2 Sweet, 110.
3 Law 2 of the Percy Society, 1840–41, printed in the endnotes of vol.1 of the Percy Society, Early English Poetry,
Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages. Edited from Original Manuscripts and Scarce Publications (London, 1841). 4 Preface to the ‘Annual Report of the Council of the Musical Antiquarian Society, November 1, 1841’, appended to
No.4., Gibbons, Madrigals and Motets, ed. Sir George Smart (London, 1841), 97.
198
establish a society for the publication of old music stemmed directly from his connection to
the Society of Antiquaries and its association with its literary offshoots. Chappell’s advantage
was being able to use his family’s publishing house, and to involve people with whom he had
made connections established through the Percy Society, the Antiquaries, and his own
publishing venture.
Chappell’s first council of the Musical Antiquarian Society included William Sterndale
Bennett, Henry Bishop, George Hogarth (also a member of the Percy Society), William
Horsley, George Macfarren, Edward Rimbault, George Smart, Edward Taylor and James
Turle. William Hawes and T. Cooke were the appointed auditors for the first year. The second
law of the society clarified that its publications should ‘consist of the works of the early
English Composers (or of foreign authors, should it hereafter be deemed desirable), and of
works illustrating the history and progress of music.’5 Bishop, Macfarren and Smart were at the
centre of London’s musical life, but had not been involved in any previous musical antiquarian
activity. Chappell’s inclusion of them on his first council is an indication of his determination
to introduce the antiquarian mindset to contemporary musical life—and in all probability to
increase its commercial potential through the association with such musical giants.
The first volume of the Musical Antiquarian Society appeared in 1841, followed by a
further eighteen volumes of musical works (listed in Appendix 4) before ‘fizzling out’ in 1848,
as Richard Turbet describes it.6 Eight of the volumes were sets of madrigals by composers of
the late-16th to early-17th century, and, according to Chappell, none of them had been printed
in their entireties since the 17th century, and certainly not in score.7 Access to music that had
5 Laws of the Musical Antiquarian Society, appended to No. 4., Gibbons, Madrigals and Motets, Sir George Smart (ed.)
(London, 1841), 99. 6 Turbet, 16.
7 Madrigal publications of the Musical Antiquarian Society: No. 2, Wilbye, First Set of Madrigals, edited by James Turle
(1841); No. 4, Gibbons, Madrigals and Motets, by Sir George Smart (1841); No. 5, Morley, The First Set of Ballets, by
Edward Rimbault (1842); No. 8, Weelkes, The First Set of Madrigals, by E. J. Hopkins (1843); No. 13, Hilton, Ayres or
Fa-Las, by Joseph Warren (1844); No. 14, Bennet, Madrigals for Four Voices, by E. J. Hopkins (1845); No. 16, Wilbye,
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previously been difficult to obtain evidently had great appeal: the audit on 1 November 1841
showed that 689 annual subscriptions had been received, and the Report of the Council in
October 1842, and the members’ list—appended to the eighth publication—showed that the
Musical Antiquarian Society was at its full complement of 950, including institutional
subscriptions from the Trustees of the Royal Academy of Music, the Society of British
Musicians, the London Institution, Cambridge University Library, and the Imperial Library of
Vienna.8 A further twenty-three music clubs and societies variously subscribed to one or two
copies each, and the remaining 900 or so subscriptions belonged to an almost exclusively
British public.9
George Macfarren prepared an extra volume of piano arrangements to accompany each
volume (at an additional cost of 14s per year), which had been made ‘in compliance with the
wish of many members,’10 with the intention of making the main volumes more serviceable.
The society relied on private collections of music, often in the hands of members, to use for
preparation and publication of the new scores—in his Secretary’s Annual Report of the
Council in 1841, Rimbault pointed out that public libraries had afforded ‘little or no
assistance’11—and before their publication, the works had been rehearsed at Chappell’s house,
presumably to check for notational errors.12
The Second Set of Madrigals, by George Budd (1846); and No. 17, Bateson, The First Set of Madrigals, by Edward
Rimbault (1846). 8 ‘Report of the Council’, 31 October 1842, appended to No. 8, Weelkes, The First Set of Madrigals, E. J. Hopkins (ed.)
(London, 1843), 2 and 5.
9 The single non-British subscriber was a Mr Codman of Quebec, Canada. 10 Footnote to the ‘Annual Report of the Council of the Musical Antiquarian Society, November 1, 1841’, appended
to No. 4., Gibbons, Madrigals and Motets, Sir George Smart (ed.) (London, 1841), 103.
11 ‘Annual Report of the Council of the Musical Antiquarian Society, November 1, 1841’, appended to No 4.,
Gibbons, Madrigals and Motets, ed. Sir George Smart (London, 1841), 104. 12 The thanks of the council to individuals for the loan of their personal copies of music (individually listed), and to
Chappell for the use of his house, is minuted in the ‘Annual Report’, 104.
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The slow ‘fizzling out’ of the Musical Antiquarian Society appears to have taken place
from 1844, the fourth year onwards; the principle cause seems to have been a
misunderstanding by its subscribers as to the nature of the music in the volumes to which they
had subscribed. The number of publications dwindled from four in 1843 to two a year in
1844/45 and 46, then one in 1847; the last came in 1848. In 1846, Rimbault reported that
‘many persons joined the Society with very mistaken views of its design and intent, and those
have withdrawn from it. Other causes have operated to the same end… The council is
inadequate to produce the same number of publications as in former years.’13 Thirty years after
the society’s extinction, Chappell confirmed Rimbault’s report, saying that the society’s
members ‘gradually fell away, chiefly alleging as reasons that the works were more fitted for
societies than for private families, in which there are rarely a sufficient number of voices; and
secondly that the books occupied too much space.’14 It seems that despite such a promising
start, the efforts of the Musical Antiquarian Society were eventually beset by the same
problems encountered by Hawes with his two series of madrigals, by not having a sufficiently
wide appeal to make the publications viable.
From the members’ list in the publications, it is clear that societies and other bodies
were important to the early success of the Musical Antiquarian Society—the first Annual Report
of the Council mentions that the Sacred Harmonic Society was responsible for one hundred
subscriptions. It is in the members’ lists that provincial and metropolitan madrigal societies’
names appear for the first, and in some cases, the only time. Amongst the subscribing societies
are the Madrigal Society, the Western Madrigal Society, and the societies at Bristol,
Manchester, Norwich, Liverpool and Ely. The madrigal societies at Norwich, Liverpool and
Ely have left scant trace of their existence (as discussed in Chapter 4), but both the Western
13 ‘Annual Report of the Council of the Musical Antiquarian Society’, appended to No. 17, Bateson, The First Set of
Madrigals, Edward Rimbault (ed.) (London, 1846). 14 William Chappell, ‘Musical Antiquarian Society’, in George Grove (ed.), Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2
‘Improperia to Plainsong’ (1880), 416–7.
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Madrigal Society, whose archive exists to this day, and the Manchester Madrigal Society, with
no archive extant, but traceable through contemporaneous newspaper reports, play important
roles in drawing this dissertation to its conclusion.
II. The Western Madrigal Society, the Prize Competition of 1841, and the Downfall of
Edward Taylor
The Western Madrigal Society was not, as it name might suggest, another madrigal society in
the west of England; in fact it took its name from the fact that it was founded in London’s
West End—in contrast to the Madrigal Society, which was a City institution. The Western
Madrigal Society was founded by nine men, who gathered on 24 February 1840 at 27 Soho
Square—the home and shop of John Browne, piano-maker and dealer—where they drew up a
set of rules almost identical to those of the Madrigal Society. The society was founded for the
‘purpose of singing madrigals’,15 but unlike the Madrigal Society, the meetings (held on
alternate Saturday evenings) did not take place at a public house, but continued at 27 Soho
Square—although an end-of-season dinner was held at the Crown and Anchor on 5 June 1840.
There appears not to have been any sense of rivalry towards the Madrigal Society, but the
stated single objective of the Western Madrigal Society may well have been intended to
contrast with the Madrigal Society’s elaborate ritual and extravagant Annual Festival. However,
the Anniversary Festival of the Western Madrigal Society quickly became as large as that of the
Madrigal Society, sometimes welcoming between 250 and 300 guests at a dinner. Another
attraction to membership of the Western Madrigal Society may have been its location in the
West End. The City was increasingly less popular as a place to live, and as the metropolis
expanded, so too must the journey times through its congested traffic have increased; such an
opportunity to avoid a lengthy journey could only have been welcome to the members.
15 Minute book, 1840–1843, Western Madrigal Society Archive, Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex.
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William Hawes was appointed the first Musical Director, concurrently holding the
same post at the Madrigal Society, and, in the same manner that he did at the Madrigal Society,
he provided boys from the Chapel Royal and St Paul’s to sing at the meetings.
The rules of the society were specific about what could be sung at meetings: ‘madrigals,
anthems and that style of music; and that no glees be sung at the meetings under any
circumstances’ (9th Rule). The first President of the society was the publisher Joseph Calkin,
who presided over the first full meeting, on 29 February 1840, when twelve people attended.
George Budd, publishing partner of Calkin, was made treasurer and secretary. Membership
was fixed at £1 11s 6d (one and a half guineas) per annum, and the maximum membership was
capped at forty. Programmes were similar to those of the Madrigal Society, and every meeting
ended with Savile’s ‘The Waits’. The Western Madrigal Society continued until 1960, when it
was disbanded, and its archive was presented in 1965 to the library at the University of Essex,
where it remains.16
Edward Taylor’s entanglement with the Western Madrigal Society set the musical press
of London ablaze in 1843. In 1841 the society had organised a competition, offering a prize of
ten guineas for the best madrigal composition submitted by competitors specially invited by an
internal committee. The works were to be submitted anonymously; the madrigals would be
rehearsed, and a winner chosen from amongst the entries. On 9 February 1842, from the nine
madrigals submitted, the winner was selected: Edward Taylor’s composition ‘Sweetheart, Why
Turn Away’, a madrigal for five voices. Taylor accepted the prize, and the work was sung at the
Anniversary Festival of the Western Madrigal Society, in the presence of Taylor, in May 1842.
Less than a year later, in March 1843, a discovery was made at an ordinary meeting of
the Western Madrigal Society: a madrigal by Marenzio, ‘Spring Returns’ (originally ‘Gia Torna’)
16 The Western Madrigal Society Archive comprises minute books from 1840 to 1960, seven part books, two
attendance books and a small collection of dinner programmes. Especial thanks are due to the Deputy Librarian,
Nigel Cochrane, at the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex, for his assistance in compiling a handlist of
the collection.
203
copied into the part books of the Western Madrigal Society from Taylor’s Vocal School of Italy,
had been rehearsed just before Taylor’s own madrigal. When singing Taylor’s madrigal, it was
found that ‘Sweetheart, Why Turn Away’, contained a fifteen-bar, note-for-note passage from
the madrigal by Marenzio. Rapid correspondence between Taylor and Joseph Calkin, on behalf
of the committee of the Western Madrigal Society, ensued. The minute book of the Western
Madrigal Society contains a record of their correspondence and an in-depth account of the
subsequent events: a comprehensive collection of articles concerning Taylor and the madrigal
‘scandal’ was pasted into the minutes, and the correspondence between Taylor and Calkin was
copied out by hand. The committee wrote to Taylor, expressing their disappointment and
requesting the return of the ten-guinea prize. Taylor complied, but wrote a long letter of
explanation to the committee, saying that he had never sought to deceive the society; he
explained that he had been in the habit of copying out passages from other works as an
exercise to study compositional form, and that the passage by Marenzio had ‘escaped’ into his
submission when copies of two different compositions by Taylor were mixed up, and the
wrong one was sent as his entry for the Western Madrigal Society prize.17 The committee
accepted Taylor’s explanation, and acquitted him of any intention to deceive them.
The press however was not so kind, and by the end of March, the story was being
broadcast across metropolitan and provincial journals. In some cases Taylor was lampooned in
cloaked irony—the Morning Post, respecting the decision of the Western Madrigal Society to
accept Taylor’s explanation, nevertheless remarked:
The unsuccessful competitors for the prize of 1842 have received notice to send in
fresh specimens of their talents in madrigal writing, and it is to be hoped that they will
exercise their inventive faculties in new inspirations, and not incur the risk of sending
in old copies, one of which might turn out to be a Luca Marenzio. Professor Taylor, in 17 Letter from Edward Taylor to Joseph Calkin, 22 March 1843, copied into the minute book, 1840–1843, Western
Madrigal Society Archive, Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex.
204
his next lectures on his very favourite theme—Handel’s plagiarisms—at Gresham Hall,
pro tempore, may have the charity to explain that poor Handel might have also used a
wrong copy by mistake, and that the great man might not have discovered his error
‘until it was too late,’ that is, until Handel had profited by the petty larceny.18
Another London-printed newspaper, the French-language Courrier de l’Europe, seized on the
opportunity to publish the letter that they claimed Taylor had sent in his defence to the
committee of the Western Madrigal Society. Not a word of it appears in the actual copied letter
in the minutes of the Western Madrigal Society, but the writer for the Courrier de l’Europe seems
to have exercised every power of invention at his disposal to forge a bewildering, meandering
communication from Taylor (the article, written in French, is given in full in Appendix 5): ‘Our
God Save the Queen is quite simply, both the words and music, a French song, inspired by Louis
XIV, and sung by the students at the royal school at St Cyr, which was founded by Madame de
Maintenon.’19 Taylor, the Courrier claimed, was then supposed to have defended the plagiarism
of Marenzio in his work. ‘Mon crime à moi, c’est d’avoir franchement reproduit une création
enfouie depuis des siècles, et que vous laissiez honteusement dormir dans la poudre de l’oubli.
Vous me devriez des louanges, et c’est un blâme et de la honte que vous déversez sur ma tête’,
Taylor opined. [‘My crime is to have freely produced something that was lost for centuries, and
which you have shamefully allowed to lie forgotten in the dust. You should be praising me, yet
you heap blame and shame upon my head.’]
The warring machinery of the press rattled on through April with attack and counter-
attack; the Morning Post was the most vociferous of critics—picking holes in a defence of
18 ‘Professor Taylor and the Western Madrigal Society’, Morning Post, 30 March 1843. 19 ‘Notre God Save the Queen est tout simplement, paroles et musique, un chant français, inspiré par le roi Louis XIV,
et chanté par les élèves de l’école royal de St-Cyr, fondée par Mme. de Maintenon.’ Courrier de l’Europe, 8 avril 1843.
205
Taylor written by Rimbault in the Musical World20—concluding that ‘it is doubtful to us whether
the Professor himself knows the distinction between a madrigal and a glee.’21
The correspondence continued in the press for several months, but beyond the risible
aspect of such reporting as that in the Courrier de l’Europe, the most cutting attack was held back
until 3 June, and came from the Musical Examiner. After the initial disclosure of the story of
Taylor and his madrigal, an article appeared in the Spectator on 22 April, re-stating the case, and
trying to make light of the offending passage in the madrigal, saying that it was merely a link
from the first to second subject and of little musical value; this was, the writer of the article
concluded, also the opinion of Horsley, Goss, Turle and Benedict. The editor of the Musical
Examiner, James Davison, was renowned for hard-hitting attacks where he felt they were due.
The motto of the Musical Examiner was ‘fair play to all parties’, appearing on all issues of the
paper, and Davison promised to ‘award praise where it is due and censure where it is due . . .
Of charlatanism, however, in all its phases, they [the editors] declare themselves the avowed
and uncompromising enemies . . . Where the public and the musical profession are
bamboozled and blindfolded, it has been and shall be the office of the Musical Examiner to
unwrap the folding which has shut out the daylight from their eyes.’22 The Musical Examiner
repeated the opinion of the Morning Post that Taylor had probably dictated the article in the
Spectator, and concluded, ‘The fact is the Professor is floundering in a water from which all the
‘Spectators’ in the world . . . could not extricate him. The article in the Post has irretrievably
snuffed out his professional existence. Farewell, then, Professor! No more will music be
infected with thy blistery hallucinations! Ed. M.E.’23
Davison’s words, although cutting, had been pre-empted by Taylor: at the end of his
letter of to Calkin, he had written, ‘my active professional life is closed—I have nothing to
20 ‘Professor Taylor and the Western Madrigal Society’, Musical World, 18:14 (6 April 1843), 124–5. 21 Morning Post, 12 March 1843. 22 Editorial, Musical Examiner, 15 (11 February 1843), 108.
23 ‘Professor Taylor and the Spectator’, Musical Examiner, 31 (3 June 1843).
206
seek in the way of advancement, and my desire of musical reputation is at an end.’24 Although
there is no written evidence to confirm it, the circumstantial evidence suggests that the affair
with the Western Madrigal Society did curtail Taylor’s musical activities considerably. He
ceased to write for the Spectator in that year, and, as has been discussed in Chapter 5, beyond
his edition of Purcell’s King Arthur for the Musical Antiquarian Society, his published presence
was slight. The record of his lecture-tours, kept inside his folder of notes, shows only four
more lecture deliveries (Norwood, 1844; Hull, 1845; Nottingham 1846; and Gresham College,
1848).25
III. Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856)
Although Taylor’s reputation was apparently on the wane in the early 1840s, that of his
acquaintance Robert Lucas Pearsall, whom he had known since his lectures in Bristol in 1837,
was decidedly waxing. Where Taylor had failed in his attempted composition in madrigal form,
due to the allegation of plagiarism, Pearsall’s emulation of the form had brought him success.
Pearsall was a remarkable individual whose place in the madrigal revival merits careful
examination because of the proliferation and quality of his compositions, and the contribution
they made to bringing together two musical worlds: the music of the 16th and 17th centuries and
that of his own time. Pearsall’s peculiar achievement in writing works that respected a late 16th-
century technique of composition, combined with the harmonic palette of the early 19th century,
makes his work stand out from that of contemporaneous composers, whose madrigal writing
was never so fully explored, nor as voluminous as that of the Bristol-born gentleman amateur.
Pearsall followed a succession of 18th- and 19th-century English composers who used
the madrigal as a vehicle for composition in an old style. The most frequently performed of
24 Letter from Edward Taylor to Joseph Calkin, 22 March 1843, copied into the minute book, 1840–1843, Western
Madrigal Society Archive, Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex.
25 Lecture Notes of Edward Taylor, GB-Lcm ET MS2153.
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these pieces were the 1811 Madrigal Society Prize winner ‘Awake, Sweet Muse’ by William Beale,
Samuel Wesley’s ‘O Sing unto Mie Roundelaie’, and Thomas Linley’s mid- to late-18th century
five-part madrigal ‘Let Me, Careless and Unthoughtful Lying’, all of which were sung by the
Madrigal Society, the Devon Madrigal Society and, later, other societies. Commentators have also
singled out other works by Pearsall’s contemporaries: one such contemporary was Thomas
Attwood Walmisley (1814–1856), composer of three madrigals, one of which, ‘Sweete Floweres’,
was described by John Fuller Maitland as ‘one of the last successful imitations of an old
madrigal’26.
Pearsall, however, surpassed the other ‘modern’ madrigal composers in the quantity of
his compositions, writing twenty-three madrigals and one ‘ante-madrigal’, ‘Who Shall Have My
Lady Fair’, between 1836 and 1842. His works were frequently included in their programmes of
metropolitan and provincial societies: ‘Who Shall Have My Lady Fair’ was the most often
performed of his madrigal works during his lifetime. Pearsall explained in a letter to Ellacombe
(quoted in Edgar Hunt’s biography of Pearsall) that he chose to call it an ‘ante-madrigal’ for the
benefit of the members of the Bristol Madrigal Society, to whom he sent it. Pearsall wanted to
‘distinguish it from the pieces usually sung there.’27 Pearsall told Ellacombe that the work had
been inspired when ‘looking over a book at the British Museum, in which were a good many old
English compositions of the reign of Henry VII…before the introduction of madrigals…and I
found there a species of four-part song, very much like a madrigal in its general character, but
possessing nevertheless peculiar features which marked it as belonging to a class apart.’28
26 John Fuller Maitland, English Music in the XIXth Century (London, 1902), 94. 27 Letter sent from Pearsall to Ellacombe in 1845, precise date not given; quoted in Edgar Hunt, Robert Lucas Pearsall:
the ‘Compleat Gentleman’ and His Music (1795–1836) (Chesham Bois, 1977), 103.
28 Hunt, 103. Judging from what Pearsall says, the work that he had seen at the British Library was undoubtedly
John Stafford Smith’s Collection of English Songs, in Score for Three and Four Voices, Composed about the Year 1500, Taken
from M.S.S. of the Same Age, Revised and Digested by John Stafford Smith (1779), previously discussed at the end of Chapter
5. Song VIII, ‘Who Shall Have My Fayre Lady’, was the foundation of his ‘ante-madrigal’.
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To understand Pearsall’s motivation for madrigal writing, it is necessary to consider the
environment and influences that brought him to the point of such compositional interest.
Pearsall was born in Clifton, Gloucestershire on 14 March 1795, and was the only surviving son
of Richard, a cavalry officer, and Elizabeth, née Lucas. Pearsall’s immediate antecedents were
Quakers, and they lived in Willsbridge, a hamlet on the back road between Bristol and Bath. The
family had been moderately prosperous industrialists in the 18th century, but Pearsall’s uncle lost
the family business in an action of bankruptcy in the early 1810s.
Pearsall’s father died in 1813, and the young Pearsall’s mother determined that her son
should be educated for a career at the Bar. From her own means, Elizabeth Pearsall was able to
buy some of the remnant of the estate of her bankrupted brother-in-law in 1816, and she and her
son moved from Bristol to Willsbridge House. The year after the Pearsalls’ arrival in their new
home, Henry Thomas Ellacombe (1790–1885) was installed as curate at Bitton (the neighbouring
village, whose parish included Willsbridge). The two young men developed a lasting friendship,
and their correspondence over the ensuing years affords a major biographical source for Pearsall.
Little other evidence of Pearsall’s life before 1826 exists: he married Eliza Hobday in
1817, and their first child, John, was born in 1818/19; a second son was born in October 1820,
only a month after the death in infancy of John. Pearsall was called to the Bar in May 1821, and
set up chambers in Bristol the following September. Two daughters were born, Elizabeth and
Philippa, in 1822 and 1824. It is only from 1825 onwards that Pearsall’s life as a composer,
antiquarian, genealogist, translator and poet has been acknowledged and recorded.
Hunt deals with the events of 1825 in one brief sentence: ‘In 1825 he [Pearsall] had a
slight stroke, and was advised to live abroad.’29 It is not known why being advised to live abroad
was thought to provide the cure, but the family—Pearsall, his wife and three children—set off
on a peregrination through Belgium and the states of north-west Germany that would lead them
first to Mainz, and then in 1830 to Karlsruhe, in the Duchy of Baden. There is certainly no
29 Hunt, 17.
209
suggestion that Pearsall was working after 1825, either while the family travelled, or once they
had settled in Mainz. Pearsall evidently used some of his time for musical pursuits as a student of
composition—he had previously had no formal training—as well as turning his hand to
translation: his translation of Schiller’s William Tell was published in London in 1829.30
In his article ‘Pearsall: a Memoir’, published in the Musical Times in 1882, Julian Marshall
states that in Mainz, Pearsall associated ‘continually with a number of friends who had musical,
antiquarian and literary tastes, thoroughly congenial with his own. Here he became the pupil of
Joseph Panny, an eminent contrapuntist, and began to study seriously.’31 Schott of Mainz
published three sacred compositions by Pearsall in 182832—all of them were sung at a meeting of
the Devon Madrigal Society on 3 February 1831 (see Chapter 4). Exactly how much instruction
Pearsall received from Panny is not known, but Pearsall published and dedicated a glee to him,
‘Take, O Take Those Lips Away . . . Dedicated to Mr Joseph Panny of Vienna, as a Mark of
Respect for his Genius as a Composer’, published by Goulding and D’Almaine in 1830.
Pearsall’s early compositions follow a distinct pattern: his orchestral and chamber music
belongs to the period from 1828 to 1835, the madrigals and other vocal music were produced
from 1836 to 1842, and from 1845 to 1856 he embraced church music. These three phases
reflect the key stages of different activity in Pearsall’s life: the period of first settling in Mainz
and then Karlsruhe, where his family grew up and received their education; Pearsall’s return to
England in 1836 to deal with the affairs of his deceased mother’s estate, and his extended stay
until late summer 1837—during which time the Bristol Madrigal Society was founded—followed
by an unsettled two years before his wife left him; and finally leaving Karlsruhe in 1842 to live in
the Gothic splendour of the Schloss Wartensee in Switzerland, where he died in 1856.
30 William Tell: a Play Translated from the German of Schiller with Illustrative Notes (London, 1829). 31 Julian Marshall, ‘Pearsall: a Memoir’, Musical Times, 23 (1882), 375–6.
32 Miserere Domine, (op.1); Tantum Ergo; Graduale pro Festo St. Stephani (Op.7). (Mainz, 1828).
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IV. Pearsall’s Madrigals
As an antiquarian musician, composing madrigals must have been an alluring challenge for
Pearsall. His first attempt took place during his return to England in the summer of 1836. He
was staying at Willsbridge after the death of his mother, but spending much of his time at Bitton
Rectory with the family of his friend, Ellacombe. Hunt records that Pearsall’s first madrigal, ‘My
Bonny Lass She Smileth’, was written into a music book belonging to Jane Ellacombe.33 Two
more madrigals, ‘Sing We and Chaunt It’ and ‘No, No, Nigella’, were written between August
and September 1836. All three are for four voices; the texts taken from Thomas Morley’s First
Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces (1595). These first three trials at madrigal writing are largely
homophonic; Pearsall was clearly experimenting with modality in his compositions. However,
Edward Taylor’s series of lectures in January 1837 and the subsequent formation of the Bristol
Madrigal Society suddenly gave Pearsall the opportunity to compose, and this seems to have
breathed life and energy into his subsequent endeavours.
His extended stay in England permitted him to attend the first twelve regular meetings of
the BMS, from 1 March to 2 August 1837. During this period, he produced many works to be
tried by the society. Whether the President or the Musical Director were informed in advance
that Pearsall was bringing new compositions, and what arrangements were made to have
sufficient copies available, is not mentioned in the minutes, nor do we know what his fellow
members thought about his composing zeal, but there can be no doubt that the BMS was a very
powerful stimulus to his composition of madrigals and partsongs. At the third meeting Pearsall
produced two new works, ‘When Apollo’ and ‘Shoot False Love I Care Not’; two more at the
sixth meeting ‘I Saw Lovely Phillis’ and ‘All Ye Nuns of Halliwell’ (now lost); and at the ninth,
yet another new work, ‘Why Weeps, Alas’. This was the last work he gave to the BMS before
returning to Karlsruhe.
33 Hunt, 20.
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Table 6.1 lists Pearsall’s madrigals, providing an overview of his works in
chronological order of composition. Only six of the twenty-four madrigals, which includes
his ‘ante-madrigal’, ‘Who Shall Have My Lady Fair’, were published during his lifetime; the
remainder were published either as part of a collection of his works—by Novello in 1862,
under the supervision of his daughter Philippa—or in the two-volume collection of choral
works by Pearsall issued by Novello from 1869.34
The first nine madrigals, including the three early trial works, were written during the
period 1836–7 at Willsbridge, and were all presented to the Bristol Madrigal Society. Pearsall
returned to England once again in 1838, producing another four madrigals, and attending
two meetings of the Madrigal Society in London in June and July that year.35
Pearsall’s friendship with Thomas Oliphant and Edward Taylor was sufficiently
strong to allow him to dedicate works to both men. To Taylor he dedicated his orchestral
overture to Macbeth, published by Schott in 1839, and the madrigal ‘Spring Returns’ he
dedicated to Oliphant. The other three dedicatees of the madrigals that Pearsall published
were, perhaps unsurprisingly, Bristol connections: Alfred Bleeck, one of the co-founders of
the BMS with Pearsall, and J. D. Corfe, the Musical Director, were central to Pearsall’s
madrigal compositions, as were all of the members of the BMS, to whom he dedicated ‘I Saw
Lovely Phillis’.
The six madrigals of 1839, which include the eight-part ‘Great God of Love’
(dedicated to Corfe) and ‘Who Shall Win My Lady Fair’, were also written for and presented
to the BMS. Pearsall wrote to Ellacombe at some point in the early 1840s, complaining that
he could get no response from Corfe to the music he was sending him: ‘It would gratify me
to hear that what I sent him has excited any pleasure or interest in him.’36 As Donald Gugan
34 Novello’s Part-Song Book (Second Series), vol.10 and 11. (London, 1869 and 1872). 35 Fox’s notes.
36 Hunt, 33.
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has written in ‘Pearsall and the Bristol Madrigal Society’—a detailed essay that accompanies
the collection of Pearsall’s autograph manuscripts at the University of Bristol—‘the society
seems to have been neglectful of Pearsall while he was alive, and the relationship seems to
have been rather one-sided.’37 Hunt goes so far as to suggest that it was probably the neglect
of Pearsall by Corfe and Bleeck that stopped Pearsall’s flow of madrigals. Whether Hunt’s
words are true or not, 1842 is visibly the year in which Pearsall’s madrigalian exercises
ceased.
The final five works, of which three were in eight parts, were all unpublished until
after his death. ‘No, No, Nigella’ and ‘Sing We and Chaunt It’ were fairly simple re-workings
of two of the three earliest works, and ‘Why Do the Roses Whisper’ and ‘Nymphs Are
Sporting’ (to words by Oliphant) are fine examples of Pearsall’s ability to combine a
formulaic approach to four-part composition with a liberal sense of harmonic experiment.
Few of his other works, though, compare with the exceptional beauty of ‘Lay a Garland’;
within its 58 bars, Pearsall succeeds in devising an exquisite agony: the constancy of
suspension and resolution, used as an illustrative device of persistent torture throughout the
music, cannot fail to draw the listener into its emotional core. The deep sadness of the words
(adapted by Pearsall from an Elizabethan play), combined with the experience and skill in
composition that Pearsall had acquired by 1840, stand as a monument to his outstanding
ability as a madrigal composer.
37 Gugan, Donald, ‘Pearsall and the Bristol Madrigal Society’, one of a series of papers written before the archives of
the Bristol Madrigal Society were transferred to the Special Collections at the Arts and Social Sciences Library at the
University of Bristol in 2008. The notes are available on the website of CHOMBEC (Centre for the History of
Music in Britain, the Empire, and the Commonwealth), Department of Music, University of Bristol:
<http://www.bristol.ac.uk/music/CHOMBEC/bms/5_Pearsall_and_the_BMS.pdf>.
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Table 6.1: Pearsall’s Madrigals
Madrigal Composed Published Dedicatee Words Voices
Two Children of this Aged Stream
1836 1837 (D’A) Dryden (adapted from Purcell’s King Arthur)
4 ATTB
My Bonny Lass She Smileth 1836 Morley (adapted) 4 SATB
No, No, Nigella 1836 Morley 4 SATB
Sing We and Chaunt It 1836 Morley (adapted) 4 SATB
Shoot, False Love (‘Ballet Madrigal’)
1837 Morley (adapted) 4 SATB
Why Weeps, Alas, My Lady-Love?
1837 1862 (N) Morley (adapted) 5 SSATB
I Saw Lovely Phillis 1837 1840 (C) The Gentlemen of the BMS
Pearsall 4 SATB
Take Heed, Ye Shepherd Swains
1837 1840 (C) Alfred Bleeck Pearsall 6 SSATTB
Let Us All Go Maying (‘Ballad Madrigal’)
1837 Pearsall 4 SATB
O Ye Roses So Blooming and Fair
1838 Pearsall 6 SSATTB
It Was upon a Springtide Day 1838 1840 (C) Pearsall? 5 SATTB
Spring Returns 1838 1840 (C) Thomas Oliphant
Pearsall? 5 SSATB
Light of My Soul 1838 1862 (N) Bulwer 6 SSATBB
Great God of Love 1839 1840 (C) John Davis Corfe
Pearsall 8 SSAATTBB
Sweet as a Flower in May 1839 1862 (N) Pearsall 4 SATB
Down in My Garden Fair 1839 1862 (N) Pearsall 4 SATB
Who Shall Have My Lady Fair? (‘Ante-Madrigal’)
1839 1840 Edited by Oliphant
Adapted from text at British Museum
4 SATB
Why Should the Cuckoo’s Tuneful Note
183938 1862 (N) Pearsall 5 SSATB
List, Lady! Be Not Coy 183939 Milton 6 SSATTB
Lay a Garland 1840 1862 (N) Beaumont and Fletcher (adapted)
8 SSAATTBB
No! No! Nigella (‘A Double Chorus’)
1840 1862 (N) Morley (adapted) 8 SATB SATB
Sing We and Chaunt It 1840 Morley (adapted) 8 SATB SATB
Why Do the Roses Whisper? 1842 1862 (N) Pearsall 4 SATB
Nymphs Are Sporting 1842 Oliphant 4 SATB
38 completed 27 February 1847.
39 completed 1847.
214
Eleven of the madrigals are set to poetry written by Pearsall, and ‘Lay a Garland’ is his own,
heavily changed adaptation. For his madrigal poetry, Pearsall sought inspiration in bucolic
fantasy and the realm of unrequited love—themes that were repeatedly found in English
madrigal verse in the late 16th and early 17th century. It was only later, in 1851, that he wrote
down his thoughts about what elements made a madrigal stand out from a partsong. The
seven ‘requisite and salient features’ were included in the article, mentioned earlier, that had
been provoked by Pearsall’s horror at the admission of several partsongs by Mendelssohn
into the programme of a BMS Ladies’ Night. Pearsall wrote:
The requisite and more salient features of the madrigal . . . may be summed up as
follows:
1) Cheerfulness and variety as general characteristics. 2) Short phrases, except in a
long madrigal where long phrases may be used for producing variety, or a particular
effect. 3) A skilfully managed conversation between the voice parts; the leading
phrases being answered imitatively, and occasionally by their inversions, where that is
possible. 4) Well prepared cadences and such as fit the sense of the text. 5) A well
balanced arrangement of the voice parts, so that some of them shall relieve the
others, by going on whilst the others pause. 6) A harmony so constructed that all
conversational phrases shall enter with effect and leave off without abruptness. 7) A
proper distribution of rests.40
Whilst these definitions are clear per se, identifying them in Pearsall’s madrigals can be a
somewhat arbitrary task. How can ‘cheerfulness’, for example, be a general characteristic of
such a sad lament as ‘Lay a Garland’? What constitutes a ‘well-balanced arrangement’ in this,
or any other music? In some ways, he creates more questions than the one he is trying to
40 The original letter was sent by Pearsall to the editor of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journey in 1851, but was not published.
It did not appear in print until 13 December 1861 in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, to whom it had been sent by
Ellacombe.
215
answer, but at least he gives some insight into his own approach in writing for this form of
composition.
V. Pressures for Change—the Manchester and Leicester Madrigal Societies
The very fact that Pearsall should have written a letter to the press about the practice of a madrigal
society indicates that private, associative music-making was changing fast in Victorian society,
pressurised by mass public taste and therefore perhaps for the first time feeling beholden to it. In
all sorts of ways the madrigal revival was beginning to come into line with the mainstream choral
movement that had been developing alongside it. The workings of the Manchester and Leicester
madrigal societies in the 1840s demonstrate this clearly.
As stated earlier, no archive of the Manchester Madrigal Society is extant; therefore no
close study of its operation is possible. However, a collection of concert programmes from 1842 to
1864 is held at the Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester,41 while reports in the Manchester
Times reveal that it was Edward Taylor who had introduced the idea of a madrigal society there. An
1842 report of a concert given by the Manchester Madrigal Society said that Taylor, ‘who may be
looked upon as the founder of madrigal music in this town,’ attended the concert.42 A concert
review in the Musical World in January 1850 claimed 1840 as the year of the Manchester Madrigal
Society’s foundation,43 although an earlier date is possible, as Taylor’s record of his lectures shows
that he had delivered his series on English Vocal Harmony in Manchester in both 1837 and 1838.44
There is, however, no evidence as to whether Taylor’s part in helping to set up the society was as
great as that as it had been at Bristol in 1837.
41 Manchester Madrigal Society: one volume of programmes for concerts given by the society at various locations
around Manchester between 20 December 1842 and 31 May 1864. Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester;
R780.69Me77. 42 ‘Manchester Madrigal Society’, Manchester Times, 24 December 1842. 43 ‘Manchester Madrigal Society’, Musical World, 25:2 (12 January 1850), 25–27.
44 Edward Taylor, Manuscripts in GB-Lcm MS2153, vol.1.
216
As at Bristol, a conductor, William Shore, was appointed, but no boys were used to sing
the top line, which was taken by women’s voices. The members were seated at tables to give the
concert, with Shore at the head of the music tables—an arrangement that did not please one
reviewer who described a concert given by the ninety singers, who sat at tables in an oblong square,
with ‘the singers at one end of the tables being unable to hear any instruction made at the opposite
end. The consequence was that the voices were not nicely attuned, harmony was occasionally
altogether destroyed, and a strange dissonant jumble ever and anon greeted the ear.’45 It seems that
the same, difficult, arrangement of the tables for concerts continued until 1849, when it was
reported that the platform had been set up in three rows of seats, in a horseshoe shape, facing the
conductor.46
The important point at Manchester is that there appears to have been no ‘president’ to take
charge of proceedings. It would suggest that from its beginning, the Manchester Madrigal Society
met only to rehearse for its concerts, unlike the earlier madrigal societies that met privately and
without an intention of public appearance (with the exception of Bristol, where public
performance developed from the president-led society). Amateurs needed time to learn their
music, and then they wanted to perform it in front of others. Without knowing whether the
Manchester Madrigal Society did or did not have a constitution and rules for its operation, concert-
giving appears to have been its raison d’être.
From the gentleman antiquarian’s point of view, it was even worse than that. The
membership of mixed sexes marks it as, apparently, the first madrigal society to break away from
the all-male models of Bristol, Exeter, and London. And although the 1842 press review
mentioned that the Manchester society’s concert included works by Marenzio and Morley, and
other madrigals ‘that bore so close a similarity in sound, that monotony occasionally was
complained of’, a review of a concert in 1850 showed that Elizabethan composers had been totally
45 ‘Manchester Madrigal Society’, Manchester Times, 24 December 1842.
46 Manchester Times, 22 December 1849.
217
abandoned in favour of a programme of anthems and motets by Mozart, Haydn and Croft,
amongst others.47 Other later programmes show that although ‘old’ madrigals were still included in
programmes, the society was drifting towards works by 19th-century composers such as Pearsall,
Beale and Webbe.48 Pearsall, by composing madrigals that fused the renaissance musical world with
his own, had become a commodity rivalling or outpacing the historical one he so revered.
Only one other late-founded society seems to have attempted to fly the flag of purity. The
Leicester Amateur Madrigal Society was founded in 1851; it seems to have survived for three years
only, but is important within the context of this study because it appears to have been the last such
society instituted under the shadow of Edward Taylor’s influence, and modelled upon the Madrigal
Society, at least in display for public performance. The Leicester Amateur Madrigal Society grew
out of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, after the idea of creating a musical section
within this society had been entertained but rejected.49 Nevertheless, Alfred Paget, a founder
member of the Literary and Philosophical Society, gave his support to the new madrigal society,
and was made Acting President in its first year. The newspaper reports of the proceedings of the
society’s concerts offer an engaging glimpse of the public’s reception of madrigals.
As has been seen in the example at Manchester in December 1842, the desire to present a
concert of madrigals in an ‘authentic’ context, in other words, seated at tables, laid out in a long
row (as at Manchester), presented problems of communication between singers, despite the
presence of a conductor, in the increasingly ‘amateur’ context—note that word in the Leicester
society’s title—which prevailed in the growing industrial towns. Despite this, at Leicester the
accommodation of ‘authenticity’ was taken a step further for the first concert: ‘the New Hall had
47 Manchester Times, 27 April 1850. 48 The Manchester Madrigal Society’s annual Dress Meeting in December 1852 was a concert of eighteen works, of
which only six were by 17th-century English composers (two each by Bennet, Morley and Wilbye); the rest of the
music was by Lord Mornington, Neukomm, Beale, Pearsall and others, including glees, songs and serenades. 49 I am very grateful to Patrick Boylan, Professor Emeritus (retired) at City University, London, for his assistance in
locating journal, and other articles relating to the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society and to the Leicester
Amateur Madrigal Society.
218
been made to assume something of the character of the private saloon or drawing-room . . . On
each side of the performers, shrubs were placed; busts of Byron and Scott, on pedestals, also being
on either hand: while mirrors surmounted the two mantelpieces.’50 The set-dressing imposed for
the concert suggests that the revival had arrived at a point where madrigals now required elegant,
intimate surroundings—the creation of the atmosphere of the drawing-room—a far cry from the
well-watered meetings of the Madrigal Society at the Crown and Anchor tavern. This aesthetic
imposition might have been influenced by one of the vice-presidents on the committee of the
society, the composer and musical commentator William Gardiner (1770–1853), then in his
eighties. Gardiner had written a review of the society’s first concert which the editor of the Leicester
Chronicle had turned down, supposedly due to a lack of space. Gardiner included it in the third
volume of his Music and Friends, claiming that madrigal-singing was ‘eminently a social style of
music, and is best sung round a table, when each performer has his part to himself.’51 This is a very
different view from that of John Hullah, who fifteen years earlier, in 1837, had insisted that justice
to a madrigal by Gibbons could only be done ‘by a body of singers that would fill St Paul’s, or
cover Salisbury Plain.’52 It is quite possible, therefore, Gardiner had contrived the arrangement of
the New Hall to suit his perception of the correct milieu for madrigal singing—he described himself
as ‘having had for many years, perhaps the chief share in the management of the musical affairs of
the town [Leicester].’53 And it is equally possible that this was not appreciated or felt to be
sustainable.
Gardiner goes on to say that ‘about thirty gentlemen and twelve boys glided in upon an
elevated stage, and sat down to half-a-dozen tables, with their books and wax-lights, as in the olden
time of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth.’ Fortunately, the number of singers on stage was less than
50 Leicester Chronicle, 20 March 1852.
51 William Gardiner, ‘Madrigals’, Music and Friends; or Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante, 3 vols (London, 1838–53), iii.
373–376. 52 [Hullah], 466.
53 Gardiner, iii. 374.
219
that of Manchester, but the insistence at being seated at a table to sing, distinguishes madrigal
performance in the 19th century from any other form of musical entertainment. At the concerts at
Leicester, the President wielded an ivory gavel (presented to him in 1853 by the society,54 at the
same time that an ivory baton had been presented to the society’s Musical Director, Henry May) to
direct the proceedings—presumably following the custom of the Madrigal Society: one strike of
the gavel to move to the next piece, two strikes to repeat it.
Henry May left Leicester for Canada in early 1854.55 In his absence, James Turle, who
brought with him a treble and Robert Barnby, ‘principal alto in the Westminster Abbey choir’,
conducted the annual concert.56 That third concert was apparently the last by the society. Although
a new conductor was appointed in 1854, no concert was reported in 1855, and the final reference
to the Leicester Amateur Madrigal Society appeared in the Leicester Journal in September that year,
with the less-than-definitive announcement that the society would ‘resume its meetings, we are
informed, some time during the month of October.’57 But that is the last we hear of it, which
strongly suggests that what the society and its movers had managed to stage was not sustainable,
and at odds with the real musical needs of its community.
The Leicester society appears to have been the last creation of its kind; thereafter no
further madrigal societies composed exclusively of men and boys were instituted in Britain. Such
marked finality to this aspect of the madrigal society movement makes it the logical place to end
this narrative, but the story of the madrigal revival in the 18th and 19th centuries does not come to
an abrupt end in the 1850s. Its resonances carry on within the three surviving all-male madrigal
societies in London and Bristol, and in the madrigal publications of Arkwright and Fellowes. The
54 The ivory and silver-mounted baton was described in some detail by the writer of the report of the 1853 concert
in the Leicestershire Mercury, 9 April 1853.
55 The Leicester Amateur Madrigal Society gave Henry May a send-off with a musical dinner before his departure for
Canada, reported in the Leicester Journal, 17 March 1854. 56 Leicester Chronicle, 29 April 1854.
57 Leicester Journal, 28 September 1855.
220
madrigal revival surely did not die; like the tide, it simply retreated until a second wave carried it
back into the awareness of the public in the early 20th century.
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CONCLUSION
Studying the madrigal revival in England during the 18th and 19th centuries has revealed not
only complex messages about its cross-fertilisation with the ‘gothic’ essence of sacred music,
but has also turned our attention towards the relationship of antiquarianism with patriotism,
and the embodiment of the ancient through the activity of madrigal singing. Covering such a
long period, between the early 18th century (even the late 17th century, if we include Henry
Aldrich within our compass) and the mid-1850s, inevitably weakens the possibility of minute
investigation of all of the tessellating details of which such an historical mosaic is constructed.
Here, though, such a broad span of time has given us the advantage to take an arching
overview of the rise and fall of the madrigal revival, from its first stirrings, onwards to its peak,
and then to its decline.
Now, almost at the end of this dissertation, we can look back across time where it is
possible to see, then, that by the 1850s the heyday of this first madrigal revival had passed:
Pearsall had ceased composing and revising madrigals, and was concerned enough about the way
the madrigal revival was going to write to the press in Bristol, only to have his letter withheld,
perhaps even censored. Edward Taylor had been hounded out of the profession by the press for
what we must assume had been seen as his mendacity, as though he were a forger of old masters.
One association in particular, the Musical Antiquarian Society, had managed to sell scores of
English madrigals to nearly 600 subscribers nationwide but it had then petered out, due
apparently to the music's lack of ability to appeal to the music-buying public. Other societies,
while maintaining the title, began increasingly to abandon the distinctive characteristics of the
madrigal society: they had begun to use a conductor, either due to the limited sight-reading
abilities of their members or because they wished to present ‘proper’ performances to a public,
or both. Manchester succumbed to the pressure to include partsongs and other non-madrigal
repertoire in its concerts, and the Leicester society and many others lost their momentum.
222
This breakdown in the madrigal's popularity in the 1850s raises several questions: where,
in retrospect, does the madrigal movement fit within the social history of music in England? In
what ways had the madrigal revival completed its work, and in what ways had it failed to do so?
Several conclusions emerge in answer to these questions, but even these answers pose further
question.
To some extent the work of Rogers, Hawes, Taylor, Oliphant, and Turle could be
perceived as having failed in an effort to grab the attention of the mass market in the 1830s and
’40s, if mass appreciation for their efforts is a gauge of success. Their collections of madrigals did
not sell; this elite market was simply overtaken by the success of cheap editions. The best-known
example is of J. Alfred Novello, who took over his father’s music publishing business in the
1840s and pushed out huge quantities of music to support the rapidly growing sight-singing
movement.58 This in turn led to the fossilisation of a preferred repertoire, available at low prices
at the expense of less popular music or composers.59 The historian of music publishing, D. W.
Krummel, noted that thanks to the fortune made by J. Alfred Novello in the mass production of
sheet music, he was enable ‘to spend his last forty years in lavish retirement in Italy.’ Krummel
asks, however, whether Novello’s decision to focus on satisfying the mass market had
contributed significantly to ‘the “freezing” of the repertory of classical music around the corpus
of masterworks, whose composers’ names were emblazoned on the decorative border of
Novello’s famous octavo covers?’60 Undoubtedly, yes; Novello’s editions successfully led and
created popular vocal repertoire in the second half of the 19th century (and onwards into the
58 Bernarr Rainbow attributed the ‘nationwide formation of amateur choral societies after 1840’ to the efforts of
John Hullah (who has been previously seen in Chapter 3, deploring the presence of women at the Madrigal Society
in 1837), and his sight-singing movement. Bernarr Rainbow, ’Hullah, John’, Grove Music Online, accessed October
2014.
59 Victoria L. Cooper briefly discusses the British choral movement and its impact on the publisher Novello, in The
House of Novello: the Practice and Policy of a Victorian Music Publisher, 1829–1866 (Aldershot, 2003), 18–21. 60 D. W. Krummel, ‘Music Publishing’, in Nicholas Tempereley (ed.), Music in Britain: the Romantic Age 1800–1914
(Blackwell History of Music in Britain 5; London, 1981), 58.
223
20th), as the ubiquitousness of Novello’s eighteen volumes of part songs (containing some 519
works in total) in choir libraries ably demonstrated. The appeal of Pearsall’s vocal music saw the
posthumous publication of two volumes of his works by Novello in the 1880s, but the madrigals
of Morley or Gibbons or Weelkes did not enjoy the same success; the works of Joseph Barnby
(1838–1896), John Liptrot Hatton (1809–1886), amongst many other ‘modern’ composers,
apparently held greater allure to the singer than the works of the ‘ancients’. It seems that the
commercial possibility of editing and selling collections of old madrigals would be suspended for
another forty years, when the first volumes of Edmund Fellowes’s The English Madrigal School
appeared in 1913.
Why, though, did the rot set in? As the mid-Victorian era began, around the time of the
Great Exhibition in 1851, the importance of being in touch with a broad public was a vital
element of the age. This extended to music making, where men and women wanted to be
involved when and where they could: choral societies and festival choruses, for example, had
been successfully launched in most English cities, including London’s Sacred Harmonic Society
(1832) and the Vocal Association (1856), Birmingham Triennial Musical Festival choir (1843)
and Manchester Hallé Choir (1858), all of them large-scale organisations of over two hundred
singers that performed oratorios and dramatic works. Madrigal singing was perhaps too small
and rarefied for the taste of the choral participants, and without the gentlemen’s-club
atmosphere in which to sing madrigals, the appeal of performing early-17th century choral music
was not great.
Gentleman amateurs had been the founders of all the societies that have been examined
in the course of this investigation, but the real core of the madrigal societies was the musical
professional. Was there something that stopped happening around 1850 in terms of the free
association of professionals with amateurs? A prime explanation would be that the professional
singers probably had less money and less time to devote to the clubroom atmosphere of the
societies. The marketplace was becoming far more competitive than it previously had been, and
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the likes of the professional members of the Madrigal Society, who had regularly attended the
meetings in the 1830s, had other ways and means of making money. In 1849, S. S. Wesley
remarked on the financial state of church musicians that ‘it is necessity, not choice, that has
driven our finest musicians to compose for the theatre, or to occupy their time in tuition, as
affording the most lucrative return.’61
By the early 1850s, only the Madrigal Society and Western Madrigal Society continued to
meet in order to sing their strictly regulated madrigal repertoire—although according to Fox’s
notes, by the early 1860s even the Madrigal Society was experiencing straitened financial times
with the cancellation of anniversary dinners in successive years from 1865 to 1868.62 That Bristol
hung on to its society without (or at least not too frequently) resorting to singing partsongs—the
poisoned chalice which Pearsall feared—may point to a conclusion that madrigal singing
required a critical mass of old-style expertise and associability (lay clerks, tradesmen networks, a
dense population of lawyers and medics and other traditional professions) found in such a
conservative city as Bristol and such a large city as London.
As we have seen in our discussions, despite the efforts of the madrigal protagonists and
the societies to which they belonged, the madrigal revival in the 18th and 19th centuries did not
bloom in the full-flourish of a celebrated musical movement, and it still remains a little-known
musical phenomenon The semi-private nature of the societies’ meetings and the limited
circulation of many of the madrigal publications (before, at least, those of the Musical
Antiquarian Society) conspired to limit the effect of the enthusiastic, though nonetheless small,
group of amateurs; but as it has been argued, the works that they sang laid the foundations for
the establishment of a canon of what are now well-known madrigals.
We have also noticed through the investigation of material relating to provincial societies
that the madrigal revival was not an isolated metropolitan matter, but one that was received with
61 S. S. Wesley, A Few Words on Cathedral Music (London, 1849), 92.
62 Arthur Fox, notes from the sixth minute book,1859/60–1915. Private Collection.
225
enthusiasm by those curious to discover the musical past. In the wider context of choral music
activity in the period under examination, it has been seen that uptake of the madrigal as a vehicle
for a wider audience was slow. The discussion of the highly successful introduction of choral
works of Mendelssohn to the programmes of the Bristol Madrigal Society showed that public
taste, outside the narrow confines of connoisseurship within the established societies, did not
favour the old over the new, but nevertheless old madrigals, when heard in concert, appealed to
the audience as auditory fragments of the past.
Could it be argued that the madrigal revivers had achieved something by their labours?
Undoubtedly, yes. Although they may not have conquered the mass market, within their lifetimes
their influence on connoisseurs and music professionals was considerable. The Madrigal
Society’s Prize Competition stimulated interest in composition; the society’s library acted as a
wellspring for circulating repertoire; the early musical press had considered madrigal meetings to
be newsworthy; and provincial cities had benefitted from their enthusiasm to sing and to share
this beautiful music.
Despite the fact that the 19th-century madrigal movement eventually lost much of its
momentum after 1850, for over one hundred years an important contribution was made to
English musical life. Its ripples eventually led to the great madrigal revival launched by Edmund
Fellowes in the 20th century, and—nearly three hundred years after Immyns’s first meeting—can
still be seen in the Madrigal Society, which continues to sing to this day.
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Appendix 1
A List of the Musical and Antiquarian Societies Mentioned in this Thesis in
Chronological Order of Their Foundation
(Madrigal societies are highlighted in bold text)
Dates of Operation Name
1717–
1726–1731
1731–1802
1744?–
1761–
1766–1792
1770–1810?
1776–1848
1777?–1857
1791–4; 1801–22
1798–1812; 1817–1847
1821–1843?
1825–39
1825–1851?
1833–1841?
1836–1838?
1837–
1838–1860?
1838–1897
The Society of Antiquaries
The Academy of Vocal Music
The Academy of Ancient Music
The Madrigal Society
The (Noblemen and Gentlemen’s) Catch Club
The Anacreontic Society
Bristol Catch Club
The Concert of Antient Music
The Glee Club
The Vocal Concerts (Harrison and Knyvett’s)
The Concentores Sodales
The Devon Glee Club
The Devon Madrigal Society
The Melodists’ Club
The Ladies’ Madrigal Society
Salisbury Madrigal Society
Bristol Madrigal Society
Norwich Madrigal Society
The Camden Society
227
1839/40–?
1839/40–1864?
1840–1848
1840–1852
1840–ca1965
Active 1841
Active 1841
1841?–1843?
1841–1852
1851–1854/55
Liverpool Madrigal Society
Manchester Madrigal Society
The Musical Antiquarian Society
The Percy Society
The Western Madrigal Society
The New Madrigal Society
Kennington Madrigal Society
Ely Madrigal Society
The Motett Society
Leicester Amateur Madrigal Society
228
Appendix 2
Transcription of Arthur Fox’s Handwritten Notes, Taken from the Now-Missing
Minute Book, 1828–1859
[My editorial interpolations are expressed in square brackets only. Otherwise this is a line-for-
line transcription of Fox’s work, including his notes, commentaries and parenthetical remarks
(in round brackets) that are found in his original transcription of the minutes]
‘The 5th Minute Book begins with a revised set of rules, dated 4 February 1828:
[1] That the Society, which is at present limited to thirty members, may be increased to thirty-
five. Whenever the members and candidates for admission shall together amount to forty, and
that it may be further increased to forty, whenever the members and candidates shall together
amount to fifty: to which number of forty members there shall be no addition.
[2] That the meetings of the Society shall be held at the Freemason’s Tavern on the third
Thursday in each month from October to July, both inclusive.
[3] That the Chair to be taken by the President at Five o’clock, and that in his absence a
substitute be appointed by the Committee.
[4] That in the absence of the Musical Director a substitute be appointed by the Committee.
[5] That at the last meeting of every Season, a day be appointed for the purpose of auditing the
Society’s accounts, and of electing, by ballot, a Treasurer, Librarian, and Secretary for the
following Season.
[6] That the President have the right of introducing three friends, the Treasurer, Librarian and
Secretary and Musical Director two each, as visitors at every meeting, but the same person
shall not be introduced oftener than twice in any one Season. That the sum of £1 be paid for
the admission of each visitor, and that for any casual extension of this rule, application be
made to the Committee.
[7] That every member shall have the right of introducing professional Gentlemen as visitors at
either of the meetings giving three days notice to the Treasurer, and paying 12s for each
gentleman so introduced.
[8] That every candidate for admission as a member of the Society be proposed and seconded
and balloted for at a subsequent meeting provided seven members be present. [9] That no
229
candidate be elected unless either the proposer or seconder be in attendance. [10] That a
week’s notice be given to each member, and the ballot take place before dinner. That two
black balls shall exclude; and that such candidate shall upon his name being placed upon the
books of the Society, pay £1 towards the expenses of the Library.
[11] That every member on proposing a candidate shall vouch for his capability of joining in
the performance of the Society.
[12] That each candidate shall, upon his being elected a member, pay £1 as his admission fee,
and that every member shall pay £1 quarterly for his subscription and 7s 6d on every
attendance, excepting the Anniversary Dinner, when he shall pay 15s.
[13] That the dinner be placed on the table at five o’clock precisely, and that madrigals be sung
until nine o’clock, when tea shall be brought in, after which the function of the President shall
cease as far as regard expense to the Society.
[14] That two members, in turn, be appointed wine stewards at each meeting, and that they
have the right of introducing one visitor upon the terms of the Sixth Resolution.
[15] That if any member shall be four quarter subscriptions in arrear, the Treasurer shall
require him to pay the same; that in default of payment when a fifth quarter shall become due,
such member shall be considered to have withdrawn himself from the Society, and that the
names of the defaulters, if any, and a copy of these resolutions shall be laid upon the table at
every meetings for the perusal of members.
1828
8 December. Subsequent resolutions.
• That the Committee of Management consist of the President, Vice-President,
Treasurer, Musical Director, Librarian, Secretary, two wine stewards and that three
form a quorum, with power to proceed to business.
• That honorary members shall not be allowed to vote in any question, or to be
permitted to exercise in any way the privilege of regular members (9 August 1832).
• That the assistant Librarian (if there be such an official) be one of the Committee of
Management (9 August 1832).
• That all persons who make a profession of music whether vocal or instrumental, be
allowed to visit this Society by paying 12s. (9 August 1832).
(The preceding rules were altered and printed, A.D. 1834. Thos. Oliphant, Secretary)
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1829
19 February. At the Anniversary Dinner sixteen madrigals were sung, five of them being
encored, including Croce’s ‘Cynthia, Thy Song’, and Gibbons’s ‘Dainty Fine Bird’, and ‘O, that
the Learned Poets’.
1830
30 May. The death of our late, much-respected, member, Mr E. Burden, having been
announced, a glass of wine was dedicated to his memory in solemn silence, and out of respect
to his departed worth, Wm. Creighton’s beautiful anthem, ‘I Will Arise and Go to My Father’,
was performed.
22 July. The first toast was ‘King William IV’, who had acceded to the throne.
5 August. Resolved that the members of the Madrigal Society assented at their annual audit,
ever retaining a grateful remembrance of the zealous and effectual support which it received
for many years from its late worthy and excellent President, Stephen Groombridge, Esq., are
anxious to express their cordial and sincere respect for him, and the pride and satisfaction
which they feel in having so long supported the best school of English music by his able
direction. (Mr Groombridge had retired owing to ill-health, and died in 1832.)
18 November. Mr Thos. Oliphant, afterwards for many years Secretary, elected a member.
1832
19 January. Among the visitors at the Anniversary Dinner were the Duke of Cumberland and
the Duke of Argyll.
15 March. A handsome and massive snuffbox was this evening presented to Wm. Hawes,
Esq., the Musical Director of this Society (for many years), as a mark of esteem for his valuable
and gratuitous services.
9 August. Sir John Rogers, the President for many years, resigned owing to ill health, and his
resignation was received with great regret and gratitude for his services.
18 October. Mr T. Oliphant appointed Secretary.
15 November. Mr Linley appointed President (composer of ‘Let Me Careless Lying’, and other
madrigals). There was some opposition to his election, as some members wished to return to
the old practice of different presidents during the season, and Sir John Rogers was requested
to resume his presidence, which he did on 18 April 1833.
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1833
20 June. The death of Mr William Bayley, late Treasurer, was announced, on which occasion
Weelkes’s motet, ‘Death Hath Deprived Us’, was performed. (Apparently for the first time.)
The following alterations were made in the rules appointed on 10 January 1833:
• Instead of Rule 3 (rescinded on 11 February 1833) read ‘That the President and Vice-
President of the Society do hold their offices for life.’
• In Rule 4, instead of three members of the Society, not being officers hereof, to be
taken annually in rotation, read ‘the President and Vice-President’.
• In Rule 10, instead of ‘before dinner’ read ‘after dinner’; instead of ‘without which no
candidate can be elected’, read, ‘and that three black balls do exclude’.
1834
16 January. The Anniversary was probably for the first time recorded in the public press. A
long notice in the Atlas of Sunday 19 January, gave an interesting account and programme of
the meeting. It is pasted into the minute book. It stated, ‘We must reckon this as one of the
rare occasions in which the very “extacy” of the art is tasted.’ On this occasion, Dragonetti, the
great double-bass player, assisted the voices. There was also a report in the Morning Post: ‘there
were 20 sopranos, 20 altos, 30 tenors and 30 basses on this occasion.’
19 June. The meeting was the largest ever held, except an Anniversary. Many musicians were
assembled for a great musical festival in Westminster Abbey. On this evening, Sir John Rogers,
the President, had 51 guests, and there were many others.
16 October. Note: on this evening, both Houses of Parliament were burnt to the ground.
1835
15 January. At the Anniversary Dinner, Sir John Rogers had 23 guests, and there were 64
others. There was again a number of enthusiastic press notices.
1836
17 March. The Earl of Oxford was proposed.
232
1838
25 October. Audit Meeting. It was resolved that owing to the flourishing state of the finances
of the Society, the quarterly payments of £1 be not demanded of the members on the next July
meeting.
1839
16 May. Mr E. Hopkins (afterwards organist of the Temple Church) proposed as a member.
20 June. A new madrigal by R. L. Pearsall, Esq., was this evening performed for the first time,
‘Spring Returns’. Mr Pearsall attended as a visitor, and again on 18 July.
21 November. ‘How Still and Peaceful’, an arrangement of Oliphant from C. Tye, sung for the
first time.
1840
16 January. At the Anniversary, Sir John Rogers had 36 guests, and there were 140 present.
1841
21 January. The Centenary of the Society; 170 people were present, and it was a great success
and well reported. Sir John Rogers presided, and had 19 guests. The programme on this
occasion is given overleaf [now below].
Programme, Centenary 21 January 1841
Part 1
Cry Aloud and Shout
I Will Go Die
Come Gentle Swains
Lullaby
Sister Awake
Now Is My Cloris
I Will Give Thanks
Wm. Croft
Marenzio
Cavendish
W. Byrd
Bateson
Weelkes
Palestrina
_______
233
Part 2
Sing Joyfully
All Creatures Now
Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees
Tu Es Sacerdos
My Lady Still Abhors Me
Phyllis, the Bright
Lo! Where with Flow’ring Head
The Waits
Byrd
Bennet
Wilbye
Leo
Ferretti
Ward
Morley
Savile
18 cantos, 23 altos, 35 tenors and 50 basses.
1842
3 February. At the General Meeting, Sir John Rogers finally retired from the Presidency, and
Lord Saltoun was elected. The sum of £50 was presented to Sir John on his retirement.
19 May. A silver tankard, value £50, was presented to Sir John.
1846
15 January. The Anniversary was reported in many papers and there was a picture of the
meeting in the Illustrated London News. (Preserved in the minute book.). Mr Turle conducted a
fine programme.
19 February. There was no meeting (and none in the month) on account of the death of
William Hawes, Musical Director of the Society.
23 July. Mr Turle was elected to succeed Mr Hawes as Musical Director.
1847
15 July. At the audit meeting, the charge for professional visitors was raised from 12s to 15s.
Mr J. P. Street, Librarian and Father of the Society, died on 17 February 1848.
1848
28 July. At the audit meeting, Rules 12 and 13 were altered as follows:
234
• 12. That every member shall pay £4 per annum for his subscription, to be considered
due at the first meeting of the Society in October, and 7s 6d, etc., etc.
• 13. That if any members’ subscriptions shall be unpaid on 1 January of the current
season, such member shall be considered, etc., etc.
First Appearance of Ladies
• Resolved: that ladies to be admitted to the gallery on the next Anniversary, that each
member be allowed two, and the members of the Committee three ladies’ tickets, and
that members be particularly requested not to absent themselves from the hall for the
purpose of joining the ladies, except during the interval between the first and second
parts of the performance.
1849
18 January. At the Anniversary, forty ladies were present in the gallery.
18 October. Mr James Turle resigned the post of Musical Director. Mr James King, the
Assistant Director, continued to preside and was appointed Director on 9 August 1850.
1852
19 July. Mr King was given £10 10s for his past services as Conductor.
19 November. The meeting this month was held on Friday, instead of Thursday, on account
of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington happening on the latter day.
1853
20 October. Sir George Clarke was elected President in room of Lord Saltoun, deceased.
1854
24 July. At the audit meeting is first mentioned an investment of the Society’s funds: £100
stock in 3% Convols [?]
July. Mr Cipriani Potter was appointed Musical Director.
1855
19 April. Mr Kellow Pye was elected a member, remaining such until his death in 1901.
235
18 February. At the Anniversary, an old German chorale was sung for the Princess Royal’s
wedding.
1858
2 August. At the audit meeting it was resolved that ladies should not be admitted to the
ensuing Anniversary, and that the meeting should be held in the usual dining room—also that
the charge for professional visitors be raised to 12s.
21 October. Resignation of Mr W. F. Beadon, who presented the pitch-pipe to the Society.
1859
20 October. His Highness Prince Duleep Singh was proposed for membership, and elected 17
November.
This Concludes the Fifth Minute Book’
236
Appendix 3
Published Collections of Madrigals, 1800—1850
YEAR TITLE EDITOR PRINTER/SELLER
1801 The Canzonets and Madrigals for Three and Four voices, of Thomas Morley W W Holland and W Cooke Clementi and Co.
1808 (reprinted 1814 by Hawes) A Collection of Madrigals for Three, Four, Five & Six Voices Richard Webb Clementi and Co. (seller)
1814 (appeared 1817) The Triumphs of Oriana: a Collection of Madrigals for Five and Six Voices William Hawes
1815 A Collection of Madrigals and Motetts, Chiefly for Four Equal Voices Joseph Gwilt
1822 7 Madrigals of Old Masters Edward Taylor
1825 Italian Music Vincent Novello
1833 First Set of English Madrigals William Hawes Wm Hawes
1838 The Vocal Harmony of the Italian Schools of the Sixteenth Century Edward Taylor Richard and Edward Taylor
1840 Oliphant’s Madrigals Thomas Oliphant
1841 John Wilbye: The First Set of Madrigals James Turle Musical Antiquarian Society
1841 Orlando Gibbons: Madrigals and Motets George Smart Musical Antiquarian Society
1842 Thomas Morley: The First Set of Ballets Edward Rimbault Musical Antiquarian Society
1843 Thomas Weelkes: the First Set of Madrigals Edward J Hopkins Musical Antiquarian Society
237
1844 John Hilton: Ayres or Fa Las Joseph Warren Musical Antiquarian Society
1845 John Bennet: Madrigals for Four voices Edward J Hopkins Musical Antiquarian Society
1846 John Wilbye: The Second Set of Madrigals George W Budd Musical Antiquarian Society
1846 Thomas Bateson: the First Set of Madrigals Edward Rimbault Musical Antiquarian Society
Publications Containing Words of Madrigals
YEAR TITLE COMPILER PRINTER
1814 The Words of the Most Favourite Pieces Performed at the Glee Club, the
Catch Club, and Other Public Societies.
Richard Clark Philanthropic Society
1837 La Musa Madrigalesca, or a Collection of Madrigals, Ballets, Roundelays,
etc., Chiefly of the Elizabethan Age, with Remarks and Annotations.
Thomas Oliphant Calkin and Budd
1840 Lyric Poetry of Glees, Madrigals, Catches, Rounds, Canons and Duets. As
Performed in the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club, the Glee Club, the
Melodists Club, the Adelphi Glee Club, and All Vocal Societies of the
United Kingdom
Thomas Ludford Bellamy Richard and John Edward Taylor
1844 Lyrical Poems Selected from Musical Publications Between the Years 1589
and 1600
John Payne Collier Richards for the
Percy Society
1847 Bibliotheca Madrigaliana: A Bibliographical Account of the Musical and
Poetical Works Published in England During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, under the Titles of Madrigals, Ballets, Apres, Canzonets, Etc.
Etc.
Edward Rimbault Richard and Edward Taylor
238
William Hawes’s Madrigals, Series 1 and 2
I am very grateful to Dr Peter Horton, Deputy Librarian (Reference and Research) at the Royal College of Music; he
helped me find some of the titles of the Series 1 publications. Alas, copies of Series 2 have been hard to trace, and
numbers 5 and 6 remain unknown.
Series 1
No.01 Dowland Now, O Now I Needs Must Part 4vv
No.02 Wilbye Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees 5vv
No.03 Beale, William Phyllis (poetry by J Gwilt)
No.04 Morley Dainty Fine Sweet Nymph Delightful 5vv
No.05 Bennet All Creatures Now
No.06 Wilbye Come Shepherd Swains 3vv
No.07 Gibbons, Orlando O That the Learned Poets
No.08 Evans, Charles S. As a Rosy Wreath
No.09 Weelkes Now Is My Cloris Fresh as May 5vv
No.10 Weelkes We Shepherds Sing 5vv
No.11 Weelkes Like Two Proud Armies 6vv
No.12 Waelrent O’er Desert Plains ‘Vorria Morire’
No.13 Conversi When All Alone 5vv (Canzoni alla Napolitana ‘Sola Soletta’)
No.14 Gibbons, Orlando The Silver Swan 5vv pf
No.15 Bicci, Dainty White Pearl 6vv
No.16 Wilbye Lady Your Words Do Spite Me 5vv
No.17 Morley Fire, Fire! 5vv
No.18 Croce Cynthia, Thy Song 5vv
No.19 Ward Die Not, Fond Man 6vv
No.20 Wilbye Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers
No.21 Lasso, Orlando di The Nightingale 5vv
No.22 Marenzio Dissi a l’Amata 4vv
No.23 Hawes Sweet Philomela 4vv
No.24 Anon. A Chi More per Dio
No.25 Bennet Come, Shepherds, Follow Me 4vv
No.26 Weelkes When Thoralis Delights to Walk 6vv
No.27 Bennet Thyrsis, Sleepest Thou 4vv
No.28 Gibbons Round About
No.29 Dowland Sleep Wayward Thoughts
No.30 Morley What Saith my Daintie Darling?
Series 2
No.01 Morley I Love, Alas, I Love Thee 5vv
No.02 Bennet Flow, O My Tears 4vv
No.03 Morley Fly Love That Art so Spritely 5vv
No.04 Ward Upon a Bank with Roses Set about 5vv
No.07 Wilbye, Softly, O Softly Drop, Mine Eyes
No.08 Weelkes Sweetheart Arise, Why Do You Sleep 5vv
No.09 Bateson Sister Awake, Close Not Your Eyes
239
Appendix 4
Publications of the Musical Antiquarian Society, 1841–1848
This list is derived from Richard Turbet’s article, ‘The Musical Antiquarian Society’, Brio, Vol. 29
(1992). It is based on the numbered lists published in the Annual Report of the Council of the Musical
Antiquarian Society, and in the lists of the volumes of piano accompaniment (not given here).
Only volume 13 published in 1844, Ayres or fa las by John Hilton, edited by Joseph Warren, is
marked with a date of publication.
1. Byrd, William A mass for five voices, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1841]
2. Wilbye, John The first set of madrigals, ed. James Turle, [1841]
3. Purcell, Henry Dido and Aeneas, ed. G. A. Macfarren, [1841]
4. Gibbons, Orlando Madrigals and motets, ed. George Smart, [1841]
5. Morley, Thomas The first set of ballets, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1842]
6. Byrd, William Book 1, of Cantiones Sacrae, ed. William Horsley, [1842]
7. Purcell, Henry Bonduca, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1842]
8. Weelkes, Thomas The first set of madrigals, ed. E. J. Hopkins, [1843]
9. Gibbons, Orlando Fantasies in three parts, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1843]
10. Purcell, Henry King Arthur, ed. Edward Tayior, [1843]
11. Dowland, John The first set of songs, ed. William Chappell, [1843]
12. Este, Thomas The whole Book of Psalms, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1844]
13. Hilton, John Ayres or fa las, ed. Joseph Warren, 1844
14. Bennet, John Madrigals for four voices, ed. E. J. Hopkins, [1845]
15. _____________ A collection of anthems, for voices and instruments, by composers of the madrigalian
era, scored from a set of ancient M.S. part books, formerly in the Evelyn Collection,
ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1845]
16. Wilbye, John The second set of madrigals, ed. G. W. Budd, [1846]
17. Bateson, Thomas The first set of madrigals, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, [1846]
18. _____________ Parthenia, or the first music ever printed for the virginals, composed by three famous
masters, William Byrd, Dr. John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, ed. Edward F.
Rimbault, [1847]
19. Purcell, Henry Ode, composed for the anniversary of St. Cecilia’s Day, A.D. 1692, ed.
Edward F. Rimbault, [1848]
240
Appendix 5
Article in the Courrier de l ’Europe (published in London), on the Subject of
Edward Taylor and the Western Madrigal Society Prize
8 avril 1843
D’après le système de quelques philosophes anciens et modernes, il n’est félicité si grande qui ne
contienne en soi un petit désagrément. Nous disions tout à l’heure que les concerts croissaient et
multipliaient, que nous nagions en plein dans les voluptés symphoniques. Voici tout près de
nous, hélas ! une société musicale, The Western Madrigal Society, au sein de laquelle règnent en ce
moment des troubles, de l’agitation et du désaccord, le tout à propos d’harmonie. Pourquoi ?
Comment ? – nous allons vous le dire.
En vue d’excitation et d’encouragement, la Société sous-nomée offrit, en 1842, une
récompense de dix guinées et son estime à l’auteur, qui à une année de là, lui produirait le
meilleur madrigal original. Cette annonce jetée dans la masse des compositeurs que Londres
contient en ses flancs, y produisit le même effet qu’un coup de fusil tiré au milieu d’un troupe
d’oiseaux ; chacun s’éleva à tire-d’ailes vers les domaines de l’imagination et picota à qui mieux
croches et doubles croches. A l’époque fixée pour le concours, La Société eut bientôt à se
prononcer entre sept et huit cents compositions. L’une d’elle, trouvée remarquable parmi toutes
les autres, valut à son auteur, M. Taylor, professeur de Gresham College, la couronne et les dix
guinées. Personne ne protesta contre le vainqueur et son œuvre.
Cependant un des membres du Comité sentait s’agiter dans son foyer auditif, une vague
souvenance de rythme et de notes en tout analogue au poème couronné. C’était comme des airs
entendus dans l’enfance et à demi effacés par le temps, mais qu’un hazard, un accident
reconstruisent dans la mémoire. Quelques efforts d’intuition firent jaillir enfin le nom de Lucas
Marenzio, célèbre compositeur du seizième siècle ; puis comme du doute à l’examen il n’y avait
point d’obstacle sérieux, le commissaire de la Société recourut au manuscrit du vieux
compositeur et par la comparaison des deux ouvrages, il vit avec l’indignation qu’un horrible
plagiat avait été perpétré avec si peu de vergogne même, que la première partie du madrigal était
copiée note pour note. Stupéfaction du Comité qui, séance tenante, fulmine contre son lauréat
de contrebande en excommunication terrible, et lui enjoint d’expliquer une coïncidence si
prodigieuse entre deux madrigaux que trois siècles séparent. Réponse tardive mais digne de M.
Taylor, qui se renferme dans le silence de la vertu outragée et renvoyé bravement les dix guinées.
241
Contestations, vifs débats entre les membres modérés du Comité, les premiers demandant à
grands cris la punition du coupable par la publication de son crime, les seconds qui s’appuient
sur l’axiome ; « à tout péché, miséricorde » votant pour l’absolution du plagiaire, d’après ce motif
que peut-être il avait agi sans discernement. Enfin, nouvelle lettre très explicite du Comité, dans
laquelle celui-ci réclame un aveu franc et net et promet en échange indulgence plénière et oubli.
Réponse verte et gaillarde de M. Taylor dont nous reproduisons ici la partie essentielle, craignant
toutefois d’avoir affaibli, par la traduction, le style original et les développements curieux de
l’auteur:
«Messieurs,… Mais votre ignorance m’étonne et m’afflige. Il n’y a rien de nouveau sous
le soleil et la Western Madrigal Society devrait le savoir mieux que tout autre. Vous m’accusez de
plagiat, eh! qui n’a pas un plagiat, cent plagiats sur la conscience! De quoi se composent les
œuvres nouvelles et prétendues originales, si ce n’est de réminiscences, de souvenirs et de
quelques plus ou moins habilement refondus, mixturés et rajustés ? Mon crime à moi, c’est
d’avoir franchement reproduit une création enfouie depuis des siècles, et que vous laissiez
honteusement dormir dans la poudre de l’oubli. Vous me devriez des louanges, et c’est un blâme
et de la honte que vous déversez sur ma tête. Cependant si j’avais à me défendre, je pourrais
vous prouver clair comme le jour que tous les littérateurs, tous les poètes et à priori tous les
compositeurs, depuis qu’il existe de la littérature, de la poésie et de la musique se sont faits des
emprunts successifs et nombreux. Je vous dirais pour peu que je m’en donnasse la peine,
qu’Homère a pillé Hésiode, que Virgile a pillé Homère ; que la Tasse et l’Arioste ont pillé les
deux derniers, ceux-là pillé à leur tour par notre divin Milton. Même chose chez les poètes
dramatiques romains, dévalisant sans pudeur Eschyle, Euripide et Sophocle, pillés tous
ensemble par les poètes anglais et français. Les musiciens n’ont pas mis plus de façons et moins
de gêne dans leurs emprunts. Notre God Save the Queen est tout simplement paroles et musique
un chant français, inspiré par le roi Louis XIV, et chanté par les élèves de l’école royal de St-Cyr,
fondée par Mme. de Maintenon. Notre excellent Handel, dans un voyage, copia, traduisit et
arrangea ce chant que beaucoup de gens croient d’origine britannique. Mais voici autre chose. Il
n’est pas que vous ayez entendu parler de Jean Jacques Rousseau et de son fameux opéra
d’Annette. Que deviendrez-vous donc lorsque vous apprendrez que l’auteur du Contrat Social et
de l’Emile a volé l’œuvre d’un compositeur obscur et qu’il s’est attribué audacieusement une
gloire étrangère et inédite ? Vous pousserez des ho ! de stupéfaction et vous aurez grand tort.
De nos jours enfin, vous citerai-je notre compatriote Balfe dont l’opéra Le Siège de la Rochelle, est
une magnifique pillerie exercée à pleines mains dans les partitions de Boïeldieu, d’Auber et de
Hérold ?. . . Vous êtes cousus de préjugés, mes maîtres, et votre indignation ferait bien rire le
242
grand Rossini s’il en connaissait le motif ; Rossini qui a démontré et prouvé autant qu’un
homme peut le faire, que la musique était une abstraction, plutôt qu’un art, un mythe plutôt
qu’un principe. Vous lui feriez un aussi mauvais parti qu’à moi, n’est ce pas, s’il vous répétait ce
qu’il a dit cent fois, à savoir que l’échelle diatonique est une illusion et que tous les airs, toutes
les cavatines, toutes les symphonies se retrouvent dans l’air type primitif et unique : « Au clair de
la lune ». Ainsi d’après les dires du Cygne de Pesaro, Il Barbière, La Semiramide, Guillaume Tell,
Mosé. etc., tous ces chefs-d’œuvres et bien d’autres sont des emprunts faits à l’air précité, « Au
clair de la lune ». Marenzio avait probablement puisé à la même source, j’ai puisé dans Marenzio,
je vous ai rendu vos dix guinées, conséquemment nous sommes tous quittes ; cependant je ne
puis m’empêcher de trouver vos procédés bien petits. »
C’est après cette lettre étrange, pleine de propositions mal sonnantes, d’arguments faux
et de citations erronées que le comité de la Western Madrigal Society s’est décidé à donner une
grande publicité à l’affaire, et à soumettre au jugement de l’opinion ce grave et important débat.
[According to the system of several ancient and modern philosophers, there is no such thing as
perfect happiness. Earlier we said that concerts were increasing and multiplying, and that we
were awash in a symphonic broth. And now so close to us, alas, a musical society, the Western
Madrigal Society, is at this very moment upset and thrown into discord by a matter of harmony.
Why? How? We shall tell you.
In 1842, with a view to stimulating and encouraging interest, the above-named society
offered its recognition and a prize of 10 guineas to the composer of an original madrigal that
was to be submitted one year later. The announcement, thrown into the mass of composers that
London holds, had the same effect as that of firing a gun into the middle of a flock of birds;
each one of them flew into the far reaches of their imaginations, pecking away at the finest
crotches and quavers. On the appointed date for the submission of entries, the society found
itself choosing from seven- and eight-hundred compositions. One of them that was found to be
outstanding from the others, carried away the crown and the ten guineas for its composer, Mr
Taylor, professor of Gresham College. No one protested at the choice of victor and his work.
However, one of the members of the committee felt something stirring in his auditory
memory; a vague recollection of rhythm and of notes that was similar to the poem crowned. It
was akin to one of those tunes heard in childhood, worn half away by time, but which is recalled
by chance or by accident. Several attempts to remember what it was finally produced the name
of Lucas Marenzio, a famous composer of the 16th century; then as with any doubt that is
under examination, and there being nothing to stop him, the president of the society turned to
243
the manuscript of the old composer, and on comparison of the two works, he found to his
indignation that a horrible piece of unscrupulous plagiarism had taken place, and that the first
part of the madrigal had been copied note for note. Straightaway a meeting of the committee
was held, and its members, stupefied by the news, raged in terrible damnation against the
falsehood that had extorted the prize, and demanded Taylor explain how such enormous
similarity existed between the two madrigals that were separated by three hundred years. A slow
but worthy response came from Mr Taylor, who shut himself away in the silence of outraged
virtue, and unhesitatingly sent back the 10 guineas. Protestation and lively debated followed,
amongst the moderate members of the committee; one side cried aloud for punishment of the
guilty party by publishing abroad his crime. The other side supporting the axiom, ‘have mercy
on all sins’, calling for the forgiveness of the plagiarist—on the grounds that he may have acted
without proper judgement. Finally, the committee sent a new, very clear letter that asked for a
clear and frank explanation, and promising in return absolute leniency and forgiveness. Mr
Taylor’s response was firm and robust, and here we produce the critical part, fearing in our
translation that we may have weakened the original style and the peculiar development of the
author’s argument:
‘Dear Sirs,…But your ignorance astonishes and afflicts me. Nothing under the sun is
new, and the Western Madrigal Society should know that better than anyone else. You accuse
me of plagiarism, do you! Who has no plagiarism, a hundred instances of it, on their conscience!
From what are new works composed, and those that claim to be original, if they are not made of
reminiscences and memories that are more or less skilfully recast, remixes and readjusted? My
crime is to have freely produced something that was lost for centuries, and which you have
allowed shamefully to lie forgotten in the dust. You should be praising me, yet you heap blame
and shame upon my head. However, if I were to defend myself, I could prove to you as clear as
the day that all writers, all poets, and, from the beginning, all composers, ever since writing,
poetry and music began, have trodden in the numerous and successive footprints of one
another. I would tell you for nothing that Homer stole from Hesiod, that Virgil stole from
Homer, both of whom were stolen from by Tacitus and Aristotle, who, in their turn were stolen
from by our own divine Milton. The same was true of the Roman dramatic poets, who
shamelessly pillaged Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, and all of them together stolen from
by English and French poets. Musicians have been no more creative in, or any less embarrassed
about, treading in one another’s footprints. Our God Save the Queen is quite simply, in both words
and music, a French song, inspired by Louis XIV, and sung by the students at the royal school
at St Cyr, which was founded by Madame de Maintenon. Our excellent Handel, whilst travelling,
244
copied, translated and arranged this song that so many people believe to be of British origin. But
here is another thing. You have surely heard of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his famous work
Annette. How, then, would you behave once you leant that the author of the Social Contract and
Emile had stolen the work of an unknown writer, and had audaciously claimed for himself a
strange and novel glory? You would cry out in disbelief and you would be greatly wrong. Even
in our time I can single out for you our compatriot Balfe, whose opera The Siege of Rochelle is a
magnificent piece of full-handed theft from the scores of Boïeldieu, Auber and Hérold? You are
stitched up by prejudice, my masters, and your indignation would make the great Rossini laugh
aloud if he knew the cause; Rossini, who has demonstrated and proved as much as any man
could, that music is abstract rather than an art, and a myth rather than a principle. You would
consider him as ill as you do me, wouldn’t you, if he repeated what he said a hundred times, that
it should be known that the diatonic scale is an illusion, and that all the airs, all the cavatinas, all
the symphonies are to be found in the simple, singular tune, ‘Au clair de la lune’. Thus,
according to the sayings of the ‘Swan of Pesaro’, Il Barbière, La Semiramide, Guillaume Tell, Mosé,
etc., all of these masterpieces, and many others, are borrowings made from the aforementioned
tune, ‘Au clair de la lune’. Marenzio had probably drawn from the same source, I drew from
Marenzio, I returned your ten guineas to you, and consequently we are at quits; however, I
cannot help but find your procedures very petty.’
It was after this strange letter, full of ill-sounding propositions, false arguments, and
incorrect quotations that the committee of the Western Madrigal Society decided to make the
affair very public, and submit this serious and important debate to the judgement of public
opinion.]
245
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Manuscripts and archives
Bristol Madrigal Society Archive, DM2114. Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library,
University of Bristol.
Papers of Edgar Hunt, DM2609. Special Collections, Arts and Social Sciences Library,
University of Bristol.
Devon Madrigal Society Archive, Z19/48/1. Devon Record Office, Exeter.
Academy of Vocal Music, Minute Book, Add.MS 11732. British Library, London.
Records of the Madrigal Society, 1744–1828, Mad. Soc. F.1–6. British Library, London.
Taylor, Edward: Lecture Notes, MS2153. Royal College of Music, London.
Other Unpublished Materials
Crewdson, Richard, ed. Robert Lucas Pearsall, Letters on Church Music Addressed to the Dean of
Hereford. 1849–50’. 2008. Typescript in private hands.
Fox, Arthur M. Handwritten notes for a history of the Madrigal Society, begun in 1930s. In the
private collection of the Madrigal Society.
Newspapers
Bristol Mercury
Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal
Flindell’s Western Luminary
Leicester Chronicle
Leicester Journal
246
Leicestershire Mercury
Manchester Times
Morning Post
Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post
Published Editions of Music
Arkwright, G. E. P. The Old English Edition. 25 vols. London: Joseph Williams; Oxford: James
Parker, 1889–1902.
Bland, John. A Collection of Catches, Glees, Canons, Canzonets, Madrigals &c. Selected from the Works of
the Most Eminent Composers. London, 1785.
Broderip, Robert. Collection of Duets, Rotas, Canons, Catches and Glees. London, 1804.
Chappell, William. A Collection of National English Airs, Consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad, & Dance
Tunes, Interspersed with Remarks and Anecdote, and Preceded by an Essay on English Minstrelsy. The
Airs Harmonized, for the Pianoforte, by W. Crotch, Mus. Doc., G. Alex. Macfarren, and J. Augustine
Wade. London, 1840.Fellowes, Edmund H. The English Madrigal School. 36 vols. London:
Stainer and Bell, 1913–24.
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Websites
Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire, and the Commonwealth (CHOMBEC):
<http:www.bris.ac.uk/music/chombec>
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: <http:www.oxforddnb.com>
Oxford Music Online: <http:www.oxfordmusiconline.com>