Zelenka: Requiem

Edward Higginbottom gives us an insight into our upcoming concert at University Church of St Mary the Virgin on the 11th November

IT&T’s offering this November (11 November, Armistice Day) comprises music by Bohemian composers: Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745), Johann Baptist Wanhal (1739-1813), and Franz Benda (1709-1786).  Each had a lowly beginning, born into modest circumstances, in Wanhal’s case into serfdom.  Each made his way in due course westwards, to prestigious posts in Austria and Germany.  Zelenka was for many years in the employ of the Dresden Court, Wanhal settled in Vienna as a hugely successful freelance composer, and Benda worked for Frederick the Great in Potsdam for some 50 years.   

The centrepiece of the programme is Zelenka’s Requiem in D minor (ZWV 48).  This is not his only Requiem setting, but it is arguably the most interesting and varied.  It was commissioned by Maria Josepha (the older daughter of the Emperor Joseph I) now settled at the Dresden Court as the wife of Frederick August II. It was performed in Dresden on one of the anniversaries of the death of Maria Josepha’s father, sometime in the late 1720s.  By this time Zelenka had received instruction from Antonio Lotti in Italy and Johann Joseph Fux in Vienna.  He was well-acquainted with advanced contrapuntal techniques, and familiar also with a range of harmonic resources.  A Requiem Mass allowed him to show off both.  In addition, Zelenka had a keen ear for instrumental colour, scoring for obligato violins, oboes, bassoons and extensively for chalumeau (a forerunner of the clarinet).  The varied scorings, and diversity of movements, produce a kaleidoscopic effect.  Our Oxford performance will offer a very rare opportunity to hear this great work, on the day in the year when as a nation we remember those who died in the two world wars. 

As for Johann Baptist Wanhal, his contribution to the evolution of the symphony is immense.  He wrote a hundred or so works in the genre, works greatly admired by his contemporaries (including Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven), and immensely popular in late 18th-century Vienna. Some of his symphonies were even, though mistakenly, attributed to Haydn.  We will perform a Symphony in G major (Bryan G6).  It speaks eloquently of Wanhal’s fluency and genial manners – exactly what the Viennese meant when they spoke of Gemütlichkeit.   

Franz Benda’s Concerto in E minor for solo flute and strings is a product of composer’s Potsdam days.  It is more than likely that it was performed at the German Court by Johann Joachim Quantz, the leading flautist of the time.  It provides the final panel our Bohemian Triptych.   

The programme as a whole affirms the role of Instruments of Time & Truth in presenting music lying off the beaten track, but which is every bit as engaging as the music we know and love.  It is music we can also be very fond of, if we get to know it.  On 11 November, in the University Church, you have that opportunity.   

Vacancy: Fundraising Manager

Instruments of Time and Truth, Oxford’s world-class historical performance ensemble, seeks a Fundraising Manager to support the organisation’s work from September 2022.

Job Title: Fundraising Manager

Remuneration: £20.40/h ~30h/mo remote work, plus variable hours of attendance at events, on a freelance basis. Potential for role to expand. 

About IT&T

Instruments of Time and Truth (IT&T) is Oxford’s premier period instrument orchestra. Founded in 2014, the ensemble’s profile has grown rapidly, and the group currently gives around 30 performances per year in Oxford, across the UK, and abroad. IT&T also runs an extensive education programme for school-age pupils, students, and adults alike, including workshops, masterclasses, 1-on-1 coaching, and digital content. Since 2019, the organisation has transitioned from volunteer- to professionally-run, and now seeks a fundraising officer to help deliver the orchestra’s ambitions for the coming years. 

Role Overview

Instruments of Time and Truth is seeking a Fundraising Manager with a successful track record in writing grant applications and developing relationships with stakeholders. In addition to managing and reporting on grant applications, the Fundraising Manager will be responsible for the administration of the Friends of IT&T. This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced fundraiser who is keen to join a young and fast-growing organisation. The role will involve roughly 1 day’s work a week in a remote, freelance capacity. The Fundraising Manager would also be expected to regularly attend IT&T events, again on a freelance basis.  The post holder will report on a regular basis to the Fundraising Committee, and occasionally to the Trustees, and work in collaboration with the General Manager.  

Key Responsibilities

The Fundraising Manager would be responsible for three strands of IT&T’s development mission:

Friends of IT&T and Individual Donors

• Maintain Friends’ database

• Manage all Friends’ communications, including membership renewal

• Plan and manage Friends’ events

• Identify new ways to engage with Friends and support the Friends programme

• Support Trustees as required in identifying and engaging with potential new HNW donors to the orchestra

• Be a visible face of IT&T’s Friends’ scheme at events when possible

Charitable Grants and Foundations

• Maintain list of charitable trusts and foundations, and identify key trusts/foundations to target

• Create and oversee applications to charitable trusts and foundations

• Maintain relationships with existing charitable trust and foundation donors and seek further funding where appropriate

• Coordinate with project leaders to produce evaluations and reports for grants awarded

Corporate Sponsors

• Maintain list of corporate sponsors

• Maintain relationships / communications with existing corporate sponsors

• Identify potential new corporate sponsors to target

• Collaborate with the GM on securing advertising from businesses in event programmes

Desirable Qualifications

• Experience in strategy development, fundraising and grant-making.

• Experience working in the classical music industry

• Experience developing and sustaining relationships with a wide range of stakeholders

• Experience of working with budgets 

• Ability to present information in a clear and attractive manner

• Ability to work independently as well as part of a team

• Excellent project management skills

• Excellent command of written English

• Excellent interpersonal skills

• Excellent IT skills 

Note:

Although this is a remote role, as this role will also involve attending events and meeting stakeholders in Oxford, it is desirable that the successful applicant will live within a reasonable distance of the city. Expenses incurred in attending IT&T events will be reimbursed. 

Application details:

Please send a CV and covering letter to the General Manager, Will Anderson, at info@timeandtruth.co.uk by 5pm on Friday 12th August 2022

Interviews will be held on the morning of Thursday 18th August 2022

A Tale of Two Cities: the Musical Worlds of Campra and Handel

On Saturday 27th May 2022, IT&T will be performing Campra’s Requiem and Handel’s Dixit Dominus in SJE Arts. Director Edward Higginbottom explores the artistic inspiration behind the concert…

A Tale of Two Cities?  Not Paris and London this time, but Paris and Rome.  Some three hundred years ago, these two great cultural hubs were the loci of two very different traditions of music-making.  It was not that they lacked things in common, but between them a broad stream separated compositional and performance practices.  IT&T’s programme on 27 May takes up the theme of difference and contrast by presenting two works very firmly situated in these different places, though close in time: Campra’s Requiem Mass and Handel’s psalm setting Dixit Dominus, the first written for performance in Paris in 1695, the second in Rome in 1707. 

There is plenty to say about the vivid contrasts encountered when pairing these two pieces, contrasts worth engaging with, since through them we get to hear more clearly the stylistic identities of each. But there are other reasons of a more pragmatic nature for the pairing.  First, the orchestral scoring for each work requires two independent viola parts.  And then the pitch standard appropriate to both works is lower than standard baroque pitch.  In the late seventeenth century, Roman performances adopted a pitch all of a tone below modern pitch, A = 392.  As also did Paris.  Whilst such pitch distinctions make some difference to string sonority, they make a huge difference to the vocal.  Handel’s setting of Dixit is well known for its fearsome demands on the sopranos, with plenty of written high B flats.  But these now sound as A flats at today’s pitch, much more in keeping with a conventional soprano range.  Similarly, in the Campra Requiem, the high tenor part (the Haute Contre) can be accessed by a tenor: no need to wheel in an anachronistic alto. The opportunities in particular to perform Dixit Dominus at ‘the right pitch’ are few and far between.  Indeed, it’s almost certain that no-one attending the concert will ever have heard the work @ 392.  So, a unique opportunity lies before us. 

Notre Dame in the early 18th Century

If that’s what brings Campra and Handel together, what separates them?  I have some answers.  But first, let’s place these two works in their historical contexts.  André

Campra was newly appointed as the director music at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Notre Dame when in 1695 he was required to write the Requiem Mass for Monseigneur François de Harlay, the late Archbishop.  The performance took place in the Cathedral in November that year.  It was a grand and spectacular event.  The work made Campra’s reputation in Paris.  Soon afterwards, he engaged rather more in stage music than liturgical, and became a leading figure in the evolution of opéra and opéra-ballet in France.  Handel was the younger man, ten years old in 1695, and only just into his twenties in 1707 when he wrote Dixit Dominus for a Roman patron.  Either Cardinal Ottoboni or Cardinal Colonna may have offered the commission: the historical record is incomplete on this subject, though on both counts conjecture is well supported. Handel was in Italy for the reason so many ‘new generation’ composers of the time believed essential: to assimilate Italian instrumental and vocal practice.  In Dixit we can hear what Handel understood this to be. And it is something very different from the French.

This is not the place for a detailed examination of two remarkable works, interesting though that might be. But it is the opportunity to open the score, and to begin a conversation. 

André Campra (Nicolas Edelinck, 1725, after André Bouys)

A useful way of seeing how Campra and Handel go about their work is to set side by side their opening movements.  Campra begins with the vocal equivalent of an organ Plein Jeu verset: a dense polyphonic movement built on a slow-moving plainchant cantus firmus, the chant of the Mass introit ‘Requiem aeternam . .  .’.  This first appears in the bass.  It later migrates to the tenor and baritone.  The counterpoint which surrounds the c.f. is not particularly rigorous: its imitative responses are lightly worn.  The objective is not a display of contrapuntal ingenuity, but rather a sonority in which the weaving parts build up an impressive block of sound.  A change of pace is introduced at ‘et lux perpetua . . .‘, where the violins break into faster and more decorative patterns, with the instrumental bass adopting a quicker movement also, a continuous run of crotchets.  The intention is clear, to evoke, in the brilliance of the writing, the ‘perpetual light’ of the text.  The whole section is reprised after a separate movement for the portion of the text ‘Te decet hymnus’.  This is still part of the Introit, but Campra seeks, as throughout his mass, to create arresting scene changes.  Here we encounter a change of tempo, texture and relation between voices and instruments.  A vocal trio is off-set against an instrumental dialogue where each performer has an independent line.  At the same time, the musical argument lies quintessentially in the highest voice, lending to this (short) movement an intimate and personal note.

George Frederic Handel (James Thornhill, c. 1720)

Meanwhile, Handel begins his Dixit Dominus in a quite different manner.  Indeed, it begins like a concerto grosso: the violins are in extravagant dialogue with each other, in concerto style.  There is nothing vocal about this.  The regular harmonic tread has a Vivaldian swagger.  It is not surprising that when the voices enter, they do not imitate the strings.  Initially they make a chordal declamatory response.  But the Italian vocal tradition encompassed coloratura, a practice much frowned upon by the French who found it ‘unnatural’.  However, Handel was in Italy to absorb Italian manners of vocal practice; and in the opening movement of Dixit there are three short displays of extravert coloratura by soprano, alto and tenor.  At the halfway point in the movement, Handel turns to the practice which was Campra’s point of departure: a cantus firmus setting.  We hear the psalm chant twice, first in the upper voices, in G, and a second time in the lower voices in D.  The long notes of the cantus are in marked contrast to the surrounding musical figures, which maintain the shorter durations of the opening measures.  In the manner of its treatment and its insertion into the movement, this is a quite different style of writing counterpoint against a given part, one which allows more diversity and more declamatory rhythms.  In true concerto style, the movement ends with an instrumental section which is in effect the ‘ritornello’ of the concerto, reprising the opening 17 measures. 

On the basis of this comparison, if one sought just a few words to describe the difference of approach between these two composers, it would be to suggest that Campra drew upon a discreet and expressive vocal style, whilst Handel was seduced by brilliant instrumental figurations.  The first sought a natural correlation between text and musical utterance.  The second was happy with a more abstract quality of declamation.  The first allowed the music to unravel naturally.  The second imposed a firm structural outline.  Juxtaposing the two in the same programme is not an invitation to judge which is better, or right.  Rather, it is to celebrate two complementary worlds.  In the very decade Handel was writing Dixit, François Couperin was fashioning a style which he believed brought the French and Italian styles together into a ‘perfection of music’.  On 27 May, there is the chance to hear clearly what it was that Couperin was seeking to unite; and to enjoy two of the finest vocal settings of the High Baroque.

New Chair for IT&T

The Trustees of IT&T are very pleased to announce to announce the appointment of Sir Jonathan Phillips, currently Warden of Keble College, as the ensemble’s next Chair in succession to Dr Geoffrey Thomas. Sir Jonathan had a long career in Whitehall, latterly as Permanent Secretary to the Northern Ireland Office, before taking up his Oxford role in 2010. He is also currently Chair of Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. He has been involved in supporting and developing several aspects of musical performance in the University and more widely over the past decade.

Sir Jonathan writes:

When I last heard IT&T in live performance, at the end of February playing Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in a concert which was part of Keble’s Early Music Festival, I was unsure whether the Trustees would invite me to undertake this role. I’m thrilled that they have now asked me to take over from Dr Geoffrey Thomas. The orchestra’s first Chair, Professor Angus Hawkins, was a good and greatly admired friend. It is a privilege to take on the responsibility which he and, more recently, Geoffrey have carried with such obvious success.

From my perspective it’s an exciting time to become involved with IT&T as it now plans for a world in which the constraints and inhibitions associated with the pandemic diminish. The programming for the year ahead, yet to be fully revealed, promises to provide a range of opportunities for the ensemble’s many admirers to be reminded of how just how fortunate we are to have this still young organisation in our midst. The same sentiment applies to its significant education work in supporting young musicians and improving access to early music performance.

I look forward very much to getting to know the musicians, supporters and Friends of the orchestra in person in the months ahead. And, of course, to sharing the experience of hearing some wonderful concerts.

Sir Jonathan takes over the reins from Geoffrey Thomas, who stepped in as interim Chair following the untimely death of Professor Angus Hawkins in December 2020. Geoffrey has been instrumental in leading the organisation through one of the most difficult years ever to face the music industry with tremendous enthusiasm and commitment - not only putting in countless hours behind the scenes, but also being a very visible face of IT&T at our events. It is a testament to his dedication and hard work that IT&T finds itself in such a strong position as we emerge from the pandemic, and all of us are immensely grateful.

Upcoming CD Release - Resurrexi! Easter in Vienna with Mozart and the Haydn Brothers

CRD Records are delighted to announce the release of Resurrexi! Easter in Vienna with Mozart and the Haydn Brothers on 1st April 2022. Recorded with the The Choir of Keble College Oxford and Instruments of Time & Truth, the album is conducted by Paul Brough.

Resurrexi! is CRD’s third album with Keble, following Ceremonial Oxford (2017) and Ave Rex Angelorum (2020). Resurrexi!, recorded in 2021 in the Victorian splendour of Keble College Chapel, celebrates Easter in music – a full mass sequence based around Mozart’s Spaurmesse K. 258, interspersed with a treasury of Viennese classical sacred music by Joseph and Michael Haydn. The result offers an imaginary recreation of an opulent service that might have been heard at Vienna’s Stephansdom, or at the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg’s court.

Resurrexi!’s soloists are Emily Dickens, soprano, Rebekah Jones, mezzo-soprano, Philippe Durrant, tenor and Graham Kirk, baritone and cantor.

CRD is one of the world’s longest-running record labels, spanning more than five decades and 200 releases, including many first recordings. Following the passing of CRD’s founder, Graham Pauncefort, in late 2021, CRD now is directed by his son and daughter, Tom and Emma Pauncefort: Resurrexi! is the first release under their management.

100 Years of British Coronations - Behind the Music

Ahead of our performances of 100 Years of British Coronations on 21st / 22nd October in Kings Place and the Sheldonian Theatre, respectively, director Edward Higginbottom shares his insights into a programme spanning 10 turbulent decades of British history.

You have to be of a certain age to remember the last coronation.  I was seven.  I can recall the street party, my piggy bank in the shape of a crown, and the commemorative crown coins (still in my drawer).  Also, a very complicated card model of the procession to the Abbey: carriages, horsemen, bands, flags.  Only later did we purchase the box set of the service (several 12” vinyl records).

In two years’ time, our present Queen will have traversed seven decades, making a coronation seem both a very distant event, and an ever closer one. One coronation every 70 years or so would have somewhat reduced the variety of our musical offering later this month (King’s Place, 21 October, Sheldonian Theatre, 22 October).  But, by adopting the 100 years between 1661 and 1761, we can count seven:  Charles II, James II, William and Mary, Anne, George I, George II, and George III.  This gives us rather more scope for musical riches.  And musical riches there are.  We are talking about a period when the very best of the musical talent of the country was routinely involved in regal pageantry. 

The Coronation of Charles II (1661)

 We start with that truly historic moment for the kings and queens of England when they were restored to their constitutional role after the Commonwealth.  The year 1660 rings like 1066 in the kingdom’s annals.  Charles II’s actual crowning came a year after.  It was a nail-biting affair for the musicians.  The choir of the Chapel Royal had been disbanded for over ten years.  Its former trebles were now bearded men in their early twenties.  The task of rebuilding the choir in double-quick time was given to Henry Cooke, a former captain in the Royalist army.  He no doubt found some of his previous experience useful in confronting the challenge, but it was as an accomplished musician and bass singer that he been appointed to take on the task.    Our programme begins with his Behold O God, our defender, the first time this work will have been heard in public, we believe, since its original performance.   

 If the music of 1661 has to be dragged out of obscurity, that of 1685 (James II’s coronation) was provided by one of the country’s greatest ever composers, Henry Purcell.  His teacher and colleague, John Blow, contributed to the next, which was only three years down the track: as James II took refuge at the French Court, William Mary ushered in a new reign in 1688.  Queen Anne, James II’s younger daughter, had a coronation (1702) of a more modest scale, if we judge it by Jeremiah Clarke’s contribution. Things scaled up again in 1714, the beginning of the Hanoverian succession, when William Croft composed an extensive five-movement setting of The Lord is a Sun and a Shield. 

The Coronation of George I (1714)

Things really scaled up in 1727 when Handel was charged with providing four anthems for the coronation of George II.  Music of this length and complexity, apart perhaps from Purcell’s My heart is inditing, had never previously been heard at these events.  And we might say that Handel established a reference for what coronation music might henceforth sound like. His setting of Zadok the priest, part of our programme, has been performed at every coronation since 1727.  The prevailing character of Handel’s music, celebratory, grandiose, loud (for the most part) rang in the ears of William Boyce, who made a number of significant contributions to the music for the coronation of George III in 1761, none more impressive than his setting of The King shall rejoice. 

Ticket for the Coronation of George III (1761)

We have now traversed 100 years.  Whatever might lie in store for our constitutional monarch, the music legacy of coronations has greatly enriched our cultural life.  Instruments of Time and Truth offer a survey of perhaps the most varied and richest century of music associated with royal enthronements.  In it, we will rekindle the pomp, ceremony, and the excitement of the greatest of all state occasions.  VIVAT REX!  VIVAT REGINA!

Dame Hilary Boulding appointed Patron of IT&T

The Trustees are pleased to announce the appointment of Dame Hilary Boulding DBE as a patron of Instruments of Time and Truth

Dame Hilary Boulding DBE, President of Trinity College, Oxford University

Hilary’s career combines 20 years as a music and arts programme maker in BBC Television and Radio with extensive senior management experience across the arts, cultural and educational sectors in the UK.  She was awarded a DBE for services to culture and education in Wales in 2017.

In 2017 she was appointed to Trinity College, Oxford as the College’s first female President in its 450-year history.  Prior to that she was the Principal of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (2007-2017) which trains 700 exceptionally talented young artists in Music, Acting, Stage Management and Theatre Design.  She served as the Director of Music Strategy for Arts Council England between 1999 and 2007.

Hilary has been an avid supporter of IT&T from its inception, and we are very pleased to have her on the team.

Hilary joins current patrons Rhian Samuel and Sir Curtis Price..

New Chairman Announced

The Trustees of IT&T are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Geoffrey Thomas, President Emeritus of Kellogg College, as the ensemble’s next chairman. Geoffrey writes:

This is my first note to you as incoming Chair of IT&T, a position I am honoured and flattered to have been appointed to. The orchestra was very fortunate in its previous Chair, my long-standing friend and colleague, Professor Angus Hawkins, whose untimely death came as such a shock to us all. Under his Chairmanship, IT&T grew in accomplishment and ambition, and I hope that I and the other Trustees can help maintain that record.

All of us as Friends, supporters and admirers can take great pride in IT&T, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to Gay and Judith for having the vision to establish the orchestra in the first place. It has meant that we are able to enjoy the artistry of amazing musicians, and hear world-class performances of cherished works and newly-researched gems. Our good fortune is based in large measure on the brilliant directors the orchestra has attracted, especially Chris Bucknall, Bojan Cicic, and the peerless Edward Higginbottom, each internationally-acclaimed and bringing inspiration and sparkle to IT&T.

I have been a Friend of IT&T from its early days, and when I tell friends in other parts of the world about it, they are envious, and rightly so. We must never forget how lucky we are in having IT&T available to us – it is a rare and precious privilege.

As for so many organisations, this has been a difficult year for the orchestra and its members, with marvellous planned-for performances having had to be cancelled or postponed. But I can assure you that everyone is in good heart, and excited about future performance plans, even though we can't at this stage be sure of exact timings, of course.

Our planned education programmes are also suitably ambitious. They will, I’m certain, inspire young people from all backgrounds to develop their own talents and love for good music, especially period performances, which is the orchestra’s unique strength.

It will be such a pleasure when we will be able to meet - Friends, supporters, and musicians – in person. Roll on that day!

Geoffrey Thomas

March 2021

Dr Geoffrey Thomas was until his retirement Director of the Department for Continuing Education (Rewley House), and Founding President of Kellogg College, Oxford. He holds degrees from Wales, Cambridge, and Oxford, and a number of Honorary Fellowships, including those from Linacre College, and Kellogg College, Oxford. His original discipline was physics, and he has also published in the fields of Lifelong, and the Public Understanding of Science. He has held visiting positions at universities including Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, and at the Smithsonian Institution. Geoffrey Thomas was brought up in a musical family in South Wales, immersed in opera, oratorio and, inevitably, choral singing. He admits to having been an enthusiastic, if undistinguished, cellist in his younger days.

In Memoriam: Angus Hawkins

The Trustees and members of Instruments of Time and Truth were shocked and deeply saddened on hearing of the death of Professor Angus Hawkins, Chairman of IT&T Trustees. He passed away at home, unexpectedly, during the Christmas break. He was 67.

Angus Hawkins (left) with IT&T members Bojan Cicic and Jean Paterson (photo: Patch Harvey)

Angus was Director of Public and International Programmes at the Department of Continuing Education and a Fellow of Keble College. An eminent historian, he specialised in 19th Century British Politics and Modern History. He published several books, including Victorian Political Culture (2015), and directed the Research Centre in Victorian Political Culture. A sabbatical in 2020 had enabled him to complete a further four books.

Within his busy life as a distinguished academic, Angus made time for his love for chamber music. He played the viola in a quartet with three friends. They would meet regularly, but sadly, the COVID-19 restrictions brought their music-making to an end. It was through this quartet that I first met Angus, as I was asked to deputise for the cellist, Rosamund Bartlett, when she was abroad. This was in early 2015, when IT&T had just been launched and was finding its feet. Angus kindly agreed to come on board, firstly as part of an advisory committee, and then as Trustee Chairman.

In the early days, IT&T was something of a ‘runaway train’. Judith Evans and I, although keen for the orchestra to be a success, knew little about management and governance. Through his interest in music and concerts, Angus seemed the ideal person to be involved in the organisation, but I had no idea that he would prove to be such a gem! Angus took huge care of our organisation, getting to know the players and helping to host receptions.  He understood the need to secure funding and made introductions that secured the financial support without which we would not have been able to progress as we have, both in promoting concerts and paying for core costs.

Angus had a lovely way with people. He was gracious and courteous, and always took notice of others. He talked little about his own work, which is why it was easy not to realise just how many balls he was juggling. His wealth of experience and talent for dealing with organisations made him a brilliant Chairman of the IT&T Trust. Paradoxically, for somebody who seemed to take his time, talking in a measured and thoughtful way, he managed to keep meetings to time, with an expert and deft touch. Needless digressions were almost invisibly extinguished and sound decisions made. His lovely sense of humour, and his warmth and generosity about the players and Trustees and their plans and endeavours, created a sense of ‘family’ cohesion and common purpose for all associated with IT&T.

It is with a sense of poignancy that we reflect on our most recent communication with Angus. This was in the week preceding the Messiah performance scheduled for December. Although he was clearly busy with other things, Angus took the trouble to consult with all the IT&T Trustees and made the difficult decision to cancel the performance. We are grateful to him for handling a disappointing outcome with grace.

We will miss Angus hugely and shall always be thankful for everything he did for IT&T. Our thoughts are with his mother and two daughters, and his close friends and colleagues.

- Gabriel Amherst, co-founder, IT&T

The Exquisite Detail of Charpentier's Missa Assumpta est Maria

In the final blog in conjunction with our upcoming live recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Missa Assumpta est Maria, Edward Higginbottom examines how Charpentier’s work reflects the exquisite detail of La Sainte Chapelle. You can read the first entry here, and the second entry here.

We are standing in the middle of La Sainte Chapelle, a private chapel, albeit belonging to a king.   It is not a huge structure.  It measures some 118 feet long, and some 56 feet wide.  As a proportion of these dimensions, it is the height that stupefies, 139 feet.  In other words, the Chapel is another 20 feet higher than it is long.   As the eye makes its way up to the distant roof, it does so via 6652 square feet of stained glass.  In context, it’s an overwhelming expanse of coloured light, completely effacing the stonework which supports it.  Eyes raised and spirits aloft, it’s just possible to sense what it must be like to be encased in a precious reliquary. And there, on the High Altar, is an exquisitely and richly fashioned reliquary, within a reliquary if you like.  It holds the Crown of Thorns, the raison d’être of the building.   

Heady stuff.  As senses go, our experience is first and foremost visual.  It is our eye that is satiated.  But we are not seeing a single canvas, or a series of canvases.  What we are seeing are innumerable scenes, each self-sufficient, each carrying equal visual weight, receding to a point where perhaps the glazier thought to address the Almighty’s eye rather than our own.  At one level, we could choose simply to be overwhelmed by this riot of colour and design.  At another, we are bound to want to read the glass.  Looking and understanding is what this visual experience is really about.  We can now read the Bible, but not by scanning a text, rather by scanning images.  There are 1134 biblical scenes to contemplate, 1134 separate narratives to follow.  

Such is the environment in which Charpentier composed and performed his sacred music during his last years.  Does it tell us anything about his music?  I think the answer is, yes. Let’s turn to the Gloria of his Missa Assumpta est Maria, to see what I mean.  This is how things begin: 

Et in terra pax . . . , full scoring, Lent in 2, 22 bars 

Laudamus te, benedicimus te, full, Guay in cut C, 5 bars 

adoramus te, full, Lent in 2, 4 bars 

glorificamus te, full, Guay in cut C, 9 bars 

gratias agimus . . . , full in 3/2 time, 16 bars 

Domine Deus, Rex caelestis . . . , solo bass in cut C, 10 bars 

Domine fili unigenite . . . , solo tenor in cut C, 5 bars 

Domine Deus, Agnus De . . . , solo haute-contre in cut C, 6 bars.   

In résumé, within the space of 77 bars we encounter eight different tempos or scorings.  Bach, in his B minor mass, takes as long (76 bars) to work through just Et in terra pax, one eighth of the above text.  That’s an extreme comparison, but not invalid.  In Charpentier’s case, it reveals very clearly that the composer was not simply working on a smaller scale, but making a musical virtue out of passing rapidly from one musical idea to another.  The only way this makes sense is to listen to his musical mosaic ‘with your eyes’.  I know many will find this a perplexing notion!   But imagine your eye settling on an image, drinking in its form and colour in a few seconds, and then moving to an adjacent image, and then to the next.   The intensity and integrity of each image is gathered in, and becomes part of an accumulated experience.  In the same way, we walk through Charpentier’s score, admiring that scene, this evocation, this vocal colour, that instrumental definition.  We are not looking for a broad musical paragraph – an epic canvas as it were – but for moments of intimate diversity, as independently responsive to the text as may be devised, each contributing to an accumulated understanding and aesthetic whole.   

The degree to which this approach may be applied in particular to the Gloria and Credo of Charpentier’s 1702 Missa Assumpta est Maria, leads me to my conjecture: that the multitude of intimate and highly coloured images found in the glass of La Sainte Chapelle finds a powerful correlate in Charpentier’s music. The density and character of these images conforms to the density and character of images found in the score.  The one is reflected in the other.  I cannot prove my case, but I can appeal to your imagination. 

So, if you can, try literally to ‘envisage’ this music.  That is the way in which the early 18th-century Frenchman was asked by the likes of Batteux to listen to his music. For me, it is the way Charpentier’s score seems best to reveal its essence as well as its beauty.  

You can watch IT&T’s performance of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Missa Assumpta est Maria below:

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704): Missa Assumpta est Maria, H.11Instruments of Time & Truth, directed by Edward HigginbottomThis performance was recorded...

Image, Theatre, and the Spectacle of Music

In the second of three blogs in conjunction with our upcoming live recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Missa Assumpta est Maria, Edward Higginbottom muses on the interplay between music and spectacle in the Baroque. You can read the first entry here.

What has an iconic gothic interior got to do with late 17th-century music?  It’s all in the eye of the beholder, of course.  So, here goes.  

There is a strand running through French aesthetics (if I may be permitted to draw a national boundary) that draws music closer to the visual arts than might be the case elsewhere.  When Debussy places the titles of his Préludes at the end of each piece, he is doing what painters do: displaying a title at the foot of the canvas.  When François Couperin gives practically every piece in his harpsichord books a non-musical title, he is explicitly referring to the portraits therein (‘found on occasion’, he says in the preface to his premier livre ‘to be remarkable likenesses’).  When Charles Batteux (Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe, 1746) unpacks for us the nature of musical experience, he chooses to take us round an imagined picture.   We look at our listening.   

If there was always something of the picture about French Baroque music, there was even more of the theatre.  Décor, machines, costume, and ballet not only refracted their images across the ear: they defined what was being heard.  The mythologies found in Lully’s opera were transported in this manner, from Elysian Fields to Hades.  Further, the mingling of secular and sacred ideologies easily carried the theatre into the church, and into a church such as the Jesuits’ St Louis in the rue Sainte Antoine. 

Charpentier had long been associated with the Jesuit community in Paris, but his official appointment to St Louis came later, in 1688.  The building was still relatively new, having been finished only in 1641.  Its interior space was nothing if not theatrical, its high altar decked out with huge canvases, reliquaries, silver vases, garlands.  Its very ground-plan could not have been better adapted to scenic display.  Catherine Cessac sums it up thus:  ‘The beauties of architecture, sculpture, painting and decorations: the pervasive odours of incense, glowing candles, and the blazing candelabra; the priests’ rich velvet silk, and lace finery; the swell of the preacher’s voice, now menacing, now reassuring; and finally the music, filling this atmosphere of devotion and magnificence with its harmony – all combined to turn ceremonies into sophisticated and enchanting spectacles “ad majorem Dei gloriam.”’ Charpentier’s music is not simply very much at home in this setting, it is inextricably woven into it.  In a sense (literally, one might say), it is difficult to listen to the music without visualizing the setting.  

We are going further here than rhetorical devices in music, designed to excite particular emotional responses.  The image looms large.  It’s as though we can walk around the music; view it from this angle, and that; admire its proportions; marvel at its colour and atmosphere; and, of course, identify unambiguously the subject drawn.  Batteux was very insistent on this last point: ambiguity was a failure in purpose and execution.  How, one might wonder, would such an aesthetic work on the mind of a composer embedded in so theatrical a sacred space?  How would it work on his mind when composing the last of his mass settings in the jewel box that is La Sainte Chapelle?  My third and final blog will attempt an answer.  

Introducing Charpentier and La Sainte Chapelle

In conjunction with our upcoming live recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Missa Assumpta est Maria, Edward Higginbottom explores the relationships between Charpentier, his musicians, and La Sainte Chapelle..

Those of you who have visited La Sainte Chapelle in the heart of Paris will know what I mean.  Those who haven’t, can (in post-Covid times ) pop their head round the door of Exeter College Chapel.  But it has to be said, the French version is the real McCoy. The upper floor of the Chapel is a single space of exaggerated height whose walls are there primarily to support the most stunning expanse of 13th-century stained glass in all France.  When the sun pours in, being inside this space, topped with its bespangled ceiling and framed by its boldly coloured stonework and friezes, is an unparalleled experience.  One could well believe that heaven had flung open its portals.  

La Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

It was a royal chapel, built by Louis IX to house relics of the Cross, and set in the Royal residence of the day, the Palais de la Cité.  Later, the kings of France moved to other quarters, notably the Louvre and then Versailles, by which time – the end of the 17th century – Marc-Antoine Charpentier found himself walking up the staircase to the upper chapel to take charge of his musicians.  His employers, having previously been Marie of Lorraine (Mlle de Guise), and then the Jesuits in the rue de St Antoine, were now the canons of La Sainte Chapelle, a powerful and wealthy body of ecclesiastics whose ambition for their liturgy was equal to the splendour of their surroundings.  

We are now in the final years of Charpentier’s life.  His appointment in 1698 as Maître de Chapelle was to be his last.  Indeed, it crowned his career, awarding him rank and prestige which earlier circumstances had withheld. And it was here, amid the grandeur of this unique Gothic building, that he first performed his Missa Assumpta est Maria.   

Portrait presumed to be of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Artist Unknown

Charpentier’s music, numbering some 550 works, is largely sacred, and almost wholly conserved in a large autograph collection called Les Meslanges, numbering 28 volumes.  Dating the materials within these volumes is not as easy as beginning with the first and ending with the last, not least because each volume comprises various cahiers assembled in a somewhat haphazard fashion.   However, Catherine Cessac, Charpentier’s biographer, confidently assigns the Missa Assumpta est Maria to 1702, just two years prior to the composer’s death.  And we may safely assign its first performance to 15 August that year, the Feast of the Assumption of the BVM.   

This Marian feast was then, and remained so, the most important of the Marian feasts, notwithstanding its dubious scriptural standing. Whereas, for example, the feasts of the Annunciation and the Nativity of the BVM were lodged in biblical narrative, none existed for the crowning of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. But one can understand this flight of imagination: it was the most focused way of venerating Our Lady, permitting, as a feast of the first class, the right level of ceremony. We might liken it to the Feast of Christ the King, but for Mary. There is no doubt that Charpentier saw the feast as meriting a special effort on his part. And we can fairly describe the Missa Assumpta est Maria as one of his most accomplished works, certainly the most remarkable of his mass settings. To my way of thinking, La Sainte Chapelle has much to do with that, and I’ll tell you why in my next blog.

You can read part 2 here.

Instruments of Time and Truth’s live recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Missa Assumpta est Maria will be released soon. In the meantime, you can watch the ensemble’s performance of the Motet Annuntiate Superi and Sonate a 8, directed by Edward Higginbottom, below.

Edward Higginbottom presents Instruments of Time & Truth's live recordings of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's motet "Annuntiate Superi" and Sonate a 8.These perfo...

Vacancy: Education Officer

Instruments of Time and Truth, Oxford’s resident Baroque ensemble, seeks an Education Officer to develop the group’s education programme from January 2021.

This vacancy is now closed.

Job Title: Education Officer

Remuneration: £20/h ~30h/mo on a freelance basis. Potential for role to expand.

Key Responsibilities

1.       Partnership with Oxfordshire County Music Service. Our partnership agreement outlines the following relationship:

·         Reciprocal sharing of information, where appropriate, including signposting to other partners

·         Extended, advanced tuition for students in historical performance practice including instrumental workshops, individual sessions and possible mentorship initiatives

·         An academic strand relating to GCSE and A-level set works.

·         Side-by-side sessions for students

·         Introductory historical performance courses for students (“IT&T InSpires”)

·         Exploration of the possibility of CPD with OCMS staff

·         Support for the annual Music Hub Gala Awards

·         No charge for IT&T for the use of OCMS premises for workshops held for OCMS students

·         Additional funding from grants made to IT&T in accordance with IT&T’s obligations as a registered charity

The Education Officer would be expected to

·         Liaise with OCMS and the IT&T Artistic Team to plan and deliver events associated with the partnership

·         Work with the General Manager to apply for funding to continue the partnership

·         Report to charities who have already supplied funding.

2.       ‘A Day with IT&T’- a day’s workshop with the ensemble, in the past specifically targeting the Edexcel GCSE syllabus, consisting of

·         Open rehearsal

·         Introduction to Baroque instruments and analysis of set works

·         Workshop on set works

·         Lunch provided by host school

·         “Come and sing” choruses / strings workshop to run simultaneously

·         Concert of pieces from the syllabus:

Historically, the day has been hosted by local private schools who have then invited state and other private schools.

The workshop could be repeated every two years with new intakes of GCSE students. The programme would need to be revised as per syllabus changes. It has previously been hosted by St Edward’s, Headington, and Abingdon Schools, as well as by Keble College and SJE Arts.

The Education Officer would be expected to

·         Continue the oversight, development, and delivery of the project

·         Renew prior collaborations

·         Promote the project to schools throughout the region

In addition to these projects, the Education Officer would be expected to

3. Establish dialogues with local schools in order to discover the kind of projects which would be most useful for their specific needs, e.g. orchestral coaching, introduction to historically informed performance, etc.

4. Develop projects associated with IT&T’s self-promoted concerts, and co-ordinate offering free tickets to school pupils.

5. Research and complete targeted funding applications to support the above, working alongside the general fundraising efforts of the organisation.

In times of Covid:

It is recognised that many of the above activities will not be feasible while restrictions surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic remain in place. As such, the Education Officer would be expected to undertake as many of these roles as feasible, particularly fact-finding and relationship building with education partners, and working with the Artistic Team to develop and deliver digital content in line with IT&T’s educational aims.   

Desirable Qualifications

Experience of working at a management level in the classical music industry

Experience of working in music education projects at Primary and Secondary level

Experience of developing relationships in the charitable sector

Experience of sustaining relationships with a wide range of stakeholders

Excellent project management skills

Experience of working with budgets

Note

As this role will involve working directly with groups and institutions in Oxford, it is desirable that the successful applicant will live within a reasonable distance of the city.

Application details

This Vacancy is now Closed

Job (In)Security for Musicians in Eighteenth-Century Britain

This article was written to accompany IT&T’s web series, “Musical Culture and Empire in Eighteenth-Century London” by Lizzy Buckle, RHUL.

In 1792, an orange thrown during a student scuffle broke John Malchair’s violin mid-performance and brought his career as leader of the Oxford Music Room (now Holywell Music Room) band to a sticky end. Fortunately Malchair had many strings to his bow and his work as a folk song collector and composer sustained him, despite his blindness, until his death in 1812. Nevertheless, to be a musician in eighteenth-century Britain was to take on a precarious profession; illness, injury, old age or damage to an instrument could quickly leave them destitute.

Portfolio Careers

The unstable finances of opera and theatre companies meant positions held by singers and instrumentalists were frequently subject to wage variation or simply vanished. Italian opera was a particularly hazardous enterprise as the exorbitant cost of the lead singers, extravagant costumes and spectacular scenery frequently exceeded the income obtained from ticket sales. The Royal Academy of Music, a joint stock company founded in 1719 to establish Italian opera in London, only lasted until 1729. Soon after its collapse, Handel set about forming the Second Academy but that too failed in 1734 as did its rival, the Opera of the Nobility, in 1737. Hence many musicians maintained multiple positions, diversified their skills by learning several instruments and took on other non-musical professions in order to make ends meet. Joseph Woodham, for instance, claimed to play not only the trombone but also the violin, viola, double bass, horn and trumpet and he even sang the role of Orlando in The Cabinet when the tenor John Braham suddenly came down with an attack of gout on 15 October 1802. The singer Luffman Atterbury was also a carpenter, builder and surveyor, while the oboist Redmond Simpson played at Covent Garden, Vauxhall Gardens, Haymarket Theatre, in the Queen’s band, the Horseguards, the Coldstream Guards, and also worked as a musician and clerk for the Duke of Cumberland. Some wealthier and perhaps more entrepreneurial musicians, most famously J. C. Bach and C. F. Abel, made use of their contacts and renown to organise subscription concert series.

John Braham as 'Lord Aimworth', steel line engraving by Thomson/Foster, 1818

Although some musicians with roles in the military, the church, or the court received a pension, this was not always enough to sustain them and their families through hard times. Even Handel, who received a generous annual pension of £600 from the royal family from the mid-1720s, experienced wildly fluctuating finances in the 1720s and 30s due to his involvement in Italian opera. Similarly, musicians who had managed to establish successful careers experienced hard times if public opinion turned against them. After a fruitful career leading orchestras, organising concerts, teaching, composing and performing violin concerti, Giardini returned to his native Italy in 1784. He returned to London by 1789 to find his competitors had taken advantage of his absence and replaced him as London’s premier violinist. Perhaps his age was also getting the better of him as Haydn noted in 1792 that he had heard Giardini play at Ranelagh Gardens and that ‘[h]e played like a pig’. So, not long after his return, Giardini left London once more to travel to Russia with a theatrical company, where he died in poverty.

Felice Giardini, 1745 representation, after Giovanni Battista Cipriani.

Benefit Concerts

A musician’s income often varied according to the time of year, as concerts and operas generally took place during the ‘season’, when the elite travelled to their London residences. One way for musicians to boost their finances and weather quieter periods was to organise a benefit concert. In return for hiring a room, enlisting the help of other players, placing advertisements and selling the tickets, a musician received all the profits from the concert. Benefits also provided musicians with opportunities to create and manage their celebrity status, collaborate with other musicians, attract students, promote newly published or composed works, and construct an appealing personal narrative. For example, a soprano organising a benefit for herself might commission and then perform a brand-new aria and hire other star musicians to perform alongside her, in order to demonstrate her respected position to both the audience and her colleagues. She may also situate the benefit within a narrative by advertising it as her final performance before leaving town or by designing a programme with a specific theme. Such strategies were vital for foreign musicians who had just arrived in London and wanted to establish a name for themselves. However, by the 1720s, the London concert scene had become so crowded with benefit events that similar strategies became essential for native performers to distinguish themselves from other competition.

Yet ironically musicians did not always benefit from their own benefits. While famous singers or instrumental virtuosi may have raised substantial sums and boosted their profile, less successful performers risked financial ruin by putting on a benefit concert: if they did not attract a large enough audience, they could lose the money they invested in hiring the venue, performers, and music. Organisers could suffer reputational as well as financial losses as a poorly attended benefit suggested a lack of popular support, which could cause them to lose out on future employment. It may also have been necessary for musicians to turn down other work to allow for the considerable amount of time and energy required to organise a benefit, which included arranging the refreshments, advertisements, tickets, staging, candles, and the hire and tuning of keyboard instruments. Therefore, such benefits were really only feasible for successful musicians who had already established their reputation, and were, for the time being at least, relatively financially solvent.

Nevertheless, a charitable benefit concert could be used as a way of raising money for a destitute musician or the family of a recently deceased musician. For example, on 28 September 1784, a benefit concert was held in aid of the pregnant widow and children of the musician Charles Linton who had been robbed and murdered by highwaymen in St Martin-in-the-Fields two months previously. The oratorio Zara was performed at Covent Garden Theatre with all members of the band ‘dressed in mourning, suited to the occasion’. However, the preparation of such an event relied on sourcing a venue, performers and music, which once again required access to money and useful contacts.

Royal Society of Musicians

Another option for a musician in need was to appeal to the ‘Fund for the support of Decay’d Musicians and their Families’, which still exists today as the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain. Three London musicians were inspired to set up the fund in 1738 after seeing the impoverished children of their recently deceased colleague, bassoonist and oboist Jean Christian Kytch, driving asses down the Haymarket.  A year later, two hundred members of the music profession, including William Boyce and Handel signed the Declaration of Trust which aimed to care for their members in need, to apprentice their children and to look after their widows.  Felice Giardini, as well as many of the musicians featured earlier in this series (including Johann Christoph Fischer, J. C. Bach and Joseph Woodham) subsequently became subscribers, while other notable personages from outside the music profession also showed their support by donating to the fund. The Society also organised annual concerts to raise additional funds for their cause.

William Boyce, attributed to Mason Chamberlin 1727-1787

For the price of the subscription fee, the charity reassured musicians that their families would be provided for in the event of their death, illness, old age, a damaged instrument or other trying circumstances. For example, since Linton had been a member, the Society offered his wife, Mary, a monthly allowance of 10 shillings for the child born after her husband’s death and gave her half a guinea towards her lying-in expenses. Ten years later, the Society helped to apprentice her other daughter, and when Mary died in 1805, it provided £5 to cover her funeral expenses.

However, membership to the society did not always guarantee assistance. Claimants (or their family) were required to have been subscribing members and practising musicians for at least one year. This meant musicians had to be able to afford the subscription fee, which started at half-a-crown per quarter but increased to a guinea by 1794 (an increase of over 800%).  Perhaps Giardini could have ended his days more comfortably had he not withdrawn his membership from the society not long after he first subscribed in 1755. Claimants also had to present a certificate signed by ten ordinary members (i.e. not Governors) stating that they were ‘a proper object’ for relief, which required applicants to have built up a considerable network of contacts within the music industry. Therefore, as with the benefit concerts, the musicians most likely to receive assistance from the Society were those who had previously gained recognition and financial success in their field.

Conclusion

The success experienced by many of the musicians featured in this series placed them in a position of relative security compared to the majority of their colleagues. Although some developments in the eighteenth century helped to support the nation’s musicians, access to this assistance often required them to have achieved a moderate level of success in the first place. For instrumentalists, singers and composers in the eighteenth century, the music profession remained a perilous line of business...

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Further Reading

Bruce, R.  (2001) ‘Malchair [Malscher], John’, Grove Music Online, < https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.ezproxy01.rhul.ac.uk/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000017528>, retrieved 23 August 2020.

Gardner, M., DeSimone, A., eds. (2019) Music and Benefit Performances in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Highfill, P. H., Burnim, K. A. and Langhans, E. A. (1973) A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800, volumes 1-16. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Hogg, K. (2018) 'Redmond Simpson: Musician, Account and Art Collector', A Handbook for Studies in 18th Century English Music, 22, pp. 47-57.

Hume, R. D. (1984) ‘The Origins of the Actor Benefit in London’, Theatre Research International, 9(2), pp. 99-111.

Hume, R. D. (2006) ‘The Economics of Culture in London, 1660-1740’, 69(4), pp. 487-533.

Matthews, B. (1985) The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain: List of Members 1738-1984. London: The Royal Society of Musicians.

Milhous, J (1984) ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674-1738’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37(3), pp. 567-592.

Milhous, J. and Hume, R. D. (1993) 'Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46(1), pp. 26-83.

McVeigh, S. (1993) Concert life in London from Mozart to Haydn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McVeigh, S. (2014) Calendar of London Concerts 1750-1800 [Dataset].

Rohr, D. A. (2001) The Careers of British Musicians, 1750-1850: A Profession of Artisans. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Musical Culture and Empire in Eighteenth-Century London

Throughout August 2020, IT&T in collaboration with the University of Warwick's Global History and Culture Centre and Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Centre presents a digital series of performances and talks exploring the lives of musicians and their patrons in eighteenth-century London. The series will premiere on 4 August at 7pm. This blog post features an historical essay accompanying the concert series by Professor Maxine Berg, detailing the rich musical culture of eighteenth-century London and Britain more generally and its historic links to empire, slavery, and changing global patterns of consumption.

Introduction

The digital concert series connects eighteenth-century London, Europe’s greatest metropolis, as a European cultural centre to the city as a centre of empire. Britain’s empire by the early eighteenth century was not on the model of the territorial empires of her European neighbours, ranging from the Roman Empire to the Habsburg, French and Russian Empires. It was a maritime empire or an ‘empire of the sea'. By the 1760s the British Empire had come to mean Great Britain, Ireland as well as numerous British colonies and settlements across the world. Themes of global encounters, the exotic and empire formed some of the background for the reception and development of British musical culture during a period defined by Enlightenment, modernity and economic development. A culturally diverse musical society included composers and performers, audiences and benefactors connecting with Europe, the Atlantic world and Asia. The Warwick History Department currently has two interdisciplinary research centres where many of its participants are pursuing themes of empire, trade, global encounter, and enslavement. ‘Musical Culture and Empire’ brings musical culture to our histories, and this digital concert series supports today’s musical cultural sector during this period of Covid-19.

London, Empire and Luxury

By 1700, London was already Europe's largest city, and held 11% of Britain’s population. It grew from 500,000 inhabitants in 1700 to 675,00 in 1750 and reached 959,000 in 1800. 4,000 aristocratic and gentry families had homes in the city by 1700, stimulating the “London season”. The London season, coinciding with the sitting of Parliament from November to June, brought the aristocracy and gentry from their country to their London residences. It marked the cycle of cultural events and polite entertainment in the capital. It brought not just elite families to London, but migrations of professional and service classes, including musical and theatrical performers.

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London in 1794

Another 4,000 merchants, bankers, and wholesale traders, as well as a third of all English lawyers generated a vibrant consumer culture: London was not just the largest city in Europe, but a city of empire, with a large mercantile and commercial culture. It was a centre for shipping, trade, and the navy, connecting it with Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Its commerce brought colonial ambitions; it became an entrepot of the world’s luxury goods. The slave trade is an integral part of its story. From early in the eighteenth century the Royal African Company and independent traders were sending an average of 60 slave ships a year to the West Coast of Africa and on to the Caribbean, returning with Britain’s new luxury foodstuff: sugar. London’s coffeehouses and sugar culture were part of a commercial culture conveyed in nearly 22,000 shops, warehouses and other retail outlets, as well as 200 leisure venues.

An extensive print culture of popular newspapers and news sheets, trade cards, bills and posters advertised all manner of goods and events. The Public Advertiser advertised many benefit concerts, musical performances and festivals, and there were large ticket-paying audiences. The first performance of George Frederic Handel’s (1685-1759) ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ attracted 12,000 paying spectators for the rehearsal alone. Johann Mattheson, writing early in the century, summed up the commercial possibilities for musicians:

‘He who in the present time wants to make a profit out of music betakes himself to England. The Italians exalt music: the French enliven it; the Germans strive after it; the English pay for it well.’

Musical events took place in the many theatres, and by the early 1740s in the pleasure gardens (especially Ranelagh in Chelsea), in the guildhalls, charitable foundations, and churches as well as specialist concert rooms. From the 1760s there were Hanover Square Concert Rooms (pictured below) and Pasquali’s Rooms on the new Tottenham Court Road.

The Hanover Square Rooms in 1844

The Royal Academy of Music was founded under the patronage of George I in 1719 to promote opera, also using funds from the slave-trading Royal African Company (1672-1752). George Frederic Handel became its inaugural musical director until his death in 1759. His prolific composition and performance fostered a great public enthusiasm for Italian opera and Italian singers, as opera became newly accessible to the middle classes. Handel also developed the popularity of the oratorio form. This saved on expensive theatrical staging and was ideal for many of the types of concert venues then available, for example the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, founded in 1740.

Provincial musical culture & sociability

This efflorescence of secular and sacred musical culture in the capital found its counterpart in the provinces: or the growth of Britain’s provincial and smaller towns far surpassed that of the rest of Europe, apart from the Netherlands. By the early eighteenth century 20-25 % of the English lived in towns, with over half of these in small centres of less than 5,000. Bristol had 50,000 inhabitants by 1750, Norwich, 36,000 and Newcastle 29,000. By 1800, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester were the largest, with populations ranging from c. 75,000 to 90,000. The spa towns and county and cathedral towns attracted members of the court, the gentry and the professional classes. Oxford, in its role as major university town and early musical centre, was populated by only 8,000 in the mid eighteenth century, and 12,000 by its end, but nevertheless one skewed to the elites and professions; by the 1730s it had three distinct musical societies. Musical culture and amateur traditions built on long-standing musical networks, while developing music clubs, subscription series and festivals, so that concerts became, by later in the eighteenth century, a nationwide pastime.

Instruments of Time and Truth rehearsing in Oxford’s Holywell Music Room for their concert, "‘Handel’s Youthful Exuberance” in February 2020

Music clubs combined a mixture of public and private events; music festivals included sacred pieces performed in churches, and secular pieces in other venues, such as The College Hall in Hereford. Towns developed their own specialist concert venues - from the Holywell Music Room (above) in Oxford in 1742, and St. Cecilia Hall, Edinburgh in 1762, to the Music Hall, Liverpool in 1786, and St. Andrews Hall, Norwich in 1788. For the most part music was publicly performed in commercial premises devoted to sociability and entertainment - inns, assembly rooms, theatres, the new pleasure gardens such as those in Bath, Norwich, Bristol, Birmingham and Newcastle.

There was a great deal of amateur composition and performance. Rich connections between popular and elite musical culture during the early modern period continued, although specific types of music making were increasingly associated with politeness and gentility. Music clubs and subscription series were expensive. James Harris’s subscription concerts in Salisbury, followed by John Marsh in Canterbury then Chichester. The Salisbury series cost the concert-goer two guineas a year; the Chichester series attracted 150 subscribers a year.

By the 1740s there were 53 oratorio subscription concerts; another 43 subscription concerts, and 45 concert series advertised. Geminiani’s subscription series at Hickford’s in 1731/2 cost 4 guineas for a 20-concert series; Handel’s 18 concert oratorio series in 1743 cost 6 guineas. Only the wealthy elite could afford to attend regularly at these prices. Many more did attend occasional concerts; tickets for professional-level concerts might be had for between 5s. and 10s.6d, the equivalent today of paying c.£75 to £160. And there was a great diversity of events to attend. Between 1672 and 1749 there were over 4,300 musical events advertised in the London press; as many were also advertised in the period from 1750 to the end of the century. By the end of the century large audiences were attending the festivals; 970 saw Haydn’s Creation at the 1800 Salisbury Festival.

While the cost of music listening could be high, domestic music-making needed not be. Many instruments could be had quite cheaply – a violincello for £5, violins for £2 to £3, an oboe for less than £2. But harpsichords and pianos did cost a lot, c. £35-50 guineas in the mid 18thC, and organs were very expensive. Organs were only just being replaced in the churches from the mid eighteenth century onwards, after their removal during the Commonwealth a hundred years prior. John Marsh of Chichester, not only a great impresario of concerts and orchestras, but an active composer and amateur musician, travelled about England playing on newly installed church organs.

Senisino alongside Francesca Cuzzoni and Gaetano Berenstadt in a production of Handel’s Flavio

Fees for professional musicians ranged widely from £30 to £100 a year during the 1720s for members of the orchestra, and wind and brass instrumentalists could be recruited for particular series or events from the many military bands quartered about the country with their regiments. But the well-funded Royal Academy’s lead singers were highly paid; a famed castrato like Senisino (pictured above) could claim £1500, and the soprano Margherita Durastanti £1100. Handel’s salary as music director was £700.

The Charities and Empire

A key platform for developing English musical culture during the early to mid-eighteenth century were the charities: hospitals, almshouses, schools and orphanages. The Foundling Hospital, established in 1742, particularly became associated with the modish music set. Handel became closely involved in the fundraising, and also found it in a new venue for benefit concerts. An audience of 1,000, including the Prince and Princess of Wales attended his benefit concert in 1749 in aid of the completion of the Chapel; he held the first benefit concert of Messiah there in 1750, donated an organ, and became a Governor. He held annual concerts of Messiah after this, raising £7,000 overall. Handel’s close musical associates, Charles Jennens (1700-1773), Messiah’s librettist John Christopher Smith, Handel’s secretary and copyist and first organist at the Foundling Hospital, and the tenor John Beard (1717-1791) were all closely involved in the project.

The association between music and the charities also takes us back to the inequalities, diversity and sources of income in London as Europe’s great imperial city. There were approximately 10,000 people identified as black in eighteenth-century London. What was their part in the musical history of this city of empire? Here, as with the lives of so many ordinary people from the eighteenth-century, we know very little. A number came to London as slaves and became servants; some were well-educated, including in music. The most famous case is that of Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), former slave turned composer, musician, and writer, after also earning his living as a grocer.

Ignatius Sancho

George Bridgetower

George Polgreen Bridgetower (1778-1860), came to London from Europe; he played at the Bristol Assembly Rooms in late 1789 and early 1790 as a prodigy, then across the London theatres during the next ten years. His musical education was fostered by the Prince Regent, and he went on to develop a European as well as British concert career. He holds enduring fame as the former dedicatee of the Beethoven Kreutzer sonata. Joseph Antonio Emedy (1775-1835), a former Portuguese slave, became a virtuoso violinist and composer, eventually becoming the leader of the Truro Philharmonic Orchestra. On a wider scale there is evidence of black soldiers in the military regiments stationed around the country, and some of these may well have been part of the military bands whose members also took part in wider orchestral concerts. But whatever their origin, our knowledge remains limited on who so many of eighteenth-century Britain’s musicians were.

Handel, benefactors and the Royal African Company

Many of the benefactors of the charities along with the elite followers of the charity benefit concerts had grown rich on Britain’s new trade and imperial wealth. A number of the original investors in the Royal Academy of Music were also shareholders in the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company (1711-1853). Both of these companies traded in slaves, though the Royal African Company ceased to do so in 1731, turning its activities to ivory and gold in the hope of clawing back from the brink of insolvency. Handel himself held shares in the Royal African Company in May, 1740 (he was paid in them), but continued to hold South Sea annuities as a holding place for transfers of fees and salary between 1723 and 1732. He was not alone; a number of the original subscribers to/investors in the Royal Academy of Music (1719-27) held shares in the Royal African Company.

There is a legacy in the imperial context of British musical culture, for Handel’s most famous manuscripts were held by two families that had owned large plantations in Barbados and Antigua. The manuscripts of the Granville family are now held by the British Library. The first performing score of Messiah, once owned by the Ottley family is now in the Bodleian Library. We are now learning just how much of Britain’s economic and social infrastructure was funded by the profits of slavery and compensation for abolition; so too was its cultural infrastructure, including scores and musical instruments. Wealthy families engaged in the slave trade and used this financial capital to build up cultural capital in the musical culture of the day, hiring musicians, purchasing manuscripts and scores, and musical instruments and funding concerts.

London as a European musical metropolis was also the centre of a rapidly growing British economy, now embedding itself in a wider global empire. It attracted musicians, audiences, benefactors and patrons from well beyond its traditional European networks. This was not just the story of one metropolis, for Britain’s distinctively urban profile ensured the wide dispersal of a rich musical culture of performers and concert goers. With wealth partially funded by empire, the British commercialised their culture, importing, adapting and developing a great variety of musical forms and staging these in many new venues. Increasingly audiences came not just from the elites, but from many in the middle classes. This commercial and amateur musical culture was not just London’s achievement, but was widespread across the country.

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Further Reading

Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005).

Helen Berry, The Castrato and his Wife (Oxford, 2011).

Helen Berry, ‘Gender, Sexuality and the Consumption of Musical Culture in Eighteenth-Century London’, in S. Hindle, A. Shepard and J. Walter, eds., Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2013).

Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660-1770 (Oxford, 1989).

Peter Borsay, ‘Concert Topography and Provincial Towns in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh, eds., Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (Farnham, Surrey, 2004).

John Brewer, ‘Culture as a Commodity; 1660-1800’, in Anne Bermingham & John Brewer, eds., The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800 (London, 1995).

John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997).

Catherine Harbor, ‘The Marketing of Concerts in London 1672–1749’, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, July, 2020.

Ellen T. Harris, ‘”Master of the Orchestra with a Sallary”: Handel at the Bank of England’, in Music and Letters, 101, 2020.

Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth-Century English Society (Oxford, 1997)

David Hunter, ‘Handel Manuscripts and the Profits of Slavery: the Granville Collection at the British Library and the First Performing Score of Messiah Reconsidered’, Notes (December, 2019), pp. 27-37.

H.D. Johnstone, “Handel's London - British Musicians and London Concert Life”, in D. Burrows, (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Handel, (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 64-77.

Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People. England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989)

Simon McVeigh Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn, (Cambridge, 1993).

Simon McVeigh, Calendar of London Concerts 1750–1800, Goldsmiths, University of London, http://research.gold.ac.uk/10342/ (accessed 29 July, 2020).

Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2010).

Walvin, James, ‘Ignatius Sancho: The Man and His Times’ in Reyahn King (ed.). Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters (London, National Portrait Gallery, 1997)

Susan Wollenberg, Music at Oxford in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, (Oxford, 2001).

Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh, eds., Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (Farnham, Surrey, 2004).

New Administrator Announced

Instruments of Time and Truth is pleased to announce the appointment of William Anderson as its new Administrator. Will may already be a familiar face to Oxford audiences as a member of Christ Church Cathedral Choir and the Oxford Bach Soloists, as well as the Administrator of the Oxford Chamber Music Festival. We are delighted that he is taking up the post and Judith and Gay are thrilled to be welcoming him to the team.

Newsletter April 2019

Newsletter April 2019

I am currently sitting in bed nursing a sprained ankle which provides me with the opportunity for a long-overdue newsletter.

IT&T: Then and Now

I just skimmed through the January newsletter to remind myself of the events which have already taken place this year and am amazed at how few have actually involved me. For the first time, I am faced with tangible evidence of the growth of IT&T. I remember on September 23rd 2015 being in the box office at the Holywell Music Room in my concert clothes and realising, in a panic, that the orchestra was going on stage without me. Gone are those days when we were almost literally a one-man band and nowadays, our growing network of volunteers and supporters has taken much of the stress out of the logistical side of putting on concerts. I must thank Joelle Mann for her infectious enthusiasm and ability to charm punters into accepting donation forms (and even filling them in), Elizabeth Adams for her quiet capability and experience with the various Oxford venues, Jitka Fort for being there throughout, our trustees and the amazing Jessica Osborne who has rescued our books from the chaos wrought by one double bass player attempting to act simultaneously as fixer, distributer of flyers, poster putter-upper, accountant and occasionally, musician.

The day to day running of IT&T is still acheived by 3 people: myself, Gay Amherst and Aliye Cornish. Only Aliye is paid a modest hourly rate and she brings the youthful energy and technical savvy that is the powerhouse behind getting things done. Aliye is single-handedly responsible for the ambitious IT&T InSpires, our unique education project which aims to bring historically-informed performance into the mainstream for future musicans, which is already benefitting young performers in Oxfordshire. In the course of creating and running the project, Aliye has become incredibly effective in attracting funding for our work and has recently garnered donations from the Bishopsdown Charitable Trust, the University Community Fund, the Doris Field Charitable Trust and the British Croatian Society.

Staying true to our ethos
But despite having expanded, IT&T remains firmly committed to its ethos - that of providing concerts of the highest possible musical standard at the lowest possible cost. We still travel together, bake each other cakes and try and think collectively about using Arts funding as efficiently as possible. Not a penny is wasted.

You are invited to our 5th Birthday Party
Of course, fund-raising still lies at the heart of any charity's existence and since having had Development funds made available to us from Woodford Investments, we are much more focused on this as a priority. You may be aware of our 5th Anniversary Appeal - our bid to raise £10,000 in a hundred days. The hundred days will be up on June 5th when we host our 5th Birthday Party which happily coincides with the birthday of one of our staunchest supporters, Lady Margaret Bullard. If you would like to donate or become a Friend in time to attend the party, be entertained by Bojan Cicic and Chris Bucknall and meet the musicians, then please sign up via the website. The ebullient William Purefoy will act as auctioneer in our auction of promises which includes stays on the coast in Cornwall and Dorset, a flight in a private plane, as well as things we could all do with, like help in the garden. So please think about joining us, we would love to meet you and we are looking forward to a night where we allow ourselves to celebrate everything we have acheived over the past 5 years. Do hurry - we only have 14 tickets remaining.

2019 so far...
So, finally, to the music. Freelance musicans are traditionally unemployed in January and February, following the flurry of Christmas Oratorios and Messiahs, so IT&T’s continued activities in February were welcomed by the musicians (and hopefully the audiences): our Monteverdi Vespers with the Summertown Choral Society; Musica per la Sera and a side-by-side concert with The Bate Players and Oxybaroxy as part of the Keble Early Music Festival; as well as Digital Spaghetti in the Wotton Concert Series.
More recently, we have performed the St John Passion in Barnes with Tiffin School and, as I write this, IT&T is engaged in a tour of 3 performances of the same work in Spain. Closer to home, we very much enjoyed performing Concertos and Curiosities in the Holywell Music Room on March 23rd on the same evening that members of IT&T took part in Dido and Aeneas in New College Chapel! The audience in the Holywell were treated to two relatively unknown suites by Telemann and W F Bach (definitely the ‘Curiosities’ of the title), alongside J S Bach’s harpsichord concertos in D major and A minor - think C18th Heavy Metal! Our next Oxford appearance will be on April 14th at 5pm in Merton College Chapel in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, conducted by Ben Nicholas. Please see our website for booking information.

Fitting Finale for the 2018/19 Season
The final official concert of our 2018/19 Season takes place in SJE on May 25th. ‘Musick Restor’d’ or ‘The King shall Rejoice’ sees IT&T performing once again with Edward Higginbottom’s much-acclaimed Oxford Consort of Voices. With its programme of quintessential English music by Humfrey and Purcell (including his Ode to St Cecilia) and the added attraction of an appearance by actor, Tom Bateman, this concert promises to be a fitting conclusion to our vibrant Season. It is also the first live performance of music from our CD of Symphony Anthems which will be available on the night.

Special treats
A couple of late additions to our programmed events will take place on June 1st. The first is a soiree at Worton Organic Garden where Bojan will perform, accompanied on the lute and guests will be treated to a mouth-watering supper prepared with literally the freshest organic ingredients from the eponymous garden (we have an a number of tickets reserved exclusively for Friends). The second is a rather special Evensong at Magdalen, where we will perform Bach’s Magnificat. I would describe both these events as examples of the privilege we enjoy living in Oxford and I hope you will take advantage of these opportunities. 

Summer Festivals
That leaves us with one of the great features of our Temperate climate: the Summer Festival. Whether performed, audaciously, in the outdoors, or undercover, these festivals celebrate the special atmosphere of our light evenings. Where, half the year we are huddled in our dingy Victorian houses, we now surface into the light which lends every occasion a frisson of enjoyment, somehow enhanced by what has gone before and must come after.

Join us on 23rd June at Oxford Festival of the Arts for ‘Purefeo’ with William Purefoy, Helen Parker and Rebecca Bottone or on July 7th in the Assembly Rooms, Bath, as part of Martin Randall Travel’s West Country Choral Festival.

To be continued...
Plans are already well-advanced for our 2019/20 Season. Our opening concert on Friday, October 4th at the Sheldonian features Bojan Cicic in what can only be his original take on the Beethoven violin concerto. A musician of immense sensitivity and integrity, Bojan offers something far more profound than the swagger of a viruosic showman. Conducted by Edward Higginbottom, this concert unites these two exceptional talents. Do come along and, for this Season, perhaps you will bring along 1 new concert-goer each time.

For your diary, our ‘candlelit’ Messiah (health and safety-approved) takes place on December 21st at 5pm. Booking will open in September and this event will sell-out.
Later in the Season we will feature concerts directed by Bojan and by Chris Bucknall, as well as a further larger scale performance with Edward.
Further plans include a Monteverdi Vespers with Owen Rees and choir of The Queen’s College as part of the Divine Office Festival in 2020 and two projects in Malta, IT&T having been recommended to the Valetta Festival by the Director of St John's, Smith Square following our performances of The Triumph of Time and Truth.

Who we are
So our name is disseminated abroad, but Instruments of Time and Truth belongs in and to Oxford. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of each individual concert-goer. You are the lifeblood of the orchestra and IT&T will exist for as long as you demand it. Bring your friends, become Friends and make a personal investment in Oxford’s cultural identity. Thank you.

Judith Evans
Orchestra Manager

IT&T Receives Support from British Croatian Society

We are pleased to announce the kind support of the British Croatian Society who will be sponsoring our leader Bojan Cicic in his performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto on October 4th in the Sheldonian Theatre. This prestigious concert will open our 2019-2020 season and we are delighted that they have chosen to support it.

IT&T Receives more funding

We are grateful to the Doris Field Charitable Trust for supporting our new trainee positions which we will be launching in 2019-2020. This is an exciting development for the organisation and allows us to operate more efficiently while also creating opportunities for young people seeking arts management experience.

Two Minute Read - Christopher Bucknall

You are joining IT&T as Director/Soloist for ‘Concertos and Curiosities’ . Do you have a particular favourite piece from this eclectic programme? And if so, what is it about this piece which distinguishes it above the others?  

I must say that I don’t have a favourite, I love the variety that the programme offers! But if I’m allowed to choose two, I’ll pick the J S Bach D minor concerto and the W F Bach Suite. The concerto, because of it’s extraordinary depth of expression - I struggle to think of a more desolate slow movement or a more grittily determined finale. It’s also wonderful to play, somehow the resonances of the key really suit the instrument. And the W F Bach because it’s a new piece to me and I’m really intrigued to discover its rather unusual musical language. 
 

Your work encompasses quite a broad spectrum; from instrumental soloist to directing operas. Is there a part of your professional life which you are most drawn to? Are there any aspects of it which you find particularly challenging? 

I think deep down, my first love is the human voice. I realise that in all my work, whether it’s playing a harpsichord concerto, conducting an orchestra or coaching a singer, I’m looking for the power of speech and of line - as if it’s being sung. It unites all the music making I do. So then the challenge  - and great privilege - is sharing that love with other musicians and audiences. 

Which projects, professional or personal, are you particularly looking forward to in the coming months? 

I’m really looking forward to working with students at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, which I conduct in March for them. Helping the young singers and players discover this extraordinary score is wonderful. I’m also looking forward to harpsichord concerto practice, a glut of Bach Passions and a week of East Anglian seaside with my wife and small children. 

Christopher Bucknall directs Instruments of Time and Truth in 'Concertos and Curiosities' on March 23rd, 7.30pm at the Holywell Music Room. Tickets cost £25 (£5 NUS/U18) and Oxfordshire County Music Service students can sign up in advance for a free ticket. To find out more and book your tickets visit our 2018-2019 Season page.