Chapter 1 - George Smart and the Musical Profession: 1776–1825

Summary

❧ Early Life

SIR George Thomas Smart's early life and education are clearly laid out in an autobiographical journal which was written up towards the end of his life and based upon meticulously kept and very detailed records and accounts. Reading the opening pages in Smart's original text, which deal with his upbringing in the late eighteenth century, one senses the enthusiasm, innocence, and simplicity that endeared him to his friends and colleagues throughout his life. It is important to realise that only the accounts of his tours abroad are contemporary narratives; the journal is a much more factual document, that mostly records day-to-day transactions, and with relatively few narrative passages. The journal does feature a number of reminiscences, however, many of which bear the signs of much re-telling. In his later life Smart was noted as a raconteur and these set-piece stories reappear in other musical autobiographies, books of anecdotes, and newspaper articles.

Cyril Ehrlich has said that ‘Smart's career was exemplary: escape from a family background in trade, and a dextrous climb, with assiduous book keeping and a modicum of purely musical skills’. From Smart's journal it is possible to chart his early career and to question Ehrlich's view: to ask if his life was merely one of adroit social climbing. In these early years, the issues that shaped his life were those that faced every musician working in London, but Smart pursued his career with a particular flair and success that eluded most of his contemporaries, and thus his life deserves critical exploration. Whilst the factual approach of the journal reveals little of his underlying motives and intentions, the apparent lack of conscious myth-making (a pertinent contrast to the memoirs of his friend and contemporary Spohr) makes this document all the more useful to us. His cultivation of patrons, acquisition of skills, both musical and social, and vigorous pursuit of a high-level career contrast markedly with other contemporaries such as Richard Stevens or Samuel Wesley. By the time he embarked upon his German tour in 1825, he had reached the top of the profession and the rewards were significant and long-lasting.