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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1981
‘Music in 18th-Ccntury Oxford’ perhaps most immediately evokes the names of Handel, Haydn and the Holywell Music Room. But these represent only part of a continuous tradition of music, richly cultivated in Oxford society and established as important in various aspects of Oxford life. The title of this paper might more accurately have been phrased ‘Music in the University of Oxford in the 18th Century’, although in fact, then as now, town and gown appear closely connected from a musical point of view. Music in a university context has received concentrated scholarly attention with regard to an earlier period, but there seems to be no equivalent study of post-Renaissance music from this particular angle. Nor does there appear to be any published survey of music in Oxford. Apparently no one has previously put together information on music in 18th-century Oxford, except, partially but most valuably, the Rev. J. H. Mee in his book on the Holywell Music Room, and Charles Abdy Williams, whose lists of musical degree-holders are complemented by general commentary on university music. In the New Grove article on Oxford, the period up to and including the 17th century, and the 19th and 20th centuries, are, quite rightly, treated to extended discussion; little, however, is said to link the 18th century historically with either of these periods. Yet it was in the 18th century that the outcome of those weekly music meetings which had begun at Oxford during the Commonwealth was seen in the Holywell concerts, and that an interest in early music, again traceable back to origins in the preceding century, developed in Oxford circles; and both of these, and other, aspects of music in Oxford were then taken up into various 19th-century developments.
1 Most comprehensively in Nan Cooke Carpenter's Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, Oklahoma, 1958).Google Scholar
2 It would be possible to light on various other provincial towns and similarly investigate their musical life: Oxford was only one among many musically active areas outside the capital.Google Scholar
3 The Oldest Music Room a Europe (London, 1911).Google Scholar
4 Degrees in Music (London, 1893).Google Scholar
5 See Appendix A.Google Scholar
6 In the 19th century the duties and posts of Professor and Choragus were separated. See The Heather Professor of Music, 1626–1976: Exhibition in the Divinity School, October 1976' (Bodleian Library pamphlet). For a list of the Heather Professors in the 18th century, see Appendix B.Google Scholar
7 Indeed the practical aspects of the subject, then as now, may have distracted undergraduates from proper concentration on their studies. In a humorous article on ‘Fiddling considered’ (The Student, i (1750), 92), music was regarded as a regrettable diversion from academic study: 'Must we not therefore with some concern see so many Students … destin'd to the common task of learning, debauch'd by Sound, neglecting LOCKE and NEWTON for PURCELL and HANDELGoogle Scholar
8 Usually Magdalen, in the 18th century.Google Scholar
9 This may not have been a disadvantage, judging from some accounts of the irregularities which prevailed among candidates and examiners.Google Scholar
10 Candidates were required to produce testimonials to this effect.Google Scholar
11 Thomas Hearne, Remarks and Collections, vi (1717–19), Oxford Historical Society, xliii (Oxford, 1902), 298. Indeed these restrictions would hold true nowadays.Google Scholar
12 There were numerous occurrences of ‘accumulated degrees’, whereby the two degrees were awarded simultaneously on production of one exercise, although by 1799 William Crotch warned that
A Doctor's degree cannot in future be taken without previously taking a Bachelor's and afterwards a space of 5 years intervening between the two degrees. Such things have been permitted but the Vice-Chancellor looks upon it as degrading to the honour of the Profession.
Christ Church Archives 347/2, letter of W. Crotch to T. Busby, 15 August 1799.
13 Stanley's exercise was the cantata The Power of Music, now in Cambridge, King's College Library, Rowe MS 7 (information by courtesy of Dr. H. D. Johnstone).Google Scholar
14 See, inter alia, Roger Fiske, “Samuel Arnold', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, i (London, 1980), 616.Google Scholar
15 Details of these and other degree exercises are given in Appendix C.Google Scholar
16 When Burney offered his exercise for the D.Mus in 1769, he had also prepared, in case it was required, a vocal chorus in 8 real parts: see his General History of Music (London, 1776–89), iii, 329, note (q), and 351–3 (music).Google Scholar
17 It is interesting to find a German earlier in the century recommending that to ingratiate oneself with the English one should ‘praise the deceased Purcell to the skies and say there has never been the like of him’; quoted in Harold E. Samuel's article, ‘A German Musician comes to London in 1704’, The Musical Times, cxxii (1981), 591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 See for example Callcott, ‘Proper Sion’, and Parsons, “Great is the Lord”, with their uninspired repetitions of worn Baroque formulae.Google Scholar
19 ‘Handel's Influence on English Music’, The Monthly Musical Record, xc (1960), 163–74.Google Scholar
20 See, inter alia, Percy Lovell's article on ‘“Ancient” Music in Eighteenth-Century England’, Music and Letters, bc (1979), 401–15, and William Weber's article in this volume of Proceedings, 100–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Burney seems to have regarded this work as establishing his credentials as a serious composer, and conferring respectability; he asks the reader of his History to excuse his egotism in citing his own work in order to rebut ‘sinister assertions’ that he ‘“neither liked nor had studied Church Music'” (op. cit., iii, 329).Google Scholar
22 The scoring of Oxford exercises must have been dictated partly by the forces available, and distinctive solo parts, as in the case of the clarinet, designed for specific performers.Google Scholar
23 Individual melodic ideas are occasionally rather commonplace in effect and unsubtle in their presentation, with phrases tending to close off prematurely rather than leading on.Google Scholar
24 Op. cit., iii, 329. For an account of the circumstances relating to its composition and performance, see Scholes, Percy, The Great Dr. Burney (London, 1948), i, 140 ff.Google Scholar
25 ‘After the Exercise of the Artists [i.e. Arts disputations] on Act Monday is over, there is to be a Musick Act, provided there be anyone to take a degree in Musick, for which he is then to perform one Consort … vocal and instrumental’ (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Hearne's diaries, 175, p. 124).Google Scholar
26 For the original Encaenia (i.e. dedication of the Sheldonian Theatre: the annual commemoration of this occasion became connected with the giving of honorary degrees) in 1669, an organ was borrowed from Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College); in 1671 the Sheldonian acquired its own organ. Among Lord Crewe's benefactions to the university was an endowment to cover organ-playing at Encaenia.Google Scholar
27 As in 1785, when the celebrated Madame Mara was at the centre of a riot in the Theatre (documented in several sources, including the diary of Richard Paget, matriculated Magdalen, 1780; MS in Bristol, University Library, Paget Collection. DM 106/419). Paget reports thatGoogle Scholar
Wednesday and Thursday [21–22 June] there were very riotous proceedings in the Theatre, which originated from Mara's being unable to sing a long song, in which she was (very absurdly) encored, Wednesday. Sufficient Apologies were made by Dr. Hayes and things went off tolerably well for the present. But Friday, a handle being made of Mara's sitting down in the choruses [apparently a habit of hers], there was a most violent disturbance — Such a scene and noise and confusion was surely never before exhibited in that place. Drunken gownsmen (for't was St. John's gawdey) and fainting women were carried off in Shoals. To complete the business, our wise V.C. put himself absolutely at the Head of the mob, by making a speech in which he said that “Madame Mara had given just cause of Offence”; so that we had a riot by permission of the Revd and very worthy the V.[ice] Chanc[ello]r.
In 1793 Hayes himself was the victim of disruptive action, when his Ode for the Encaenia at which the Duke of Portland was installed as Chancellor, was interrupted by the audience and only half of it performed (see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 174, f. 238). The work is extant in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus.1 d.64 (ff. 63r–126v), and is admittedly in a very protracted and disunified cantata form.
28 Listed in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Summary Catalogue, v, 251–5; composers known to have contributed include Locke and Blow.Google Scholar
29 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. Sch. c. 127–8 (parts).Google Scholar
30 Remarks and Collections, xi (1731–5), Oxford Historical Society, lxxii (Oxford, 1921), 231.Google Scholar
31 Particularly fully in O. E. Deutsch, Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 316–34, 366–8.Google Scholar
32 For example at the opening of the Radcliffe Library (in April 1749), when Esther, Samson, Messiah (in apparently its first Oxford performance) and some anthems were heard on three afternoons, under the direction of William Hayes; like the 1733 Act, though for different reasons, this seems to have been an occasion simmering with political implications: see Kennicott's letter, printed in The Bodleian Quarterly Record, i/6 (1915), 165 (from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. b. 43), and Peter Marr, The Life and Works of John Alcock (Diss., University of Reading, 1978), 19–20. The phrase ‘Mercy to Jacob's Race, God Save the King’ was taken as particularly significant. Among other occasions which similarly took on the appearance of a Handel festival was the 1754 commemoration, when ‘a Convocation was held in the Theatre to commemorate the Benefactors to the University and to receive … the Earl of ‘Westmorland as its high Steward’, and the three days following, from 3 to 5 July, were used for performances of L'Allegro, Judas Maccabaeus and Messiah at the Sheldonian Theatre (see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 247, p. 114, 2 July 1754). On earlier 18th-century performances of Handel in Oxford, see Burrows, Donald, ‘Sources for Oxford Handel Performances in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’, Music and Letters, lxi (1980), 177–85.Google Scholar
33 Remarks and Collections, xi (1731–5), 224 ff.Google Scholar
34 Apart from his Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate, and Coronation anthems, at the University Church (St. Mary's) on the Sunday morning, the works performed were: Esther (evenings of Thursday 5 and Saturday 7 July); Athalia (in its first performance, on the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, 10 and 11 July); Deborah (on Thursday evening, 12 July); and Acis and Galatea at Christ Church (morning of 11 July).Google Scholar
35 Remarks and Collections, xi (1731–5), 227.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., 232.Google Scholar
37 Wordbook in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gough Oxf. 59. The cast includes a don, ‘Haughty’, and a scholar Thoughtless'. Again objections to Handel are mainly financial: Thoughtless has had to sell the furniture of his room to buy tickets for Handel's oratorios.Google Scholar
38 Diary of Richard Paget (June 1788); MS in Bristol, University Library, Paget Collection. DM 106/419Google Scholar
39 E.g. Jackson's Oxford Journal; Paget's diary. Among modern documentary compilations see particularly H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn in England, 1791–1795, Hadyn: Chronicle and Works, iii (London, 1976), 88–95 and passim.Google Scholar
40 Andreas Lidl (baryton player at Esterhaza), appeared in Oxford in 1776; Philippe Jung, violinist (originally of Vienna), settled in Oxford by 1789.Google Scholar
41 See Landon, op. cit., 88.Google Scholar
42 Quoted in Landon, op. cit., 93.Google Scholar
43 See Hughes, Rosemary, ‘Haydn at Oxford’, Music and Letters, xx (1939), 248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44 Quoted in Landon, op. cit., 89.Google Scholar
45 Ibid., 80.Google Scholar
46 Landon's account clarifies usefully: the work listed as Haydn's ‘Sinfonia MS in G’ in Hayward's programme for 18 May 1791 was to have been no. 92 (1789), conducted by the composer, and already introduced to London audiences in the first concert of Salomon's series; it received its first Oxford performance on 7 July 1791 (see Landon, op. cit., 53–5, 89 and 504).Google Scholar
47 Landon (op. cit., 94) prints a facsimile of the autograph, with a correct realization. When Haydn was elected to the Society of Musical Graduates he presented this piece to the society.Google Scholar
48 See Mallet, SirCharles, A History of At University of Oxford (London, 1924–7) iii, 145.Google Scholar
49 Sir John Hawkins, A Central History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), iv, 374.Google Scholar
50 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. a. 76.Google Scholar
51 ‘Sconcing’ involved drinking a tankard of ale without pause for breath. An account of the music-meetings at Aberdeen refers to the ‘playing members’ complaint that their music was ‘often disturbed by Peoples’ talking' (H. G. Farmer, Music-Making in At Olden Days: the Story of the Aberdeen Concerts, 1746–1801 (London, 1950), 52).Google Scholar
52 Oxford, Merton College Archives 4.33. See also M. Crum, ‘An Oxford Music Club, 1690–1719’, The Bodleian Library Record, ix (1974), 83–99. Unfortunately there are no records subsequently until about mid-century; the scattered evidence suggests that activities continued in the interim.Google Scholar
53 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 337; see also Bodleian Library, Gough prints vol. 27, f. 95, for an architectural sketch of the Music Room. There was special care taken in its design with regard to acoustical properties. One critic noted that ‘there is not one pillar to deaden the sound’ (quoted in Mee, op. cit., 34).Google Scholar
54 Oxford, Music Faculty Library, Rare Books. Printed in Mee, op. cit., 45–53.Google Scholar
55 Ernest Walker, A History of Music a England, rev. J. A. Westrup (3rd edn., Oxford, 1952), 273.Google Scholar
56 See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 247, p. 147.Google Scholar
57 Disentangled to some extent in Betty Matthews, ‘The Musical Mahons’, The Musical Times, cxx (1979), 482–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
58 Philippe Jung, Concerts of Vocal and Instrumental Music, as performed at the Music Room, Oxford, from October, 1807, to October, 1808 …, Oxford, 1808 (Bodleian Library, 174 g. 106): includes list of subscribers, stewards, and programmes for 1807–8.Google Scholar
59 This was one Walter Vicary (B.Mus, 1805; organist of Magdalen College, 1797–1845, and of St. Mary's Church, 1830-).Google Scholar
60 It would be interesting to know when the piano was first introduced into public concerts and private musical circles in Oxford; harpsichordists continued to be employed at Holy-well throughout the 18th century. On Thursday evening, 27 September 1792, M. and Mme. Dussek played on the ‘Grand Piano Forte’ and the Pedal Harp at St. John's College. The harp was a popular solo instrument at Oxford concerts.Google Scholar
61 The sopranos were sometimes reinforced by college choristers. Later in the 18th century there was dissatisfaction with the small choral ensemble favoured previously and it was, assumed that the ‘several good Voices in Oxford’ would require assistance from London and elsewhere. Extra instrumentalists were imported, either to reinforce existing sections of the orchestra, or to play parts not catered for at all by the regular orchestral players. An advertisement in Jackson's Oxford Journal, vol. 1560 (1783: 22 March) for Handel's Messiah, as the Society's termly choral performance, refers to ‘Principal Vocal Parts by Messrs. Norris, Matthews, Price, and Clarke, Miss George, and Miss Mahon. The Instrumental Parts by the Oxford Band, with the Addition of Trumpets from London. The Choruses by the Gentlemen of the Oxford Choirs, assisted by Messrs. Barrow, Randal, and Real, from London’.Google Scholar
62 Numerous Oxford musicians, including William Hayes, were keen composers of glees and catches. The fashion is amusingly illustrated in Oxford at an earlier period by Aldrich's ‘Smoking Catch’ (‘Good indeed the herb's good weed’), to be sung by four men smoking pipes (with rests for puffing at their pipes). Composing and performing light unaccompanied partsongs of this kind continued to form a favourite occupation among academic musicians. See also: David Johnson, The 18th-century Glee’, The Musical Times, cxx (1979), 200–02.Google Scholar
63 Programmes are preserved mainly in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus. 1 d. 64; MS Top. Oxon. d. 281 (160–70); MS Gough Oxf. 90 (5; 29–34). A few specimens are reproduced in modern literature; see for example Douglas Rod's article, “Some Festival Programmes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. 2. Cambridge and Oxford', RMA Research Chronicle, vi (1966), 3–22. Addenda in ibid., vii (1967), 26–7.Google Scholar
64 Op. cit., iii–iv.Google Scholar
65 For an account of the quarrel between Hayes and the cellist Monro, see Mee, op. cit., 88–106.Google Scholar
66 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus. d. 32.Google Scholar
67 As fn. 64.Google Scholar
68 Mee, op. cit., 146.Google Scholar
69 Kindly drawn to my attention by Dr. H. D. Johnstone.Google Scholar
70 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 247, p. 162 (12 September 1785).Google Scholar
71 One interesting aspect of their work was Goodson senior's contribution to Musica Oxoniensis, originally discovered by Dr. F. W. Sternfeld. See Zaslaw, Neal, ‘An English “Orpheus and Euridice” of 1697’, The Musical Times, cxviii (1977), 805–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
72 In his edition of William Hayes's Cathedral Music (Oxford, 1795: preface, ‘Life of W. Hayes’) he refers to his father's ‘sweetness of Temper’, but there is evidence of a contentious streak in the older Hayes's writings on music for example in his critical Remarks on Mr. Avison's Essay on Musical Expression (published anonymously, London, 1753); and in his anonymous satirical pamphlet, directed, with professional pique, against Barnabus Gunn, organist at Gloucester Cathedral 1730–40 (see Deutsch, O. E., ‘“Ink-Pot and Squirt-Gun”, or “The Art of Composing Music in the New Style'”, The Musical Times, xciii (1952), 401–3).Google Scholar
73 Among some more light-hearted descriptions of Philip Hayes's conducting mere occurs a remark that he ‘beat time unmercifully’. See Parke, W., Musical Memoirs (London, 1830), 38–9, 98.Google Scholar
74 By 1806 he had established his base in London, initiating the trend whereby the Heather Professor lived and worked out of Oxford.Google Scholar
75 For example of Lassus, Gibbons, Corelli, Pepusch, the two Hayes, Abel and Salomon. See Poole, Rachael, ‘The Oxford Music School and the Collection of Portraits Formerly Preserved There’, The Musical Antiquary, iv (1912–13), 143–59. Other notable acquisitions of portraits depicting 18th-century composers included the fine Handel portrait (ascribed to Hudson) given by George Colman of Christ Church in about the 1750s, and the Haydn portrait given by Benecke (grandson of Mendelssohn) in the 19th century. Among other 18th-century subjects whose portraits were added to the Music School collection were Burney (by Sir Joshua Reynolds), Hawkins, Croft, Crotch and Tudway. The collection, ranging from the original portrait of William Heather to post-18th century figures such as Ouseley and Stainer, is now housed at the Music Faculty, Oxford.Google Scholar
76 Anthony Wood, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. J. Gutch, 3 vols., 1792–6: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. c. 16, p. 889. This incidentally also gave (p. 889) a list of portraits currently at the Music School.Google Scholar
77 Op. cit., preface to vol. i. See also M. Crum, ‘Early Lists of the Oxford Music School Collection’, Music and Letters, xlviii (1967), 23–34; W. K. Ford, ‘The Oxford Music School in the late 17th Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xvii (1964), 198–203.Google Scholar
78 Quoted in Roger Lonsdale, Charles Burney: a Literary Biography (Oxford, 1965), 247.Google Scholar
79 See Hiff, Aloys, Catalogue of Printed Music published prior to 1801, now in the Library of Christ Church, Oxford (Oxford, 1919); G. E. P. Arkwright, Catalogue of Music in the Library of Christ Church, Oxford (Oxford, 1915, repr. with additions and corrections, 1971); and Christ Church, Library Records 12, Catalogue of the Aldrich collection, a handwritten list compiled by Philip Hayes (1778–9), and indicating later 18th-century additions.Google Scholar
80 Later excerpted in The Substance of Several Courses of Lectures (London, 1831); full version in Norfolk and Norwich, Record Office. Syllabus of these lectures (Music School, Oxford, 1800–4) in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 22/II and G. A. Oxon. b. 19 (265). The accompanying Specimens of Various Styles of Music, referred to in A COURSE OF LECTURES read at Oxford and London … by Wm. Crotch, Mus. Doct. Prof. Mus. Oxon. was printed in 3 volumes (London, c. 1808–15).Google Scholar
81 ‘East Indian’ tunes are harmonized with 18th-century ‘galant’ cadences, and so on. Crotch shared his enthusiasm for national music with his friend Malchair: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus. d. 32 contains Crotch's arrangements of ‘Malchair's tunes’, mainly folk melodies and dances.Google Scholar
82 Crotch also, like Malchair, possessed artistic talent; he succeeded Malchair as President of the School of Art in Oxford.Google Scholar
83 See Wood, Anthony, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. J. Gutch, 3 vols., 1792–6: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. c. 17, p. 199 (New College), c. 18, p. 271 (Magdalen), and c. 19, p. 554 (St. John's).Google Scholar
84 For example at New College, where chapel expenditure covered such items as repairs to the organ, music copying, extra singing, and teaching the choristers. I am grateful to Miss M. Crum for the loan of her notes on some New College account books.Google Scholar
85 See for example Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus. d. 169 (‘Chants/Basso/Fellows’ copy'), from New College.Google Scholar
86 Description of a day at Trinity College: in ‘Letters from Oxford’, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. c. 41 (1790–4), quoted in L. Quiller-Couch, ed., Reminiscences of Oxford, 1559–1850, Oxford Historical Society, (Oxford, 1892), 195–7.Google Scholar
