​Musical & Amicable Society Historically informed, amicably performed.​
ODES, SONGS, SONATAS &c
Divine, Moral, Entertaining
Music by Barnabas Gunn, John Pixell, Jeremiah Clark, Joseph Harris & Richard Mudge
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Martin Perkins – director
Louise Wayman - soprano
Buy - Barn Cottage Records
Track Listing
Joseph Harris: Invocation (O Muse beloved, Calliope divine!)
John Pixell: An Invitation to the Red-Breast
Barnabas Gunn: Solo Sonata] VI for violin and continuo in D major
Joseph Harris: Gentle air, thou breath of lovers
John Pixell: An Ode by Anacreon: Cupid's Complaint to Venus
Barnabas Gunn: Solo IV for flute and continuo in B minor
Jeremiah Clark: To Myra (See Myra, see the lily fair)
Richard Mudge: Non Nobis Domine
Pixell: Psalm 23rd Versified by Mr. Addison
* An Hymn to the Supreme Being: My song by grateful praise inspired
® Thou in the paths of death I tread
Barnabas Gunn: An Occasional Ballad
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Personnel
Louise Wayman – soprano
Rachel Latham – flute
Kate Fawcett – violin
Sophie Barber – violin
Amanda Babington – violin
Heather Birt – viola
Henrik Person – cello
Martin Perkins – harpsichord
Programme Notes
Britain in the eighteenth-century saw a rapid growth of its provincial towns, due in large part to the industrial revolution. The towns of the Midlands - Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton - benefited from a good supply of coal, metals and other raw materials, and their inhabitants were particularly resourceful in applying newly-developed industrial techniques of mechanisation. Birmingham in particular saw a huge increase in merchants and entrepreneurs and, as a result, large numbers of well-paid skilled workers and artisans, earning the town the nickname City of a thousand trades. With the riches of industry came a cultural flourishing which mimicked London's society life: public theatres, concerts, balls, and pleasure gardens to rival those at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, sprung up during the last few decades of the eighteenth-century across the region. London remained the musical capital of the country (and, indeed, of Europe), but the growing provincial centres provided an attractive alternative to the capital's entertainment. The rising middle classes now had the opportunity to attend fashionable cultural events on their doorsteps without the expense of travelling to London, and the landed gentry were able to enjoy events whilst resident in their country seats.
Credits
Recorded in the church of St James, Great Packington, Warwickshire, August 14-15 and September 6, 2012
By kind permission, the Earl and Countess of Aylesford
Produced by Robin Bigwood
Pitch: A = 415Hz
Temperament: modified 1/6 comma meantone, prepared by Martin Perkins
Harpsichord: Michael Johnson, 1997, after Taskin/ Goermanns
Research: Martin Perkins
All music edited by Martin Perkins
Six Solos by Barnabas Gunn published by Edition HH.
Photos: William Burn
The ban on serious theatrical productions during Lent and restrictions on the number of licensed theatres in the country meant performances of oratorio continued to flourish throughout the eighteenth-century, and the concert, or 'musical meeting' became a significant part of British cultural life. By far the most important composer represented in eighteenth-century concerts was Handel, whose influence on the British nation can never be overstated: not only did he spur a generation of composers who emulated his style (whilst on mainland Europe, musical style 'progressed' in the hands of Haydn, Gluck and Mozart); but his music became the first to be described as part of the public musical heritage, or the musical 'classics'. Handel's Messiah was the most important work in this canon, making a regular appearance at provincial musical
meetings, including those in the 1760s and 1770s in Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, as well as in the Three Choir towns of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford. These festivals were often instigated by local musician-impresarios and prominent church organists and composers, with the dual intent of bringing the classics and more recent music to the provinces and raising money for the benefit of local social causes.
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Joseph Harris was one such musical entrepreneur, gaining the post of organist at St Martin's (in the Bull Ring), Birmingham, in 1771, and soon becoming an important figure in the musical life of the town. He directed and played the organ and violin in concerts in the town and was a sought-after teacher. Among his pupils was the daughter of the celebrated industrialist and member of the Lunar Society, Matthew Boulton.Adding to his stature, Harris gained a Bachelor of Music at Oxford in 1773 after presenting his Ode to May on 18 March 1773. The Invocation (O Muse beloved, Calliope divine!) and Gentle air, thou breath of lovers, both from his Twelve Songs, Op. 3, show the influence of thecontinental London composers such as J. C. Bach, Felice Giardini and G. H. Abel and, typically, has a prevailing Arcadian theme.
John Pixell was vicar of St. Bartholomew's in Edgbaston, Birmingham (now called Edgbaston Old Church) from 1750 to 1784. He was by all accounts a competent violinist, harpsichordist and tenor, and produced two fine collections of songs, published locally and subscribed to by gentry, musicians and societies in the Midlands and further afield. Unusually for collections of this time, Pixell's two books contain a wide variety of vocal music, sacred and secular, He uses earlier English models of pastoral cantatas, (An Ode by Anacreon: Cupid's Complaint to Venus is typical), and arias, often scored for a variety of instruments, such as An Invitation to the Red-Breast with its effective use of transverse flute. Notable too are his settings of devotional texts: sacred music designed for domestic use, rarely seen since the works of Henry Purcell and his contemporaries. Psalm 23rd Versified by Mr. Addison, and Thou in the paths of death I tread (the third stanza of Addison's Psalm 23) and An Hymn to the Supreme Being: My song by grateful praise inspired, clearly influenced by Handel's I know that my Redeemer liveth from Messiah.
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Little is known of Barnabas Gunn's formative years; the first we hear of him is on his appointment as organist in 1715 at the newly built church of St Philip in Birmingham (now Birmingham Cathedral). He moved to Gloucester in 1730 to take up a similar position, only toreturn to St Philip's nine years later, to assume a which prompted the influential Oxford professor of music, William Hayes, to publish an anonymous pamphlet in 1751 entitled The Art of Composing Music by a Method Entirely New, Suited to the Meanest Capacity. This was a barely-concealed attack on Gunn, in which Hayes suggested that he composed by means of a machine, the 'spruzzarino', which randomly squirted ink dots on manuscript paper. Gunn was probably an easy target for Hayes' real attack, which was against the modern Italian Galant style so fashionable in London at thistime. Gunn rebuffed the offensive by embracing Hayne's suggestion tongue in cheek, by reissuingthe collection in 1752 with an amended title "Set to musick by the new-invented method ofcomposing with the spruzzarino..." He added thelight-hearted rebuff An Occasional Ballad "byway of preface"
​One of Gunn's successors at St Philip's, and Joseph Harris' immediate predecessor, was Jeremiah Clark. He must have been aware of his more famous namesake: Jeremiah Clarke, the
contemporary of Purcell, whose Anthems were still being published in church music anthologies decades after his death. We see from his first publication, Eight Songs with the Instrumental Parts Set to Musick, published in 1763, that he is careful to call himself "Jeremiah Clark of Worcester" to avoid confusion. The following year, he left Worcester, where he had been a chorister at the Cathedral, to become organist at St Philip's, Birmingham, remaining in the post until 1805, a few years before his death. Clark is known to have played the violin and taken part in the early "musical meetings" and festival performances in the town. In 1798 he staged a benefit concert in commemoration of the victories of Admirals Nelson and Duncan in the French Revolutionary Wars, in which his own Constitutional Ode was performed. One can only imagine that the ode, now lost, was a grand work, if it was anything like his later sets of songs, scored for full orchestra including horns, clarinets and bassoons.
Richard Mudge was another musical vicar who, like John Pixell, produced uncommonly accomplished music. In 1741 Mudge was appointed curate at Great Packington, Warwickshire, seat of the Earl of Aylesford who was a close friend of Charles Jennens (librettist of Messiah and other works by Handel). Mudge later became curate at St Bartholemew's, chapel of ease for St Martin's, Birmingham, undoubtedly enabling him to take part in the town's thriving music scene. Mudge is remembered for a set of Concertos in Seven Parts published in 1749 which ranks highly among those in the Handelian tradition of Arne, Stanley and Avison. Appended to this collection is an instrumental fantasia in eight parts on the Non Nobis Domine hymn-tune. The version recorded here, in five parts, dates from before the printed collection and is found in the Aylesford Collection of manuscripts in Manchester's Henry Watson Music Library, alongside early versions of Mudge's concertos.