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Music in 18th-Century Oxford
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1981
Extract
‘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.
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References
1 Most comprehensively in Nan Cooke Carpenter's Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, Oklahoma, 1958).Google Scholar
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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.
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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
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