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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1968
For most of us, singer and musicologist alike, English song from the death of Purcell to the Victorian ‘renaissance’ nearly two centuries later is represented by a few of the Shakespearean settings of Arne, and a small handful of such perennial favourites as Leveridge's ‘Black-ey'd Susan’, Boyce's ‘Heart of Oak’, Dibdin's ‘Tom Bowling’, and Horn's once-ubiquitous ‘Cherry ripe’. As for our knowledge of the cultural environment in which such pieces naturally have their place, that is generally more limited still. Though theatrical in origin, we may take as typical of the sort of vocal melody which was popular with early Georgian audiences, Arne's charming ‘O come, o come, my dearest’ from The Fall of Phaeton (1736). If we agree, with Ernest Walker, that such a song is, in its way, ‘a sparkling polished little gem’, then it may be fairly maintained that English song during the first half of the eighteenth century is a veritable treasure trove of delightful music—none of it very ‘great’, certainly, but much of it worthy of a better fate than the oblivion to which it has been carelessly consigned.
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7 I am indebted to Mr. Harding for kindly answering several queries about material in his possession.Google Scholar
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20 Recorded by April Cantelo and Raymond Leppard on OL 50205 (Eighteenth Century Shakespearean Songs), London, 1961.Google Scholar
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The following specially recorded illustrations were played during the course of the lecture:Google Scholar
a T. A. Arne: ‘O come, o come, my dearest’ from The Fall of Phaeton (1736).
b ‘If it does not rain tomorrow’, ‘A New Song … by an Outalian’.
c Henry Carey: ‘Young Philoret and Celia met in an old shady grove’.
d William Boyce: ‘As Thyrsis reclins'd by her side he lov'd best’, from Lyra Britamica.
e Maurice Greene: ‘Sweet Annie fra the sea beach came’, The Chaplet (1738), pp- 24-26.
f Ignaz Pleyel's arrangement of Greene's ‘Sweet Annie’; the violin part (not printed by Thomson) may be found in Fleyel's autograph ‘full’ score: British Museum, Add. MS 35276, ff. 17v–18.
g William Croft: ‘My heart is ev'ry beauty's prey’.
h Maurice Greene: ‘The rolling wheele that runneth often round’, from Spenser's Amoretti.
i John Stanley: Air, ‘By heav'n I'll stoop no more, not I’, from No. 4 of the second set of Six Cantata's For a Voice and Instruments.
The author wishes to thank Lyn Parkyns (soprano) and David Johnston (tenor) who performed the musical examples, and John Southall who made the recordings; also Ruth Ellis (violin), Philip Claringbull (violin) and Jonathan Palmer (cello), three music students at Reading University, for assistance with the accompaniments.Google Scholar
