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Dr Cooke’s Protest: Benjamin Cooke, Samuel Arnold, and the Directorship of the Academy of Ancient Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2024
Abstract
In 1789, the Academy of Ancient Music replaced Benjamin Cooke with Samuel Arnold as its musical director. This article offers a detailed analysis of an autograph copy of the address Cooke delivered to the Academy responding to their action, and of a letter to Cooke from Arnold countering accusations made regarding his conduct in the affair. Both documents are annotated by Henry Cooke, who used them in writing a biography of his father. These documents enable a new understanding of the significant changes made within the Academy in the 1780s and of the reasons Academy subscribers replaced Cooke with Arnold.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
Footnotes
Preliminary versions of the article were offered as papers at the Thirty-First Annual Conference of Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain at the Foundling Museum in 2015 and the Eleventh Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference at the University of Birmingham in 2017. I am grateful to Tim Eggington, Peter Holman, H. Diack Johnstone, and Roya Stuart-Rees for reading and commenting on the article in draft. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the article who offered valuable advice.
References
1 London Chronicle, 19 December 1789; Public Advertiser, 18 December.
2 John Wall Callcott chronicled its activities in ‘Account of the Graduates Meetings, a Society of Musical Professors Established in London’, British Library, Add. MS 27693, fols. 6–30.
3 In A Musical Directory for the Year 1794 (author, 1794), 76–83.
4 [Henry Cooke], Some Account of Doctor Cooke, Organist of Westminster Abbey, &c. (author, 1837), 12.
5 Eggington, Tim, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England: Benjamin Cooke and the Academy of Ancient Music (Boydell & Brewer, 2014), 253.Google Scholar
6 University of Leeds Library Special Collections, MS 1700/2/9 and MS 1700/2/11, respectively. The cataloguing was undertaken by Joe Whelan as part of his Laidlaw Undergraduate Research Leadership Scholarship.
7 Johnstone, H. Diack, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802): Its History, Repertoire and Surviving Programmes’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 51 (2020), 1–136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Transcriptions of the ‘Protest’ and of Arnold’s letter are provided as an appendix to this article.
9 Wehner, Ralf, ‘“There is Probably no Better Living Authority on Mendelssohn’s Autograph”: W. T. Freemantle und seine Mendelssohn-Sammlung’, Mendelssohn Studien, 16 (2009), 333–69Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Fiona Smith for providing me with an English translation of this article.
10 Bennett was the subject of Freemantle’s book Sterndale Bennett and Sheffield. Comprising an Account of the Bennett Family (Derbyshire, Cambridge and Sheffield) part I: Also part II, Sir William Sterndale Bennett and Associations with his Native City (Pawson and Brailsford, 1919).
11 MS 1700/2/16. See William Croft, Canticles and Anthems with Orchestra, ed. Donald Burrows, Musica Britannica, 91 (Stainer & Bell, 2011).
12 Freemantle’s collection formed the basis of his book A Bibliography of Sheffield and Vicinity (Pawson and Brailsford, 1911).
13 James Donnelly, ‘Brotherton, Edward Allen, Baron Brotherton (1857–1930)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com> (accessed 12 May 2021).
14 Smurthwaite, John, The Life of John Alexander Symington, Bibliographer and Librarian, 1887–1961: A Bookman’s Rise and Fall (E. Mellen Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
15 Wehner, ‘W. T. Freemantle und seine Mendelssohn-Sammlung’, 351–55.
16 Ibid.
17 A Catalogue of a Collection of Miscellaneous Music, Comprising Many Scarce and Valuable Treatises on the History and Theory of Music […] On Wednesday, July 30th, 1873. British Library, S.C.P. 157(7).
18 MS 1700/2/12. One, ‘Rapt’rous youth’, is an autograph dated 9 November 1799. The other, ‘How wretched is the faithful youth’, in a different hand, appears to have been revised by Cooke; he signed and dated it ‘Jan 1807’. An autograph score of ‘St Michael’s Chair’ by Dr John Clarke[-Whitfield] (1770–1836), whose name is also mentioned in this lot, is in the Brotherton Collection: MS 1700/2/7.
19 See discussion of this item in King, A. Hyatt, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge University Press, 1963), 59, 138 Google Scholar. King identified the diary in the sale catalogue of James Shoubridge (S.C.P. 156 (12), 30 June 1873). He also notes the anonymous sale of the item (giving the date as 20 [recte 30] July 1873, lot 104 (S.C.P. 157 (7)). In fact, the ‘Protest’ and the collection of glees had also appeared in the sale catalogue of 30 June.
20 It appears that Freemantle sent in maximum bids ahead of the sale; he offered to pay 10s but was outbid by a shilling.
21 MSS 1700/2/9 and 1700/2/11, respectively.
22 Henry Davey, ‘Warren, Joseph (1804–1881)’, rev. David Golby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com> (accessed 12 May 2021); King, Some British Collectors of Music, 56–57, 59, 138.
23 Musical Conjectures is now in the Bodleian Library, Tenbury MS 1344. See also Eggington, The Advancement of Music, ch. 5.
24 Catalogue of the Extensive, Rare, and Valuable Musical Library of the late Benjamin Cook, Mus. Doc […] sold by Auction, by Mr. Fletcher […] August 5th […] 6th, 1845 (London, 1845). A copy is preserved in the New York City Public Library, Drexel 855. I am grateful to Tim Eggington for sharing a copy of the catalogue with me.
25 Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 4, 9. The most recent and thorough histories of the organization, on which I have relied heavily, are found in Eggington, The Advancement of Music and Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’.
26 [John Hawkins], An Account of the Institution and Progress of the Academy of Ancient Music (author, 1770), 11.
27 ‘Orders Agreed to by the Members of the Academy of Vocal Musick’, British Library, Add. MS 11732, fol. 1v, quoted in Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 7 and Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 4.
28 He did, however, provide the Academy with his music, some of which he composed expressly for it. See Timms, Colin, ‘ La canzona and Stabat Mater: Steffani’s First and Last Gifts to the Academy of Ancient Music?’, Early Music, 47 (2019), 65–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Diary of Viscount Percival, afterwards First Earl of Egmont, ed. R. A. Roberts, 3 vols., Historical Manuscripts Commission, 63 (H. M. Stationary Office, 1920–23), i, 202.
30 Harmony in an Uproar: A Letter to F-D-K H-D-L, Esq (London, 1733), quoted in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802), 9.
31 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music [1776], 2 vols. (Novello, 1853), ii, 806.
32 Lindgren, Lowell, ‘The Three Great Noises “Fatal to the Interests of Bononcini”’, Musical Quarterly, 61 (1975), 560–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, Stephen, ‘Plagiarism at the Academy of Ancient Music: A Case Study in Authorship, Style and Judgement’, Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Herissone, Rebecca and Howard, Alan (Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 181–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Doane, Musical Directory, 82.
34 Hawkins, A General History, ii, 886.
35 Doane, Musical Directory, 78.
36 MS 1700/2/9, ‘Dr. Benjamin Cooke’s Protest’, 10. Quotations from this document suppress crossings out and indications of insertions that are preserved in the transcription in the Appendix.
37 H. Cooke, Some Account, 5.
38 For Cooke senior’s association with Pepusch see Rosalind Halton and Michael Talbot, ‘“Choice Things of Value”: The Mysterious Genesis and Character of the VI Concertos in Seven Parts Attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 12 (2015), 9–32.
39 ‘Protest’, 10.
40 Ibid., 11.
41 Ibid.
42 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Rés. F. 1507, fol. 4r, quoted in Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 50 and Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 14–15.
43 H. Cooke, Some Account, 5.
44 Other members of the Academy may occasionally have directed performances. Alan Howard suggests that Samuel Howard probably directed performances of his anthem ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made’ at the Academy; see ‘Samuel Howard and the Music for the Installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1769’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 14 (2017), 232–33.
45 See Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 80–81. In 1762, Cooke succeeded John Robinson as organist of the Abbey.
46 Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library Folio LWL MSS Vol. 121.
47 ‘Protest’, 11.
48 Ibid.
49 ‘Memoir of James Bartleman’, Fraser’s Magazine, 48 (1853), 165.
50 James Feret, Charles, Fulham Old and New: Being an Exhaustive History of the Ancient Parish of Fulham, 3 vols. (Leadenhall Press, 1900)Google Scholar, iii, 44–47. Madden’s name appears third, under those of Peter Stapel and Robert Smith in the list of subscribers for the 1785/86 Academy season dated 28 April 1785 (Folio LWL MSS Vol. 121). In an article of 10 December 1785 in the General Evening Post covering the first concert of the 85/86 season, the ‘particular attention’ of the Earl of Effingham, the Marquis of Carmarthen, Peter Stapel, and James Madden are credited with the ‘astonishing progress’ of the Academy (cited in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 54). Madden was, like several members of the Academy, a collector. The sale catalogue of his library lists fifty-seven lots of printed and manuscript music and ‘The Words of such pieces as are most usually performed by the Academy of Ancient Music, 1768 &c. 3 vol.’, A Catalogue of the Scarce and Valuable Library of the Late James Madden, Esq […] Sold by Mr. Stewart […] March 31st, 1813, and 3 Following Days (London, 1813). I am grateful to Meghan Constantinou and Scott Ellwood of the Grolier Club, New York City for providing me with a copy of the catalogue.
51 Mathias signed himself as president of the Academy in a letter dated 1774 (see note 99).
52 Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library Folio LWL MSS Vol. 121. I am grateful to Tim Eggington for sharing a copy of this document with me.
53 ‘Protest’, 12.
54 See McVeigh, Simon, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, especially the Prologue and ch. 1.
55 Ibid., 1–8, 54.
56 J. Hawkins, An Account of the […] Academy of Ancient Music, 10–12.
57 William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Clarendon Press, 1992); Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 71–73.
58 A detailed assessment of the Concert’s repertory is found in Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics, 168–97.
59 Doane, Musical Directory, 80.
60 Quoted in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 53. John Hindle (1761–96) was a former student of Cooke’s and a regular tenor soloist at the Academy.
61 Indiana University, The Lilly Library (ML 52.2.A37 H13); quoted in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 53.
62 Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics, 223–42; Peter Holman, Beyond the Baton: Musical Direction and Conducting in Stuart and Georgian Britain (Boydell & Brewer, 2020), 154–63.
63 Charles Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon […] in Commemoration of Handel (T. Payne & Son; G. Robinson: 1785), part ii, 11, 17; quoted in Holman, Beyond the Baton, 156.
64 Holman, Beyond the Baton, 156, 162.
65 See details of the programmes and performers provided in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’.
66 Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library Folio LWL MSS Vol. 121.
67 ‘Protest’, 7.
68 Morning Post, 16 November 1784 and 21 November 1785; Public Advertiser, 14 November 1787. I have not found any notices for the 86/87 series.
69 The Morning Chronicle, 10 March 1788.
70 In an advertisement for the subscription for the next season in the wordbook of 11 May 1786. See Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 55.
71 Wordbook of 17 May 1787; quoted in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 61.
72 Public Advertiser, 19 June 1787.
73 The minutes were published in the wordbook of 1 May 1788; quoted in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 66–67.
74 The Morning Post, The Times, and The World, 5 November 1788.
75 The Morning Herald, 8 December 1788.
76 10 January 1789. For the Professional Concert meeting at Hanover Square Rooms, see McVeigh, Simon, ‘The Professional Concert and Rival Subscription Series in London, 1783–1793’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 22 (1989), 1–135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
77 13 January 1789. ‘Conductors’ refers to the sub-directors that had resigned the previous April.
78 The full report is transcribed in Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 252.
79 Doane, Musical Directory, 80.
80 Robert Hoskins, ‘Arnold, Samuel’, Grove Music Online <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/> (accessed 10 March 2022).
81 Primatt is referred to as Treasurer of the Academy in April 1790. He was a wealthy man (his marriage to Elizabeth Knapp brought £8000), whose business was based at 66 Aldersgate Street.
82 Street was a stationer and bookseller with a business at 2, Bucklersbury, London. In 1814 he was Master of the Stationers’ Company.
83 H. Cooke, Some Account, 12. ‘Mr Grub’ was probably Edward Grubb, Esq. (1758–1817), a solicitor and a subscriber to the New Musical Fund of 1794.
84 For Robert Smith, founder member of the Glee club and collector of music, see Roe, Lucy, ‘Robert Smith, Music Collector’, Handel Institute Newsletter, 14/2 (2005), 5–8 Google Scholar. The ‘Mr. John Livie’, subscriber to Cooke’s Collins’s Ode, is probably the same ‘Mr. Livie’ who subscribed to A Selection of the Most Favourite Scots-Songs Chiefly Pastoral (London, 1791) and A Selection of Original Scots Songs in Three Parts the Harmony by Haydn, vol. 2 (London, 1792) and that Samuel Wesley invited to meet a few musical friends in a letter of September 1796. See Michael Kassler, Samuel Wesley (1766–1837): A Source Book (Ashgate, 2001), 174.
85 Cooke, Benjamin, Collins’s Ode on the Passions (Robert Birchall, 1785).Google Scholar I am grateful to Tim Eggington for sharing the subscription list with me.
86 ‘Protest’, 3.
87 Ibid., 6.
88 Information on performances is drawn from programmes transcribed in Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’.
89 See the list of Cooke’s works in Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 269–80.
90 H. Cooke, Some Account, 10.
91 ‘Protest’, 4.
92 Annotations in Cooke’s hand, dated 19 or 26 September 1749, are found in London, Royal Academy of Music, MS 27D; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus.c.103; London, British Library Add. MSS 34267 and 34279B. See Johnstone, H. Diack, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music: A Library once Lost and now Partially Recovered’, Music & Letters, 95 (2014), 329–73 (pp. 370–71).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
93 The John Marsh Journals: The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752–1828), ed. Brian Robins (Pendragon Press, 1998), 472.
94 Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs (Rivington, 1822).
95 London, National Archives, PROB 11/1237, fols. 218v–220v.
96 Held by the Royal Collection Trust <https://www.rct.uk/collection/420160/john-christopher-pepusch-1667-1752> (accessed 12 May 2021). I am grateful to Roya Stuart-Rees for alerting me to this portrait.
97 Pepusch’s will (National Archives, PROB 10/2134. ERD/1048) is transcribed in Frederick Donald Cook, ‘The Life and Works of Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667–1752), with Special Reference to his Dramatic Works and Cantatas’, 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College, University of London, 1982), i, 342.
98 I am grateful to Roya Stuart-Rees for information on the Academy Medal. Copies in silver and bronze are held in the British Museum (1882, 1004.1 and M.8598, respectively), and one in bronze is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (1995.414). Sacchi’s painting in as the Metropolitan Museum of Art <www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437593> (accessed 12 May 2021).
99 Pepusch bequeathed ‘my gold Medal, presented me by the Musick Academy’ to another Academy member, John Travers (c. 1703–58). See Cook, ‘The Life and Works of Johann Christoph Pepusch’, i, 342. In 1774, James Mathias wrote to the composer David Perez (1711–78) to offer him a gold medal and invite him to become a member of the Academy. See Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 101–03 (where the letter is reproduced) and Johnstone, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music’, 336–37.
100 Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 7.
101 Mathias later donated them to the British Library, where they are now Add. MSS 5036–62. Burney described his voice as ‘admirably full, mellow, and extensive’ in An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey, part ii, 133. See also Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 82–83 and Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 7. In her will, Hester bequeathed £20 to Cooke’s son Henry, who she described as her godson (National Archives, PROB 11/1105).
102 MSS 814 and 808, respectively; see Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 83.
103 Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 66, 87.
104 The provenance of this manuscript, with an image of the flyleaf, is discussed in Rasch, Rudolf, ‘The Messaus-Bull Codex London, British Library, Additional Manuscript 23.623’, Revue belge de Musicologie, 50 (1996), 93–127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rasch mistook the identifications of Thomas James Mathias’s and Henry Cooke’s hands, reversing them.
105 Eggington, The Advancement of Music, 83.
106 Cook, ‘The Life and Works of Johann Christoph Pepusch’, i, 342.
107 See vol. 2, between pp. 806 and 807 (p. 124 of vol. V of the 1776 edition). A copy of the Grignion engraving is held by the British Museum (1943,0410.1856) <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1943-0410-1856> (accessed 12 May 2021).
108 Dorion was assistant to Arnold and Robert Smith. See Johnstone, ‘The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802)’, 13.
109 British Library, Add. MS 27693, fols. 9–11.
110 ‘Memoir of Samuel Arnold’, 7 (1830), 137–39; ‘Memoir of Benjamin Cooke’, 9 (1831) 207–08.
111 J. Hawkins, A General History, ii, 832; L. Hawkins, Anecdotes, 228–29.
112 He must also have drawn on another source for he lists ‘Messrs. Primat, Street, and Grub’ as the men who informed his father of the Academy vote. Grub is not mentioned in the ‘Protest’ or in Arnold’s letter, but it may be a personal reminiscence, since it was apparently Henry who received the delegation from the Academy when his father was indisposed (see below).
113 Johnstone, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music’, 333.
114 John Bumpus, A History of Cathedral Music 1549–1889 (London, [1900–09]), ii, 333.
115 Some Account, 13.
116 12/E/Cooke.
117 General Reference Collection 10804.bbb.7.(4.).
118 In the table of contents, dated 1847, Novello recorded his high opinion of Cooke’s music: ‘Most of these curious Compositions, which are as beautiful as they are rare, have never yet been published.’ Novello also assembled a volume of transcriptions of Benjamin Cooke’s sacred works: British Library, Add. MS 65388.
119 McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn, esp. ch.4, ‘The Concert in London Life’.
120 Michael Kelly, Reminiscences (London, 1826), 165; McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn, 33–34.
121 Abraham Rees, Cyclopedia; or Universal Dictionary (London, 1802–19). Arnold’s entry appears in Volume 2, part four, published in April 1803.
122 John Sainsbury, A Dictionary of Musicians (London, 1824), i, 32. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for this reference.
123 A Dictionary of Musicians, i, 171.
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