¹ The first person to point this out was Henry Davey in his History of English Music published in London in 1895 (with a second revised edition in 1921; see 362). His discovery went unnoticed, however, and, until comparatively recent years, the 1710 date has been endlessly retailed by successive generations of armchair historians, many of whom have also confused the Academy with the later Concerts of Ancient Music founded in 1776. The Crown and Anchor Tavern, which had a large public room and was a favourite meeting place for a number of eighteenth-century societies, stood on the south side of the Strand at the east corner of Arundel Street [see figure 1 in Tim Eggington’s book, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England: Benjamin Cooke and the Academy of Ancient Music (Woodbridge, 2014), 5].

² Dr William Croft, the Organist of Westminster Abbey and Master of the Chapel Royal choristers joined on 21 January and, at the next meeting (on 4 February), he brought some of his boys along with him; other singers from the Abbey choir followed shortly.

³ An annotated list of members in April 1730 (the ‘Eighth Subscription’) forms Appendix A here, and shows that, by this stage, there were probably as many instrumentalists as there were singers among their number. The only other listing of the membership to survive is dated 28 April 1785, and is now in the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University (where it is catalogued as Folio LWL MSS vol. 121). This contains the signatures of the 119 persons who were then subscribers, and with it is a listing (again with signatures) of the money paid out to the 69 vocal and instrumental performers employed during the 1787-88 season. I am indebted to Professor William Weber for drawing these documents to my attention. The latter is Appendix B here. A further list of 111 names said to be members of the Academy (although not all were resident in London) can be extracted from the entries in Joseph Doane’s Musical Directory for the Year 1794. A later copy of the 1787-88 payments list appears on the front flyleaves of a copy of Hawkins’ Account … of the Academy of Ancient Music now in the US Library of Congress.

⁴ According to Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755), a non-juring priest and noted antiquarian who left his huge collection of manuscripts to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, ‘the Gentlemen and Children of the Academy … together with some of the Choristers of S^t Pauls’ sang at his funeral (see Ob Rawlinson MS J, folio 202).

⁵ A transcription by Ilias Chrissochodis is available online at http://ichriss.ccarh.org/HRD/1726-31%20Academy%20of%20Vocal%20Music.htm. Facsimiles of Hawkins’ Account and of an updated version included in Joseph Doane’s Musical Directory of 1794 form Appendix B of Christopher Hogwood’s essay, ‘“Gropers into Antique Musick” or “A very ancient and respectable Society”? Historical Views of the Academy of Ancient Music’, Coll’astuzia, col giudizio: Essays in Honor of Neal Zaslaw, ed. Cliff Eisen (Ann Arbor, 2009), 127-82. A separate facsimile of the whole of Doane’s Musical Directory was published by the Royal College of Music in 1993.

⁶ By May 1731, the starting time had been changed to 6.30 p.m. It was probably round about this time too that ‘Publick Nights’ held the following Thursday were introduced.

⁷ The first four were, it appears, clergymen, and George Carleton, later sub-dean of the Chapel Royal, was Greene’s brother-in-law.

⁸ Libri had earlier (in 1845) attempted to interest the British Museum in buying the whole of his library. For a detailed account of this interesting saga in which his friend Antonio Panizzi (Keeper of Printed Books) was involved, see P. Alessandra Maccioni, ‘Guglielmo Libri and the British Museum: a case of scandal averted’, British Library Journal, 17 (1991), 36-60.

⁹ My thanks to Donald Burrows and to Rosalba Agresta of the Bibliothèque Nationale who kindly searched the archives on my behalf and provided valuable information on the later history of Lot 264.

¹⁰ A copy ascribed to Bononcini (whose name was later crossed out in pencil) survives in Lbl RM 24.h.11 (at folio 23v).

¹¹ These were ‘Foss’io quel rossignuolo’, ‘Mentre lungi ti stai’ and ‘Quanti lessi d’amore’, the first a5, the other two a4, and all with continuo.

¹² In their final letter, originally in Latin (as was Hawley Bishop’s letter of 5 February), the Directors thank Lotti for the proofs of his authorship and refer to a madrigal and mass of his which they have ‘thankfully received’; in return, they send him ‘by the Ship called the Ruby’, two works by Tallis and Byrd, which they trust will show ‘that true and solid Musick is not in its Infancy with us, and that, whatever some on your Side of the Alps may imagine to the Contrary, the Muses have of old time taken up their Abode in England’. Among the ex-Academy manuscripts now in the library of Westminster Abbey are a Lotti four-part mass and three Magnificats (all a capella and on Venetian paper) plus an instrumentally accompanied ‘Confitebor tibi’ setting; also the autograph of a hitherto unknown ‘Crucifixus’ for five voices and continuo which I believe to have been specially written for them and sent to England along with the evidence proving his authorship of ‘In una siepe ombrosa’. My edition of the piece was published by Stainer and Bell in 2014. Two other works, an instrumentally accompanied ‘Gloria’ and a ‘Miserere’, almost certainly from the Academy’s library, are now part of MS G Mus 417 in the City of London’s Guildhall Library (Gresham Collection).

¹³ A unique copy of their ‘Standing Orders’ dated 1733 is to be found in the Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Hospital Museum (accession no. 608). From the wordbook published in 1740, it would appear that the Apollo Academy was very largely devoted to the works of its founder member (Maurice Greene) and his close associates, William Boyce and Michael Christian Festing.

¹⁴ The source of this quip can be traced no further back than a long letter ‘On Antient Music’ from one ‘Gossip Joan’ that appeared in The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser on 31 December 1776, just a month after the publication of Hawkins’ General History on which it was intended as a satirical comment; see Bertram H. Davis, A Proof of Eminence: The Life of Sir John Hawkins (Bloomington and London, 1973), 133-5.

¹⁵ Diary under date of 31 August 1731. See John Perceval, Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont: Diary of Viscount Percival afterwards first Earl of Egmont, 3 vols. (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 63; London, 1920-3), i, 202. See also Stephen Rose, ‘Plagiarism at the Academy of Ancient Music: A Case Study in Authorship, Style and Judgement’, in Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Rebecca Herissone and Alan Howard (Woodbridge, 2013), 181-98.

¹⁶ See his Memoirs of the life of Sig. Agostino Steffani, published anonymously in 1750 (p. vi). In this, the first printed biography of any composer in English, Hawkins gives the date of the Academy’s foundation as 1724 - which, if we allow the organizers (most likely Pepusch and Galliard) time to have rounded up other interested parties and to have assembled a library of music sufficient to get them started, may well be what actually happened. This suggestion I owe to Colin Timms who kindly read an earlier draft of this essay. As for the date of the Memoirs, variously given as 1740?, 1749-52 and 1758, see the letter of 13 August 1750 from Hawkins to James Harris in Salisbury which makes it perfectly clear that the work had only recently appeared; see Music and Theatre in Handel’s World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732-80, ed. Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill (Oxford, 2002), 272. The Memoirs, now credited to Hawkins, were later published in the Gentleman’s Magazine 31 (November, 1761), 489-92, and again (with revisions) in vol. 42 (1772), 443-6. As originally printed, their unusual landscape format was obviously designed to match that of most manuscript collections of Steffani’s celebrated cantatas and duets.

¹⁷ See Add. MS 11732 (folio 16). Sadly, the hoped for ‘Historical Account of the Academy’ never materialized; neither had Pepusch any success in retrieving the aforementioned motets from Greene who, on his death, obviously passed them on to his pupil William Boyce, in the sale catalogue of whose library (1779) they appeared (anonymously) as Lot 204. As a manuscript in the hand of Steffani’s principal copyist, Gregorio Piva, they are now in the City of London Guildhall Library, Gresham Collection, as MS G Mus 418.

¹⁸ See Lowell Lindgren and Colin Timms, ‘The Correspondence of Agostino Steffani and Giuseppe Riva, 1720-1728 …’, R.M.A. Research Chronicle, 36 (2003), 108. It is clear from the letter that ‘the good and studious Galliard’ had taken over as secretary after Haym’s death in August 1729. On Haym’s connection with the Academy and his secretarial role in its affairs, see Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678-1729)’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), 247-380 (at 279-82 and 315).

¹⁹ On the background to the inaugural meeting, see Colin Timms, ‘La canzona and Stabat Mater: Steffani’s first and last gifts to the Academy of Ancient Music’, Early Music, 47 (2019), 65-82.

²⁰ See Colin Timms, Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music (Oxford, 2003), 131-2. It is perhaps worth mentioning that manuscript copies of four of the Sacer Ianus quadrifrons motets in a very early eighteenth-century English hand survive in the library of York Minster (as MSS 41 and 154); originally for three voices and continuo only, they are here decked out with accompaniments and articulating structural ritornelli for two violins, while the numbering of those in MS 41 very curiously matches that in Galliard’s listing (see Timms, 131) rather than that of the 1685 printed edition.

²¹ There is a fascinating contemporary critique of this piece in Galliard’s letter of 7 July 1727 to Riva discussed by Colin Timms in ‘Italian Church Music in Handel’s London: The Sacred Works of Agostino Steffani’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 46 (2000), 157-78 (165-9 in particular); for yet more on Steffani and the Academy of Ancient Music generally, see 130-2 of Timms’ book, Polymath of the Baroque and his several articles listed on p. 391 of its bibliography.

²² See ‘Steffani und Händel als Komponisten für Hannover und London’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 61 (2015), 13-37 (32-6 in particular) and ‘Steffani and his Church Music’ in Agostino Steffani: Europäischer Komponist, hannoverscher Diplomat und Bischof der Leibniz-Zeit/European Composer, Hanoverian Diplomat and Bishop in the Age of Leibniz, ed. C. Kaufold, Nicole K. Strohmann and Colin Timms (Göttingen, 2017), 21-40 (34-6 and 38-9 in particular); also the important article cited in n. 19. A scholarly edition by Emeritus Professor Timms is in preparation.

²³ ‘Viscount Percival’, Diary, i, 202. One reason for the delay must surely have been the Duke of Modena’s peremptory recall of Riva from his London post in 1729.

²⁴ Haym makes the same point in his letter to Steffani dated 24 February 1727; see Lindgren and Timms, 111.

²⁵ Viscount Percival, Diary, i, 46. In an earlier diary entry for 31 January 1729 (iii, 342), he refers to the Academy as being ‘composed of the Quires of St. Paul’s and the King’s Chapel, with some masters of musick and gentlemen … who perform on musical instruments’; see also Part II for 4 December 1729. Might it have been the receipt of their President’s ‘Stabat mater’ perhaps that prompted the academicians to abandon their earlier voices only (with continuo) approach?

²⁶ Mathias, a very wealthy City merchant with a keen interest in music, sang bass and must have become a member sometime after the Eighth Subscription on 9 April 1730. He is said to have been friendly with both Handel and Hawkins, and on his own death (in 1782), he bequeathed all the manuscripts left to him by Needler’s widow to the British Museum (now the British Library) where they survive as Add. MSS 5036-62.

²⁷ A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776), facs. repr. of the 2-vol. 1853 edition with an introduction by Charles Cudworth (New York, 1963), ii, 887.

²⁸ According to Thomas Oliphant in his Brief Account of the Madrigal Society (London, 1835), their rules make it plain that any member of the Academy was ‘at liberty to visit this Society whenever they think fit, gratis’.

²⁹ I am indebted to Tim Eggington for this reference, an English translation of which is Appendix 1 in his book cited in note 1 (see 258 and 103). Whether Perez accepted the invitation or not is unknown, but several of his works were by this date already in the Academy’s repertoire and it may be significant that his Mattutino de’ morti, the only full-scale item printed in his lifetime, was published in London that same year (1774) when, according to New Grove ii, Perez became ‘by acclamation’ a member of the AAM.

³⁰ General History (1853), ii, 832.

³¹ There is a thematic catalogue of his complete works (and their sources) in D. F. Cook, ‘The Life and Works of Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667-1752), with special reference to his dramatic works and cantatas’, Ph.D. thesis, 2 vols. (University of London, 1982).

³² It was published in the next year’s Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, xliv, 266-74. Among earlier theorists concerned with the genera and Greek musical theory in general, much the most important was Giovanni Battista Doni (1595-1647). On Pepusch’s celebrated library, see D. F. Cook, ‘J. C. Pepusch: an 18th-Century Musical Bibliophile’, Soundings, 9 (1982), 11-28. After his death (in 1752), the library was divided among John Travers, Ephraim Kellner and the Academy.

³³ Account, 7.

³⁴ In Doane’s Musical Directory (79), the date given for the admission of auditor members is given more precisely as 1735. Doane also points out that, in March 1734, it had been agreed that ‘no new instrumental performer should be admitted till after he had performed his part in a piece of music before three of the managers’.

³⁵ See Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe and Anthony Hicks (eds.), George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, 5 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 2013), ii, 733-49 (in particular 744-5 and 749); also Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 352. The ‘Philharmonick Spiders’ is a reference to one or other of two contemporary London music clubs about which very little is known; one met on Monday evenings, the other on Wednesdays. For Handel’s own views on the Greek modes and the use of solmization in the teaching of music, see his letter to Johann Mattheson of 24 February 1719 (in Deutsch, 86-8, and in Handel: Collected Documents, i, 411-13).

³⁶ Musical Directory, 78-9. Among the papers of the Academy now held by the Bibliothèque National in Paris is a memorandum dated 23 November 1749 of a resolution (‘ballotted for, and unanimously agreed’) that ‘such Children of the Members of this Society as are sufficiently vers’d in the practical part of Music either vocal or instrumental (of which the Performers are to be Judges) shall be admitted as Students of the Academy in order to their Improvement’.

³⁷ On Cooke, see the book by Tim Eggington referred to in note 1, and on Berg, curiously unmentioned by both Burney and Hawkins, an important article by Michael Talbot entitled ‘George Berg: an original musical and scientific spirit in Georgian London’, The Musical Times, 160 (Spring, 2019), 3-27. One other Academy chorister on whom Doane comments at some length (on p. 78) is one Isaac Pierson who apparently ‘shewed marks of such extraordinary genius, that Dr. Pepusch paid particular attention to his education’. Sadly, however, this obviously very talented lad died young (at the age of 18).

³⁸ Lbl Add. MS 11732, folio 17.

³⁹ On the authenticity of the canon, see Philip Brett, ‘Did Byrd write “Non nobis, Domine”?’, The Musical Times, 113 (1972), 855-7; according to David Humphreys (The Musical Times, 144 (2003), 4), it derives from Philip van Wilder’s ‘Aspice Domine’.

⁴⁰ For a discussion of the historical background and provenance of this manuscript see p. 4. A similar ‘list of pieces … sung at the practice and public nights, beginning on 17 March 1737, and ending 23 April 1741’ (and said to have been in the hand of Henry Needler) was last heard of in 1873 when, on 29 April, it appeared as Lot 130 in a Puttick and Simpson sale catalogue (the library of ‘A Professor recently deceased’). The item was evidently purchased by Franz Gehring, a Viennese collector who wrote several articles for the first (1878) edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Its present whereabouts (assuming it still exists) is unknown.

⁴¹ General History, ii, 802.

⁴² Doane, Musical Directory, 82.

⁴³ In the February 1822 sale of James Bartleman’s library, lot 808 is identified as ‘A set of books formerly belonging to the Ancient Musical Academy’, and there were several other lots in the same sale, which almost certainly came from the same source. See also a White sale catalogue of 8-10 June 1820, which included the scores and parts of nearly all the Handel anthems that were among those which had been ‘most usually performed’ by the Academy. These, it appears, had previously been owned by ‘the Late Mr. G. E. Williams, Organist of Westminster Abbey and Several other Eminent Professors (Deceased)’.

⁴⁴ See H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music: A Library once Lost and now Partially Recovered’, Music & Letters, 95 (2014), 329-73.

⁴⁵ See Alan Howard, ‘Samuel Howard and the music for the installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 1769’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 14/2 (2018), 215-34.

⁴⁶ Robert Smith, a wealthy City vintner, was an important collector (of Handel in particular) and also a founder member of the Glee club in 1783; see Lucy Roe, ‘Robert Smith, Music Collector’, Handel Institute Newsletter, 14/2 (2003), [5-8]. Bellamy was a bass singer who, in 1771, was appointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and also, 2 years later, a vicar choral at Westminster Abbey. For an example of Dorion’s work as copyist see Ob MS Mus. c. 29, a score of Francesco Scarlatti’s Mass and ‘Dixit Dominus’ for four four-part choirs and orchestra apparently made for Philip Hayes in 1786.

⁴⁷ See Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, ed. with an introduction by Roger Fiske (London, 1975), 165.

⁴⁸ According to William Jackson of Exeter who was then a pupil of John Travers and an occasional visitor to the Academy, Geminiani himself led the band in their performance. Jackson, however, ‘had no Pleasure from the Composition or Performance’. He seems not to have been greatly impressed by the Academy either which, he said ‘help to keep in existence many Pieces that had best been forgot’; see ‘A short Sketch of my own Life’, in Gainsborough’s House Review (1996/7), 60.

⁴⁹ See The St. James’s Evening Post, 24-26 April 1729. The autograph is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (as MU Mus 731), and there is a duplicate copy in the British Library (Add. MS 28969) where it is wrongly accredited to Greene.

⁵⁰ See, for example, Lbl MSS RM 24.c.9 and 24.h.11; also (for the Eton Choirbook) Lcm MS 660. There is an entire volume of Travers’ canons and stile antico motets (mostly signed and dated between 1731 and 1738) in Ob Tenbury MS 667, and still more in Lbl RM 24.d.12 and Lgc MS G Mus 460; also four modal psalm settings for ATBB and strings in Lcm MS 807. In the words of William Jackson of Exeter (see note 48), Travers ‘had thoroughly imbibed all the stiff old-fashioned Principles of his Master’.

⁵¹ Might they in fact have been regarded as ‘Students of the Academy’ in effect? See the memorandum of 23 November 1749 cited in note 36.

⁵² The Miserere had long been a favourite peg on which to hang samples of contrapuntal dexterity in canonic form, and Morley, in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), cites one George Waterhouse who, he said, had written well over a thousand of them; see edition by R. Alec Harman (London, 1952), 202.

⁵³ The music is in the hand of Thomas Barrow, Travers’ favourite pupil. On Marcus Meibomius, the seventeenth-century Danish philologist, mathematician, and writer on early Greek musical theory, see John Bergsagel, ‘Meibom, [Meiboom, Meibomius], Marcus’ in Oxford Music Online (New Grove), and Hawkins, General History, ii, 642-4. For more on Travers’ work as a copyist see p. 366 of my article cited in note 44.

⁵⁴ Information kindly provided by Tim Eggington.

⁵⁵ Modern edition, ed. Emanuel Rubin, in Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 74 (Middleton WI, A-R Editions, 2005).

⁵⁶ The weekly exercises in contrapuntal technique that he worked as a pupil of Pepusch are preserved (in chronological order) in Lcm MS 823. A diary written while Cooke was under the tuition of the Dr and covering the period 5 July 1746 to 9 April 1747 was last heard of as Lot 104 in a Puttick and Simpson sale of 30 July 1873.

⁵⁷ The words of the first (‘O Lord I will praise thee’) are included in The Words of such pieces as are most usually performed by the Academy of Ancient Music (1761).

⁵⁸ The others were Messrs. Needler, Birch, Cary, Collier and Mathias. Needler and Mathias we have already encountered. Cary (who rejoiced in the unusual Christian name of ‘Esquire’) was a subscriber to a good many musical publications of the period and an eminent surgeon in service to the Prince of Wales. Mr Birch was not, as one might imagine, Croft’s good friend and admirer, Humphrey Wyrley Birch, but (as Michael Talbot kindly informs me) the Revd Dr Thomas Birch, a celebrated historian and rector of St Margaret Pattens in the City. Collier, however, has not, as yet, been successfully identified, but for information on Esquire Cary (whose name appears on one of the Academy manuscripts now in the library of Westminster Abbey) I am indebted to Tim Eggington; see p. 82 of his book, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England.

⁵⁹ Most of the titles added in this final version of The Words are of music composed by Cooke. His Cambridge doctorate he incorporated at Oxford in 1782 in order simply, one assumes, to qualify for the splendid robes that went with that particular degree in the older university. The Royal College of Music holds some 30-odd manuscript volumes of his music.

⁶⁰ Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs (London, 1822), i, 228; in her later book, Memoirs, Anecdotes, Facts, and Opinions (1824), she corrects a mistake she had made earlier in suggesting that Dr Cooke was ‘liberal’ in lending copies from the Academy’s library. This, she now concedes, he had no power to do, but, being a man who could never say ‘no’, he was evidently generous in having copies made.

⁶¹ See especially 11-12.

⁶² An obviously biased account of the affair is to be found in [Henry Cooke], Some Account of Doctor Cooke, Organist of Westminster Abbey &c. (London, 1837).

⁶³ This document has only recently surfaced in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds where it was discovered by Dr Bryan White to whom I am indebted not only for a transcript of the document itself, but also for a copy of his paper announcing his discovery at a Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain Study Day held on 27 November 2015.

⁶⁴ These are now all in the Brotherton Library; a rough draft of the latter, formerly in the library of the late Christopher Hogwood, is now in the Coke Collection at the Foundling Museum, and a proof copy as published in 1837 in the British Library [pressmark 10804.bbb.7.(4)].

⁶⁵ For a description of Warren’s rich collection, see A. Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge, 1963), 56-7.

⁶⁶ According to the Morning Herald of 8 December 1788, the emergency meeting was scheduled to take place on the 11th.

⁶⁷ Doane, Musical Directory, 80.

⁶⁸ For details of the ‘Graduates’ meeting’ and its history, see Percy Scholes, The Great Dr. Burney (London, 1948), ii, 119-20; Scholes’ account is based on that of John Wall Callcott in Lbl Add. MS 27693, ff. 6-30.

⁶⁹ As for example in Viscount Percival’s Diary under date of 31 August 1731 where ‘Martini’ (a dinner guest) is identified as ‘the famous hautboy’.

⁷⁰ This is not the only reference to Greene’s physical deformity (which appears to have been some hereditary form of spinal scoliosis).

⁷¹ Whether a benefit concert for Pepusch given at Stationers’ Hall on Friday, 31 March 1732, had anything to do with the Academy we do not know, but the programme of vocal and instrumental music ‘Composed by Antient and Modern Authors’ was made up of standard Academy repertoire: Eduardo Lupi, Paulo Petti, William Byrd. Giovanni Paolo Colonna, Steffani, Corelli, Purcell and Pepusch (advertisement in The Daily Post of Wednesday, 29 March).

⁷² This short canon, formerly attributed to William Byrd, was normally the final item on nearly all AAM programmes made up of individual pieces. Apparently, it was also sung as a grace after dinner at the meetings of the Anacreontic Society (1766-92) and at the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club founded in 1761 [see Mark Argent (ed.), The Recollections of R. J. S. Stevens: An Organist in Georgian London (London, 1992), 284, 289]. An extended instrumental setting (109 bars) is appended to the last of Richard Mudge’s Six Concertos in Seven Parts (1749) and also, even more surprisingly perhaps, is incorporated in the A major concerto from a set of Concerti armonici published by Walsh as the work of Carlo Ricciotti in 1755. Although this last has also been attributed to Pergolesi, its real composer has since been identified as Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, a little known figure whose concertos were published at the Hague in 1740. Another instrumental setting, seemingly for two violins only, survives in Oxford (Ob MS Mus. d. 142); headed ‘Sinfonia Non nobis Domine’; it appears to have been copied by Philip Hayes and may perhaps have been intended to introduce the singing of the canon. The unnamed composer might possibly be Pepusch, but is more likely perhaps to have been Benjamin Cooke. On the Mudge version which follows the last of his Six Concertos see the article by Richard Platt in Early Music 28, (2000), 531-45.

⁷³ See my discussion of this point in Part I, p. 10.

⁷⁴ Victor Schoelcher, The Life of Handel (London, 1857).

⁷⁵ See Marvin E. Paymer, G. B. Pergolesi: A Thematic Catalogue of the Opera Omnia with an Appendix Listing Omitted Compositions (New York, 1976), 75-6.

⁷⁶ On the earlier history of this manuscript, see Part I, 4.

⁷⁷ HWV 260 is in the first (1761) edition of The Words; the ‘Dettingen’ anthem (HWV 265) was added in the second (1768) edition.

⁷⁸ As The Morning Hymn taken from the fifth book of Milton’s Paradise Lost this was published (with a dedication to the members of the Academy) in 1773. The Academy subscribed for three copies and James Mathias, the Treasurer, for two; one cannot, however, be certain how many of the other subscribers were actual members but there are a good many likely candidates on the list.

⁷⁹ Hay was subsequently to become the first leader of the Concerts of Ancient Music; he also led at the first of the Handel Commemoration performances in 1784.

⁸⁰ Attributed in later programmes (see, for instance, that of 27 December 1787) to ‘Dr. Hutchinson’ (whose pseudonym was Francis Ireland).

⁸¹ See note to 16 March 1788 for more on rehearsals; also, the minutes of an important meeting held on 7 April 1788 and the prefatory note to the 1789 season plus those to the performances given on 29 January and 26 February of that same year.

⁸² From this point on, performers are (for the first time) named, not on the front page of the programme but inside, in association with the words of the piece to be performed. As laid out here, their names (together with such supplementary material as is drawn from the interior pages of the programme itself) are set in round brackets.

⁸³ Peter Stapel would appear to have succeeded James Mathias as President on the latter’s death in 1782. Although someone of that name is listed in various trade directories as early as 1738, we have yet to discover the nature of his business. In Thomas Mortimer’s The Universal Director (London, 1763) he is described simply as a merchant in Basinghall Street. A volume of Italian duets formerly in the library of Thomas Bever, himself an auditory member of the Academy, was apparently copied from a collection then in the possession of Peter Stapel and is now Lbl Add. MS 31492.

⁸⁴ Only two copies are known to me, but there may well be others. These are GB-Ob Douce M. 640 and F-Pn Rés. V. S. 1423. The Bodleian copy once belonged to the great English antiquarian, Francis Douce (1757–1834), whose signature appears on one of the rear endpapers, while stuck to both front and rear paste-downs (and the verso of the page bearing his bookplate) are the words of several individual pieces, which have obviously been cut from AAM programmes of the 1780s, suggesting that Douce himself was probably a member while he was a student at Grays Inn, and this is indeed confirmed by a document of 1785–86 cited in Appendix B. He is known to have been seriously interested in music, but whether the appreciative comments on two or three of these scraps were his, we do not know. The witches’ chorus in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, for example, is described as ‘charming’ while Benjamin Rogers’ ‘Come, come all noble souls’, a favourite with late eighteenth-century members, is said to be ‘One of the finest Glees extant’.

⁸⁵ See the worklist in Tim Eggington, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England (2014).

⁸⁶ Among those not actually named in The Words of such pieces as are most usually performed is Antonio Caldara (c.1670–1736), one of whose settings copied by John Immyns, an early member of the Academy, is now in the surviving residue of its library as Lwa MS CG 9. Lbl RM 24.c.6 (3) is a duplicate copy, unattributed but also in Immyns’ hand. Others are by Lotti (MS CG 67), Pergolesi (MS CG 51) and Gasparini, the latter now Lgc MS G Mus 351. There is also a setting for SSB and continuo by Carissimi in MS CG 63.

⁸⁷ A Credo setting attributed to ‘Keller’ survives as Lwa MS CG 20. Its composer was actually Fortunato Chelleri (c.1690–1757) who was briefly a member of the Academy (from November 1726). The score is not an autograph but in the hand of a copyist closely associated with Pepusch. Several other Credo settings form part of various complete masses by Italian composers also preserved in the library of Westminster Abbey (see HDJ).

⁸⁸ A setting by Nicola Fago (1677–1745) in the hand of Immyns is Lwa MS CG 14. Immyns also copied the setting by Giovanni Battista Mazzaferrata (d. 1691) in Lwa MS CG 28 (a). For other settings by Bassani, Ceva, Colonna, Gasparini and Porta, which also once formed part of the Academy’s library, see HDJ.

⁸⁹ This is actually part of Victoria’s eight-part Salve regina (1576) and not by Marenzio as had earlier been suggested in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxiv (1971), 103–12; see also xxx (1980), 211.

⁹⁰ One setting ‘with Instruments’ of which no performance is recorded is that almost certainly by Francesco Negri in Lwa MS CG 57; another also by the same composer is combined with a Credo and the hugely popular Gloria in MS CG 58. A Kyrie and Gloria (which together comprise a ‘Neapolitan’ missa brevis) for SSATB and strings ought also perhaps to be mentioned; copied by John Immyns, it was composed by Domenico Gabrielli (1651–90) and is now MS CG 18.

⁹¹ Among those settings in the Academy’s library not otherwise mentioned here is one (of five) by Johann Rosenmüller (c.1619–84); copied by John Immyns it is now Lwa MS CG 54.

⁹² Among several Latin Magnificats in the residue of the Academy’s library (see HDJ) are three by Antonio Lotti probably sent to them by the composer, two for SATB and one for SATBB. Together with a four-part Mass, they are now part of MS Lwa CG 23.

⁹³ A three-voice (ATB) setting by Natale Monferrato (c.1603–83) of which, it seems, only one other source is known, is contained in a volume of madrigals and motets formerly in the Academy’s library (Lwa MS CG 63).

⁹⁴ A Te Deum setting by Francesco Negri whose hugely popular Gloria was so often performed by the Academy is also in the residue of their library (as Lwa MS CJ 4(a)).

⁹⁵ Composers and works within curly brackets are not actually mentioned in The Words of such pieces but come within the category of ‘Various’ in the list of unnamed composers in the section immediately above. Of the anonymous items listed there, only ‘Senex puerum portabat’ turns up in the surviving programmes as performed on 19.xii.34, 27.ii.55 and 24/31.xi.72.

⁹⁶ Another motet by Bernabei now in GB-Mp MS 470.1 Cr 74 (‘O Jesu mi dulcissimi’) was ‘Brought in for M^r: Bagnall 1731. as Manager’ and is said to be ‘out of D^r: Pepusch’s Library’. Bagnall was a harpsichordist and friend of Viscount Percival who is often mentioned in Percival’s Diary (see Appendix A). He joined the Academy in December 1728.

⁹⁷ The three-voice canon, ‘Non nobis, Domine’, then thought to be by Byrd was the final item at almost every concert of miscellaneous pieces until late in the century. As David Humphreys has pointed out [see The Musical Times, 144 (2003), 4] it actually derives from Philip van Wilder’s ‘Aspice Domine’; see also Philip Brett, ‘Did Byrd write Non nobis, Domine?’ [The Musical Times, 113 (1972), 855–57]. A manuscript copy of c.1730 (in Lbl RM 24.h.11) is of AAM provenance.

⁹⁸ A footnote to the text of ‘The eagle’s force’ in the 1768 edn reads: ‘These words are supposed to be written by King Henry the VIII’.

⁹⁹ A copy in the hand of Mark Cottle (who became a member of the Academy in 1728) is now Lwa MS CG 13.

¹⁰⁰ The score of an instrumentally accompanied motet (‘O Maria quis te laudare’) by his son, Jean-Joseph Fiocco (1686–1746) forms part of the residue of the Academy’s library (Lwa MS CG 16) and is in the hand of John Immyns.

¹⁰¹ A copy formerly in the AAM library survives together with five other motets and a mass for five voices and strings in Lwa MS CG 68; all are from his Sacri Concerti published in Antwerp in 1691.

¹⁰² Hereafter, only performances of a complete work or substantial extracts are tabled. From 1790 onwards, most programmes are very largely made up of individual movements, both solos and choruses (and occasional ensembles), from Handel oratorios (and not just those listed here).

¹⁰³ Francis Hutcheson, a doctor of medicine, apparently composed catches and glees under the pseudonym ‘Francis Ireland’, a name which has been added by hand in the programme in which the piece first appears (anonymously). See James D. Brown and Stephen S. Stratton, British Musical Biography (Birmingham, 1897), 214.

¹⁰⁴ In both editions, the composer is named as ‘Roland Lassè’ and a footnote reads: ‘He was of Mons in Flanders, and not an Italian, although his name was often written Orlando Lasso, and Orlandus Lassus’.

¹⁰⁵ See Owen Rees, ‘Adventures of Portuguese “Ancient Music” in Oxford, London and Paris: Duarte Lobo’s Liber missarum and Musical Antiquarianism 1651–85’, Music & Letters, 86 (2005), 42–73.

¹⁰⁶ A much later setting most probably composed for the Academy by Francesco Barsanti (c.1690–1775) survives as part of Lwa MS CJ 1, and was subsequently published as no. 2 of his Sei Antifona, op. 5 (c.1760).

¹⁰⁷ The composer has been identified from Brown and Stratton, op. cit., 253. For further information, see Donovan Dawe, Organists of the City of London 1666–1850 (Padstow, 1983), 122–3. The piece cited here evidently won a Glee Club prize in 1764.

¹⁰⁸ A copy without attribution formerly in the AAM library is now Lwa MS CG 29 (a), while an AAM copy of ‘Regina coeli’, still in its original binding, is now Ob Tenbury MS 543.

¹⁰⁹ In a programme of 1 May 1735 (see Part II), Lotti is described as ‘a member of this Academy’.

¹¹⁰ Copies of both anthems in Mp (MS 370 Nd 65) where the first is described as a full anthem made for the King’s Chapel (in 1765) with instruments (two violins and basso continuo) added to it ‘for the use of the Crown and Anchor’ (i.e., the Academy of Ancient Music) in 1769.

¹¹¹ Generally known in eighteenth-century England (and so referred to here) as Praenestini. As a composer of madrigals, however, he is named as Palestrina.

¹¹² The bit normally performed was ‘The Sacrifice’ (nos. 30–32 in the Purcell Society edition, vol. 19).

¹¹³ For full details, see Lowell Lindgren’s article, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380, especially 314–20 and 324–7.

¹¹⁴ For more on Chelleri in London, see Michael Talbot, ‘Fortunato Chelleri’s Cantate e arie con stromenti (1727): A Souvenir of London’, De musica disserenda, 7 (2011), 51–68; also H. Diack Johnstone in Music & Letters, 95 (2014), 348 and music ex. 2.

¹¹⁵ See Donald Burrows, ‘Sir John Dolben, musical patron’ and ‘Sir John Dolben’s musical collection’, The Musical Times, 120 (1979), 65–7 and 149–51.

¹¹⁶ Dated Thursday 28 April 1785, the last night of the 1784–85 season (see Part II above), the list contains the names (or rather the actual signatures) of the 119 men who thus signified their intention of retaining their membership. Among the most notable of these are John Beard, the celebrated tenor (now retired), Thomas Bever, a distinguished lawyer and important collector of old music, Edward Warren-Horne, secretary of the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club and another collector with strong antiquarian interests, and Theodore Aylward, Gresham Professor of Music and an assistant director of the 1784 Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey; also on the list is the young Francis Douce (1757–1834), keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum from 1799 to 1811. Of five new members proposed for election on the same occasion, one was the architect John Nash (1752–1835), now remembered as having planned the layout of Regent’s Park and the upper reaches of Regent’s Street in the City of Westminster plus the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace. On Bever, the collector, see A. Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge,1963), 22–3 and Richard Charteris in Music & Letters, 81 (2000), 177–209. There is apparently a copy of the sale catalogue of his library (not known to King) at Yale and a photocopy in the Getty Museum in California. This information I owe to the late Professor Robin Alston, the first editor of the Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue.

¹¹⁷ The two singers (one tenor and a bass) whose names are followed by an asterisk (*) are apparently missing in the original (Yale) copy of the Account, but must have vanished when the last page of the Account was pasted to the back of the List of Members referred to in note 116 above. They have been recovered from a copy obviously been made before the two documents were pasted together. This was written on the front flyleaves of a copy of Hawkins’ Account of the Institution and Progress of the Academy of Ancient Music formerly owned by T. W. Taphouse (for whom, see A. Hyatt King, Some British Collectors, 71). Now in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (call number ML28. L8 A2), this gives names, instruments or voice, and the sums paid, but not the dates on which payments were made and is a help in clarifying a few signatures not entirely clear in the parent document. The same list (contributed by someone identified only by their initials ‘B. B.’ and with no indication of its source) was printed in Notes & Queries, 5th series, vol. 1 (January, 1874), 63–4.

¹¹⁸ This entry is puzzling. While the two Miss Abrams (Harriett and Theodosia) took part in all 12 concerts, sometimes singly and sometimes together, the accounts make no reference to the well-known tenor Samuel Harrison who is named as a soloist in no fewer than 8 of the concerts. As £63 seems rather too large sum for two singers only, one wonders if, perhaps, the money was intended to be split three ways, that is, between the two Miss Abrams and Mr Harrison. For details of the careers of all three, see New Grove ii and Philip H. Highfill et al., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers &c., 16 vols. (Carbondale, 1973–93). Of the other eight soloists named in the programmes (see Part II), five (Messrs. Wilson, Gore, Hobler, Sale and Bartleman) are given separate entries and are paid varying sums which presumably reflect the extent of their respective contributions. That still leaves two, Mrs Iliff and a Mr Reynolds unaccounted for. Mrs Iliff (d.1815) was a theatre singer who is not known to have appeared on the London concert scene; described in 1792 as ‘an utter stranger … to vocal refinement or delicacy’, she apparently sang at Vauxhall in the summer of 1787 (see Highfill et al., A Biographical Dictionary, viii, 71–3). Of Mr Reynolds nothing is known. He may perhaps have been one of the two basses of that name listed in Doane’s A Musical Directory For the Year 1794.

¹¹⁹ Was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1788 until 1831; he also sang in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral and was a member of the Catch Club (from 1785).

¹²⁰ The organist William Shrubsole (1760–1806) is now remembered solely as the composer of the hymn tune ‘Miles Lane’ (‘All hail the power of Jesus’s name!’).

¹²¹ Was later to edit an important three-volume collection of church music (Harmonia sacra, 1800), a valuable supplement to the earlier anthologies of cathedral music by Boyce (1760–73) and Arnold (1790).

¹²² John Wall Callcott (1766–1821) was a composer (mainly of glees) and a theorist with a B.Mus. degree from Oxford (1785). Although he appears here as a singer, he also played the clarinet and the oboe, and, according to New Grove ii, was admitted as a ‘supernumerary hautboy’ of the Academy by Benjamin Cooke.

¹²³ Samuel Webbe Junr (1768–1843) was a member of a Roman Catholic family of musicians (as also we suppose was the ‘J. Webbe’ listed here as a bass). Their father, Samuel Webbe Senr (1740–1816) was a well known bass singer, composer and sometime organist of the Sardinian Embassy chapel.

¹²⁴ Although included here among the tenors, James Bartleman (1769–1821) was soon to become the leading bass singer of his generation. A former chorister at Westminster Abbey, he had been trained by Benjamin Cooke.

¹²⁵ On the Revd William Clark (1738/9–1820), a Minor Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral and an important musical antiquarian, collector and copyist of early music, see Michael Talbot (ed.), Francesco Barsanti Secular Vocal Music (A-R Editions, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era 197, Middleton, Wisconsin, 2018), xii.

¹²⁶ Then in his late 20s, John Sale was soon to gain a reputation as a bass soloist with a particular forte for Handel; he also, it appears, taught singing to some members of the royal family and was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1783 until 1828.

¹²⁷ A Roman Catholic, John Danby (d.1798) was sometime organist of the chapel at the Spanish Embassy and a well known composer of glees, some of which were included in the Academy’s concerts of the 1780s and 90s (see Part II).

¹²⁸ Bass singer and double bassist, son of the composer William Boyce (1711–79).

¹²⁹ François-Hippolyte Barthélemon (1741–1808) was a French violinist and composer who became a leading figure in London’s musical life during the last three decades of the eighteenth century.

¹³⁰ William Napier (d.1812) was a Scottish musician who moved to London in 1765 and is now remembered chiefly as a music publisher. He also led the private band of George III and was leader of the violas at the 1784 Handel Commemoration.

¹³¹ In Doane’s Musical Directory (1794) he is listed as a viola player.

¹³² John Fentum was a second generation music seller and publisher with premises at 78 Strand from 1784 (see Charles Humphries and William C. Smith, Music Publishing in the British Isles from the earliest times to the middle of the nineteenth century (London, 1954), 145.

¹³³ John Ashley senr was a bassoonist; his sons included here were two violinists, a viola player and a cellist. The only Ashley named by Doane as a violinist was General Christopher Ashley. The viola player may have been John James Ashley rather than Richard Ashley (see above) and both are listed as such in Doane. As a family, the Ashleys were active as concert promoters in London and the provinces over a 50-year period (from c.1780 to 1830).

¹³⁴ Albert Innes was one of the Directors of the Academy.

¹³⁵ Was also paid a further 12 shillings as a trumpeter.

¹³⁶ Not the son of John Immyns, founder of the Madrigal Society and an important figure in the earlier history of the Academy, but probably a nephew (b.1767).

¹³⁷ After the death of J. C. Bach in 1782, James Billington taught the famous English soprano, Elizabeth Weichsell (d.1818) whom he married in 1783 and who sang thereafter as ‘Mrs Billington’, although never, it seems, for the Academy.

¹³⁸ Music seller and publisher; father of Sir George Smart (1776–1867), conductor, organist and composer, the first musician ever to gain a knighthood; whether the Thomas Smart who sang bass in 1787–8 was in any way related we do not know.

¹³⁹ Father of the composer Thomas Attwood, jun., sometime pupil of Mozart and later Organist of St Paul’s Cathedral (from 1796 until 1838).