REVIEWS. Reviewed by Dorothy de Val

Transcription

1 REVIEWS Michael Kassler, ed., The Music Trade in Georgian England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. ISBN Reviewed by Dorothy de Val Trade often associated with England as a nation of shopkeepers is no less connected with music than with the grind of daily commerce, and from early on London was a centre for music publishing as well as other aspects of the music trade. In 1900 Frank Kidson published his ground-breaking dictionary, British Music Publishers, Printers and Engravers, covering the period from Queen Elizabeth s Reign to George the Fourth s, in Scotland and Ireland as well as London and the English provinces. This was not superseded until 1954, with Charles Humphries and William Smith s Music Publishing in the British Isles, which covered the phenomenon from the beginning to the middle of the nineteenth century. Moving away from dictionary format in more specialized studies, scholars have grappled with issues such as the role of music publishers in society; the effect of the economy on their trade; legal aspects such as copyright; technology; and the audience for the music they published. The essays in Rudolph Rasch s edited collection Music Publishing in Europe, : Concepts and Issues (2005), provide a good example of recent work in these areas. The volume under review touches on many of these concepts, while focusing on a particular time period and place. Despite the title, there is little discussion of much outside London, and nothing from the earlier part of the Georgian period, except in the chapter on musical copyright, which takes us from 1662 to London reaped the rewards of increased travel and the growing internationalization of musical style. By 1800 the transformation from humble music seller to business entrepreneur was complete. Assisted by the rise of popular public concerts and growth in the piano industry, the scene was ripe for mass music production catering to an audience eager for new, accessible music and instruments on which to play it. Harder to find is evidence of what buyers actually bought and played, which may explain the absence of the consumer factor in this book, though a catalogue of Jane Austen s family collection is readily available and gives often surprising glimpses into contemporary taste. Who would have thought that Jackson s canzonets would trump Haydn s? The book has four main sections. The first deals with the linked music publishing companies from Longman, Broderip and Wilkinson through to Clementi, perhaps the most entrepreneurial music businessman of all time. A second section deals with their competitor, John Bland, and his periodical collections a concept devised to whet the bourgeois appetite for varied musical offerings. Central to the book is single chapter on musical copyright by John Small Script & Print 36:3 (2012) BSANZ [ISSN ]

2 Reviews 181 in the third section. A fourth section, headed New Technologies and written solely by Kassler, covers the quirky inventions of Charles, Earl Stanhope, and the introduction of lithography into England by Georg Jacob Vollweiler. The opening chapters by Jenny Nex, Michael Kassler and David Rowland provide detailed accounts of key London publishers of the period, sleuthing out fresh biographical information while building on work by previous scholars. Nex uses parish and livery company records to flesh out the life of James Longman, known to posterity mainly through his final bankruptcy and resulting dissolution of the firm. She goes on to give similar detailed accounts on partners Charles Lukey and Francis Broderip, whose firm became known for its sale of instruments as well as for its publishing activities. Interestingly the firm was the London agent for Artaria, and made Viennese music available to a public playing English pianos. Artaria in turn sold Longman and Broderip pianos. This should prompt a question I raised some time ago about the internationalization of the music trade and the fact that perhaps the piano playing public of the time made less of a fuss about the differences between English and Viennese pianos than we do now. This is not to dispute the actual differences, but to think more closely about contemporary attitudes towards them. Michael Kassler continues the story with his chapter on Broderip and Wilkinson, providing the same wealth of detail on the intricacies of the families and the business. As with the earlier firm, there was a strong interest in Viennese music, and the firm began publishing works by Mozart, which presumably their clientele (though not the Austen family, it seems) did not mind playing on the English pianos that were sold by the same firm in an arrangement with Ludewig Augustus Leukfeld, whose piano manufactory was located at 27 Tottenham Street (a drawing of it graces the cover of this book). By 1809, four years after Broderip s death and the renaming of the company, they had become so successful at selling the fashionable cabinet pianos made under William Southwell s 1807 patent that they relinquished the publishing side of the business altogether; their stock was sold to music seller Thomas Preston, which ensured its afterlife well into the Victorian period. By far the most versatile musician in the industry was the composer Muzio Clementi, whose flamboyant career as musician and businessman embodied the entrepreneurial spirit of the times. As such, Clementi merits two articles, one dealing with his music business (i.e., the sale of instruments) and the other with his activities as a publisher. As a composer and pianist, Clementi was in an ideal position to contribute to both areas, but to operate efficiently he needed partners who could tend to the business, especially during his trips abroad. Building on previous work by Plantinga, Rasch and this reviewer though relevant articles in Muzio Clementi: Studies and Prospects (Bologna, 2002) are not cited as well as his own book of Clementi s correspondence, Rowland delves into Clementi s

3 182 Script & Print partnerships, following their convoluted progress as various partners came and went. The international aspects of the business become clear in his negotiations with Artaria, Härtel and Pleyel, and like Broadwood, Clementi also sold instruments in America. Continuing the tradition established by Longman and Broderip, Clementi also sold various types of organs, flutes and bugles built by others. His pianos were known for their high quality, and many survive in collections today. The premises fell victim to a serious fire in 1807 and more recently in 1964, when many valuable records were destroyed at the Chappell premises. Clementi was equally entrepreneurial as a music seller and published works by famous composers of the time such as Cramer, Dussek, Haydn, Steibelt and Viotti, while avoiding the second-list composers so often found in other catalogues. Dealing with prominent composers was not always easy, however: Dussek fled overseas shortly after signing the contract, and Beethoven was referred to (in a well-known letter) as that haughty beauty. The company s 1823 catalogue, long a favourite of writers on Clementi, lists 6000 items in 59 categories, much of it for the domestic market. Absent are symphonies by Mozart or Beethoven, and there are only a few by Haydn. The vagaries of copyright law are illustrated in two cases which Clementi brought against his competitors he lost one and won the other. The company was fortunate to have Clementi as its head for so long; he died only a year after retiring at the age of 79. The firm under its new name of the brothers Collard & Collard never recouped its previous glory. Domestic music remained the order of the day, and the publisher John Bland sought to attract this market by publishing music in periodical form. Customers could buy collections of duets, accompanied sonatas (marketed under the fashionable French title of Le tout ensemble), songs, glees, divine music and various sonatas, lessons, overtures, capriccios, divertimentos, &c. &c, between 1782 and Knowing the vogue for continental composers, Bland sought out works by Haydn, Kozeluch and a Jane Austen favourite, Sterkel. Bland aimed at the large amateur market issuing nine catalogues devoted to periodical collections. Using research from her recent dissertation, Yu Lee An, a librarian, covers each collection exhaustively, and gives us some information on Bland and his successors, though does not manage to tie up everything in a concluding summary. John Small s exhaustive chapter takes up the theme of musical copyright in England. As such it forms a backdrop for the articles on publishing, though its length (150 pages) makes it almost a book in itself. Impressive in its comprehensiveness, it draws on previous (though uncited) work by David Hunter for history up to 1800, while adding significantly to our knowledge of this area. The final section on New Technologies makes for slightly easier reading, if only because of the personalities involved. In the first two chapters, Kassler covers the career and work of inventor Charles Earl Stanhope, drawing on family papers in the Centre for Kentish Studies. Alas, Stanhope s letter-music, an alternative

4 Reviews 183 to standard musical notation for the musically illiterate (which he developed with a clergyman, Thomas Baldwin), never caught on, nor did his machine for transcribing into a kind of shorthand music played on a keyboard instrument. One wonders how he did not arrive at the piano roll. Other inventions, such as his tuning glasses and monochord, reflected his interest in tuning systems, but never became available outside his own personal circle. Stanhope also designed a steel strung pianoforte, so heavy that eight men were needed to carry it. He bequeathed this and his other instruments to a Mrs Walburga Lackner, a Bohemian pianist on whose musical (and perhaps other) advice he relied on for some years. Clearly an opportunist, she sold the heavy piano at auction before disappearing back to Bohemia and marrying a man twenty years her junior. A final chapter brings us back to earth with an account of lithographer Georg Jacob Vollweiler, associated with the André firm, who brought what was then known as polyautography to England in The febrile atmosphere of Georgian London forms an important backdrop to its music. Packed with detail and graced with copious black and white illustrations, this book is a guide to the industry, and a significant reference tool; there is a helpful index of persons and companies active before Unlike Rasch, who provided a useful introduction tying together themes in his volume, Kassler provides only a short preface, which does not really prepare the reader for the onslaught that follows. Several chapters end rather abruptly without summarizing the material covered, or raising questions that arise from it. Although this book sheds valuable light on publishers and inventors of the time, Georgian London s allure and excitement are somehow overwhelmed by the sheer volume of worthy research. If you persevere, though, you will find that musical Georgian England was not merely a nation of shopkeepers. Jenny Uglow, Nature s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, xx pp. ISBN US$30. Reviewed by Dennis Bryans Those who have read Jenny Uglow s The Lunar Men will know what an engaging story she tells. In Nature s Engraver we have a wonderful and beguiling book that reaches far beyond Thomas Bewick s personal recollections, written between 1822 and 1828 (reissued as the Memoir of Thomas Bewick Written by Himself in 1924). Uglow tells of Bewick s rural upbringing at Cherryburn, where the boy emerges as stubborn and unruly, resisting formal teaching, but with a gift for drawing and a close affinity with nature. Not cut out to work the land, his father paid a heavy sum to have him apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, silver engraver and seal cutter, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where Bewick s latent talent blossomed. Uglow illuminates

5 Copyright of Script & Print is the property of Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand and its content may not be copied or ed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or articles for individual use.