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WILLIAM BATES AND HIS CONCERTOS IN TEN PARTS, OP. 2: AN ENTERPRISING EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COMPOSER AND AN UNRECOGNIZED ORCHESTRAL SUBGENRE EMPLOYING HORNS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2017

MICHAEL TALBOT
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Abstract

William Bates, who died in 1778, was a prolific and, in his day, successful composer of stage music and concert songs performed in London in the 1760s and 1770s; but a scarcity of biographical information and uncertainties over his position vis-à-vis the new style introduced in the early 1760s by J. C. Bach and others have tended to disadvantage him in modern commentary. New facts about his life and background together with a recently discovered sale catalogue reveal him to have been a cultivated man of wide interests, with a sympathy for the ‘ancient’ style. His most substantial musical contribution, as regards its potential for modern revival, is a remarkable set of six concertos for strings with oboes, bassoons and horns (plus, in two concertos, trumpets and timpani) published in 1762. These concertos, related in style to contemporary overtures to stage works but making much greater use of concertante writing, form a high point in a peculiarly British tradition of concertos employing French horns. The cult of the horn in Georgian Britain that nourished this tradition is the subject of extended discussion.

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Articles
Information
Eighteenth-Century Music , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , September 2017 , pp. 235 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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Footnotes

The author is very grateful to Harry Johnstone for his comments on an early draft of this article.

References

1 Barrett, William Alexander, English Glees and Part-Songs: An Inquiry Into Their Historical Development (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1886), 214 Google Scholar. The catch in question was published in the second volume of Arnold, John’s anthology of catches and similar works entitled The Essex Harmony (London: Bigg and others, 1777)Google Scholar.

2 The only currently available modern editions appear to be desktop-style editions of all six trio sonatas in Bates's Op. 1 published by notAmos Performing Editions www.notamos.co.uk. A digital reproduction of the copy of Op. 1 in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia (M312.4.B29 1750) is accessible with open access at http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:1226509. This copy has two names added in ink to the list of subscribers: ‘M:r Adams’ and ‘Peter Searle Esq:’.

3 Fiske, Roger, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

4 Stephen Charles Foster, ‘“To Entertain the Fancy”: The Orchestral Concert Song in England, 1740–1800’ (PhD dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2013). There is also useful commentary in Richard Goodall, ‘Eighteenth-Century English Secular Cantatas’, two volumes (DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford, 1979), and Rice, Paul F., The Solo Cantata in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Thematic Catalog (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park, 2003)Google Scholar.

5 Edwards, Owain, ‘English String Concertos before 1800’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 95 (1968–1969), 1–3 Google Scholar; Edwards, Owain Tudor, English Eighteenth-Century Concertos: An Inventory and Thematic Catalogue (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2004)Google Scholar; and Johnstone, H. Diack and Fiske, Roger, eds, Music in Britain: The Eighteenth Century (The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, volume 4) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 A Copy of the Poll for a Citizen for the City and Liberty of Westminster (London: Osborn, 1749), 29.

7 The greater than average frequency with which one encounters the surname Bates, the forename William (very popular at the time as an assertion of Protestantism) and, especially, their combination as a pair creates many obstacles towards establishing family relationships securely via parish records of baptism, marriage and burial.

8 This involvement in international trade is confirmed by an advertisement that Bates, still at his South Audley Street address, placed in the Public Advertiser of 23 February 1761, where he offered a reward of two guineas for the return of a lost pocket-book containing ‘several Memorandums and ten Foreign printed Bills’.

9 See the news report in the Public Advertiser of 29 May 1772.

10 Westminster Archives Centre, 36/127/FB/0036/9/4.

11 Information from the record set Britain, Country Apprentices 1710–1778, accessed via www.findmypast.co.uk (17 August 2016). Thompson (died 1761) was not the organist of the church of St George, Hanover Square, who at the time was officially Thomas Roseingrave, for whom John Keeble had been deputizing since 1744. He was, however, a member of the King's Band, having succeeded Peter Randall in 1746. This apprenticeship record provides the strongest confirmation that the two Williams were father and son.

12 Information from the record set English Births and Christenings 1538–1975, accessed via www.familysearch.org (17 August 2016).

13 Phillips, whose skill as a music engraver is lauded by Hawkins, Sir John (A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, five volumes (London: Payne, 1776), volume 5, 210)Google Scholar, does not add his name to the Op. 1 edition, but its style of engraving is virtually identical with that of Bates's Op. 2 (the concertos), where he discreetly writes his name. Moreover, the appearance of a ‘Mr. Phillips’ among the subscribers to Op. 1 makes a personal connection appear all the likelier.

14 The purchase of multiple copies had many possible purposes. One was to act on behalf of friends and relatives; another was to acquire a stock for resale (this is the case here with the six copies ordered by John Cox himself, and perhaps also the six ordered by the violinist Thomas Pinto); another, common among theatres and music societies, was to enable many-to-a-part performance without recourse to copyists. The complete list of subscribers is readable online via the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

15 Very often, as in Bates's list, the names of persons of quality were moved to the head of the list out of respect, but otherwise the sequence of names for each initial letter is seen time and again to reflect the order in which subscriptions were made, one pointer to which is that relatives and colleagues most often appear adjacently. On the nature and significance of subscription lists see Talbot, Michael, ‘What Lists of Subscribers Can Tell Us: The Cases of Giacob Basevi Cervetto's Opp. 1 and 2’, De Musica Disserenda 10/1 (2004), 121–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is noteworthy how many names are common to the subscription lists for Bates's Op. 1, Langdon's Ten Songs and, in 1757, Samuel Boyce's Poems on Several Occasions (where Bates's name also appears). Simple chronological proximity may well be the main reason, if one assumes that for every period in London life there was a relatively finite ‘subscriber community’ for music and belles-lettres, but one may also suspect in this instance the operation of a ‘community of taste’, which was perhaps cemented by geographical proximity, frequent social interaction and kinship.

16 Matthews, Betty, The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain: List of Members, 1738–1984 (London: Royal Society of Musicians, 1985), 20 Google Scholar.

17 Catalogue of New Music Printed for and sold by John Cox at Simpson's Musick Shop (London: Cox, c1755). Cox, who in 1751 married the widow of John Simpson and took over her late husband's business, did not normally advertise his new publications in the press, so this route to a more precise dating is, unfortunately, closed.

18 Edwards, Owain, ‘Bates, William (Pseud. Jack Catch)’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, second edition, ed. Finscher, Ludwig (Kassel and Stuttgart: Bärenreiter and Metzler, 1994–2008), Personenteil 2, column 469Google Scholar.

19 Edinburgh Public Libraries, ref. qYML 28 MS: Sederunt (Minute) Books, four volumes, 1727–1794, volume 2, 100. I am very grateful to Andrew Woolley for making a reproduction of this and the following page available to me.

20 Edinburgh Public Libraries: Sederunt (Minute) Books, volume 2, 101 (copy in Douglas's hand).

21 See Jennifer Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society: Its Membership and Repertoire 1728–1797’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2001), 279.

22 Since the dates for the first and subsequent performances of eighteenth-century theatre works in London are ascertainable from a multitude of contemporary and modern publications – most especially, the multi-authored ten-volume set The London Stage, 1660–1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968) – sources for them will be referred to here only selectively.

23 A burletta was, in British usage, a kind of singspiel in the vernacular that differed from a ballad opera in that its vocal numbers, when not newly composed, were based on airs and ensembles in the Italian or English art-music repertory rather than being arrangements of popular melodies.

24 The hiatus between 1760 and 1768 is partly explained by Bates's absence in Ireland from the end of 1765 to mid-1767.

25 The literature on Ann Catley is so vast that one hardly knows where to start. The biography of her by Ambross, Miss, The Life and Memoirs of the Late Miss Ann Catley, The Celebrated Actress (London: Bird[,1789–1790])Google Scholar, is rich in detail but very embroidered. For general purposes, the entry for her by Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography www.oxforddnb.com is recommendable. The best source of information on the trial of 1763, in which she was a star witness, is Burrow, Sir James, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench During the Time of Lord Mansfield's Presiding in That Court [1756–1772], five volumes, third edition (London: Strahan and Woodfall, 1790), volume 3, 1434–1440 Google Scholar.

26 In Burrow's words (Reports of Cases, volume 3, 1438), ‘she resided in the house of Bates's father, as Bates himself was a single man and no housekeeper’.

27 Reported in the Public Advertiser of 20 February 1764.

28 Whitehead, Lance and Nex, Jenny, ‘The Insurance of Musical London and the Sun Fire Office’, The Galpin Society Journal 67 (2014), 181–216 Google Scholar, www.galpinsociety.org (10 August 2016). The original documents are held by London Metropolitan Archives.

29 The will is transcribed in the probate document (The National Archives, Prob 11/1043).

30 Ann outlived William, but it is uncertain for how long. An Ann Bates who was buried at St Dunstan's in Stepney, aged fifty-five, on 12 January 1793 could possibly have been her, but this is very speculative, given the commonness of both names.

31 Hull (1728–1808) and Bates appear to have been close. In 1762 Bates subscribed to Hull's Genuine Letters from a Gentleman, and the actor-playwright seems to have negotiated the contract over the music for Pharnaces directly with him. See Davies, Thomas, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq., two volumes (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1818), volume 2, 70 Google Scholar.

32 Slack's and Bates's activities in Dublin are chronicled in Greene, John C., Theatre in Dublin, 1745–1820: A Calendar of Performances, six volumes (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2011), volume 2Google Scholar.

33 Bates may in fact have written some of this music earlier for London productions of the same plays.

34 As reported verbatim in Lloyd's Evening Post of 15–18 May 1767.

35 Lloyd's Evening Post (25–28 November 1768).

36 Whitehead and Nex, ‘The Insurance of Musical London’, 21.

37 My thanks to Christie's Archives for permitting me to inspect the catalogue.

38 The title-page for days 1 and 2 opens with the words ‘A Catalogue of the Genuine Household Furniture’; that for days 3 and 4 with ‘A Catalogue of the Genuine Library of Books’. The two components were evidently sold either separately or conjointly. A copy of the second component (the one listing music) in the Bodleian Library has been digitized and is accessible via that library's online catalogue and other websites.

39 The numbers end at 140, but between lots 128 and 129 an extra item numbered *128 was inserted at the last moment.

40 On the counterculture of ‘ancient’ music in Georgian Britain, which in some instances extended to actual hostility to modern trends, see especially Eggington, Tim, The Advancement of Music in Enlightenment England: Benjamin Cooke and the Academy of Ancient Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014)Google Scholar.

41 Berg's responsibility for Vologeso is not known from other sources. The Perez Farnace could perhaps have been the inspiration behind the Pharnaces of Hull and Bates.

42 A study of the seventeen purchasers of the music and of the prices paid must, regrettably, await another occasion.

43 Dr Bates was fluent in Italian (as Alan Argent has kindly informed me), so the named work in lot 60 – the 1659 edition, revised by Giovanni Torriano, of John Florio's Italian and English dictionary – could be another inherited volume, seeing that it is similarly an outlier in the sale catalogue, which lists no other non-musical items with an Italian connection. Dr Bates also owned a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, auctioned at Sotheby's in 2006, so his interest in theatre is a certainty.

44 There is an enormous amount written on the theologian Bates, to which it is impossible to do justice here. A good starting point is Stephen Wright, ‘Bates, William (1625–1699)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography www.oxforddnb.com (10 April 2016).

45 An anonymous account of Dr Williams's library in The Athenæum 2461 (1874), 879–880, lists many major dramatic and poetic works in English, including the already mentioned Shakespeare volume, that probably came to Williams from Bates. It could well be that Williams chose not to purchase ‘loose’ single plays in Bates's possession, which might explain why binder's collections predominate among (and, significantly, only among) the pre-1700 stage works listed in the 1778 sale catalogue.

46 Noble, Theophilus Charles, Memorials of Temple Bar with Some Account of Fleet Street and the Parishes of St. Dunstan and St. Bride, London (London: Diphose & Bateman[, 1869]), 80 Google Scholar.

47 Information from the record set Records of London's Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freemen 1400–1900 www.londonroll.org (16 August 2016).

48 Information from the record set London Apprenticeships Abstracts 1442–1850 www.findmypast.co.uk (25 March 2016). This second William's mother was Margaret, as placed beyond doubt by the Latin phrase ‘matre naturali et legitima’ occurring in the probate document (see next footnote). On Haistwell see Jacob M. Price, ‘Haistwell, Edward (c.1658–1709)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography www.oxforddnb.com (2 April 2016).

49 Details of William's marriage to Bridget and the pre-nuptial contract associated with it emerge from the case Glover vs Bates heard on 2 June 1739. See West, Martin John, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery from 1736 to July, 1739 (London: Butterworth, 1827), 667–668 Google Scholar.

50 John Johnson published its overture and (in simplified form) most of its closed numbers in 1760.

51 Fiske, English Theatre Music, 397–398.

52 See Pedicord, Harry William and Bergmann, Frederick Louis, eds, The Plays of David Garrick, six volumes (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980–1982), volume 2, 331 Google Scholar.

53 Davies, Thomas, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq., volume 2, 70 Google Scholar.

54 Fiske, English Theatre Music, 314.

55 The Monthly Review or Literary Journal 58/1 (1771), 473.

56 Dibdin, Charles, A Complete History of the English Stage, five volumes, second edition (London: author, 1800), volume 5, 226Google Scholar.

57 Foster, ‘“To Entertain the Fancy”’, 261–263.

58 Foster, ‘“To Entertain the Fancy”’, 263.

59 Fiske, English Theatre Music, 397, finds this overture ‘very poor in quality’, a surprisingly negative judgment that suggests to me a bias in favour of the later, ‘J. C. Bach’ style.

60 Bates, William, Pharnaces: An English Opera (London: Welcker [, 1765])Google Scholar.

61 Edwards, ‘English String Concertos before 1800’, 1.

62 Edwards, ‘English String Concertos before 1800’, 10.

63 Fiske, ‘Concert Music II, in Johnstone and Fiske, eds, Music in Britain: The Eighteenth Century, 210.

64 Public Advertiser (11 June 1760).

65 The two trumpet parts and the ‘Timpano’ (timpani) part have handwritten title-pages. Why this distinction should have been made is unclear, especially since these instruments are ‘obligated’ in the two concertos that include them (Nos 2 and 4).

66 There were two standard ways of notating horn parts in eighteenth-century Britain. The first was to write them in C major in the treble clef, at the requisite interval above the sounding pitch. The second was to write the notes as just described but then to substitute a C or an F clef that would enable the player to read the part ‘as if’ at sounding pitch (or an octave higher, in the case of the bass clef), with the necessary adjustment of accidentals.

67 The English translation ‘obligated’ is uncommon, but at least not quite a neologism: it appears, for instance, in the title of Daniel Wright's edition (c1730) of Geminiani's concerto arrangements of the first five sonatas of Corelli's Op. 5.

68 Avison discusses the ‘Mostra’ again in his Essay on Musical Expression (London: Davis, 1752), 130–131. I am very grateful to Harry Johnstone for pointing me towards Avison.

69 Edwards, ‘English String Concertos before 1800’, 10.

70 Advertised in the Daily Courant of 22, 23 and 24 May 1723.

71 One instance is the Medley Concerto (1757) of Richard Mudge, based on Scottish country dances.

72 Six Concertos for Violins, French Horns or Hoboys, &c. . . . in Eight Parts, Op. 4, numbered 799 in Smith, William C. and Humphries, Charles, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by the Firm of John Walsh during the Years 1721–1766 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1968), 180–181 Google Scholar.

73 See Talbot, Michael, ‘A Leaving Present for Princess Louisa? Handel, Barsanti and Bodmer Ms. 11461–7’, Händel-Jahrbuch 61 (2015), 358 Google Scholar.

74 The Lyric Muse Revived in Europe or A Critical Display of the Opera in all its Revolutions (London: Davis and Reymers, 1768), 35.

75 Lord Mansfield's landmark ruling in the case of Somerset v Stewart (1772) established that under common law slavery could not exist on British soil, irrespective of its status elsewhere, but in practice black domestic servants who had been house slaves prior to their arrival in Britain were commonly still treated in some respects as chattels, transferable without their consent from master to master.

76 The Yearly Chronicle for M,DCC,LXI (London: Becket and others, 1761), 6. In this light the depiction of a solitary black French horn player among a group of otherwise white musicians in John June's well-known etching ‘A view of Cheapside, as it appeard on Lord Mayor's Day last’ (1761) must be seen as a wholly realistic element. The appearance on the advertised programme for a concert at Drury Lane Theatre on 3 March 1738 of ‘Mr Handel's Water-Piece, with the Chorus in Atalanta, to be perform'd on the French-Horns by two little Negro-Boys, Scholars to Mr. Charles, who never perform'd before’ (London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 28 February 1738) offers confirmation of the same close association and suggests, further, that training in horn playing was a far from uncommon experience for pairs of black boys being prepared for service to the same master.

77 One example of a servant who played in an orchestra of professionals is the unnamed servant of Lord Mountjoy who played the solo horn part in a (so-called) overture performed as an interlude in Handel's Acis and Galatea in Dublin in 1735. See Jennifer Beakes, ‘The Horn Parts in Handel's Operas and Oratorios and the Horn Players Who Performed in These Works’ (DMA dissertation, City University of New York, 2007), 280.

78 The incorrect statement found in some modern sources that Charles Cato was promoted to become a gamekeeper to the Prince of Wales probably goes back to an error in the London Evening Post of 18–20 September 1740, which misprints the name ‘William Cater’ as ‘William Cato’.

79 London, City of Westminster Archives Centre, microfilm 1,042,313.

80 Grano, as Harry Johnstone reminds me, was also the teacher of the black trumpeter William Douglas, known humorously as ‘The Black Prince’.

81 Weekly Miscellany (2 June 1737).

82 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, ninth edition (London: author, 1794), 241.

83 Twelve specimen horn calls of a simple but multi-pitched kind are presented on pages 5–8 of The Compleat Tutor for the French Horn (London: Simpson, c1746), believed to be the work of Christopher Winch (Winsch), a foreign-born horn player who was also a vintner.

84 A complete set of movement incipits can be found in Edwards, English Eighteenth-Century Concertos, 53–56.

85 In this music example, and all those following, bass figures have been omitted. All examples are based on the John Johnson edition of 1762.

86 Exactly the same feature appears in the first movements of Bates's overtures: for example, those of The Jovial Crew, Flora and The Ladies’ Frolick.

87 The striking opening gambit comprising two balancing phrases, each of one and a half bars, which are then answered by a three-bar consequent, reminds one of a favourite device of Vivaldi (see, for instance, the opening movements of his violin concertos rv197 and 222) that effectively disguises the metre before fully revealing it. This is a further instance of how Vivaldi's music casts a long shadow over music in eighteenth-century England.