Northumbrian Baroque

Abstract

Eighteenth-century Britain was awash in music. London—a cosmopolitan capital with aristocrats and flourishing middling classes who had money and time to devote to leisure—offered music-lovers unmatched opportunities to hear music in opera houses and theatres, public and private concerts, taverns and assembly halls, pleasure gardens, and churches. Musicians from across Europe flocked to London, where they could earn livelihoods as freelance performers, teachers and composers. Roz Southey's Music-making in North-East England during the eighteenth century joins other studies showing how the craze for music was not limited to London, but flourished in other English urban centres as well. Her primary focus is music-making in Newcastle, Durham, York and environs. Southey valiantly undertook the essential task of combing local newspapers and archival holdings in search of mentions of music, musicians and musical activities. She is at the mercy of whatever evidence chanced to survive, so there probably was more music-making than she can report; nonetheless, from this scattered evidence Southey builds up a picture of the rise and varied fortunes of music-making and the careers of musicians in the north-east. Threatening to dominate her story—on account of his numerous compositions, concert promotion, his well-known Essay on musical expression (1752) and other writings—is Charles Avison, and Southey works deliberately to give other musicians their due.