TWO GEORGIAN CLASSICS: ARNE AND STEVENS

Abstract

THE Georgian period saw a very considerable outpouring of Shakespearean music. Practically every new revival of the plays brought some fresh addition to the growing corpus of 'traditional' Shakespeare music, and as often as not some bogus variant of the poetry as well, for eighteenth-century actor-managers, although they paid endless lip-service to 'The Bard', were almost as resolute in their determination to bring him up-to-date as certain modern conductors have been in performances of Handel. One fascinating point is that even the least talented of composers seemed to rise above himself when setting the Shakespearean lyrics, and many a fifth-rate eighteenth-century composer produced at least one good Shakespeare setting, for solo or ensemble voices. Most of that music is now forgotten, after being in general use for a century or more and finding its way into the various nineteenth-century anthologies of 'Music for Shakespeare'. But there were two Georgian composers whose Shakespearean music is still being generally sung. I refer to Thomas Augustine Ame (I7IO-I778) and Richard John Samuel Stevens (1757-I837). Arne is world-famous, and is so almost as much for his settings of 'Under the greenwood tree' or 'Blow, blow thou winter wind' as for 'Rule, Britannia'. Stevens is not so wellknown by name, but there are many to whom 'Ye spotted snakes' or 'Sigh no more, ladies' or 'The cloud-cap't towers' are hauntingly familiar, although they might not be able to name the composer. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast between two contemporary musicians than that presented by Arne and his young acquaintance Stevens. Arne was careless and casual, but richly gifted and a prolific composer. Stevens was careful and painstaking, with a thin thread of talent which he used sparingly, usually referring to musical composition as 'study'. If all Arne's autograph full scores could be recovered from the dustbin of time they would make almost as brave a showing on the library shelf as those of Handel, in quantity if nothing else; but he seems to have taken as little care of his scores as he did of his money. Stevens, on the other hand, was tidiness personified and left careful fair copies of all his musical i46