The Keyboard Concerto in London Society, 1760-1790. (Volumes I and II) (Engl and ).

This dissertation discusses the uses of the keyboard concerto made by professional and amateur musicians in London between 1760 and 1790. The period studied begins after H and el's death in 1759 and ends with Haydn's arrival in London in 1791. The author identifies the thirteen English, four German, and three Italian concerto composers who lived in London in those years and the concertos they published there for harpsichord, organ, or pianoforte. The English composers are discussed in extensive biographies, which include new information from primary sources. The lives of these composers, intersecting at some points and widely divergent at others, serve as a focal point for an assessment of musical life in London during that time. Keyboard concertos were played, often by virtuoso performers, on some of Europe's best keyboard instruments at oratorio productions (a practice begun by H and el), and also at public and private concerts, at the pleasure gardens, at court, and even in domestic settings. The frequency with which concertos were performed in the homes of eighteenth-century Londoners, either as solo pieces or with only a few accompanying instruments, demonstrates that the genre often was considered to be chamber music. Many of these concertos seem to have been written specifically for that purpose, since they often had accompaniments of strings in three parts, and since the keyboard parts were published in a format that made solo performance possible. Keyboard parts and other evidence indicate that the soloist played basso continuo during the tutti sections. In drawing up this profile of the concerto's function in late eighteenth-century London, the author has relied as much as possible on the primary sources, which include: (1) contemporary London newspapers; (2) contemporary periodicals; (3) diaries and memoirs of eighteenth-century musicians, especially those of R. J. S. Stevens, John March, and Samuel Wesley; (4) published period accounts, including, for example, Friedrich Wendeborn, View of Engl and (1792), Charlotte Papendiek, Court and Private Life (published posthumously, 1887), and others; and (5) collections of pleasure gardens memorabilia, housed at the British Museum and at the Minet Library, London. These sources, indispensable to an underst and ing of English musical life, provide the main focus of this study.Ph.D.MusicUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161488/1/8712246.pd