Instrument: James Davis chamber organ of c.1790 (via Hauptwerk) -- "[John] Bennet [sic], an eleve of Dr Pepusch, played the Tenor [viol], & occasionally, was a Chorus singer & figurante in processions. He knew the laws of Counterpoint very well, but had not a spark of…" The quotation comes from notes by Charles Burney (1726-1814), the organist and writer on music, preserved in the British Museum. Burney is discussing the orchestra of the Drury Lane Theatre in London, of which Bennett was a member. Unfortunately the rest of the sentence was written on a different sheet of paper, now lost.
Forced to move to the countryside for health reasons, Burney resigned as organist of St Dionis Backchurch in the City of London in 1752. St Dionis now needed a new organist. Seven candidates applied, of whom four withdrew on learning that the vestry would not tolerate deputies (in 18th-c. England an organist would often hold more than one post, subcontracting some of his duties to deputies evidently paid still less than even the official organist often was). Bennett, aged 17, was elected unanimously. He obviously supplemented his income by playing his viol, singing and apparently even dancing on stage, and as a music teacher (Mortimer's "Universal Director...to the Masters and Professors of the Liberal and Polite Arts and Sciences" of 1763 lists one "Bennet [sic], John, Tenor to the Queen's Band, Organist and Teacher on the Harpsichord, Queens-square, Bloomsbury"). He held the post at St Dionis until is death in 1784. The organ he played there was a three-manual instrument by Renatus Harris of 1724, the last organ by this builder. The church was demolished in 1878. Parts of the instrument may survive in the organ built by Mander for the Great Hall of the Merchant Taylors' Company in the City of London in 1966.
For the publication of a volume with ten of his voluntaries (from which the piece heard here is taken) Bennett obtained the support of 227 subscribers. The list includes Boyce, Handel , Stanley and the actor David Garrick (co-proprietor of the Drury Lane Theatre). Also on the list are James Nares and John Travers. Nares is described in the list as "Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal", which he became in October 1757, while Travers, organist of the Chapel Royal , died in June 1758. The date of publication can be inferred from this.
Voluntary No. 1, of which the piece heard here forms the first movement, was republished by C.H. Trevor in his well-known and notoriously unreliable anthology "Old English Organ Music for Manuals". Trevor cut much of the second movement of this voluntary and removed the written-out cadenza from the first, along with all ornamentation -- as usual without indicating it.
Forced to move to the countryside for health reasons, Burney resigned as organist of St Dionis Backchurch in the City of London in 1752. St Dionis now needed a new organist. Seven candidates applied, of whom four withdrew on learning that the vestry would not tolerate deputies (in 18th-c. England an organist would often hold more than one post, subcontracting some of his duties to deputies evidently paid still less than even the official organist often was). Bennett, aged 17, was elected unanimously. He obviously supplemented his income by playing his viol, singing and apparently even dancing on stage, and as a music teacher (Mortimer's "Universal Director...to the Masters and Professors of the Liberal and Polite Arts and Sciences" of 1763 lists one "Bennet [sic], John, Tenor to the Queen's Band, Organist and Teacher on the Harpsichord, Queens-square, Bloomsbury"). He held the post at St Dionis until is death in 1784. The organ he played there was a three-manual instrument by Renatus Harris of 1724, the last organ by this builder. The church was demolished in 1878. Parts of the instrument may survive in the organ built by Mander for the Great Hall of the Merchant Taylors' Company in the City of London in 1966.
For the publication of a volume with ten of his voluntaries (from which the piece heard here is taken) Bennett obtained the support of 227 subscribers. The list includes Boyce, Handel , Stanley and the actor David Garrick (co-proprietor of the Drury Lane Theatre). Also on the list are James Nares and John Travers. Nares is described in the list as "Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal", which he became in October 1757, while Travers, organist of the Chapel Royal , died in June 1758. The date of publication can be inferred from this.
Voluntary No. 1, of which the piece heard here forms the first movement, was republished by C.H. Trevor in his well-known and notoriously unreliable anthology "Old English Organ Music for Manuals". Trevor cut much of the second movement of this voluntary and removed the written-out cadenza from the first, along with all ornamentation -- as usual without indicating it.
Kategorie
🎵
Musik