Henry Purcell (10
September, 1659 – 21 November, 1695) is considered England’s greatest composer
of the Baroque Era. Named one of the first British composers of significance,
he was often called “Orpheus Britannicus”
and his contribution to the musical heritage of his native land is
immeasurable.
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| Henry Purcell |
Imagine then, the
excitement stirred in the musical world in 1964, when Nigel Fortune, Purcell
scholar, announced the discovery of a previously unknown ode by Purcell in a
four-volume manuscript collection of the composer’s works at Tatton Park in
Cheshire. ‘The Noise of Foreign Wars’ is
preserved as a fragment in a bound collection first copied by Philip Hayes
(1738-1797) Professor of Music at Oxford. After Hayes’s death, the collection
was owned by Samuel Arnold (1740-1802) composer and conductor of the Academy of
Ancient Music. In May of 1803, the collection was purchased by Mark Masterman
Sykes of Sledmere in Yorkshire.
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| Sledmere House - Yorkshire |
How did it end up in the
music room at Tatton Park? How did all of these men – a music professor, a
composer and conductor, and a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire manage to save
such a treasure so that Nigel Fortune might unearth it three hundred years
after it was written? They didn’t. Well, they didn’t do it by themselves. It
took….
A woman.
In the late seventeenth
century, gentlemen of means began to collect books and art to display in their
homes as a mark of their wealth and status. After all, no young man returned
from his Grand Tour without some sort of souvenirs. (Preferably the sort for which
one did not need to visit one’s physician.) Long galleries in which to display
paintings and works of art and libraries became essential parts of the Society
town-house and the country “ancestral
pile”. Some homes were even designed or redesigned to feature these
architectural aspects prominently.
In 1809, the biographer
Thomas Frognall Dibdin called the obsessive collection of books by the nobility
‘bibliomania’. In 1812, an exclusive
bibliophile society, the Roxburghe Club, was formed. One of its founding
members? Mark Masterman Sykes. He was best known for his collection of books
and engravings. By the end of 1810, his library at Sledmere was considered one
of the finest in England.
And in 1807, Mark
Masterman Sykes gifted his four-volume collection of Purcell’s music to his
newly married sister, Elizabeth Sykes Egerton, of Tatton Park. (You thought I was never going to get there,
didn’t you?)
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Elizabeth Sykes, (Mrs Wilbraham Egerton), c. 1795
portrait miniature by Abraham Daniel of Bath |
Elizabeth Sykes was an
accomplished musician at an early age. As a young girl, her music collection was
like that of any musically inclined lady. Collections of the sort made by the
accumulation of pieces with social occasions and entertainment in mind. Not to
be taken seriously, or so the majority of Society (men) believed.
Her first music books are
dated 1790 and are inscribed with her name – Miss Sykes. They consist of pre-ruled oblong copybooks into which
she copied music from her piano lessons, folk songs, and catches. One book
actually has two handwritings in it – one starts at one end of the book and the
other starts at the other end. This was a common practice in copying music,
especially when one wanted to divide the types of compositions – say sonatas at
one end and hymns at the other. In some instances, a composition might be
started, messed up and started over in a better fashion to the finish.
Her copybooks from 1799
and 1801 were larger pre-ruled music books from the London music publisher
Robert Birchall. The covers were a bit more elegant with pages for her to
inscribe her name and the details of the music in each one. There were vocal
ornaments and notations in these in multiple hands. Even entire pieces appear
to be copied by others. This can be attributed to the common practice of
passing around these books to friends, the same way young ladies today might
pass around CD’s or I-pods.
Elizabeth Sykes also
purchased a great deal of printed sheet music. Fortunately for us, she signed
all of her music as it was purchased. Therefore, it is easy to differentiate
between the music she bought whilst unmarried, and those pieces she purchased
after she married her cousin, Wilbraham Egerton, in 1806 and moved her
collection to Tatton Park. (I know. She married her cousin, but he did play the cello.)
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| Tatton Park - Cheshire |
The collection of printed
sheet music, because it was the realm of women, did not signify as collecting
the way the accumulation of books and art did. However, these collections often
contain copies of popular songs printed the night after their first performance
at Vauxhall or at one of London’s theatres, never to be seen again. It is
thought researchers have only begun to scratch the surface of many of these
collections.
Elizabeth had a great deal
of her music bound in indexed volumes. Her diligence and attention to her
collection produced folio compilations as handsome as the albums of engravings
and illustrated books on antiquities to be found in any bibliophile’s library.
Her valuation of her music resulted in it being shelved and cared for the same
way her husband’s and brother’s collections of books were.
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| Music room at Tatton Park |
As a result, in addition
to the Purcell volumes gifted to Elizabeth by her brother, the music at Tatton Park includes rare numbers of
Benjamin Goodison’s projected complete edition of Purcell begun in 1789. Nearly
an entire shelf contains Samuel Arnold’s collection of Handel’s complete works.
It is the first complete edition of any composer, pre-dating the Mozart
Gesamtausgabe.
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| Dove sei by G.F. Handel (from the Samuel Arnold collection at Tatton Park) | |
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I have gone into great
detail about the collection of music at Tatton Park and the incalculable debt
we owe Elizabeth Sykes Egerton. Like those researchers who have renewed the
world’s interest in these collections, I have only scratched the surface of
this fascinating topic. There are impressive collections of music accumulated
and preserved by Georgian and Regency women all over England. Lydia Hoare Acland’s collection at Killerton
House in Devon. Mary Egerton Sykes music books at Sledmere in Yorkshire. Over
two thousand items in Miss Cornewall’s collection at Mocca’s Court in
Herefordshire.
The list goes on and musicologists are prowling the libraries
and collections of stately homes all over England in search of the next great
musical treasure. All tucked safely away by those accomplished young ladies, bluestocking women, and musical dragons
who loved their music enough to preserve it for all of us.
I’ll be posting more on
this subject in my next post. Not only more about the role women played in
preserving England’s musical heritage, but also how their love of music changed
the architectural design of many houses built during the late Georgian and
Regency eras to accommodate that love.
Labels: Louisa Cornell
