Advancement of music in enlightenment England : Benjamin Cooke and the academy of ancient music / Tim Eggington.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eggington, Tim.

Series:

Music in Britain, 1600-2000

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--England--18th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Cooke, Benjamin, 1734-1793.

Cooke, Benjamin.

Composers--England--Biography.

Composers.

England.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 303 pages : illustrations, music ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk : Boydell Press, 2014.

Summary:

Amidst the cosmopolitan, fashion-obsessed concert life of later eighteenth-century London there existed a discrete musical counterculture centred round a society called the Academy of Ancient Music. Now largely forgotten, this enlightened school of musical thinkers sought to raise the status of music as an art of profound expression, informed by its past and founded on universal harmonic principles. Central to the group was the modest yet highly accomplished musician-scholar Benjamin Cooke, who, as organist of Westminster Abbey and conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music, enjoyed prominence in his day as a composer, organist, teacher and theorist. This book shows how Cooke was instrumental in proffering an Enlightenment-inspired reassessment of musical composition and thinking at the Academy. The picture portrayed counters the current tendency to dismiss eighteenth-century English musicians as conservative and provincial. Casting new and valuable light on English musical history, it reveals how the agenda for musical advancement shared by Cooke and his Academy associates foreshadowed key developments that would mould European music of the nineteenth century and after. The book includes an extensive bibliography, a detailed overview of the Cooke Collection at the Royal College of Music and a complete list of Cooke's works. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Academy of Ancient Music: Foundation and Early Years 4

2 Benjamin Cooke: Upbringing, Education and Career 44

3 Cooke and the Academy of Ancient Music, 1752-84 68

4 Musical Discovery in the Age of Enlightenment: History, Theory and the Academy of Ancient Music 104

5 Musical Conjectures (1769) 135

6 Cooke's Part Songs and Orchestral Anthems 167

7 The Morning Hymn and Collins's Ode 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-294) and index.

ISBN:

1843839067

9781843839064

OCLC:

880966124