English 18th Century Concertos--An Inventory and Thematic Catalogue (review)

Time was—and not so very long ago either—when the eighteenth century was almost universally regarded as the Dark Age of English music. Indeed, one little book by Sir Henry Hadow published in 1931 actually labels it as such. That this is no longer the case is due partly to the work of such pioneering scholar-enthusiasts as Gerald Finzi, Charles Cudworth, and Roger Fiske, but also, and more influentially perhaps, to the skill of such fine musicians as Peter Holman and his Parley of Instruments, who have brought so much of this repertory to life in performance. Thanks too to the enterprise of such record companies as Hyperion (and ASV in its excellent Boyce series under the direction of Graham Lea-Cox), a good deal of eighteenth-century English music is now available on disc. It is particularly sad therefore that financial circumstances appear to have forced Hyperion to abandon its splendid 'English Orpheus' series after the production of no fewer than fifty discs.

Among many works thus introduced to the listening public, some of the most interesting and musically rewarding have been concertos, and it is on the eighteenth-century English contribution in this area that Owain Tudor Edwards's book is firmly focused. At its heart is a detailed thematic catalogue of some 380-odd concertos arranged alphabetically by composer, and then chronologically in sets as originally published. For each entry there is a diplomatic transcription of its title page (and any other matter of interest to be found in the parent volume) and also a complete listing of all the known sources. This last is a rather bulky feature which could easily have been dispensed with, since most of the information it contains is readily available in RISM and the British Union-Catalogue of Early Music between them. Neither is it entirely accurate or up to date. While it is admittedly difficult to keep track of the present geographical location of material in private hands—the Hugh McLean collection, for instance, is no longer in Vancouver—Edwards ought surely to have known that the holdings of St Michael's College, Tenbury, are mostly (and have been for nearly twenty years now) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. And had he kept abreast of recent work in the field, he would also have discovered, for example, that the orchestral parts of John Stanley's Op. 10 and Thomas Chilcot's Op. 1 are no longer missing.

The author's decision to restrict himself solely to concertos actually published (as he did in his 1967 Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Wales at Bangor) seems to me wholly regrettable. Though there are relatively few eighteenth-century English concertos which did not make it into print, I can immediately think of at least thirty-six that survive only in manuscript and ought, in my opinion, to have been included here: eleven by William Hayes, eight by Charles Wesley, eight by Peter Prelleur, three by Boyce, two by William Herschel, and one each by James Hook, Benjamin Cooke, John Buxton, and Thomas Carter. Thus any statistical observations on the nature of the repertory as catalogued in this volume are automatically flawed. Also deliberately excluded are all references to modern editions. This Edwards attempts to justify by telling us, rather feebly, that 'since publishing houses do not keep stocks as long as they used to', a list of modern editions 'might raise false hopes of obtaining works that are out of print'. Methinks such information would have been a useful addition to the catalogue, but anyone wanting it, he says 'will have to make an Internet search'. Not good enough in my view.

And if modern editions are regarded as being too ephemeral to merit inclusion, then there is naturally no hope for recordings. Apart from one Oxford D.Phil. thesis of 1997 to which he is evidently much indebted (Peter Lynan, 'The English Keyboard Concerto in the...