Bound for America: Three British Composers (review)

It is unlikely that anyone trawling the pages of Brown and Stratton's British Musical Biography (1897) would feel inclined to linger over the thirty-six words accorded George K. Jackson (1757–1822), or be greatly stimulated by David Baptie's assessment of Raynor Tay1or (1747–1825) as a 'Glee composer of taste and ability' (A Handbook of Musical Biography, 1887). Vague though it is, only a comment in Baptie's Sketches of Glee Composers (1895) might give rise to a flicker of curiosity. 'About 1792', we are told, 'he went to America and was living in Philadelphia about 1825.' As for William Selby (1738–98), neither Brown and Stratton nor Baptie have anything to report, while the first edition of Grove (1879–89) makes no mention of the hapless trio and their work. Yet it is the careers of these marginal figures that have prompted Nicholas Temperley to write a fascinating account of what happens when minor musicians are transplanted from routine careers in their native land to a New World fertile with opportunities for music-making.

Wisely, Temperley prefaces his study of the individual careers of Selby, Taylor, and Jackson with a survey of the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions they had to contend with, not only in their own country but also in a land 'where the leader of opinion sought musical equality with Europe, while the majority of the public wanted only to be entertained in a familiar style' (p. 11). Brief though it necessarily is, this helps enormously to place the careers of his subjects in context, so that we know where they were coming from and what they were going to.

Born in London, and probably the younger brother of the organist John Selby, who had emigrated to Boston in 1771, William Selby pursued a successful career as organist from the age of 17. It seems, however, that his career was tarnished by a probable sexual impropriety during his tenure at the Magdalen Chapel (a charity for penitent prostitutes), and that this may have prompted him to follow his brother's example in 1773. His career in America began, tentatively, in Newport, Rhode Island, but in 1776 he settled in Boston, where he established himself as 'a composer, arranger, choir director, and keyboard player', and also, prudently, 'as an American patriot' (p. 23).

In 1782 he began to promote concerts that were clearly modelled on such British choral events as the Three Choirs Festival and the St Cecilia Festivals in London, Oxford, and Salisbury, though undertaken with care not to offend Puritan susceptibilities. Secular concerts soon followed. The same year saw him resume his London publishing ventures with 'a collection of original compositions' called The New Minstrel. Though the greater part of his activities as a composer involved anthems and service music, Selby also wrote secular songs and choral odes, as well as organ sonatas and voluntaries. Temperley sums up his career thus: 'in ability he fell far short of the leading English musicians of the day, not to mention the many prominent Continental musicians living in London. In New England, on the other hand, he found himself at the top of the heap, once the war was over. He could play, direct, teach and compose European style music better than anyone else in the region' (p. 51). His removal to America, for whatever reason, proved to have been inspired.

Though he was enrolled, probably in 1756, as a Child of the Chapel Royal, Rayner Taylor's talents inclined more towards the secular than the sacred, and since choristers were often made available for public concerts, and even the theatre, he had ample opportunity to develop this aspect of music-making. Between 1765 and 1768 he was engaged as composer, vocalist, organist, and harpsichord player for the summer seasons at the Marylebone Pleasure Gardens. In July 1769, however, he was to be found in Edinburgh, along with a Mrs Raynor Taylor, in the cast...