Symphonies, Part 1: The Salisbury and Canterbury Symphonies (1778-1784); Part 2: The Chichester Symphonies and Finales (1778-1801) (review)

As Ian Graham-Jones notes in the preface to his edition of John Marsh's symphonies, Marsh (1752–1828) ranks as 'the most prolific English symphonist to the present date' (Pt. 1, p. ix). Yet most of his music has lain unheard for close on two centuries and, until the publication of Brian Robins's edition of his memoirs (The John Marsh Journals: The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer 1752–1828 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1998)) even his name was unknown to all but a few. His position as an amateur musician active in three provincial cities—Salisbury, Canterbury, and Chichester—meant that he never considered it necessary, or desirable, to leave his mark on the national musical scene (i.e. London), with the result that little of his large output was ever heard in the capital or published. That we know so much about his life is due entirely to his diligence in recording its events, not least the composition of some 350 works. Much of this large output has been lost, and of his forty symphonies only the nine published during his lifetime have survived. It is these, and three independent Finales intended by Marsh to provide appropriately rousing conclusions to concert programmes, that Ian Graham-Jones has edited in two handsomely produced volumes.

When Marsh first turned to the symphony in 1770 the form was still quite novel in England. Indeed, it was only during the previous decade that composers had started to turn their backs on the French overture as a model for the first movements of their 'overtures' (as symphonies were invariably called). The acceptance of the galant idiom had been hastened by the example of the two émigré composers who did so much to refashion London concert life in the 1760s and 1770s, C. F. Abel and J. C. Bach, and in his journal Marsh recorded his first encounter with their work: 'The modern symphony or overture with hautboy & horn parts instead of ripieno violins having been introduc'd not long before this time, Mr McArthur soon brought the two first setts of Bach & Abel [i.e. J. C. Bach's Op. 3 and Abel's Op. 1] to our meetings as a valuable addition & variation of style' (ibid. 48). Marsh later noted his introduction to Abel's symphonies Op. 4 and Op. 7, but as his comments make clear, he was just as happy 'to play Corelli, Humphry or Boyce's sonatas etc. w'ch we all enjoy'd & were even now & then glad to be thus left to ourselves and so escape Bach & Abel's Symphonies' (ibid. 49). Not surprisingly, his own music looks both forwards and backwards, and among the works no longer extant are fifteen concertos in the 'ancient style'. The symphony no. 5 also opens with a French overture-like introduction, but this leads into a galant Allegro moderato rather than the customary fugue. Elsewhere Marsh reveals his indebtedness to the Mannheim school and employed the Mannheim crescendo (see, for example, the first movement of no. 3); his journal records how his first acknowledged symphony—no longer extant—was 'in the style of Stamitz' (ibid. 72).

But what of the music itself? In his informative introduction Graham-Jones refers to the 'astonishing variety of styles and influences apparent in these works' (Pt. 1, p. xi) that 'sets him [Marsh] apart from most of his minor continental contemporaries'. This very variety, however, is surely a reflection of Marsh's inability—not unexpected in an amateur—to rise above these influences and to forge a style of his own. Likewise, his works are frequently compromised by weaknesses of design or invention. Symphony no. 6 in D, for instance, was written 'upon the plan of Haydn...