John Marsh and the Ancient-Modern Polemic

John Marsh and the AncientModern Polemic HOWARD IRVING The writings of musical amateur John Marsh offer one of the most extensive ye witness accounts known of late eighteenth century English musical life. Marsh's importance rests, however, on two very different contributions that researchers have often considered in isolation. This is regrettable, since the two sources were written for different purposes and different audiences and consequently reveal something about Marsh's thinking when read together that is less readily apparent when they are considered separately. The purpose of this essay is to connect disparate threads of research on Marsh and in the process to shed some light on the ideologies that shaped musical thought during a crucial period in the creation of the institutions and values we now associate with the phenomenon of classical music. Recent attention on Marsh has focused mainly on what he called his History of My Private Life. ' This massive autobiography offers an invaluable record of provincial musical life and of the complex web of social customs and rituals that were important to a gentleman of modest fortune in the southern cathedral cities in which Marsh lived. Marsh began the process of recasting daily diaries he had kept since early adolescence into a formal life history as he reached his forty-fourth year in 1796. The result eventually grew to some thirty-seven volumes spanning the years from 1765 to a point very near his 215 216 / IRVING death in 1828. A large part ofthis manuscript, which was once believed lost in its original, unedited form, was recently published as The John Marsh Journals from a complete copy obtained by the Huntington Library in 1990. Long before the reappearance of his original autobiography, Marsh received some scholarly notice for his work as a minor composer and for an abridged version of his life history, but also for two important works that stand out among his handful of published contributions to music criticism and pedagogy.2 One is a long essay published anonymously in the Monthly Magazine in 1797 that Marsh called "A Comparison Between the Ancient and Modern Styles of Music in Which the Merits and Demerits of Each are Respectively Pointed Out." The other is a related slender volume entitled Hints to Young Composers of Instrumental Music, Illustrated with 2 Movements for a Grand Orchestra in Score (London, ca. 1807) from around a decade later, in which Marsh reprised many of the ideas of the earlier essay and acknowledged its authorship. Together, these two sources are among the most important historical documents known that describe a pervasive cultural schism in England between proponents of so-called "ancient" and "modern" music. Since these two musical species might be defined in several different ways at different points in the eighteenth century some clarification is in order. At the time Marsh wrote his essay, the expression "ancient music" was often understood to mean music of Handel, Corelli, and Geminiani plus a select repertory of madrigals, earlier sacred music, and a very limited sampling of Italian opera. The expression "modern style," on the other hand — at least in the limited way Marsh understood it — referred to instrumental music written in what is sometimes called the mid-century homophonic style, including such figures as J. C. Bach, Ignaz Pleyel, and Haydn.3 Marsh completed the first draft of his Monthly Magazine essay in the spring of 1796, shortly before beginning the long project that resulted in the History of My Private Life. The Hints to Young Composers, on the other hand, dates from a point a few years after Marsh had brought his life history up to date and consciously scaled back his journal-keeping activities.4 The two published works, then, frame the important parts of the autobiography that concern the late eighteenth century and date from roughly the same time, but they were written for very different purposes and addressed to different audiences. The autobiography was intended to be read by family and friends who crossed many of the social and ideological lines that define Marsh's own place at crossroads of British society. Marsh was a moderate Anglican whose mother was a Dissenter as were many in...