Correspondence

To the Editors of ‘Music & Letters’

Robert Pindar

Rebecca Herissone’s revelatory article discussing the revisions visited on Purcell’s birthday ode Come, ye Sons of Art (Music & Letters, 88 (2007), 1–48) left unresolved an important question: the precise identity of the copyist-cum-arranger, named in the sole complete early source for this work (London, Royal College of Music, MS 993, pp. 143–80) as Robert Pindar. Come, ye Sons of Art is one of several similarly arranged Purcell works contained in this volume, whose collective title reads: ‘Vocal and Instrumental Musick with the Overture’s Song’s & Chorusses as composed by Mr Henry Purcell Vol. 1st Finished anno Domini 1765’; the scribe signs himself ‘Rob[er]t Pindar’.

When I recently revisited this article, it struck me that it might nevertheless be possible to pinpoint this particular Pindar. Herissone had commented that the transcriber, though obviously musically literate and competent enough as a copyist, was inexpert as a composer. Since no professional musician with the surname Pindar was known from any source, the obvious inference was that the scribe was an amateur musician and/or collector of music, which might account for the shortcomings.

My starting point (following a process I have found to be very productive in other cases) was to ascertain whether any Robert Pindar had subscribed to music-related publications around 1765. I very quickly identified three such instances. The earliest (1767) was an edition by Randall and Abel of Handel’s Messiah ‘as it was originally performed’, which listed ‘The Rev. Mr. Pindar, A.M. Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge’. This Pindar was evidently conversant with musical notation, was an admirer of Handel, and had an interest in choral music in the English language. Even more encouraging was the appearance of an identically described person in the subscription list for William Randall’s new edition (1771) of Thomas Morley’s Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, which is almost a ‘Who’s Who’ of the ‘ancient music’ community active in Britain at that time. Finally, Pindar, now identified more simply as ‘Rev. Mr. Pindar M.A.’, was a subscriber in 1776 to Charles Burney’s General History of Music.

This information led me in turn to the following sources: Part II (1752–1910), volume 5, of John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1953); volume 3 of Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886 (Oxford, 1891); the Clergy of the Church of England Database (<db.theclergydatabase.org.uk>); the FamilySearch genealogical database (<https://familysearch.org>); Registrum regale sive catalogus . . . alumnorum é Collegio Etonensi, ed. Joseph Pote (Eton, 1774); The Eton College Register, 1753–1790, ed. Richard Arthur Austen- Leigh (Eton, 1921); and especially William Brocklehurst Stonehouse, The History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme (London, 1839). From these sources it is possible to piece together in outline the course of Robert Pindar’s life.

The Pindars, an armigerous landowning family centred in north Lincolnshire, included a branch resident since the late seventeenth century in Owston Ferry, just south of Epworth. Our Robert’s father, also named Robert (1707–76), studied at Lincoln College, Oxford (matriculation 1726; BA 1730; MA 1733). Ordained as a priest at Lincoln in 1733, he served briefly as a curate, first at Wroot and then at Misterton and West Stockwith, before in 1738 obtaining a rectorate at Ashby-by-Partney, which he held until his death; in 1748 he became also Vicar of Luddington (all the mentioned localities lie close to Owston). In 1735 he married Catherine Barnard at nearby Haxey. Robert junior, their second son, was baptized at Misterton on 17 October 1739. From 1752 to 1759 he studied at Eton College, whence he proceeded as a Scholar to its sister institution of King’s College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1760, and obtaining his BA in 1765 and MA in 1768. He presumably studied theology, given his title ‘Reverend’ and description in some documents as ‘Clerk’, but he chose not to enter the ministry: instead, he remained at King’s, from 1765 to 1776, as a Fellow and Tutor. In 1776 he resigned his Fellowship, to quote...