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Home , Giuseppe Sammartini, Old Bailey, Recorder of London

From our Patron, Simon Callow

Last year I received the exceptional honour of the Freedom of the City of . Since boyhood I have been haunted by the City, its history, its imagery, its traditions. One of the most vital of those traditions is the City's association with music. Since at least 1350, The Worshipful Company of Musicians has proudly celebrated the noble art. I vividly remember a Festival when I was a youth, in which The Yeoman of the Guards was performed with full son et lumière effects at the of London, and Sir William Walton was specially commissioned to write a splendid piece for the City – A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table. Since then the Barbican Concert Hall has opened, and the London Symphony Orchestra has become resident orchestra. Music is everywhere in the City, as it should be. So when last year's Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Roger and Clare Gifford, asked me become a Patron of their new charity, the City Music Foundation, I said yes straight away - not only because of the ancient association of the City with music, but because it looks so keenly to the future. Its raison d'être is to help young musicians at that critical difficult early point in their careers, right at the beginning, after their training, when they attempt to launch themselves into the world. The Foundation nurtures, encourages, and supports them at a vulnerable moment in their lives. I know very well what that feels like - young actors face exactly the same problems; sometimes really gifted, exceptional artists fall by the wayside. The CMF exists to make sure that that doesn't happen. Countless talented musicians will owe their subsequent success to it; what a fantastic contribution. I am very proud to be associated with it.

Welcome to this interactive programme!

Follow the links in the text to find out more….

Recorders, the and the City Music Foundation

Music has always been at the heart of the City and through the ages has pervaded all walks of life. This evening we are focussing on the legal connections in two well-known and loved buildings.

The title of London has obvious musical connotations which we will explore this evening. The is an important and ancient legal office in the City of London, appointed by the Crown and responsible for managing the court lists and allocation of cases to the court’s as well as providing legal advice to the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. We are honoured to welcome the current Recorder of London His Honour Brian Barker, QC to explain more about the history of this prestigious position.

The Old Bailey is the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, named after the street on which it stands. Music has occasionally played a central role in cases, for instance in 1751 when a guilty verdict was returned in a manslaughter case with a “german flute” as the weapon! Moreover, a tunnel was built directly from prison, where the Old Bailey now stands, into what is now known as the National Musicians’ Church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate. The purpose of this was unfortunately not musical, rather to ease the execution process. The twelve “Bells of Old Bailey” are remembered in the rhyme “” and St Sepulchre’s great bell tolled as condemned men passed from the prison towards the gallows.

By contrast, the City Music Foundation (CMF) is a young organisation which promotes outstanding musicians starting out on their career. One of our inaugural CMF Artists is recorder player Miriam Nerval who studied in the City at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and joined the other seven 2013 CMF Artists last year in a showcase concert at the recently opened Milton Court Concert Hall at the Barbican. This evening is also part of the City of London Festival and CMF is proud to help ensure that music and the arts continue to play an important role in the vibrant life of the City, now and into the future.

The Old Bailey and the Recorder of London: A Brief History

The Old Bailey is the common name of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales and named after the street on which it stands. It is one of a number of buildings housing the .

The Recorder of London is a legal office in the City of London, appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the City of London Corporation with the concurrence of the . The Recorder is responsible for managing the court lists and allocation of cases to the court’s judges as well as providing legal advice to the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. The Recorder takes charge of the election of the , declares the result, and presents the new Lord Mayor for the monarch's approval. On the occasion of a State visit, the Recorder usually presents an Address of Welcome on behalf of the City.

1298 First Recorder of London appointed

1559 Recorder presents Queen Elizabeth I with 1000 gold coins as she rides to her coronation

1444 A charter granted by Henry VI appoints the Recorder of London ex office a Conservator of the Peace.

1666: The medieval courthouse is destroyed as well as (site of part of the present building).

1674 Courthouse rebuilt, with the court initially open to the weather to prevent the spread of disease

1750 A particularly serious outbreak of typhus (gaol fever) kills sixty people, including the Lord Mayor and two judges.

1751 A guilty verdict is returned in a manslaughter case with a “german flute” as the weapon

1807 28 people are crushed to death after a pie-seller’s stall overturns amongst the large riotous crowd gathered for a public hanging. A secret tunnel is subsequently created between the prison and the church of St Sepulchre- without-Newgate to allow the priest to minister to the condemned man without having to force his way through the crowds.

1808 The Sheriffs’ and Recorder’s Fund is started to help inmates and their families dealing with the horrors of Newgate Prison.

1829 – 1833 Charles Dickens is court reporter. The Old Bailey features in as the courthouse where Charles Darnay is on trial for treason.

1833 Recorder of London is discharged for incompetence after a man who had been granted a reprieve was nearly hanged.

1907 New courthouse building is officially opened by King Edward VII. The original ceremonial gates to this part of the building are only used by the Lord Mayor and visiting royalty.

1941 The Old Bailey is badly damaged in

1973 IRA bombing at Old Bailey and

1974 Year in which the original play of was set

2007 The Old Bailey (in its current form) turns 100. Read more about the history here and here.

HH Judge Brian Barker, QC, Recorder of London

HH Judge Brian Barker, QC is the senior judge at the Central Criminal Court better known as the Old Bailey – the most famous criminal court in the world. The UK’s most notorious criminal cases are tried at the Old Bailey very much in the public eye, making headlines from day to day in the national news.

HH Judge Brian Barker, QC has also been Recorder of London since 2013 and was previously the Common Serjeant for seven years. Both of these are ancient City of London offices appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. The first Recorder of London was appointed in 1298.

In addition to hearing trials in the Central Criminal Court the Recorder of London is responsible for managing the court lists and allocation of cases to the judges. He also provides legal advice to the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. He presides over the election of the Lord Mayor of London and presents the Lord Mayor for the monarch’s approval. When there is a State visit the Recorder presents the Address of Welcome on behalf of the City.

HH Judge Brian Barker, QC started practice as a barrister in 1970 after being called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn. He became a QC in 1990 and became a permanent judge at the Central Criminal Court in 2000.

Brian has a great interest in the City and the Old Bailey and derives enjoyment from both the facts and the fiction associated with his role.

Miriam Nerval

Miriam Nerval is fast establishing a name for herself as an exciting and versatile young performer in the recorder world. She graduated with First Class Honours from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD) in 2012, studying with Ian Wilson, Robert Ehrlich and Pamela Thorby, and continued as a scholarship student to post-graduate level (MMus – 2013). She has participated in master classes in Europe and the Middle East with prominent recorder players such as Kees Boeke, Karel van Steenhoven, Piers Adams, Sebastien Marq and Drora Bruck.

Miriam has performed in numerous prominent events and venues with highlights including the Wigmore Hall, Wilton’s Music Hall, The Foundling Museum, Eton College, Kings Place, Stationer’s Hall, the London Handel Festival, the Dolmetsch Centenary Celebrations, the Brandenburg Festival, the Greenwich Early Music Festival, Britten 100 and Tel-Aviv International Early Music Seminar. Additionally, she has featured as a soloist with the New London Orchestra, the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra and Eboracum Baroque.

Miriam has been successful in many competitions. She was twice awarded the GSMD Concert Recital Diploma for outstanding final recital, once upon each graduation. She won a Musicians Benevolent Fund Postgraduate Performance Award to support her studies, alongside a generous scholarship from the GSMD. Miriam was twice a finalist in the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers Competition (2012, 2013) and won the June Emerson Launchpad Prize with her recorder quartet. She received first prize in both the solo and ensemble categories of the Recorder Conservatoire division of the North London Festival of Music (2013). She is also a finalist in the Westbourne Orchestral Society’s Competition later in 2014.

Miriam is a City Music Foundation Artist, one of the inaugural awardees from 2013, and as a result became the first recorder player to give a recital in the City’s newest venue, Milton Court Concert Hall. This evening’s concert, part of the City of London Festival, is part of a programme of support she receives from CMF.

Miriam is beginning to forge a career, dividing time between regular performances as a soloist and chamber musician (with Palisander Recorder Quartet and WoodWork) and instrumental teaching throughout London. She is a passionate teacher, working as a recorder, theory and Young Music Makers teacher for Camden Music Service, Richmond Music Trust, and Barnet Arts Trust.

Nathaniel Mander

Harpsichordist Nathaniel Mander, winner of the 10th Broadwood International Solo Harpsichord Competition, graduated in 2011 with first class honours from the Royal Academy of Music. He became interested in the harpsichord at an early age, being fascinated by the repertoire and finding the instrument infinitely more congenial than the piano. His initial studies were with Richard Lester. In 2009 he moved to London to take up his place at the Royal Academy and it was here that he met and studied with Carole Cerasi, who has deeply influenced his physical sound and approach to the instrument.

While at the Academy Nathaniel won the Early Music Prize three years in a row as well as the Harold Samuel Bach Solo Keyboard Prize in 2010. He won first prize for the Early Keyboard Ensemble Competition at Fenton House with his group, Ensemble Caravaggio. In 2011 he was awarded a prize at the first “G. Gambi” International Competition for Harpsichord in Pesaro, Italy.

Nathaniel performs both as a harpsichord and a fortepiano soloist, and has worked with many distinguished musicians including the late Charles Mackerras, Laurence Cummings, and Rachel Podger. In 2010, he gave his debut recital for the British Harpsichord Society at Handel House, where he continues to give recitals. He made his Wigmore Hall concerto debut in 2012 with a performance of C.P.E. Bach’s great D minor concerto. Nathaniel performs widely as a recitalist and recent concert work has included performances at Mandeville Place, Fenton House, Finchcocks, the Cobbe Collection of Early Keyboards at Hatchlands, the Russell Collection in , Kings Place, Kent’s Tudeley Festival, the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, the London Handel Festival and the Spitalfields Winter Festival and Raynham Hall.

Nathaniel has just been awarded the Linda Hill Junior Fellowship in Harpsichord at the Royal College of Music.

James Bramley

As a soloist and accompanist, in ensembles and as a continuo player, James performs throughout the UK and abroad on the lute, theorbo and Baroque guitar. He began studying lute with Manuel Minguillón in London and Madrid, and has also taken lessons and master classes with Paul O’Dette, Nigel North, Elizabeth Kenny, Jacob Heringman, Evangelina Mascardi and Michael Fields. He is currently continuing his studies with William Carter and David Miller at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Born in London, James began his musical education on the violin, percussion and piano as a music scholar at Bristol Cathedral School. He went on to play in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and study at the Royal Academy of Music. James then read languages and history at King’s College London and the London School of Economics, before returning to music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

Recently acclaimed performances include Cavalli’s La Calisto with Hampstead Garden Opera, and Daniel Purcell’s The Judgement of Paris with Spirirato directed by Julian Perkins. He has worked with many renowned artists and ensembles including Emma Kirkby, Evelyn Tubb and London Concertante, performing at venues including the Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, the Foundling Museum and St Martin-in-the-Fields. James has also given concerts and recitals for The Lute Society, the London Handel festival, and the City of London Festival, as well as directing numerous educational projects and workshops for all ages, most recently for the Wigmore Hall’s Chamber Tots programme. He is a founding member of Defleo, an ensemble reviving all aspects of seventeenth and early eighteenth century music drama.

The Music

The following pieces were chosen by Miriam to tell the history of the recorder. Here she explains why….

Miri It Is / Sumer is Icumen in - 13th century England Miri It Is and Sumer is Icumen in are rare examples of secular songs written in Middle English. Miri It Is is a setting of a mediaeval poem (author unknown) written around 1225 AD. Only the first stanza of this setting has survived, alongside fragments of two other songs that were slipped into the front of a manuscript from the same era. No rhythmic indication was given on this fragment; modern performers and editors instead rely on the syllabic pattern of the poem to inspire their interpretations. In contrast to this Sumer is Icumen in survives not only in its entirety, but also with detailed instructions as to its performance. One of the earliest and most complex rotas (similar to a modern-day round), this can be performed in up to six-parts, and demonstrates polyphonic writing not usually associated with compositions of this time. Today, you will hear both pieces not in their traditional vocal setting, but arranged for the recorder, as it is likely the traveling musicians of the mediaeval period would have done.

Can She Excuse My Wrongs – John Dowland (1563-1626) Whilst Can She Excuse My Wrongs was originally published as a lute song in First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597), Dowland would perhaps not disapprove of the arrangement for lute and recorder we are presenting today, given that he too published a purely instrumental version known as The Earl of Essex Galliard (1605). I have written divisions on the original melody line: a common form of ornamentation employed by instrumental musicians of this time that quite literally divides the given note into smaller note values, resulting in florid passages around the original theme.

New Ground – From the Division Flute (1706) The Division Flute, published in two parts by John Walsh (London, 1706), is an anthology ‘containing the newest divisions upon the choisest grounds.’ However, it would be fair to assume the melodies featured in this collection are slightly older than the publication date implies, as the original for the violin was published more than 20 years earlier. The compositions featured marry the ever-popular art of divisions and the ground bass (a repeating bass line, usually just a few bars in length): a structure that enjoyed intense popularity in England at this time. Post-Reformation London welcomed the first real generation of amateur musicians, and The Division Flute proved a most popular choice amongst these players: assured by its publisher it is ‘Very Improving and Delightful to all lovers of that instrument.’

If Music be the Food of Love – Henry Purcell (1659-1695) Henry Purcell’s collection of songs, the Orpheus Brittanicus (first published posthumously in 1698) contains alternative versions of select songs transposed for the violin or recorder. This was not uncommon practice on the part of composers or publishers at this time, looking to market their editions to the widest audiences by making them accessible to a variety of instruments. These arrangements, suggested by Purcell himself, are of some comfort to recorder players: whilst the instrument is frequently featured in his theatrical music and songs, no solo work for the recorder survives. If Music Be the Food of Love seemed the ideal choice for this programme, as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (which opens with these words) was first performed at .

Recorder Concerto in F – Giuseppe Sammartini (1695-1750) I. Allegro II. Sicilliano III. Allegro Assai Giuseppe Sammartini, whilst Italian by birth, spent most of his life living and working in London. All things Italian were hugely fashionable at this time (Telemann even occasionally worked under the anagram Snr. Melante, in a bid to sell more music) so it is no surprise that Sammartini retained the Baroque compositional style of his homeland, despite his move to England. One of the earliest virtuosos, it is likely Sammartini was also proficient on the recorder, as doubling in orchestras was customary at this time. As a frequent soloist in Handel’s orchestra, he was immersed in the London music scene of the early 18th century.

Extracts from The Beggar’s Opera (1728) The Lass of Patie’s Mill Cold and Raw The Beggar’s Opera was a hugely successful work that ran for 62 consecutive performances, breaking all previous records. It was perhaps especially popular with audiences as it used familiar folk melodies (with adapted new lyrics) and characters they could identify with; a stark contrast to the elaborate Italian operas more usually performed in London at this time. Whilst the songs were originally arranged by Pepusch, only the Overture from his original score survives, so tonight you will hear settings of the same melodies by Barsanti and Playford respectively.

The Lass of Patie’s Mill is an old Scottish tune, the composition of which is often attributed to David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary Queen of Scots. Cold and Raw is known by many other names including Stingo and The Oyle of Barley and features in Henry Playford’s The Dancing Master of 1651.

Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet – Igor Stravinsky (1882- 1971) Movements I & III As you will have seen this evening, recorder players have a habit of borrowing music from other instruments as a means of extending our repertoire. The recorder revival of the 20th Century happened a little too late to have inspired many of the great composers to write for the instrument - Igor Stravinsky included. Whilst he is perhaps best remembered for his large scale orchestral works, following the intense controversy surrounding the premiere of The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky focused on a number of compositions for hugely reduced forces, including The Soldier’s Tale for seven instrumentalists, which was followed immediately by this, his Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet.

The Voice of The Crocodile – Benjamin Thorn (b.1961) Movements II & III Benjamin Thorn is an Australian composer, educator and recorder player. Although he has published works for numerous instruments and ensembles, it is his recorder music that earned him critical acclaim. Thorn seems to be an eccentric character, citing that he is concerned ‘too little recorder music is inspired by vegetables and crocodiles’ and that he ‘has been referred to 7/8 Anonymous to cure a marked addiction to that time signature’. Originally for bass recorder and voice, the composer states in the score that he ‘assumes the player is a man.’ Consequently, I will be performing on a tenor recorder so that the intended relationship between recorder and voice can be preserved.

Botany Bay - Anon Closing the programme today is our original arrangement of the well-known folk tune, Botany Bay. The song appeared in Little , a Victorian play (premiered London, 1885) based on the life of the notorious 18th Century criminal of the same name. However, one can only assume the song dates back further than this, as it is described in the play’s programme as an ‘Old Air.’

Farewell to old England forever, Farewell to my rum coes as well, Farewell to the well-known Old Bailey Where I used for to cut such a swell

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