University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Music Faculty Publications Music 2014 Composing after the Italian Manner: The nE glish Cantata 1700-1710 Jennifer Cable University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/music-faculty-publications Part of the Composition Commons Recommended Citation Cable, Jennifer. "Composing after the Italian Manner: The nE glish Cantata 1700-1710." In The Lively Arts of the London Stage: 1675-1725, edited by Kathryn Lowerre, 63-83. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Music Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Chapter 4 Composing after the Italian Manner: The English Cantata 1700-1710 Jennifer Cable Charles Gildon, in addressing the state of the arts in his 1710 publication The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, the Late Eminent Tragedian, offered the following observation concerning contemporary music and, in particular, the music of Henry Purcell: Music, as well as Verse, is subject to that Rule of Horace; He that would have Spectators share his Grief, Must write not only well, but movingly. 1 According to Gildon, the best judges of music were the 'Masters ofComposition', and he called on them to be the arbiters of whether the taste in music had been improved since Purcell's day.2 However, Gildon's English 'masters of composition' were otherwise occupied, as they were just beginning to come to terms with what was surely a concerning, if not outright frustrating, situation.