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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON Faculty of Humanities The Sound of the English Picturesque in the Late Eighteenth Century: Native Vocal Music and Haydn’s The Seasons by Stephen Groves Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2011 ABSTRACT In eighteenth-century England, the art-forms of painting, poetry and gardening were often collectively labelled, the ‘sister arts’. The increasing interest taken in the apprehension and appraisal of scenes of English landscape by artists in these fields, alongside an emerging taste for nature ‘tourism’, gave rise to the term, the ‘picturesque movement’. English music was seldom considered as belonging to this ‘sisterhood’ or discussed as a medium for conveying artistic expressions of national scenic beauty. When the picturesque was discussed alongside music it was adopted as an analogy to explain the tactics of novelty and surprise deployed by contemporaneous German composers of instrumental music; these ‘plays’ with regularity and expectation were felt to be similar to the techniques of landscape gardeners who had studied and adopted the elements of surprise and irregularity observed in picturesque ‘beauty spots’. Recent musicological references to the picturesque have also preferred to employ it in this way in order to problematize the subversion of formal characteristics in the fantasias and unconventional symphonies by German composers. This thesis addresses the silent aporia in these discourses – namely the apparent absence of any participation in the picturesque by English composers, natives of the country most associated with the picturesque sensibility. Revealing the connections between the veneration of national landscape and eighteenth-century English vocal music, it is the ‘pictorialisms’ present in their texts, and their musical treatment, which are the focus of this project. In the process, secular song, the glee and national theatre music are positioned as appropriate sites for expressions of a uniquely English, painterly engagement with national landscapes, making possible reclamation of a neglected repertoire through the lens of the picturesque. And at the end of the project, Haydn’s oratorio, The Seasons, is shown to be as much a part of the English picturesque expression as a product of the German Enlightenment. ii CONTENTS List of figures iv Declaration v Acknowledgements vi Part 1 1 Coloured for sight and sound: picturesque landscapes and the 1 muse 2 Late for the picturesque? 30 3 The abstract, suggestive and representational picturesque 65 Part 2 4 Walks and prospect views: solo song and the glee in England 93 5 From Lake Windermere to the Bay of Naples: picturesque scenery, 146 subjects and situations in English musical theatre 6 The picturesque oratorio: Haydn’s art in nature’s clothing 178 Select Bibliography 236 iii FIGURES 1.1 Paul Sandby – A View of Vinters, Boxley, Kent, with Mr. Whatman’s Turkey Paper Mills (1794) 1.2 Holkham Estate, Norfolk 1.3 Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire 1.4 Thomas Gainsborough, A Study of Beech Trees at Foxley (c. 1760) 1.5 William Gilpin – Goodrich Castle (c. 1770) 3.1 Richard Wilson – Holt Bridge on the River Dee (1762) 3.2 Richard Wilson – Croome Court (1758-9) 5.1 Thomas Gainsborough – The Woodman (c. 1790) 5.2 Phillipe de Loutherbourg – Coalbrookdale By Night (1801) 5.3 Phillipe de Loutherbourg – Peak’s Hole (c. 1780) 5.4 Phillipe de Loutherbourg – A View near Matlock (1785) 5.5 Joseph Wright of Derby – Lake with a Castle on a Hill (1787) 5.6 John Russell – The Moon (c. 1795) 5.7 Michael Angelo Rooker – Interior of Ruins, Buildwas Abbey, Shropshire (1785) 6.1 Thomas Gainsborough – Mountain Landscape with Shepherd (1783) 6.2 Phillipe de Loutherbourg – Avalanche in the Alps (1803) 6.3 Thomas Gainsborough – The Watering Place (c. 1777) 6.4 Thomas Gainsborough – The Cottage Door (c. 1778) iv DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I, ……………………………………………………………………………., [please print name] declare that the thesis entitled [enter title] ……………………….………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………. and the work presented in the thesis are both my own, and have been generated by me as the result of my own original research. I confirm that: . this work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University; . where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated; . where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; . where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; . I have acknowledged all main sources of help; . where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself. Parts of this work have been published as: ‘The Sound of the English Picturesque in the Age of the Landscape Garden’, Eighteenth Century Music 9/2 (2012). Signed: ……………………………………………………………………….. Date:……………………………………………………………………………. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those at the University of Southampton who helped and guided this project, in particular, David Owen Norris, Emma Clery, Jonathan Conlin and Valeria De Lucca. I am especially grateful to Tom Irvine for his advice and support and for reviewing numerous drafts of this thesis. I am indebted to the Faculty of Humanities at Southampton for funding my visit to the Széchényi Library in Budapest, as well as Balázs Mikusi who advised me whilst I was there. I should also like to thank Will Lingard for his help with matters technological. Lastly I would like to thank my wife, Tracey, without whom this project would simply not have been possible. vi Coloured for sight and sound Part 1 1 Coloured for sight and sound: picturesque landscapes and the muse Why brand these pleasure with the name, Of soft unsocial toils of indolence and shame? Search but the garden of the wood, Let yon’ admir’d carnation own Not all was meant for raiment or for food Not all for needful use alone; There while the seeds of future blossoms dwell ‘Tis colour’d for the sight, perfum’d to please the smell.1 Human beings find encounters with certain natural landscapes pleasurable. We seek out scenery to pique our sense of wonder, tranquil spots to slow the heart rate and to promote contemplation, and peaceful retreats to banish everyday drudgery and stress. We seem to realize that, in William Shenstone’s words from 1750, ‘not all was meant for raiment or for food’. For British aestheticians in the eighteenth century, and poets such as Shenstone, the cause of these pleasures was a new and pressing concern as they sought to establish why particular scenes from nature pleased and how the components of these scenes worked on the human mind. And for artists of the period this delight in nature’s beauty came to be expressed in much of their work. In eighteenth-century England this response is associated with the emergence of the landscape garden, a native landscape painting school and nationalistic pastoral poetry. These shared concerns led those art-forms to be collectively termed, the ‘sister arts’.2 1 William Shenstone, Rural Elegance, included in Roach’s Beauties of the Poets etc., vol. 3 (London: J. Roach, 1794), No. X, 7. 2 See Ralph Cohen, ed., Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Art and Aesthetics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 1. 1 Coloured for sight and sound English music, indeed any music, was seldom spoken of as belonging to this sisterhood, despite the prevalence of aesthetic commentary on music at the time.3 The particular kind of beauty felt to be found in certain natural landscapes, and its effect on the senses, was given a name – the picturesque, a term that was, according to Malcolm Andrews, ‘coming into vogue’ in the early eighteenth century.4 In addition to the notion of ‘picturesque’ beauty, the coinage was extended to embrace poetry, painting and gardening that objectified the beauty of natural landscape – this response was said to be picturesque and to be expressive of the picturesque. And these art- forms, together with the tourism and tourist literature that emerged in its wake, formed what has since been termed, the ‘picturesque movement’.5 So if a painting could convey a picturesque landscape, a landscape garden could express the picturesque through its artful arrangement of natural components, and a poem could articulate picturesque sentiments, how could the English composer contribute to this picturesque chorus? Answers to that question are hard to come by in either primary or secondary literature; as we will we see in the following chapter, English music, particularly in the late eighteenth century, struggled both for identity and respectability. Notwithstanding a recent musicological turn in its direction, this struggle persists. This study proposes that compelling connections between the picturesque and music from the land of its origins have, in fact, been overlooked.