Archive Item of the Month – May 2020
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and musicians in time of hardship or misfortune
Half-length portrait from the circle of William Hogarth (1697-1764): mid eighteenth century.
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George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and Water Music, HWV348-350
The oldest surviving score of Handel’s Water Music. London: ca 1717-1719.
Archive Item of the Month – March 2020
March for March: Grand march [Hob. VIII/3bis]
composed expressly for and presented to The Royal Society of Musicians, London by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). London: 1792.
Archive Item of the Month – February 2020
Valentines’ day : Thomas Valentine (1759-1800) and his immediate family
RSM Member Thomas Valentine (A093) hailed from an extensive family of musicians from Leicester and moved to London in the late 1770s. His name appears in the list of instrumentalists for the important and ground-breaking music festival held in London in 1784, namely the Handel Commemoration Concert at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon (see An account of the musical performances in Westminster-Abbey and the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th and June the 3d and 5th, 1784 in commemoration of Handel by Charles Burney, London, printed for the benefit of the Musical Fund, 1785). Valentine joined the Society of Musicians on 4 July 1784 just a few weeks following this festival and his application had been supported by Redmond Simpson (who compiled the financial accounts for the Handel Commemoration Concert) and notes that Valentine “has practised music for a livelihood upwards of seven years, is a single man, aged about 25, plays at Covent Garden Theatre, has many scholars”.
Archive Item of the Month – January 2020
Beethoven 2020 : 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth
Head and shoulders painted plaster bust of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), clad al’antica, after a bust by Johann Nepomuk Schaller (1777-1842) of 1827. The sitter’s cloak is gathered at the right shoulder with a morse, the whole atop an integral socle. Rectangular name-plate below unlettered.
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