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”.