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Book explores musical life in America in first 50 years after independence
Melissa
Mitchell, Arts Editor
217-333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu
11/7/03
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Just as contemporary American-made music enjoys great popularity in
Europe today, music by European composers and performers was all the
rage in America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. According
to musicologist Nicholas Temperley, musicians with significant mastery
of the British or European musical idiom were highly sought after in
America.
That’s just one of many observations Temperley makes in his new
book, “Bound for America: Three British Composers,” published
this month by the University
of Illinois Press. In the book, Temperley, a professor emeritus
of music at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explores “American musical life
in the first 50 years after independence” by examining the lives
and music of three London-based composers who emigrated to the United
States during the prime of their careers. The composers – William
Selby, who emigrated in 1773; Rayner Taylor, in 1792; and George K.
Jackson, in 1796 – were multitalented and engaged in other music-related
pursuits such as teaching, performing and serving as church organists.
Temperley, whose past research has focused primarily on British music
and composers, said personal reasons inspired him to investigate these
composers’ motivations for leaving successful careers in their
homeland and taking their chances in America.
“A certain parallel with my own career stimulated my interest
in these men,” he notes in the book. “Educated in Britain
as a musician, and then as a musicologist, I moved permanently to the
United States at the age of 34, for a mixture of reasons, economic,
professional, and personal. There I continued my career and found that
I had to modify my ideas and practices in various ways to suit my new
surroundings. It is this sort of adaptation that I wished to investigate
in Selby, Taylor and Jackson.”
Temperley considers the trio – who composed music in the era of
Mozart and Beethoven – to be talented composers in their own right,
but concedes that their names are hardly household words today, in the
United States or Britain. Their achievements are notable nonetheless,
he said. And even though Temperley acknowledges that “there were
no great composers in America” at the time, Selby, Taylor and
Jackson each were well-regarded and respected for their musical prowess
during their lifetimes. In large part, the esteemed status they earned
in the new country can be attributed to their background and training
in London, which, Temperley said, was regarded as “the fountainhead
for American ideas of public music-making” in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries.
“However,” he writes, “the prestige that London-trained
musicians enjoyed in the young republic has been reversed by history.
In the revival of early American music that took place in the later
20th century, they were seen by some scholars as symbols of a snobbish
anti-American prejudice.
The native composers whom they had displaced in their lifetimes were
now unearthed and held up for admiration, while they themselves were
devalued as an undesired foreign import. This reaction may have reached
the point of inverted prejudice. At any rate I have tried to form a
fresh evaluation of each man in his whole life and output.”
Temperley said at least one American biographer has conducted a thorough
study of each of the composers he examined. Still, reconstructing an
accurate record of their lives was difficult because relatively little
source material – such as letters, sketchbooks or even portraits
– exists. And much of the music is out of print, unrecorded and
generally hard to find. For that reason, Temperley injected his text
with several musical examples by Selby, Taylor and Jackson.
One of the biggest questions Temperley sought to answer through his
research was “Why did they leave Britain?” On the surface,
each appeared to enjoy a fairly prosperous career there. The short answer
to the question driving Temperley’s inquiry appears to be: “for
personal reasons.”
Selby, Temperley speculates, left Britain after a scandalous dismissal
from his post as organist of the Magdalen Chapel; Taylor, who may have
been married at the time of his emigration, appears to have eloped with
a young protégé; and Jackson may have moved to escape
debt collectors and assume a fresh, more respectable identity in America.
During his investigation, Temperley uncovered previously unknown information
about the composers, which he believes will be of particular interest
to other music scholars. For instance, he was the first to discover
Taylor’s birth records, which indicated his mother’s French
heritage. That is useful information for scholars, Temperley said, since
Taylor set a lot of music to French text and demonstrated an interest
in the French revolution. Temperley also was able to resolve some confusion
regarding Selby’s identity by determining that an older brother
had emigrated to New England ahead of him.
While such details will help musicologists arrive at a better understanding
of early American musical history, Temperley believes the book may appeal
to anyone, including those who appreciate music, students of American
history or both.
“The stories have quite a bit of personal interest,” he
said. “By putting two and two together, we are able to know more
about various aspects of the time.”
The book also will help people understand the role music played in the
cultural lives of post-revolutionary Americans. “Music is quite
as important as other arts in the period, but sometimes gets lost,”
Temperley said. “It’s sometimes easier to look at the architecture
or the paintings or the poetry of the period.”
