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Florimel, or Love's Revenge, a Dramatic Pastoral in two interludes, was the first of six large-scale musical works by Maurice Greene for which the words were written by John Hoadly, sometime Chaplain to the Prince of Wales and youngest son of Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, one of the most celebrated of eighteenth-century Anglican divines. The Bishop is said to have had a particular liking for music and the theatre which, in his calling, he found it impossible to gratify without impropriety; thus it was probably in the drawing room at Farnham Castle, the episcopal seat, that the piece was first performed in 1734. Though it was never done in any of the London theatres, it does seem to have been quite widely performed (in 'still life' as Burney might have said), and no fewer than six manuscript sources survive--which is at least double the number for any other English 'opera' of the period. A facsimile of the earliest and most important of these has recently been issued by Stainer & Bell in their prestigious Music for London Entertainment series.[1] No sooner had it appeared than my attention was drawn to Keith Maslen's article on 'Dr. Hoadly's "Poems Set to Music by Dr. Greene"' in the 1995 issue of this journal (vol. 48, pp. 85-94). By printing cast lists not only for Florimel (or Love's Revenge as Hoadly himself preferred to call it), but also for the various other musico-dramatic pieces in which they collaborated, the article provides valuable new evidence on the performance history of these works. Viewed from the musicological side of the fence, however, there is still a good deal more to be said of some of the personalities involved, and also of Hoadly's other poetic contributions to the English vocal repertoire of the period.
Hoadly came down from Cambridge with an LL.B. in the summer of 1735 and immediately decided to become a clergyman in order that, as the D.N.B. puts it, 'he might avail himself of the rich patronage at his father's disposal'. Five years earlier, Greene had taken a Cambridge doctorate of music and, 'in compliment to his performance' there, had been elected to a purely titular professorship in the subject. It must therefore have been while John Hoadly was still a student at the university that Love's Revenge was written and first performed. Quite how Greene came to be so intimate with
Exactly who was involved in the 1734 premiere of Love's Revenge we do not know, but I suspect it was an essentially domestic affair in which the parts of Florimel, Myrtillo and Cupid (all trebles) were sung by three of the more accomplished boy choristers from St Paul's Cathedral or the Chapel Royal, and that of the Satyr (a bass) quite possibly by the composer himself, especially since he is known to have sung the part at a later performance of the work given at his own house in Beaufort Buildings just off the Strand. But the cast list of this later performance and also the one which took place at the Apollo Academy are to be found not only in the Otago copy of the 1737 Winchester libretto cited by Maslen: they are also written by hand in another copy of the same edition which is now in the Royal College of Music, London (press-mark XXI.C.IV), the only difference being that there is no mention of 'Mr. Abbott' whose name, in the Otago copy, is scored through and replaced by 'Mr. Mence'. The Rev. John Abbott (bass) died on 18 February 1744 and his place in the Chapel Royal choir was taken by the Rev. Anselm Bayly. The fact that 'Mr. Bailley' figures in this particular cast list along with Benjamin Mence and William Savage, all of whom gained their Chapel Royal appointments in the spring of that same year (1744), suggests that the Apollo Academy performance--in which the Rev. Edward Lloyd evidently sang the part of Cupid--was almost certainly the one referred to in The Daily Advertiser of 11 January 1745 as having taken place the night before.[4]
As for the singers who were involved in the performance at Greene's house, 'Miss Gilbert, afterwards Mrs. Bowes' can be identified as the wife (from 1743?) of George Bowes, a wealthy Whig landowner and popular member of Parliament for Co. Durham (1727-60). The family were generous patrons of the arts, and especially of music, and Greene visited them at their North Country home, Gibside, superbly situated on the heights overlooking the Derwent, near Gateshead, in June 1750.[5] Of 'Miss Ayliffe' and 'Mr Hastings' nothing whatever is known, but since the latter evidently sang the part of Myrtillo, it must almost certainly have been the later version of the work in which all the music for this character was assigned to a countertenor which was done on this particular occasion.
From the engraving of Apollo and his lyre on the title-page of the earliest printed libretto (London, 1734), we may safely infer that the work was taken up by the Academy very shortly after its first performance. Rather surprisingly perhaps--or was it simply that the text was too long?--the words were not included in A Miscellany of Lyric Poems, The Greatest Part written for, And performed in The Academy of Music, Held in the Apollo published in London in 1740; this does, however, contain the text of another joint Greene-Hoadly production, the undated masque 'The Judgment [sic] of Hercules' whose score was last heard of in 1832 (when it was listed in the library sale catalogue of Thomas Greatorex, recently deceased). It is interesting that Hoadly himself calls it 'The Choice of Hercules', whereas Robert Lowth in his versified treatment of the same subject later adapted for setting by Handel in 1751 originally opted for 'Judgment'.[6] The other 'Choice of Hercules' referred to by Maslen (whose remarks are based on the somewhat confused account given by Roger Fiske in his English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century) is by Greene's pupil, John Stanley (1712-86), and is actually earlier. The librettist in this case is unknown, but the music was evidently composed somewhere round about 1730,[7] and there is absolutely no reason to suppose it was never performed (or that it was unknown to Greene and Hoadly either for that matter). Though Fiske does not fail to mention 'The Judgment of Hercules' by Shenstone (1741), he appears not to have noticed that there were yet two more poems with the same title, one by Joseph Mitchell published in 1727, the other by Peter Layng in 1748.[8]
Of the two 1745 editions of Love's Revenge, the one printed in London most probably relates to the performance at Greene's Apollo Academy referred to above, the other (with no specified place of publication) to a performance by various members of the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral choirs under the direction of the composer at Gloucester on 4 September 1745 as part of that year's Three Choirs Festival programme. The work was also done at the Winchester Festival in 1768 and at the Hampshire Music Meeting in 1781, but the only other edition of the libretto was apparently printed for a London performance given by the Castle Society at Haberdashers' Hall on 21 March 1757.
The Greene-Hoadly oratorio Jephtha (1737), likewise survives, musically speaking, in two versions. In one, Jephtha's daughter (unnamed) is cast as a soprano ( or boy treble more likely), and in the other as a countertenor. It is interesting that, in the cast list quoted by Maslen, the part was taken by 'Mrs. Lampe', and that Hoadly himself says the performance took place 'at ye. Academy in the Apollo' since all the evidence hitherto available has suggested that, as with the 1745 performance of Love's Revenge referred to above, the Academy's concerts seem normally to have been all-male affairs. In his Handel: A Documentary Biography (1954), Otto Erich Deutsch refers to a production of the work at the King's Theater in the Haymarket in Lent 1737, but he does not state his source, and no evidence in support of this assertion has yet come to light. 'Mr. Abbott' (who sang the part of Jephtha) was, as has already been noted, one of Greene's colleagues at St Paul's and the Chapel Royal. So too were the two Elders, Messrs. 'Whaley' (Samuel Weely, d. 1743) and (David) 'Cheriton' (d. 1758). In his libretto, Hoadly lays a good deal of emphasis on the notion of Jephtha as Patriot King, in doing so, he no doubt sought to interest and impress his employer, the Prince of Wales (whose Chaplain he became almost immediately after his ordination in December 1735).[9]
As with the masque, The Choice of Hercules, the words only of the oratorio The Force of Truth now survive. According to the Gentleman's Magazine in its 'Memoirs of the Life of the late Dr. John Hoadly' (April 1776, p.165) and repeated verbatim in the Annual Register (xix), the piece was written 'for his friend Dr. Green's academy at the Apollo'. A score and parts, apparently autograph, is listed in the sale catalogue of the library of Greene's pupil, William Boyce, in April 1779, and was last heard of in 1822. Both soloists named by Hoadly in the Otago copy of the libretto have already been identified in connection with the 1745 Academy performance of Love's Revenge. Without the music it is difficult to be certain, but the 'Miss Young' who sang Pleasure in The Choice of Hercules is most likely perhaps to have been Esther, the younger sister of Mrs. Lampe (née Young) who was Virtue on the same occasion. Cecilia Young (1711-89), another member of the same
The three-act pastoral opera Phoebe (1747), though musically (and dramatically) a better work than Love's Revenge, was nothing like so successful, and only one public performance is recorded: at a benefit for John Robinson, the organist of Westminster Abbey, in Mr Ogle's Great Room, Dean Street, Soho, on 16 January 1755. That it was also done by the Apollo Academy has hitherto been a matter of conjecture, and Keith Maslen is quite right in assuming 'Mr. Beard' to have been John Beard, the celebrated tenor. Of the other singers named, only Messrs. 'Wasse' and 'Jones' (who evidently took on both female roles) have yet to be identified. Robert Wass is no problem, for he too was a member of the St Paul's, Westminster Abbey and Chapel Royal choirs from 1743-45 until his death in 1764. Who Jones was is more difficult to say, but probably the singer concerned is the little-known David Jones who was appointed a Lay Vicar at the Abbey in May 1743 and died in January 1751.[10]
Two other works by Hoadly, Love's Artifice
and The Song of Moses, are also mentioned
by Maslen who wonders apropos of the first whether 'it was ever set to music, but only intended
to be, and never performed?'. The same question also applies to The Song of
Moses. The answer
is to be found in a letter from Hoadly to David Garrick dated 27 August 1775 in which he lists his
various dramatic works as
- "Love's Revenge" (a printed book) where Florimel is introduced . . .
- " Phoebe," a whole Pastoral Opera of three acts, . . .
- "Love's Artifice," a Mask, from "Don Quixote."
- "The Choice of Hercules," A Mask, set by Dr.G.
- "The Song of Moses," paraphrased for music.
- [and] "The Beggar's Garland," a ballad scene, which I imagine . . . would be a fine thing for Sadler's Wells.[11]
It seems that, a month or so earlier, Hoadly had sent copies of most of these pieces to Garrick,[12] and that Garrick, unaware of the fact that the music took three quarters of an hour to perform, evidently had some idea of including The Choice of Hercules as part of a rather longer entertainment which he was then planning to stage. Also in Garrick's hands were the words of 'my two (unset) pieces' which Hoadly asks him to send on to 'Mr. Linley' in Bath
By that time, however, Hoadly was dead and Garrick had retired.
Towards the end of his
Drury Lane career, Garrick was, as Dougald MacMillan points out, 'forced, by the policy of
Covent Garden and by the vogue of comic opera, to rely more and more upon musical
pieces'.[15]
This no doubt explains why he was actively considering The Choice of
Hercules. Writing to
Garrick again on 10 September 1775, Hoadly also tried to interest him in Love's Revenge, a copy
of which, 'hashed and slashed', he enclosed with his letter:
In the same letter, Hoadly claims to have written the words of the enormously popular song 'The Early Horn' composed, he says, 'for Rich, in the Cambridge stage-coach, [in] 1731' and shortly afterwards set to music by J. E. Galliard whom Hoadly describes as 'a most genteel and knowing composer'.[17]
The reference here is to volume five of A Collection of Poems . . . By Several Hands published by Robert Dodsley in 1758 where, on pp. 258-268, is to be found 'Kambromyomaxia: or the Mouse-Trap; Being a Translation of Mr. Holdsworth's Muscipula, 1737. By ****.' Though anonymous on the page, the author is identified in a list of 'Names . . . not [otherwise] mentioned in the Six Volumes of Miscellanies', and prefixed to volume one, as 'Dr. Hoadley' [sic]. In the 1782 edition (with notes by Isaac Reed),[19] the words are actually ascribed to 'Dr. John Hoadly', while the next several poems in both--pp. 269-288 in the 1758 edition--are 'By the Same'. First come the 'Verses under the Prints of Mr. Hogarth's Rake's Progress, 1735'--one for each of the eight plates--then three poems headed 'On the Friendship of two young Ladies, 1730', 'Chloe's unknown Likeness, 1738,' and 'The Bird of Passage, 1749'. These are followed by six lines of French verse 'said to be fixed on the Gate at the Louvre at Paris. 1751' (with translations into both English and Latin), and then (on pp. 280-281) 'Chloe resolved. A Ballad. Set to Music by Dr. Green. 1743'.[20] Next we have an 'Epilogue to Shakespear's first Part of King Henry IV, acted by Young Gentlemen at Mr. Newcome's School at Hackney,
According to Bishop Percy in his MS list of 'Concealed Names &c.' appended to each volume of his copy of the 1758 edition, there are also two items by 'Chancellor [i.e., John] Hoadley' in volume six. One is the poem on p. 229 headed 'To Chloe, written on the Author's Birth Day', the other the piece entitled 'The Indolent' on pp. 294-295. While most of Percy's Hoadly attributions are confirmed by the editor of the 1782 edition, this latter one, curiously, is not. 'To Chloe', on the other hand, was also printed in volume three, and there appears as the last but one of another group of verses which Thomas Percy likewise maintained was the work of Chancellor Hoadly. [23] In this he was evidently supported by Walpole,[24] although the first of these poems (and by implication all the others in the same group) was quite unambiguously assigned to brother Benjamin in 1782. Which of the two was actually responsible is anyone's guess, but, in view of John Hoadly's longstanding association with the composer (who also set some of these lines as well), the chances are that Percy and Walpole together are more likely to have been right than Reed.[25]
Much the most important of these are six cantatas (pp. 255-265 in the 1758 edition) entitled 'The Trophy' and dedicated, in the wake of Culloden, 'To the Honour of his Royal Highness William, Duke of Cumberland; Expressing the just Sense of a grateful Nation, in the several Characters of The Volunteer, The Poet, The Painter, The Musician, The Shepherd, [and] The Religious'. Greene's music is said to have been written in 1746, but if so, it too has long since disappeared. Also set by Greene is the song (on pp. 271-273) beginning 'To silent groves, where weeping yew With sadly mournful cypress join'd'.[26] This is the last of the Hoadly group of poems in Dodsley's original
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