The Practitioners of Musick

Britannia’s Invitation

Oft has it been said that British music experienced a decline at the outset of the eighteenth century. It was precisely for the rejection of this notion that two private collectors in America set about gathering together a treasury of British instrumental and vocal music published in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin between the years of 1695 and 1795. The result is a fruitful collaboration with Ruth and Jeremy Burbidge, proprietors of the Peacock Press in Yorkshire. The works selected from the collection form the basis of a new and unusual series of facsimile editions appropriately entitled Britannia’s Invitation – A Treasury of British Vocal Music . For in this repertory there is, to quote a phrase from the quill of Colley Cibber (1671-1757), poet, playwright, and contemporary of all the composers represented in the series, nothing in it to “coerce…passions”.

While the protean Handel is represented in the series, so too are those esteemed English masters Thomas Augustine Arne and Maurice Greene, who wrote neat and finely-crafted music for songs and cantatas – often, alas, to texts that are by today’s standards of optimistic merit. Nonetheless this repertory unjustifiably remains largely unheard and neglected. To rescue this charming music from oblivion, it is ardently hoped by the publishers that those interested parties who purchase selections from Britannia’s Invitation will find occasions to perform the airs, songs, and cantatas before audiences who will indeed greet the music anew with approbation.

John Burkhalter and Eugene Roan

Since 1952, Fenton House in Hampstead, London has been home to one of the most important collections of early keyboard instruments in Europe. Cared for by the National Trust of Great Britain, the collection was assembled during the early decades of the twentieth century by Major George Henry Benton Fletcher, a man of extraordinary vision. Major Fletcher was an ardent advocate of the value of playing early music on period instruments. For a new catalogue compiled by Mimi S. Waitzman,  along with an accompanying CD of the Fletcher collection, the Practitioners of Musick supplied Charles Frederick Abel’s Overture  in B-flat Major (1759) which was played by Terence Charlston on a Shudi and Broadwood harpsichord of 1770.

In the predawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of about three hundred French and Native allies launched a daring raid on the English settlement. A hundred and twelve men, women, and children were captured and taken on a three hundred mile forced march to Canada in harsh winter conditions.

Some of the captives were later redeemed and returned to Deerfield, but one third chose to remain among their French and Native captors.

The Practitioners were invited to provide text and music for a section of the 1704 Deerfield website, devoted to sacred and secular music in New France.

The Old Barracks Fife and Drum Corps, Trenton, New Jersey (photo courtesy of the Old Barracks Association)

The Old Barracks Fife and Drum Corps released, in 2010, a recording that includes marches found in the Caspar Schaffner manuscript, arranged and edited by Steve Hudak, for the Corps, of which he is the distinguished director. The CD, titled, “Guardian Angels” debuted the talents of the fifes and drums of the Old Barracks. But it offers more than just the familiar compilation of martial music drawn from the 17^th to the early 19^th centuries; it is unique in that many of the melodies recorded are extracted directly from original manuscripts of Caspar Schaffner (1767-1825) of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  The first manuscript volume is in the collection of the Practitioners of Musick.

The Practitioners of Musick contemplates a recording project highlighting the English and  German repertory found in the manuscript.

The Practitioners of Musick plan to perform and record many selections from a remarkable new source, a collection of sheet music published in London between 1790 and 1815, that was acquired by and bound for one of the members of the celebrated Calvert family of Maryland. Among the many felicities of the volume are keyboard arrangements of English and Scottish dance tunes.