William Boyce (1710-1779) - Ode 'The charms of harmony display' (c.1738)
Performers: Patrіck Burrowes (boy soprano); Willіam Purefoy (alto (boy);
Andrew Wаtts (counter-tenor); Richard Edgar-Wilson (tenor); Michael
George (bass-baritone);
Choir of New College Oxford; Hаnover Band;
Grаhаm Leа-Cox (conductor)
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English composer, organist and editor. Though formerly best known for
some of his anthems and his editing of Cathedral Music (1760-73), the
significant contribution he made to instrumental music, song, secular
choral and theatre music in England is now widely recognized. Boyce’s
family came from Warwickshire, where his grandfather was a farmer. His
father, John, the youngest of five sons, came to London in 1691 to be
apprenticed to a joiner. He settled in the City of London, as a joiner
and cabinetmaker, and married Elizabeth Cordwell in 1703. They were
living in Maiden Lane (now Skinners Lane) when William, the last of
their four children, was born. His earliest musical education was as a
chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, after which he was a
student of Johann Pepusch and Maurice Greene. In 1734 he obtained his
first position as an organist at the Oxford Chapel, and in 1736 he
became a composer for the Chapel Royal. In 1738, along with George
Frideric Handel, Thomas Arne, and Pepusch, he founded the Society of
Musicians, later the Royal Society. By 1755 he was well known for his
stage works, including the 1740 masque Peleus and Thetis and The
Chaplet, a favorite pastoral opera from 1749. In 1755 he was appointed
as master of the King’s Musick, and three years later organist of the
Chapel Royal. Boyce married Hannah Nixon on 9 June 1759, and his son
William was born in March 1764. He suffered from slowly increasing
deafness, which appears to have made it difficult for Boyce to perform
his church duties by the 1760s. As a composer, although his list of
works includes over 75 anthems and 4 other settings of the Te Deum,
Boyce was known in his own lifetime mostly for his stage music,
including six masques and contributions of incidental music and songs to
many other productions, for his odes (mostly composed after 1755 when
he succeeded Maurice Greene as Master of the King’s Musick), and a
famous publication in 1747 of 12 sonatas for two violins and continuo.
He also composed 3 later sonatas for two violins, 10 voluntaries, 12
overtures, and 6 concertos. Today, the most frequently heard music of
Boyce is his set of eight symphonies of 1760.
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