Samuel Arnold (1740-1802)
Work: Overture (VI) in D, Op.8 (c.1781)
Performers: Toronto Camerata; Kevin Mallon (conductor)
Painting: John Russell (1745-1806) - Samuel Arnold
Further info: Arnold: Overtures, Op. 8
---
English composer, conductor, organist and editor. He was the son of
Thomas Arnold, a commoner, and, according to some sources, the Princess
Amelia. He received his education as a Child of the Chapel Royal (c.1750
to August 1758) and on leaving became known as an organist, conductor
and teacher, and composed prolifically. In autumn 1764 he was engaged by
John Beard as harpsichordist and composer to Covent Garden; there he
compiled several pastiche operas, including the popular The Maid of the
Mill (1765), which is among the supreme examples of the form. In 1769
Arnold bought Marylebone Gardens, and during the next six summers
produced several short all-sung burlettas, composing or at least
contributing to four new examples (now lost). These productions were
simply written (from the literary point of view at least) and would have
appealed to an audience with no previous experience of operatic music.
In 1771 he married Mary Ann Napier, sometimes described as wealthy; but
whatever the family fortune, the criminal activities of an employee at
Marylebone lost Arnold most of his money and the Gardens were sold. The
eldest of Arnold’s four children, Samuel James, his only son, was the
author of some weak opera librettos which his father set; he became the
first manager of the Lyceum Theatre. Unsurprisingly, Arnold pursued his
early composing career with a sequence of oratorios on biblical
subjects; The Prodigal Son (1773) was performed at Oxford at the
installation of Lord North as Chancellor at the Encaenia of 1773. The
university also offered Arnold the honorary degree of Doctor of Music,
but he declined, preferring to take it in the ordinary manner. Arnold
resumed his professional association with the patent theatres when, in
1777, he was engaged by George Colman the elder as composer and music
director for the Little Theatre in the Haymarket.
As a result of an inheritance, Colman had just bought the theatre; he
and Arnold had collaborated when they were on the Covent Garden staff in
the 1760s, and were always close friends. Arnold composed for the
Little Theatre for 25 years; from 1789 George Colman the younger was
manager. There is little documentary material related to Arnold’s
residency at the theatre, except through evidence of the production and
reception of his works performed there. With his afterpiece opera
Lilliput (1777) and, in the same year, an arrangement of the full-length
ballad opera Polly (text by Gay and original music attributed to
Pepusch) – Arnold’s only operatic material to survive orchestrally – was
begun a successful series of his stage works, which achieved maturity
in the full-length pasticcio ‘comic opera’ The Castle of Andalusia
(1782). By that time he was in a position to combine his summer
directorship at the Little Theatre with several other posts in London,
as organist and conductor. He was organist and composer to the Chapel
Royal (from 1783) and organist to Westminster Abbey (from 1793). In 1786
Arnold (together with Thomas Linley) succeeded John Stanley as manager
of the Lenten oratorios at Drury Lane, and in 1787 he established the
Glee Club with J.W. Callcott, who later helped him compile a large
volume of psalm settings. In 1789 he became official conductor of the
Academy of Ancient Music, and in 1790 founded the Graduates' Meeting, a
society of academic musicians which included Haydn among its associates;
he was also an active member of the Anacreontic Society and appointed
president in December 1791. A long-standing freemason, Arnold, from
1795, conducted the societies’ concerts in aid of the female orphans. In
autumn 1798 Arnold fell off his library steps, suffering injuries which
eventually led to his death; he was buried on 29 October 1802 in
Westminster Abbey. During his last three years he wrote three novel
pantomimes and an oratorio, The Hymn of Adam and Eve, presumably
composed for the Haymarket Lenten oratorio season.
Cap comentari:
Publica un comentari a l'entrada