Music for Gainsborough
by his contemporaries

charivari agréable

Susanne Heinrich
Kah-Ming Ng
Lynda Sayce

with

Reiko Ichise

Programme Notes

The paintings of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) constitute one of the most poignant and evocative icons of Georgian England; he painted supremely accomplished portraits of a wide social spectrum, and landscapes which capture the verdancy of England prior to the Stygian advance of the Industrial Revolution. His surviving correspondence and many contemporary references give glimpses of the painter himself, who emerges as an attractive and well-liked personality. For example, the son of the master of Ipswich grammar school recalled that ‘he was a great favourite of my father; indeed his affable and agreeable manners endeared him to all with whom his profession brought him in contact...I have seen the aged features of the peasantry light up with a grateful recollection of his many acts of kindness and benevolence.’

Born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1727, he studied in London with Hubert Gravelot and, from 1740, Francis Hayman. He remained in the capital until 1748, whereupon he returned to Sudbury to eke out a living as a provincial portraitist. Business was limited, so in 1752 he moved to nearby Ipswich and then, in 1759, to Bath, a fashionable and rapidly expanding spa which became a magnet for the fashion-conscious leisured classes. Bath was not to everyone’s taste, as the following devastating description by the valetudinarian Matthew Bramble in Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker demonstrates: ‘...this place, which Nature and Providence seem to have intended as a resource from distemper and disquiet, is become the very centre of racket and dissipation. Instead of that peace, tranquillity, and ease, so necessary to those who labour under bad health, weak nerves, and irregular spirits; here we have nothing but noise, tumult, and hurry; with the fatigue and slavery of maintaining a ceremonial, more stiff, formal, and oppressive, than the etiquette of a German elector. A national hospital it may be, but one would imagine that none but lunatics are admitted; and truly, I will give you leave to call me so, if I stay much longer at Bath.’

The concern with appearance and ceremonial which Smollett decries provided Gainsborough with work aplenty, and both his annual output of paintings and his fees increased following the move to Bath. Not surprisingly he remained there for many years, until a final move to fashionable Pall Mall in 1774. He became a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768, and his final years were marked by some notable successes, including the gaining of royal patronage from 1781. He died in 1788, one of the most admired painters of his generation. 

Gainsborough’s varied musical interests are reflected in both his correspondence and his paintings. His daughter Margaret told the diarist Joseph Farington that her father was ‘led much into company with Musicians, with whom he often exceeded the bounds of temperance...being occasionally unable to work for a week afterwards.’ His musical friends, most of whom he painted, included several who were at the cutting edge of Georgian musical life, for example Johann Christian Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, the Linley family of Bath, Rudolf Straube, the violinist Felice de Giardini whom Charles Avison singled out in 1753 for ‘amazing Rapidity of Execution, and Exuberance of Fancy, joined with the most perfect Ease and Gracefulness in the performance’, and the oboist Johann Christian Fischer, who married Gainsborough’s daughter Mary. At the other end of the scale, Gainsborough also associated with amateur musicians, as the following anecdote about the Ipswich music club demonstrates; it is related by the painter himself, to the actor David Garrick: ‘...You must know, Sir, whilst I lived at Ipswich, there was a benefit concert in which a new song was to be introduced, and I being Steward, went to the honest cabinet-maker who was our singer instead of a better, and asked him if he could sing at sight, for that I had a new song with all the parts wrote out. “Yes, Sir” said he “I can”. Upon which I order Mr. Giardini of Ipswich to begin the Symphony, & gave my signal for the attention of the company; but behold, a dead silence followed the Symphony instead of the song; upon which I jumped up to the fellow: “D--n you, why don’t you sing? did not you tell me you could sing at first sight?” “Yes, please your honour, I did say I could sing at sight, but not first sight”.’

Gainsborough’s own creativity sought expression in music as much as in painting, which was unusual in an age when musical ability was mainly considered the preserve of the ladies; it was an accomplishment much less prized in gentlemen because, in the words of John Locke, ‘it wastes so much of a young man’s time, to gain but a moderate Skill in it, and engages often in such odd Company.’ However, Gainsborough remained stubbornly attached to both his musical aspirations and his socially dubious and often foreign musical friends. The composer William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral and a long-term friend, said of him: ‘Gainsborough’s profession was painting and music was his amusement, yet there were times when music seemed to be his employment and painting his diversion.’ 

It was to Jackson that Gainsborough turned for technical advice; evidently his musical knowledge was limited, for Gainsborough wrote in response to some information supplied by Jackson: ‘There never was a poor Devil so fond of Harmony, with so little knowledge of it, so that what you have done is pure Charity. ... I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village when I can paint Landskips [sic] and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease.’ Jackson evidently agreed with Gainsborough’s assessment of his musical ability, writing somewhat pointedly with reference to the painter: ‘How often do presumptive amateurs spoil the success of a concert by contributing their efforts under the mistaken conviction that they are adding to the enjoyment of the affair, whereas in reality they are only giving offence to the unfortunate composer of the music?’

Gainsborough was certainly something of a dilettante, spreading his talents thinly over several instruments. Friends recall him accompanying ‘a slow movement of the harpsichord both on the fiddle and the flute, with taste and feeling.’ In addition to the oboe and the harp, he studied the viol with Abel, the lute with Straube, and J.C.Bach was exasperated to discover him one day attempting to play a bassoon: ‘Pote it away, man; pote it away’, he shouted, ‘do you want to burst yourself, like the frog in the fable?’ However, he was a genuine connoisseur of musical instruments, appreciating the value of fine specimens; his viols, for example, included three by Henry Jaye and two by Barak Norman.

For this musical tribute to Gainsborough, we have gathered together pieces by several of his friends. Our original intention was to focus on three, all expatriate Germans, and all writing for instruments doomed to imminent extinction—the viol, the lute and the harpsichord. However, the riches of the rest of Gainsborough’s musical circle proved impossible to ignore! 

The virtuoso viola da gamba player Carl Friedrich Abel was one of Gainsborough’s closest friends for 25 years, with whom he studied (albeit somewhat casually), made music, and consulted in times of musical need. Gainsborough painted Abel, his viols, and his much-loved Pomeranian dogs many times; William Jackson, writing of Gainsborough to their mutual friend Ozias Humphry in 1778, commented: ‘He has given Abel as many Pictures & Drawings as are worth some hundreds of Pounds, & he in return has taught him to drink himself into a premature blind Old Age...’. However, this jaundiced view of their friendship was not shared by Gainsborough, for there is no mistaking the deep and genuine regret in the letter he wrote to Henry Bate on the occasion of Abel’s death: ‘Poor Abel died about one o clock to-day, without pain, after three days sleep. Your regret, I am sure, will follow this loss. We love a genius for what he leaves and we mourn him for what he takes away. If Abel was not so great a man as Handel it was because caprice had ruined music before he ever took up the pen. For my part, I shall never cease looking up to heaven—the little while I have to stay behind—in hopes of getting one more glance of the man I loved from the moment I heard him touch the string. Poor Abel!—’tis not a week since we were gay together, and that he wrote the sweetest air I have in my collection of his happiest thoughts. My heart is too full to say more.’

Abel was renowned for his extempore performances, sometimes of song arrangements and opera arias. Taking our cue from him, we have included some arrangements for viol of songs by Thomas Linley and his colleague, J.C.Bach, as well as a contemporary arrangement of a Mozart aria.

Rudolf Straube studied with J.S.Bach in Leipzig, where he published two lute sonatas in 1746. By 1754 he was in London, where he remained until his death in 1785. He evidently found it hard to earn a living; according to William Jackson’s 1798 essay on Gainsborough, the artist tracked him down dining upon an apple in a garret, and bought his lute from him for 10 guineas. The same anecdote tells us that Straube had composed (but not yet published) a book of lute pieces, which Gainsborough insisted on purchasing, arguing that the lutenist could easily replace it. The book never did see publication, but a tantalising group of Straube’s manuscripts survives, including settings of popular tunes, studies and dances for lute, from which a selection of pieces is included here. Straube also taught and published music for the English guitar, a fashionable type of cittern that usurped the lute’s and even the harpsichord’s role as a domestic instrument. It was indisputably part of Gainsborough’s musical circle, though; he painted Ann Ford—wife of his first biographer Philip Thicknesse, and subject of the CD cover—holding the instrument, upon which she laid herself open to ridicule by promoting herself as a professional musician. The guitar’s popularity prompted the harpsichord builder Jacob Kirkman to besmear its image by buying several and giving them to prostitutes and street vendors. (The instrument by Kirkman used in this recording dates from 1776.)

Many of the pieces in the present programme would undoubtedly have featured in the long-running London concert series organised jointly by Abel and J.C.Bach, but most would probably also have been heard informally by Gainsborough; he may even have attempted to play them himself. They are aural images of Gainsborough’s world, no less vibrant than his wonderful paintings.

Lynda Sayce, 2000