Lucie Skeaping talks to musicologist Ian Gammie about the life and travels of the inimitable Charles Burney. Burney, the 18th-century music-writer, teacher, organist and composer was well known for having opinions on just about everything, and, during his extensive travels through Europe, met some of the great musical luminaries of his day, including Padre Martini, Scarlatti and even the young Mozart. (R)
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I used to quote Burney in university essays. It didn't go down well.
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It seems we have something in common Alps.
Burney was very fixed upon the fashion for Italianate music (as today's programme showed) and he didn't like the English whims of Blow and Croft. He devoted a whole page of his General History of Music, headed 'Specimens of Dr Blow's Crudities'; whilst for Croft we get:
He [Croft] continues, however, in all his works, the use of the sharp third and flat sixth, like his predecessors, to the sorrow of my ears; and this vile combination does not seem to have been held in sufficient abhorrence till the time of Dr Green, in whose works I find not trace of it.
Good programme today. Thanks Lucie and the team.Comment
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