Treasures of the English Baroque, English harpsichord music from 1689 to 1759 played by Colin Tilney
Instrument not mentioned in the documentation but on the cover is a picture of a Crang harpsichord by kind permission of Dr. Rodger Mirrey
Released 1970 by Argo, Decca Record Company order number ZRG 640 (no insert inclosed in my copy).

SIDE ONE

John Blow (1649-1708) Suite No. 2 in D minor
00:00 Ground
02:30 Minuet
03:38 Rondo
Blow contributed to three keyboard anthologies during his lifetime – The Second Part of Musicks Hand-Maide (1689), of which Purcell was editor, and A Choice Collection of Ayres and The Second Book of the Harpsichord Master (both 1700) – but his major publication, A Choice Collection of Lessons (1698), contains only his own music. The second suite from this begins with an alman, constructed in part over a ground bass, and ended originally with the minuet.

04:40 G. B. Draghi (c.1640-?) Ground: ‘Scocca pur’
No attribution for this masterly five-bar ground is given in The Second Part of Musicks Hand-Maide, but the song itself occurs in several late seventeenth-century manuscripts described as “An Italian Song to Baptista’s Ground”. “Baptist” might mean Lully, of course, but the name was shared by Catherine of Braganza’s organist, Giovanni Battista Draghi, and it seems plausible that Playford should have invited the well-known theatre composer to adapt his very popular song for the harpsichord.

Two pieces from Christ Church MS 1177
08:35 Almaine in D (Blow)
10:12 Ground in B minor (anon).
Blow’s published output, a total of twenty-five pieces, represents less than half of the various manuscript attributions. The melancholy little ground may perhaps also be by him.

12:21 William Croft (1678-1727) AIIemande and 14:18 Gavotte in E minor
From British Museum Add. MS 31467, which contains nine suites by Croft, including one of the two he printed in A Choice Collection of Ayres. Joint organist of the Chapel Royal with Jeremiah Clarke from 1704, Croft succeeded Blow at Westminster Abbey four years 1ater. We still lack a complete edition of his keyboard music.

Jeremiah Clarke (c.1673-1707)
15:23 Almand in D
17:01 Round O in A
18:40 Jigg in A
The Prince of Denmark’s March (better known as “The Trumpet Voluntary”) is only one of many attractive marches and dances that Clarke wrote for harpsichord. The three pieces here come from bis posthumously published Choice Lessons of 1711, the almand from Suite 5 and the rondo and jig from the second suite.

Thomas Roseingrave {1690-1766)
19:48 Overture – Allegro
23:29 Presto
25:08 Chacone (from the First Sett in E flat)
Halfway between the Clarke pieces and Roseingrave’s lessons (1728) comes Handel, and the impact is unmistakable. The Irish organist of St. George’s, Hanover Square (Handel’s church from 1721 onwards), was noted for his eccentricity, and if these three movements sometimes seem to confirm Burney’s rather harsh judgment – “crude harmony, extravagant modulation” – at least this is a grander world than Clarke’s. Curiously, though, there is little trace of Roseingrave’s lifelong devotion, Domenico Scarlatti, whose Essercizi he republished in 1739, adding twelve new sonatas and a prelude of his own.

SIDE TWO

Thomas Chilcot (? -1766)
26:42 Overture: Largo-Allegro
31:02 Aria
32:31 Jigg (from Suite the First in G minor)
Thomas Chilcot, organist of Bath Abbey from 1733 to 1766, published his six suites in 1734, possibly to mark his appointment. Of the seven movements in No. 1, the grand Handelian overture and jig and the touching little air seem the most assured.

James Nares (1715-1783) Lesson in B flat, Op. 2 No. 3
35:09 Larghetto Affettuoso
37:50 Allegro
40:14 Tempo di Minuetto
James Nares held, among other positions, those of organist at York Minster and at the Chapel Royal; this charming sonata cornes from his second book of harpsichord pieces (1759) and is the latest English music on the record.

Thomas Arne (1710-1778) Sonata No. 3 in G
43:08 Prelude
44:05 Allegro
47:11 Minuet and Two Variations
Arne’s eight sonatas of 1757 stand out among contemporary keyboard music for their real musical interest and sheer competence. His masters are clearly still Hândel and Scarlatti, but his derivations never descend to lifeless copying. Of the opening movement Arne remarks: “In this and other Preludes, which are meant as Extempore Touches before the Lesson begins, neither the Composer nor Performer are oblig’d to a Strictness of Time.”

This record is a survey of harpsichord music published in London, mainly by organists working there or in the provinces, during a period arbitrarily defined as the hundred years from Charles II’s Restoration in 1660 to the accession of George III. Handel’s and Purcell’s keyboard works have been deliberately excluded, although there was no return to the scale and richness of the Elizabethan virginalists – but much of the writing is first-rate and deserves to be better known.

#ColinTilney