Thomas Augustine Arne
One of the most important figures in English music during the eighteenth century, Thomas Arne’s passion for music began to flourish while studying at Eton where his interest in playing the recorder and spinet verged on the obsessional. At this time he was self-taught as a composer and his first important professional contact with another musician was when he commenced his violin studies with Michael Festing. By 1726 Arne was, in accordance with family wishes, apprenticed to a London lawyer, Arthur Kynaston. The apprenticeship was short-lived when Arne’s father discovered his son playing violin in a concert at a neighbour’s house and there was clearly little opposition on the part of Arne’s father to his son abandoning his law studies when he allowed Thomas to start teaching singing to other members of the family. By the early 1730s Arne was involved in theatrical productions in London (with some assistance from his father) and on 7 March 1733 he put on his own opera, Rosamond, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Other theatrical productions followed and in 1734 Arne’s sister Susanna married the actor and playwright Thomas Cibber and a direct result of this was that Arne took up the position of house composer at Drury Lane, where Cibber’s company was in residence. Arne’s theatrical standing was by now already assured and his position would be even further strengthened by his marriage, in 1737, to one of the finest singers of the era, Cecilia Young. The participation of his sister and wife in John Dalton’s adaptation of Milton’s Comus, for which Arne provided the music, provided the composer with a major and long-term success. This was followed by a setting of the masque Alfred in 1740 and although the original version contained just a few numbers (it was later reworked and by 1753 had been transformed into an all-sung opera) it does contain one tune which is familiar to everyone — ‘Rule, Britannia’.
Another of Arne’s most popular and enduring songs is “Where the bee sucks”. This was written for inclusion in The Tempest for the 1740-41 season at Drury Lane, a season that also included productions of As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice. A further major success came in 1742 with another masque: The Judgement of Paris, to a text by Congreve. “O ravishing delight” is one of the finest songs from that work and the overture was adapted and reworked as Overture No. 8 in the set of Eight Overtures. Another work which employs a text by Congreve is the cantata Fair Caelia love pretended. This dates from 1749 and relies on lyrical writing and smaller-scale arias than are found in Arne’s other works. On a larger scale, Arne also produced a set of cantatas (1755) and the first of these, Bacchus and Ariadne, is one of the grandest.
During the 1740s Arne travelled to Dublin where he spent two seasons. His sister was already there, having taken refuge in Dublin when her marriage failed, and on 13 April 1742 sang in the first performance of Messiah. Arne arrived in Dublin on 30 June 1742 and stayed there until the summer of 1744 when he returned to London. It was on the return journey that Arne met Charles Burney in Chester and he agreed to take him on as his apprentice without a fee. Burney later wrote that he benefited more from accompanying Arne’s wife in her vocal studies than in any instruction he might have received from the composer and Fanny Burney, in her memoirs, was quite scathing about Arne’s character and behaviour. During the 1750s Arne didn’t enjoy the level of success he had earlier achieved and his marriage was also in jeopardy. Arne and his wife had returned to Dublin in 1755 and had taken with them Arne’s pupil Charlotte Brent and his niece Polly Young. Mrs Arne complained of her husband’s philandering while he claimed the cause of their marital problems was attributable to his wife’s illnesses. The result of this was that Arne returned to London with Charlotte Brent, while his wife and niece stayed behind in Dublin (Arne and his wife were eventually reconciled in October 1777, a few months before his death in March 1778). It was with the participation of Charlotte Brent in a number of his works that Arne’s fortunes improved in the early 1860s and one of the important pieces from this period is his opera Artaxerxes (1762). This sets a text by Metastasio and is the first example of opera seria in English.
During the second half of the 1750s Walsh published several collections of music by Arne and as well as Britannia (1755), Alfred (1757) and Eliza (1757), several of Arne’s instrumental works were published. Instrumental music accounts for a relatively small part of Arne’s output and even though a number of his theatrical works are now lost there still remains a substantial body of music for the numerous theatrical productions with which he was involved. Arne’s first published instrumental music is the set of Eight Overtures included here. Although the set was published in 1751 a number of the pieces are known to be of earlier origin. Overture No. 3 derives from Henry and Emma, Overture No. 7 from Comus, and already mentioned, Overture No. 8 from The Judgement of Paris. Indeed it is quite likely that all eight overtures have their origins elsewhere. Throughout the set of Eight Overtures there is a wealth of instrumental and textural variety and while Arne broadly adopts the basic style of French overture which Handel often employed (where an introductory section in dotted rhythm is followed by a fugue), Overtures Nos. 3 & 5 more closely follow the style of the Italian overture (where the basic plan is fast–slow–fast). Each overture ends with a dance movement — whether a graceful minuet, a gavotte or a lively jig (as in Overture No. 8).
© Raymond McGill