Enlightenment! Setting the Pace in the Eighteenth Century

I recently had an essay 'Promoting Business' published in Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the Eighteenth Century (2013), the exhibition catalogue for the exhibition of the same name which was staged to coincide with the end of the Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the Eighteenth Century Project which had run from 2008-2013 with funding from the Heritage Lottery  Fund's 'Collecting Cultures' project.

BSECS 2014

I recently presented a paper 'Concerts for Ancient Music Revisited' at the 43rd Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.


In this paper I sought to revise the prevailing view that James Gillray's print Ancient Music (1787) was purely a social satire on the attendance of the King and Queen Consort at the concerts as subscribers, drawing out a number of political undertones including the removal of the Fox-North Coalition.


I also sought to revise the view that the dominance of Handel in the musical canon of the concerts was down to its first treasurer, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fourth baronet, by demonstrating that Handel's work continued to dominate after Sir Watkin's death and that there was evidence in later programmes of an overarching strategy.


My main conclusions were as follows:


The work of Handel dominated most concerts put on by the Concerts of Ancient Music.

• His was the only work to fill the entirety of individual concerts or an entire act of a concert.
• Whilst Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was no doubt a keen admirer of Handel’s music he was not the only director of the concerts to give over a disproportionate amount of space to his work.
• The work of Handel dominated the music library catalogue of the Concerts published in 1827 covering forty-one of the sixty five pages.
• The dominance of Handel’s works continued well after Sir Watkin Williams Wynn’s death in 1789.
• James Gillray’s print Ancient Music clearly hints at the concerts having a political aspect with many of its protagonists being current or former ministers
• The print also provides a comment on the fall of the Fox-North Coalition some three years after its fall from power.