Burney, Dr Charles
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- Burney, Dr Charles
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(1726 - 1814), musicologist, yr. s. of James Burney; Mus.D. Oxf. 1769; m. 1 1749 Esther Sleepe (d. 1761), 2 1767 Mrs Stephen Allen; FRS 1773; Dilettanti 1806.
1770 [dep. Dover 7 Jun.] Turin ( - 14 Jul.), Milan (16 - 25 Jul.), Brescia (26 Jul.), Verona (28 Jul.), Vicenza (29 Jul.), Padua (29 Jul. - 3 Aug.), Venice (4 - 19 Aug.), Ferrara (20 Aug.), Bologna (21 - 31 Aug.), Florence (2 - 11 Sep.), Siena, Montefiascone (18 Sep.), Rome (20 Sep. - 14 Oct.), Naples (16 Oct. - 7 Nov.), Rome (10 - 22 Nov.), Florence (24 Nov.), Pisa, Genoa [Antibes 30 Nov.; England 24 Dec.]
Dr Burney travelled to Italy to collect material for his General History of Music [1776 - 89].1 Of all the writers on Italy Burney found it 'somewhat extraordinary that none have hitherto confined their views and researches to the rise and progress, or present state of music in that part of the world, where it has been cultivated with such success' (1). Accordingly he spent four busy months in Italy, talking with musicians and musicologists,2 consulting libraries, and adding to his collection of material. He found that there was more music in Italy than in England. At Venice, for example, during the Carnival there were seven opera houses open at once, 'three serious, and four comic, besides four play-houses, and these were all crowded every night' (151). But concert audiences were noisy and inattentive, largely because music was 'cheap and common, whereas in England it is a costly exotic, and more highly prized' (68).
At Turin he listened to a symphony in the Royal Chapel, heard the great violinist Pugnani and the brothers Belsozzi on the oboe and bassoon. At the opera house in Milan he found every box was furnished with 'a complete room, with a fireplace in it, and all conveniences for refreshments and cards'; on each side of the house there was a pharo table where people played during the opera. At Brescia he heard a wonderful young castrato, and he was to try in vain to discover where these painful operations were performed (312). In Padua he visited the house where the famous composer Tartini had died five months previously (seeing 'everything which could afford the least intelligence concerning his life and character, with the zeal of a Pilgrim at Mecca'; 126). At Venice he was moved to tears by girls singing in one of the Conservatories, who were 'absolute nightingales', and at the Mendicanti a special two-hour programme was performed for Burney alone. He was delighted with the street and canal music, but surprised to discover there were no music shops and that the art of engraving music had entirely disappeared. He met the composers Galuppi (whose genius, 'like that of Titian, became more animated with age'; 174) and Sacchini (who told Burney that he had written fifty operas). Burney reflected that Venice had 'few amusements but what the theatres afford; walking, riding, and all field-sports, are by the situation of their city denied them. This, in some degree, accounts for music being so much, and in so costly a manner, cultivated by them' (194 - 5). At Bologna, besides the fourteen-year-old Mozart, and the music historian G.B. Martini, he met the famous soprano Farinelli (then sixty-five), whose large room was furnished with pictures of great personages, chiefly sovereign princes who had been his patrons (222). In Florence he met Mozart's friend, the young English prodigy Thomas Linley.
Before proceeding to Rome he sent home all the books he had bought in Bologna and Florence, in order to avoid any difficulties with the Inquisition. He spent three busy weeks in Rome, meeting many compatriots, of whom the Duke of Dorset and William Beckford of Somerley proved most helpful. Musical parties were arranged in his honour, the libraries of Cardinals were opened for him, and Charles Wiseman helped him to find and buy old music (385). Piranesi gave him copies of his works and gave him several drawings (276). Rome, thought Burney, was 'the post of honour for composers, the Romans being the most fastidious judges of music in Italy' (395).
In October he went on to Naples with Captain John Forbes. He studied ancient instruments as shown on Etruscan vases, antique sculpture and paintings, and he was constantly assisted by William Hamilton and his wife, both great lovers of music (330 - 5, 358). Mrs Hamilton had a Sicilian waiting-girl sing her national airs to the tambour de Basque and Hamilton's two pages performed on the violin and violoncello. Hamilton arranged special concerts and gave him a place in his box at the opera. Burney also attended the after-dinner musical entertainment given by Lord Fortrose with a full orchestra and the famous castrato vocalist Caffarelli (334, 364). It was from Naples that Burney told Garrick (17 Oct. 1770) that his 'reception and treatment among the men of learning and genius throughout my journey have been to the last degree flattering'. Burney visited the Conservatories in Naples, which were music schools for boys (as opposed to the Venetian orphanages for girls), but he was not impressed with their performances.
Returning briefly to Rome, Burney set off on 22 November for his journey home. He had not been an easy traveller. He complained of the 'dust, dirt, cobwebs, fleas, bugs, and all manner of filth' in the inns; he suffered from 'cramps, stitches and spasms' and from swarms of mosquitoes in Venice; he shuddered with horror at the sight of 'the bog and the sickly and putrid hue of the inhabitants' of the Pontine Marshes. The journey back from Rome was made in the cold, the Arno had flooded between Florence and Pisa, and there was a dangerous (and bad-tempered) passage from Sarzana to Genoa by mule.
In 1771 Burney published a separate account of his journey, containing only that which was directly related to music: The Present State of Music in France and Italy, or the Journal of a tour through those Countries, undertaken to Collect Materials for a General History of Music (Burney, Tour).
1. See Burney, Tour, 63 - 402 (page refs. in brackets). Scholes 1948, 1:148 - 81. 2. A letter from Burney, 29 Sep. 1791 (Hornby Lib., Liverpool), mentions Italians he met in 1770.