Calvish young fellows
Feb. 14th, 2011 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anteros_lmcI've been reading a book about the life of Joseph Emidy, the West African violinist pressed from the Lisbon Opera House into service on the Indefatigable in 1795. The book includes some fascinating background on the cultural life of Lisbon in the late eighteenth century recorded by one William Beckford, who spent much of 1787 in Portugal after having left England "following accusations of scandalous behaviour concerning his relationship with William Courtney, published in the Morning Herald in November 1784."
As women were banned from the stage in Portugal, female roles were taken by male performers, despite this practice falling out of fashion elsewhere in Europe. In his 1834 memoir Beckford records that the female parts...
Beckford adds:
But to be honest, I think he protests too much ;)
Beckford, W., (1834), Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, Richard Bentley, London.
McGrady, R., (1991) Music and Musicians in Early Nineteenth Century Cornwall: The world of Joseph Emidy - slave, violinist and composer, University of Exeter Press.
As women were banned from the stage in Portugal, female roles were taken by male performers, despite this practice falling out of fashion elsewhere in Europe. In his 1834 memoir Beckford records that the female parts...
... are acted by calvish young fellows. Judge what a pleasing effect this metamorphosis must produce, especially in the dancers, where one sees a stout shepherdess in virgin white, with a soft blue beard, and a prominent collar-bone, clenching a nosegay in a fist that would almost have knocked down Goliath, and a train of milk-maids attending her enormous foot-steps, tossing their petticoats over their heads at every step.
Beckford adds:
Such sprawling, jerking, and ogling, I never saw before, and hope never to see again.
But to be honest, I think he protests too much ;)
Beckford, W., (1834), Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, Richard Bentley, London.
McGrady, R., (1991) Music and Musicians in Early Nineteenth Century Cornwall: The world of Joseph Emidy - slave, violinist and composer, University of Exeter Press.
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Date: 2011-02-14 08:33 pm (UTC)I love Collingwood's story! I've said it before and I'll say it again, it never ceases to astonish me that there are not more fics about on board theatricals!
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:40 am (UTC)What? D: A couple of months on a ship must have ruined his hands forever!
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:55 am (UTC)Far from ruining his career he went on to have a very successful career as an orchestral conductor, violin taecher and composer here in England. He was almsost certainly Britains first black orchestral masestro.
there will undoutedly be more on Emidy from
icon shows him reherasing with his orchestra - like most conductors then he was both conductor and lead violin.
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Date: 2011-02-15 09:27 am (UTC)Heh, the army/navy pressing violinists to play for them is funny in a *headdesk* sort of way… ;)
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Date: 2011-02-15 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 11:59 pm (UTC)"Orchestra" might be stretching it a bit. Emidy seems to have played mostly with private music societies, sometimes they gave recitals and concerts but often they played in private for their own enjoyment and improvement. The famous picture in your icon is thought to be of an "amateur orchestral society".
< /pedantry>
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Date: 2011-02-15 09:23 am (UTC)Which is the complex realtionships between William and Emma Hamilton and Beckford and Nelson - and the oversize bed that Beckford had made for their visit to him at Fonthill Manor ...
But did you know that you can holiday in Beckford style opulence - see the Landmark trust page on Beckford's tower near Bath - which is found here
and just for
Henry Venn Landsdown writes of a visit to Beckford in his Landsdown Crescent home:
we were shown into the library wjere Mr Bneckford waited to greet us..I confess I did feel at first somewhat embarrassed but a lovelt spaniel ran foreward to greet us licking oour hands in the most affectionate and hospitable manner."You are welcome" was the silent language...
the rest of the passage is worth reading and is in
Landsdown, Henry Venn,(unpublished letters circa 1838 to his daughter Charlotte subsequently published by her in 1893 and now published by Kessinger Publications)
and is in preivew on Googlebooks here
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Date: 2011-02-16 12:04 am (UTC)I love the way the Landmark trust website describes him as being "a collector, patron, writer and eccentric builder." What a great line to have in your biog; "eccentric builder"!
And as for riding out each morning "accompanied by his dwarf and pack of spaniels"!!!! I wonder what Bartholomew would make of that?!
O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-15 10:01 am (UTC)His ship's company also wanted to stage Händel's Messiah and delighted in the Hallelujah chorus. ;D Unfortunately the ship then had to chase the wicked French, so the chorus was never performed...
Quotes wanted? *g*
Re: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-16 12:22 am (UTC)Yes please!! You really do have an O'Brian quote for every occasions don't you?! I think the above passage could very well describe Midshipman Aubrey playing Ophelia ;P
His ship's company also wanted to stage Händel's Messiah and delighted in the Hallelujah chorus.
Lol! Read these comments, what is it about Navyboys and Händel's Messiah?!
My pleasure. was: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-16 05:43 am (UTC)I should be very happy to see Hamlet's grave as well.'
'Both ten and thirteen, sir. And if you go a little to the right from the farthest turret, there are some trees: and among those trees there is the grave. You can just make out the rocks.'
'So there he lies,' said Jack, his telescope levelled. 'Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life.'
'A capital piece indeed,' said Stephen, 'and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind classed it among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?'
'I never read it at all,' said Jack. 'That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that - I acted in it. There, the upper terrace fires. I was a midshipman at the time.'
'What part did you play?'
Jack did not answer at once: he was watching for the fall, counting the seconds. At the twenty-eighth it came, well pitched up but wide to starboard. 'Port your helm, there,' he called, and then went on, 'I was one of the sexton's mates. There were seventeen of us, and we had real earth to dig, brought from shore; it played Old Harry with the deck, but by God it was worth it. Lord, how we laughed! The carpenter was the sexton, and instead of going on in that tedious way about whose grave it was he made remarks about the ship's company. I was Ophelia too: that is to say, one of the Ophelias.'
(…)
At the breakfast-table, with a fine view of the narrows and the now silent Elsinore, Stephen said, 'So you were Ophelia in your youth, Captain Aubrey.'
'A part of Ophelia. But in this case the part was greater than the whole: I was called back three times, and the other fellows were not called back at all, even the one that was drowned in a green dress with sprigs. Three times, upon my honour!'
'How did the poor young lady come to be divided up?'
'Why, there was only one midshipman in the flagship pretty enough for a girl, but his voice was broke and he could not keep in tune neither; so for the part where she has to sing, I put on the dress and piped up with my back to the audience. But neither of us was going to be drowned and buried in real earth, Admiral or no Admiral, so that part fell to a youngster who could not defend himself; and that made three of us, do you see.' Jack smiled, his mind going back to the West Indies, where the performance had taken place; and after a while he sang:
'Young men will do't
An they come to't
By Cock they are to blame.
Yes, alas; and it all ended unhappy, as I recall.'
'So it did, too,' said Stephen, 'the pity of the world.
(The Surgeon’s Mate)
Messiah Chorus
Musical gifts cropped up in the most unexpected places: a bosun's mate, two quarter-gunners, a yeoman of the sheets, a loblolly boy, the aged cooper himself, Mr Parfit, and several more were found to be able to sing a score at sight. Most of the others could not read music, but they had true ears, a retentive memory, a natural ability to sing in part, and they were rarely out when once they had heard a piece: the only trouble (and it proved insuperable) was that they confused loudness with excellence, and passages that were not so pianissimo as to be almost inaudible were taken with the utmost power of the human voice. In singing the immense difference between Mr Parfit, with two pounds five and sixpence a month plus perquisites, and a landsman with one pound two and six minus deductions for his slops was abolished, and as far as the vocal part of it was concerned the Messiah came along nobly. They most delighted in the Halleluiah Chorus, and often, when Jack walked forward to lend his powerful bass, they would go through it twice, so that the deck vibrated again and he sang away in the midst of that great volume of true ordered sound, his heart lifted high.
(The Ionian Mission)
what is it about Navyboys and Händel's Messiah
It is a great piece of choral work and lends itself to fine voices (Navyboys usually have them, even when they confuse pianissimo with loudness)
*g*
Re: My pleasure. was: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-17 08:49 pm (UTC)Navyboys usually have them
Oh aye? Done extensive research have you?! ;)
Thanks for sharing these, very entertaining indeed!
Re: My pleasure. was: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-18 05:27 am (UTC)Not really, but navies tend to have choirs even nowadays, and they sound good. *g*
Re: My pleasure. was: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-19 09:46 pm (UTC)Very dashing! ;)
Re: My pleasure. was: O'Brian of the day ;D
Date: 2011-02-20 02:39 pm (UTC)