Second paragraph of third chapter:
Wealth and comfort were assured from the moment Jennens was born in 1700 at Gopsall in Leicestershire. At that stage his father was overseeing the production of over 2,000 tons of cast iron a year. The Darbys of Coalbrookdale had discovered the art of smelting ore with coke, but they kept this knowledge to themselves: until the middle of the eighteenth century charcoal was the only fuel that could then produce metal of a quality acceptable to all other ironmasters. Prodigious quantities of wood for charcoal burning were needed to feed the industry now burgeoning in the English west midlands. For a time timber felled in the broadleaved forests of Ireland, shipped across the Irish Sea, had met the requirements of a great many English smelters. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, these forests were no more – heedless exploitation had left Ireland, apart from Iceland, the most treeless country in Europe. Jennens’s father, also called Charles, had been assiduously buying up suitably wooded land still remaining in England and Wales to ensure a steady supply for his business: when he died in 1747, his son inherited 736 acres at Gopsall and no fewer than 33 other properties in 6 different counties.1
1 McCracken, 1971, pp29 and 83-84; Smith, 2012, p.3
Jonathan Bardon (who died of COVID in 2020) was one of the great Irish historians, and this was his last monograph, published in 2015. It is a lovely micro-study of the before, during and after of the evening of 13 April 1742, when Handel’s Messiah was first performed in Dublin at the long-vanished music hall on Fishamble Street
He carefully unpicks the cultural background to the performance, with Dublin, feeling that it was not punching its cultural weight as a city, eager to find openings where it could score over London. He also looks at the stories of the other people involved with the show – librettist Charles Jennens (who submitted it to Handel unsolicited); leading soprano Susannah Cibber, sister of Thomas “Rule Britannia” Arne; and Jonathan Swift, whose grumpy authority over the choristers of St Patrick’s Cathedral almost derailed the entire performance at the last minute.
And he goes into the subsequent history of Messiah, which was actually rather slow to catch on in the English-speaking world. Interestingly it was the Methodists who first picked up on it, and then it became a staple for large-scale musical spectacle starting with a performance in Westminster Abbey in 1784 to commemorate the centenary of Handel’s birth. (He was actually born in 1685, but never mind.)
So, it’s a nice study of a particular cultural event which will tell people who know about Irish history some interesting things about music, and will tell people who know about music history some interesting things about Ireland. Recommended. You can get it here.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my shelves. Next is Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman.
