Author: AVISON (Charles):
Title: An Essay on Musical Expression. With Alterations and Large Additions. To which is added, A Letter to the Author, concerning the Music of the Ancients, and some Passages in Classic Writers, relating to that Subject. Likewise, Mr. Avison's Reply to the Author of Remarks on Musical Expression. In a Letter from Mr. Avison, to his Friend in London. The Third Edition.
Description: London, Printed for Lockyer Davies..., 1775. Small 8vo, pp. viii, 221 [222 blank, 223 - 224 adverts], including the final leaf of adverts, 4 folding engraved plates of music, dark contemporary calf, red leather label; corners a bit worn, but a good to very good copy. Avison's Essay was first published in 1752 with a second edition in 1753. It is not clear what authority this text has, as Avison died in 1770. The work to which Avison alludes on the title-page is that of the Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, William Hayes, whose Remarks on Mr. Avison's Essay was an extensive criticism of this work. Bennett Mitchell Zon in his Oxford DNB entry records that "Although Avison published incidental aesthetic and critical writings, he is at his most concentrated in An Essay on Musical Expression, first published in London in 1752.... The Essay addresses various aesthetic, critical, and performance-related issues in three parts, the first considering the effect of music upon the emotions and character, and the analogy between music and painting. The second discusses specific composers and their styles, and the third considers instrumental performance practice. Avison's admiration of Geminiani and Benedetto Marcello, to the detriment of Handel, sparked a highly critical response from William Hayes, then Heather professor of music at Oxford. Hayes's criticisms, published anonymously as Remarks on Mr Avison's 'Essay on Musical Expression' (1753), in turn prompted Avison's Reply. The second edition of the Reply, published later in 1753, also includes A Letter to the Author, Concerning the Music of the Ancients, by the historian John Jortin. Avison's Essay is not, by his own admission, entirely his own work, but reflects the priorities of his musical circle in Newcastle and elsewhere. It included input by Dr John Brown, the Northumberland-born controversialist, the poets Thomas Gray and William Mason, John Jortin, the Newcastle bookseller Joseph Barber, and Robert Shafto, head of a prominent Newcastle family and brother-in-law of Ralph Jenison."

Keywords: music aesthetics prose


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