Charles Burney in Westminster Abbey - July, 1784

from Letter from Charles Burney to Thomas Twining, 31 July 1784, page 423:

You ask my opinion of the Commemoration Performance - have a little patience, my dear friend, & you shall have it in print. Wd you believe it, that after expecting little more than noise & confusion, as I believe I told you in my last letter, things went so much better, & afforded me so much more pleasure & satisfaction than I expected, that in a kind of Rodemontade gratitude I told Lord Sandwich I had some notion of writing an acct of the Commemoration Performances for immediate publication, & showed him the sketch of some such promise wch I intended putting into the Papers, to prevent other …   more >>
cite as

Letter from Charles Burney to Thomas Twining, 31 July 1784. In Charles Burney, and Alvaro Ribeiro (ed.), The letters of Dr Charles Burney, volume 1 (Oxford, 1991), p. 423. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1412614124837 accessed: 8 November, 2024

location of experience: Westminster Abbey

Listeners

Charles Burney
musicologist, Musician, Writer
1726-1814

Listening to

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Handel Commemoration

Experience Information

Date/Time July, 1784
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, indoors, in public

Notes

From editor's note: 'Twining had written (26 June): 'O-but the Westminster-Abbey Charivari - how was it? - I long to hear your account of it. ... I own I had never any great idea of the scheme. I considered mere loudness as it's object. And, moreover, I doubted much whether such a monstrous Orchestra could be kept in tolerable order. ... I'll be hanged if I did not wish that your prophecy - "I foresee that it will be manqué" - might be fulfilled, merely for their abominable neglect of your opinions, & hints.''

Originally submitted by Charlotte on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 17:48:45 +0100