Thomas Holcroft in Beaumont Street, London - 8 July, 1798
from Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft: Written by Himself; and Continued to the Time of His Death, page 264:
Read Boswell’s Life of Johnson; practised a little music. Purcel (sic), a flowing, impassioned composer—his harmonies original, yet natural; and his melodies the best of his day. Is it true, as Boswell affirms, that Corelli came to England to visit him, and that Purcel (sic) being dead, Corelli immediately returned?
Thomas Holcroft, and William Hazlitt (ed.), Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft: Written by Himself; and Continued to the Time of His Death, volume 2 (London, 1816), p. 264. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1656604169543 accessed: 19 April, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
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Unspecified music
written by Henry Purcell |
performed by Thomas Holcroft |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | 8 July, 1798 |
| Medium | live |
| Listening Environment | in private, indoors, solitary |
Notes
Holcroft most likely practiced the violin. He notes early in his memoir ‘I must have been around five years old, when [my father] put me under the tuition of a player on the violin, who was a public performer of some repute […] I had an uncommon aptitude for the art I had been put to learn […] I was a prodigy’ (vol. 1, pp. 7-8). Severe poverty befell the family around this time and Holcroft could not pursue a musical career as he had hoped to do.