| GREEN MAN PRESS - EARLY MUSIC EDITIONS | ||
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| Hay 1 | Nicola
Haym (1683-1764)
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| The composer and
cellist Nicola Haym (1678-1729) was the son of a Roman instrument maker
and was a professional musician in the city from at least 1694. He arrived
in London in March 1701 in the retinue of Wriothesley Russell, Marquess
of Tavistock, soon to be the second Duke of Bedford. He became master of
Russell’s ‘Chamber Musick’, and worked subsequently for
Charles Montague, Baron Halifax, and James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, later
Duke of Chandos. In 1706 he began a career in the theatre, initially at
Drury Lane (he arranged Bononcini’s Camilla, produced there
on 30 March), and worked subsequently for the Italian opera company at the
Haymarket Theatre. He also wrote or revised the texts of Italian operas,
including a number by Handel, from Teseo (1713) to Tolomeo
(1728). From 1720 Haym was one of the two principal violoncellos in the
orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music, becoming its secretary in 1722.
He was a man with many interests: he edited Italian literary works, was
a scholar interested in coins, gems, sculpture and other antiquities, and
supposedly wrote a history of music, now lost. ‘O praise the Lord in his holiness’ is the fourth of a set of sixth anthems written by Haym for the Earl of Carnarvon’s private chapel at Cannons near Edgware in Middlesex. The autograph score of the set, now British Library, Add. MS 62561, is described on the title-page ‘Six Anthems with Instruments, for one, two or three Voices, Composed by Nicolino Haym of Rome, for the Use of Witchurch, and Humbly Dedicated to the Right Honourable, the Earl of Carnarvon, Cannon, the 29th of September 1716’. The volume is listed in J.C. Pepusch’s catalogue of the Duke of Chandos’s library, compiled in 1720, and it passed with other volumes by inheritance into the library of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire. It was sold at Christie’s on 18 November 1981, lot 124, and was acquired by the British Library from Richard McNutt in 1983. There is also a copy of ‘O praise the Lord in his holiness’ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tenbury MS 830 with the unconvincing annotation ‘Dr Croft I believe’. Haym’s ‘Chandos’ anthems, like those by Handel and Pepusch, were written for the group of musicians assembled by Carnarvon. On 15 November 1715 Cassandra, Lady Carnarvon, wrote to the Dowager Duchess of Bedford enquiring about Haym’s salary, and he seems to have been employed at Cannons from then until 1718, when he was dismissed. In the dedication Haym wrote that:
The group was small but select, and consisted mostly
of Italians. In 1718 it included three violinists and three violoncellists
or bass players, as well as the oboist Signor Biancardi and the flute
and bassoon player Pietro Chaboud; they presumably played the flute and
oboe parts in the anthem. The soprano singers were all boys; they must
have been well trained to cope with Haym’s considerable demands.
Until the chapel in the house was completed in Peter Holman, Further reading: |
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