AN ACCOUNT OF THE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, AND THE PANTHEON, May 26th, 27th, 29th, and June the 3rd and 5th, 1784, IN COMMEMORATION OF HANDEL; By CHARLES BURNEY, Mus. D. F.R.S. PUBLISHED BY DUFF AND HODGSON, 65, OXFORD STREET, 1834. Price One Shilling. 696. ΤΟ THE KING. GREATNESS of mind is never more willingly acknowledged, nor more sincerely reverenced, than when it descends into the regions of general life, and by countenancing common pursuits, or partaking common amusements, shews that it borrows nothing from distance or formality. By the notice which Your Majesty has been pleased to bestow upon the celebration of HANDEL'S memory, You have condescended to add Your voice to public praise, and give Your sanction to musical emulation. The delight which Music affords seems to be one of the first attainments of rational nature; wherever there is humanity, there is modulated sound. The mind set free from the resistless tyranny of painful want, employs its first leisure upon some savage melody. Thus in those lands of unprovided wretchedness, which Your Majesty's encouragement of naval investigation has brought lately to the knowledge of the polished world, though all things else were wanted, every nation had its Music; an art of which the rudiments accompany the commencements, and the refinements adorn the completion of civility, in which the inhabitants of the earth seek their first refuge from evil, and perhaps, may find at last the most elegant of their pleasures. A 2 But that this pleasure may be truly elegant, science and nature must assist each other; a quick sensibility of Melody and Harmony, is not always originally bestowed, and those who are born with this susceptibility of modulated sounds, are often ignorant of its principles, and must therefore be in a great degree delighted by chance; but when Your Majesty is pleased to be present at Musical Performances, the artists may congratulate themselves upon the attention of a judge in whom all requisites concur; who hears them not merely with instinctive emotion, but with rational approbation, and whose praise of HANDEL is not the effusion of credulity, but the emanation of Science. How near or how distant the time may be, when the art of combining sounds shall be brought to its highest perfection by the natives of Great Britain, this is not the place to enquire; but the efforts produced in other parts of knowledge by Your Majesty's favour, give hopes that Music may make quick advances now it is recommended by the attention, and dignified by the patronage of our Sovereign. I am, With the most profound Humility, Your MAJESTY'S most dutiful And devoted Subject and Servant, CHARLES BURNEY. PREFACE. A PUBLIC and national tribute of gratitude to deceased mortals, whose labours and talents have benefitted, or innocently amused, mankind, has, at all times, been one of the earliest marks of civilization in every country emerged from ignorance and barbarism. And there seems no more rational solution of the mysteries of ancient Greek mythology, than to imagine that men, whose virtue and abilities surpassed the common standard of human excellence, had excited that degree of veneration in posterior times, which gave rise to their deification and apotheosis. Such a gigantic idea of commemoration as the present, for the completion of which it was necessary that so many minds should be concentred, must have been long fostering ere it took a practicable form and was matured into reality. But from the conception of this plan to its full growth, there was such a concurrence of favourable circumstances as the records of no art or science can parallel: the Royal Patronage with which it was honoured; the high rark, unanimity, and active zeal of the directors; the leisure, as well as ardour and skill of the conductor; the disinterested docility of individuals, and liberal contributions of the public; all conspired to render this event memorable, and worthy of a place, not only in the annals of music, but of mankind. And indeed it was hardly possible for a Musical Historian not to imagine that an enterprise honoured with the patronage and presence of their Majesties; planned and personally directed by noblemen and gen |