NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

may have lacked that vital spark of ambition but one thing is certain and that is
music was his passion. In a letter that appeared in the Newcastle Journal after
his death it was stated that ‘had music been less his passion and more his
business his time would have been more profitably employed’
Avison is often referred to today as the foremost English concerto composer
of his time. It is an epithet that seems to have stuck to him. He composed sixty
concerti grossi in the style of Geminiani as well as arranging another set of
thirteen from Domenico Scarlatti sonatas. His further output comprises a
collection of sonatas for harpsichord and strings in the style of Rameau and odd
anthems and hymns. Further arrangements include a set of 50 Psalms set to
music by Benedetto Marcello, on which he collaborated with John Garth, the
Durham musician. There is also mention of a number of quartets and trios and
one source credits him with as many as 50 violin concertos but this is not
confirmed elsewhere. He was in this respect the most active composer of
concertos amongst the English born musicians of his day. Some fifty or so were
published in his lifetime and these followed Geminiani’s example in the preferred
four-movement scheme and in his use of a concertino group of two violins, viola
and cello as opposed to the two violins and cello of Corelli and Handel. The
twelve for string orchestra are arrangements of Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord
sonatas and are reported as being more adventurous than the other concerto
grossi and show a lively feeling for orchestration and a boldness of invention
which is lacking in some of the concertos of the other sets. Following his death,
however, his music remained largely unperformed, but I am pleased to say that
even as I write work is in hand at the Northumbria University to restore some of
his original manuscripts and house these in an Avison Archive in the town’s
Central Library. There is, as well as The Avison Society, a long established early
music group, Concert Royal, that has received a grant from the Regional Arts
Lottery Fund to continue keeping alive the music of Tyneside’s most famous
Georgian musician.
Avison was as much respected for his critical and theoretical writings as for
his musical compositions. It was stated in the last volume of Burney’s History of
Music, 1789, that, ‘musical criticism has been so little cultivated in this country
that its first elements are hardly known’ and then goes on to credit Avison with
being the first and almost the only writer who attempted it. This reference was to
Avison’s famous ‘Essay on Musical Expression’ of 1752 and subsequent
editions. These provoked much discussion and several public replies. The
strength of Avison’s Essay is that it presents the plain good sense of a genuine if
minor composer, but it’s criticisms of other leading composers including Vivaldi,
Palestrina and Handel as being guilty of subordinating harmony to melody or vice
versa, enraged some of his contemporaries and brought a furious reaction from
William Hayes of Oxford University, whose anonymously published pamphlet
attacked Avison the composer as lacking the skill to justify his credentials as a
theorist. Avison replied with dignity to his “virulent, though, I flatter myself, not
formidable, Antagonist” countering his criticisms of specific passages with
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