NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

perhaps honesty is not always the best policy. It was the march, however, that
allegedly inspired the poet, Browning to immortalise Avison in his ‘Parleyings with
Certain People of Importance in Their Day’. published not long before the poet’s
death. The following quote from the work appears on Avison’s gravestone: -
“On the List
of worthies who by help of pipe or wire
expressed in sound Rough Race or Soft Desire
Thou Whilom of Newcastle Organist”
Today, Charles Avison ranks alongside the best of his English contemporaries
and could undoubtedly have had a more distinguished career had he courted
success, yet in spite of not doing so his legacy lives on. He still retains a certain
distinction for an outsider; an uncompromising provincial musician, in that he
continues to have articles written about him and is referred to and discussed in
most of the leading musical dictionaries and encyclopaedias as well as in other
critical musical publications. Having said all that there still remains that nagging
feeling that he is being denied his rightful place in the roll of honour of 18 th
century English musicians. But before we explore this let us have a closer look at
the tenuous link between Avison and Browning – these two men who lived their
lives one hundred years apart.
Why should Avison from Newcastle have appealed so much to Browning, who
hailed from Dorset It is generally accepted that the little march attributed to
Avison which Browning is said to have found in his mother’s papers after her
death, inspired him to include the composer in his ’Parleyings’ but in fact
Browning must have heard other music by Avison if, as is alleged, he loved him
so much. (He even contributed towards a new headstone for Avison) One
explanation is that as a young man Browning took musical instruction from John
Relfe (1763–1837) organist, English musical theorist and composer. Relfe
composed sonatas amongst other things and perhaps because of this and the
fact he was a fellow church organist, he would have been aware of Avison and
his compositions, some of which were published in London, and through Relfe,
Browning was introduced to Avison’s works. Through Relfe, Browning also
acquired knowledge of music theory and composition and as a literary man
(although long in doubt whether he should not become a musician) would no
doubt have acquainted himself with Avison's musical criticisms etc. Browning
wrote his ‘Parleyings’ when he was seventy three years old and in a sense it is a
summary of his career in that it is full of reminiscences and deals with men
whose works connected themselves with his own intellectual sympathies and
imaginative pleasures of his early youth. On dealing with Avison, whom it seems
Browning had loved as a boy, he wonders whether Avison’s music is as dead as
the winter landscape before him (as he gazed into the early spring garden) ‘Once
it had captivated audiences and seemed perfect yet now when one has become
accustomed to the complicated harmonies of Wagner, Brahms and Liszt it seems
so simple. It no longer has the power to shine as it once had’. Browning explains
14