NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

CHAPTER TWO
CHARLES AVISON
Charles Avison is unquestionably the single most important figure in
Newcastle’s musical history and the city is justly proud of him. Today he has a
society bearing his name, which is dedicated to restoring his music and his
rightful place as a Georgian musician. The man and his reputation has, if
anything, grown over the years and today there are many potted biographies and
articles about him, but as so little is known about his early life, much of what has
been written is speculation and can be neither proved nor disproved. The most
reliable of them in my opinion is that written by Arthur Milner and published in
The Musical Times, in two parts, over January and February 1954. However, the
picture that emerges from all that has been written about Avison is of a man
greatly respected and admired for his personal qualities, whatever faults and
deficiencies he may have otherwise had, and I think this would have greatly
pleased Charley Avison from Nolte Market, and no doubt it is the way he would
have wished posterity to remember him.
Charles Avison was the third son of Richard and Anne Avison, born in 1709.
The parish register of St John’s church, Newcastle, records his baptism on 16 th
February 1709. He would have been taught the rudiments of music at home as
both his parents were musical, his father being one of the Town Waits. Charles
would have received some formal education at one of the local Free schools in
the district, thereafter he probably self educated himself in the local book shops,
which he frequented and later gained his poise and position in local society by
his association with men of letters and through his influential pupils who
introduced him to an ever widening social circle. One of these was Mrs Ord, a
bluestocking and typical of those wealthy learned women of the time who,
opened their homes (salons) to artists, men of letters and musicians and
provided a select forum in which they were able to converse with each other. At
some time in his early twenties Avison went to London and for a spell was a pupil
of Geminiani, Italian violinist, theorist, teacher and conductor (whom young
Avison may, or may not, have accompanied on one of his trips to Italy) and
through him was greatly influenced by the Italian style, which had infiltrated
English music of the time. A letter signed ‘Marcellinus’ in the Newcastle Journal
on 17 th March 1759 indicates that Avison was offered the organist’s post at York
Minster in 1734 but refused it and between 1733 and 1740 was, on Geminiani’s
recommendation, offered two organist posts in Dublin, which he also turned
down. In addition to these he further refused offers of a teaching post in
Edinburgh with participation in the Musical Society there and the organist
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