J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

teacher at his elbow. There was one advantage they both shared, however, and that
was the frequent opportunity to hear the effect of their experiments.
SAMUEL WESLEY GROWS UP
Although willing to nurture his sons’ musical gifts so far as he might, Charles
Wesley was reluctant to see them irrevocably committed to the unstable career of a
professional musician. Between 1779 and 1787, therefore, he instituted series of
subscription concerts in his own house, where his sons could gain experience
accompanied by hired professional musicians. 38 The concert programmes resembled
those of the Academy of Ancient Music, with the addition of works composed by the
two brothers (organ concertos, symphonies, chamber works). ‘They do not presume to
rival the present great masters who excel in the variety of their accompaniments. All
they aim at in their concert music is exactness.’ 39 This humility in the face of
recognised authorities is a precise counterpart to their father’s dependence upon expert
advice in deciding what to do with his sons. Just as their father accepted
unquestioningly the advice of leading musicians, his sons were to accept equally the
authority of their compositional models—Corelli, Geminiani, Scarlatti, and above all
Handel. As we have already seen in relation to J. L. Krebs, this was a generally
accepted precept in eighteenth-century cultural life. The value of originality had
already been put forward in Edward Young’s Conjectures on original composition
(1759) but was only beginning to take effect, and emulation as a means of education
was a universally accepted principle. 40 Intriguingly, Bernard Granville (a family friend
38 The Mendelssohn family organised similar entertainments for the benefit of Felix and Fanny (for
which e.g. Felix’s opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho and the ‘string symphonies’ were written), for
broadly similar reasons.
39 C. Wesley (sen.), ‘Reasons for letting my sons have a concert at home’ (1779), The letters of Samuel
Wesley: professional and social correspondence, 1797-1837, ed. P. Olleson (Oxford: University
Press, 2001), p.xxvi.
40 See p.82-8 for discussion and references concerning originality.
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