Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London

Cheryll Duncan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000732825
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London explores Giardini's influence on British musical life through his multifaceted career as performer, teacher, composer, concert promoter and opera impresario.

The crux of the study is a detailed account of Giardini's partnership with the music seller/publisher John Cox during the 1750s, presented using new biographical information which contextualizes their business dealings and subsequent disaccord. The resulting litigation, the details of which have only recently come to light, is explored here via a complex set of archival materials. The findings offer new information about the economics of professional music culture at the time, including detailed figures for performers' fees, the printing and binding of music scores, the charges arising from the administration of concerts and operas, the sale, hire and repair of various instruments and the cost of what today we would call intellectual property rights.

This is a fascinating study for musicologists and followers of Giardini, as well as for readers with an interest in classical music, social history and legal history.

1 The documents

Legal background

The archives on which this monograph draws for much of its material ­consist of litigation generated by two disputes heard in different courts of the English judicial system. The first dates from Easter 1758 when John Cox brought suit against Felice Giardini; this was heard on the ‘plea’ side, that is, the civil – as opposed to the ‘crown’ or criminal – side of the Court of King’s Bench, the highest common-law court in the land. The second case, preserved among the records on the equity branch of the Court of Exchequer, was instituted in the following term as a response by Giardini (now the complainant) to Cox’s common-law action. The primary business of the Exchequer, of course, was to call the King’s debtors to account; secondarily it was a court of law where cases affecting the rights and revenues of the Crown were heard and determined. The Exchequer Court had two sides – a common-law jurisdiction (the so-called ‘Exchequer of Pleas’) and an equity side. The word ‘equity’, which is synonymous with fairness and natural justice, was often used in contrast with the common law. Whereas the latter was the more confining, rigid and predictable system, equity was more flexible, discretionary and individualized. It helped to supplement the substantive common law and provided a broader array of remedies, such as specific performance, injunctions and accountings. The equity courts (Chancery and the equity side of the Exchequer) were regarded as courts of conscience, and bills of complaint were presented there to persuade the Lord Chancellor or the Exchequer Barons to relieve the petitioner from an alleged injustice that would result from a too rigorous application of the common law. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, litigants in the Exchequer had to have some genuine connection with the royal revenue, but from 1649 that connection persisted only as a legal fiction for most plaintiffs. Anyone claiming to be indebted to the Crown could sue another upon a writ of quominus, that is, of his being ‘the less’ able to satisfy the Crown by reason of the cause of action he had against the defendant. This is why Giardini’s Exchequer bill begins: ‘(1) … Your Orator Felice Degiardino of Brewer Street in the parish of Saint James in the Liberty of Westminster and County of Middlesex[,] Italian Musick Master[,] Debtor and Accomptant to your Majesty’.¹

Physical description

The proceedings in King’s Bench comprise Cox’s initial declaration expressing the wrong he has suffered at the hands of the defendant; a claim for damages; the record of several imparlances or adjournments subsequently granted by the Court to Giardini’s attorney; and the setting of a trial date. This material is inscribed on the recto and verso of two strips of parchment or ‘rotuli’ measuring 65cm × 22.8cm and 65.7cm × 22.8cm, respectively, the standard size of rotulus for a King’s Bench plea roll.² The documents that constitute Giardini’s Exchequer case, by contrast, are more numerous and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.³ Held together by a thong in the top left corner, they include:

• Document 1: Giardini’s bill of complaint, measuring 80.3cm × 86.2cm. The initial drafting is not dated, but it must have been presented to the Court sometime between 26 May and 14 June (Trinity term) 1758. According to a marginal note the bill was ‘Amended by Order of Court made the 11th of December 1758’, probably in light of Cox’s testimony in Documents 2 and 4 below; there are a number of interlineations and marginalia as a result.
• Document 2: Cox’s answer, measuring 135.7cm × 83.2cm. Filed on 11 November 1758, this enormous document contains two Schedules (A1 and A2), the first of which is reproduced in a diplomatic transcription as Appendix 1 of this study. The word ‘Schedule’ in this context encompasses detailed accounts and lists attached by one party or another, usually the defendant, to their pleadings as evidence in support of their case.
• Document 3: Giardini’s exceptions, measuring 39.8cm × 25.5cm. An ‘exception’ was a formal objection by the complainant that the defendant’s answer was insufficient or in error, specifying the grounds for that objection. This modest document was filed after Document 2, at some point during Michaelmas term 1758.
• Document 4: Cox’s further answer, measuring 70.2cm × 45.8cm. To satisfy the objections raised by Giardini in Document 3, Cox was required to testify again, and a marginal note tells us that this sworn statement was made ‘at Serjeants Inn the 25th day of Novembe ^r 1758 before Richar ^d Adams’.
• Document 5: Cox’s answer to the amended bill, measuring 68.5cm × 63.3cm. Delivered on 6 February 1759, this includes two more Schedules (B1 and B2), which are reprinted in Chapter 4 and at the end of Chapter 3, respectively.
• Document 6: Giardini’s replication to Cox’s answers, measuring 25.6cm × 16.4cm. A ‘replication’ is a second pleading of the complainant’s case, in response to the defendant’s answer. This dates from Hilary term 1760 and is purely formulaic.
• Document 7: Cox’s rejoinder to Giardini’s replication, measuring 25.5cm × 16.3cm. A ‘rejoinder’ is a second pleading of the defendant’s case. This is also dated Hilary 1760 and is of similarly low evidential value.

Case summary and outcomes

Before examining the documents in greater detail, it may be helpful to summarize the main points on which the parties were at variance. In broad brush-stroke terms, the litigation charts the rise and fall of the business relationship between a professional musician (Giardini) and his publisher, music seller and manager (Cox). As we have seen, it was the latter who initiated proceedings in King’s Bench at Easter 1758; without defining the nature of his business, Cox complained that Giardini owed him several sums of money not only for unspecified goods and services, but also for cash loans. The composer countered almost immediately by resorting to equity in the hope of obtaining an injunction that would restrain Cox from pursuing his suit; the lengthy Exchequer proceedings that followed are invaluable because they flesh out the skeletal generalities that characterize not just this, but most, common-law actions. Giardini may have pinned all his hopes on equity, for he appears to have withdrawn gradually from the King’s Bench case over the coming months. The trial that had been set for the end of Trinity term 1759 never took place and, in the Court’s rules and orders for the following Michaelmas, a marginal note to a case-list that includes Cox v. Giardini reads: ‘Unless something be said in Arrest of Judgment on Saturday the tenth day of November let Judgment be entred [sic] for the Plaintiff’. Giardini’s legal team did not comply with this order, knowing full well that the matter was under consideration in the Exchequer.⁴ A series of injunctions issued there certainly impeded the progress of Cox’s lawsuit but they did not quash it, and on Tuesday 17 June 1760 the Court threw out Giardini’s complaint because he had failed to pursue it:

Between Felice DeGiardino Petitioner & John Cox Defendant By Amended Bill

Upon the Motion of M^r Bicknell the Younger of Councel for the Defendant Informing the Court that the said Defendant Obtained an Order of this Court in Hilary Term last for Dismissing the plaintiffs Bill for want of prosecution after Answer filed[;] whereupon the plaintiff Replyed but had Not proceeded Since[.] He therefore prayed that the said plaintiffs Bill might stand Dismissed Out of this Court for want of prosecution with Costs to be taxed by the Deputy Remembrance ^r of the sai ^d Court[,] which the Court hereby Orders as prayed unless Cause be Shewn to the Contrary on the last Day of this Term⁵

Again Giardini did not respond, which is why we hear nothing further of his case.

The above extracts from the Courts’ deliberations are worth quoting because they bring a sense of closure to the dispute, and leave us to ponder the state of Giardini’s finances, which must have been parlous after payment of damages and costs. But the legal consequences are perhaps the least interesting aspect of the litigation from a musicological point of view. Of much greater significance is the wealth of fascinating detail concerning London’s musical life during the 1750s that both parties adduce as evidence in the course of constructing their cases; this will be discussed mainly in Chapters 3–5.

Notes

1 Editorial policy with regard to the transcription of extracts from the legal proceedings is as follows: line numbers, allowing the reader to locate quotations from the original documents, are provided in round brackets; interlineated text is shown between converging obliques (\ ……./); contractions and abbreviations are expanded in italics; superscript letters, capitals and original spelling have been retained; and editorial additions, including minimal punctuation, appear in square brackets.

2 The National Archives of Great Britain (henceforth TNA): KB 122/286 (Easter 31 Geo. II), rot. 478; word-count: 3113. Although there are two rotuli, only the first is numbered; this is quite usual, the number changing only with the next case on the plea roll.

3 TNA: E 112/1235/3444 (Trinity 31 Geo. II); word-count: 21,225.

4 TNA: KB 125/156 (Rule Book 1759–60).

5 TNA: E 127/41 (Order Book 22 June 1754–25 October 1760).

2 Biographies

Felice Giardini: early years in England

The known facts of Giardini’s career before he settled in England can be briefly summarized. Born in Turin on 12 April 1716 of French parentage, he was sent as a chorister to Milan Cathedral where he studied singing, composition and harpsichord with Giuseppe Pietro Paladini, whose students also included Giovanni Battista Sammartini.¹ However, ‘having previously manifested a disposition and partiality for the violin, his father recalled him to Turin, in order to receive instructions on that instrument of the famous Somis’.² According to Pohl, Giardini moved to Rome at the age of twelve; two years later he obtained a place among the ripieni in the orchestra of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and soon rose through the ranks to become deputy leader. In about 1748 he set out on a concert tour o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The documents
• 2 Biographies
• 3 Early collaborations
• 4 Giardini and Cox in court
• 5 Giardini’s account at Cox’s music shop
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Schedule A1
• Appendix 2: Giardini’s associates
• Index