Unfairly Neglected Baroque Quality

Composers are constantly becoming the victims of changing fashions.  Usually, after a popular composer dies, his or her music has to go through a purgatory of being out of fashion for a generation or so, and then later musicians rediscover the quality that was there all along.

But then there are the ones who become a victim of mass group labelling.  Such a one is William Boyce, who was born in London in 1711, the year before Handel came to England, and died in 1779.  It's kind of a received truth that English music after Purcell descended into utter and irredeemable mediocrity until the fresh kick-start from composer/teachers such as Parry and Stanford in the late 1800s.  That would certainly cover Boyce, and may go a long way to explain the neglect of his music.  The rest is explained by the fact that he continued composing in the late Baroque style that had already become unfashionable by the time Handel died in 1759.

All this as background to a recording that had been gathering dust on my shelves for quite a while until I pulled it out and listened again yesterday.  It's a collection of 12 Overtures and 3 Concerti grossi by Boyce, and the music made me re-evaluate that received truth mentioned above.  These could almost be considered pastiche works, as they are pulled together from various secular and sacred odes and anthems which Boyce had already composed.  But, taken as a group like this, they are highly recommendable.

It's music of undoubtedly high quality.  Boyce depended mainly on the strings, but his more sparing use of winds is always appropriate in scale and often quite ear-catching.  His music leans a bit more towards the dance than some of Handel and Bach, and has a lift and a lightness to it that is refreshing, if not perhaps truly original.  But then, few Baroque composers could ever be considered to be utterly original, since all worked in variants of a highly-developed and widely-disseminated musical language.  But Boyce's take on that language is certainly original enough to merit wider hearing, and so thanks to Chandos Records and the chamber orchestra Cantilena, directed by Adrian Shepherd. 

This 1979 2-CD set is one of several recordings of little-known British composers from this team, and I now feel I have to go and look out the others too.  In the meantime, this one will certainly get another hearing, and soon, now that I have taken the time to re-evaluate it.