William Boyce (1711 – 1779) was an English composer
and organist. He was born in London, at Joiners Hall,
then in Lower Thames Street, to John Boyce, at the time
a joiner and cabinet-maker, and beadle of the
Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers, and his wife
Elizabeth Cordwell. He was baptised on 11 September
1711 and was admitted by his father as a choirboy at St
Paul's Cathedral in 1719. After his voice broke in
1727, he studied music with Maurice Greene.
His first professional...(+)
William Boyce (1711 – 1779) was an English composer
and organist. He was born in London, at Joiners Hall,
then in Lower Thames Street, to John Boyce, at the time
a joiner and cabinet-maker, and beadle of the
Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers, and his wife
Elizabeth Cordwell. He was baptised on 11 September
1711 and was admitted by his father as a choirboy at St
Paul's Cathedral in 1719. After his voice broke in
1727, he studied music with Maurice Greene.
His first professional appointment came in 1734 when he
was employed as an organist at the Oxford Chapel in
central London. He went on to take a number of similar
posts before being appointed Master of the King's
Musick in 1757 (he had applied for the post on the
death of Maurice Greene in 1755) and becoming one of
the organists at the Chapel Royal in 1758. He also gave
lessons, his daughter telling the composer R. J. S.
Stevens that both Thomas Linley the Elder and Thomas
Linley the Younger had been his pupils in counterpoint
in the period 1763-1768.
His work as a composer began in the 1730s, writing
songs for Vauxhall Gardens. In 1736 he was named as
composer to the Chapel Royal and wrote the oratorio
David's Lamentation over Saul and Jonathan. He was
engaged as conductor to the Three Choirs Festival in
1737; many of his works, including the Worcester
Overture (today known as his Symphony no. 8), will have
been premiered at the Festival over the succeeding
years. The 1740s saw his opera Peleus and Thetis, the
serenata Solomon, and his Secular Masque, to a libretto
by John Dryden. In 1749 he wrote an ode and the anthem
O be joyful to celebrate the installation of the Duke
of Newcastle as Chancellor of Cambridge University, and
was awarded the degree of Doctor of Music. In 1747 he
had published his first purely instrumental
composition, a set of "Twelve Sontas for Two Violins
and a Bass" and these proved popular. Charles Burney
wrote that they were "not only in constant use, as
Chamber music, in private concerts ... but in our
theatres, as act-tunes [i.e. intermezzi] and public
gardens, as favourite pieces, during many years."
In the 1750s Boyce supplied David Garrick with songs
and other music for many productions at the Drury Lane
Theatre. These included his own operas The Chaplet and
The Shepherd's Lottery, both to libretti by Moses
Mendez, and for Garrick's 1759 pantomime Harlequin's
Invasion which contained what became Boyce's most
famous song, Heart of Oak.
As Master of the King's Musick Boyce had the
responsibility of writing music for royal occasions
including funerals, weddings and coronations. He,
however, refused to make a new setting of Zadok the
Priest for the coronation of George III in 1761 on the
grounds that Handel's setting of the anthem was
unsurpassable – as a consequence of which Handel's
setting has been played at every subsequent British
coronation.
By the year 1758, his deafness had increased to such an
extent that he was unable to continue in his organist
posts. He resolved to give up teaching and to retire to
Kensington, and devote himself to editing the
collection of church music which bears his name. He
retired and worked on completing the compilation
Cathedral Music that his teacher Greene had left
incomplete at his death. This led to Boyce editing
works by the likes of William Byrd and Henry Purcell.
Many of the pieces in the collection are still used in
Anglican services today.
On 7 February 1779 Boyce died from an attack of gout.
He was buried under the dome of St Paul's Cathedral.
His only son, also William Boyce (25 March 1764 –
1824), was a professional double bass player. Boyce was
largely forgotten after his death and he remains a
little-performed composer today, although a number of
his pieces were rediscovered in the 1930s and Constant
Lambert edited and sometimes conducted his works.
Lambert had already launched the early stages of the
modern Boyce revival in 1928, when he published the
first modern edition of the Eight Symphonies (Bartlett
and Bruce 2001). The great exception to this neglect
was his church music, which was edited after his death
by Philip Hayes and published in two large volumes,
Fifteen Anthems by Dr Boyce in 1780 and A Collection of
Anthems and a Short Service in 1790 (Bartlett 2003,
54).
Church choral music saw a revival in the 1830s and
1840s, under the influences of the Tractarians, the
Cambridge Camden Society, and the financial changes
carried out under the "Dean and Chapter Act" (the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1840). A new edition
of Boyce's works as Cathedral Music, edited by Joseph
Warren, appeared in 1849.
The first movement (Allegro) of Boyce's Symphony No. 1
in B-flat was the first piece of music played during
the procession of the bride and bridegroom at the
conclusion of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan
Markle in 2018.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Boyce_(composer)
).
Although originally written for 2 Oboes, Strings &
Continuo, I created this arrangement of the Symphony I
in Bb Major (Op. 2 No. 1) for Woodwind Quartet (Flute,
Oboe, English Horn & Bassoon).
