SKU: ST.LC5
Composed by Samuel
Arnold. Library Volumes.
Facsimile: Printed score,
John Bland (1782). MS
libretto, The Huntington
Library LA605.
Introduction by Robert
Hoskins. Facsimile Score.
Stainer & Bell Ltd. #LC5.
Published by Stainer &
Bell Ltd. (ST.LC5).
ISBN
9790220200274.
In
its day The Castle of
Andalusia by Dr
Samuel Arnold
(1740-1802), with its
gothic sentimentality and
wild romantic action, was
a novelty. The castle,
the forest, the
cave-in-rock, the
bandits, mistaken
identities and sudden
recognitions were to
become the stock-in-trade
of the Romantic movement
and its poetry. In this
facsimile edition, first
published by John Bland
in 1782, Robert Hoskins
introduces us to a
composer, who, like his
near contemporaries Arne,
Boyce, Storace and Hook
(to name a small
selection) had no
interest in the extremes
represented by the fire
and languor of the
Italians, the
sophisticated
artificialities of the
French or the
intellectual and
emotional complexities of
the Germans. The English
style was fresh and
direct, lyrical and
'airy' and its most
characteristic
manifestation is in
entertainment music.
