THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE HARMONICON: AN ANALYSIS

NOTES

• Leanne Langley, ‘The English Musical Journal in the Early Nineteenth Century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1983), i, 54. For titles, publication data and content of the 30 journals see ii, ‘A Descriptive Catalogue of English Periodicals Containing Musical Literature, 1665–1845’. Useful finding lists include Imogen Fellinger, Verzeichnis der Musikzeitschriften des 19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1968), and Anthony Hodges, comp., Raymond McGill, ed., The British Union Catalogue of Music Periodicals (London, 1985). I am indebted to Scott Bennett, Alec Hyatt King and Paul Scruton for many helpful suggestions on the original draft of this article, and to the American Association of University Women for research assistance in the form of an American Fellowship (1980–1), which greatly facilitated my earliest work on The Harmonicon. The following abbreviations are used throughout the study: B.L. = British Library, London; C.U.L. = Cambridge University Library; Clowes 152 = William Clowes Customer Accounts Ledger No. 152; Longman C4, C5 = Longman & Co. Commission Ledger C4 and C5; s. = shillings; d. = pence.
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• For example Alan Tyson, in The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London, 1963); Clive Brown, in Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (Cambridge, 1984); and Nicholas Temperley, ed., in The London Pianoforte School 1766–1860, 20 vols. (New York and London, 1983–7).
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• The first trace of public advertising for the new magazine is a reference of November-December 1822 to 55,000 handbills, found in Samuel Leigh's printing account with William Clowes; a similar entry in the same account, but at the even later date of 25 January 1823, refers to a Harmonicon prospectus. (See note 20.) The editor himself, in an ‘Advertisement’ written at the end of the first year, cited ‘the novelty of the project, and the suddenness with which it was carried into execution’ as the cause of imperfections in early numbers (The Harmonicon, 1 (1823), iii).
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• He was the first to use steam machinery for book printing (1823). For a general history of the firm, which by 1843 used 24 machines, had its own type and stereotype foundries and kept in store 2,500 tons of stereo plates and 80,000 woodcuts, see W.B. Clowes, Family Business, 1803–1953 (London, [1953]), and Samuel Smiles, Men of Invention and Industry (London, 1884), 208–19.
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• [William Ayrton], ‘On the Various Processes Applied to Printing Music’, Monthly Supplement, The Musical Library, 1 (1834), 4. In the same year he was associated with at least two musical works, both engraved. One was issued by Samuel Leigh (see note 19) and the other by J. B. Cramer (C.F. Abel's Adagios in Score & J. B. Cramer's Specimens in the Fugue Style, according to Charles Humphries and William C. Smith, Music Publishing in the British Isles from the Beginning until the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (2nd edn, New York, 1970), 109). Clowes was by no means the first to issue type-printed music in England. Rather, his importance rests on his advocacy of type-printed music at a time when newer, engraved methods predominated; the goal was to achieve much larger edition sizes than those allowed by engraved or punched plates.
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• Ayrton to Richard Mackenzie Bacon, 2 January 1822, C.U.L. Add. MS 6243, item 33; Ayrton to Robert Elliston, 13 February 1822, B.L. Add. MS 60370, ff. 13–14. Ayrton (1777–1858) had previously been a pianoforte teacher, a concert director for the Philharmonic Society and the highly respected director of the Italian Opera, King's Theatre, for the seasons of 1817 and 1821. He would later return to the Italian opera briefly in 1825, only to withdraw in another disagreement over his authority.
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• The 1822 controversy between professors and aristocrats over the Royal Academy of Music is described in detail in Bacon's The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, 4 (1822), 370–400, an account based partly on information from Sir George Smart (Smart to Bacon, 17 July 1822, C.U.L. Add. MS 6243, item 43). In 1813 Ayrton, together with J. P. Salomon and others, had been involved in yet an earlier, thwarted Philharmonic plan to establish a music academy (see the abstract in B.L. Add. MS 41771, ff.6–7).
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• The Regent's Harmonic Institution (from February 1820, Royal Harmonic Institution), whose official purpose was announced in January 1819 as printing, publishing and vending music (see The English Musical Gazette (1819), 16, 34–5), was really a joint stock company formed by 23 music professors to finance new concert rooms, the Argyll Rooms on Regent Street, for the Philharmonic Society. The scheme appears to have been spearheaded by John Nash, the royal architect responsible for building Regent Street, with help from William Ayrton, who intended to serve the Philharmonic Society as well as the cause of British music publishing and scholarship. By early 1820 Nash had completed the rooms, but not without controversy, leading to the withdrawal of some funds and disastrous consequences for most of the stockholders. A partnership of two members, Thomas Welsh and William Hawes, finally took over the Arygll Rooms in early 1823 and the music retailing business in 1825. Ayrton's role in the affair remains clouded. See John Summerson, John Nash: Architect to King George IV (2nd edn, London, 1949); [James Elmes], ‘Opening of the New Argyle Rooms’, Annals of the Fine Arts, 5 (1820), 196–8; Nash to Ayrton, 28 September 1819, B.L. Add. MS 52339, f.151; diary of Sir George Smart, 22 April 1820, B.L. Add. MS 41772, f.41; and the minutes of the Directors' Meetings (Loan 48.2/1) and of the General Meetings (Loan 48.3/1), Philharmonic Society Papers, The British Library, London.
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• Elected an F. S. A. in 1807, he had been collecting materials for an historical dictionary of music since 1808 and contributing honorary criticism to The Morning Chronicle since 1813. Among his acquaintances around this time were James and Martin Burney, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Henry Crabb Robinson, T. N. Talfourd and T. M. Alsager. For Ayrton's background, career, relationships and personality, see Langley, ‘English Musical Journal’, 284–317.
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• As the firm's business manager, Parker (1793–1870) took an active role in overseeing new projects. That he was closely involved with The Harmonicon can be seen in his direct solicitation of original music for the magazine (William Shield to Parker, 18 May 1823, B.L. Add. MS 52343, ff.37–8) and in his personal supervision of Ayrton's proof corrections (see an errata sheet bound at the back of The Harmonicon, 1 (1823), B.L. Hirsch IV. 1123a, in which Parker's indisposition is blamed for errors in early impressions of the June and July numbers).
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• Parker probably already knew of Ayrton in his King's Theatre connection (Clowes printed the Theatre's tickets and programmes), but an endorsement from Murray, if offered, would have been welcome. Murray himself had recently applied to Ayrton for a literary opinion of M. H. Beyle's manuscript ‘Life of Rossini’ (See Murray to Ayrton, n.d., and D. G. Lubé to Murray, 14 May 1822, B.L. Add. MS 52339, ff. 179–80) and was to solicit musical criticism from him in later years as well.
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• Besides his London contacts in the Society of Antiquaries, the newspaper business and court and opera circles, Ayrton kept up with amateur musical friends in foreign and provincial places. Equally important were his colleagues in the Philharmonic Society and composer friends in the Harmonic Institution. For the contents of Ayrton's impressive private musical library, which included some Mozart and Haydn autographs, important theoretical and historical works and a number of opera librettos, see B.L. sale catalogue S. C. Puttick & Simpson 55(2).
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• Given Ayrton's already strong collection of dictionary materials (see B. L. Add. MS 52334), his skills as a compiler and writer, known interest in the literature of music (including the contemporary Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung) and concern for high standards in English musical criticism, it is tempting to infer a literary-critical bias on his part. Parker would have been interested mainly in making the printing of music an efficient and profitable enterprise.
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• These decisions must have had something to do too with differentiating The Harmonicon from its only rival in the field, Bacon's The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, a more philosophical, discursive, leisurely and expensive periodical consisting exclusively of literature about music.
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• The following are listed as a group of Harmonicon advertisers in Clowes 152, pp. 1264–84: Sherwood & Co., Rudall & Co., Cocks & Co., Urling & Co., Robins & Co., Dibb & Co., Sams (St James), Donovan & Doyle, Jackson & Macfarren, Harding, Mavor & Co., Clementi & Co., Bell's Life in London, Harmonic Institution, Baldwin & Co., Hurst & Robinson, John Murray, Whittakers, Goulding & Co., Hill, Power, Boosey & Co., Atkinson, Ewer and Preston.
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• Pinnock's poor performance as a manager of accounts and the folly of his Music Warehouse scheme are recorded vividly in Jerdan's autobiography (London, 1852–3), ii, 181–2. Other evidence includes a civil legal action as noted in The Times (28 December 1820): after their Literary Gazette episode ended in 1820, Pinnock and his brother-in-law partner, Maunder, were confronted by their third partner, the printer Bensley, who had discovered irregularities in their schoolbooks business, specifically, bills of over £12,000 for which there was no provision. Maunder then got out of the business, while Pinnock conceived the idea of building and selling pianos, purchasing the shop at 267 Strand (previously sublet from Jerden) to accommodate his Warehouse.
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• Clowes 152, p. 570. (This ledger, the earliest extant Clowes account book, contains customer accounts from January 1822; itemized entries under Pinnock's name run from 12 January 1822 to 8 July 1824.) The debts are entered as lump sums at the end of Pinnock's private account and appear to be carried over from a previous ledger; they probably relate exclusively to printing.
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• Leigh had been in business at 18 Strand with his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Mathews, since 1807. The original owner of the family business, since 1774, was James Mathews, a bookseller, stationer and bookbinder. When Mathews died in 1804 his wife Elizabeth carried on the business, then took in Leigh as a partner, while the Mathews's own son Charles (1776–1835) pursued a career in the theatre. See Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Folkestone, 1977), s.v. ‘Mathews, James’. A list of early Samuel Leigh titles is contained at the back of his Scripture Geneology from Adam to Christ (1817); the Scripture Atlas [1812], published under royal patronage, was apparently his first independent work. For a brief discussion of Leigh's important travel works, see John Vaughan, The English Guide Book C1780–1870: An Illustrated History (Newton Abbot, 1974).
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• The Beauties of Mozart, Handel, Pleyel, Haydn, Beethoven, and other Celebrated Composers, adapted to the Words of Popular Psalms & Hymns for One or Two Voices, with an Accompaniment & Appropriate Symphonies for the Piano Forte, Organ or Harp, By an Eminent Professor. London: Printed for Samuel Leigh, in the Strand, n.d. [1820]. A small oblong collection of 164 pages, decoratively embellished, this work typified the high society vogue for simple arrangements of popular tunes, but it was criticized by at least one writer (The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, 3 (1821), 486–8) for its irreverence in appropriating light music to sacred subjects. According to Glowes 152, p. 139, Leigh also issued a collection of hymns in 1822, for which Clowes executed the preface and contents pages.
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• Clowes 152, pp. 139, 141. For paper and presswork of the handbills Leigh was charged £19 10s., whereas for the 6,000 prospectuses he was charged nothing. (No trace of either piece of ephemera has been found.) Similarly, Leigh advertisements printed in 1823 numbers of The Harmonicon, and another bill executed in December 1823, were rendered at no cost to the publisher (Clowes 152, p. 1280).
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• In lieu of a complete set of original wrappers for 1824, the plates designed to accompany biographical articles that year may be used to document the change of publisher. According to colophons on these and ignoring the sequence of the published articles, Pinnock's last issue was the number for February (portrait of Hummel); Leigh's first was the number for March (portrait of Weber).
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• The Harmonicon; an Assemblage of Vocal and Instrumental Music, consisting of Original Pieces by eminent British and Foreign Composers of the present day, and Selections from the best Works of all the great Masters; together with a Critical Review of New Musical Works; notices of Operas, Concerts, and other Musical Performances, and a new Encyclopaedia of Music, to give the full title found on early wrappers, was puffed in The Gentleman's Magazine for January (93, pt. 1 (1823), 59–65) and reviewed favourably in Ackermann's Repository of Arts for February (3rd ser., 1–2 (1823), 109–11). Several of the first few numbers had to be reprinted more than once to meet public demand, and Ayrton wrote warmly about the journal's success in his year-end ‘Advertisement’ (The Harmonicon, 1 (1823), iii-iv).
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• ‘Advertisement’, The Harmonicon, 1 (1823), iv. For a more detailed discussion of format, content and editorial method in the first series (vols. 1–5, 1823–7) see Langley, ‘English Musical Journal’, 335–65 passim. It should be noted that one supplementary feature promised at the outset of the magazine, a lexicon of musical terms, proved so troublesome that it was abandoned before the end of 1823. Several installments of the aborted ‘Encyclopaedia’ and successive ‘Lexicon’ are preserved at the back of The Harmonicon, 11 (1833), B.L. shelfmark P.P. 1947.
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• ‘New Series of the Harmonicon’, announcement at the end of The Harmonicon, 5 (1827). The writer stressed that there would be no compromise in the “established character' of the work but that future essays would be of a ‘less studied’ nature and foreign news ‘more compressed’; only the review department did not ‘admit of amendment’ in the new series.
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• There were also two or three minor changes to the title of the magazine, and numbering began afresh in January 1828. Only once did the Harmonicon conductors experiment with a change in format: during 1830 each month's letterpress and music were paginated consecutively and stitched together, ostensibly to reflect a more integral relationship between the two parts. Although a few readers welcomed this change as a ‘great improvement’ (see George Hogarth's letter in The Harmonicon, 8 (1830), 97), many evidently did not like it; the original method of pagination was restored the following year.
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• [George Hogarth], ‘Musical Literature’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 27 (1830), 479–81, and [T. P. Thompson], ‘Musical Periodicals: Harmonicon-Giulianiad', Westminster Review, 18 (1833), 471–2. Hogarth (1783–1870), a journalist and musical writer who was a steady contributor to The Harmonicon and a close friend of Ayrton, wrote a glowing account of the monthly magazine in the context of a larger discussion of British musical literature. Thompson (1783–1869), the wealthy, liberal-minded co-editor of The Westminster, who was also something of an eccentric musical amateur, had been in contact with Ayrton since 1832, suggesting that a discussion of music between their two journals might be beneficial to both (Thompson to Ayrton, 8 September 1832, B.L. Add. MS 52338, ff.79–80). These two articles were, in other words, deliberate puffs for The Harmonicon.
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• The British Library's Department of Manuscripts holds Ayrton's papers in two parts, the Ayrton Collection (B.L. Add. MSS 52334–52358) and the Ayrton Papers (B.L. Add. MSS 60358–60381), both owned originally by his descendants. One can only speculate that the fastidious editor kept drafts, correspondence and other official material relating to Harmonicon business separate from his personal and family papers; if preserved at all, this material has not survived.
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• By all accounts none of William Clowes's records survived the London bombing raids of 1941, in which the firm's Duke Street premises were completely destroyed. However, a survey of company records conducted in 1982 by the Business Archives Council revealed the existence of several accounting ledgers and corporate records, dating mostly from the late nineteenth century, in store at Beccles, Suffolk, where Clowes established additional premises in 1873. These ledgers were saved in the 1941 raids but damaged by water; the earliest one, No. 152 (1822–30), contains much valuable and hitherto unknown information on The Harmonicon. I am indebted to Mr N. F. Squibb of William Clowes (Beccles) Limited for his kind assistance in first making this material available to me, and to Mr Howard J. Goodborn, Managing Director, for permission to cite ledger 152 and to reproduce p. 1386 (Figure 1). For access to Longman Commission Ledgers C4 and C5, located in the Longman Archives (Part I), Department of Archives and Manuscripts, The Library, University of Reading, I am grateful to Dr J. A. Edwards and Mr Michael Bott; for permission to cite the Longman material and to reproduce ledger C4, f.254 (Figure 2) I must thank Mr David Lea of the Longman Group Limited.
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• Clowes 152, pp. 1386–7 and 1390–1. In real money the average monthly pp cost from January to June 1828 was £90, music printing representing £30; from July to December 1828 the total was £82, music printing representing about £29.
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• Whereas the rate for both music and letterpress printing appears to go down in the smaller print run, i.e. from £12 to £11 10s. a sheet for music and from £5 to £4 10s. a sheet for letterpress, the gap between the two rates actually increases in the smaller run.
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• In a review of a Boston Handel and Haydn Society publication (The Harmonicon, 4 (1826), 14) Ayrton alluded to the great expense of type-printed, as compared with engraved, music in small runs, suggesting that if under 1,500 copies were needed, the type-printed unit (a single copy) would cost four times that of the engraved unit. Clowes later lowered this estimate to three times the cost of an engraved unit (The Harmonicon, 7 (1829), 295n), but the point about economies of scale remained the same.
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• No list of payments to contributors is extant, though Ayrton almost certainly kept one. That he did solicit for pay original articles on behalf of the proprietors is strongly suggested by a letter in The Literary Gazette (30 October 1824) signed by ‘One of the Conductors of the Harmonicon’ (referring to original biographical memoirs, of Weber and others). Ayrton's occasional use of original material by the professional journalists F.J.M. Fayolle, George Hogarth and others, as well as the phrase ‘written expressly for the Harmonicon’ on certain musical pieces, further points to commissioning activity. The figure is certainly large enough to have supported a fair amount of outside original writing as well as Ayrton's own work as editor and compiler.
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• Theoretically, advertising could be subsumed under Leigh's ‘Sundry Disbursements’ for any or all of 1828–30, but only those figures for the first half of 1828 are large enough to have included this expense, especially given the amounts spent on advertising during the years 1825–6 and 1830–2.
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• Longman, Rees. Orme, Brown, and Green, as it was known in 1830, became Longman. Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman in 1832. Thomas Brown had sole management of the cash department from around 1811 to his retirement in 1859, ‘with so regular and just a system that an author could always learn what was coming to him, and when he was to receive it—a plan not invariably adopted in a publisher's counting-house'. Henry Curwen, A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New (London, 1873), 94.
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• For example, W. T. Parke's Musical Memoirs (London, 1830) was purchased for 15s. on 9 December 1830 (reviewed in the number for March 1831); libraries regularly receiving copies included those of the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh (two copies) as well as those of Trinity College, Dublin, and Sion College, and the British Museum; special requests for copies were granted to Mr Purday [a proprietor], Mr Townsend [a contributor], Thomas Barnes [editor of The Times] and The Atlas [Edward Holmes]; paper duties were calculated on the size, and hence weight, of each number and were paid, along with a flat duty of 3s.6d. (from August 1833, 1s.6d.) per advertisement, monthly.
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• In delivering free copies to other papers, Longman was probably acting on orders from Parker, who is known to have authorized a similar publicity gesture for the SPCK's new Saturday Magazine in June 1832 (Minutes of the General Literature Committee, 30 June 1832, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, SPCK Archives, Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, London). Such copies came out of the normal print run each month and were accounted for in the Longman ledger, collectively with all legal deposit and privately requested copies, as ‘delivered’. The ‘Delivered’ column on the credit side of the account book thus had nothing to do with a number of paid subscriptions, as I once assumed (‘English Musical Journal’, 169, 330–1).
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• The six were reserved presumably for the most influential papers, though any interested publication could still obtain a regular gratis copy by request; a few papers that were former recipients, such as The Examiner, The Eclectic Review. did so. Besides allowing a small saving on monthly packing fees, this cut signalled an important policy change at The Harmonicon, suggesting that from this time Parker was no longer managing the magazine. From at least January 1832 he had been making arrangements to leave Clowes and start his own religious publishing business. See Parker to John Murray, 22 December 1832, Murray Archives, 50 Albemarle Street, London, and note 54.
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• The monthly print run had been stable at 1,100 since March 1831; in May 1832 it was reduced to 750, and in July to 700, where it remained (Longman C4, f. 420).
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• Special promotions occurred, for example in mid-1828 (just as sales of the New Series were beginning to fall sharply), when 30,000 handbills were distributed, partly through insertion in John Murray's The Quarterly Review (the July number of which carried an article of musical interest by H. H. Milman, the Dean of St Paul's); in January 1831 (just after the return of the old format and the change to Longman), when 850 ‘specimen’ copies were printed; in May 1831, when a special supplementary number devoted entirely to the music of Spohr's popular Azor and Zemira was issued; and in August 1831, when another 850 specimens were printed.
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• See Longman C4, f. 255 and the successive ff.420–1, where a figure of £245 15s.6d. (comprising the original debt plus advertising costs through June 1831) is, for bookkeeping purposes, systematically debited and credited to Clowes's account. The annotation ‘p agreement’ and a cross reference to ‘6L 39’ (probably a letter of agreement in a Longman letterbook, now missing) accompanies the figure. Accumulating about £30 every six months, the total figure is deducted finally from the printer's account on 30 June 1832.
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• The amount due by 23 January 1832 was £214 16s. 4d. (Clowes 152, p.333). Leigh's business may well have suffered, and never recovered, from the general depression that hit the bookselling trade during the winter of 1825–6, added to which his Harmonicon involvement, including an 1825 court case over a copyright offence, proved an intolerable burden. Evidence given at the inquest following his suicide revealed that the 51-year-old bookseller and publisher ‘had latterly been very much depressed in spirits, and was frequently very melancholy’ (The Times, 13 August 1831).
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• See monthly advertising sections from 1824, preserved at the back of The Harmonicon, 1–2 (1823–4), B. L. shelfmark P.P.1947.
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• Over the final period The Harmonicon lost revenue not only from a drop in the number of clients but also by a decrease in the typical size of a single advertisement.
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• Rich (1783–1850), originally of Truro, Massachusetts, was appointed American consul at Valencia, Spain in 1816 but lived in Madrid between 1823 and 1829, overseeing the archives of the U. S. legation there, building up his own collection of manuscripts and early printed books relating to America, and hosting American scholars working in Madrid, notably Washington Irving, whose A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (London, 1828) was produced during his stay with the Rich family. Rich moved to London about 1829, and established himself as an antiquarian bookseller at 12 Red Lion Square, Holborn. Issuing sale catalogues from at least 1832, he acted as an agent for American libraries and collectors, also publishing a two-volume bibliography of his remarkable private collection entitled Bibliotheca Americana Nova; or, A Catalogue of Books in various languages, relating to America, printed since the year 1700 (London, 1835,1846). He later served as consul in the Balearic Islands (1834–45) but carried on the London business in partnership with his sons until 1849; he is also known to have arranged the distribution in England, through Longman's, of at least one American publication (see Longman C6, f.457). Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. ‘Rich, Obadiah’, and Stanley T. Williams, The Life of Washington Irving (New York, 1935).
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• In other words, at a unit price of 13/12d. (the full retail price was 3s.). This special rate may be compared with the usual trade discount of 72 per cent given to ordinary vendors and the slightly more generous rate of 64 per cent given to vendors who were New Series co-proprietors (see Table 1, note f).
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• This episode is documented only by brief memoranda headed ‘Mem. Mr Rich’ in Longman C4, ff.254–5 (see Figure 2), which I earlier interpreted, owing to the 37.5 per cent discount rate, as references to Longman's sale of Harmonicon remainders in 1831 ('English Musical Journal', 160n). In fact the quantities (which are not accounted for by Longman's sale of ordinary 1831 print runs) and the dates and method of payment (at future quarterly intervals and into Clowes's own bank) strongly point to an independent private distributor. The identity of Rich himself—he is listed in Robson's London Directory for 1832 as an ‘American agent’—further supports the shipping theory. It is logical that Clowes should have been looking for new markets, not only as part of a package of fresh initiatives in 1831 but also in the wake of an apparently successful, indigenous American fine arts journal in New York, The Euterpeiad (not to be confused with the Boston Euterpeiad of 1820–3; see ‘Musical Literature in North America’, The Harmonicon, 9 (1831), 10–11). The Rich memos disappear from the Longman Harmonicon account after 1831.
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• Given the known single print run high of 2,000 (during the first six months of 1828 and again in January of 1831) and the existence of up to four editions of some of the earliest numbers—according to Jamie Croy Kassler, The Science of Music in Britain, 1714–1830: A Catalogue of Writings, Lectures, and Inventions (New York, 1979), 1228, a fourth edition of the first number was published in June 1823—it is not too much to deduce a total monthly sale of from 1,800 to 2,000 or more for some of the early months of 1823.
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• As a known quantity, or basic minimum number of readers committed to the magazine's purchase in advance of publication, the size of the subscribing audience would undoubtedly have been a useful rough guide to Clowes in adjusting Harmonicon print runs from month to month. But since subscriptions were never centralized at one office but rather were funnelled through a changing network of book and music shops, it is now impossible to differentiate the size of the magazine's subscribing audience from that of its more occasional one. A subscription was merely a private standing order, cancellable at any time, with the purchaser's chosen book-or music seller. Still, if we assume from the specialized nature of The Harmonicon that subscriptions accounted for at least half the monthly sale, and, given that the mean of all known, extrapolated and projected monthly sales figures is 871, then it is reasonable to estimate the loyal Harmonicon audience at around 435 purchasers.
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• In the 1820s and early 1830s circulation figures for the higher quarterly reviews ranged from about 10,000 to 13,500 and for the best monthly magazines 3,000 to 6,500, whereas figures for the literary and fine arts weeklies hovered closer to 1,000 or 2,000. Estimated circulations of specialized musical journals appearing between 1800 and 1845, including the well-known The Musical World, The Musical Times, remained near the bottom of this scale, with readerships of anything from 200 to perhaps 5,000. See Richard D. Altick, ‘Periodical and Newspaper Circulation’, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago, 1957), 391–6, and Langley, ‘English Musical Journal’, 184–90.
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• For comparison, we may note some roughly contemporary percentages reported in Scott Bennett, ‘Revolutions in thought: serial publication and the mass market for reading’, The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, ed. Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff (Leicester, 1982), 225–57. This is a highly informative article, the methodology of which is reflected in the present study. Bennett calculates that, on average in the 1830s and 1840s, the successful Penny Magazine sold 98 per cent of its print order, The Quarterly Review 97 per cent, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 84 per cent, while the short-lived Quarterly Journal of Education (not unlike The Harmonicon) sold only 61 per cent (p.236).
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• Bennett calculates similar ‘profitability ratios’ for the journals in his study by dividing total cost into total income. Thus Blackwood's returned £1.58 for every pound spent on it, The Quarterly Review £1.27, The Penny Magazine (at just over the break-even point) £1.07, and The Quarterly Journal of Education only £0.46 (ibid., 239). It should be noted that The Harmonicon's £0.88 for the period 1828–30 is a slightly more optimistic return on the pound than was in fact the case, since the proprietors' accounts at the time did not register their accumulating advertising costs.
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• The SDUK was founded in 1826, largely through the reforming zeal, mainly social and educational, of Henry Brougham. Funded by subscription, the Society acted as a non-profit-making intermediary between authors and publishers in an ambitious series of works appearing mostly in the late 1820s and early 1830s. See Monica C. Grobel, ‘The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826–1846 and its Relation to Adult Education in the first half of the XIXth Century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1932), and Janet Percival, comp., The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1848: A Handlist of the Society's Correspondence and Papers (London, The Library, University College, 1978). For Knight's involvement with the SDUK, see his own Passages of a Working Life during Haifa Century; with a Prelude of Early Reminiscences (London, 1864–5), and Bennett, ‘Revolutions in thought’. According to Clowes 152, Clowes had been executing books and magazines for Knight since June 1823 and SDUK works (published by Baldwin, Cradock & Co.) since 1827.
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• Bennett, ‘Revolutions in thought’, 236. Exploring Knight's shrewd achievement with The Penny Magazine, Bennett shows how his strategy of low price, short publication interval and razor-thin profit margin, coupled to a largely non-controversial product, successfully imposed itself on an unwilling market. See Knight's illustrated account of the venture in ‘The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine’, The Penny Magazine, 2 (1833), 377–84, 417–24, 465–72 and 505–11.
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• W. K. Lowther Clarke, A History of the SPCK (London, 1959), 182; the Society's annual Report gives average weekly sales during 1832–3 as 81,731 (cited in Bennett, 255 nl8). Parker had hoped for a partnership in Clowes's business, but since family arrangements precluded this, he set up his own publishing firm at 445 West Strand in the spring of 1832, having already become advising printer to the Cambridge University Press (1829) and, meanwhile, established good connections with the SPCK. His SPCK dealings can be followed in the Minute Books of the General Literature and Education Committee, SPCK Archives, London, and his subsequent associations with education, Fraser's Magazine and the Liberal and Broad-Church party in his obituary in the The Bookseller (1 June 1870).
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• Bennett, ‘Revolutions in thought’, 243. In the same vein, a series of attacks on Knight, the SDUK, SPCK and ‘cheap knowledge’ in general was carried on throughout The Literary Gazette, which insisted on behalf of the traditional publishers' monopoly that cheapness and high quality were incompatible: ‘This is the system of publishing which has the effect of making authorship a mere trade, chiefly carried on by hirelings and journeymen, and of vitiating the literature of England to a degree destructive of all excellence. The new method of manufacturing books merely for the ready market of the day…is indeed a lamentable exhibition. All that is sought is, that they should sell’ (11 January 1834). Any force such protests carried was made stronger by the high political ranking of many SDUK Committee members.
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• Evidence of Ayrton's conservative temperament, his establishment connections and his general agitation over recent social and political events can be seen in his private scrapbooks and in The Harmonicon (for example, his 27 April 1832 entry in ‘Extracts from the Diary of a Dilettante’, The Harmonicon, 10 (1832), 137), as well as in his reluctance to get involved with the SPCK's projected Saturday Magazine, even after reassurances from Parker. See Parker to Ayrton, 13 June 1832, B.L. Add. MS 52339, f. 141.
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• See Longman C4, f. 422, entry for 31 December 1832, showing no advertising expenditure, in contrast to previous half-yearly amounts of £30–33.
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• Advertising expenditure was cut to half its previous level, and despite a steadily falling sale, no attempt was made to adjust the print run. The plan to let the magazine run down through September (rather than December, completing a full calendar year) must have been based on the London season, which traditionally closed when Parliament broke up at the end of the summer.
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• Whatever his initial, ideological reservations about useful-knowledge publishing, Ayrton was enough of a pragmatist to adapt himself to the newer market; indeed by mid-1833 he seemed comfortably settled in to what would be another 15 years of freelance work for the SDUK or Charles Knight, from writing musical biographies in the Gallery of Portraits (1833, 1836) and Penny Cyclopaedia (1833–46) to providing musical tidbits for the Pictorial History of England, the Pictorial Edition of the works of Shakspere and the British Almanac.
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• T.P. Thompson, the writer responsible for the Westminster puff (see note 26), had previously enjoyed a favourable Harmonicon review (8 (1830), 35) of his own, idiosyncratic harmony treatise, Instructions to my Daughter, for Playing on the Enharmonic Guitar (London, 1829), portions of which were reprinted and discussed by Ayrton (8 (1830), 68–70; 10 (1832), 240–2). His Westminster Review article was brief and light-hearted, praising The Harmonicon as ‘the chef d'état-major of the musical forces'. But R.M. Bacon, whose own Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review had recently become defunct, saw things more clearly when in July, in the second of a five-part New Monthly Magazine series called ‘On the Progress of Music from the Commencement of the Present Century’, he revealed that The Harmonicon was scarcely covering its expenses (see The New Monthly Magazine, 38 (1833), 301).
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• ‘Address’, following the contents page of the last volume (1833), B.L. Hirsch IV. 1123a.
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• To what extent this long delay was intentional is not clear. It may have been necessary both to accommodate Ayrton, busy with The Penny Cyclopaedia and other projects (including a serial collection of sacred music for Parker, entitled Sacred Minstrelsy), and to allow Clowes time to implement a music printing improvement, of which Knight had secured the patent from Eugène Duverger of Paris. See ‘On the Various Processes Applied to Printing Music’, Monthly Supplement, The Musical Library, 1 (1834), 4, where Duverger's ‘secret process’ is described as having achieved ‘a more perfect union of the staff-lines’. It is important to note that The Musical Library was exclusively a Knight project and had no real connection with the SDUK, despite the public's natural assumption to the contrary.
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• ‘Address’, Monthly Supplement, The Musical Library, 1 (1834), 1. The literary supplements did not begin appearing until the second month of publication, April 1834.
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• The modern pieces were mostly German, though songs were given English texts; symphonies were excerpted and overtures ‘revised and altered’. Handel's music was ‘freshly arranged’ from score, and the opening of Haydn's Creation and certain Beethoven selections were ‘newly adapted’; new accompaniments were given to Purcell's cantatas, to madrigals and glees, and to English songs. Reviewers generally welcomed the better quality of these selections, approving Ayrton's omission of light popular music and encouraging him to include even more older English music. The tacit avoidance of sacred music was to do both with broader audience appeal and with the express aims of the popular education movement.
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• About 17 per cent and 14 per cent of selections in Musical Library volumes for 1834 and 1835 respectively had previously appeared in The Harmonicon; examples include two pieces each by Asioli, Rossini ('Deh calma, O ciel' from Otello; overture to Demetrio e Polibio), Mozart (canzonet ‘Good Morrow’; overture to Cosi fan tutte), Weber and Hummel, and as many as seven by Beethoven, one of which ('March' from Fidelio) had already appeared twice in The Harmonicon (1827, 1832). Ayrton rather piously explained that it was ‘neither advisable nor possible to avoid occasionally republishing what [had] already appeared in so voluminous and well-selected a work’ (as The Harmonicon), further asserting that only one in 20 Musical Library subscribers possessed The Harmonicon and therefore had reason to complain. (He later revised this estimate to one in 12.) See his replies to correspondents in the Monthly Supplement, The Musical Library, 1 (1834), 72 and 108. Charges of compilation and piracy against Knight publications were common.
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• From a review of the first monthly part, in The Examiner (20 April 1834). See also The Spectator (8 March 1834) and The Atlas (1 June, 17 August and 16 November 1834). The Musical Library's relationship to The Harmonicon was widely understood by these papers, but there was some misapprehension about the role of the SDUK in its affairs.
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• In late 1833 and throughout 1834 a string of music publications joined the list of cheap periodicals. Besides Ayrton's Sacred Minstrelsy for Parker, there was John Barnett's issue of his own works in cheap monthly parts and arranged masterworks in a separate Library of Standard Music; John Goss issued cheap monthly numbers of sacred and secular songs; a Rev. Wybrow brought out weekly numbers of sacred music at 12d. each, and there was also a Juvenile Musical Library. For a trenchant satire on the trend, see [Edward Holmes], The Musical Libraries', The Atlas (20 October 1833).
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• No explanation was given for this change in the publishing scheme, but it probably had more to do with a quick exhaustion of popular demand for serious musical instruction than with anything else. To compensate for the loss, monthly parts of music from August 1836 to February 1837 were increased by about ten pages each.
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• Principally from The Musical World, Alfred Novello's first house journal, begun on 18 March 1836. It was an important 16-page weekly (price 3d.) devoted to national and international musical news, scholarship, short reviews and chit-chat; with many changes it lived throughout the Victorian period as an organ of English musical opinion.
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• From Ayrton's remarks comparing the Musical Library, Harmonicon audiences (see note 65) and from the present study's estimate of a loyal Harmonicon readership (note 48), we can conservatively place The Musical Library's steady circulation at 5,220. Clowes's most important musical work was yet to come, however: Hymns Ancient and Modern, first published by Novello in a form complete with music in 1861, was taken over by Clowes in 1868 and is still printed by the firm.
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• Examples include Dowland, ‘Awake sweet love’ and ‘Now, O now, I needs must part’; Morley, ‘Now is the month of Maying’; Gibbons, ‘The silver swan’; Wilbye, ‘As fair as morn, as fresh as May’, ‘Flora gave me fairest flowers’ and ‘Sweet honey-sucking bees’; Weelkes, ‘The nightingale’, and Ford, ‘Since first I saw your face’. Such material would have been new to most Musical Library patrons and welcome as an English contribution to a masterworks collection, besides lending itself well to the educational purposes of a Charles Knight publication. For the Tudor revival in context, see Frank Howes, The English Musical Renaissance (London, 1966), 85–110.
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• Passages of a Working Life, ii, 234–5.
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• Subscription series of the Ancient and Philharmonic concerts were not only beyond the means of most people but also presented social obstacles to membership. See the plea by ‘An Uninstructed Lover of Music’ for more democratic concert opportunities, in a letter to the editor, The Spectator (28 December 1833).
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• [Edward Holmes], in ‘Decease of the Harmonicon’, The Atlas (8 September 1833). This is a blistering, tongue-in-cheek report of the magazine's demise and Ayrton's contribution to it. Some of the editor's more familiar targets, satirized here, were Bochsa, Malibran, Paganini, any proprietor of the Italian Opera House, the use of canon or fugue, faulty text-setting and parallel fifths.
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• Bacon, an articulate music enthusiast with a broad circle of professional contacts, produced and printed his magazine almost single-handedly; Samuel Chappell was probably principal proprietor until about 1827, when Bacon himself took ownership. Important for being the first English periodical devoted entirely to musical writing. The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review reflects Bacon's interests in the intellectual and philosophical qualities of music and the role of music in society, as well as his hopes for improved musical education and the establishment of serious English opera. Although no commercial records have come to light, it is clear from secondary and internal evidence that the journal was well received during its first few years but got into trouble in the mid-1820s. For a discussion of its publication history, content and influence see Langley, ‘English Musical Journal’, 194–281.
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