Thomas Chilcot
Thomas Chilcot (1707? – 1766), was an English organist and composer.
Life[edit]
Thomas Chilcot of Bath, Somerset was born in the West of England (probably Bath) in or about 1707.[1] He was the son of John Chilcot and Elizabeth Powell.[2] Records of his birth, like most other records from his life, are now lost. Chilcot was educated at Bath Charity School, whose headmaster, Henry Dixon, had a strong interest in church music. On 6 July 1721 Chilcot (presumably aged 14) was apprenticed to Josiah Priest, the organist of Bath Abbey since 1714 - seemingly the only occasion on which the school allowed a pupil to be apprenticed to a musician.[3] On Priest's death, just four years later, Chilcot was made Abbey organist on a probationary basis. At what should have been the conclusion of Chilcot's apprenticeship, in 1728, the appointment was made permanent. As City musician in fashionable Bath, Chilcot rapidly established a remarkable relationship with many noble families, attracting their patronage and subscriptions to his publications. He became a member and subsequently Grand Master of the Royal Cumberland Lodge of Freemasons. He was also amongst the original members of the Royal Society of Musicians, founded in 1738/1739.
As well as his work at the Abbey, Chilcot organised and directed some ambitious choral concerts (at which he played his own concertos) and appears also to have run a small instrument hire business.
He married Elizabeth Mills of Bath in 1729 and had seven children, of whom four survived. Following Elizabeth's death, he married Anne Wrey, a member of a prominent West Country family (the Wrey baronets), in 1749.
Chilcot died suddenly on 24 November 1766, after occupying a highly influential role in Bath for forty years. Almost no public notice was taken of his death and a complicated disagreement over Chilcot's estate meant that none of the elaborate arrangements that the composer had made for his own funeral procession, monument and memorial trusts, was ever carried out.[4]
Works[edit]
Chilcot's unpublished music, including at least four anthems, a Jubilate, an oratorio called Elfrida and what a posthumous auction catalogue describes as "his finest pieces of Music ... never Printed or Sold", has not survived.[5]
His published music consists of:
- Six Suites of Lessons for the Harpsicord or Spinet (London, Wm Smith, 1734). Modern edition by Le Pupitre (Paris, Heugel & cie, 1981)
- Twelve English Songs with their symphonies. The words by Shakespeare and other Celebrated Poets. (William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Anacreon, and Euripides) (London, John Johnson, [1744])
- Six Concertos, for the Harpsichord (London, John Johnson, 1756) (dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Bathurst)
- Six Concertos, for the Harpsichord (Bath, privately, 1765/1766)
References[edit]
- ^ Biography from Tim Rishton, 'Thomas Chilcot and his concertos' except where otherwise stated
- ^ St. Peter's Tawstock, Effigies: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~ukdevon/TawstockInsideMIs.htm
- ^ Thomas Chilcot and His Concertos: The Chilcot Family in Bath, p. 12 http://www.rishton.info/pubs/chilcotthesis.pdf
- ^ Tim Rishton, 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', p.34
- ^ Tim Rishton, 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', p.34
Bibliography[edit]
. Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
B.J. Maslen: ‘Thomas Chilcot: a Forgotten Composer’, Musical Quarterly, lxvi (1943), 294–5
David Falconer: Bath Abbey: its Choirs & its Music (Bath, 1984)
Tim Rishton: Thomas Chilcot and his Concertos (PhD thesis, U. of Wales, Bangor, 1991)
Tim Rishton: ‘The Eighteenth-Century British Keyboard Concerto after Handel’, Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans, ed. R. Judd (Oxford, 1992), 121–39
Tim Rishton: 'Chilcot, Thomas', article in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Seraphic Lays': Thomas Chilcot 1707-1766', Hexachord: The Journal of Early Music Wales vol II no. 2 (February 2000), 4–13
Tim Rishton: 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', Early Keyboard Journal Vol 23 (2005), 33-66
External links[edit]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
