BURNEY, CHARLES

born April 7, 1726, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng. died April 12, 1814, Chelsea, Middlesex organist, composer, and the foremost music historian of his time in England. After attending Chester Free School (173942), Burney returned to Shrewsbury, assisted his half-brother, a church organist, and learned violin and French. In 1744 he began a musical apprenticeship at Drury Lane, in London, where he later collaborated with David Garrick. He married Esther Sleepe in June 1749 (one of their daughters was Fanny Burney, the English novelist), became organist at St. Dionis' Backchurch in October, and that winter succeeded John Stanley as organist and harpsichordist of the concerts at the King's Arms, Cornhill. He was elected to the Royal Society of Arts in 1764, was appointed to positions in the king's musical establishment in 1767 and 1774, took his D. Mus. at Oxford in 1769, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1773. Burney toured France and Italy collecting materials for a projected history of music in 1770 and visited the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria in 1772. His first success as a writer came with the publication of his travel journals, The Present State of Music in France and Italy . . . (1771) and The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Provinces . . . (1773). On his return he devoted every moment he could spare from teaching to his General History of Music, published between 1776 and 1789 in four volumes. His final appointment was as organist at Chelsea Hospital from 1783. His Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio appeared in 1796. Between 1801 and 1805 Burney wrote the music articles for Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia and was handsomely rewarded with a fee of 1,000. Burney virtually retired in 1805. He was granted a king's pension in 1806 and in 1810 became a correspondent of the Institut de France. He was also an amateur astronomer. Burney's General History of Music established him as the foremost writer on music in the country. It was not an antiquarian's history but a readable account catering to amateurs as well as professionals. What most interested Burneyand his subscriberswas contemporary music; he was an enthusiastic champion of Haydn and devoted a long chapter to Italian opera in England. Burney also wrote sympathetically on the music of the Renaissance; nevertheless, it is principally for its insight into fashionable musical taste in 18th-century London that Burney's History is indispensable.