Players and music in the 18th century

Players and music in the 18th century

Unfortunately, no music, published or in manuscript, is known to have survived for the bell harp. In fact, no music is known to have ever been written for it but, of course, something might yet turn up. This absence of music is interesting in itself and taken with other pieces of evidence suggests, unsurprisingly, that bell harp players simply played popular tunes of the time, songs and dance tunes that fitted the instrument and the player. But it is also possible that the bell harp had a specialised repertoire appropriate for it.

Street musicians

One source of information about the bell harp and bell harp players comes from the archive of trials at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674-1913.

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

On the sixth of November 1730 John Richards was drinking in the Crown Tavern in Westminster. He drank ‘several Pints of Wine, five or six at the most’. During his time there he counted his money out on a table, two guineas as well as three shillings and sixpence. It is difficult to disentangle exactly what happened that night, but two women in the tavern joined John Richards and drank with him and finally charged him for drinking 14 pints. There was a dispute and then Richards noticed that some of his money was missing. The two women were accused of stealing two guineas.

At court (the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court) his friend John Neal also gave evidence. Neal claimed to be passing the tavern and ‘heard a Bell-Harp there’. It was the sound of a bell harp that caused him to look in and see his friend, John Richards. The two women were acquitted on the grounds that John Richards could not positively identify which of the two women stole the money.

References to the bell harp in the 18th century are very rare indeed and this is probably the earliest. The fact that someone in 1730 was playing a bell harp in a tavern in London is presented as a feature of everyday experience at that time. The bell harp has nothing to do with the criminal proceedings.

A similar instance of ‘pocketpicking’ is recorded in the Old Bailey archives from a few years later. On February 26, 1733, John Harrison, who by his own account had been drinking too much, was on his way home when a woman called to him, ‘Won’t you give me a Dram, Master Harrison?’ He went with her to ‘Mrs. Robinson’s Brandy-shop’. There he met some other people and after that they went on to an alehouse and there was more drinking. John Harrison ended up sleeping in an empty house and woke up with both goods and money stolen.

Five women were accused but all acquitted because John Harrison couldn’t identify who actually stole the money and goods. At the ‘Brandy-shop’ there was a boy playing a ‘Bell-harp’ and Harrison threw him some money; was it a halfpenny, was it a guinea? Whatever the amount, the bell harp was not a crucial part of the alleged crime but simply an incidental part of that night. A boy, presumably a street musician, was playing a bell harp, perhaps in the street or in the ‘Brandy-shop’ itself. 

One final and rather different instance of a bell harp mentioned in a criminal case occurs four years later.  On October 21, 1737 four ‘Footpads’ attacked a stage-coach near Enfield. Only two men were on trial, Grafton Kirk and Terry Gerrard. They broke through the door of the coach and, armed with pistols, assaulted and robbed two passengers.  As well as money, they stole a gold watch. The money was shared out at the time a few fields away. The watch was sold a week later to a ‘Fellow with one Eye that goes about with a Bell-harp.’ Grafton Kirk and Terry Gerrard were sentenced to death.

Once again the bell harp had no part in the crime. It is only mentioned to identify a particular man, a man with one eye who carried a bell harp with him. Perhaps the bell harp signifies something more sinister, an insinuation of the character of this dodgy fellow who buys stolen property. The man, named as Solomon Moses, is not only a member of a minority (he is Jewish), he is disabled (he has one eye) and, to cap it all, he walks around with a bell harp.

This fascinating window into history from the records of London’s Central Criminal Court reveals only a very circumscribed view of ordinary life of the time. The bell harp in the 1730s in and around London appears to be part of an underworld of drunkenness and pickpockets and criminals. But, of course, the instrument could have been more widely popular with all sorts of people both in the London area and throughout Britain.   

These Old Bailey records are from 1674 to 1913. The bell harp doesn’t appear again after 1737. Instruments like the flute or violin feature in court cases many times over the decades but for instruments more comparable to the bell harp there is very little record. For example, the sticcado or sticcado pastorale (or pastrole)  was a popular instrument in its various forms from the 1770s and into the 19th century but there are no mentions in the Old Bailey archives. The dulcimer is perhaps the closest to the bell harp and coexisted with it but there are no results at all from the 18th century. The little cluster of bell harp references 1730–37 is certainly worthy of some note. 

These brief references do suggest that the bell harp was a street musician’s instrument. What do street musicians play? The repertoire must have been whatever would get passers by to throw some money their way, and most likely, popular tunes of that time. 

There is one further record of the bell harp from only a few years later but this time beyond London and the criminal court.  It is from Derby in the early 1740s. William Hutton was born in Derby in 1723 and went to work as an apprentice at the age of seven. He later became a businessman and a historian. His autobiography, The Life of William Hutton… was published in 1816. 

It is his entry for the year 1743 that refers to the bell harp. He was then aged 20 and it marked his first interest in music. Hutton was living with his uncle in Nottingham but went to visit his father in Derby. There he heard someone playing on a bell harp. He says that he was ‘charmed with the sound’ of the instrument and agreed to buy it when he could raise the money, which was half a crown. A few months later he returned to pay for the bell harp, an instrument, he writes, ‘whose sounds I thought seraphic’.

Hutton gives no description of the bell harp, nor what music was played on it, nor if the player swung it, but he tells us that he laboured for six months and couldn’t get a tune out of it. He then tells us that he borrowed a dulcimer, made a copy of it, and learned to play it. This is a curious little story because Hutton is quite boastful of his ability to make a dulcimer out of an old case and without proper woodworking tools. If he could make a dulcimer and learn to play it, what was the problem with the bell harp that he bought? Does it hint at some special technique or tuning that Hutton was not aware of?

The bell harp is once again an instrument of ordinary people, not the middle or upper classes. Will Hutton, a twenty-year old apprentice, could afford to save up and buy one. His descriptions of the sound of a bell harp are possibly the only ones that survive from the 18th century. It is the sound of the instrument itself rather than the music played or the skill of the player that struck Hutton as ‘charming’ and ‘seraphic’. Descriptions of the bell harp in works of reference in the 18th century agree that the instrument was swung like a bell when played but Hutton hears the instrument as charming and angelic, not as bell-like.

A poem from 1810 offers a glimpse of a different kind of bell harp player, not from that time, but from the middle of the 18th century. The poem was published in the Norfolk Chronicle (February 3) and appears to be a submission from a reader in Norwich who composed it in January 1810. It is an epigram in contrast with an epitaph which is actually inscribed on a gravestone. 

'Poor Jemmy', an actual or imaginary parish clerk, would have been 'debonnaire, blithe and gay' in the middle of the 18th century. Whatever the precise status of a parish clerk at that time was, it was certainly different from a London street musician. The parish clerk must have been literate, with some level of general and musical education. He (it was almost always a masculine role) was also an important religious figure in the community. If 'Poor Jemmy' was a good player on both bell harp and organ, the bell harp must have been seen as an acceptable instrument for a man of his standing. His repertoire must surely have included some religious music, psalms and hymns perhaps, alongside, or instead of, more popular fare.

The bell harp is here an instrument of a person with at least some degree of musical literacy - unless, of course, the point of the poem is the incongruity of the pairing of organ and bell harp. But that possibility seems unlikely.

Parish clerks may also have been involved in bell ringing and, once again, there is a possibility of a link with the bell harp and bell ringing. 

Middle class amateurs

Although no music for the bell harp has yet been found, some music does survive for the English harp, invented around 1760 by John Simcock. Simcock’s instrument was most probably some modified form of the earlier bell harp and it was popular for a while in the 1760s.

Thompson's Compleat Collection of Minuets is dated by the British Library as  c1762. Collections like this were popular in the 18th century and the harpsichord, violin and German flute are often found on title pages. This collection is the only one to have the English harp as an option and it is likely that the publishers simply added it because they hoped it would increase sales. Nevertheless, it shows that the English harp must have been popular enough at that time for the publishers to bother.

There are 100 minuets in Thompson's Compleat Collection, in a number of keys, with many in D major and G major, but other keys are used too. The music is laid out as expected, keyboard fashion, with a treble line and a bass, occasionally with figures. Simcock's English harps have a range of two octaves and would surely have only been able to play the treble part only.

Unfortunately, nothing in the music suggests that it has been adapted in any way for the English harp. The player presumably played whatever was possible to play and perhaps adapted other pieces too. The fact that this music for the English harp was actually published, and had to be paid for, probably indicates a target audience of middle-class amateurs.

John Simcock had been in the army and, according to a label on one of his instruments (now no longer extant), he ‘instructs gentlemen in the best mode of playing that instrument[English harp]’. In his advertisements (three have survived from 1763, 1764 and 1785) he:

teaches Ladies and Gentlemen to play with great Ease and Expedition; but those who have practis'd the Harpsichord, Violin, German-flute, guitar etc may with great facility learn the English Harp without the help of a Master.

The selling point is that the instrument is not difficult to learn to play, a very old ruse for promoting a musical instrument. Once again it would seem that the likely repertoire would have been popular melodies of the time, perhaps with more emphasis on music known to a middle class audience, for example, songs  popularised in the London theatres or pleasure gardens. 

Even simple tunes, like minuets and country dances and songs of the time, would have had trills and playing them would have been an expected part of a performance.  When swung, English harp players have just a single thumb to perform trills. The only possibility is a fast wiggle. The sticcado pastorale player, according to James Bremner's Instructions c1775, is in a similar situation. Bremner's sticcado is a wooden, xylophone-like instrument played with one hand and one 'stick' (a piece of whalebone topped with an ivory ball). To play trills, the sticcado player simply wiggles the stick (the ivory ball) between the wooden bars.

Rural life

There is another series of references to the bell harp from much later, in the 1790s. They come from The Diary of a Country Parson by James Woodforde.

A Mr William Mason of Marham in Norfolk played for the Reverend James Woodforde around Christmas time in the 1780s and 1790s. At first he played ten bells in some sort of construction of his own devising but from 1789 he played a bell harp. On a couple of occasions the Reverend noted that he paid Mr Marham 1s 6d. and in one diary entry, the Rev Woodforde refers to Mr Marham’s ‘Wire-Musick’ . 

In this instance the bell harp is once again an instrument of ordinary people and not the middle or upper classes, but now of the rural poor rather than urban poor. Could the the trajectory of the bell harp in the 18th century have been something like this? At first it was a sort of novelty instrument, designed by, and for, street musicians to attract attention both by its sound and by its theatrical manner of play. And then, decades later it had  a brief period of popularity for a middle class audience in Simcock's gentrified bell harp, his English harp.  When that interest faded, both the older form of bell harp and Simcock's version, now available as inexpensive, second-hand instruments, had a final burst of life in rural areas. Of course this is just a guess and only based on  very limited evidence.

Another angle is that the instrument was devised for a special purpose, something to  do with bell ringing and, in particular, change-ringing.  For example, Eric Halfpenny (see References) offers a suggestion as to the origin of the instrument which he admits is 'quite unsubstantiated':

I suggest also that the English custom of change-ringing may have required in its early stages some from of  mnemonic upon which changes might be worked out audibly and visually, and that this is the explanation of the origin and purpose of the 'English' or 'Bell' harp. (Halfpenny 1978)

This is the final sentence of Halfpenny's article and he is ending with a flourish. But this raises the question: what does, or what could, 'some form of mnemonic upon which changes might be worked out audibly and visually' actually mean? No musical instrument can be of any assistance for the mathematics of change ringing and any musical instrument can play sequences of notes.

The connection of the swung zither instruments (bell harp, English harp, fairy bells) with bell ringing and change ringing is probably much simpler. A swung zither is an instrument that isn't a bell or collection of bells but evokes the sounds of church bells.  Listeners may either sneer at this or accept its fancifulness.  The bell harp, unlike other musical instruments, explicitly invites the sympathetic listener to hear the instrument as church bells ringing. The player is simply offering a little soundscape or auditory 'glimpse' of chimes and peals and changes.