[BITList] Heart of Oak

[John Feltham]

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Boyce,  William  (bap. 1711, d. 1779), composer, organist, and music editor, was born in Maiden Lane, London, and was baptized on 11 September 1711 at St James Garlickhythe, the youngest of four children of John Boyce (1673-1752), joiner and cabinet-maker, and his wife, Elizabeth, nee Cordwell (d. 1740). His father, 'discovering in his son while an infant, a delight in musical sounds'  (Hawkins), had him admitted to the choir of St Paul's Cathedral about 1719 under Charles King, master of the choristers. On the breaking of his voice he stayed on to study the organ as an articled pupil of the cathedral's organist, Maurice Greene, from 1727 to 1734.

Boyce's first professional appointment was as organist at the earl of Oxford's chapel, St Peter's, Vere Street, in 1734, and he taught the harpsichord, notably at Mr Cavaller's seminary for young ladies in Queen Square. He moved to St Michael Cornhill in 1736 in succession to the organist Joseph Kelway and remained there until 7 April 1768. By 1736 he had composed some fifteen anthems which were in use at the Chapel Royal, and on the death of John Weldon on 7 May 1736 he succeeded him as a composer to the Chapel Royal on 21 June, sharing some of the duties of the second organist, Jonathan Martin. Once again he was closely associated with Maurice Greene, who was the senior composer and organist to the Chapel Royal.

Boyce was a member of Greene's Apollo Academy, which had met in the Devil tavern, Temple Bar, since 1731. Several of Boyce's larger works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra were first heard there: the sacred cantata David's Lamentation over Saul and Jonathan (words by John Lockman, April 1736), The Charms of Harmony Display (an ode to St Cecilia written by the Revd Peter Vidal, c.1738), and See Famed Apollo and the Nine (Lockman's ode to St Cecilia, 1739). Lord Lansdowne's masque Peleus and Thetis and Walter Hart's Pindaric ode Gentle Lyre Begin the Strain had both been set by Boyce and performed there by 1740. It was probably for the Apollo Academy that Boyce composed his most popular and enduring choral work, the serenata Solomon to a libretto by Edward Moore first heard in the autumn of 1742 and published the following May.

In the autumn of 1737 Boyce conducted the Worcester festival and was connected with the annual Three Choirs festival until at least 1756, though evidence for his visits is sparse. March 1747 saw the publication of Boyce's first instrumental music, Twelve Sonatas for Two Violins and a Bass, whose popularity is confirmed by the extraordinarily large subscribers' list attached. Burney wrote that Boyce's trio sonatas were 'not only in constant use, as chamber Music, in private concerts ... but in our theatres, as act-tunes, and public gardens, as favourite pieces, during many years'  (Burney, Hist. mus., 3.620). He had a similar success with a set of Eight Symphonys, published by Walsh in January 1760, which comprised seven overtures originally composed for other works between 1739 and 1756 and a work which is sometimes known as the Worcester overture. He published a further set of Twelve Overtures at his own expense in 1770, but these were less successful. Hawkins comments:

The taste of the people at the time of the publication of these, was very unpropitious to their success: they had the misfortune to meet with compositions of [J. C.] Bach and Abel which had already gotten possession of the public ear. (Hawkins, ix)

Boyce was a successful songwriter in the pastoral idiom and some seventy-six solo songs are known. Many of them, along with his duets and cantatas, were popular at Vauxhall and Ranelagh pleasure gardens and found their way into published anthologies, the earliest being Bickham's Musical Entertainer of 1737. Between March 1747 and July 1759 Boyce published a series of six books containing selections from his garden and theatre pieces entitled Lyra Britannica.

When Garrick became manager of Drury Lane, Boyce, from 1749 to 1759, supplied him with songs and incidental music for thirteen productions, including Garrick's adaptations of Shakespeare. Boyce's afterpiece The Chaplet, to a libretto by Moses Mendez, first performed on 2 December 1749, was highly successful for a number of years. The Shepherd's Lottery, written by the same librettist, which opened on 19 November 1751, had fewer performances. His final work at Drury Lane was for Garrick's pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, which opened on the last day of 1759 and was written to celebrate the end of the 'year of victories'. It featured Boyce's most famous song, 'Heart of Oak', which has been associated with the Royal Navy ever since.

On 1 July 1749 Boyce was in Cambridge with a large assembly of singers and instrumentalists from London to conduct his ode Here All thy Active Fires Diffuse, with words by William Mason, commissioned for the installation of the duke of Newcastle as chancellor of the university. The following day he performed his doctoral exercise, the orchestral anthem 'O be joyful in God', in St Mary's Church, and on 3 July he received the degrees of bachelor and doctor of music. He remained in Cambridge for a further two days performing his earlier compositions Peleus and Thetis, Dryden's Secular Masque, Solomon, and Gentle Lyre Begin the Strain. On his return to London he accepted an invitation to become organist of All Hallows-the-Great, where a new organ had been installed. He was appointed on 28 July 1749 but, according to the vestry minute book, was asked to resign on 21 March 1764, evidently owing to frequent non-attendance.

On the death of Maurice Greene in December 1755 Boyce succeeded him as master of the king's musick, although he was not officially sworn in until June 1757. This prestigious appointment required him to compose annual odes to texts by the poet laureate for the king's birthday and for new year's day which were performed at St James's Palace. He also received Greene's conductorship of the charity festival for the sons of the clergy held annually at St Paul's Cathedral, for which he composed the fine orchestral anthem 'Lord, thou hast been our refuge'. A third royal appointment, organist to the Chapel Royal, followed on the death of John Travers in June 1758.

After the death of Handel in April 1759, it fell to Boyce to compose the music for state occasions. He composed the orchestral anthem 'The Souls of the Righteous' for the funeral of George II in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1760, the wedding anthem 'The king shall rejoice' for George III and Queen Charlotte at St James's Palace on 8 September 1761, and a set of eight anthems for the coronation in Westminster Abbey on 22 September. Boyce declined to set the text 'Zadok the Priest', claiming that Handel had provided an unsurpassable setting for the coronation of George II in 1727. Thereby Boyce inaugurated the tradition of performing Handel's anthem at every coronation thereafter.

By September 1756 Boyce had left his parental home in Joiner's Hall, where he had lived since 1723, and was living in Quality Court, Chancery Lane. On 9 June 1759 he married Hannah Nixon, which remains a chronological puzzle since their daughter Elizabeth was born on 29 April 1749. A son, William, was born on 25 March 1764, and by this time the family had moved to Kensington Gore. Hawkins implies that this was precipitated by Boyce's worsening deafness. He wrote in the 'Memoirs'

that before the expiration of his apprenticeship, Boyce's organs of hearing were so sensibly affected, that in a short time he became little less than deaf ... it deprived him in some degree of a source of both delight and improvement, but he considered music as a mental and not a sensual pleasure, and secretly and with advantage contemplated that harmony which he could but just hear. (Hawkins, i)

This handicap may explain Boyce's scholarly interest in the history and science of music. In the 1730s he studied with the composer and musical theorist Johann Christoph Pepusch, with whom he shared an interest in earlier musical styles. Boyce in turn shared his knowledge with 'organists and young musicians desirous of improvement in the theory of sounds, the laws of harmony, and the art of practical composition'  (Hawkins, vii). His notable pupils included Thomas Linley, John Stafford Smith, Charles Wesley, and Jonathan Battishill. During his life Boyce assembled a considerable music library of manuscripts and printed music which eventually contained Greene's collection bequeathed to him at his death. The sale catalogue of Christie and Ansell (14-16 April 1779) reveals its riches in the descriptions of its 267 lots. As late as November 1778 Boyce evidently visited Christ Church, Oxford, and made an inventory of Dean Aldrich's music books. Philip Hayes returned the list to the college after his death, and it was almost certainly Hayes who acquired for the music school of the University of Oxford a large portion of Boyce's own compositions in manuscript from Hannah Boyce. Also acquired, from where is not known, was the full-length portrait of Boyce painted by Thomas Hudson about 1745. These are now in the Bodleian Library. Other collections of Boyce's music manuscripts are in the British Library, the Royal College of Music, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and University College, Aberystwyth.

Boyce was an assiduous editor and brought to fruition John Alcock's and Maurice Greene's cherished but unfulfilled proposal to publish an uncorrupt corpus of church music, printed in score, to be placed in the hands of all cathedral and collegiate choirs. Boyce's wife stated that he achieved this with considerable financial loss to himself, but its influence on the repertory of English church music was to last for more than a century. Cathedral Music was published in three large volumes in 1760, 1768, and 1773. In his last years at Kensington, Boyce was writing a treatise on harmonic theory and corresponding with Marmaduke Overend on the science of music. This material is also in the Bodleian.

Boyce died of gout in Kensington on 7 February 1779 and was honoured with burial in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral on the 16th. The funeral was attended by a large gathering of musicians and he was buried to the sound of his own music played on the organ and sung by the choirs of the Chapel Royal, St Paul's, and Westminster Abbey. Both Burney and Hawkins knew Boyce personally and describe him in their writings. Burney in Rees's Cyclopaedia writes:

There is an original and sterling merit in his productions, founded as much on the study of our own old masters, as on the best models of other countries, that gives to all his works a peculiar stamp and character of his own, for strength, clearness, and facility, without any mixture of styles, or extraneous and heterogeneous ornaments.
Hawkins, in his 'Memoirs of Dr. William Boyce' of 1788, describes something of Boyce's character:

He was endowed with the qualities of truth, justice, and integrity, was mild and gentle in his deportment, above all resentment against such as envied his reputation, communicative of his knowledge, sedulous and punctual in the discharge of the duties of his several employments, particularly those that regarded the performance of divine service, and in every relation of life a worthy man. (Hawkins, xi)
This is borne out by Boyce's support for charitable foundations. For Mercer's Hospital in Dublin he composed the orchestral anthem 'Blessed is he that Considereth the Sick' (1741), which he later introduced at the festival of the sons of the clergy at St Paul's. He composed and conducted the funeral music for the burial of the philanthropist Captain Thomas Coram at the Foundling Hospital on 3 April 1751. For the benefit of the Leicester Infirmary he composed the ode Lo! On the Thorny Bed of Care, with words by Joseph Cradock, performed in St Martin's Church, Leicester, in September 1774.

Together with Handel and other eminent musicians, Boyce was a founder member of the Fund for the Support of Decayed Musicians and their Families, inaugurated on 19 April 1738: it is known today as the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain. There is evidence to suggest from appeals made by his widow that Boyce himself died impoverished. To assist the family Philip Hayes selected and published two volumes of Boyce's services and anthems-the first in November 1780, the second in 1790-and in the year of Boyce's death Longman and Broderip published Ten Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord, which is Boyce's only known set of keyboard works.

Robert J. Bruce 

Sources  J. Hawkins, 'Memoirs of Dr William Boyce', in W. Boyce, Cathedral music, 2nd edn, 1 (1788), i-xi + Burney, Hist. mus., 3.619-21 + C. Burney, 'Boyce, William', in A. Rees and others, The cyclopaedia, or, Universal dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature, 45 vols. (1819-20) + F. G. Edwards, 'Dr. Boyce', MT, 42 (1901), 441-9 + D. Dawe, 'New light on William Boyce', MT, 109 (1968), 802-7 + J. S. Bumpus, A history of English cathedral music, 1549-1889, 2 vols. [1908] + H. D. Johnstone, 'The genesis of Boyce's "Cathedral music"', Music and Letters, 56 (1975), 26-40 + R. McGuinness, English court odes, 1660-1820 (1971) + E. Taylor, 'William Boyce and the theatre', Music Review, 14 (1953), 275-87 + H. Boyce, letter to the dean and chapter of Gloucester Cathedral, 24 Aug 1779, Gloucester Cathedral Archives, D 936 X126 stamp on letter + parish register, London, St James Garlickhythe, 11 Sept 1711 [baptism] + private information (2005) [I. Bartlett]
Archives Bodl. Oxf., MSS | Glos. RO, letters to Samuel Viner
Likenesses  T. Hudson, oils, 1745-50, U. Oxf., faculty of music [see illus.] · J. K. Sherwin, line engraving, 1775, BM · J. Russell, pastel drawing, 1776, NPG · J. K. Sherwin, line engraving, 1788, NPG · J. K. Sherwin, drawing (William Boyce aged sixty), repro. in Musica Britannica, 13, xxviii; formerly in possession of T. W. Taphouse in 1901 · oils (of Boyce?), Royal College of Music, London
Wealth at death  possibly poor; library sold two months after his death; Philip Hayes published Boyce's services and anthems to benefit his family




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