Thomas Linley the younger
Encyclopedia
Early life
Linley's abilities were apparent from a young age. He played a concerto at a concert in Bristol on 29 July 1763, at the age of 7, and from 1763 to 1768 was apprenticed to Dr. William Boyce, the Master of the King's Musick. In 1767 he appeared with his sister Elizabeth Ann Linley in a London production of The Fairy Favour, singing, dancing a hornpipe and playing the violin. Between 1768 and 1771) he journeyed to Italy to study violin and composition with NardiniPietro Nardini
Pietro Nardini was an Italian composer and violinist.-Life:He was born in Fibiana and studied music at Livorno, later becoming a pupil of Giuseppe Tartini. Having been a student of Giuseppe Tartini, he moved to Germany where he joined the court chapel in Stuttgart where he became conductor in 1762...
in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. There he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
in April 1770, and Charles Burney
Charles Burney
Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...
in September of the same year. In reference to Linley, Burney later wrote,"The 'Tommasino', as he is called, and the little Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, are talked of all over Italy, as the most promising geniusses of this age." (Thomas and Mozart - both aged 14 in 1770 - had met and become warm friends earlier in 1770).
Work
On his return to England he performed in the concerts directed by his father in Bath and at various oratoriosOratórios
Oratórios is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion of Zona da Mata and to the microregion of Ponte Nova.-See also:* List of municipalities in Minas Gerais...
at the Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
, of which he was leader between 1773 to 1778.
A significant amount of Linley's compositions have been lost including many in the Drury Lane Fire of 1809. Surviving works attest to his congenial mastery of melody, gift for counterpoint, and musical imagination. Linley composed violin sonatas and concertos as well as choral works, and provided most of the music for his brother-in-law Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
's opera The Duenna
The Duenna
The Duenna is a three-act comic opera, mostly composed by Thomas Linley the elder and his son, Thomas Linley the younger, to an English-language libretto by Richard Brinsley Sheridan...
(1775). Among his surviving works are an "Ode on the Spirits of Shakespeare", the Lyric Ode (1776), set to a text by his fellow-Bathonian French Laurence, and an oratorio entitled The Song of Moses. Linley also assisted his father, and their works (mainly madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
s and songs) were published together in two volumes.
Death
Linley was killed in a boating accident at the age of 22, while on holiday with his family at Grimsthorpe CastleGrimsthorpe Castle
Grimsthorpe Castle is a country house in Lincolnshire, England four miles north-west of Bourne on the A151. It lies within a 3,000 acre park of rolling pastures, lakes, and woodland landscaped by Capability Brown...
in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
. He is buried at Edenham
Edenham
Edenham is a village in Lincolnshire, England situated about north-west of Bourne on the A151. The village is part of the civil parish of Edenham Grimsthorpe Elsthorpe & Scottlethorpe.-The Village:...
Parish Church.http://www.linley.com/tlinley.htm. Linley's early death was immediately recognised as a tragedy for English music. For his part, Mozart later told fellow musician Michael Kelly that "Linley was a true genius" who "had he lived, would have been one of the greatest ornaments of the musical world".