Thomas Augustine Arne (b. London, bap. 28 May 1710; d 5 March 1778)
Thomas Arne was an English composer with a flair for dramatic music and song. He was the Son of an upholsterer, and his father had intended for him to study Law. It has been said that he studied music in secret, and his violin teacher Michael Festing was his main source of encouragement. After acquiring proficiency in playing the violin and keyboard instruments, his father withdrew his objections and Arne was able to pursue a career in Music.
Arne gave both his brother and sister singing lessons, and they went on to appear in his first work Rosamond, (1733). During my research, I was interested to learn that his sister Susannah Maria Arne became the celebrated actress Mrs Cibber, who had a long stage partnership with David Garrick and can be seen in six portraits at the National Art Gallery, London.
In Arne’s late twenties, he was engaged to write musical works for Drury Lane Theatre in Covent Garden. His light, pleasing melodic style was apparent in many of his works. You may be familiar with one song “Rule, Britannia”, which was from his masque “Alfred”.
Side Note: A Masque was a form of entertainment to be held at social gatherings that involved masked performers of dance, speech and music. It later evolved to involve elaborate machinery and paved the way to the genre of opera and theatre as we know it today.
Love the Charlotte and George cartoons!
The little avatars are cute I agree. I’m experimenting with graphics to try to make blog posts and booklets for concerts a little easier to make and reproduce.
All my best wishes Martin,
Charlotte
Sadly, our daisies, that are not pied, died at summers end. White they were and white they will be once summer comes again. Interesting history of the song.
Perhaps they’re just resting to come back refreshed hopefully like the rest of us! The thing I like about the white daisies is that they come back year after year, unless my Grandad rips them out lol.
I should have mentioned my sources – I read notes from: The Britannica Encyclopaedia, the National Portrait Gallery and The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music. Glad to share :).
Best wishes
Charlotte
The Shasta Daisies always come back and make the insects really happy.
Delightful!
Thank you, Patricia, lovely to hear from you, I hope that you’re well.
Best wishes
Charlotte
My daisies just sprouted – we’ll see one day if they are pied or not. Beautiful song, Charlotte. Love those cartoons of you and George!
Ah Spring is on the way yay. I hope they are pied I do like the white daisies with the colourful yellow middles but by far multi-coloured ones are my favourite.
Best wishes
Charlotte
Brilliant blog I loved all of it, very informative.
Great colours, the song was great too..👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I thought of you when I put ‘daisies’ into a photo search program and Livingstone daisies came up they remind me of your garden.
I’m glad you liked all the colours I’m experimenting.
Stay safe and well,
Charlotte x
Wow, very interesting, thanks a lot, nice share, congrats !!!!! Charlotte and George, I wish you the best and please, take care of you !!!
Merci Pascal. We are still in near total lockdown in London, we make the odd trip to the shop for food or a walk and we try to avoid all the busiest pavements. What is it like in Manosque at the moment?
Best wishes
Charlotte
Here for the moment it is curfews at 6:00 p.m., restaurants, cinema, auditorium closed counting people at the supermarket entrance. . we are soon being told confinement, or not. Still people without masks, clustered in hospitals, I am very careful not to bring viruses to my mother who no longer leaves the house.
Best wishes
It’s lovely reading the background to songs, your very knowledgeable. I love this song and love listening to your CD. Well done 👏👏👏🥰😘😘
I never sang this popular festival tune before the balcony concert, but I always loved it when someone chose it in their program. I was going to do a Shakespeare concert so learnt it for that. I’m happy you are enjoying the cd download the hard copies arrived today.
All my best wishes
Charlotte
Charlotte – this is a brilliant post. I am beyond excited to read this history because there are so many connections. After reading your post, I did more research behind this story, I found that Susannah Maria Arne (aka Mrs. Cibber) joined the premiere performance of Handel’s Messiah on 13 April 1742, singing the contralto solos. Legend has it that Dr Patrick Delany, the chancellor of St Patrick’s Cathedral, upon hearing her sing “He was despised”, proclaimed “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!” I am delighted that we connected in 2020. More adventures from your balcony in 2021. Hugs!
I love that the post gave you inspiration to research more. Thank you for sharing your findings. I love the soprano solo in Handel’s Messiah. ‘He Was Despised’ used to be sung a lot in festival music competitions I used to take part in, it is the wrong vocal type for me requiring a much lower range, but it is a great song.
Best wishes
Charlotte
I am enjoying your posts and music!!! As Vincent Van Gogh wrote many years ago, “In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.”
I shall save that saying and use it in a recital thank you.
🤗🤗🤗
How wonderful and beautiful! I love the clavier music.
I love clavier music too, sometimes George will use the harpsichord setting on the keyboard especially if we are performing certain Handel music.
I have used the lockdown to practice my piano skills more, much to George’s approval although he tells me my nails are too long!
Best wishes
Charlotte
What a wonderful presentation, my dear Charlotte! Lovely!!!! xoxo
Thank you, Marina, I’m trying to improve my graphic design so I’m trialing out all the different templates, colours and fonts to give more details on each song from our balcony. I’m glad you like them.
Best wishes
Charlotte
Lovely post Charlotte, lots in it actually. And of course your voice.
Thank you, Shehanne, I’ve always enjoyed researching it made my degree more enjoyable. The balcony concert I sang this in was my first time singing the song outside. I’ve always enjoyed listening to it and I used lockdown time to learn it.
Best wishes
Charlotte
I certainly will enjoy Arne much more thanks to your voice and enjoyable post, Charlotte..
Thank you, Don, I like to write interesting intros in any song booklet I create so no research goes unused and it is nice to share it online so that when you listen to the track you have a deeper understanding of the lyrics and the time it was composed.
Best wishes
Charlotte
What a wonderful post! I live in the southern U.S. and grew up hearing the word pied used quite often, except that we add an additional ‘ed’ on the end and make it a two syllable word.
Thank you 😊. I love to learn new facts; is it used in the same context ‘multi-coloured’ offering when the daisies bloom?
I always find the American spelling corrector on colour and grey interesting. Being dyslexic I would like to get rid of whole and use hole I used to inevitably choose the wrong spelling or neck and knee I’m always tempted to type kneck or just nee. I’m only joking, I now use Grammarly to save me.
All my best wishes
Charlotte x
It does mean multicolored but not in connection with daisies or other flowers. It is rather strange, but people here speak of someone having pied skin, usually on the arms. It means blotchy skin with some areas that are lighter than other areas, especially in people of mixed ancestry. My grandmother used the term frequently about her own arms.
That is really interesting, I’ve very pale skin so I have to be really careful in the sun because rather than going a nice even tan I go pied or freckled first.
Charming! And I love the information that explains it all. 🙂
Its a lovely little song, I always like to learn the stories behind the songs.
Best wishes
Charlotte
I enjoyed the clip! I remember the song from your concert series. And thank you for the musical history lesson! Wishing you and George all the best.
It was so sweet on concert day because a couple of little children echoed the ‘cuckoo’ back to me. I put a special gadget on my iphone to point the microphone towards us and it has a wind cover on it so it doesn’t capture so much of the audience now.
Thank you Lavinia all our best to you too.
Charlotte
Birds heard could not land
Targets Tagates
Dying earfuls, dying scene
Bouquet binding between
10 arrows wound softly in a dream
Unlucky seven what doth mean
Hear not Heroes anime
Three becomes one, twice
Undying fidelity
Wonderful 👏👏. For some reason my reply a few days ago didn’t post properly so 2nd try 🌼
I had to look up tagates, is that what the photos are I thought they were daisies lol sshhhh.
All my best wishes
Charlotte
Marigold tagates, a play on your upcoming marriage!! Marrygold. Gold, color that does no blemish
It is said every song has a story. If not a story, at least a history. Hope your album is doing well. 🙂
Yes thank you David lots of streams where in the past people would download, I think music is becoming much more temporary now and less a collectors piece like the old vinyl records and cds.
Best wishes
Charlotte
Vinyl records, I have a varied collection, from classical to Elvis. I agree about the temporary nature music has become. In the old days, you would buy a vinyl album for one or two songs. You would listen to the rest and maybe the other songs would grow on you. CDs made it easy to replay a single track over and over until you got tired of the song.
Have a great weekend! 🙂
My parents still have their vinyl collection and tonnes of cd and dvds 📀. I put all my cds into the computer and have left the cases at my parents I must admit, and I do use streaming services too.
A delightful rendition of the song. I can’t help but chuckle at the underlying bawdyness of Shakespeare’s lyrics countering with a very proper sounding melody and accompaniment by Arne. I agree with other commentary that the caricatures of you and George are great. I hope you are both well.
Thank you John, I agree about the lyrics on such a friendly little number lol.
We are doing well thank you considering the total lock down here.
Best wishes
Charlotte
Thank you for this Charlotte! An entertaining and informative post, it triples the joy I feel when I listen to “Songs From Our Balcony”. As a matter of fact, I’ll be listening to it shortly, while I work on my new Art Gown (which has dominated my creative hours lately, because it is almost done!!)
Update: For the next Art Gowns Models post I need to do 10 drawings. I have now done 5. I’ve decided on a gown for Lala, and it is up for drawing next. When I finally finish the drawings and do the post, I have an idea that Lala will swoop into the AGMs show… do a breaking news type thing and promote your Album!
Will be in touch before I actually post, for approvals. Resa xx
Well if you would like a backing track to Lala’s show let me know 🎶🥰
Good idea!!!!!! 🎶🥰 will be in touch. I let Holly see the rough ups, so she can pick RR’s songs & make any comments, after all, she is RR. I’ll send you link & passcode, as well. That should give you an idea of what song you think should go in!
Je découvre ton univers musical.
Univers que je connais très peu.
Bonne journée
bienvenue dans mon univers ✨ bonne soirée
J’ai assisté à un oratorio à Paris, avec Natalie Dessay, c’était magnifique !
https://blogoth67.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/between-yesterday-and-tomorrow/
Cela se rapproche de ton univers ?
Bonne soirée
Merci beaucoup, je regarde beaucoup de vidéos d’opéra de Dessay. Elle est magnifique.
Best wishes to you,
Charlotte
Qu’est-ce qui t’a amené à faire du chant ?
Merci