The Decline of the English Musician 1788-1888: A family of English musicians in Ireland, England, Mauritius, and Australia
Oxford University Press, $120 hb
A double-bass sinks in Sydney harbour
This book opens with the pregnancy of an Irish actress in 1789 and concludes with the death of her grandson in 1888. There is mystery at both ends of the story, relating in the first case to paternity and in the second to the source of a substantial estate. In between comes a drama of marital dissonance and economic survival played out against the great crisis brought upon the musical profession in England by the collapse of its family-based guild traditions.
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