The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney: Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Susanna Elizabeth Burney (1755-1800), known as Susan to her family and friends, was the third daughter of the music historian Charles Burney and the younger sister of the novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney. She grew up in London where she was able to observe at close quarters the musical life of the capital and to meet the many musicians, men of letters, and artists who visited the family home, before moving to Ireland in later life. Susan Burney witnessed the Gordon Riots and the 1798 uprising in Ireland, and she was a lifelong and knowledgeable enthusiast for music, one with discriminating tastes and an ability to capture vividly musical life and the personalities involved in it. Her letter-journals provide a striking portrait of later eighteenth-century social and cultural life, both in London and the Home Counties.Philip Olleson opens the book with a substantial biographical introduction, setting Susan Burney in the context of her family and the society in which she lived. The main part of the book consists of a series of annotated selections from the letter-journals, drawn from all periods of Susan's life and representing all her activities, but principally focussing on musical life. Burney evocatively depicts the social world of opera: the relationships between the star castrati, the composers and their aristocratic patrons; the etiquette of opera performance and its reception; and attitudes towards the music. Other topics of significance are: the public benefit concert; the private concert; the quartet party; the musical weekend and the music lesson. Overall the letter-journals represent one of the most significant sources on musical life in the eighteenth century as yet unpublished.Burney's abiding passion was for Italian opera and this area in particular will appeal to those opera scholars interested in performance staging, singers, gender studies and reception history. The letter-journals are of importance and interest to a number of different readerships. Because of the detailed descriptions of music, and particularly opera, the journals contain, they are of the greatest importance and interest to music and theatre historians, but there is also much that will be of significance for Burney scholars, social historians of England and Ireland, to women's historians and historians of the family.