{"id":7320,"date":"2021-11-15T16:09:49","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T15:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=160546"},"modified":"2021-11-15T16:30:08","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T15:30:08","slug":"thomas-linley-how-the-english-mozart-died-aged-22-in-boating-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/thomas-linley-how-the-english-mozart-died-aged-22-in-boating-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Linley: how the \u2018English Mozart\u2019 died aged 22 in boating tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By BBC Music Magazine\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 15 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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An <\/span>aspiring young landscape gardener named Lancelot \u2018Capability\u2019 Brown is said to have <\/span>visited Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire i<\/span>n 1741 (where he certainly returned in 1771), and set in train a number of changes to the layout of the estate surrounding it. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

These included creating a ten-acre lake, which 37 years later had tragic consequences for English music. There, on 5 August, 1778, the English composer Thomas Linley the Younger perished in a boating accident, just three months after his 22nd birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who was Thomas Linley?<\/h2>\n

Even by that age, Linley had already blazed a brilliant trail in his professional activities. Born into a highly musical family \u2013 his father, Thomas senior, was a composer and teacher \u2013 Linley was performing in public by the age of seven, playing a violin concerto at the Hot Wells near his home in Bath. He could sing too: aged ten, he played Puck in a masque at Covent Garden. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018His singing, playing on the violin and dancing the hornpipe are all beyond expectation,\u2019 a reviewer wrote, \u2018and discover extraordinary abilities in one who must be considered a child.\u2019 <\/span>A child indeed, yet one who was about to stretch his musical experiences further by travelling to Italy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Did Linley and Mozart get on?<\/h2>\n

Aged 12, Linley went to study with the violinist Pietro Nardini in Florence, eventually spending three years there. In April 1770, another youthful prodigy passed through the city: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.<\/a><\/strong> Linley met him at a musical evening, and the pair (both born in 1756) immediately warmed to one another. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The two boys took turns performing all evening while constantly embracing,\u2019 Wolfgang\u2019s father Leopold wrote. They played together again the following day, and Linley apparently \u2018wept the bitterest tears\u2019 at the Mozarts\u2019 departure. It was around this time that Linley was nicknamed \u2018the English Mozart\u2019, though originally due to his prowess as a violinist, not as a composer. Linley played \u2018absolutely beautifully\u2019, Leopold Mozart thought, and the music historian Charles Burney bracketed Thomas and Wolfgang together as \u2018the most promising geniuses of this age\u2019 when it came to performing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Linley would, though, shortly show his mettle as a composer too. His jubilant anthem Let God arise<\/i> premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1773, when he was 17. There followed a clutch of works related to the Drury Lane theatre in London, where he led the orchestra and his father was music director. His A Lyric Ode on the Fairies, Aerial Beings and Witches of Shakespeare<\/i> was first heard there in 1776, and hailed by The Morning Chronicle <\/i>as \u2018an extraordinary effort of genius in so young a man\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

Incidental music for Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/i> followed the year after, as did Linley\u2019s rousing oratorio The Song of Moses<\/i>. These have all been successfully recorded, and while the influence of Handel<\/a><\/strong>, Purcell<\/a><\/strong> and Linley\u2019s teacher <\/span>William Boyce<\/a><\/strong> is evident, the emergence <\/span>of a new, vibrantly distinctive voice in English music is unmistakable.<\/span><\/p>\n

When did Thomas Linley die?<\/h2>\n

That voice, however, was destined never to be fully developed. On an August day in 1778, Linley and two friends went boating on the lake at Grimsthorpe Castle, where he was staying with the Duke of Ancaster. Somehow the boat tipped over, perhaps because of choppy weather, and though his friends survived Linley unfortunately did not. \u2018He remained under water full 40 minutes,\u2019 The Morning Chronicle<\/i> reported, \u2018so that every effort made to restore him to life proved ineffectual.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

Linley\u2019s loss was keenly felt among those who knew him and recognised his immense potential as a composer. And the teenage wunderkind whom Linley briefly met in Florence never forgot him. \u2018Linley was a true genius,\u2019 Mozart reportedly commented. \u2018Had he lived, he would have been one of the greatest ornaments of the musical world.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n