59
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess  (1718–1786)
THE ORGAN CONCERTOS OF HENRY BURGESS  
(1718–1786)
MICHAEL TALBOT
University of Liverpool
Izvleček: Henry Burgess mlajši je leta 1743 
objavil prvo znano zbirko orgelskih koncertov 
izpod peresa kakega angleškega skladatelja. V 
njih je viden močan vpliv Georga Friedricha 
Händla, ki je z orgelskimi koncerti, objavljenimi 
leta 1738 kot op. 4, iznašel ta žanr, razviden pa 
je tudi vpliv Antonia Vivaldija in, presenetljivo, 
angleške pesemske tradicije. Čeprav je Bur-
gess še vedno slabo poznan, je bil nadarjen in 
inovativen skladatelj, čigar iskrivi koncerti, ki 
se lahko izvajajo z orkestrom ali brez njega, si 
zaslužijo svoje mesto v repertoarju.
Ključne besede: Henry Burgess mlajši, Henry 
Burgess starejši, angleška glasba, angleška pe-
sem, Georg Friedrich Händel, orgelski koncert, 
Antonio Vivaldi
Abstract: Henry Burgess, Junior,  published in 
1743 the earliest known set of organ concertos 
by an English composer. These show strongly 
the influence of George Frideric Handel, whose 
organ concertos published as Op. 4 in 1738 in -
vented the genre, but also reveal that of Antonio 
Vivaldi and – more surprisingly – the English 
song tradition. Though still little known, Burgess 
is a capable and inventive composer, whose 
sparkling concertos, performable either with 
or without orchestra, deserve a place in the 
repertoire.
Keywords: Henry Burgess (Junior), Henry 
Burgess (Senior), English music, English song, 
George Frideric Handel, organ concerto, Antonio 
Vivaldi
The Organ Concerto in its English Context
Eighteenth-century England has to its credit the creation, or at least a much more diligent 
and longer-lasting cultivation than elsewhere, of three distinct species of instrumental 
concerto, each of which responded to particular social and cultural conditions unique 
to the country. In comparison, the concerto for a single melody instrument (most often, 
a principal violin), which almost from the start of the century was by a long way the 
dominant type in continental Europe, led a patchier existence, being the province mostly 
of concertmasters or itinerant virtuosos, and was represented surprisingly sparsely in 
Prejeto / received: 4. 3. 2021. Odobreno / accepted: 22. 6. 2021.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, DOI: 10.3986/dmd17.2.04
The present article is written in memory of Nicholas Temperley (1932–2020), who many decades 
ago directed my studies at the University of Cambridge and was a lifelong champion of English 
music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I would like to acknowledge the kind assistance 
towards it given by Simon Fleming, Peter Holman, Peter Lynan and Andrew Woolley through the 
sharing of materials and comments made in private correspondence.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
60
the musical repertoire composed by native-born musicians and published in London or 
elsewhere in Britain.
The first of these new subgenres was the concerto commonly described in the titles 
of collections as being “in seven parts” or by a label such as “grand”.
1
 This was a direct 
descendant of the characteristic Roman type of concerto (represented by such figures as 
Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Montanari, Giuseppe Valentini, Giovanni Mossi and Pietro 
Locatelli) that was named after one of its components: the concerto grosso (or ripieno) 
comprising a string ensemble with doubled parts that provided reinforcement for, and 
contrast with, a “trio sonata” ensemble (concertino) featuring solo strings. It seems to 
have been Francesco Geminiani’s orchestral arrangements of Corelli’s solo violin sonatas, 
the first group of which appeared in 1726 from the London publisher William Smith, that 
transported the genre to English soil.
2
 Geminiani’s own concerti grossi, Opp. 2 and 3, fol -
lowed in 1732, giving rise to a continuous series of similar concertos by native composers 
that lasted up to at least the mid-1780s. In contrast, concerto grosso production, certainly 
in the form of published collections, ceased abruptly in Italy with Locatelli’s Op. 4 (1736). 
Where the Roman and English forms of “seven-part concerto” crucially parted company 
from the very start was the societal context within which the works were intended for 
performance – and this divergence left its mark on the musical fabric itself. To generalize: 
a Corelli concerto was designed in the first instance for courtly, often ceremonial, sur-
roundings and functions where house musicians customarily made up the concertino and 
supernumeraries, themselves also professionals, the ripieno. In contrast, a superficially 
similar English concerto by (say) Michael Festing or George Berg was oriented towards 
the world of public concerts, music clubs and even informal, purely recreational music-
making. These settings observed fewer pre-set hierarchical distinctions, enabling musical 
amateurs to participate and, particularly in local music societies, even predominate. This 
was quintessentially “social” music where even a humble viola player might enjoy a brief 
moment of unexpected glory. It avoided extremes and sought to keep all the players, not 
merely their audience, happy.
The second characteristically English (or, rather, British) subgenre was a type of 
concerto where a pair of French horns was added to the generally four-part or seven-part 
string ensemble. These horns acted partly as “reinforcing” instruments adding warmth 
and richness to the middle of the texture, partly as soloists periodically playing lightly 
accompanied or even totally unaccompanied extended passages. The evocation of the tra-
ditional milieu of horn-playing, hunting in the countryside, was, however, now attenuated: 
what replaced it was the urban setting of horn-playing servants ceremonially marking 
the departures, arrivals and progress through the streets (or, very often, waterways) of 
1 
On the history and character of this concerto type, see Talbot, “From ‘Sonate a quattro’ to 
‘Concertos in Seven Parts’”, 315–316. On occasion, the total number of parts may in fact exceed 
seven (this total generally being calculated on the basis of the number of partbooks rather than 
that of “real” parts), so that the number indicated in the title rises accordingly. This happens 
especially when wind instruments or a second viola part are included in the ensemble, as in 
Pieter Hellendaal’s Six Grand Concerto’s in Eight Parts, Op. 3 (1758), which adds a viola to the 
concertino.
2 
Geminiani, Concerti grossi.

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
their noble or high-bourgeois employers, which was a constant feature of the eighteenth-
century London soundscape. The foundational works for this new type can be identified 
as movements 3–5 of the F major suite (HWV 348) and movements 1–2 of the D-major 
suite (HWV 349) forming part of George Frideric Handel’s Water Music (1717).
3
 Between 
the 1720s and the 1770s concertos with horns became ubiquitous in England: staple ele-
ments in public concerts, theatre music and music clubs alike – so popular, in fact, that 
some high-born members of orchestras belonging to the last-mentioned category were 
induced to take up the instrument despite its plebeian associations.
4
The third – and historically most important and long-lived – novel type of concerto 
cultivated especially in Britain was that for solo organ and/or harpsichord. The introduction 
to a recent anthology of English keyboard concertos comprising thirteen works stretching 
chronologically from William Felton (1744) to William Russell (1810) estimates the total 
number of surviving compositions in the genre by British-born composers of that period 
at over 200.
5
 Its seminal works were the six making up Handel’s Op. 4 (HWV 289–294), 
published in 1738 but originally composed (or arranged) as interval music designed to show 
off the composer’s prowess as organist – plus, in places, improviser – in performances 
of his oratorios during the 1735 and 1736 seasons.
6
 Intriguingly, Handel may have been 
pipped to the post by the Newcastle organist and composer Charles Avison, who at a 
benefit concert for himself given in Hickford’s Great Room in Panton Street, London, on 
15 March 1734 played “a Concerto, the Solo Part to be perform’d upon the Harpsicord”.
7
 
This concerto is very likely identical with one published, together with a set of string 
parts (that for violoncello furnished with bass figures), in Newcastle in 1742 as the first 
of a pair, the partner work being a conventional concerto “for violins in seven parts”.
8
One need not agonize too much over whether the organ or the harpsichord was the 
“preferred” choice of the composer in this and similar instances where both instruments 
are mentioned as alternatives (or even when only one of them is explicitly mentioned). For a 
start, the fact that most English organs – including the most easily transportable or quickly 
erectable among them – lacked pedalboards meant that from a strictly practical standpoint 
the two instruments were interchangeable. The organ possessed the advantage of greater 
strength and (usually) variety of tone – particularly useful in antiphonal dialogues with 
3 
The source material making up the Water Music is too complex even to summarize here, but the 
music’s genesis is well described in Burrows, Handel, 77–78.
4 
On the horn in eighteenth-century Britain and concertos employing horns in particular, see 
Talbot, “William Bates”, 250–256.
5 
English Keyboard Concertos, x Ix .
6 
Handel, Six Concertos for the Harpsicord or Organ. A very good concise introduction to Handel’s 
organ concertos is Gudger, “Handel and the Organ Concerto”.
7 
Advertised in the Country Journal or The Craftsman of 9 March 1734. I am grateful to Simon 
Fleming for alerting me to this notice and to the first concerto of the publication cited in the next 
footnote.
8 
Avison, Two Concertos. For prior appearances in England of the solo harpsichord in partnership 
with strings (albeit not in harpsichord concertos in a formal sense), see Lynan, “Organ Concerto”, 
162–163. I take this opportunity to thank Peter Lynan warmly for commenting on the present 
article in an earlier draft.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
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an orchestral accompaniment. It obviously contrasted more sharply than a harpsichord 
with another harpsichord used as a continuo instrument, if one was present. It was also 
more decorous and magnificent in certain settings, such as oratorio performances. But it 
did not possess the ubiquity or transportability of the harpsichord and was less likely to 
be available for performances in most concert rooms or in domestic environments. It is 
clear that composers and performers took a pragmatic approach to the choice of instru-
ment, as we should similarly do today. The size and composition of the accompanying 
ensemble could likewise vary greatly according to the availability of players and the size 
of the performing space, purely aesthetic considerations normally remaining subordinate.
On the surface, the typical solo part for a keyboard instrument resembles closely 
those of the “principal” instrument in any other type of solo concerto. Particularly if the 
solo instrument is a violin, it normally plays continuously throughout each movement, 
merging with the corresponding orchestral part during tutti sections. This unbroken line 
helps soloists to orient themselves and, if relevant, to direct the ensemble with the next 
best thing to an actual score. But there is an important difference between parts for key -
board soloists and those for players on any other kind of instrument, the harp excepted. 
It is abnormal for a keyboard player not to make concurrent use of both hands in the vast 
majority of bars, with the result that (a) the solo part has to be notated unvaryingly on 
systems of two staves, and (b) save in special circumstances, such as the start of a fugal 
exposition, the writing for it has to be in a minimum of two parts. One hardly needs to be 
reminded that, in Manfred Bukofzer’s classic phrase, musical style during the Baroque 
period (and never more evidently than in the central decades of the eighteenth century) 
was governed by “a harmonic polarity between soprano and bass”.
9
 The austerity of two-
part writing, normally with one part taken by each hand, dominated keyboard music over 
a wide temporal arc stretching from the late Baroque to the early Classical period. This 
textural sparseness was mitigated a little by the use of broken-chord figures or the spo-
radic insertion of notated or improvised inner lines and/or chordal notes, but it remained 
a constant characteristic. A correlation can perhaps be seen between the preference for 
a two-part texture and the rise in keyboard-playing among amateurs and especially the 
young, since having only one note to play at a time with each hand made not only for 
simplicity of execution but also for ease of reading the music on the page.
Following these principles, the solo parts of early harpsichord concertos usually took 
the form of short scores where the music on the upper staff was identical with the first violin 
part during tutti sections (with fragments of the second violin and/or viola parts added only 
where especially opportune and not technically too difficult) but independent during solo 
sections. In matching fashion, the left hand reproduced the continuo line (though often 
not its figures) in tutti passages but played independently elsewhere.
10
 Unlike in concertos 
9 
Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, 11.
10 
Where figures are lacking in the keyboard part, a player (other than the composer) is not in a good 
position to play a full continuo harmonization during tutti passages unless – as becomes possible 
in a modern performance – he or she is reading from a score. The problem can be solved, as it 
was in Burgess’s day, by employing throughout for the continuo an additional keyboard player 
reading from the figured Basso part.

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
for melody instruments, there was no ever-present need to co-opt players from the rest of 
the ensemble for bass support or harmonic enrichment during solo passages, where the 
keyboard instrument could remain very literally “alone” if the composer wished to keep 
things simple. But this simple modus operandi left one important question unanswered: 
what to do when the soloist was asked to pause for a while – for example, during a slow 
movement entrusted to orchestra alone or in the intervals of “call-and-response” exchanges 
between soloist and strings. A surprising but commonly adopted solution was to write the 
unplayed notes into the short score as if for a tutti section, but then to add an explanatory 
cue such as “senza organo”. The virtue of this seemingly self-contradictory practice was 
that it indicated clearly to the keyboard player the location of pauses in a performance 
“with accompaniments” (i.e., with orchestra), while at the same time providing a complete 
and, more importantly, continuously running musical text for anticipated performances 
without orchestra. One should remember that throughout the eighteenth century there was 
immense tolerance for “reduced” scores of every kind, right down to the versions of vocal 
melodies scored for unaccompanied recorder or traverso that were used as space-fillers in 
song collections.
11
 At the humbler levels of music-making accessibility, practicality and 
cost were factors always likely to outweigh scrupulous attention to completeness and fine 
detail. Contrary to modern expectation, orchestra-less performances of eighteenth-century 
keyboard concertos, provided that their composers foresaw that possibility and catered 
for it in the musical material they committed to print, are able to produce a good (even 
if not ideal) effect via intelligent solutions. For example, call-and-response dialogues, 
even though their antiphony is not readily reproducible on a single instrument, can often 
be simulated effectively through alternations of dynamic level, registration or manual.
There is no space in this article for a more detailed general study of the keyboard 
concerto in eighteenth-century Britain – a subject that has already accumulated quite a 
substantial literature, including an information-packed doctoral thesis by the editor of 
the anthology cited earlier.
12
 We now move on to consider the article’s little-known, and 
in my view under-appreciated, protagonist, starting with his homonymous father, who 
was similarly named Henry Burgess.
Henry Burgess, Senior, and Henry Burgess, Junior
Neither Burgess, father or son, has been well served by the lexicographical tradition. The 
only actual dictionary articles (as opposed to catalogue entries) specifically dedicated to 
them are the two brief ones found in the biographical dictionary of figures connected with 
London theatres compiled between 1973 and 1993 by the team of Highfill, Burnim and 
Langhans, which, conforming to the house style of this otherwise admirable compilation, 
11 
The concertos by Burgess that are the subject of this article are an excellent case in point, for 
the surviving examples of the first edition, which lack the complementary orchestral parts (even 
though the prospectus inviting subscriptions mentions them), greatly outnumber those of the 
second edition, which include these “accompaniments”.
12 
Lynan, “English Keyboard Concerto”.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
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hardly ever reveals the source of information.
13
 What follows is therefore largely pieced 
together from small pieces of evidence culled from a multitude of sources, some of which 
have not been known about before.
The mainstay of the career of the elder Henry Burgess was his membership of the 
King’s (or Royal) Band of Musicians, to which he was admitted principally as a keyboard 
player on 28 September 1723 in succession to William Babell, who had died five days 
earlier.
14
 Coincidentally or not, Babell’s musical style, as displayed in his keyboard com-
positions as well as in the occasional flamboyant passages for solo harpsichord inserted 
into his ensemble music, prefigures in certain respects that of the younger Henry – for 
instance, the two men share an Italianate predilection for sequential passage-work and 
motor rhythms – and it would have been very natural if, through a connection to the Royal 
Band that Henry, Senior, would soon join, Babell acted as a formative influence on his son.
Nothing certain is known about the elder Henry’s earlier life. Both he and his son 
appear to have been parishioners of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, where the latter 
was christened and lies buried. A large number of parishioners with a surname spelled 
“Burgis” or “Burges” (but not “Burgess”!) are found in registers of the same church for the 
seventeenth century. It seems that the original written form of the family’s surname – the 
one that predominates in church records – was “Burgis”, whereas “Burgess” (which looks 
and sounds more elevated, since it can denote a minor civic official) was very possibly 
a variant form adopted, initially by the elder Henry, for professional reasons. Whether 
this Henry was born within the London-Westminster conurbation or moved there only 
at a later stage and who his parents were are things awaiting discovery. The most likely 
decade for his birth was the 1690s.
The marital life of Henry Burgess, Senior, appears to have been complex, not to say 
confusing, since each of his three known wives was called Mary. The first Mary was the 
mother of Henry, Junior (“Henry Burgis of Henry & Mary”), born on 11 October 1718 and 
baptized at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 19 October,
15
 and of his sister Isabella (“Issabella 
Da[ughte]r of Henry Burgis & Mary in Dean Street Holborn”), baptized at St Andrew, 
Holborn, on 2 February 1721/1722.
16
 I have so far not managed to ascertain with certainty 
by trawling through genealogical websites who this first Mary was, nor when and where 
she married Henry. The first candidate to consider is a Mary Phillips with whom a Henry 
Burges concluded a so-called clandestine (or “Fleet”) marriage on 4 August 1703.
17
 His 
13 
Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, Biographical Dictionary, 2:418.
14 
Daub, “Music at the Court of George II”, 326.
15 
Record set “Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 
1558–1812”. The digitized document from which this information is taken and all other web 
references cited in this article were verified via access on 20 January 2021.
16 
Record set “London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1558–1812”. 
The composite form (1721/1722) given for the year reflects the fact that nearly all English church 
registers up to and including 1752 follow the Style of the Incarnation, in which the days between 
1 January and 24 March are assigned to the outgoing, not the incoming, year. The later year is of 
course the one used today. Isabella, who died in 1803, married in 1759 a well-known bookseller 
on the Strand, Thomas Wilcox.
17 
Record set “London, England, Clandestine Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667–1754”.  Weddings 

65
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
address is given as “St Pauls All[e]y Near The St Pauls”, hers as “Love Lane”. The main 
obstacle to accepting this identification is the early date of the wedding, which leads one to 
ask why no children apparently arrived between then and 1718 and why no musical activity 
on Henry’s part during the same period has come to light. A more promising candidate 
is a Mary Jones of the parish of St James, Piccadilly, who married a Henry Burgis of St 
Clement Dane at Gray’s Inn Chapel (the chapel attached to this Inn of Court) on 9 May 
1714.
18
 But even assuming that this Mary had actually been christened at the fashionable 
Westminster church of St James and had not moved into the parish from outside, there 
is, alas, a bewildering plethora of identically named bridal candidates of a suitable age 
to choose between.
19
 As for the Henry in question, he cannot be pinned down any more 
firmly than she.
Whoever she was, the first Mary had evidently died by 24 May 1725, for on that day 
her successor, a Mary Ardern who lived, like her bridegroom, in the parish of St George, 
Hanover Square, married Henry Burgis at St James, Piccadilly.
20
 Their first and perhaps 
only child, another Mary, was laid to rest at the same church on 9 February 1727/1728. The 
choice of a church wedding in a prosperous neighbourhood perhaps reflects an upswing 
in Henry’s fortunes at this time.
The third Mary, daughter of a Thomas Wormsley and described as “spinster”, married 
her fellow parishioner “Henry Burgess, Musician of St. Giles’s [St Giles-in-the-Fields] 
wid[owe]r” at the Fleet Prison on 23 July 1741.
21
 The choice of a clandestine wedding might 
seem a regression after the elegance of St James, but there are so many possible reasons 
for it that it is best not to speculate. The union does not seem to have produced further 
children. After Henry’s death this Mary acted as his executrix for his will, and inherited 
practically the whole of his estate, since the younger Henry was left merely his father’s 
music, Isabella a shilling and a gold ring and another son, Thomas, whose identity is not 
clarified by other documentation, a shilling and a pair of ornamental buttons.
22
 The will was 
drawn up on 7 March 1764. It left the executrix free to choose a site of burial, and when 
Henry died just over a year later, on 17 March 1765, he was interred at St Paul, Covent 
conducted within London’s Fleet Prison or in its vicinity were able, through an obscure legal 
loophole, to offset their undeniable stigma by circumventing many of the potential drawbacks of, 
or obstacles to, a conventional church wedding. They were secret (useful for a person who wished 
to succeed to an inheritance that would be withheld if he or she married, or for a bigamist), entailed 
no posting of banns or granting of a licence, required no parental consent in the case of minors, 
could be arranged very quickly and were much cheaper than church weddings. Unsurprisingly, 
they were at certain times the choice of a majority of Londoners.
18 
The wedding is recorded in Foster, Register of Admissions, 59.
19 
For instance, there were three infants christened as Mary Jones at St James during 1694–1696.
20 
Record set “Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 
1558–1812”.
21 
Record set “London, England, Clandestine Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667–1754”. 
22 
Record set “England & Wales, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1384–1858” (which 
includes a digital reproduction of the original archival copy in Kew, The National Archives, PROB 
11/906/305). Thomas could, perhaps, be identical with a “Thomas Burgess, Drawing Master” 
resident in Duke Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, listed on p. 6 of Thomas Mortimer’s Universal 
Director of 1763 (see later, note 26).

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Garden. His connection, presumably by birth, with a different parish was recognized, 
however, by his description in the burial register as “Henry Burgiss from St. Martin in 
y
e
 Fields”.
23
 Two days later, the will was proved. The widow is probably the same person 
as the “Mary Burgis” who was buried at St Paul on 30 August 1779.
24
A few landmarks in the elder Henry’s otherwise rather uneventful life can be identified. 
In June 1730 he competed unsuccessfully for the vacant organist post at St Mary-at-Hill 
(to which Henry Duncalf succeeded).
25
 No further applications of a similar kind seem 
to have been made by him. His major occupation “on the side” was almost certainly the 
private teaching of music in the form of harpsichord (and perhaps also singing) lessons: 
we find both him and his son listed in 1763 among the “Masters and Professors of Music” 
(respectively, as “Burgess, Henry, senior, one of his Majesty’s Band. Brownlow-street” and 
“Burgess, Henry, junior. Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s-in-fields”) in Thomas Mortimer’s 
directory of professional men of various kinds (a sort of Yellow Pages ante diem).
26
 Like 
so many other minor English musicians of his time, Henry made a small and intermit-
tent contribution to song composition. One of his earliest songs must have been “Love’s 
a dream of mighty treasure” (separately titled The Illusion), which he contributed to the 
first volume (1729) of the publisher John Watts’s six-volume song anthology The Musical 
Miscellany.
27
 The elder Henry’s sole substantial publication was a collection of harpsichord 
pieces in a “familiar” style (i.e., one suitable for domestic recreation, thus not technically 
challenging), which John Johnson brought out – and may have commissioned, since he 
financed the operation – at some point in the mid 1750s.
28
 These competently written and 
indeed rather pleasing compositions, which group the individual movements into little 
suites, would be well worth publishing some day, even if only in a facsimile edition.
The elder Henry raised his profile a little among his peers by becoming, in 1738, a 
founder member and director of the benefit society for professional musicians originally 
known as the Fund for the Support of Decayed Musicians or Their Families, which later 
changed its name, after receiving a royal charter, to the Royal Society of Musicians, still 
going strong today.
29
 His son joined in the following year. The importance of this member-
ship for both men was that it placed them within a collegial network providing not only 
23 
Record set “Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 
1558–1812”.
24 
Hunt, Registers of St. Paul’s Church, 5:117.
25 
Dawe, Organists of the City of London, 85. Dawe leaves it open whether the applicant was the 
elder or the younger Henry Burgess, but since the latter was aged only twelve at the time, it 
stretches credibility to imagine that it was he, especially when nothing more is heard of him 
until 1738.
26 
Mortimer, Universal Director, 32.
27 
Musical Miscellany, 1:129.
28 
Burgess, Sr, Collection of Lessons. The phrase “for John Johnson” (rather than “for the author and 
sold by John Johnson”) appearing in the imprint on the title page defines in customary language 
which party paid for the engraving.
29 
On the early history of this society, see especially Drummond, Royal Society of Musicians; and 
Matthews, Royal Society of Musicians. “Decayed” in the society’s original name refers not only 
to infirmity but also to hardship of any kind.

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
practical support if needed but also news and recommendations regarding professional 
opportunities.
We move on now to Burgess fils. For convenience, I will give his forename from 
this point onwards as “Harry”, the colloquial form of Henry by which he was popularly 
known, at least in his youth. Between the notice of his baptism and the year 1738 there is 
no trace of him anywhere. His sure command, from the very start, of all the basic skills 
of composition – from melody, harmony and counterpoint to form and instrumentation – 
implies expert, sustained teaching in childhood and adolescence. Very likely, his father 
instructed Harry in the first rudiments, but the son probably received more advanced and 
systematic tuition from a respected pedagogue such as Johann Christoph Pepusch, who 
happens, perhaps not coincidentally, to have been a subscriber to both of Harry’s first 
two published collections: the organ concertos and the volume with cantatas and songs.
Harry appears to have made his public début as the contributor of two songs to an 
afterpiece, The Coffee House (by the dramatist James Miller), that opened at the Drury 
Lane Theatre on 26 January 1738.
30
 Most of the songs used in the production, however, 
were by Henry Carey (1687–1743), a prolific poet, singer and composer (especially of 
songs, but also with more ambitious works to his credit), who at the time served Drury 
Lane as a kind of unofficial house composer. Harry may well have been Carey’s protégé 
and even assistant: one cannot easily imagine the older man to have been Harry’s actual 
composition teacher, but he was doubtless a mentor in the domain of song composition.
On 17 January 1739 Harry reappeared at Drury Lane in “a new Concerto, composed 
and performed on the Harpsichord by Mr Henry Burgess Jr. with Accompanyments”. 
There are similar reports of his concerto-playing (always on harpsichord, not organ) on 
19 January, 5 March, 3 May, 5 May and 22 May 1739. A report in the London Daily Post 
and General Advertiser appearing on the same day as the last-mentioned performance 
notes that the concerto was used on that occasion “for the second music” preceding George 
Farquhar’s comedy The Beaux Stratagem – in other words, as the second introductory 
piece of orchestral music preceding the overture to the play itself – and this was probably 
the customary place for concertos at Drury Lane.
A witness to these performances was the organist and, later, historian Charles 
Burney (1726–1814), who in his General History included among a group of leading 
instrumentalists of the time “little Harry Burgess at the harpsichord in Drury-lane, 
where, for second-music, he often played concertos, generally of his own, as clean and 
unmeaning as on a barrel”.
31
 By “barrel” Burney means the barrel of a musical clock, 
an allusion to the motor rhythms that dominate the fast movements of the concertos. 
His epithet “clean and unmeaning” pays tribute to Harry’s virtuosity but disparages his 
30 
The main source of information on eighteenth-century theatrical productions in London is the 
London Stage, 1660–1800, a multi-volume, chronologically organized calendar of plays and 
similar productions mainly compiled from playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries. In the 
interest of saving space, it may be assumed that where no original source is given with regard to 
individual productions and their participants the details can be verified from this authoritative 
reference work.
31 
Burney, General History of Music, 4:664.

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alleged lack of musical expression. In early life, before embracing the aesthetic ideals 
of the Enlightenment and reacting strongly against those of the previous generation, the 
historian had been enamoured of this typically Italian style, confessing elsewhere in his 
History: “I remember in the early part of my life being a dupe to the glare and glitter of 
this kind of Tinsel [a reference to Babell’s keyboard music]; this poussiere dans les yeux 
[dust in one’s eyes], which Mr. Felton [William Felton, most prolific of the English organ 
concerto composers], and other dealers in notes, et rien que des notes [notes, and nothing 
but notes] continued” – before he, Burney, underwent conversion to the realm of “taste, 
expression, and light and shade”.
32
Burney fills out his description of Harry’s playing a little in two other writings. His 
so-called memoirs – remnants of preparatory jottings for a finished work of that type 
that was never achieved – contain a reference, dating from the mid-1740s, to “Burges, 
who had a very neat finger that never failed him in the common passages of w[hi]ch 
his concertos were composed”.
33
 “Common” means here “ordinary”, with a soupçon of 
“hackneyed” – actually, rather fair comment on the fact that Harry’s basic musical ideas 
are in themselves generally less original and striking than his development and treatment 
of them. There is also a passing reference to Harry embedded in an anonymous entry for 
the blind Welsh harpist Thomas Jones that Burney wrote during the years leading up to 
his death for the Cyclopaedia of Abraham Rees.
34
 As he so often did, notwithstanding 
his professed contempt for Sir John Hawkins, the other great English music historian of 
the late eighteenth century (who, incidentally, does not mention Harry in his writings), 
Burney closely paraphrases his rival’s account of the given subject,
35
 but then embel -
lishes its description of Cuper’s Gardens (newly established pleasure gardens in Lambeth 
where Jones was a star performer, and which had just acquired an organ specially built by 
Richard Bridge) by adding that the new instrument “was played by little Harry Burges, 
the harpsichord-player at Drury-lane, with his usual unmeaning neatness”.
36
Burney implies there that Harry not only visited Drury Lane to perform his concertos 
but also played regularly at that theatre as house harpsichordist, which would entail at the 
very least the additional duties of a continuo accompanist. In the absence of documen-
tation providing a list of the theatre’s personnel during this period, no definite answer 
one way or the other can be given. Harry’s known, datable performances at Drury Lane, 
which are doubtless fewer than the total number that actually took place, number no more 
than the five already mentioned, all situated in the 1738–1739 season, plus one from 1745 
shortly to be discussed. I currently favour the view that his presence at Drury Lane was 
occasional rather than regular, and coincided primarily with his appearances there as a 
soloist in a context where the participation of a separate continuo harpsichordist (probably 
32 
Ibid., 4:649.
33 
Klima, Bowers and Grant, Memoirs of Dr. Charles Burney, 46.
34 
Rees, Cyclopaedia, 19:[358].
35 
Hawkins, General History, 5:357 (footnote).
36 
On the short but lustrous history of Cuper’s Gardens, see Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, 
247–257.

69
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
the actual house harpsichordist!) was always required – but I would not be surprised to 
be proved wrong.
We next meet Harry playing, and apparently inaugurating, the organ at Cuper’s 
Gardens on 16 June 1741. Playbills for the event proclaim: “a new grand concerto for the 
organ by the author, Mr. Henry Burgess, junior, of whom it may be said without ostentation 
that he is of as promising a genius and as neat a performer as any of the age”.
37
 This event 
is interesting for being the earliest to feature a performance by Harry on organ of one of 
his keyboard concertos. Concertos for organ were by then not absolute novelties outside 
the context of performances of Handel choral works – during 1739 organ concertos were 
given pride of place in a series of monthly subscription concerts by leading musicians 
at Hickford’s Room in Brewer Street – but the occasion in 1741 may well constitute the 
earliest public performance in London of an organ concerto by a named composer other 
than Handel. Harry appeared in two similar concerts at Cuper’s Gardens in July 1741. 
Apart from the fact that the proprietress of Cuper’s Gardens, Mrs Evans, subscribed 
in 1743 for three copies of Harry’s concertos (purchasing multiple copies obviated the 
need to copy out band parts by hand), which is indirect evidence that their performance 
continued, presumably still with Harry as soloist, there is no further evidence of his 
presence there. I have a suspicion, however, that a patriotic song, “Rouse, Britons, Drive 
the foe” (Harry’s setting of a text excoriating the Bourbon monarchy and its fleet, which 
was published in 1746 in the second volume of the song anthology Calliope or English 
Harmony), is connected with celebrations of the victory over the Jacobites at Culloden 
that were held at Cuper’s Gardens on 14 August 1746.
38
 If so, the association may have 
continued for several years.
Harry finally decided to consolidate the reputation he had earned with his keyboard 
concertos by committing six of them to print. He chose the common route of initially 
publishing them privately by subscription, probably already expecting to be able to sell 
on the engraved plates to his chosen stockist at a later stage. The prospectus he placed in 
the Daily Advertiser of 11 January 1743 reads as follows:
MUSICK
PROPOSALS for printing by SUBSCRIPTION, with the Instrumental Parts, as they were 
perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane, by the Author, HENRY BURGESS jun. 
I. The Price to Subscribers is Half a Guinea;
39
 F i v e S h i l l i n g s t o b e p a i d a t 
the Time of Subscribing, and the Remainder on the Delivery of the Book. 
II. The Work will be ready to deliver to the Subscribers in February next. Subscriptions 
are taken in by the Author, in Brownlow-Street, near Drury-Lane; and at Mr. Walsh’s, 
in Katherine-Street in the Strand.
37 
Ibid., 249–250.
38 
Calliope or English Harmony, 2:76–77.
39 
The gold coin known as a guinea was worth twenty-one shillings. A half-guinea therefore equalled 
ten shillings and sixpence. It was normal for deposits paid by subscribers to be set at the level 
of about half the total cost.

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70
The publication took a little longer than promised to be delivered, perhaps because 
subscriptions were initially slow coming in, thereby delaying the start of engraving. But 
Walsh was finally able to announce publication of the set in the London Daily Post and 
General Advertiser of 28 March 1743.
RISM lists eight known library examples of this first edition.
40
 All are preserved, 
and may well have been purchased, simply as a keyboard score. The title page reads:
SIX | CONCERTOS | for the | Harpsichord or Organ | Compos’d by | M.
r
 HENRY 
BURGESS Jun.
r
 | London. Printed for the Author. | Sold by I. Walsh in Catharine Street 
in the Strand.
The keyboard part has no heading identifying it as such, but perhaps one would have 
been considered redundant, given the part’s notation on two staves.
At some later stage Harry passed on the plates to Walsh, who made no visible alte-
rations at all to the engraved plates of the keyboard part except for the replacement of the 
original title page by a new one reading:
SIX | CONCERTOS | for the | ORGAN and HARPSICHORD, | also for VIOLINS & 
other | Instruments in 5 Parts | Compos’d by | M.
r
 Hen. Burgess Jun.
r
 | London. Printed 
for J. Walsh in Catherine Street in the Strand.
41
One notes here the reversal of the order of harpsichord and organ, implying that the 
organ is now considered the primary instrument (matching the composer’s move from 
harpsichord to organ in his own public performances), and the new mention of the instru-
mental accompaniment.
42
 Walsh is now identified as the publisher through the replacement 
of “sold by” by “for”. The main set of parts comprises Violino Primo, Violino Secondo, 
Tenore (a faux-Italian form of the traditional English word “Tenor”, denoting a viola) and 
Basso. It is likely that the Basso part was normally sold, as was customary, in duplicate, 
which could explain why the “other instruments” run to five parts, according to the title 
page. In addition, the parts include three supplementary ones printed rather messily on 
half-sheets. These are for “Hautboy Primo”, “Hautboy Secondo” and “Basso Ripiano” 
[recte, Ripieno], which are all obbligato parts required for Concerto V only. The Basso 
part is quite copiously figured throughout.
40 
“RISM Catalog”, ID no. 990007604. The holding libraries are: Pendlebury Library of Music, 
Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge (GB-Cpl); The British Library (GB-Lbl); Oxford, 
Bodleian Library (GB-Ob); Winchester, Hampshire Record Office (GB-WCr); Cambridge, 
Harvard University, Harvard College Library (US-CA); Chicago, The Newberry Library (US-
Cn); Washington, The Library of Congress, Music Division (US-Wc); and Colonial Williamsburg 
Research Department, historical collection (US-WGw).
41 
If Harry did not renege on his promise to supply subscribers with a set of instrumental parts 
(always a possibility), it seems likely that the instrumental parts likewise remained unaltered 
from the first edition.
42 
Peter Lynan raises, in private correspondence, the possibility that Walsh’s phrase “the Organ and 
Harpsichord” refers in fact not to alternative instruments for the solo part but to complementary 
instruments performing, respectively, concertante and continuo roles.

71
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
RISM lists only two known library examples of this second edition.
43
 Rather per-
versely, this edition contains the expected list of subscribers, whereas the first edition 
apparently does not. This list, which contains seventy-eight names of subscribers, a few 
among whom (such as the music dealers John Simpson and John Johnson and the pleas-
ure garden proprietress Mrs Evans) took multiple copies, repays careful perusal, since it 
contains much interesting information of biographical relevance. Table 1 identifies the 
major categories of subscriber identifiable, albeit with a degree of caution, from the list, 
which sometimes adopts unusual spellings (normalized in the table) or omits the forename. 
Where subscribers belong to more than one category, their names are repeated. Seventy-
eight is a rather disappointing number for even a debutant musician to achieve, although 
probably sufficient to cover costs.
Table 1 
Description by category of the subscribers to the Six Concertos by Henry Burgess, Jr (1743)
Female pupils Miss Bellamy, Miss Sarah Crowder [= Crowley?], Miss 
Demorin, Miss Derisme, Miss Dixon, Miss Gibbon, Misses 
Susanne and Madeleine Guinand, Miss Mayne, Miss Rigail, 
Miss Simons
Harpsichord makers Jacob Kirkman, Joseph Mahoon
Huguenots Miss Demorin, Miss Derisme, Misses Susanne and Madeleine 
Guinand, Cyprien Rondeau, Miss Rigail
King’s Band members Joseph Abington, Arthur Bradley, John Hudson, Thomas Jones
Men of independent 
means
Daniel Bayley, James Dopson, Timothy Dewell, Sir Philip 
Hall, James Harris, Joseph Hiscox, James Hatley, Abel-
Johnston Ketelbey, George Lynn, Thomas Masterman, 
Richard Warner
Merchants Cyprien Rondeau, John Albrecht Vassmer
Music dealers John Johnson (6 sets), John Simpson (2 sets)
Organists John Bennett, John Cary (?), Thomas Chilcot, Dr Maurice 
Greene, Samuel Howard, William Jackson, Johann Christoph 
Pepusch, Nelme Rogers, William Savage, “Mr Trevor”  
[= John Travers?], James Vincent
Professional men William Dodd (army captain), Richard Hamilton (surgeon), 
Henry Watson (surgeon)
Pupils of Pepusch John Bennett, Samuel Howard, William Savage, “Mr Trevor” 
[= John Travers?]
43 
“RISM Catalog”, ID no. 990007605. The holding libraries are: GB-Lbl and Durham, The 
Cathedral Library (GB-DRc). The digitized copy in the British Library (g.251.b) is the base text 
used in this article for analytical discussion and music examples.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
72
RSM members Joseph Abington, John Barnard, John Beard, Thomas Barrow, 
Arthur Bradley, Richard Carter (?), Thomas Chilcot, Maurice 
Greene, John Hudson, Thomas Jones, Thomas Lowe, “Mr 
Trevor” [= John Travers?], James Vincent
Singers John Beard, Thomas Barrow, Mrs. [Kitty] Clive, Mrs Collett, 
Thomas Lowe
Many subscribers are not identifiable with certainty. Question marks in the table 
identify those persons who would be of interest if correctly identified but whose inclusion 
should for now be regarded only as speculative. The first thing to strike the reader is the 
complete absence of members of the nobility: the best the list can offer is a knight (Sir 
Philip Hall). This lacuna at the top of the social spectrum is typical for the subscription 
lists of composers who were organists or teachers and lacked courtly connections or noble 
patrons and employers. On the other hand, there is a good sprinkling of what I have termed 
“men of independent means”, their status conventionally signalled by the title “Esquire”. 
Many of these were provincial landowners who paid seasonal visits to London and had 
the inclination and means to exercise patronage on a small scale via subscriptions to the 
publications of favoured musicians. Most of the female subscribers whose surnames are 
prefaced merely by “Miss” (where a forename is missing, one assumes that the eldest 
unmarried daughter in a family is meant) must have been pupils of Harry, although one or 
two could have been well-off spinsters happy to support a young musician.
44
 Predictably, 
the overlapping categories of organists, members of the future Royal Society of Musicians 
and members of the King’s Band, all with their individual collegial loyalties, collectively 
form the numerically strongest group. Lastly, one should mention the presence of several 
members of London’s Huguenot community, whose wealthier families lived in and around 
Soho and took a keen interest in cultural pursuits, including music.
On 9 September 1743, according to an advertisement in the London Daily Post 
and General Advertiser for the day before, Harry played a concerto on the organ at the 
Castle Tavern in Paternoster Row during a concert whose main item was William Boyce’s 
serenata Solomon; whether this was a new concerto or one of the published ones is not 
stated. Then on 3 April 1745 he returned to Drury Lane to play an organ concerto at a 
performance of Thomas Arne’s opera Alfred the Great. These are the last two documen-
ted public performances by him. In fact, I have been able to trace no later biographical 
references except what can be gleaned from his two subsequent publications, his father’s 
will, the record of his burial and of course Burney’s retrospective comments. He does 
not seem to have retreated to the provinces, which is the commonest explanation for the 
abrupt disappearance from view of London musicians. The simplest scenario is perhaps 
44 
The strongly “gendered” character of keyboard playing in the eighteenth century and its effect on 
subscription to publications are explored in fascinating detail in Fleming, “Gender of Subscribers”, 
especially 103–109.
Table 1 
(continued)

73
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
the most credible: he grew tired of, or experienced some impediment towards, high-pro-
file public performance, and as a bachelor (it appears), he made enough to live on from a 
combination of teaching, composition and perhaps occasional jobs such as accompaniment 
or music copying.
His Collection of English Songs and Cantatas, announced by Walsh in the General 
Advertiser of 4 May 1749, is a composite publication of a kind typical for England at that 
time, comprising two cantatas (a name freely awarded by English composers to almost 
any relatively elaborate multi-sectional song that included at least one section styled as 
a recitative), six strophic songs and a final “lesson for the harpsichord”. This, too, was 
published by subscription, the list this time reaching a healthier total of 126 names; the 
reappearance of several names belonging to persons who, or whose close kin, had sub-
scribed earlier to the concertos shows that Harry had acquired a loyal following. The 
cantatas receive quite favourable comment in Paul Rice’s catalogue of British cantatas 
of the eighteenth century, which speaks of “attractive melodies” that are only slightly 
compromised by occasionally awkward word-setting.
45
Harry’s “swan song” is unexpected in nature: a dated (1781) and privately published 
(“for the Author”) collection of nine trio sonatas for two violins, cello and continuo. The 
print is preserved uniquely in the British Library, and unfortunately lacks its thorough-
bass part.
46
 Since this is one of the very last trio sonata collections to be published in an 
original edition in England – or anywhere else – it invites inspection. (Unfortunately, 
this is impossible at the time of writing on account of a temporary closure of the library.) 
Some trio sonatas published this late in the eighteenth century are fully “Classical” in 
their musical language, and it would be interesting to find out whether Harry’s style, 
already galant to a certain degree in the 1740s, evolved further in the succeeding decades.
The final event in Harry’s life, his burial, took place at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 2 
April 1786.
47
 It seems to have occurred in total obscurity: I have found no press notices, 
let alone obituaries, referring to it.
Leaving aside simple bibliographical references (which often confuse father and 
son), the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth are a near-void with regard 
to both Harry’s biography and the reception history of his music. The first stirrings of 
interest that I have discovered emerge in a chapter on concert life in England written 
jointly by H. Diack Johnstone and Rosamond McGuinness for the Blackwell History of 
Music in Britain (1990), where the following critical assessment of the concertos is made:
They [the concertos] are notable chiefly for their brevity, but such compression is 
hardly displeasing when form and matter are so well matched. Concertos 1, 3 and 4 in 
particular have a strong Italian flavour suggesting Vivaldi. Elsewhere there are passing 
45 
Rice, Solo Cantata, 121–123.
46 
GB-Lbl, g.251.a. The example lacks the thorough-bass part, but it is unclear from the library’s 
catalogue whether this is a duplicate of the cello part with added figuring, exactly the same as 
the cello part or an independent part.
47 
Record set “Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 
1558–1812”.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
74
hints of the galant style which was soon to become fashionable, and no. 5 has oboes in 
the accompaniment as well as strings.
48
I would not dissent from anything in this admirable characterization except to qualify 
the remark about brevity. The first five concertos possess ritornello-form Allegro move -
ments in common time that run to 96, 118, 82, 113 and 110 bars, respectively. Granted, 
the other movements (and all the movements, in the case of Concerto VI) are more mode-
stly scaled, but the ritornello-form movements amply demonstrate Harry’s command of 
complex and large-scale design.
A longer account of the concertos appears in Peter Lynan’s doctoral thesis, cited 
earlier, which repeats the contestable statement about the shortness of their ritornello-
form movements.
49
 Noting correctly that Harry’s organ concertos, in performance as well 
as in publication, were pioneering works for an English composer, Lynan rightly draws 
attention to their Venetian-style (i.e., “Vivaldian” in the broadest sense) use of ritornello 
form and their clear tonal plans, as well as the presence of solo (as distinct from doubling) 
oboes in the third movement of Concerto V. I would question, however, his statement that 
the tonic–dominant–relative–tonic plan for ritornellos is “unaltered from one concerto to 
another”, since Concerto IV has an additional ritornello in the subdominant key, Concertos 
I and IV one in the mediant key and Concerto II even one in the supertonic key, while 
Concerto V reverses – as commonly happens in the minor mode – the order of dominant 
and relative keys. Moreover, as an extra tonal ingredient, there is a striking major-minor 
shift in the opening ritornello and two of its subsequent iterations in the first movement 
of Concerto II. Lynan also remarks a little negatively on the quick movements’ “heavy 
reliance on almost continuous semiquaver episodic passage work”, the “predictability of 
[Burgess’s] solo material” and “a certain similarity between some of the allegro themes”. 
All these observations are factually incontrovertible, but one has some latitude in decid-
ing whether these features arise from a simple deficit of imagination or are conscious 
compositional choices with compensatory benefits.
The second volume of Lynan’s thesis contains a thematic catalogue with full incipits 
of English organ concertos, including Burgess’s.
50
 Incipits for the latter are also listed in 
Owain Edwards’s slightly later catalogue of English eighteenth-century concertos for all 
instrumental combinations.
51
To date, only one of Harry’s concertos has been published in a modern edition: 
Concerto V, edited by Francis Hopper.
52
48 
Johnstone and McGuinness, “Concert Life in England I”, 65.
49 
Lynan, “English Keyboard Concerto”, 1:84–85.
50 
Ibid., 2:11–14.
51 
Edwards, English Eighteenth-Century Concertos, 62–64.
52 
Burgess, Jr, Concerto V. At the time of writing, I am working on a critical- cum-practical edition 
in separate volumes of all six concertos.

75
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
The Six Concertos
Basic Details
Analytical discussion of Harry’s concertos can conveniently start with a close reading of 
the data in Table 2, which summarizes some important elements of their content.
Table 2
Basic details of the Six Concertos by Henry Burgess, Jr
No. Key Heading, Metre Structure Notes
I G
1. Allegro, $
ritornello form
2. Largo Andante, #
unitary form In E minor. Leads to a 
Phrygian cadence.
3. GIGA, Presto, P
binary form with 
introduction
II B♭
1. Allegro, $
ritornello form
2. Andante, #
binary form, only first 
section repeated
In G minor. Has brief 
Adagio conclusion  
(in L) leading to a 
Phrygian cadence.
3. FUGUE, Allegro, $
concertante fugue Has Adagio conclusion.
4. Allegro, )
binary form with 
introduction
III A
1. Allegro, $
ritornello form
2. Largo, #
unitary form with 
introduction
In F♯ minor. Has brief 
Adagio conclusion  
(in L) leading to a 
Phrygian cadence.
3. Allegro, #
binary form with 
introduction
IV F
1. Allegro, $
ritornello form
2. SICILIANA, Largo, P
unitary form In B♭ major. Has brief 
Adagio conclusion 
leading to a Phrygian 
cadence.
3. Vivace, $
binary form with 
introduction
In the style of a country 
dance.

De musica disserenda XVII/2 • 2021
76
V g
1. Andante, $
binary form With appended 
Phrygian cadence, 
Adagio.
2. Allegro, $
ritornello form
3. Largo Andante, #
In B♭ major. Two oboes 
replace the organ in the 
solo role.
4. Allegro, )
binary form with 
introduction
VI c
1. Andante, L
through-composed With appended 
Phrygian cadence, 
Adagio.
2. Allegro, $
binary form With appended 
Phrygian cadence, 
Adagio.
3. Largo, #
binary form In E♭ major.
4a. MINUET I, Allegro 
moderato, #
binary form
4b. MINUET II binary form In E♭ major. Followed 
by Minuet I da capo.
The second column gives the keys of the concertos – all different, as customary in 
sets written for instruments capable of playing easily in many different tonalities.
53
 The 
dominance of major keys (four works) over minor ones (two works) is typical for the 
period: very soon, major tonality would come to enjoy an even greater dominance – the 
greatest it has ever had in music’s history. Interestingly, Concerto VI retains, for C minor, 
the two-flat key signature normal in the seventeenth century but gradually superseded by 
the modern form during the first few decades of the eighteenth. This suggests that Harry 
learned his craft from a teacher quite a lot older than him.
Column 3 lists the headings for each movement. In the four instances where this does 
not consist merely of a tempo marking we find a fashionable social dance (the Minuet), a 
fashionable theatrical dance (the Siciliana), a traditional but in England surprisingly durable 
dance (the Giga, or Jig) and a fugue. The latter is not, however, a traditional fugue with 
approximate parity of the parts but a concertante fugue in which the episodes alternating 
with expositions of the subject and countersubjects make only fragmentary or indirect 
reference to the material treated in counterpoint, offering instead exactly the same type 
of display writing and accompaniment to it employed in the solo episodes of concertos.
54
 
53 
Following convention, major keys are shown in capitals, minor ones in lower case.
54 
On concertante fugues, see Talbot, Vivaldi and Fugue, 82–83 and elsewhere. Young composers 
Table 2 
(continued)

77
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
The number of movements (ignoring tailpieces in slower tempo tacked on to the 
end of movements as transitions to a following movement, which are shown in column 
5) varies between three and four. All the concertos, however, have a three-movement 
“core” in a fast–slow–fast configuration. Concertos I, III and IV provide no more than 
this; Concerto II interjects its lively fugue before the final movement; Concerto V opens 
with a concise, intrada-like slow movement not unlike some of Corelli’s preludes in his 
chamber sonatas; Concerto VI not only features a slow opening movement of a different 
type but also casts its last movement in the composite form of a pair of minuets (the second 
contrasting with the first by being scored for keyboard alone), with a reprise of the first 
minuet to close the work.
Turning to column 4: as we saw earlier, ritornello-form movements, all of which 
dominate their respective work in weight and duration, occur as first allegro movement 
(always in common time) in Concertos I–V. Not always far behind in complexity and 
length are the five mostly fast movements described as “binary form with introduction”. 
Here, the introduction is an orchestral prelude preceding the forward-facing repeat sign 
that marks the start of the binary structure proper. This variant of binary form with an 
independent introduction is imported directly from the repertoire of English song of the 
period, where it constitutes one of the favourite structural types. To my knowledge, only 
one other composer of concertos, William Hayes (1708–1777), sometimes employs a 
similar layout – as in Harry’s case, only in final movements.
55
 Chronological priority is 
hard to determine for certain, but Harry seems more likely to have been the originator. 
To illustrate the relationship to vocal music, the opening of Harry’s song “Rouse, Britons, 
Drive the foe” (mentioned earlier) and that of the third movement of Concerto IV are 
juxtaposed as Music examples 1a and 1b.
56
often included one or more fugues in their first opus to give evidence of their good technical 
foundation.
55 
Hayes adopts a similar form for the minuet finale of a keyboard concerto in D major – (W)6:011, 
dating from 1755 and published complete in English Keyboard Concertos, 29–46 – as well as for 
the finales of concertos in G and A major (ibid., xxv III), the first of which certainly dates from 
the period of Burgess’s concertos. My thanks to Peter Lynan for drawing my attention to Hayes 
and providing extra information on these works. It is interesting and perhaps significant that an 
earlier version of the finale of (W)6:011 – used in a different concerto, (W)6:001, which may 
well date from before 1740 – does not have any introduction. I owe this detail to Simon Heighes 
(in private correspondence). The above concertos are catalogued in Heighes, Lives and Works, 
343, 345.
56 
Unless otherwise stated, the organ (or harpsichord) part is not notated separately in the music 
examples for tutti passages where it merely doubles instruments of the orchestra.

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Music example 1a
Henry Burgess, Junior, opening of the song “Rouse, Britons, Drive the foe” (1746)
Music example 1b
Henry Burgess, Junior, opening of the third movement (Vivace) of Concerto IV

79
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
Though not so labelled, the concerto movement, which despite its common time 
signature functions as if in cut time (alla breve) metre, has the lineaments of the popular 
type of English dance known as the country dance, which one might describe as the 
indigenous counterpart of the French gavotte. Its faux-naïf charm recalls Handel’s well-
known “Harmonious Blacksmith” air from his keyboard suite in E major (HWV 430) and 
similar movements in the symphonies of William Boyce.
The binary-form movements without a separate introduction, which are all in slow 
tempo, are unusual for their period in making surprisingly little use of thematic rounding, 
meaning a reprise in the tonic of the opening theme (or at least its first notes) during the 
second section. Although he can be facile in other ways, Harry does not readily “paste 
in” blocks of music mechanically. Whenever he repeats, he is apt to vary. Revealingly, 
when organ and orchestra share phrases in dialogue or simultaneously, very often one or 
the other introduces unanticipated elaborations or, indeed, simplifications as if to tease 
its partner (this is a recognizably Handelian feature).
This leaves the few movements that I term “unitary” or “through-composed”. The 
difference between the two descriptions is that the first is distinguished from binary 
form only by having no sectional repeats and no prominent caesura at the point where 
the alternate key (dominant or relative major) is confirmed with a cadence, whereas the 
second unfolds freely, often in “consciousness-stream” fashion. This is the case with the 
opening Andante of Concerto VI, where the strict patterning of rhythm and articulation is 
offset by the exploratory, calculatedly unpredictable nature of the harmony and modulation 
(Music example 2). This manner is in fact very old in concertos, pre-Vivaldian in fact 
(similar movements occur in Torelli and Albinoni). It seems, like the fugue, to be a nod 
towards the “ancient” style, which had many devotees in England throughout the century.
Music example 2
Henry Burgess, Junior, opening of the first movement (Andante) of Concerto VI

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From column 5 we see that Harry is extraordinarily fond of ending his tailpieces 
to movements with a Phrygian cadence, a typically Corellian gesture. Fortunately, he is 
quite inventive in varying the inner-part details of such cadences.
The same column identifies the key of the slow movement within the three-move-
ment “core” group mentioned earlier. Generally, this is the relative major or minor, as 
it would be in Handel or J. S. Bach, but Concerto IV is progressive in using instead the 
subdominant, statistically the most common choice in early Classical instrumental works.
The Ritornello-Form Movements
Not all the orchestral passages in the ritornello-form movements are describable as 
ritornellos. This term is best reserved for the structural pillars that in Harry’s case (as 
in the earliest concerto tradition represented by Torelli and Albinoni, but not always in 
Vivaldi) are characterized by use of an invariable head-motive, whose continuation in 
interior statements is liable to mutate into something simpler and shorter than in the 
original statement, and which is nearly always a closed period starting and finishing in 
the same key.
57
 Other, shorter orchestral passages are embedded within the solo episodes 
separating ritornello statements. These are generally very loosely related motivically to 
the ritornellos or, as an alternative, reproduce or paraphrase the solo material itself, as in 
echoes and call-and-response passages, for which the model is clearly Handel (see later 
discussion). Like Vivaldi, Burgess writes segmented ritornellos consisting of juxtaposed 
discrete phrases, some of which are repeated at the same pitch or in sequences. Perhaps 
the most memorable (and Vivaldi-evoking) of the opening ritornellos is that of the second 
movement of Concerto V, as jaunty as a hornpipe and with a central modulation to the 
relative major that anticipates the later tonal trajectory of the movement (Music example 
3). This example concludes with the opening bar of the first solo episode to illustrate 
how it is Harry’s custom to launch his solo display with a paraphrase of the start of the 
preceding ritornello. This is a Vivaldian practice, but unlike Vivaldi himself, Harry never 
recapitulates the same paraphrase towards the end of the movement. In a way, the first 
solo’s opening is morphologically more akin to the start, following a thematically related 
introductory “symphony”, of the main, texted portion of a typical English song of the period.
57 
Exceptionally, the opening movement in Concerto III “fuses” the second and third ritornellos 
to create a single unit modulating from E major to F sharp minor. This form of telescoping is 
very common in Vivaldi.
Music example 2
(continued)

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
Music example 3
Henry Burgess, Junior, opening of the second movement of Concerto V (bass figures omitted)
Ritornellos afford Harry an opportunity to demonstrate his command of orchestral 
texture, which embraces the full range from stark unison passages to complex multi-
stranded ones. The most striking ritornello statement in the whole set (quoted as Music 
example 4) is the second, in D minor, from the same concerto, which terminates with 
something approaching the rhetorical weight and venom of the first bars of Handel’s Dixit 
Dominus (HVW 232).

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Music example 4
Henry Burgess, Junior, bars 23–29 of the second movement of Concerto V
The spirit and technique displayed in these movements also permeate Harry’s quick 
movements cast in other forms. The fugue in Concerto II can be viewed as a variant of 
ritornello form in which the solo episodes remain as before, but conventional ritornellos 
are replaced by fugal expositions unified by using a common subject, though differing in 
length, configuration and tonality.
58
 As regards the binary-form movements with orchestral 
introductions, the standard procedure is to begin both of the repeated sections with a long 
solo for the organ and end both with a short tutti referring back, either loosely or more 
strictly, to the material of the introduction.
The Solo Episodes
Except for the sporadic interjections by the full orchestra already discussed, Harry’s solo 
episodes are scored quite literally for the solo instrument alone: in the quick movements 
there are no counterpointing melodies or figures on selected instruments wafting in and 
58 
I use ‘exposition’ here in its American meaning referring to a block of entries at any point in the 
movement rather than in its traditional British meaning, which refers only to the initial block.

83
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
out during the episodes, as would most likely be the case in an organ concerto by Handel 
or Felton or even a solo concerto by Vivaldi. Harry sets a premium on transparency and a 
rather formulaic tidiness. Part of the reason is doubtless a wish not to complicate matters 
for the alternative mode of performance without organ.
At first sight, these episodes appear to consist of little more than extended series of 
semiquavers in the right hand, lightly supported with longer notes in the right hand, and 
full of mechanical repetition of all kinds. Closer acquaintance reveals greater subtlety, 
however. The structure of the figures changes periodically in time to avert tedium; the 
transitions from one figure to the next are smooth and often underpinned by a semi-
concealed element of continuity such as the persistence of a tiny cell; most important, 
convincing cycles of tension and release are created. For this last purpose, the role of 
the left hand is crucial. Its well-calculated fluctuations of speed, and between even and 
uneven rhythms, regulate, so to speak, the music’s temperature and make an independ-
ent claim on the listener’s attention. At climactic moments the bass often joins the treble 
in semiquaver motion, predominantly in the parallel tenths so beloved of Handel. It may 
be noted here that a pervasive feature of Harry’s writing, one seen at its clearest in the 
solo episodes of his concertos, is what Eleanor Selfridge-Field, writing about Albinoni, 
aptly called “emphatic consonance”: a bias towards the euphony of thirds, sixths and their 
compound equivalents, unsullied by the asperities introduced by suspensions.
59
 In keeping 
with this bias, the chains of interlocking seventh chords so dear to Vivaldi are absent, and 
the dominant triad at cadences often dispenses with a 5/4 or 6/4 prefix.
Another important regulator is the varying degree of tonal stability. At times, the 
music is kept in a swirling tonal flux, with short-lived and occasionally rather unexpec-
ted tonicizations of a great variety of scale-degrees, but these are counterbalanced by 
moments of exultant tonal and harmonic stasis celebrating arrival at, or departure from, 
a staging post on the music’s itinerary. No one passage can illustrate all the points made 
above, but the first part of the third solo episode in Concerto I (leading up to an orchestral 
interjection), shown in Music example 5, gives a flavour. The poignant dominant minor 
ninth in bar 72 is one of the most exquisite harmonic touches anywhere in the concertos.
59 
Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, 200.

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Music example 5
Henry Burgess, Junior, bars 58–73 of the first movement of Concerto I

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
Here and there, the stream of right-hand semiquavers may be delightfully disrupted 
by a triplet group or by flurries of demisemiquavers (Music example 6). Harry understands 
well that the less often an effect is encountered, the more impact it makes when it does 
appear. He also has the useful knack of creating figures that “lie under the fingers” in a 
satisfying way so that the sound often becomes more brilliant than the technical ability 
needed to achieve it. In the background is always a solicitous consideration for amateur 
players. That is the reason why, unlike Handel, Harry leaves only the narrowest sliver 
of space for free improvisation by the soloist – merely an “organo ad libitum” direction 
(inviting performance of a short cadenza) at the final perfect cadence of the Largo of 
Concerto III.

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Music example 6
Henry Burgess, Junior, bars 17–20 of the second movement of Concerto V
Discussion of the solo episodes would be incomplete without illustration of the short 
call-and-response passages that pepper these sections. Music example 7 comes from 
Concerto II. The small variations – leaving aside the harmonic content – between call 
(organ) and response (orchestra) clearly arise from a wish to counterpose the liveliness 
of the first to the stateliness of the second, and perhaps also to pique the listener’s ear.
Music example 7
Henry Burgess, Junior, bars 42–49 of the first movement of Concerto II

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
The Slow Movements
The great variety of style and form in Harry’s slow movements offsets the uniformity 
of the fast ones. He observes the normal distinction between opening slow movements 
(present in Concertos V and VI), which have a dignified, intrada-like character already 
signalled by the choice of common time, and internal slow movements, which form the 
emotional core of the work and are always in triple or compound metre. All the latter are 
short, some extremely so. The scoring varies: Concertos I and II employ orchestral texture 
throughout, while Concertos III–VI alternate tutti and solo sections (the second minuet in 
Concerto VI is scored for unaccompanied organ). Three of the movements (in Concertos 
I, II and IV) feature inverted dotting (the so-called Scotch Snap, a favourite ingredient 
of English – and of course Scottish – music already long before alla zoppa or Lombardic 
rhythm became the rage in Italy), which we encountered earlier in Music example 1a. This 
mannerism, cultivated particularly in songs, reached a peak of popularity in Britain in 
the central decades of the eighteenth century. We find it even in sicilianas written there, 
in contrast to the Italian tradition, as Music example 8 demonstrates.
Music example 8
Henry Burgess, Junior, opening of the second movement of Concerto IV

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To illustrate Harry’s lyrical gift, we need go no further than the second movement of 
Concerto I, quoted in its entirety as Music Example 9. Note the slightly unexpected turn 
to the subdominant in bars 5–8: a liking for a momentary dip into the subdominant area 
is noticeable throughout Harry’s concertos. Not literally “modal” but similar in effect, 
this feature can impart, as here, a pleasing mellowness. The ornament sign (added to 
the keyboard part alone) in bar 13, which, ironically, becomes relevant only when this 
explicitly “senza organo” movement is played on the keyboard without orchestral accom-
paniment, denotes not an ordinary mordent but its peculiarly English variant known as a 
“beat”.
60
 This prefaces a pincé with its lower note in the manner of a rising appoggiatura. 
A moment to relish is the sudden descent of the viola to its lowest register for the final 
Phrygian cadence, which produces an attractively cavernous sonority.
Music example 9
Henry Burgess, Junior, the second movement of Concerto I
60 
 On the history, nature and usage of the beat, see Johnstone, “English Beat”.
Music example 8
(continued)

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
Instrumentation and Orchestration
The specified accompaniment for Harry’s concertos consists of the usual four-part strings 
(with tacit expectation of the doubling of the cello in the lower octave by contrabass) plus 
continuo. These become augmented in Concerto V by a pair of obbligato oboes that replace 
harpsichord in the solo role in the third movement. The idea of using an “alternate” soloist 
in the internal slow movement was not new: Vivaldi, for instance, substitutes a solo cello 
for a pair of horns in the central movement of the concerto RV 538 and a pair of recorders 
for a pair of oboes in that of the concerto RV 566. But Johnstone and McGuinness, and 
later Lynan, are absolutely right to draw special attention to the use of the oboes.
61
 Handel, 
too, uses oboes in organ concertos – but only in an optional, reinforcing role. The question 
arises whether Concerto V, or even all six concertos, should add oboes to the ripieno. 
The answer seems positive in the case of Concerto V, since if one needs instruments for 
one movement, it would be uncharacteristic of early eighteenth-century practice to omit 
them from the others when they have the opportunity to fill a conventional role there. 
Moreover, the compass for the violins in that concerto lies relatively high, and there are 
very few places where a Baroque oboe in C doubling one of the violin parts needs to 
61 
 J o hnstone and M cGuinness, “Concert L if e in England I” , 6 5 ; L ynan, “English K eyboard 
Concerto”, 85.

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adjust its part through upward transpositions or brief omissions, something usually car-
ried out at sight by practised players. For the other concertos, the case is less clear-cut, 
but it would certainly be idiomatic to include oboes (and perhaps bassoon on the bass) in 
performances with numerous players.
Concerto V also has a separate ripieno bass part for the third movement, where the 
Basso part is temporarily renamed “Violoncello”. The idea here is that the violoncello and 
its keyboard continuo partner accompany the oboes in solo passages, while the “Basso 
ripiano” (Harry renders the bisyllable “pieno” a second time incorrectly as “piano” in his 
direction “organo piano” at the head of Concerto VI!) joins in whenever the violins and 
viola are active. This movement contains more complex and intricate textures than any 
other in the set, and one may well wonder whether Concerto V was not the very work 
labelled “grand” in the puff for the concerto’s performance at Cuper’s Gardens in June 
1741. Its second repeated section (Music example 10) illustrates the point.
Music example 10
Henry Burgess, Junior, the second repeated section of the third movement of Concerto V

91
Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
As noted earlier, Harry usually operates with much thinner textures. But he orche-
strates in a forward-looking way, common in English theatre music of the mid-eighteenth 
century, which one might describe as “free-voiced”. The essence of this technique is 
that contrapuntal lines bifurcate (one line branches into two) or reunite (two lines merge 
into one) with absolute freedom, often within the course of a single phrase. This flexible 
approach contrasts with the more traditional, schematic one still being adopted by Handel 
(plus Felton and other English composers in the genre), where two parts are either inde-
pendent all the time (at least, for the duration of a phrase) or double one another strictly. 
Such extra room for manoeuvre enables Harry to achieve subtle transitions between light 
and shade or between robustness and gracefulness. It also brings fresh possibilities to 
the part-writing, facilitating some inventive writing in the inner parts. Take, as a simple 
demonstration, bars 5–8 of the Largo in Concerto VI (Music example 11). Here, the upper 
string parts begin in sonorous three-strand harmony. They then reduce, by merging, to 
two strands, and finally to only one, creating a smooth “taper” effect. The musical lines 
themselves continue seamlessly even if the instruments playing them change (as happens 
when the viola takes over from the second violin in the penultimate bar). Similar free-
voiced treatment can be seen in several earlier music examples in this article.
Music example 11
Henry Burgess, Junior, close of the first section of the third movement of Concerto VI

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Conclusion
While no one should elevate Henry Burgess, Junior, to the ranks of the great or even 
the middle-ranking masters, from which he is immediately debarred in any case by the 
small size of his output, he is certainly not the negligible figure suggested by the paucity 
of earlier interest in his work and life. He deserves credit for being the first English-born 
musician to compose and publish a full set of free-standing keyboard concertos (with 
acknowledgement, however, of Avison’s earlier lone example), and also for being the 
first composer anywhere to use oboes as co-soloists in a keyboard concerto. Most of all, 
he should be admired for his enterprising and original synthesis of elements drawn from 
Handel, the Vivaldian tradition and – so unexpectedly – English song. These achievements 
make his music interesting, but they do not, by themselves, make it good. I would argue, 
however, that Harry’s concertos easily pass the threshold separating the merely noteworthy 
from the worth performing. They are instantly attractive, bubbling with vitality, varied 
enough to avoid predictability and supremely practical, being performable by the solo 
keyboard instrument (a) with orchestra and continuo harpsichordist, (b) with orchestra 
but no continuo harpsichordist (since the soloist, if playing from a full score, can easily 
take over the realization of the continuo during tutti sections, where he or she is always 
either silent or merely doubling string parts) or (c) without accompaniment. I regard it as 
no disparagement to suggest that they are ideal music for a school or college orchestra or 
a local music society as a first step towards more testing fare, such as the Handel organ 
concertos or the Bach harpsichord concertos.
The biographical account I have been able to give of Harry and his father is rather 
thin, to say the least, but it at least supplies the bare bones that future scholars will, I hope, 
be able to flesh out. Composers do not usually strive to make their lives more incident-
packed in order to gratify the wishes of their biographers, and if both Burgesses led a quiet 
life remote from the limelight (except for Harry’s few golden years as soloist in his own 
concertos), they may have felt perfectly comfortable and fulfilled doing so. But there are 
a few interesting things we can learn from their lives, and especially their publications, 
about the wider English scene. The father’s keyboard “lessons”, not discussed beyond a 
simple listing in the authoritative history of English keyboard music by John Caldwell,
62
 
offer an insight into the humble sphere of “familiar” music, which was so closely con-
nected with the world of private music teaching. The son’s cantatas, though lacking the 
originality of his concertos, exemplify well the deviant nature of the English variety of 
cantata, which unlike its Italian prototype came eventually to take its poetic texts not from 
purpose-written verse (poesia per musica) already neatly divided into recitative and aria 
stanzas, but from poetry of any type, often not intended originally for music, which it 
was the composer’s responsibility to select and divide into aria and recitative sections at 
his own pleasure. As for Harry’s late trio sonatas, once it again becomes possible to study 
them, we will find out whether or not new wine was poured into old bottles.
One unanswered question continues to obsess me. Was the epithet “little” applied 
by Burney to Harry a synonym for “Junior”, an expression of disparagement de haut 
62 
Caldwell, English Keyboard Music.

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
en bas or a reference to actual short stature – either at the point when the latter had just  
reached maturity (c. 1738) and made his début as a composer or perhaps earlier, during 
his teenage years? Could Harry have been a child prodigy on the harpsichord? A painting 
or drawing of him that could resolve the matter is something eagerly to watch out for.

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Michael T albot: The Organ Concertos of Henry Burgess (1718–1786) 
ORGELSKI KONCERTI HENRYJA BURGESSA (1718–1786)
Povzetek
Henry Burgess je bil med prvimi v Angliji rojenimi ustvarjalci in izvajalci izrazito angleške 
vrste koncerta – tj. orgelskega koncerta (ki se je lahko izvajal tudi solo na čembalu) – nastale 
po vzoru šestih primerov, ki jih je leta 1738 objavil Händel kot op. 4. Angleški skladatelji 
so podobne koncerte v velikem številu ustvarjali vse do konca stoletja. Burgessov niz 
šestih koncertov je izšel leta 1743 in je vključeval dela, ki jih je Burgess ob orkestrski 
spremljavi od leta 1739 izvajal v Londonu, večinoma v gledališču Drury Lane. Burgess 
jih je izdajal zasebno po naročilu, njegov glavni zastopnik pa je bil John Walsh. Čez kako 
leto (kar je bila običajna praksa med londonskimi skladatelji) je tiskarske plošče predal 
Walshu, ki se je od takrat naprej predstavljal kot založnik .
Burgess se je rodil v glasbeni družini v župniji Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields v Londonu. 
Njegov oče, ki je imel enako ime, se je rodil v 60. letih 17. stoletja in umrl leta 1765. Henry 
Burgess starejši je od leta 1723 do svoje smrti igral instrumente s tipkami v Royal Band 
of Musicians. Pisal je tudi svoje skladbe in sredi 50. let 18. stoletja izdal zbirko suit za 
instrumente s tipkami. Henry Burgess mlajši, po domače »Harry«, si je kot glasbenik na 
instrumentih s tipkami ime najverjetneje ustvaril že v najstniških letih, in čeprav za to ni 
pisnih dokazov, naj bi v času, ko je začel izvajati svoje koncerte v gledališču Drury Lane, 
že bil hišni čembalist v tem gledališču. O tem, da bi tam nastopal tudi po letu 1745, ni 
podatkov, in zdi se, da je bil od takrat njegov glavni vir dohodka poučevanje glasbe. Še 
naprej je skladal: leta 1749 je Walsh izdal zbirko njegovih pesmi in kantat, leta 1781 pa je 
zasebno izdal niz devetih trio sonat za dve violini, čelo in basso continuo. Umrl je leta 1786.
Burgessovi koncerti so ob izdaji povzročili precejšnje razburjenje in zdi se, da so 
močno vplivali na razvoj prve generacije orgelskih koncertov v Angliji, zlasti skladate-
ljev, kot sta William Hayes in William Felton. Zgodovinar, skladatelj in organist Charles 
Burney je Burgessa hvalil kot izvajalca in skladatelja, čeprav z nekaterimi zadržki, ki 
odražajo njegovo poznejšo naklonjenost bolj »modernemu« (tj. posthändelskemu) slogu. 
Slava, ki so si jo Burgessovi koncerti prislužili, pa je kmalu zbledela in do danes se o njih 
in njihovem skladatelju ni več kaj dosti slišalo.
Ta zapostavljenost je neupravičena, saj so njegovi koncerti privlačna in zelo spretno 
napisana dela, ki kažejo veliko mero izvirnosti. S slogovnega vidika združujejo prvine 
Vivaldijevih in Händlovih del, hkrati pa vključujejo tudi značilnosti, ki izhajajo iz angleške 
plesne in pesemske tradicije. Zaključni hitri stavki v binarni obliki imajo ločene uvode 
brez ponovitve, ki so očitno sposojeni iz vokalne glasbe. Večina glasbe za solista vključuje 
neprekinjene pasaže v motoričnem ritmu, občudovanja vreden pa je način, kako se skozi 
pasaže razvijata figuracija in tekstura.
Kot je bilo značilno za obdobje, v katerem so nastali, so Burgessovi koncerti primerni 
za različne kontekste, ne samo za javne koncerte in nastope v gledališčih, ampak tudi za 
ljubiteljsko igranje in domače muziciranje. Izvajajo se lahko bodisi s spremljavo violin, 
viole, čela in bassa continua bodisi solistično na instrumentu s tipkami. Orkester se lahko 
opusti, ker so solistični deli vedno brez spremljave, »tutti« in »senza organo« deli pa se 
lahko vedno, vsaj okvirno, izvedejo na instrumentu s tipkami, ki igra od začetka do konca.