113
THE SINGER AND COMPOSER HENRY HOLCOMBE 
(1690–1756) 
MICHAEL TALBOT
University of Liverpool
Izvleček: Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) se je z 
glasbo prvič srečal kot pevec v zboru stolnice v 
Chestru. Leta 1705 se je preselil v London, kjer je 
pel v gledališču Drury Lane. Kasneje je deloval 
kot izredno uspešen zasebni učitelj glasbe. Šele 
kasneje v življenju je dosegel svoj polni poten-
cial kot skladatelj in izdal štiri glasbene zbirke 
vrhunske kakovosti. Pričujoča razprava je prva 
podrobnejša študija Holcombovega življenja 
in dela.
Ključne besede: Henry Holcombe, gledališče 
Drury Lane, angleška pesem, kanconeta 
Abstract: Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) was 
trained as a chorister at Chester Cathedral. In 
1705 he moved to London, where he sang at the 
Drury Lane theatre. He later pursued a lucra-
tive career as a private music teacher. Only in 
later life did he achieve his full potential as a 
composer, producing four collections of excep-
tional quality. This is the first study to examine 
Holcombe’s life and music in detail. 
Keywords: Henry Holcombe, Drury Lane thea-
tre, English song, canzonetta
The Holcombes of South Perrott, Dorset
The picturesque Dorset village of South Perrott lies on the route from Dorchester, in the 
south of this West Country county, to Crewkerne in a north-westerly direction. Shortly 
after the village church of St Mary, by royal decree in 1534, adopted the Anglican rite, 
new registers of baptisms and marriages in the parish (and doubtless also of deaths, but 
the relevant register does not survive) were started. The baptismal register runs from 
1538 to 1812, that for marriages from 1539 also to 1812.
1
 Together, these registers afford 
a conspectus – very incomplete but nevertheless revealing – of the population of this 
village during that period.
The baptismal register records the christening, therefore indirectly also the birth, of 
sixteen persons with the surname Holcombe, stretching from Dionisia, daughter of William, 
in 1541 to John, son of James, in 1686. Recorded marriages in the village are fewer: only 
six between 1555 and 1628, divided equally between male and female Holcombes. There 
appears to have been a maximum of two Holcombe households, certainly closely related, in 
1 
For links to tables giving the complete content of both registers, with normalized spelling of 
personal names, see the website http://www.opcdorset.org/SouthPerrott/SouthPerrott.htm. All 
web citations in the present article were verified on 30 September 2022.
Prejeto / received: 13. 10. 2022. Odobreno / accepted: 3. 1. 2023.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, DOI: 10.3986/dmd19.1.05

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
114
the village at any one time. Why no new Holcombes are listed after 1686 could have been 
for any number of causes including infertility and fatality resulting from infectious illness, 
but more likely on account of settlement in other locations following marriage (mostly 
for females) or in connection with new employment (mostly for males), not forgetting 
simple family reasons including the acquisition through inheritance of new properties.
The surname Holcombe, a toponym, is a compound of Old English “hol”, meaning 
hollow, and “combe” (also spelt “coombe”, “comb”, “com” etc.), a word of Celtic origin 
meaning a short, straight valley. Locations with this name (and also that of simple “Combe”) 
are found predominantly, though not exclusively, in Dorset, Devon and Somerset  – where, 
indeed, such valleys are especially common. The derived surname is moderately common 
and unsurprisingly most prevalent also in the West Country (excluding Cornwall).
The Holcombe in South Perrott of particular interest to us, being the composer’s 
father, is Henry Holcombe (his name entered into the register as “Henricus Holcomb”), 
son of John, christened on 14 April 1645.
2
 No John Holcombe living in South Perrott before 
then appears in the register, so Henry’s father could well have been a recent incomer.
By good fortune, we know what trade Henry Holcome senior plied, since his occupa-
tion is stated in the apprenticeship contract binding his son John on 1 February 1697/1698 
to George Croke, a master tailor in Chester (where Henry himself was now living).
3
 There, 
Henry is described as a “Flanders lace weaver”. Lace weaving was at the time a thriving 
cottage industry undertaken in private dwellings, urban or rural, all over England and 
was protected from foreign competition by legally enforced import restrictions. Dorset 
was noted for its lace production: a one-sentence characterization of the county dating 
from 1795 reads: “Dorsetshire makes cordage for the navy, feeds an incredible number 
of sheep, and has large lace-manufactures”.
4
 An account of Buckinghamshire published 
in 1782 observes:
It [the town of Newport Pagnell] flourishes greatly, by means of the lace manufacture, 
which we [the English] stole from the Flemings, and introduced with great success into 
this county. There is scarcely a door to be seen, during summer, in most of the towns, but 
what is occupied by some industrious pale-faced lass; their sedentary trade forbidding 
the rose to bloom in their sickly cheeks.
5
Lace, however, was of many different kinds and degrees of intricacy, and it is likely in 
view of Henry’s specific description as a Flanders lace weaver that he operated at the 
higher end of the market and earned a decent living.
Immediately before his definitive move to Chester Henry lived in a place named 
only as “Comb”. We know this from an allegation dated 25 September 1683 approving 
his marriage by licence at Chester Cathedral to one Frances Thompson, a resident of 
2 
See also the genealogical website FamilySearch (hereafter, FS), dataset England, Dorset, Parish 
Registers, 1538–2001, which transcribes personal names in original form.
3 
Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, Apprenticeship Registers, ZM/AB/2/f. 2 (accessible via 
the National Archives, Kew, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/).
4 
Guthrie, New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar, 243.
5 
Pennant, Journey from Chester to London, 342–343.

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Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
that city.
6
 The West Country is awash with Combes (plus their many homophones and 
compounds), between which it seems almost arbitrary to choose. If invited to guess, I 
would opt for Combe Almer, a village close to the town of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, 
on account of a possible connection (mentioned later) that emerges from the subscription 
list of Henry junior’s first published collection.
The Holcombes in Chester
Henry was probably already living and working in Chester by the time he met Frances. 
Since there is no record of any Holcombes living in Chester before his arrival, there is no 
obvious reason for his removal there except that, as a major centre for the production and 
distribution of lace, the city offered reasonable prospects to a skilled artisan in that domain. 
But, of course, he may nevertheless have had relatives by marriage living there. Settling 
in the parish of St Oswald (this church was Chester’s most important after the cathedral), 
he and Frances soon produced a numerous brood: John in 1684; Thomas in 1685; Anne 
in 1687; Henry in 1690 (christened at St Oswald as “Hennry Holcome” on 13 April); 
James in 1691; Frances in 1693; Mary in 1694; Elizabeth in 1697; William in 1700. Of 
the nine children, only Henry achieved distinction in life. Mary and William died in early 
childhood (in 1697 and 1701, respectively), while Anne, unmarried, survived only until 
1711. On Thomas and James there is no further information so far. John duly became a 
tailor, married a local woman, Sarah Keys, in 1710 and at the time of his death in 1739 was 
living in Eccleston, close to Chester.
7
 In 1729 Frances married a limner (portrait painter) 
likewise from Chester, James Christian, who died in 1746; it seems that she then reverted 
to her maiden name and was the Frances Holcombe buried at St Oswald in 1763. Elizabeth 
seems not to have married, remaining in Chester her whole life and dying in 1764. As for 
the parents of the siblings, Henry senior was most probably the “Hen. Holecomb” buried at 
St Oswald on 11 November 1736, which would make him ninety-one at the time of death. 
When and where his wife Frances née Thompson died has not yet been traced.
8
Henry Holcombe Junior: From Chester Chorister to London Theatre Singer
For information on young Henry’s brief period of musical education as a chorister at 
Chester Cathedral and concurrent general education at the attached King’s School we 
6 
FS, England, Cheshire, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1606–1900.
7 
FS, England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538–2000; FS, England, Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts, 
1598–1900.
8 
The information on births, marriages, deaths and (when present) occupations given in this paragraph 
all comes from FS and is derived variously from the following three databases: FS, England, 
Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538–2000; FS, England, Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts, 1598–1900; 
FS, England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975. Wherever possible, the information given in 
the databases has been checked against reproductions of the original records made accessible 
online by FS.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
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must turn to an article by Ian Spink – seemingly unnoticed previously by investigators 
of the musician’s life – that discusses a manuscript organ book from Chester cathedral 
preserved in the Nanki Music Library, Tokyo.
9
 Henry was admitted as a boy treble to the 
choir towards the end of 1698, thus aged eight, and left it, perhaps prematurely, at the end 
of 1704. He attended the King’s School from 1701 until the same date. The book itself 
contains miscellaneous childish jottings by its users, including one by a fellow chorister 
reading: “Henery Holcome is a bastard & is [his] mother got him & his father […] [the 
rest illegible]”, and another asserting: “Henery Holcombe is a great Roage [rogue]”.
How and when Henry’s musical talent was discovered and the process by which 
he gained admission as a chorister remain unknown. The two men holding the post of 
organist-cum-choirmaster during the six years of his membership of the choir were first 
William Kay (until 1699) and then John Monnterratt – neither man of particular distinc-
tion.
10
 To have later achieved such admiration as a singer and composer apparently without 
any sustained period of advanced musical tuition under a recognized master suggests a 
rare ability on Henry’s part to learn his craft mainly through observation and immersion 
in its practice.
Why Henry did not serve out his time in the choir until his voice broke (remember-
ing that in the eighteenth century the onset of male puberty was often a few years later 
than has become normal today) and possibly seek readmission after his adult voice had 
settled are unresolved questions. Sir John Hawkins, in his General History of the Science 
and Practice of Music (1776), does not comment on Holcombe’s voice type as a singer in 
productions at the Drury Lane theatre in London during the 1704/05 (starting in February 
1705), 1705/06 and 1706/07 seasons,
11
 but the fourth volume of Charles Burney’s General 
History of Music (1789) identifies it as treble, indicating a boy’s voice not yet broken.
12
 
This statement seems to be corroborated by surviving songs naming Holcombe (under his 
theatrical sobriquet of “The Boy”) as the singer, from the pens of such composers as John 
Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Richard Leveridge, Robert Cox and Daniel Purcell: these concur 
in fixing the outer limits of Henry’s compass at d′ and g″ (exceptionally, a″ in the aria “A 
Thousand Fairy Scenes Appear” in Thomas Clayton’s Rosamond of 1707).
13
 After Henry’s 
voice broke, he ended up as a tenor, but although there are several later mentions of his 
appearance in public as a singer, we lack references to specific compositions and therefore 
have no means at present of discovering his working vocal compass during adult life.
Regarding the great change in Henry’s life that occurred in 1704–1705, we should 
consider three things in particular: first, whether his removal to London and recruitment 
9 
Spink, “Chester Organ Book”, 139–140.
10 
On Kay and Monnterratt, see Shaw, Succession of Organists, 65–66.
11 
Hawkins, General History, 187.
12 
Burney, General History, 633. The fact that Burney believed Holcombe to have been “brought up 
in Salisbury [not Chester!] cathedral” reminds one of his frequent fallibility over factual details.
13 
Several songs sung by “The Boy” at Drury Lane are contained in John Walsh the elder’s compilation 
A Collection of the Choicest Songs & Dialogues Composed by the Most Eminent Masters of the 
Age (London, [1715 or later]), Smith no. 463. This was essentially an ad hoc binder’s collection 
uniting a large number of songs originally published separately in songsheet form. The two 
examples in the British Library (shelfmarks G. 304 and G. 151) partly vary in content.

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Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
as a junior member by the Drury Lane company were linked projects from the outset; 
second, who in Chester arranged and financed the move; third, who acted as his guardian 
and/or protector in London during the rest of his adolescence. None of these questions has 
a clear answer at present. My suspicion is that his father sent him (now nearly at the age 
of fourteen, when a boy traditionally commenced an apprenticeship) to an unidentified 
relative or close family friend in London without a clear idea of his future, but perhaps 
with a hope that it would lie in music. Henry may then have an opportunity to demonstrate 
his precocious musical ability to someone connected with Drury Lane, from which his 
engagement duly followed.
Dramatic productions at Drury Lane were during this period entirely in English 
or, at most (speaking of all-sung operas), in a mixture of English and Italian. Even when 
nominally spoken, plays ordinarily included an assortment of vocal items (ranging from 
solos to choruses), instrumental pieces and often dancing. Some musical items were (to 
borrow a modern term) “diegetic” – performed or overheard by members of the cast as 
a peripheral component of the action – while others, especially when occurring before, 
between or after the acts, were external to the plot after the fashion of French divertisse-
ments. The entr’actes included much music taken from the classics of English theatrical 
music – for instance, Henry Purcell’s “Frost” music from the “dramatic opera” King 
Arthur – alongside the novelties.
Between 15 February 1705 and 24 May 1707 Holcombe appeared as a singer in 
conjunction with almost fifty productions (including many that featured repeat perfor-
mances during the same season) at Drury Lane.
14
 His evolving appellations in playbills, 
press announcements and songsheets reflect growing acceptance by his fellow singers 
and the public. At his first appearance, in Tunbridge Wells, he is the “new Boy”. This 
mutates into “The Boy” for Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (opening on 16 October 1705) 
and finally into “The late Boy” for The Recruiting Officer (opening on 1 November 1706), 
by which time he was artistically and doubtless also physically mature enough to slough 
off the increasingly inapposite epithet. Published material for the two all-sung operas in 
which he was a full, albeit minor, participant – as Prenesto in Camilla (1706), adapted by 
Nicola Haym from an opera by Giovanni Bononcini, and The Page in Thomas Clayton’s 
Rosamond in 1707 – more fittingly style him “Mr. Holcomb”. Holcombe often sang 
alone, but at other times in tandem or in ensemble with other singers in the company, 
the most regularly appearing of whom were Littleton Ramondon, Richard Leveridge, 
Catherine Tofts, Francis Hughes and Mary Lindsey. Several of Holcombe’s colleagues 
had a knowledge of Italian and familiarity with Italian music, which quickly rubbed off 
on him. Indeed, Haym probably assisted him for the operas as a language coach as well 
as singing coach. All in all, this short but intensive period in Holcombe’s career was 
the most formative, pointing him towards his future not only as a performer but also  
as a composer.
14 
The main source of information for Holcombe’s public appearances as a singer is London Stage (vol. 
1, bk. 2.), covering the period 1700–1729. This is supplemented by announcements in the British 
press, as retrievable from the database “Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers 
Collection”, https://www.gale.com/intl/c/17th-and-18th-century-burney-newspapers-collection.

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The sole testimony to the quality of Holcombe’s singing in the Drury Lane company 
that I have seen appears in a letter of Juliana Wentworth to her brother-in-law Thomas 
Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford.
15
 The receipt of the letter is dated 2 January 1707 (1708).
16
 
Commenting on the Italian castrato singer Valentino Urbani (the first of his kind to appear 
in England, in Camilla, where he assumed the role of Turnus on 8 March 1707), Mrs 
Wentworth writes how “wee had a boy of our one [recte, own] nation last winter y
t 
[that] 
had a more agreeable voice then [sic] any of them [castrati?] but has been fooll enough to 
Lose itt for his Laudness [Loudness?] […]”. Could the writer perhaps have been referring 
to hoarseness induced by the high A in Rosamond, or does the remark have more to do 
with Holcombe’s breaking voice?
Apropos of Holcombe’s readiness to cultivate the Italian language as performer, 
teacher or composer within the sphere of vocal music, it should be emphasized that he 
was second only to Maurice Greene among his generation of native-born English musi-
cians.
17
 In his anonymously written entry for Holcombe in Abraham Rees’s multi-volume 
Cyclopaedia Burney noted something about the musician that he had mentioned only 
cursorily in his General History:
He had many scholars, particularly in singing; for which, from constantly frequenting 
the opera, after he had ceased to perform there [i.e. after 1707], and hearing all the great 
singers, from Valentini [Valentino Urbani] and Nicolini, to Senesino and Farinelli, he 
must have been very well qualified, and we have been assured by very good judges, who 
had often heard him sing in private, that his taste was perfectly Italian.
18
Indeed, such was our musician’s eagerness to increase his knowledge of Italian that in 
1727, during the heyday of the Royal Academy of Music when Italian-language libretti 
were widely collected and perused in England, “Mr. Henry Holcombe of Surrey-street” 
became the sole musician apart from Michael Festing and Nicola Haym to subscribe to 
Ferdinando Altieri’s Dizionario inglese ed italiano.
19
It is revealing to look at the opening of a song performed in 1705 by Holcombe in 
Owen Swiney’s comedy The Quacks, or Love’s the Physician, for it shows that he was 
entrusted at Drury Lane with vocally demanding material making no allowance for his 
young age (Music example 1). The composer, his colleague Richard Leveridge (1670–1758), 
writes in a style recognizably English in character (as evidenced by the “modal” F natural 
in bars 4 and 9, the intricate, manneristic rhythms of the vocal part, the abrupt change 
15 
London, British Library, Add. MS 22,227, fol. 1v. I have to thank Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson 
for their kindness in showing me the relevant extract in a transcription made by Thomas McGeary.
16 
Where years relating to England are shown in “dual” form, the earlier year is that given, usually 
alone, in the original document, while the later year is the modern equivalent adjusted to reflect 
the fact that prior to 1752 the year advanced officially on 25 March, not 1 January.
17 
On Greene’s many and diverse compositions set to Italian words, see Talbot, “Maurice Greene’s 
Vocal Chamber Music”.
18 
Cyclopaedia, s.v. “Holcombe, Henry”.
19 
Altieri, Dizionario inglese ed italiano, subscription list. The suffix “of Surrey-street” appended 
to Holcombe’s name (but not to those of Festing and Hay) can be viewed as a claim to elevated 
social status, a subject discussed later in this article.

119
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
of metre in bar 13 and the reverse dotting in bars 18 and 19). But superimposed on this 
there are also a few Italianate touches, such as the “double Devise” at the start (almost 
normative in Italian arias written around 1700), and in the later part of the song (not 
shown) bass passages in running quavers of pure Corellian type. The stylistic flexibility 
later displayed by Holcombe in his own compositions was certainly well nourished by 
his experience at Drury Lane.
Music example 1
Richard Leveridge, To Gentle Strephon Tell Your Grief (“A SONG in the PLAY call’d the 
Quacks or Lov’s [sic] the Physitian, Sung by the Boy. Sett by M.
r
 Leveridge”), opening.

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120
Henry as Freelance Musician, Private Music Teacher and Gentleman
Even before leaving the Drury Lane company, Holcombe had been one of the first singers 
in England to perform in public English cantatas on the Italian model, introducing “a new 
English cantata” there on 1 June 1706.
20
 Not very long afterwards he expanded his reper-
toire to include Italian-language cantatas. At York Buildings, on 31 March 1710, he sang 
“several Italian Cantata’s never yet heard in England” in a benefit concert for the violinist 
William Viner, following this with a performance, at a benefit concert on 17 April at the 
same venue, of “several songs in Italian and English”.
21
 Later in 1710 (on 29 June) he per-
formed “Three select Entertainments in Italian” at the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket 
in accompaniment to George Villers’s play The Chances; these were possibly cantatas 
sung as entr’actes.
22
 He made a similar intervention on 6 July, when William Congreve’s 
play The Old Bachelor was revived there;
23
 this seems, amazingly, to have been almost the 
last public musical event held in London that mentions Holcombe as a performer, the sole 
known exceptions being a special benefit concert for him at Drury Lane on 26 February 
1729 “at the Desire of several Ladies of Quality”
24
 and a subscription concert series held 
on Fridays at Hickford’s Great Room that opened, after a delay, on 26 January 1733.
25
 In 
both instances, the concerts, while not held in private homes, seem to have drawn their 
audiences from the elevated milieu that Holcombe was now serving as a music teacher 
or otherwise mingled with socially and were therefore not “public” in the fullest sense.
During the 1710s, and perhaps for a little longer, Holcombe paid occasional visits to 
provincial centres. He toured with the violinist William Corbett (an enthusiastic advocate 
for Italian instrumental music) and others in 1709, participating in concerts in York on 8 
August during Assize week (the “Sizes”) and at Nottingham on 16–19 August following 
the Races.
26
 More intriguing is a visit – perhaps more than one visit – to Bath in the period 
leading up to 1714. This is possibly biographically significant in view of Holcombe’s later 
connection with the city, which during the first decades of the eighteenth century was 
rapidly evolving from a simple spa visited primarily for its curative powers into England’s 
premier centre of fashionable recreation. In the fifth, penultimate volume (1714) of his 
vast collection of ballads (a term mostly used for especially long strophic songs with a 
narrative content) and songs the compiler, Thomas D’Urfey, included a witty anonymous 
20 
Not quite the earliest: the Italian singer Margarita L’Épine had already done this, likewise at 
Drury Lane, on 13 April 1706.
21 
Both concerts announced in The Tatler, 25–27 March and 13–15 April 1710.
22 
Avery, London Stage, bk. 1, 226.
23 
Announced in the Daily Courant, 4 July 1710.
24 
Avery, London Stage, bk. 2, 1017. The role of the “Ladies of Quality” was presumably to underwrite 
the costs, guaranteeing Holcombe against loss. Very possibly, this concert, where he reportedly 
sang six songs, was a collective thanksgiving for his work as a private music teacher.
25 
With thanks to Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson for bringing to my notice this concert series, 
whose revised opening date is announced in the London Evening Post, 2–4 January 1733.
26 
Announced in the Daily Courant, 2 August 1709. Concerts in the English provinces were often 
scheduled to coincide with non-musical public events at which the higher layers of society 
congregated.

121
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
parody of the venerable “Ballad upon a Wedding” by the cavalier poet Sir John Suckling 
(1609–1642), which opens with the line “I tell thee, Dick, where I have been”. The parody 
is entitled “The Bath Teazers, or A Comical Discription of the Diversions at Bath” and 
begins with a similar line: “I’ll tell thee, Dick, where I have lately been”.
27
 The new poem, 
for which a suitably grotesque tune is supplied (unusually for the collection, it is notated 
in the bass clef), comments satirically on the musical fare recently served up to Bath’s 
visitors. Stanzas 4–7 (omitting the refrain) repay scrutiny:
28
And now for the crew that pass in the throng,
That live by the gut, or the pipe or the song,
And teize [tease] all the gentry as they pass along.
First Corbet began[:] my Lord, pray your crown,
You’ll hear a new boy I’ve just brought to town,
I’m sure he will please you, or else knock me down.
Besides, I can boast of myself and two more,
And Leveridge, the Bass that sweetly will roar,
Till the whole audience joins in an anchore [encore].
Next H—b, L—r and B—r too,
With hauboy, one fidle, and tenor so blew,
And fusty old musick, not one note of new.
Stanza 4 suggests that the hired musicians belonged to a cohesive ensemble (“crew”) 
comprising players of stringed (“gut”) and wind (“pipe”) instruments besides singers, and 
that they advertised their forthcoming performances to the assembled company. Stanza 
5 clarifies that Corbett – appropriately, as the senior violinist – was the band’s leader. 
The mention immediately afterwards of a “new boy” could very well be a sly allusion 
to Holcombe’s former sobriquet. Stanza 6 adds the bass singer Leveridge to the group. 
Helpfully, a reprint of the poem in the third volume (1725) of the song anthology entitled 
The Hive supplies the missing letters for the three musicians named in stanza 7. They are 
Holcombe, the oboist Peter Latour and the violinist John Banister junior. Holcombe must 
by elimination be the “tenor” mentioned in the next line. In theory, the word “tenor” could, 
in English usage, refer to the viola, but on balance, and especially in view of his likely 
identity as the poem’s “new boy”, it more probably denotes his vocal register.
Holcombe’s work as a music teacher – certainly of singing and the harpsichord and 
possibly also of the violin and composition – conceivably began only a few years after 
his Drury Lane period. It was firmly oriented towards the upper echelons of society, and 
in particular to the financial elite occupying leading positions in dominant institutions 
27 
D’Urfey, Wit and Mirth, 183–184. From autumn 1710 to autumn 1714 the Drury Lane theatre 
was not permitted to employ specialist singers, a situation that released Leveridge and others 
for freelance work elsewhere. On the restriction and its effects, see Baldwin and Wilson, “With 
Several Entertainments”, 44–47.
28 
My transcription is lightly edited to assist intelligibility.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
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such as the South Sea Company, the East India Company and the Bank of England (as one 
immediately gleans from the subscription list of his Six Solos). The teaching conjointly of 
singing and the harpsichord was very normal in the eighteenth century. Both accomplish-
ments were strongly “gendered” – in the direction of females – and inseparably linked 
by the fact that self-accompanied singing was the prevalent mode in a domestic setting, 
occasionally even being admitted to the concert hall.
29
As a clearly sought-after music teacher, undistracted by the hurly-burly of concert 
life and beholden to no individual employer, Holcombe was able, on the evidence of the 
assets mentioned in his will, to amass over time a considerable fortune, possibly without, 
to our knowledge, receiving any especially large inheritances or gifts.
30
 He aspired to 
become, and de facto became, a “gentleman” in the wider sense of a man not engaged in 
any occupation describable as menial and able, financially and culturally, to replicate the 
lifestyle of a gentleman in the original, narrower sense of a person of independent means, 
typically underpinned by rents from landed or urban property. Very revealing is the fact 
that on 14 June 1727 he was able to become a signatory, as “Hen. Holcombe”, to a pub-
lished pledge of allegiance to the new king, George II, made by numerous self-described 
“principal Gentlemen of Quality”.
31
 From this action alone one may infer that Henry was 
pro-Hanoverian and anti-Jacobite in sentiment, a supporter of the Whig party in politics, 
a Protestant in religion – and also a person socially qualified to stand alongside the rest 
of the signatories. This new-found status as a gentleman almost inevitably distanced 
Henry from the bulk of his musician colleagues. He joined the newly formed Academy 
of Vocal (later, Ancient) Music in 1726 and paid his subscriptions at least up to 1730, but 
appears to have drifted away thereafter.
32
 He was a member of the benefit society later to 
become the Royal Society of Musicians from its foundation in 1739, but had apparently 
dropped out by 1742.
33
We must now return to Henry’s family life. On 12 May 1716 he married Martha Haynes, 
born on 21 October 1695 in Middlesex, at the church of St Giles without Cripplegate, 
London.
34
 This choice of marriage partner proved highly important for Henry’s future 
life, for Martha was, or soon became, a staunch Presbyterian, influencing his selection 
of poetic texts to set as a composer. Whereas the texts of some of his early songs are 
skittish, those of his later ones incline towards a more serious, often moralizing, tone. 
29 
For example, on 1 May 1710, when Mrs Elizabeth Hemmings sang in Italian and English at 
a concert in York Buildings “several new Cantata’s, Songs, and other pieces of music”. The 
announcement in The Tatler, 27 April 1710 adds: “She also accompanies to her own Voice on 
the Harpsicord”.
30 
If any large bequest came Henry’s way, its would probably have been from the unknown person 
who acted initially in London as his guardian.
31 
Historical Register, 173–175. No other person named Henry Holcombe appears to fit the criteria 
for inclusion.
32 
Johnstone, Academy of Ancient Music, 123.
33 
Matthews, Royal Society of Musicians, 73.
34 
FS, England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975 (for both events).

123
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Henry also developed a taste for subscribing to religious writings, one passed on to his 
two eldest children.
35
The couple’s first child was Anne, christened at Holy Trinity in the Minories, London, 
on 6 December 1717.
36
 She is the one person among Henry’s close relatives known to have 
had a interest in music, to judge from the fact that she inherited “my Harpsichord which 
I promised her she should have at my Decease” plus “all my Books and Papers of Musick 
only”.
37
 She never married, and at the time of writing her own will, on 18 February 1755, 
was living separately from her father in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn.
Their second child was James, baptized at the Presbyterian meeting house in Carter 
Lane, Blackfriars, on 2 August 1725.
38
 Hawkins probably errs in supposing that the minister 
then officiating at this church, a prominent rallying point for London’s dissenters, was Dr 
(William) Harris (1675–1740), whose poem “Happy Hours, All Hours Excelling” was set 
by Henry – the appointed minister was in fact Samuel Wright – but it seems likely that Dr 
Harris was a frequent visitor to it, if not also an actual congregant.
39
 On 2 February 1753 
James, described as “Gentleman”, was granted a licence to marry Phillippa Collet “aged 
about twenty two”, the two nominated churches (between which to choose later) being the 
chapel of the Charterhouse in London and Kensington Parish Church.
40
 Despite the slight 
discrepancy of age, this Phillippa appears to be identical with the Mary Phillippa, daughter 
of John and Susanna Collett (or Collet), who was given first an Anglican christening at 
Saint Andrew, Holborn, on 20 April 1728 and subsequently a Nonconformist baptism at the 
independent church in Kingston-upon-Thames on 10 March 1728 (1729).
41
 Whether John 
Collett was a relative of the musicians Richard and Thomas Collett remains to discover. 
Nothing is known of James’s occupational life except that at the beginning of September 
1759 he was promoted at the Foreign Post Office from the junior rank of Clerk to that of 
Deputy Comptroller
42
 – a post from which he was reported to be dismissed in November 
1764.
43
 James was buried on 2 January 1803 at St Luke’s, Chelsea.
44
 His will, written on 
35 
Henry subscribed to Thomas Doolittle’s Complete Body of Practical Divinity in 1723 and to 
the dissenting minister Henry Grove of Taunton’s Sermons and Tracts in 1741; his son James 
to the same Henry Grove’s System of Moral Philosophy in 1749 and similar works thereafter; 
his daughter Anne (as “Miss Holcombe”) to Elizabeth Harrison’s Miscellanies on Moral and 
Religious Subjects in 1756.
36 
FS, England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975. Anne’s birth date was recorded as 15 November 
1717.
37 
Quoted from Henry’s will (see later).
38 
FS, England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4–8), 1588–1977.
39 
Hawkins, General History, 187. For a chronological list of the ministers of this meeting house, 
see Wilson, History and Antiquities, 108.
40 
Ancestry Library (hereafter, AL), London and Surrey, England, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 
1597–1921. Marriage by licence (rather than with banns) was often preferred when bride and 
groom came from different parishes and wished to marry in a parish different from either.
41 
AL, England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975 (for both).
42 
Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette, 1–8 September 1759, 283.
43 
London Evening Post, 6 November 1764.
44 
FS, England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539–1988.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
124
25 August 1790 and proved on 20 May 1803, contains nothing of special interest except 
for showing that his wife was still living on the first date.
45
Henry and Martha had a third child, Elizabeth, who is probably the infant of that 
name christened at St Katherine Coleman, London, on 4 July 1739.
46
 At any rate, she 
was certainly still a minor on the day when Henry’s will was signed (15 July 1754). If 
we assume that she was still a spinster when she died, as seems likely, it is nevertheless 
hard to choose the right person from among the many Elizabeth Holcombes who died in 
England during the ensuing decades. One possibility is a woman of exactly that name 
buried at St Matthew, Bethnal Green, on 18 September 1778; another is an Elizabeth 
Holcombe buried at Hawkridge, Somerset, on 6 February 1825.
47
 The latter is described 
as aged eighty-six, which almost fits the putative birth date (or fits perfectly if the stated 
age is interpreted as the eighty-sixth year of life).
From the 1740s onwards most of what we can glean about Henry’s life comes from 
his published compositions (there are no extant manuscripts of his compositions apart 
from ones copied from the prints by other hands). But there was an important develop-
ment within his family. Martha Holcombe died in 1752 and was buried in her and Henry’s 
parish church of St Paul, Covent Garden, on 16 August 1752.
48
 Almost indecently soon 
afterwards, on 10 November 1752, Henry clandestinely married a certain Elizabeth Fitz, 
apparently a fellow parishioner, at St George’s Chapel, Mayfair.
49
 About the age, parent-
age and character of this Elizabeth nothing can at present be said.
Meanwhile, Henry began in 1745 to publish his works at intervals no longer singly 
but now in substantial collections: first of sonatas, then of songs of various types (in 
1748, 1755 and very probably also 1753). This was a true Indian summer of composition, 
suggesting a desire to leave, before he died, a musical legacy affirming not merely his 
talent as a composer tout court but also his decades of work in intimate domestic set-
tings as a teacher – and perhaps even, in the vocal compositions, his religiously informed 
philosophy of life.
On 15 July 1754, perhaps after warning signs of failing health, he wrote a will, proved 
on 7 August 1756.
50
 Even before then he had become aware of the complications introduced 
by his recent second marriage. His task was to protect the future interests both of his two 
45 
Kew, The National Archives, Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/1392/221.
46 
AL, England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975. The register does, however, give 
Henry’s surname as “Halcomb” and his wife’s forename as “Mary”, so caution is advised.
47 
FS, England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539–1988; FS, England, Somerset, Church Records, 
1501–1999.
48 
AL, Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 
1558–1812.
49 
AL, London, England, Clandestine Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667–1754. “Clandestine” 
is a technical term denoting a wedding not so much secret as discreet, dispensing with banns or a 
licence but fulfilling the minimum requirement of being solemnized by an Anglican clergyman. 
Probably a majority of the wedding ceremonies held in London in the first half of the eighteenth 
century (clandestine marriages were prohibited there from 1754 onwards) were of this swiftly 
organized and inexpensive kind.
50 
Kew, The National Archives, Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/824/173.

125
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
adult children and the minor, Elizabeth, and of his new wife (who was possibly no longer 
of child-bearing age, since the will makes no provision for further children), foreseeing 
and removing potentially contentious issues as much as possible. The interests of Anne 
and James had already been addressed through earlier substantial financial donations to 
each of them, which meant that, except for the harpsichord and music to be passed to Anne, 
nothing more needed to be done. The remaining question, then, was how to ensure that 
both Elizabeths, stepmother and stepdaughter (the latter initially as a minor and later as a 
marriageable adult), were guaranteed an equitable share of assets so as to remain on good 
terms. Henry’s astute solution will be discussed shortly in conjunction with Anne’s will, 
which was proved on 5 March 1759,
51
 five days before her burial at St Andrew, Holborn.
52
Henry himself died from unknown causes in 1756. Unexpectedly, he was buried on 
21 July not at St Paul, Covent Garden, but at the St James Old Burial Ground in Bath. 
Although a James Holcombe who died in 1783 lies interred in the same cemetery, it does 
not appear that the purpose of Henry’s burial in Bath was to reunite posthumously with 
relatives from that city. A more plausible explanation is that he died suddenly while visi-
ting the city to take the waters, and that a decision was made on practical grounds not to 
transport his body back to his home parish.
The Wills of Henry and Anne
Henry chooses as witnesses to his will the Irish actor Spranger Barry (1719–1777) and a 
John Roberts who is probably identical with the unidentified “John Roberts, Esq.” appearing 
in the subscription list for the Six Solos. The executrix is to be his wife Elizabeth. The gist 
of the will’s stipulations is that after his death she should receive a capital stock of £800 
in Old South Sea Annuities of the First Subscription, half of which she must make over 
to her stepdaughter Elizabeth at the point when the latter reaches the age of twenty-one 
or marries. At her own death his wife is asked to bequeath half of her South Sea stock to 
a person of her choice and half to her stepdaughter (if still living). She is also named as 
Henry’s residuary beneficiary, meaning that the furniture, clothing, non-musical books 
etc. all become hers. Lesser sums are payable “for mourning” to son James (£20) and 
daughter Anne (£10). Two unnamed sisters at Chester (by elimination, probably Frances 
and Elizabeth) also receive money (£10) “for mourning”. That they are not allocated more 
suggests that their financial situation was at least satisfactory. There is nothing for one or 
more domestic servants, although their employment would doubtless continue as before 
under Elizabeth. It is noteworthy that Henry owns nothing in landed property, although  
he presumably had the wealth to acquire some: he probably did not wish to burden himself 
with the constant need for oversight that such ownership entailed.
53
51 
Ibid., PROB 11/844/332.
52 
FS, England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539–1988.
53 
There is a proviso to this statement. In 1746 we find a Mr Holcombe at the Ring & Pearl (a 
traditional shop sign for a goldsmith or jeweller) opposite Tom’s Coffee House in Russell Street, 
Bloomsbury, inviting enquiries for the letting of a farm in Hendon, Middlesex (London Evening 

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
126
Anne chooses as her witnesses Thomas and Mary Liddington (née Wright), a 
Nonconformist couple who had married in Westminster in 1743.
54
 The two executrices 
are her “dear and honoured Friends” Mrs Elizabeth Andrews and Miss Martha Steuart. 
The first lady is identifiable as the Mrs. Andrews (née Pettit), a member of the five-strong 
family who between them subscribed to six copies of Henry’s Six Solos at the voluntary 
“double” price of one guinea apiece. Her husband (who had died in 1753) was Joseph 
Andrews, Esq., of Shaw, Berkshire, the First Clerk in the office of the Paymaster General 
(thus a senior civil servant). Of the two listed sons, one, Joseph Andrews junior, was to be 
made a baronet in 1766, while the other, James Pettit Andrews (1737–1797), would become 
an eminent historian and antiquarian.
55
 Anne leaves to her brother James a capital stock 
of £700 of South Sea Annuities of the First Subscription, currently held in the names of 
her executrices, on condition that he pay their father half of the interest received while he 
is still alive. She makes small bequests of five guineas apiece to five ladies, who include 
the two executrices.
56
 The residuary beneficiary is her unmarried servant (and lady’s 
companion?), Mary Watts. A striking feature of Anne’s will is that every person named 
in it, apart from her brother and the husband of one witness, is female. One has the strong 
impression of a feminist ante diem in no hurry to assume wifely duties.
The Subscription List of Henry’s Six Solos, Op. 1
Nothing is more revealing about a composer’s social connections (or absence of them) 
than a subscription list accompanying a publication.
57
 It is, so to speak, a snapshot of a 
precise moment in his or her career. From a composer’s viewpoint, publication by sub-
scription was both a safety net offering assurance that a publication would at least cover 
its costs and, equally importantly, a means of making or renewing contact with a wide 
and diverse network of sympathetic persons, whether patrons, employers, professional 
colleagues, co-religionists, pupils, amateur musicians, visitors from the same county 
or region, neighbours, friends or family members. From a subscriber’s viewpoint there 
was sometimes the advantage of a discount on the shop price, but even more satisfaction 
Post, 16–19 August 1746). But Tom’s Coffee House was also the chosen place, besides Henry’s 
house in nearby Southampton Street, at which to open a subscription and pay a deposit for the 
Six Solos. Moreover, Henry is listed as a ratepayer, and therefore house or flat owner, in Russell 
Street in 1748 (see British History Online at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/
vol36/pp192-195#fnn10). These coincidences could be a red herring, or they could open up a 
fresh dimension to our musician’s biography.
54 
FS, England and Wales Non-Conformist Indexes (R4–8), 1588–1977. The marriage record gives 
the surname in the form “Lydington”.
55 
Miss Pettit, listed as the 145th name and asterisked, is obviously a relative of Joseph senior by 
marriage. In lists of this kind, families subscribing collectively are often extended rather than 
nuclear, hence embracing more than one surname.
56 
A guinea, minted as an actual coin, was worth twenty-one shillings (i.e. one pound and one 
shilling).
57 
On the character and biographical value of subscription lists, see Talbot, “What Lists of Subscribers 
Can Tell Us”.

127
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
gained from becoming, in today’s parlance, a participant in a “crowdfunding” enterprise 
– moreover, a person earning social credit through the publication of his or her name. 
Subscribers were not necessarily people who would actually make personal use of every 
item purchased.
58
 The study of large numbers of such lists reveals the existence of what one 
could term “serial subscribers”: persons who put their names down for an extraordinary 
range and number of publications. In such cases, one often suspects a covert charitable 
motivation: a wish to offer financial support to a worthy but needy person, as one might 
to a hospital or orphanage.
Planning to publish his six solo sonatas for violin with harpsichord accompaniment 
(but not mentioning the additional works following them in the collection, which could 
have resulted from a later decision), Holcombe placed a prospectus inviting subscriptions 
in the Daily Advertiser of 6 April 1745, having two days earlier taken out a royal privilege 
(its text placed between the title page and the list of subscribers) valid for the customary 
fourteen years. The advertised price was half a guinea. There was no press announcement 
of the completion of publication, but this probably occurred before the end of the same 
year. Holcombe had the audacious and unusual idea (perhaps because he had extended the 
content and therefore the cost of production well beyond what was originally envisaged) 
of asking subscribers voluntarily to pay a full guinea, marking the listed names of those 
who had done so with an asterisk.
59
Some statistics: there are 207 names of subscribers, and therefore, as a starting point, 
receipts of 207 half-guineas. That number increases by nineteen if one takes into account 
extra copies bought. In nearly all cases these comprised one extra copy, but two subscribers 
ordered six copies. One was John Walsh the younger, who obviously bought them for retail 
in his shop. The other was Robert Downes, Lord Bishop of Raphoe, a town in County Down, 
Ireland. These were also obviously acquired for onward distribution. (The more remote from 
London an area was, the more likely it would be that visitors to the metropolis would execute 
commissions from their friends or make purchases “on spec” to pass on to them.) The number of 
asterisked names rises only to fifty-six, which may have come as a disappointment to Holcombe. 
So the grand total of income from subscriptions was (notionally) 282 half-guineas, or 141 
guineas: an amount probably large enough to defray production costs completely but perhaps 
yielding little surplus. The difference between asterisked and non-asterisked subscribers is 
quite revealing, because, crudely speaking, it distinguishes those whose prime aim was to 
support the composer (such as the Andrews-Pettit family) from those more anxious to get value  
for money.
The list is organized alphabetically with only minor deviations. Within the entries 
for individual letters, as is very normal in such lists, a fixed hierarchical order is observed 
58 
When more than one member of the same family subscribes, the suspicion often arises that 
the true purpose is to purchase multiple copies for the head of the family while impressively 
maximising the number of family members included in the list. The Andrews family mentioned 
earlier are a case in point.
59 
Jeremy Barlow has kindly suggested to me in correspondence that the doubled price may indicate 
the use of superior (thicker) paper. That is indeed a possible explanation, except that it leads one 
to ask why this fairly common option was not offered in the original prospectus.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
128
whereby titled men (knight, baronet or higher) and their family members come first, being 
followed in turn by gentlemen (identifiable by the “Esq.” suffix) and commoners (plain 
“Mr.”). Forenames are usually omitted, and where a “Miss” is followed immediately by 
a surname, the convention is that this is the eldest living unmarried daughter of her par-
ents. Some entries assist identification by appending a place of residence or family seat 
following the preposition “of” or some other detail, but most do not.
Reflecting Holcombe’s activity as music teacher to the wealthy, the list is unusually 
heavily tilted towards the nobility and gentry. As a simple pointer to this fact, the prefix 
“Esq.” occurs eighty-one times, “Mr.” only thirty times. “Miss” makes thirty-four appear-
ances: in many instances, these will have been Henry’s pupils or former pupils. Especially 
prominently represented among the subscribers are members of the banking fraternity 
and their families. The sixteenth and seventeenth names are those of Peter Burrell and 
John Bristow, respectively sub-governor and deputy governor of the South Sea Company, 
who – uniquely in the list – proclaim their posts with meticulous attention to detail. (One 
can imagine them proudly striding in side by side to pay their deposits.) Four subscribers 
are connected to this one company, and one wonders whether the several hundred pounds 
worth of stock in it owned by Henry were acquired as a special gift or concession.
In contrast, professional musicians are very thin on the ground, numbering only five. 
All of them probably subscribed through actual friendship rather than mere professional 
solidarity. The most interesting is the Italian-born violinist and composer Giovanni Stefano 
Carbonelli (naturalized as John Stephen Carbonell), whose employer, John Manners, Duke 
of Rutland, is also a subscriber. My suspicion is that Carbonelli – by now, like Holcombe, 
upwardly mobile and generally retired from concert life – advised him on violinistic 
matters concerning the sonatas and perhaps even gave him lessons on the instrument.
60
 
Another is the singer and actor Thomas Lowe. John Ernest Galliard, the German-born 
oboist and composer, repays Holcombe in kind for having subscribed in 1728 to three 
copies of his Hymn of Adam and Eve by ordering two copies of the sonatas. Finally, there 
are two organists from the West Country: Nelme Rogers at Bristol Cathedral and George 
Combes at the Minster in Wimborne Minster (close to Combe Almer, cautiously proposed 
as the “Comb” entered into Henry Holcombe senior’s marriage attestation). In general, 
the subscription list is more heavily populated by persons with West Country links than 
mere chance would predict. There is no suggestion that Henry Holcombe himself made or 
sustained personal connections by travelling frequently to the West Country, but move-
ment in the opposite direction, from the rest of the country to London, was very normal 
during this age, especially during the winter months, and helped to keep alive a loose but 
genuine kind of solidarity based on regional affiliation.
The list also contains the names of six prominent musical amateurs: the customs 
officials Henry Needler (a violinist) and Bendall Martyn (a string player and composer), 
the Rev. Dr. Smith (a mathematician who organized a music society in Cambridge), the 
Hon. Edward Walpole and the artist Marcellus Laroon the younger (both proficient cellists) 
and the harpsichordist, composer and aesthetician James Harris.
60 
On Carbonelli’s life and music, see Talbot, “From Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli”.

129
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Holcombe’s interest in religion is reflected in the six churchmen who subscribed. One 
is Benjamin Grosvenor, an influential Presbyterian. Another is the theologian Thomas 
Sharp, father of the abolitionist Granville Sharp. We also encounter Benjamin Hoadly, 
very active as a poet and librettist.
As for the other subscribers, most professions and trades find their place. We have 
artists (James Hudson, Jonathan Richardson the younger, Isaac Whood, the previously 
mentioned Laroon and the German-born enameller Christian Frederick Zinke, a “serial 
subscriber” to music), poets, playwrights, booksellers, antiquarians, academics, lawyers, 
landowners, politicians, court officials, artisans and merchants. Two men working for the 
Post Office, Isaac Jamineau and Charles Roberts, must have been colleagues of Henry’s 
Son James. Finally, the list includes among the asterisked names William and Elizabeth 
Villareal, son and daughter by her first marriage of Kitty Da Costa Villareal, most famous 
of the converts from Judaism to Anglican Christianity that eighteenth-century Britain 
witnessed. Interestingly, one surviving copy of the Six Solos contains the bookplate of 
Edwyn Francis Stanhope (1729–1807) with an added annotation in Latin recording that 
it was a gift, made on 19 November 1746, from his friend William Villareal.
61
 What is 
unclear is whether this was the actual subscription copy obtained by William (or, pos-
sibly, that of his sister) or a new copy specially purchased from the composer or a dealer.
The Independent Songs
The commentary on Henry Holcombe’s music forming the second part of this article 
begins with those of his songs that appeared initially in songsheets, journals or periodi-
cal publications. The words of all the settings, with or without Holcombe’s music, were 
reprinted, many repeatedly, in pirated editions and anthologies up to the end of the cen-
tury and even beyond, and several songs were retexted or otherwise arranged.
62
 Table 1 
lists, as far as possible chronologically, the first editions of all those I have traced. Their 
number is small, but we do not know how many similar songs remained in manuscript 
and have been lost. The losses may extend to some of those published only as songsheets 
on one or two sides of paper, typically in the form of a two-stave score with the words of 
the first stanza underlaid, followed by the remaining stanzas (very variable in number) 
and finally, space permitting, by a version of the melody for recorder or flute. Most songs 
were provided from the start – if not by the poet, then by the composer or publisher – 
with a separate title summarizing their content or moralistic lesson. Such titles, mere 
paratexts, were apt to change at the whim of a compiler or publisher in the course of a 
song’s onward transmission.
63
61 
The copy is owned by Jeremy Barlow, who very kindly sent me a reproduction of the bookplate.
62 
To avoid prolixity, my discussion focuses where possible on the songs in their earliest incarnation 
and mentions their later evolution only selectively.
63 
In Table 1 the title in column 3 is always that in the earliest known source, listed in column 5. 
The names of the poets, supplied in column 4, are never given by Holcombe himself in any of 
his publications unless they form part of the title.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
130
Table 1
Henry Holcombe’s published independent songs (c. 1720–1741).
Date Incipit Separate title Poet Primary source
c. 1720 To lordlings proud I 
tune my song
Duke upon 
Duke
James Craggs 
the younger?
Songsheet published 
possibly by A. Moore
1730 Happy hours, all 
hours excelling
The Happy Man William 
Harris
The Musical Miscellany, 
4:166
1731 Little syren of the 
stage
To Seignora 
Cuzzoni
Ambrose 
Phillips
The Musical Miscellany, 
5:116
1734 How can they taste 
of joys or grief
Charming 
Neaera
Unknown The British Musical 
Miscellany, 2:129
1737 When Delia on the 
plain appears
The Doubtful 
Shepperd
George 
Lyttleton, 
1st Baron 
Lyttleton
The Musical Entertainer 
(London: Corbett, 1737), 
1:37
1739 Go, happy paper, 
gently steal
Happy Paper Unknown Calliope or English 
Harmony (London: 
Simpson, 1739), 2:163
c. 1740 Guardian Angels 
now protect me
The Forsaken 
Nymph
Unknown Songsheet published by J. 
Simpson
1743 When here, 
Lucinda, first we 
came
Arno’ s Vale Charles 
Sackville, 
Earl of 
Middlesex
The British Orpheus 
(London: Walsh, 1741–
1743), 1:3
Duke upon Duke, which briefly enjoyed astonishing popularity, is a witty parody of 
a border ballad such as Chevy Chase.
64
 The “dukes” in question were two parliamentar-
ians, Nicholas Lord Lechmere and Sir John Guise, who had a famous public spat. The 
authorship of the new ballad has not yet been established definitively. Both Alexander 
Pope and Jonathan Swift, fellow members of the Scriblerus Club (a London literary 
society), have been credited with it, but an unidentified example of a 1723 reprint by A. 
Moore has a handwritten annotation on the title page claiming the author to be “the Right 
Hon[our]able James Craggs Esq., one of the Principal Secr[etaries] of State and revised 
and corrected by Thomas Tickell”.
65
 With its thirty-seven stanzas, the ballad could well 
be the work of multiple authors. An earlier edition by an unidentified publisher, datable 
to c. 1720, introduces the poem by what at first glance appears to be a tune-only presenta-
tion of the song (which, as in 1723, is attributed to “Mr Holdecombe”), but turns out to 
be an intentionally meaningless collage of fragments of musical notation, some of them 
inverted – thus functioning not as music at all but instead as an emblem of discord allud-
ing to the poem’s subject.
64 
Border ballads are anonymous medieval narrative poems whose typical subject is skirmishing 
in the Anglo-Scottish borderlands.
65 
Digitized by Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

131
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Holcombe’s chirpy tune and simple but solid bass are worth quoting entire as Music 
example 2. They are full of attractive detail. The asymmetry caused by the repetition of 
the quatrain’s last line, launched by the interrupted cadence in bar 8, is pleasing; even 
more so, the word-painting for “Pride will have a fall” (which returns at the end of the 
song as the poem’s punchline), culminating in a delicious descent of a sixth in bar 9. The 
appended ritornello, presumably for harpsichord, is doubtless intended to be used only 
intermittently to allow the singer to recover breath.
66
Music example 2
Henry Holcombe, song Duke upon Duke (from the 1723 edition by A. Moore).
His next two songs were published in the penultimate and last volumes of a remark-
able six-volume compilation published in London between 1729 and 1731 by John Watts: 
The Musical Miscellany. Watts’s stated modus operandi, already announced in the first 
volume, was to invite “gentlemen”, by which he meant amateur poets, to submit their 
previously unpublished song texts to him, leaving him to find willing composers to supply 
the tunes (after volume 2, both the tunes and their basses, sometimes figured). In practice, 
however, he seems often to have received completed songs, some of which were perhaps 
despatched to him by their composers rather than their poets. The Happy Man, on a text 
by the William Harris (1675–1740) previously mentioned as a leading Presbyterian, is a 
beautifully sculpted song full of subtlety. For instance, Holcombe does not take the easy 
option of making the music for lines 3 and 4, cadencing finally in the dominant key (D, 
66 
As was normal for English usage at the time, the double barlines in the source, reproduced without 
alteration in Music example 2, are probably to be interpreted as repeat signs – in this particular 
case, optional rather than mandatory.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
132
in G minor), echo exactly that for lines 1 and 2. The tonal direction for both couplets is 
exactly the same, but whereas line 2 descends in the vocal line to d′, reflecting the downcast 
mood of “crowds and noise”, line 4 is taken up to d″, exulting in “self-possessing joys”. 
A willingness to employ micro-variation for expressive ends is a feature of Holcombe’s 
entire song production. “Little Syren of the Stage” is a tribute by the popular poet Ambrose 
Philips (1674–1749) to the Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, Handel’s most trusted diva, 
written in the wake of her departure from London in the summer of 1728 as a result of 
the closure of the Royal Academy of Music.
67
 In this very well constructed single-stanza 
song alla gavotta Holcombe mimics in a simple but eloquent way the extempore variation 
introduced into their performance by Italian singers, ending wittily with an unexpected 
burst of unison writing at a distance of two octaves to express the sentiment of the regretful 
(because clearly ironic) final line of text: “Leave the Britons rough and free”.
From 1734 comes “How Can They Taste of Joys or Grief” (Charming Neaera), published 
in the second volume of John Walsh the elder’s six-volume song anthology entitled The 
British Musical Miscellany.
68
 The fourth of its five musical phrases illustrates Holcombe’s 
finesse, since whereas all the other phrases are four bars in length, mirroring the regular 
quatrains of each stanza (whose last line is repeated), this penultimate one is extended 
to five bars, creating expectancy just before the melodic climax on the note g″ arrives.
The same song, retexted (as “When Delia on the Plain Appears”) to the words 
of a poem by George Lyttleton and retitled (as “The Doubtful Shepperd”), came 
out in 1737 in George Bickham’s anthology The Musical Entertainer. In this second 
form it gained many reprints, including one in the first volume of Henry Roberts’s  
two-volume anthology Calliope, or English Harmony (1739). This contrafactum illu-
strates how accepted and widespread the practice of retexting, overt or covert, had  
become.
A London music engraver like Bickham, Roberts included in the second volume of 
Calliope what appears to have been an entirely new song: Happy Paper (“Go, Happy Paper, 
Gently Steal”). Employing asymmetrical phrase structure in a way similar to Charming 
Neaera, Happy Paper describes how a bashful lover slips an avowal of his feelings 
underneath the pillow of his lady love. Holcombe depicts the furtive act of placing the 
letter delightfully with a swift, undulating conjunct motion. In the song’s second half he 
uses wider melodic intervals in both tune and bass to express an outburst of passion. The 
anonymous text of Happy Paper achieved instant fame the next year though its insertion 
into Samuel Richardson’s famous epistolatory novel Pamela.
The Forsaken Nymph (“Guardian Angels Now Protect Me”) may be an interloper 
into Table 1 since its attribution to Holcombe is questionable. In 1739 a setting in F 
major of the same text attributed to Handel (HWV 228/10, today generally regarded as 
spurious by Handelians) appeared in the first volume of Calliope.
69
 Shortly afterwards, 
67 
This song also exists separately in undated songsheet form, probably reprinted from The Musical 
Miscellany.
68 
With thanks to Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson for alerting me to this setting’s existence.
69 
This Handel-attributed setting had actually first appeared, described as “A New Song”, at the 
end of 1737 in The Monthly Mask, a periodical publication issued by John Walsh the younger. 

133
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
the songsheet of a different setting, in G minor, was published. Despite their difference 
of mode, the two settings are similar not only in structure but also in certain turns of 
phrase, suggesting that the second is loosely modelled on the first. The G-minor setting 
exists in two published versions. What is probably the earlier does not bear a composer’s 
name but includes that of the London music seller and publisher John Simpson, who 
was later to bring out Holcombe’s collection The Garland.
70
 The revised version, obvi-
ously engraved by the same person but with major alterations to the page’s layout, omits 
Simpson’s imprint but adds “set by M.
r 
Holcombe” to the title. It also disfigures the bass 
part by accidentally inserting the content of bars 2 and 3 into bars 3 and 4.
71
 Holcombe’s 
authorship is placed in doubt on purely musical grounds by the (for him) abnormally 
high density of appoggiaturas and slides in the tune, the ungainly, very pedestrian qual-
ity of the bass and the unrelieved four-squareness of the phrasing. A reprint of the set-
ting, this time attributed in the index of the songs to [Henry] Carey, appeared under a 
new title, Leander, and with an almost totally rewritten bass part in the first volume of 
John Tyther’s two-volume anthology Amaryllis (1746). This altered version illustrates a 
general truth: that within the domain of the simpler English songs the tune was for many 
people everything, the bass merely an optional, readily exchangeable and even sometimes  
discardable support.
For completeness, a later – and superior – setting, in A major, of Guardian Angels 
should be mentioned. This setting, retexted (beginning: “Where’s the mortal can resist 
me?”) and transposed to B flat major, was sung in 1773 as a replacement air for the famous 
Anne Catley in Kane O’Hara’s burletta The Golden Pippin.
Arno’s Vale (“When here, Lucinda, first we came”) was without doubt Holcombe’s 
most successful individual song. Its poem was written by Lord Lyttleton as a spontane-
ous elegy on the extinction of the Medici dynasty with the death of Gian Gastone, last 
duke of Tuscany, in 1737. In 1773 the travel writer John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, 
remarked how this poem, which had been blessed with “the good fortune to be set by the 
late Mr. Holcombe with a plaintive sweetness that does honour to his taste and justice to 
the subject”, was “as well known to our musicians as it is to our poets”.
72
 The song first 
appeared in print in 1741, in Book 1 of John Walsh the younger’s six-volume anthology 
The British Orpheus. It is Holcombe’s earliest known song to display in quantity the 
typical stylistic features of the galant style such as Lombardic rhythms, strings of triplets 
and drum basses, and in that respect looks forward to his later collections. Among later 
arrangements of it were a duet for unaccompanied flutes published by John Simpson later 
in 1745 and a glee for four voices by Philip Hayes published in 1777 in John Arnold’s 
anthology The Essex Harmony.
73
This setting is discussed in some detail in Marx and Voss, Compositions Attributed to G. F. 
Handel, 32–33.
70 
This version is the one in London, British Library, G. 316.i.(7). My thanks to Olive Baldwin and 
Thelma Wilson for supplying me with reproductions of both songsheet versions of this setting.
71 
This version is the one in London, British Library, G. 326.h.(36) iii.
72 
Boyle, Letters from Italy, 267.
73 
Delightful Pocket Companion, 30; Arnold, Essex Harmony, 31–33.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
134
In April 1755 The London Magazine published, without identifying either the poet or 
the composer, what it billed as a new song: The Constant Shepherdess (“Cease, Damon, 
to pursue me”).
74
 This turns out to be a simple reprint, omitting bass figures, of a song 
included seven years earlier in Holcombe’s collection The Garland, a publication pro-
tected in theory by a still valid royal privilege. Quite possibly, the claim for its newness 
was made in good faith: the intricate paths of transmission traversed by English songs of 
the seventeenth and (especially) eighteenth centuries are often hard to discern today and 
doubtless were no less so at the time.
The Six Solos and Their Adjuncts (1745)
Holcombe’s invitation to subscribe to his first published collection must have taken admirers 
of his songs somewhat by surprise, since it was more normal for professional musicians 
to open their account as composers of collections with areas of repertoire with which the 
public already associated them as performers. By 1745, however, the memory of Henry’s 
performances as a singer, as distinct from his sporadic contributions as a composer of 
songs, must already have faded, leaving him effectively with a tabula rasa. Quite possibly, 
it was his contact with Carbonelli, whose twelve published violin sonatas (1729) provide 
inspiring models, that propelled him in the direction he chose to take.
The text of the title page is straightforward enough, reading:
Six Solos | FOR A | Violin and Thorough Bass | With some Pieces for the | German Flute 
and Harpsicord | COMPOS’D BY | HENRY HOLCOMBE | OPERA PRIMA | LONDON 
Printed by W.
m
 Smith Musick Printer at the golden Bass in Middle Row Holbourne and 
| sold only by the Author at his House in Southampton Street Bloomsbury
This was therefore a private publication for which the composer retained the engraved 
plates. It is interesting to learn from the imprint that the composer’s own house was 
planned to be the sole point of sale, for it was more usual to name at least one alternative 
outlet such as a coffee shop.
At first glance, the six sonatas for solo violin and figured bass in Op. 1 look con-
servatively neo-Corellian in their make-up.
75
 Major and minor keys, in the sequence 
c–G–E–a–d–D, are represented equally, whereas by 1745 one might have expected a 
preponderance of the major mode. All six works have a four-movement plan observing 
the tempo sequence Slow–Fast–Slow–Fast, whereas one might have expected three-
movement plans (either Fast–Slow–Fast or Slow–Fast–Fast) at least to register a presence. 
The movements are either in binary form (all the fast movements and some of the slower 
74 
“A New Song”, The London Magazine 24 (1755): 180.
75 
Neo-Corellian in the sense of adhering to the consensus inspired by Corelli’s music that formed 
early in the eighteenth century, while not necessarily imitating every jot and tittle of the Italian 
master’s own practice (such as a preference for five rather than four movements in his solo 
sonatas).

135
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
ones) or in a unitary form without sectional repeats but having exactly the same tonal 
trajectory as the binary-form movements – except for the finale of Sonata 1, which adopts 
French rondeau form, very popular in England. Quadruple or duple metre dominates 
the first pair of movements, triple or compound metre the second pair. Final movements 
can be styled (as corrente or minuet) or even identified by name (in the “Jigg” move-
ments of Sonatas 2 and 5) as dances – a sign of convergence between the da chiesa and 
da camera traditions already incipient in Corelli’s Op. 5 violin sonatas (1700). Internal 
slow movements are generally placed in the relative major or minor key, although the 
third movement of Sonata 5, following a traditional practice in chamber sonatas, remains 
in the home key; that of Sonata 4, a brief transition between two fast movements, ends 
emphatically on the dominant chord of the home key but begins in a state of tonal flux  
(see Music example 3).
Standing in contrast to this is the very up-to-date, galant character of the melodic 
and figurational writing for the violin, replete with the characteristics noted earlier 
for Arno’s Vale, with the addition of some technically specific and idiomatic devices 
such as double and multiple stopping, mid-phrase trills (often in close succession), 
slurred staccato and rapid cross-string arpeggiation. Music example 3, which testifies 
to Holcombe’s lively musical imagination, illustrates some of these points. His sona-
tas are equally noteworthy for the complex, ever-changing rhythms of their finely 
chiselled melodic lines and the subtlety and care applied to their phrasing, worthy 
of an experienced practitioner. Surprisingly, in the context of his times, Holcombe 
makes only very sparing use of sequence. Phrases are not often repeated in exact 
sequence more than once, although less exact immediate reiteration of motivic material is  
plentiful.
Where Holcombe’s style comes closest to Carbonelli’s is in certain con slancio move-
ments mimicking the panache of fast movements in concertos following the Vivaldian 
tradition. A typical instance is the opening of the second movement of Sonata 6, with 
its arresting “three hammer-blows” (“Dreierschlag”) in the first bar (Music example 4).
The volume continues with twelve movements, all short and sometimes miniaturistic, 
collectively headed (on page 24) “Aires for a German Flute or Harpsicord” – not “and 
Harpsicord” as on the title page. Neither preposition is semantically unambiguous, but the 
intention is clear. The first ten movements constitute three chamber sonatas for transverse 
flute and accompanying harpsichord comprising respectively three, three and four move-
ments in the same key (replicating Corelli’s normal usage in his trio sonatas of Opp. 2 and 
4). The last two make up a lone solo harpsichord sonata containing the two movements 
normal in mid-century Italian keyboard sonatas, such as those of Domenico Alberti and 
Domenico Paradies or their English imitations by George Berg and many others.
One common seventeenth- or eighteenth-century meaning of “aria” and its French 
or English cognate “air” is a theme or movement in binary form structurally resembling 
a dance movement but not necessarily identifiable with any particular dance on the basis 
of tempo, metre, rhythm or general character. “Air” thus becomes a catch-all term for a 
usually concise, often perfectly symmetrical, binary-form movement. To divide a long 
sequence of such airs into discrete multi-movement works of suite or chamber-sonata 
type (assuming that this is the composer’s intention), all that one has to do is to continue 

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
136
Music example 3
Henry Holcombe, third movement of Sonata 4 from his Six Solos (1745).
Music example 4
Henry Holcombe, opening section of the second movement of Sonata 6 from his Six Solos 
(1745).

137
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
to add movements for as long as the same tonic persists and then start a new work at the 
exact point where a new tonic arrives. This is how Rameau’s second and third Livres de 
clavecin each form themselves naturally into two suites without any need for supplementary 
verbal or numerical cues.
76
 The same method of creating multi-movement works on the 
basis of a shared tonic out of what are ostensibly free-standing consecutive movements 
applies also to the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and to numerous collections 
of “lessons” published by eighteenth-century English composers.
77
The idiom of Holcombe’s three chamber sonatas, making allowance for their reduced 
scale, is that of his violin sonatas purged of specifically violinistic features such as double 
stopping and rapid arpeggiation including wide skips and with a compensatory increase 
in linear, cantabile writing suited to a woodwind instrument. The flute sonatas also have 
a slightly more active bass line, bridging over the brief moments when the player of the 
solo instrument needs to draw breath. Regarding tempo, they are laid out on the more 
modern Slow–Fast–Fast plan (where both “Slow” and “Fast” can be fairly elastic in their 
interpretation). Less fl amboyant and technically demanding than their counterparts for 
violin, the flute sonatas are very persuasive in their gentler way.
The technically rather simple harpsichord sonata in B minor that concludes the 
volume is a little jewel, causing regret that nothing else for solo keyboard by Holcombe 
is known. In terms of keyboard writing, it is nicely varied, with some interesting things 
for the left hand to do, although – a conservative feature – there is no sharing of melodies 
or figurations between the hands. Appropriately for keyboard music, it features turns and 
a few instances of the so-called English beat in addition to the ever-present trills.
Two final questions need an answer. First, why is the content of Op. 1 so heterogene-
ous in instrumentation and level of difficulty? My suspicion, to pick up on a point made 
earlier, is that Holcombe, as his prospectus for the collection seems to show, originally 
planned to publish simply the violin sonatas, perhaps with an eye to reintegrating himself 
with his erstwhile professional colleagues and even re-entering the arena of concert life. 
But, as the subscription list shows, the response from the community of professional 
musicians was very weak. It was perhaps at this point, when the number of subscriptions 
may not yet have reached the threshold of viability enabling engraving and publication 
to go ahead, that Holcombe decided to reorient the collection towards his pupils and their 
families, in aid of which he added the works for flute and for solo keyboard. Evidently, 
this strategy paid off, albeit at some cost to musical coherence.
The second question is harder to answer. Why did Holcombe provide no sequel to 
this excellent collection of instrumental music during the eleven years of life left to him? 
Perhaps the lack of support for the violin sonatas from London’s musicians had left a bitter 
taste. Or was it, rather, a case of loving instrumental music no less but loving vocal music 
even more, particularly as it could act as a bridge to the realms of poetry and religion, 
both very close to his heart?
76 
Similarly for the extracts from Tomaso Albinoni’s Balletti a tre (1701) that John Walsh the elder 
published in 1702 as “Albinoni’s Aires in 3 Parts”.
77 
I write “shared tonic” rather than “shared tonality” because in some instances the movements 
collectively making up the work mix the major and minor modes.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
138
The Song Collection The Garland (1748)
A transcription of the title page of Holcombe’s first song collection reveals some intere-
sting details. It reads:
The | GARLAND | A | Collection of | Songs and Cantatas | COMPOS’D BY | M:
r
 
Holcombe | London Printed for J. Simpson in Sweeting Alley | opposite the East Door 
of the Royal Exchange. | Of whom may be had compos’d by M.
r
 Holcombe | Six SOLOS 
for a Violin & a Bass with some pieces for the German Flute & Harpsicord | [other works 
by different composers follow]
We saw earlier how Holcombe had dealings with Simpson starting in the 1730s, but now 
the publisher is financing a collection by Holcombe from his own pocket (that is the signi-
ficance of the preposition “for”) and, as a music seller, is also stocking the Six Solos, of 
which he has probably acquired the plates. This pattern whereby a composer paid all the 
costs of his first opus but only a few years later was able to sell its plates plus, perhaps, 
a new collection to a willing publisher was a very familiar one in London’s music trade 
during that period.
Discussion of The Garland can conveniently start with a glance at Table 2, which lists 
its contents. Whereas his independent songs had mostly resulted from direct collaboration 
with a poet, which dictated precisely the text to be set, now he had to assemble his own 
anthology by foraging among the poems accessible to him – some already set to music 
but others not – and selecting either whole poems or (in the case of no. 11) an extract from 
a longer poem. There is no over-arching theme explored in the chosen poems, but most 
deal in a conventional fashion with the pleasures and pains of love in a vaguely classical 
pastoral vein. Two, however, address the human condition in a moralizing spirit consonant 
with Holcombe’s own religious leanings (nos. 6 and 11).
The texts, or at least some of them, afford a glimpse into Holcombe’s personal 
library. Some had appeared in widely circulated single-author published collections 
(Mallet, Akenside), others in periodicals or song-text anthologies. One surmises from 
nos. 9 and 11 that Holcombe was a former subscriber to Ambrose Philips’s strongly pro-
Whig periodical The Free-Thinker, and from no. 10 that he had obtained more volumes 
of The Musical Miscellany than simply the two containing his own songs. Nos. 5 and 6, 
which come from the same volume of The Universal Magazine, suggest that he had this 
publication available at home.
All the songs save two (nos. 1 and 10) are of the most conventional type: in binary 
form and strophic (though not with the large number of stanzas found in some ballads). 
The two items in question, both headed “Cantata”, are more elaborate. At this point, it will 
be useful to outline the ways (beyond the simply linguistic) in which the mid-eighteenth-
century English cantata differed from its Italian counterpart. In the first few decades of that 
century, when the genre was still a novelty, some attempt was made by native poets and, 
crucially, the earliest composers (such as J. C. Pepusch, Daniel Purcell and J. E. Galliard) 
to establish in the English language a distinctive poetic structure reserved for cantatas 
prescribing exactly which stanzas were to be set as recitative (including arioso) and which 
as aria. Unfortunately (as it appears in retrospect), no system for English cantatas evolved 

139
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Table 2
The content of Henry Holcombe’s song collection The Garland (1748).
No. Incipit Title Poet Selected concordances
1 A youth adorn’d 
with ev’ry grace
Cantata David 
Mallet
In Mallet’s Poems on Several 
Occasions (1753), used earlier in 
the Masque of Alfred (1740)
2 Cease, Damon, to 
pursue me
The Constant 
Shepherdess
Unknown Reprinted with Holcombe’s 
music in The London Magazine 
24 (1755), 180
3 You tell me I’m 
handsome
The Judicious Fair 
One
Edward 
Moore
Later concordances confirm 
Moore’s authorship of the poem
4 The shape alone 
let others prize
The Choice, or 
Beauty and Sense 
United
Mark 
Akenside
In Akenside’s Friendship and 
Love (1745)
5 Where is pleasure, 
tell me where
The Disinterested 
Lover
Unknown Words alone in The Universal 
Magazine 1 (1747), 186–187
6 The parent bird 
whose little nest
Paternal Love Unknown Setting by J. F. Lampe in The 
Universal Magazine 1 (1747), 
184
7 Sweetest charmer, 
pride of Nature
The Consolation, 
or the 
Disagreeable 
Disappointment
Unknown Words alone in the song-text 
anthology The Warbling Muses 
(1759), 299
8 Farewell, ye green 
fields and sweet 
groves
The Unhappy Maid Unknown /
9 Ye little lovers 
that round her 
wait
The Careless Lover Ambrose 
Philips
In The Free-Thinker 3 (1719), 
213
10 Can then a look 
create a thought
Cantata Barton 
Booth
In The Musical Miscellany 1 
(1729), 166
11 Man only from 
himself can suffer 
wrong
Self Conviction Ambrose 
Philips
Extract from An Epistle from a 
Gentleman in Holland to His 
Friend in England, in the Year 
1703, published in The Free-
Thinker 1 (1718), 369–373
whereby one particular metre – this could have been iambic pentameter – was reserved 
by consensus for recitative (as a counterpart to the mixture of seven-syllable and eleven-
syllable lines in Italian poesia per musica), leaving a free choice of any other metre for 
arias. So there were no fixed landmarks regarding the placement of recitatives and arias 
for English composers to follow. By the middle of the century, they had reverted to the 
practices of the multi-sectional song inherited from the seventeenth century. Composers 
simply chose autonomously which parts of the chosen stanza or stanzas of a poem (not 
necessarily one originally intended for music) to set in either of the two manners. Thus 
when Holcombe or other English composers of his generation label a setting a “cantata”, 

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
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they may mean nothing more than that (a) recitative occurs somewhere or other; (b) the 
work is divided into discrete movements; and – but only optionally – (c) that some use is 
made of ritornellos (commonly called in England “symphonies”) and/or da capo structures.
78
Accordingly, the three identically structured stanzas (sestets in iambic tetrameter) 
making up Mallet’s poem are set, respectively, as a recitative, a slow aria in binary form 
with “symphonies”, and a slightly quicker aria of similar design, composed in the tonic 
minor in order to accentuate the threnodic character of the text. Holcombe’s recitative (see 
Music example 5) bespeaks great familiarity with Italian usage: we find a sudden quickening 
before the first cadence in bar 4, and the final cadence is of the familiar “telescoped” kind 
where an appoggiatura is needed in the vocal part to mitigate the apparent clash between 
tonic and dominant harmony. More typically Italian than English is the recitative’s final 
cadence in B minor in preference to the G major in which the first aria begins. The tonal 
relationship between the end of a recitative and the start of an aria can be used powerfully 
for affective ends: here, the instantaneous transition from a B minor chord to D major 
(dominant) harmony in G major brings about a highly effective lightening of the mood 
in keeping with the tenderness of the protagonist’s eulogy of her lover, fallen in war.
79
Music example 5
Henry Holcombe, recitative opening the cantata “A Youth Adorn’d with Ev’ry Grace”, no. 1 in 
The Garland (1748).
78 
The most compendious study of the English cantata to date – Goodall, Eighteenth-Century 
English Secular Cantatas – does not, in my opinion, make enough of this fundamental and 
enduring difference between the Italian and English cantata traditions.
79 
On tonal aspects of the recitative-aria interface, see Talbot, “How Recitatives End”.

141
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
The second cantata (no. 10) is tripartite in exactly the same way, except that the 
opening movement headed “Recit:” is no ordinary recitative but instead an arioso in 
♯ metre, where ostinato crotchets creating a drum bass are present in most bars. Once 
again, the two binary-form arias are nicely differentiated: the first coquettish, the second 
vigorous and quasi-martial.
In both the cantatas and the majority of the strophic songs “symphonies” play an 
important role. These are of various kinds. Sometimes, they consist only of a figured 
bass, the upper staff remaining blank. At other times, they comprise both a bass and a 
treble line that may on occasion marginally overlap with the vocal line at either end. In 
the vast majority of domestic performances, including self-accompanied ones, the treble 
line was doubtless taken by the keyboard player, but it is possible that when a violinist 
was available, the stringed instrument, reading over the keyboard player’s shoulder from 
the same score, sometimes took over the top part. Finally, there are rare occasions – as 
towards the end of no. 11 – when a middle instrumental strand as well as an upper one is 
supplied. Once again, the harpsichord can supply all the written-out notes, but if a violin 
plays, a second violin or a viola can suitably take the middle strand. Around 1805 Thomas 
Busby (1754–1838), a singer, organist and composer better known today for the several 
dictionaries and histories of music that he wrote or co-wrote, compiled an anthology enti-
tled Melodia Britannica, or the Beauties of British Song, which included an arrangement 
of Holcombe’s opening cantata. This maintains two violins (or violin and viola) in the 
accompaniment even while the voice is singing. Busby’s version testifies equally strongly 
to his questionable taste as an arranger (although it could be said in his defence that such 
treatment was normal for his age) and the durable appeal of some of Holcombe’s songs.
The nine strophic songs in the collection are sufficiently similar to the ones from 
the previous two decades not to need separate discussion. They all display the usual 
craftsmanship, including a subtle and judicious use of word-painting.
The Puzzling Case of the Twelve Italian Canzonets (1753)
From 7 May up to 13 August 1753 the Public Advertiser ran a series of advertisements 
for a group of new publications by John Walsh the younger that included “Twelve Italian 
Canzonets, with some English Ballads, never before printed, by M. Holcombe”. The 
significance of “Holcombe” looks clear enough, but why “M.” and not “Mr.”?
80
 Was the 
omission of an “r” a typographical error lazily left uncorrected? Or was there, perhaps, 
an overlooked Maurice or Marmaduke Holcombe?
Things get more, rather than less, mystifying if one looks at the title page of the 
publication itself in its earlier and later forms. Originally, it read: “TWELVE ITALIAN | 
CANZONETS. | To which is added | A Collection of ENGLISH SONGS. | Compos’d by 
| A. H. | London. Printed for I. Walsh in Catherine Street in the Strand. […]”.
81
 So now 
80 
In Smith and Humphries, Bibliography, 167 (no. 746) and 189 (no. 839), the “M.” is inexactly 
transcribed as “Mr.”.
81 
Example in London, British Library, D. 836.jj.(4).

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
142
“Holcombe” is pared down to “H.” and preceded not by “M.” but by “A.” Was there a 
Holcombe with musical inclinations possessing this initial? Yes: Henry’s daughter Anne, 
then aged thirty-five. Could she be styled “M.”? Yes, if this was an attempt to devise a 
deliberately ambiguous title (remembering the reticence of most genteel women to identify 
themselves in public as literary, artistic or musical creators) capable of standing equally 
for “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, “Miss” and “Master”. A second edition of the same publication sold 
by Walsh at an undetermined later date omits the three English songs (hardly enough to 
constitute the “Collection” promised by the original title page) and blanks out everything 
on that page between “CANZONETS.” and “London.”, leaving an unsightly gap.
82
 Was 
Walsh’s suppression of “A. H.” a deliberate act, perhaps because he no longer believed the 
attribution to be correct, or was it an accidental by-product of the preceding deletion? Or 
could it even be that he thought it expedient to get rid of the “H” (a letter rarely used in 
Italian) so that, by default, purchasers would now imagine that the canzonettas were the 
work of one or more Italian hands?
At this point, it is prudent not to get too excited, but to continue the investigation 
on the provisional assumption that Henry was the actual composer of everything in the 
collection. First, it will be useful to have a table of contents for reference (Table 3).
The eighteenth-century canzonetta, anglicized as “canzonet”, was, as its name 
suggests, a short, single-movement song. It was either monostrophic or polystrophic and 
generally of a light, cheerful and amorous character. Most settings were for a single high 
voice with continuo accompaniment, but canzonets for two or three voices, ordinarily 
treated in a homophonic manner, were also popular. The genre took wing in England in 
the second third of the century just as the popularity of the cantata, Italian and native 
alike, was beginning to wane. The earliest collection of canzonetta settings published 
there was the first volume (of two) by the Dutch violinist and composer Willem de Fesch, 
then resident in London.
83
 These Canzonette ed arie, published in 1735 or slightly earlier, 
took most of their texts from the widely circulated canzonettas by the London-based 
poet Paolo Rolli published in 1727.
84
 They paved the way for the numerous collections of 
Venetian ballads (or gondola songs), which were an important sub-species of canzonetta. 
Walsh’s first, and extremely popular, collection of these ballads by J. A. Hasse and others, 
which came out in 1742, was the opening landmark.
85
 The next major event was a fine 
collection of canzonets on English texts for two and three voices by the Pepusch pupil 
John Travers that appeared in 1746.
86
 The new Holcombe collection (ignoring the three 
82 
Example in London, British Library, E. 270.y.(6). See Smith and Humphries, Bibliography, 194 
(no. 862) and 350 (no. 861a). In this second edition the sequence of the canzonets is slightly 
amended.
83 
De Fesch, Canzonette ed arie. The earliest known advertisement for this collection, placed in 
the Leidsche Courant, 22 July 1735 by the Dutch music seller Jacobus Lovering, describes it as 
“nieuwelings uyt London omfangen” (newly received from London). My thanks to Rudolf Rasch 
for information on this advertisement.
84 
Rolli, Di canzonette e di cantate. On this collection and Rolli’s cantatas and canzonets generally, 
see Hicks, “Paolo Rolli’s Canzonets”.
85 
Venetian Ballad’s; Smith and Humphries, Bibliography, 186 (no. 826).
86 
Travers, Eighteen Canzonets.

143
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Table 3
The content of Henry (and/or Anne?) Holcombe, Twelve Italian Canzonets to Which is Added a 
Collection of English Songs (1753).
No. Incipit Poet Selected earlier concordances
1 Pastorella, io giurerei Pietro Metastasio Zenobia
2 Arde (recte, Ardi) per me 
fedele
Pietro Metastasio Didone abbandonata (London, 
1748)
3 Accorrete, voi pastori Giacomo Rossi Il pastor fido (London, 1734)
4 S’io bramo mio tesoro ? / P. Metastasio ? / La clemenza di Tito (London, 
1737)
5 Quanto mai felici siete Pietro Metastasio Il pastor fido (London, 1734)
6 Sentirsi il petto accendere Francesco Silvani Taken from a London pasticcio?
7 Il piacer, la gioia scenda Pietro Metastasio Semiramide riconosciuta (London, 
1733)
8 Bella, consola intanto Apostolo Zeno Scipione (London, 1726)
9 All’ombre, alle catene G. P. Candi L’Idaspe fedele (London, 1710)
10 Se mi rivolgo al prato Grazio Braccioli Orlando (London, 1733)
11 Son regina e sono amante Pietro Metastasio Didone abbandonata (London, 
1748)
12 Te felice, o pastorella G. C. Pasquini Leucippo
13 Too late for redress and too 
soon for my ease
Unknown /
14 Long from the force of 
Beauty’s charms
Unknown The Musical Miscellany 5 (1731), 
57
15 It is not that I love you less Edmund Waller The Self Banished (stanzas 1 and 
2 only)
English songs tacked on at the end) introduced yet another variety: a canzonet for solo 
voice set to Italian words but with a typically English – indeed, shockingly un-Italian – 
freedom in the treatment of the text.
As Table 3 shows, the texts of the twelve Italian canzonets are all taken from aria 
texts, many by Metastasio and most, if not all, to be found in original or “imported” arias 
used in Italian operas performed in London between 1710 (the year of Francesco Mancini’s 
Idaspe fedele) and the late 1740s. The most likely source for them was published libretti 
or collections of operatic “Songs”, although one or two could have been transcribed from 
musical manuscripts in circulation. Only a single canzonet, no. 11, retains the original da 
capo (ABA) structure. The rest either: (i) adopt the more concise AB structure, assigning 
the two poetic semistrophes to the two repeated sections in binary form (nos. 4, 5); (ii) use 
only the A text, repeating it in the second section (nos. 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 12); (iii) divide the A 
text into two, assigning each half to one repeated section (no. 7); or (iv) use only the A text 
within a unitary (through-composed) structure (nos. 6, 9). No. 4 complicates the picture 
by taking its A text from an aria in A major (a single quatrain imported from an unknown 

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
144
source into the 1736 revival of Handel’s Ariodante) and its B text from a different aria in 
A minor, “Ch’io parto reo, lo vedi”, performed at the King’s Theatre in 1737 in a setting 
by Francesco Veracini. The dismemberment does not end there: no. 10 uses only the first 
three (out of four) lines of its borrowed semistrophe. The repurposed Italian aria texts in 
Holcombe’s canzonets make an interesting parallel with those utilized as chamber duet 
texts around the same time by Maurice Greene.
87
 In both cases, the repurposing probably 
arose from simple expediency: the absence of convenient alternative sources of settable 
text coupled with a willingness, born of the English tradition of song-writing, to pay little 
regard to genre boundaries.
Given Henry Holcombe’s love, and presumably also command, of the Italian language 
and his frequent visits to the opera-house, one can easily believe that the purloined texts 
were findable at his home in his personal library. He may have been inspired to branch out 
into the setting of Italian texts by a song collection privately published in 1748 to which 
he had subscribed: Elisabetta de Gambarini’s Lessons for the Harpsichord Intermix’d 
with Italian and English Songs, Op. 2.
88
 This heterogeneous collection includes among 
its Italian songs two items headed Canzonetta, which are both short and in binary form. 
Their texts, however, are decidedly non-operatic and could well have been custom-written 
by Gambarini herself. Henry very possibly purchased this collection primarily for the use 
of his daughter Anne (it is a female-oriented product par excellence), but he must also 
have taken some note of its contents.
In the Twelve Italian Canzonets there are countless mistakes in the rendering of the 
Italian – in contrast to the English – texts: incorrect letters, missing apostrophes, syllables 
allocated to the wrong word and similar. The most likely explanation is carelessness on 
the engraver’s part or insufficient legibility of the manuscript from which he copied – one 
could not expect him, after all, miraculously to acquire an understanding of the Italian 
language in order to decide between a sloppily written “a” and an “o”. Why proof-reading 
did not lead to correction of most of the mistakes is another matter – but one too endemic 
in eighteenth-century publications of music generally to need discussion here.
89
The musical quality of this collection is very impressive. So, too, is its markedly 
Italianate quality. There is an elegant, carefree naturalness and lucidity about the writ-
ing, which, though deploying the full panoply of galant devices and clichés, manages 
to avoid the studied rhythmic complexity often found in English vocal lines. Take, for 
example, the opening of “Pastorella, io giurerei”, shown as Music example 6, with its 
catchy introductory “symphony”.
Interestingly, this canzonet was one of two (the other was no. 4) copied out between 1754 
and 1760 into a manuscript album of keyboard and vocal music (shelfmark CWJHA/19/1, 
catalogue reference Jenkyns 01) that passed into the possession of the novelist Jane Austen’s 
family and is today privately owned by Richard Jenkyns, by agreement with whom the 
87 
Talbot, “Maurice Greene’s Vocal Chamber Music”, 120–121.
88 
Listed in Simon D. I. Fleming and Martin Perkins, Dataset of Subscribers to Eighteenth-Century 
Music Publications in Britain and Ireland, https://musicsubscribers.co.uk.
89 
Walsh’s collections of Venetian Ballad’s often mangle the Italian words almost as badly.

145
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Music example 6
Henry Holcombe, opening of the canzonet “Pastorella, io giurerei”, no. 1 in Twelve Italian 
Canzonets to Which is Added a Collection of English Songs (1753).
University of Southampton has catalogued and digitized it together with the other volumes 
making up the Austen family’s collection of music.
90
Little needs saying about the three English songs bringing up the rear of the volume 
except that they are good, typical specimens of their type. No. 14 is noteworthy for taking 
its text from a song set by an unknown composer in the fifth volume of The Musical 
Miscellany, bringing us back to Henry’s library. Perhaps significantly, the text of no. 15 
90 
Accessible at https://archive.org/details/austen1676469-2001/page/n33/mode/2up.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
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had been set by Robert Cox during Henry’s period at Drury Lane, from which he perhaps 
remembered it.
So where does this leave Anne’s tenuous claim to authorship? The circumstantial 
evidence of many different kinds is so overwhelming that even if there had been no “M. 
Holcombe” or “A. H.” to supply preliminary cues, close scrutiny of the music itself, and 
especially of the English songs, would have pointed unambiguously towards her father. 
And yet, the most worrying point causing doubt over Henry’s authorship has not been 
made earlier: why should a well-known and respected musician never previously known 
for withholding his name suddenly hide his light under a bushel and prejudice sales by 
reducing that name to enigmatic initials – moreover, inaccurate ones?
My belief is that the answer must in some way involve Anne. We learned that bet-
ween his second marriage in 1752 and the writing of his will in 1754 Henry took the step 
of securing before his death the futures of the adult children by his first marriage, Anne 
and James. Of the two siblings, Anne, being an unmarried woman, was the more econo-
mically vulnerable, and if there was a realistic chance of her inheriting part of Henry’s 
mantle as a musician – say, by practising as a private music teacher – she would surely 
have grasped it. What if the combination of “Holcombe” in the newspaper advertisement 
and “A.” on the title page were a two-pronged ruse thought up by Henry for the purpose 
of allowing Anne plausibly to claim authorship after his death and thereby earn a little 
credit for herself? If this hypothesis is correct, we do not need to search for any signs of 
her participation in the planning and execution of the collection. Moreover, this inter-
pretation would allow us to speculate, first, on whether Walsh’s not easily explainable 
action in expunging the initials in his abbreviated second edition of the collection was a 
deed expressing knowledge and disapproval of the ruse, and, second, on whether Henry’s 
unexpected reversion to private publication for his final song collection was intended as 
a sharp riposte to a uncooperative publisher.
The Song Collection The Musical Medley (1755)
If the Twelve Italian Canzonets were only covertly valedictory, The Musical Medley, 
longest of Holcombe’s song collections, is almost explicitly so, rounding off slightly unti-
dily (given the more than usually heterogeneous character of the songs) but undeniably 
impressively his musical legacy. Table 4 summarizes its content. Tellingly, it contains 
only one song, no. 8, with an amorous-cum-pastoral subject. All the rest are in some way 
moralistic or meditative, expressing awe before Nature or the Divinity (nos. 1, 10, 11, 15, 
16, 17, 18 )
91
 and sorrow over the human condition (nos. 3, 4, 6, 13, 19 ), or else offering 
sage advice to those at risk of straying from the path of righteousness (nos. 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 
14). The titles, probably all originating from Holcombe himself, signpost each song’s 
content with great precision.
91 
Nos. 1 and 10 are actual hymns, which in simpler settings have remained in the Anglican 
repertoire.

147
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Table 4
The Content of Henry Holcombe’s Song Collection The Musical Medley (1755).
No. Incipit Title Poet Selected earlier  
concordances
1 How brisk the 
breath of morning 
blows
A Thought on a 
Spring Morning
Charles 
Wesley
Hymn, unpublished at the time, 
written c. 1751
2 The world, my 
dear Myra, is full 
of deceit
On Friendship to 
a Lady
Unknown /
3 Tell me, perjur’d 
Damon, why
The Disconsolate 
Maid
Unknown /
4 Love, hope and 
joy
A Couplet by Mr 
Pope
Alexander 
Pope
An Essay on Man (c. 1733), 
lines 107–108
5 Thy vain pursuit, 
fond youth, give 
o’er
The Honest 
Confession
Unknown Setting by Mr. Gouge in The 
Musical Miscellany 1 (1729), 
83
6 Sad solitary mole, 
whose stream
Extempore Verses 
on the Death of a 
Friend
Unknown /
7 Ye belles and ye 
flirts and ye pert 
little things
Advice to the Fair 
Sex
Wm. 
Whitehead
R. Dodsley, A Collection of 
Poems (1755), 4:176–177
8 Behold, my fair, 
what joyous 
scenes
An Enconium on 
the Month of May
Unknown /
9 The beau with 
his delicate, 
womanish face
The Maid’ s Choice 
of Husband
Unknown Words in The London Magazine 
(1751), 490
10 O happy soul that 
soars on high
The Words by D.
r
 
Watts
Isaac Watts Hymn, unpublished at the time
11 Hail, charming 
grotto, still retreat
A Thought in a 
Grotto
Unknown /
12 Ye fair that would 
be blest in love
A Friendly Hint to 
the Ladies
John 
Hughes?
Samuel Richardson, in 
The History of Sir Charles 
Grandison (1754), 1:148
13 When tides of 
youthful blood run 
high
A Serious Though 
on Death
Joseph 
Addison
Rosamond (1707)
14 Ye happy swains 
whose hearts are 
free
The Caution Sir George 
Etheridge
Published in John Dryden’s 
Sylvae, 3rd edition (1702), 187

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
148
No. Incipit Title Poet Selected earlier  
concordances
16 Blest solitude, 
devotion’s greatest 
friend
A Panegyric on 
Solitude
Unknown /
17 Ye woods and 
ye mountains 
unknown
/ William 
Shenstone
/
18 Evington, 
charming seat of 
love
Verses on a 
Gentleman’ s Seat 
in Kent
Unknown /
19 Cruel 
remembrance, 
home-bred foe
The Injur’d Lover Unknown /
About half of the authors of the poems are untraced. In his effort to turn his collec-
tion into a true swan song it seems that Holcombe turned to many manuscript, or at least 
obscure, literary sources. As in earlier collections, he trawled to some extent in his own 
past, as the text taken from Rosamond demonstrates, although the Whitehead text (no. 
7), in sharp contrast, appears to have been brand new.
The average dimensions of the songs are noticeably raised by comparison with his 
earlier collections, although this is partly due to the higher incidence of multi-sectional 
(i.e. beyond simple binary) or multi-movement structures. There is a corresponding 
diversification in the compositional approaches adopted.
More neatly engraved than any of Holcombe’s earlier collections, The Musical Medley 
has a brutally curt title page reading: “The | MUSICAL MEDLEY | or | A Collection of 
English | Songs and Cantatas | Set to Musick by | HENRY HOLCOMBE”. The complete 
absence of information about publisher, point of sale and price might initially suggest 
that this was not only a private publication but also one where the volume was distributed 
informally, possibly even sometimes donated, to a few chosen recipients. But in fact the 
volume was advertised in the normal manner, albeit apparently only once: in the Public 
Advertiser of 29 November 1755. The advertisement reads: “just published, | A Collection 
of new ENGLISH SONGS | called the MUSICAL MEDLEY. Set to Musick by Henry | 
Holcombe, and sold at his Lodgings, at Mr. Howell’s, in Great | Rider-street, St. James’s, 
Price Five Shillings, to the Masters | four Shillings”. The fact that Henry was now living 
no longer at “his House” but at “his Lodgings” suggests either that he had fallen on hard 
times since writing his will or that ill health and perhaps restricted mobility had forced 
him to change his accommodation. The lack of any separate mention of a house among 
the property bequeathed to his wife Elizabeth, residuary beneficiary of his will, could 
mean that that the problems had started even earlier. It is interesting to see him once 
again setting two different price levels: the “Masters”, presumably meaning professional 
musicians, pay only four shillings; everyone else, five.
Structurally speaking, the new songs conform to type in making binary form (or a 
Table 4
(continued)

149
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Music example 7
Henry Holcombe, bars 9–18 of the song “O Happy Soul That Soars on High”, no. 10 in The 
Musical Medley (1755).
unitary form differing from it only by the absence of repeats) the default choice. But now, 
the provision of “symphonies” is mandatory rather than merely optional. Moreover, these 
ritornellos, especially the opening ones, are sometimes of such length and complexity as 
to remind one of nineteenth-century art song. Nearly always, they comprise a melody on 
the upper staff (temporarily taken over from the voice) as well as a figured bass. Many of 
them look particularly well suited to performance with a violin on the upper line, even 
though a harpsichordist can easily negotiate them.
There are two songs, nos. 8 and 16, that, although they are not so labelled, Paul 
Francis Rice rightly includes in his catalogue of eighteenth-century British cantatas.
92
 The 
92 
Rice, Solo Cantata, 256–259. Although the space for value judgment in this catalogue is very 
limited, Rice aptly describes the melodies of the two cantatas in The Garland as “energetic and 
tuneful”, stating that his style “would have appealed to the home/amateur market of the day”.

De musica disserenda XIX/1 • 2023
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Enconium on the Month of May (no. 8), with its RA structure, belongs to the less common 
two-movement type that the Italians called cantata semplice. Its aria is in binary form, 
moving to a new metre and tempo for the second section in order, perhaps, to simulate 
the effect of having three movements rather than only two.
More ambitious is the Panegyric on Solitude (no. 16), whose six movements are laid 
out as RARARA. Its tonal design is very enterprising. The six movements follow the 
trajectory C minor | E flat major | C minor → G minor | G major | D major → E minor | 
C major. The shift from the predominance of minor to that of major tonality mirrors the 
progressive brightening of the mood of the words. Holcombe differentiates the form of 
the arias skilfully: the first is unitary; the second with da capo; the third binary.
93
The most impressive song in the collection, however, is no. 10: “O Happy Soul 
That Soars on High”. Only here does the upper instrumental line, which this time must 
certainly have been conceived for violin, continue to partner and dialogue continuously 
with the voice during the vocal sections, forcing Holcombe to notate on three rather than 
two staves. The delightfulness of the three-part counterpoint for the obbligato parts that 
this brings about – found nowhere else in Holcombe’s known oeuvre – makes one regret 
that there are no trio sonatas or chamber duets from his pen. Music example 7 provides 
a specimen of this texture, making a suitable conclusion to the discussion of his works.
What Now for Holcombe?
This article did not start with the review of existing literature on its subject that 
custom prefers, simply because there is so little of it. Prior to the short paragraphs writ-
ten by Burney and Hawkins one finds hardly any commentary on Holcombe’s life and 
works. Even after them, remarkably little has been added to the record apart from the 
slow trickle of small supplementary facts cumulatively added by lexicographers and the 
authors of entries in encyclopaedias, catalogues and reference works. The opportunity was 
missed by William S. Newman to write anything at all about the sonatas and by Richard 
Goodall to make more than the briefest passing reference to the cantatas and songs in 
his study of the eighteenth-century English cantata.
94
 Silent, too, is the volume devoted 
to the eighteenth century in The Blackwell History of Music in Britain.
95
 That is all now 
water under the bridge. My hope is that the present article will have convinced readers 
that Holcombe is a composer worth studying further, performing, recording and getting 
into print in reliable, affordable editions.
93 
Holcombe’s treatment of da capo form, also seen in the canzonets, differs from the Italian 
prototype by giving the B sections a closed rather than open tonal structure, with the result that 
they come to resemble the trio in a tripartite minuet-and-trio structure. This is likewise true of 
the central section of A Thought on a Spring Morning (no. 1), the only other item in The Musical 
Medley to employ that form.
94 
Newman, Sonata in the Baroque Era; Goodall, Eighteenth-Century English Secular Cantatas.
95 
Johnstone and Fiske, Music in Britain.

151
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Where to start with publication? The situation is made more favourable by the fact 
that all Holcombe’s music except the last-mentioned song is notated on two-stave systems 
and is as easily performable today in a domestic setting (echoing his own day) as in the 
concert hall. Production costs should be low, and the potential market reasonably large.
An obvious priority must be the six violin sonatas, which I find as well written and 
interesting as any produced by an English-born composer (therefore leaving aside Pepusch, 
Handel and Carbonelli) during the first half of the eighteenth century.
96
 The three flute 
sonatas – perhaps less well suited to concert use but excellent for teaching or recreation 
– are also very publishable.
97
 As for the keyboard sonata, a singleton, it could find a good 
home in a published or recorded anthology.
The vocal music is not quite so simple either to publish or to perform. A majority of 
the songs are polystrophic, and some have (for modern tastes) a ridiculously high number 
of stanzas, of which the texts for only two or three can be stacked as underlay beneath the 
singer’s staff. This is of little importance to scholars, who can simply read separately the 
remaining stanzas printed after the score, but for singers this is very inconvenient, par-
ticularly when those stanzas form a recognizable narrative that makes cutting undesirable.
But polystrophic songs are probably not the top priority anyway, since their musi-
cal component tends to be shorter and less ambitiously developed than one finds in their 
counterparts with only one to three stanzas. My own preference would be, in descending 
order, for modern editions of the twelve Italian canzonets (which have the added attraction 
of being pioneering works within their English context) and the four cantatas. The remain-
ing forty-odd songs would, initially at least, be best served by anthologies using as criteria 
for inclusion musical quality, the degree of difficulty, the vocal compass and the interest 
of the literary text. During the thirty-five or more years of his activity as a composer of 
songs, Holcombe’s style underwent considerable evolution, and these anthologies could 
be made more attractive if they included songs from several different phases of his life.
There are also some loose threads in Holcombe’s biography that require tying up. The 
background to his removal to London is still hazy. We also need a fuller and clearer picture 
of his ability as a singer, both before and after his voice broke. His obvious closeness to 
Galliard, who, according to Samuel Richardson (see Table 4, no. 12), was the composer 
of an earlier setting of the poem “Ye Fair Who Would Be Blest in Love” inserted into his 
last novel, deserves further investigation, as does his link to Carbonelli. Further occasions 
when Holcombe performed outside London, particularly in the interval between his work 
at Drury Lane and his settling down as a teacher in London, will probably come to light. 
We still know very little about his long activity as a music teacher, something on which 
references in private correspondence or entries in account books might provide infor-
mation. And, most of all, the mysterious circumstances surrounding the Twelve Italian 
Canzonets invite a better explanation than I have been able to provide.
96 
At the time of writing, I am working on such an edition.
97 
Jeremy Barlow in fact broke the ice in 1977 by publishing with Schott the three airs making up 
a chamber sonata in E minor (but not the six in other keys).

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Bibliography
Principal Publications Containing Music by Henry Holcombe
Holcombe, A. Twelve Italian Canzonets: To Which Is Added a Collection of English Songs. 
London: Walsh, [1753].
Holcombe, Henry. The Garland: A Collection of Songs and Cantatas. London: Simpson, 
[1748].
———. The Musical Medley, or A Collection of English Songs and Cantatas. [London]: 
author, [1755].
———. Six Solos for a Violin and Thorough Bass with Some Pieces for the German Flute 
and Harpsichord […] Opera Prima. London: author, [1745].
———. Three Airs for Flute (or Descant Recorder) and Continuo. Edited by Jeremy 
Barlow. London: Schott, 1977.
Musical Anthologies and Publications by Other Composers
Arnold, John, ed. The Essex Harmony. London: Bigg, 1777.
The British Orpheus. V ol. 1. London: Walsh, 1741.
De Fesch, Willem. Canzonette ed arie a voce sola di soprano col basso continuo. London: 
author, [c. 1735].
The Delightful Pocket Companion: For the German Flute. V ol. 1, bk. 5. London: Simpson, 
1745.
D’Urfey, Thomas, ed. Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy. Vol. 5. London: 
Pearson, 1714.
Travers, John. Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices. London: author, 1746.
Venetian Ballad’ s Compos’d by Sig.
r
 Hasse and All the Celebrated Italian Masters. London: 
Walsh, 1742.
l It e r a t u r e Altieri, Ferdinando. Dizionario inglese ed italiano. London: Innys, 1727.
Avery, Emmett Langdon, ed. The London Stage, 1660–1800. Vol. 2, 1700–1729. 2 bks. 
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.
Baldwin, Olive, and Thelma Wilson. “With Several Entertainments of Singing and Dancing”. 
In Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth-Century Britain, edited by 
Matthew Gardner and Alison DeSimone, 39 –59. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108631808.003.
Boyle, John. Letters from Italy, in the Years 1754 and 1755. London: White, 1773.
Burney, Charles. A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. 
V ol. 4. London: Payne, 1789. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511711237.
The Cyclopaedia; or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. Edited by 
Abraham Rees. V ol. 18. London: Longman and others, 1819. https://doi.org/10.5962/
bhl.title.59683.
Doolittle, Thomas. A Complete Body of Practical Divinity. London: Clark, 1723.
Goodall, Richard. Eighteenth-Century English Secular Cantatas. New York: Garland 
Publishing, 1989.

153
Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
Grove, Henry. Sermons and Tracts. London: Waugh, 1745.
———. A System of Moral Philosophy. London: Waugh, 1749.
Guthrie, William. A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar and Present 
State of the Several Kingdoms of the World. London: Dilly and others, 1795.
Harrison, Elizabeth. Miscellanies on Moral and Religious Subjects in Prose and Verse. 
London: author, 1756.
Hawkins, Sir John. A General History of the Science and Practice of Music. V ol. 5. London: 
Payne, 1776. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997556.
Hicks, Anthony. “Paolo Rolli’s Canzonets and Cantatas and Their Earliest Musical Settings”. 
In Three Papers on Handel, edited by Colin Timms, 7–51. London: The Gerald Coke 
Handel Foundation, 2021.
The Historical Register, Containing an Impartial Relation of all Transactions, Foreign 
and Domestick. V ol. 12. London: Nutt, 1727.
Johnstone, Harry Diack. “The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802): Its History, 
Repertoire and Surviving Programmes”. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 
51 (2020): 1–136. https://doi.org/10.1017/rrc.2019.1.
Johnstone, Harry Diack, and Roger Fiske, eds. The Blackwell History of Music in Britain. 
V ol. 4, The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
Marx, Hans Joachim, and Steffen Voss. The Compositions Attributed to G. F . Handel, 
1700–1800 (HWV Anh. B). Hildesheim: Olms, 2017.
Matthews, Betty. The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain: List of Members 
1738–1984. London: Royal Society of Musicians, 1985.
Newman, William S. The Sonata in the Baroque Era. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1959.
Pennant, Thomas. The Journey from Chester to London. London: White, 1782. https://doi.
org/10.1017/CBO9781107049536.
Rice, Paul Francis. The Solo Cantata in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Warren, MI: Harmonie 
Park Press, 2003.
Rolli, Paolo. Di canzonette e di cantate libri due. London: Edlin, 1727.
Shaw, Watkins. The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal and the Cathedrals of 
England and Wales from c. 1538. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Smith, William C., and Charles Humphries. A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published 
by the Firm of John Walsh during the Years 1721–1766. London: The Bibliographical 
Society, 1968.
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Michael Talbot: The Singer and Composer Henry Holcombe (1690–1756) 
PEVEC IN SKLADATELJ HENRY HOLCOMBE (1690–1756)
Povzetek
Henry Holcombe, sin čipkarskega mojstra iz grofije Dorset na jugozahodu Anglije, se je 
rodil leta 1690 v Chestru na severozahodu Anglije. Leta 1698 se je kot pevec pridružil 
zboru chestrske stolnice, kjer je pel do leta 1704. Nato se je preselil v London, kjer je 
približno dve leti pel deški sopran v skupini glasbenikov gledališča Drury Lane. Sprva je 
bil znan le kot »Deček« (»The Boy«), ki je pel zahtevne vloge vokalne glasbe vseh zvrsti, 
med drugim v operah Camilla in Rosamond, ter vzljubil opero in italijanščino. Po mutaciji 
leta 1707 je postal samostojni tenorist in v Londonu med prvimi v javnosti pel kantate, 
tudi italijanske. Nastopal je tudi v drugih mestih (York, Nottingham, Bath).
V drugem desetletju 18. stoletja se je podal v vode zasebnega glasbenega poučevanja 
(petje in čembalo), kar mu je prineslo veliko bogastvo in dostop do višjih družbenih slojev, 
med bankirje in direktorje. Njegov novi položaj ga je nekoliko oddaljil od skupnosti lon-
donskih poklicnih glasbenikov, čeprav je postal član Akademije za staro glasbo (Academy 
of Ancient Music) in pozneje še Kraljevega združenja glasbenikov (Royal Society of 
Musicians). Njegova prva žena Martha je bila prezbiterijanka in pod njenim vplivom so 
ga čedalje bolj privlačila resna, pogosto verska besedila.
V letih med okoli 1720 in 1745 je dozorel kot skladatelj in napisal več zelo uspešnih 
skladb za solistični glas in continuo. Med letoma 1745 in 1755 je izdajal svojo zapuščino, 
štiri obsežne zbirke: v prvi so bile predvsem violinske sonate, v naslednjih dveh angleške 
pesmi in kantate, v zadnji italijanske kanconete, ki so njegove najizvirnejše skladbe. Umrl 
je leta 1756, pokopali pa so ga v Bathu, kjer je bil najbrž v zdravilišču (Bath je bil najbolj 
priljubljeno angleško letovišče).
Glasba Henryja Holcomba je bila dosledno vrhunska in samosvoja, zato preseneča, 
da se doslej še nihče ni poglobil vanjo in da obstaja le malo njenih sodobnih izdaj. Namen 
članka je zapolniti vsaj prvo vrzel v raziskovanju ustvarjanja tega angleškega skladatelja.