Description

Perceiving only empty ostentation in mainstream music, this Enlightenment school of musical thinkers pursued their vision through recourse to universal exemplars from science, nature and ancient authority. Central to this group of musical thinkers was the now little-known figure of Benjamin Cooke. This book shows how, through his creativity, historicism and theorising, Cooke was instrumental in defining and proffering an Enlightenment-inspired reassessment of musical composition and thinking at the Academy. The picture portrayed counters the current tendency to deride English music and composers of the eighteenth century as conservative and provincial. It casts new and valuable light on our understanding, not just of English eighteenth-century musical life, but of Enlightenment culture more generally.