Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era

John Travers's Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (1764) is a delightful collection of part-songs with continuo for social singing. This charming music made a key contribution to the growth of social singing that culminated in the latter half of the eighteenth century with the English glee. The pieces are for the most part settings of poems by England's outstanding epigrammatist, Matthew Prior, whose wit has rarely been equaled, and probably never excelled. Craftily contrapuntal and chordal by turns, Travers's settings capture the clever epigrams with music that sticks in the memory and challenges the voices without overwhelming them. These songs were popular enough to be reprinted several times during the eighteenth century, but the change of style at the end of that period relegated them to the libraries of antiquarians. Today they appear, after some 250 years of lying fallow, for the first time in a modern critical edition, allowing us to enjoy once again the music of England's Georgian composers.

Music Sample

Contents
Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices

 Dedication 
 Canzonet 1. I, like a bee
 Canzonet 2. Whilst our joys
 Canzonet 3. Thus to the muses
 Canzonet 4. When Bibo thought fitt
 Canzonet 5. I, my dear, was born to day
 Canzonet 6. Why thus from the plain
 Canzonet 7. Says Pontius in rage
 Canzonet 8. Whilst I in prison
 Canzonet 9. Cease, Leonora
 Canzonet 10. Poor Hall
 Canzonet 11. Reading ends in melancholly
 Canzonet 12. Haste, my Nanette
 Canzonet 13. Soft Cupid
 Canzonet 14. He is not numb'red with the blest
 Canzonet 15. Beauty should please
 Canzonet 16. Pleasure's enchanted ground
 Canzonet 17. Fair and ugly
 Canzonet 18. Old I am