Document Type
Theses, Ph.D
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
Arts, Performing arts studies, Musicology
Abstract
This thesis examines and analyses the contents of the Mercer’s Hospital Music Collection. The collection includes fifty manuscript and seven printed volumes of
music containing works by Handel, Greene, Boyce, Purcell, Corelli, Humfrey, Avison, Barsanti, Stanley and Festing. Selected works were performed at the Mercer’s Hospital benefit concerts, established in April 1736 to provide important financial support to the
hospital, which opened on Stephen Street, Dublin in 1734. Mercer’s was the first voluntary Dublin hospital to initiate a series of benefit concerts. The Mercer’s benefit concerts attracted the participation of a wide range of Dublin-based performers, both singers and instrumentalists. The surviving contents of the hospital’s eighteenth century music collection raise several questions in terms of source studies. The
Mercer’s Hospital Music Collection is one of the most significant eighteenth-century music collections surviving in Ireland and its examination reveals important information about musical life and performance practice in eighteenth-century Dublin, setting the contents of the collection within the wider context of extant sources for works by George Frideric Handel, Maurice Greene and William Boyce.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/d7318h
Recommended Citation
O'Hanlon, T. "Music for Mercer's: The Mercer's hospital music collection and charity music in eighteenth-century Dublin." Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D.to the Technological University Dublin, February 2012, DOI: 10.21427/d7318h
Publication Details
Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D.to the Technological University Dublin, February 2012.