The Catch Club
in Eighteenth Century England
by Brian Robins
“Glee music forms a splendid literature in itself. It is thoroughly English in style, manly, straightforward and vigorous, with a tenderness and pathos, which like the veins in marble take away nothing of its solidity, but adds greatly to its beauty”
Those words form part of the final summing-up of two illustrated lectures read by the singer, educationalist and music critic William Alexander Barrett at the London Institution during the winter of 1877. Barrett’s admirably succinct description of the form includes one feature on which earlier writers on the subject agree - its essential ‘Englishness’. For them it is a native music whose qualities cannot be captured by those not versed in the idiom. The lecturer concluded by suggesting to his audience that in attempting to “imitate our great English writers” in his male part-songs even the genius of a Mendelssohn never approached the excellence of character, the individuality or distinctiveness of the English glee. Leaving aside the questionable relationship of Mendelssohn’s part songs to the glee, the sentiment is clear.
Fifty years earlier we find Richard Clark, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and secretary of the Glee Club from 1812 until 1824, in similar but more trenchantly patriotic mood in the Remarks that preface a volume of glee poetry published in 1824. Bewailing the “the almost entire exclusion of any of the beautiful compositions of our own countrymen from public concerts”, Clark lays the blame firmly at the door of foreign musicians and performers, who not content with ignoring English composers, “flock to this country in swarms, and devour what Englishmen, by their birthright, ought to enjoy”.
The patriotic, even perhaps xenophobic objective of Clark and Barrett, along with other nineteenth century writers like David Baptie, was clearly to define an indigenous repertoire that European composers, specifically French and German, had sought to emulate and failed. What is less clear is the degree to which the development of the glee and catch in the latter half of the eighteenth century was inspired by contemporary patriotic or national sentiment. Clark was writing some time after the glee had gone into decline, a fact acknowledged by Barrett, who recognised in the long life of Samuel Webbe senior (1740-1816) a seminal figure who had witnessed the glee’s rise, high noon and decline. Was Barrett, living during a period when English music had little definable national character, clutching at the chimera of an imagined “golden age”, or have the English indeed bypassed an important part of their musical heritage? It is not the intention of the present article to provide a comprehensive answer to that question, which would demand critical examination of an enormous repertoire on a scale yet to be undertaken. Rather it seeks to place within context the driving force behind the emergence of that repertoire - the clubs established to encourage its propagation.
The Nobleman and Gentleman’s Catch Club
While the distinction of forming the earliest catch club may belong to the Oxford Professor of Music, William Hayes, it was the establishment of the Nobleman and Gentleman’s Catch Club (the Catch Club) in 1761 that proved the catalyst. Details of the foundation of the Catch Club have been sufficiently well documented elsewhere to require no more than a brief résumé here. In November 1761 the nine founder members met for the first time at the Thatched House Tavern in St. James’s Street, London. Among them were three noblemen, Archibald Montgomery, 10th Earl of Eglington, William Douglas, 3rd Earl of March (later 4th Duke of Queensbury), and John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Of the remaining six, two held senior rank in the army. But it was the least distinguished member of this gathering who would leave the greatest mark on the Catch Club. Edmund Thomas Warren was a businessman, musician and antiquarian who from the Club’s inception until his resignation in 1794 acted as secretary, devoting himself tirelessly to its administration and propagation. Warren’s most important legacy was the annual publication of the Catch Club’s most popular catches, glees and canons, an undertaking that ran unbroken for 32 volumes, most probably between 1763 and 1794.
One of the more interesting questions surrounding the foundation of the Catch Club is motivation. As Gladstone pointed out, there was nothing in the records to show how or why it was formed. Most authorities point back to the Madrigal Society, founded in 1741, or even the Hibernian Catch Club of Dublin, which dates back as far as 1680 as precedents. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that the professed historicism of the Madrigal Society (which in contrast to the Catch Club emerged from distinctly plebeian roots) played a significant role. The assertion by John Wall Callcott that the aims of the Club were to “revive the neglected music of the madrigal” is substantiated neither by the contents of the Warren Collection nor by the crucial decision to encourage the composition of catches and glees by offering annual premiums for the composition of the best new works in each category. Assuming Warren, himself a historical music enthusiast, included the most called-for pieces in his annual issues, the amount of “old” music is small, an average of less than 6% of the total content. Commitment to the encouragement of new works remained a focus of the Catch Club even after prize giving was totally suspended in 1794, the year of Edmund Warren’s death. In 1810 the Leicestershire dilettante William Gardiner was a guest of the Catch Club when Lord Blessington called for a solo song. “Upon which”, Gardiner relates, “Mr Linley, the vice-president [William Linley, the younger brother of Thomas] arose, and addressing the chair, said ‘It was contrary to the rules of the society for a song to be introduced at their meetings. Their object was to give encouragement to a species of composition peculiar to the English, called catches and glees, in which music this country has excelled all others” [my italics]. Linley’s words testify not only to the continued adherence to a “purist” policy regarding performance, but also a declaration that provides a significant nationalistic link to the later sentiments of writers such as Clarke, Barrett and Baptie.
The major role played by the awarding of prizes in the early history of the Catch Club also provides, I would propose, partial evidence for a hitherto unnoticed and largely non-musical influence on the formation of the Club itself. Founded in 1754, the tortuously named Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce had the avowed aim of “exciting a Spirit of Emulation, to encourage and reward Ingenuity and Industry”. To provide incentives the Society instituted annual premiums for the best works submitted within six designated categories, of which one was devoted to the “Polite and Liberal Arts”. Every effort was made to ensure impartiality, the rules stipulating the maintenance of anonymity for all entrants. Professional expertise from outside the ranks of the Society was called upon if necessary to initially evaluate entries, but a final decision rested with the relevant committee, which then put selected entries to confirmation by ballot of the membership. Such rules conform closely to the regulations established by the Catch Club for the award of premiums. There we find the same preliminary examination by a group of professional “privileged members”, the same secrecy surrounding the identity of entrants, who were allowed to make only a distinguishing mark on their work and required to submit their names within a sealed envelope that was opened after judging was completed. As with the Society for Arts, final decisions were made by the membership, in the case of the Catch Club by all members, who were subject to a fine for non-attendance on the day of judging.
A further reason for looking at the Society of Arts in relation to the Catch Club is the small, but significant congruent membership of the two societies. While by definition the Catch Club was the smaller and infinitely more select of the two, the older organisation boasted a large number of aristocratic and upper-class supporters, well over 200 out of a total membership listing in excess of 2500 issued in 1765. Among the names listed we find a number of prominent members of the Catch Club, including the Earl of Sandwich, the Duke of Queens bury, the Duke of Bedford, and the Earl of Exeter. While the Society offered no prizes for composition (although it did provide backing for the English manufacture of gut strings, a commodity largely imported from Italy at the time), the membership includes a number of musicians. Notable from the viewpoint of our present interest are the names of Thomas Arne, one of the first “privileged” (or professional) members of the Catch Club, and Luffman Atterbury, winner of five Catch Club medals, but who may have joined the Society of Arts as a carpenter, his trade by training. Moving on to a new membership list prepared in 1770, Atterbury is no longer listed, but Arne’s name is still there and has been joined by those of two more composers who feature prominently in the early days of the Catch Club, George Berg and Benjamin Cooke.
The significant patriotic implications of the concept and aims of the Society of Arts (and by analogy the Catch Club) have been discussed, but how far they extended to overt nationalism is open to question. In 1765 one of the Society’s noble members, the Duke of Bedford, could be found opposing a Bill that would have imposed high import duties on Italian silks. The Society was also sufficiently pragmatic to employ two Italians as instructors when setting up the gut string project noted above. Analysis of the repertoire included by Warren during the early years of the Catch Club suggests that far from pursuing an exclusively nationalistic agenda, the club welcomed compositions by immigrant composers. During the 1760s no less than 15% of the works included in his collection were by foreign-born composers, mostly Italians who frequently set both glees and catches in their native tongue.
The Expansion of a Catch and Glee Club Culture
While the exact significance of the areas of common ground shared between the Catch Club and the Society of Arts is open to debate, there is in fact no need to seek specific impetus for the formation of niche clubs during this period. An increasingly urbanised Georgian England witnessed a huge upsurge in the formation of clubs and societies that not only covered a wide spectrum of special interests, but also encompassed every strata of society. It is a phenomenon widely commented upon in the journals and accounts of foreign visitors to Britain, many of who expressed astonishment at the popularity and diversity of the club life they encountered. The observations of the French Academician M. Grosley on London club life during a tour made in 1765 are not only typical, but might well have been offered up by a member of the Catch Club itself as an explanation for its existence. “They [the clubs] are held amongst friends, who, having contracted an intimacy in their early days, and experienced each other’s fidelity, are united in a conformity of tastes, schemes of life, and way of thinking”. He also points to the independency of such societies, which, he writes, “acknowledge no laws but those they have laid themselves”. “Strangers, and Frenchmen above all”, noted Grossly, “are excluded from these assemblies, without particular recommendation: and then they meet with all that respect and easy reception, so much preferable to ceremony and compliments”.
Given the vibrancy of club and society life, it is hardly surprising to find that in the years following the establishment of the Catch Club numerous imitators sprang up in London. What is rather more surprising is the number of clubs that mushroomed throughout the provinces. The full extent to which they did so has yet to be established, but it is becoming increasingly clear that by the 1780s few larger cities and towns lacked their own catch club. Scarcely any in either London or the provinces aspired to emulate either the distinction of membership or purist rules of their exemplar, particularly those outside London, where membership concentrating exclusively on elite membership was obviously impractical.
Among the first and more interesting clubs to be established in the capital in the wake of the Catch Club was the Anacreontic Society, founded in 1766 under the presidency of the solicitor Ralph Tomlinson. While Tomlinson was, in the words of R.J.S. Stevens, “very much a gentleman”, the Anacreontic Society was founded on a bourgeois membership consisting mostly of bankers and merchants. While no members’ lists or rules are known to have survived, rules of admission appear to have been fairly lax. In December 1773 John Marsh, then a young attorney in Chancery, was taken by a friend to an Anacreontic Society meeting at the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill (the Society later moved to more spacious accommodation available at the Thatched House Tavern). He records that he “was readily accepted” and invited to play with the leader before sitting down to supper with a large gathering. Marsh’s inclusion as a performer introduces a fundamental difference between the Anacreontic Society and its distinguished forbear - the incorporation of instrumental music. The format of an instrumental prelude to supper being followed by a second half devoted to the singing of part songs was one not apparently widely emulated by London clubs, but it did provide a blueprint for a significant number of those formed in the provinces.
If the participation of a raw amateur violinist like the youthful Marsh suggests a low quality of performance at this time, the list of vocal performers mentioned by Stevens does not. Stevens, who as a young man regularly attended meetings during the 1770s, records that at various times one would have encountered such eminent figures as Benjamin Cooke, Samuel Webbe, [Stephen?] Paxton, John Danby, William Knyvett, and many others. His account of proceedings at the Anacreontic Society is worth repeating as being of typical of a glee club evening: “At ten o’clock the Instrumental Concert ended, when we retired to the Supper rooms. After Supper, having sung Non nobis Domine we returned to the Concert Room, which in the meantime had been differently arranged. The President, then took his seat in the centre of the elevated table, at the upper end of the room, supported on each side, by the various Vocal performers. After the Anacreontic Song had been sung, in the chorus of the last verse of which all the Members, Visitors, and Performers joined ... we were entertained by the performance of various celebrated Catches, Glees, Songs, Duettos, and other Vocal, with some Rhetorical compositions, till twelve o’clock”.
The departure of the President from his chair at midnight by no means ended what was already a long evening that had started at seven. It was at this point members apparently let their hair down. Stevens, who throughout his writings betrays a tendency to a prim rectitude that one suspects at times borders on the hypocritical, was horrified by a descent into proceedings that “were very disgraceful to the Society; as the greatest levity, and vulgar obscenity, generally prevailed. Improper Songs, and vicious compositions were performed without any shame whatever”. By coincidence, it was the refusal to forgo such bawdiness that led to the demise of the Anacreontic Society. In 1794 members were so angered at being restrained from singing risqué humorous pieces during a visit to the Society by the Duchess of Devonshire that a substantial number resigned, causing it to be disbanded.
Questions of propriety were a constant issue. As early as 1771 The Monthly Review praised the contents of The Songsters Companion for including “none of those indecent, ribaldry pieces... by which other collections have been disgraced”. Such criticisms became increasingly strident during the last two decades of the century. William Jackson of Exeter, one of several composers to return to the use of the rubric “madrigal” for his part songs, was particularly scathing. In an epistolary essay on the catch published in 1795, Jackson launched into a form “not judged perfect, if the result be not the rankest indecency”, later mounting a transparently veiled attack on an unnamed “club composed of some of the finest people in the kingdom, who meet professedly to hear this species of composition: they cultivate and encourage it with premiums. To obtain which, many composers, who ought to be above such nonsense, become candidates, and produce such things”.
As the reaction of the members of the Anacreontic Society implies the high moral stance of those such as Jackson was by no means universal. The evidence in fact suggests that most clubs, provincial as well as those in the capital, viewed their evening’s entertainment as being in two quite separate parts: a formal meeting held under the auspices of the president, after which those who wished to do so carried on into the early hours of the morning singing and drinking. In his days as a young married man John Marsh tells us that he became something of “a rake”, often happily convialising among the “jolly company” of the Salisbury Catch Club until nearly three in the morning. Such frivolity would have been welcomed by the irascible Charles Dibdin, who on a visit to a catch club in Bath in September 1787 found the “fashionable gravity” of the proceedings “beyond credibility”. “That a meeting”, Dibdin fulminates, “professedly convivial should apparently be held without mirth, is a kind of existence without a soul - a mental death - but it may be reconciled by saying that it is a refinement on politeness”. The club to which Dibdin made such an uncongenial visit is likely to have been the Bath Harmonic Society, one of the few outside London to boast a substantial representation from the nobility, among them the Duke of York, Prince Frederick of Orange, the Marquis of Lansdown, and the Marquis of Bath. Dibdin’s experience appears to be supported by the rules of the Society as published in 1799, Rule I uncompromisingly stating: “This Society is established for the PROMOTION OF HARMONY...; in order to preserve which, no POLITICAL DISCUSSION shall be suffered to take place, nor shall any INDECENT SONG or SENTIMENT be permitted to be sung or spoken on any account”.
By 1799 the Bath Harmonic Society was a well-patronised society, boasting a membership list of 276 who paid an annual membership fee of one guinea. Membership, restricted to noblemen, gentlemen, and professionals who resided in or near Bath, was gained by means of ballot after being proposed by an existing member at the previous meeting. Objection to membership was made by the comparatively recently introduced system of blackballing, members placing a black rather than white ball in the ballot to signify their opposition to candidature. In Bath a proportion of one black ball to two white was sufficient to ensure the rejection of a potential member, a significantly higher ratio than that to be found in the rules of Glee Club, whose nominees failed only on the production of two black balls out of a minimum of thirteen, the quorum necessary to conduct an election.
The Glee Club was one of the last major clubs to be established in London during the eighteenth century. It had its origins in private meetings started in December 1783 at the home of Robert Smith, a former St. Paul’s Cathedral choirboy and a subscriber to the Academy of Ancient Music. Prominent among the amateur and professional friends who became involved was Dr. Thomas Bever, one of the directors of the Concert of Antient Music and a connoisseur collector of old music whose rare editions were frequently used at meetings where the repertoire included motets and madrigals in addition to the expected glees, canons and catches. In 1787 Smith and his friends took the decision to formalise proceedings under the name of the Glee Club, the society to be restricted to a subscribing membership of no more than thirty members. The founders list of thirteen underlines the strong connections between the Glee Club and the AAM. In addition to Smith himself, the names of Bever, the Rev. Josiah Hinckes, John Roberts, Charles Wright, the Vice-president and Theodore Aylward, Professor of Music at Gresham College, also appear on a listing of AAM members wishing to renew membership for the 1785/6 season. Unfortunately, no records of the repertoire performed by the Glee Club appear to have survived, but such circumstantial evidence and the usage of Bever’s collection suggests that it may have been more interested in “old” music than appears to have been the case with the Catch Club.
The Glee Club, which eventually settled on holding its meetings at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, appears to have neither courted nor claimed significant aristocratic membership, relying rather on gentleman enthusiasts. The list of those who subscribed from its inception in 1787 up until 1824 includes only three peers: Lord Rancliffe, who was not a peer when he joined in 1795, Lord Newark (a member from 1810-1815), and Lord Hawke, who joined in 1822. Notwithstanding the humbler constitution of its membership, the Glee Club did not come cheap at eight guineas for the ten meetings held annually between December and April. In addition new candidates also had to find a three-guinea admission fee to cover the cost of books and “other expenses”. In February 1801 John Marsh, who was neither poor nor mean, declined an invitation to attend as a guest of Samuel Arnold, another founder member, when he discovered that “the expense of dinner etc. was raised to 15s each”, which he considered “rather too much for a single afternoon’s entertainment”.
All this was indeed a far cry from the open membership of the provincial clubs to which Marsh was accustomed. In Canterbury, where a weekly Catch Club had been founded in 1779, a membership of around 60 paid no annual subscription, being admitted to meetings held at the King’s Head for sixpence, an entry fee that also included an unlimited quantity of pipes, tobacco and beer. Not surprisingly, such a cheap evening’s entertainment attracted many of the “lower kind of tradesmen”, whose pipe smoking in the low-ceilinged room caused such a fug that it “appear’d as if we were all in a fog”. Some years earlier Marsh had found a well-established catch club in Salisbury when he moved to Salisbury in 1776. Meeting fortnightly at the Spread Eagle inn, it was soon joined by a rival set up by the fractious Joseph Corfe (later to become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and himself a glee composer), who had fallen out with the original club. A further impetus for the establishment of a new club, deliberately set up on a smaller scale, was that the original now had so many members “that it frequently became disagreable”. The two clubs continued to meet on alternate Tuesdays throughout the winter for some years, both apparently attracting a substantial membership, remarkable testimony to the popularity of the catch club culture in a city of under 7,000 inhabitants. Marsh does not give details of the rules of the club set up by Corfe, but he does tell us that the Old Catch Club, as it became known, was organised along lines similar to those at Canterbury, although in Salisbury members paid a quarterly subscription of 7/6d rather than an admission fee. This covered the cost of “the room, fire, candles, bread, cheese & porter at supper, pipes and tobacco (w’ch were never used ‘till after supper)”.
In Salisbury a Catch Club evening followed a format similar to that of Anacreontic Society meetings as outlined earlier. A long evening started at around six with instrumental music, for which professionals were employed, before breaking for a supper interval. Once the table had been cleared the president took his place for the second part of the evening, when catches, glees and an occasional song were sung until the members finally dispersed sometime between 11 and 12. In Canterbury meetings took a course closer to that of a concert. There was no supper break, while the glees, catches and songs were interspersed with instrumental music. Once the concert was over, however, most members stayed on until up to midnight or later to continue singing. When Marsh settled in Chichester in 1787 he found no catch club in the city. One of his first actions was to form one, modifying his experiences of those in Salisbury and Canterbury to suit his rather more gentlemanly ideas. Rules were more stringent, with members being fined for not attending or making a late appearance. Hired instrumentalists who played in the earlier part of the evening were sent on their way after being invited to join members at a supper of oysters and “Welch rabbits”. Marsh also introduced a rule that membership was restricted to those capable of joining in the singing of a glee or catch, although they were waived on at least one occasion when a Colonel Jones was admitted after singing a song “the words of which were not more chaste in themselves than his manner of singing them” on the grounds that he was “a convivial man... on intimate terms with other members”.
Turning from the unchaste Colonel Jones’s of the catch club world, what standard of singing might we have expected to encounter at an eighteenth century catch club? Considerable evidence suggests that members expected and frequently heard performances of high quality. Both the Catch Club and the Glee Club ensured that by inviting top-ranking professional singers to become honorary members they would hear some of the best singing available, while the clubs in the provincial cities associated with John Marsh drew largely on leading members of cathedral choirs, some of them known to be singers of high repute. Members of the Catch Club expected to hear words clearly enunciated, a potential snare for foreigners like poor Felice Guardian, who apparently frequently returned home inebriated after falling foul of the (unwritten) rule that mispronunciation of texts resulted in the penalty of being made to drink a half-pint bumper of wine. Singers, both professional and those amateurs called upon to sing, were also expected to embellish their parts when singing glees. The William Gardiner passage quoted above also makes clear that ornamentation was added to glees. Having been called upon to take part in a glee and chosen Charles Knyvett, Thomas Greatorex and Thomas Vaughan, three of the finest singers of the day, to join him, Gardiner recalls being “pretty alert, or I should have had my heels tripped up by the tasteful liberties they took in performing it”. Poor performances at the Catch Club are said to have been greeted by Lord Sandwich with the reproof “Very bad indeed, gentlemen”. The list of honorary members of the Glee Club also indicates expectations of a high standard of performance. From its inception the club was able to draw on the considerable talents of men such as both Samuel Webbes, the elder of whom also acted as librarian, John Wall Calcott, the alto John Dyne, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Samuel Harrison, one of London’s leading tenors, and the great bass James Bartleman were all involved with the club from in its inception. Israel Gore, also a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and a singer at the Canterbury Catch Club during Marsh’s time there, was an early addition to their numbers. Other prestigious names followed, although they were unable to prevent R. J. S. Stevens finding some of the glees he heard on a visit to the club in 1797 to be “very indifferently” performed. In 1799 the Bath Harmonic Society maintained a group of eight professional singers in addition to nine honorary professional members, four of them boy trebles, the remainder instrumentalists. The following year John Marsh was introduced as a visitor, noting that although the glees were “very accurately done”, the style was not as good as he expected “as they sung rather too loud & in too boisterous a manner”. Such a comment underlines a fundamental aspect of catch club culture. While the convivial side of membership obviously formed a considerable attraction, auditors (pace Dibdin!) also expected the music they heard would be performed with care and a certain refinement, demands that extended beyond the top London clubs.
Such qualities appear to have been best achieved by the use of adult male voices, with altos taking the top line. There is also evidence that catches and glees were not only intended by their composers to be sung one voice per part, but invariably were in performance (an important distinction when dealing with an age less purist than our own). The introduction of the glee with chorus shows composers clearly marking the latter “tutti” to distinguish such passages from solos, while John Marsh scornfully dismissed an offer by Canterbury Cathedral organist Samuel Porter to provide him with three or more boys to sing upper parts, telling Porter “that as it was for a glee not a chorus I that wanted them, one or at most two would be sufficient”. The issue of piano accompaniment of glees was rather more contentious. With very few exceptions the glees and catches published in the Warren Collection are a cappella works and there is no evidence that the works performed at the Catch Club were presented in any other way. Both Stevens and Marsh make a number of references to performances of glees employing keyboard accompaniment, the former recalling Thomas Arne accompanying glees on the harpsichord at the Madrigal Society as early as 1773, while Marsh himself accompanied “some glees” on a visit to the Nottingham Catch Club in September 1796. Such observations must, however, be treated cautiously. As a composer Stevens was in some ways atypical of the eighteenth century, one of a relatively small number of composers to write glees with choruses and written keyboard accompaniments. Moreover a number of the instances recorded by Marsh took place in private rather than club surroundings, a likelihood increased by the growing popularity of the piano in the home.
The popularity and domestication of the glee ultimately emasculated the form. As composers increasingly sought to capitalise on new and less demanding markets for their compositions, so the thoroughly professional part-writing of composers like Samuel Webbe senior was replaced by works in which simple chordal harmony was geared to the politeness of the salon rather than the demanding ambience of the catch club. Yet at the height of its popularity the catch club played a unique role in English musical life, the huge gulf between the status of the aristocratic Catch Club and the plebeian Canterbury Catch Club striking proof that the culture of the clubs extended across every branch of male society.
The foregoing is a revised version of an article that originally appeared in the journal Early Music.
Further information and details concerning Brian Robins' book, Catch and Glee Culture in Eighteenth-Century England, Boydell & Brewer, 2006 can be found at www.earlymusicworld.com.
Among others studies, Brian Robins has also published The John Marsh Journals, The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752-1828), Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant, NJ, 1998.