[00:00:01] Speaker A: Charles Ignatius Sancho was an abolitionist, musician, writer, and the first british man of african descent to vote in a general election.
Though Sancho's name is well known to literary and art historians, his music is only beginning to get the attention it deserves in this episode of Solan era. Sancho's songbook we're thrilled to shine a bright light on Sancho's legacy.
While various aspects of Sancho's biography have been called into question, he described himself as having been born in Africa.
He spent his early years as a servant in Greenwich, England, where he attracted the attention of John Montague, the second Duke of Montague, who enabled his education in literature, history and music.
By the 1760s, Sancho was employed as valet to the late Duke of Montagu's son in law and as the younger Montagu's valet. Sancho travelled throughout England and Scotland, encountering and befriending individuals from every walk of life, from the royal family and other nobles to leading artists, writers, booksellers and thinkers, as well as fellow servants.
The 1760s were a particularly important decade for Sancho. His first two books of surviving music were published, and he enjoyed a close connection to leading actors and theater impresarios like David Garrick of London's famous Drury Lane theatre.
Sancho's portrait was painted by Thomas Gainsborough at Bath in 1768, and he famously wrote to the influential novelist Lawrence Stern, entreating him to oppose slavery in his published works, which Sterne did.
In 1774, the Duke of Montague helped Sancho establish a grocery shop adjacent to Sancho's own house at 20 Charles street in Westminster.
As an independent, property owning male head of household, Sancho was able to vote in parliamentary elections in 1774 and 1780.
Sancho was also a family man. He married caribbean born Anne Osborne and had several children.
Together with one of her sons, William Sancho, Ann extended her husbands legacy by transforming the grocery into a bookseller shop that was thought to be the first black publisher in the western world.
Four books of music by Ignatius Sancho survive a book of minuets and other dances, a collection of six songs, a publication of cotillions and a book of twelve country dances.
Yet for many musicians as well as music lovers, Sancho is a name that's new to them. I spoke with countertenor Reggie mobley about how Sancho first came on his radar, what Sancho's music means to him, and how restoring Sancho's legacy offers a more inclusive view of 18th century music and culture.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So a really good friend of mine, Henry Lepodinski, historical keyboardist, he and I used to do recitals together around the US, 300 years or 250 years of the black diaspora in classical music. So we perform concerts of Burleigh and William Grant, still Florence Price, as well as Charlie Saint Georges, Joseph Boulogne and Ignacio Sancho. And so he was my introduction to Sancho with a couple of songs. First of all, I was very shocked to find that this is, you know, an early 18th century composer who was a black man was just shocking in and of itself. But the music itself also just really charmed me. And at that point forward, I was pretty much gung ho about singing him every chance I could. And the more I learned about Sancho, the more I fell in love with who this man was and everything surrounding him. So I became, as much as I could, a standard bearer for the man.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Sancho becomes a kind of window into black life in Britain in mid to late 18th century. And, you know, he's just one individual.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: But he's one individual of many, you.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Know, and how do we think about.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Representation and what traces of a much.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Wider world and culture?
[00:04:37] Speaker B: He's a massive lightning rod for that.
[00:04:40] Speaker D: I mean.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I mean, behind Sancho, I mean, you have job Solomon, you have equiano, you have Josephimity. Like, there's so many people. But there was at this time, in the mid, early 18th century, there was no woman, John Montague, who kind of saw that there was a brilliance. There was just. There was an equal intelligence in all men, regardless of color. And he was basically hellbound to prove that any black man could be just as. Just as learned, just as intel is just as intelligent, is just as clever, is the same as any man with white skin. And so he kind of had this circle around him of what became the.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: You know, the black intelligence.
[00:05:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: There was a black british elite that existed at that time, and Sancho was definitely among them. And he spread far beyond that, of course, you know, as he survived John Montague. But he also, you know, was a shopkeeper. He was a man of letters. Like he knew David Garrick. He was associated with the Shakespeare society. I mean, this was a man whom everyone knew. I mean, I've performed him at concerts, and people come up to me who had nothing to do with music. They were like, you know, someone who's actually ran an art gallery. And she said, she's like, well, that's such that Sancho wrote music. Like, I've known him in the art world because of the games we're playing.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: To play this music that is so fun, so exciting, so energetic. And for many people to say, oh, well, this is someone that looks like me. This is. And not just someone that looks like me who wrote this now, but someone who existed, you know, several hundred years ago, you know, at a time where we. Where we forget that not every composer was a white man in a wig.
And I think that's. That's been the big thing for me is that is to bring forward something kind of restorative to show that people of color, queer people, and also, you know, diverse genders, women composers. I mean, we've always been a part of music, not just classical music, but music in general. And that it's important that we see that there is proof and that there.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: Is.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Belonging, that we are always a part of this, that we're not newcomers to classical music or even early music, but that we've always had a seat at the table. It's just someone else is sitting in it. And Sancho, to me, is the best foot forward just because of who he was and what he's done to make the case that there is more to life, there's more to music than just Bach and Mozart.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: In addition to my conversation with Reggie, I spoke with keyboard player and musicologist Rebecca Cypes, whose recent performances, recordings, and research projects celebrate Sancho and provide additional context for his rich legacy. Well also hear from doctor Nicole Aljo in this episode. Nicole is the editor for a new edition of Sancho's letters and one of the driving forces behind Mapping Black London, a digital humanities project.
But first, let's begin by listening to some of Sancho's own music in this new recording, produced especially for Solanira, featuring bass baritone Jonathan Woody with Les de.
[00:08:00] Speaker E: Lys.
[00:08:16] Speaker D: Is the treasure I enjoy my utmost care still and still despair and winter from roach would say take I be, take I see, take I think but since reaches cannot see waters from the gloomy grave why should I ever see?
Give me free while I live jealous, widely sweeping joys I like cheer, beauty, heart and presence here.
[00:10:38] Speaker F: I'm Nicole N. Aljo. I am professor of English and Africana studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Broadly speaking, my work focuses on 18th and 19th century black writing, and writing about black folks.
I mean, there's not a lot actually written by black people, so it's mostly, you know, stuff that's written about them.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Fabulous. Your work has been so fascinating and.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Interesting and thanks so much.
[00:11:03] Speaker F: I mean, it's just a pleasure to talk about Sancho.
You know, we all refer to ourselves, folks who focus on Sancho as sanchoinettas. Which is he.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: How lovely.
[00:11:14] Speaker F: Yes, he referred to his family in that way, all of his kids. But as you say, he's had such an incredibly, you know, intriguing life. And then we have just those wonderful letters, which are very unusual for an 18th century person, you know, not only in terms of black person, but also someone of his stature, you know, somebody who was a servant but also a shopkeeper.
[00:11:36] Speaker D: Right.
[00:11:36] Speaker F: Those letters are very hard to come by. He was famous after 1776 when a letter that he had written to the famous novelist Lawrence Stern was published. And then it showed up in newspapers all over the place. So he became this kind of black man of letters that folks would know about. Sancho is just this amazing polymath in that when you look at his letters closely, I mean, he's drawing on, he's drawing on pope, he's drawing on Milton, he's drawing on sermons that he's reading, but that he's citing, right, these things. And it's just peppered. Right. All throughout these letters. And so this affinity that he has between moving between different kinds of disciplines is just really, really incredibly fascinating. And so it makes sense that it shows up in the music as well, that the music would not just be about music, that it would also be about these other things that he's interested in. Definitely somebody who's interested in aesthetics. Right? So his experience with Garrick, but also his experience going to bath on a regular basis, right. And sitting for the famous portrait with Gainsborough, I mean, all of that, he's also, I mean, it sounds like he's really circulating in these really these groups of people who like artists and musicians and that kind of thing. I mean, he knows nolikins and he knows Samuel Johnson, and, you know, he's hanging out, you know, and he knows these people and he's talking with them. We had the just amazing opportunity to meet the archivist for the descendants of the Montagues. So the Montagues were the noble family that Sancho worked for. The fascinating thing we found, we discovered, is that a lot of these noble families, they have their own archives. So he has this massive archive, and it's his job basically to go through and catalog all this material. And so Sanchez Sancho worked for them. So he has all of this really interesting documentation about Sancho's experiences with the Montagues. One of the most fascinating is a little document about his room in Windsor Castle. So Montague worked with the king and so would have to go to Windsor Castle. And it's not like an overnight thing, right? You're there for a couple days. And as his valet, which is the highest ranking male member of the, usually of the household, he would have to stay. He had his own room. And there's this lovely kind of receipt that details the furniture that's in Mister Sancho's room. And what's fascinating there is that he's identified as Mister Sancho. And not just Sancho or the black man accompanying, or the black boy accompanying Montague. He's Mister Sancho. So identified with that honorific, which I think is just super.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: Hello, Rebecca. It is so great to have the opportunity to talk with you on salon era.
[00:14:35] Speaker G: Thank you so much, Deborah. I'm delighted to be here during the.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Pandemic you were recording and completing, or is it starting? I'm not sure. Some really fascinating work on Charles Ignatius Sancho. And I wonder what the original genesis of that was and where the project is for you right now.
[00:14:56] Speaker G: Sure, yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share some of this.
I have a long standing collaboration with soprano Sonia Hedlam. I've been really blessed to, to work with her for many years.
And the repertoire that we had been exploring before 2020 was repertoire associated with elite white women, especially salon hostesses. And we had an opportunity during the pandemic to record what would have been a midtown concert for the Gotham early music scene, but was in fact put online just like every other concert during the pandemic.
Known about these songs by Ignatius Sancho for some time, but hadn't really had an opportunity to explore them and to perform them. And that sort of opened up a rabbit hole of research and performance projects that ultimately have resulted in a recording project that's now in progress, including some new commissions that are really related to Sancho. We've done a lot of research together with some faculty from Rutgers University and from elsewhere, about the arts in Sancho's worldview and his practice from dance to literature to music. And so it's been quite a journey over the past several years. And Sonia has really been a driving force, a true partner in all of this and in sort of helping me think about Sancho's world. And, yeah, it's just been a wonderful collaboration. Sancho's music is characteristic of the english style from the 1760s, seventies, eighties, in that his songs are continuous songs. And what that means is that he writes out the bass line and he gives figured bass, but he's not really creating an idiomatic treble part or a right hand part for the keyboardist. Instead, the keyboardist sort of oscillates between doubling the voice line or getting out of the way of the voice line or supplementing the voice line with some counter melody and figuration, Sancho's songs would have been used in elite circles.
And, in fact, his relationship with the Montague family was a musical one, as well as sort of one of friendship and mutual support and an intellectual exchange. They had frequent concerts in their homes, and so he was also kind of exposed to a lot of musical activity of London, a kind of elite musical circle, professional, professional musicians and elite amateurs in London.
But his songs were published, so that means that they would have been used in a variety of contexts, and I think you can see traces of that even in the printed scores. So, for example, the score of the complaint, the opening song in Sancho's song collection, which was probably published 1769 or maybe slightly thereafter, that score includes dynamic markings, and it's not clear to me that by 1769, Sancho would have had access to a piano. We know that the Duchess of Montague, for example, got her square piano in 1777. There's a little piece of trivia. But what that suggests is that the song may also have been played by melody instruments other than keyboards.
[00:18:28] Speaker F: Right.
[00:18:28] Speaker G: So it could have been adapted. And, you know, he I think they should be considered part of a repertoire of very flexible songs, songs with a flexible instrumentation that could have been real at the keyboard, but they could also have been realized by, you know, violinists, oboists, right. Flutists, and played in ensembles. And that could have taken place in the home. It could even have taken place in settings like Vauxhall Gardens, where there was a very lively musical scene.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Absolutely. The next pieces that we're going to listen to are actually from the book of published minuets. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about what is contained in that book, and, you know, how this kind of flexible, potentially flexible approach to understanding the notation and interpreting what is on the page gives us different sounds or different sound worlds that we can kind of not only imagine, but perhaps reconstruct on various levels.
[00:19:33] Speaker G: Yeah, certainly. So there are four books of instrumental dance pieces, and I think all four of them contain minuets, among other dance genres, country dances, cotillions. First of all, Sancho's dance music needs to be considered in the broader context of instrumental dance music that was being published. It was flying off the presses in the 1760s, seventies, eighties.
It was used everywhere. And, you know, some of the volumes were modest little volumes that were suited to the keyboard and would have been played by, usually by women at home, you know, think of, like, scenes from Jane Austen film adaptations where you have one of the girls playing. Playing a minuet and everybody dancing in the parlor at home. But they would also have been used in public dances, public balls, which would have taken place in London, in Bath, in kind of all of the fashionable cities. There were just reams of these things flying off the press. Some of them, you know, contain 400 pages worth of dances. And so those are clearly intended for professional musicians who just need, you know, a lot of material.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like a real book or a jazz fake book, for sure. And so it's. It's up to the professional musicians who execute those dances, you know, and play them for these public balls to be able to figure out how to. How to make them whole pieces of music. So they could add a bass line, they could add harmony lines. They could, you know, play the treble line a couple of times through. But when the dance needs to continue, they play variations, they play doubles. They play more doubles, like, they just sort of keep varying this to keep it interesting, I think, both for themselves and for the audience. Right. They would get bored if they just started playing. They continued playing the same thing, you know, ad nauseam. So Sancho's music, I think, needs to be read in that context. And this is an argument that I've put forward in an article recently. So there's a lot of discussion about Sancho's published letters, the letters that his friends kind of edited and collected and published in the 1782 after his death, but which he may originally have intended for publication. And I think the same question about orality and literacy. How do you take a kind of skeletal framework of music and interpret it through a literary lens, a musical literary lens? That same question applies to his music. So there are these moments in Sancho's dance books, the books of minuets, cotillions, and country dances, where he actually deviates from this standard practice of just writing the skeletal fragmentary. Yeah, just the melodies. He does a couple of things that are far more specific and sort of show him really engaging with the medium of print in ways that are. That are, I think, very unusual for the genre of the instrumental dance. So some of those include really detailed articulation markings or dynamic markings or expressive markings, you know, like, play this with expression or play this, you know, in a particular character. That's not common for instrumental dance music of this time, because the professional musicians using those books would have known what to do. They didn't need the written instruction. And so I think we see kind of flashes of this really thoughtful care that he's taking over the medium of print.
And we think that he had a lot to do with the production of the printed editions because he was sort of overseeing the publications, apparently by himself. One other way that he.
That he leans into the medium of print is by notating horn parts, where most all, nearly all english printed dance music was not notating horn parts. Many black musicians, including servants and enslaved blacks in London and even in the colonial and early United States, learned to play the french horn. It was a practice that was associated with black musicians in particular.
And there are some portraits and some kind of comedic newspaper clips that point this out, and even descriptions of all black balls dances where french horns were used. So when Sancho includes horn parts in five of his minuets, I think that he's actually affiliating himself with this person. Practice of black musicians learning to play the french horn, and he's sort of inscribing that into his printed scores for.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: What might otherwise be thought of as kind of obviously domestic music or obviously simple music. Actually, to have written out the horn parts and included them in a popular idiom publication is quite remarkable. And so I really thank you for making that point. It's fabulous.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:52] Speaker G: And I think it does attest to also the fact that there were often black servants or enslaved blacks in homes who were playing these instruments as part of their kind of daily routine, whether for ceremonies or for the hunt or to accompany dance music that was happening in the home. So there is this continuum of kind of private to public. Right. And everything in between where various types of instrument combinations would have been used. But the specificity with which he refers to the french horn, I think, suggests an affiliation with a wider black community of musicians who did not have the opportunity to notate and publish their own music, for the most part.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: So let's listen now to a couple of brand new performances recorded by Les Dailies this past March.
Several minuets from Sancho's collection.
[00:27:56] Speaker D: Sa sa.
[00:29:54] Speaker E: This is such an exciting time for Les de Lys and Solan era. Les de Lys is in the midst of its 15th anniversary season, and we are coming to the conclusion of our fourth season of Solania.
Thanks so much for being a part of our global community of music lovers as a listener to Solan era. With your support, we can continue to collaborate with such engaging guests from across the country and around the world. You can support Solanira by becoming a
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Thanks again for supporting Lady Lys and Solania by listening and subscribing to this series. Now let's continue our conversation about Sancho and his connections to London's theatre world with Rebecca Cybus.
[00:30:49] Speaker C: Welcome back, Rebecca.
You mentioned a few minutes ago how Sancho had access to all of these different levels of society, you know, through his affiliation with the Montagues and other elements of the arts throughout London. One of the interesting things to me when I first started looking at Sancho's surviving published music is how the collection of songs includes many either tributes to Shakespeare or even settings of shakespearean texts. And it really brings together the musical world with the theatrical world, with the literary world. And of course, there's this famous portrait of Sancho by Thomas Gainsborough, and you start to realize how these different social circles interact. And I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about Sancho's engagement with the theater world and how it's manifested in the song repertory that survives.
[00:31:53] Speaker G: We don't have a whole lot of detailed information about his own theatrical practice. The very spurious biographical sketch that was published together with his collection of letters posits a real engagement with theater.
It says that he tried famous roles for black men like Othello and Orinoco, but he wasn't successful in the theater because essentially of a speech defect.
That biographical sketch was called into question by brick and Carey many years ago already, and I think it's been shown even more to be really unreliable. But Sancho did have a relationship with some major players in the theater in 18th century London and clearly had an interest in it. So his letters even record times that he, he went to the theater.
He had a relationship, apparently a friendship with David Garrick, who was the manager of the Drury Lane Theater. And Garrick was known as a sort of primary advocate for the revival of Shakespeare's works. Garrick himself played various shakespearean roles. Garrick's work really ignited the kind of Shakespeare revival craze that gripped so much not only of London, but of Britain, and even extended to Britain's colonies. The song collection. It consists, unfortunately, only of six songs. I wish there were more. And yes, three of them engage with Shakespeare in some way. One, the opening song of the collection. The complaint is drawn from a little poem that's inserted into the play measure for measure, and two others are drawn from the kind of libretto for this wild event that David Garrick mounted at Stratford upon Avon in 1769. So that's sort of why we know that Sancho's songbook was published 1769 or slightly after, because it draws on the libretto for this big Shakespeare festival that Garrick mounted, the song sweetest bard, which is Garrick's ode to Shakespeare, sweetest bard that ever sung, addressing Shakespeare as the bard that that text had been used in. In more than one context before.
There is a setting by William Boyce in which it was also affiliated with the figure of Harlequin, right? This commedia dell'arte, a stock figure from the kind of comic, comic theater. And Harlequin was someone who always wore a black mask, very interestingly. And he started. Harlequin started to be associated with black people, not just that he was wearing a black mask, but that he was actually black and african. And so here's Sancho borrowing that text, sweetest bard writing a new melody for it, right? Setting it into a new song setting. And the songbook was published not under his name, but under the generic name of an african, right. So he's actually kind of asserting that black Africans have a stake in the reception of Shakespeare's legacy, the reinterpretation and reframing of Shakespeare's legacy, so much as he was a fan of the theater and was a friend of David Garrick. I think there's also a subtle critique whereby he's borrowing these texts, shakespearean texts, or texts that are kind of associated with Shakespeare and reframing them through the voice of an African. And that itself is a kind of subtle critique or a kind of reframing of Shakespeare's legacy.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: Fascinating.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Let's listen.
[00:36:22] Speaker H: Never sure. Did Witchington never show such wood? No.
For such wood, no smile. What pleasures ever come? College views and sister grace. Those are prejudice.
Bring the Lord and the flowers. Songs of triumph to your knees. Bring the glory of your past. He united all your past. He united all your past are united.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: One of the ideas that's so important and tantalizing to consider is that Sancho, his ideas, his writings, his music, didn't exist in a vacuum. Doctor Nicole Aljo has been one of the driving forces behind mapping Black London, an online interactive map that puts Sancho's life into a physical context.
Different layers of the map allow us to see and situate key locations for Sancho, his associates, other black Londoners, and much more. In our next segment, Nicole talks about the origins of mapping Black London, the revelations about black life that it has.
[00:38:37] Speaker F: Enabled, and future directions for the project northeastern purchased. I'm not quite sure the exact language, a college in London. And so then I had these colleagues in London, and one of them was working on a digital map of black people in London before World War two, because the idea in Britain is that people of color weren't really in England until the arrival of the Windrush and I think 1949, something like that. But relatively late. Yeah. So I saw what he was able to do with that digital project where he's mapping.
I saw what he had done, and I thought, you know, huh. I wonder if we could do this for the 18th century and kind of use Sancho's letters, too, as kind of like a database.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: What has been the most rewarding or perhaps surprising work, either relative to Sancho or relative to the mapping Black London project?
[00:39:37] Speaker F: So the most surprising thing has been just the number of black and brown people in 18th century London. So that was a surprise. You know, I knew we'd find Dido Bell, and I knew we'd find, you know, maybe one or two relatives of Sancho. We knew that Sancho's wife was born in London, but we didn't realize that she had an extended family, which, of course, she would have an extended family, right. That Sancho was writing to. And there mentioned in a lot of his letters that he's writing to other black people and writing about other black people. So Julia Soubiz, Charles Lincoln, who's another friend of his.
And according to the archivist for the Montague family, the Montagues, you know, supported a number of black men, not only in terms of education, but also they had them as servants as well.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Until this project, on some levels, what we knew about Sancho's biography was limited to the first couple of pages by Joseph Jekyll that introduce the published edition of Sancho's letters. And how does the mapping Black London project complicate and or reveal?
[00:40:58] Speaker F: Yeah, well, it reveals that in all likelihood, most of that biography is specious.
So, I mean, even Sancho, even Sancho himself says, right, in the letters, he says he was born in Africa, not on a slave ship. He had different kinds of experiences he talks about, and he's referenced as having this booming voice. And the letter. I'm sorry. The biography says that he had a stutter and wasn't able to perform.
And that just seems unimaginable when you see the letters and the kinds of things that he's saying and getting up to. I mean, maybe he did have a stutter, but then why would he be described as having a booming voice? Those two things don't really seem to go together.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: What I love about the mapping Black London project, the project makes clear that black people and voices permeate society at every level.
[00:41:59] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's been the most fascinating part, to see just the amazing connections that he has. The expectation was that black and brown people or enslaved people would be ghettoized in some way, that they'd all be in one place. But no, they're all across London. They're all across England. They're up in Scotland, they're in Wales. Every possible place you can imagine. We found black folks just astounding. Completely different perspective on 18th century, and they're at every level. So not just enslaved people. Right. So freed people, people who had been born free, you know, were mixed race, you know, maybe in, you know, say, Jamaica or Barbados. They're moving back and forth, you know, same with folks, you know, coming from Madras and Bengal over just really, just this incredibly rich, you know, portrait of this, you know, major metropolitan city, which, of course, right.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: And a lot of more mobility.
[00:43:01] Speaker F: Yes, yes.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Is mapping black London ongoing as a project or is it?
[00:43:07] Speaker F: Yes, it's ongoing and it's going to expand.
So last year we developed a connection with the London Metropolitan Archives. So they are the second largest archives in the entire UK. And they have so much stuff, they don't know what they have in their archives, so much. So we're in there looking at maps of London, looking through archival documents, and we actually found an illustration of the street that Sancho's shop is on. And so we developed this working relationship. So we worked closely with the London Metropolitan Archive to produce a lot of the research for their unforgotten lives exhibit that's currently up. So that exhibit covered black and brown and indigenous people in England and London from 1560 to 1860. And there are over 3000 documented instances of black and brown people in that data set. And so Ollie and I were thinking, in conjunction with the London Metropolitan Archives, it's like, well, there's a lot of stuff here and we could actually map more. So we are going to be doing that. So we are going to be mapping from 1560 up to pre World War two.
[00:44:43] Speaker D: SA.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: Welcome back, Rebecca. It's been really wonderful to have the opportunity to enjoy these performances with you and Sonia. What do you see the future directions being in terms of music and Sancho research?
[00:49:09] Speaker G: I think that it's wonderful, first of all, to see a number of groups who are engaging seriously with Sancho's music. In a sense, he's bearing a lot right now in terms of kind of 18th century repertoire. But if that opens the way to kind of further research on other black african composers from this period, and I think we're heading in a good direction. And because his music is so flexible, it's great to hear multiple interpretations and multiple different approaches. The ensemble that I direct, the Raritan players, does have a recording of Sancho's music coming out on the Centaur label.
And we are pairing Sancho's music with some new compositions by the wonderful New Jersey based composer Trevor Weston. What we've done is commissioned Trevor to set texts from Sancho's published letter as songs. And we have the songs now. We've premiered. Sonia and I have premiered two of them. Oh, yes. He wrote them for the english square piano. He's created these really beautiful compositions, which I think provide a wonderful counterpoint to Sancho's music.
And so the idea of sort of having Sancho on the recording, both as musical composer and as textual author, is really exciting and gratifying.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: We would love to know more. We would love for there to be more music and the role that not just arrangement and reimagining and reconstruction play, but also expanding the repertoire with contemporary compositions, potentially, that extend his legacy in various ways, including Jonathan Woody's sweet for string orchestra, inspired by Ignatius Sancho. Before we go, we have one more recording from you and Sonia, the Raritan players. And that is Sancho's song, the complaint. Could you introduce that for us?
[00:51:15] Speaker G: Sure.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:15] Speaker G: So, like I mentioned earlier, this is the first song in Sancho's songbook.
It's the only one that is through composed meaning. It has new music for every line of text.
The text is drawn from Shakespeare's play measure for measure. And it's a sort of moment in the play where someone is actually singing. It's a song where he actually notates dynamic markings, suggesting that maybe it could have been played by a string ensemble or by strings and winds. It's nice also in that it has these beautiful little counter melodies in the right hand or the treble part of the instrumental. The instrumental part. And so you'll kind of hear this really lovely dialogue between Sonia and between my right hand and. Yeah, it's just a charming, charming song.
[00:52:05] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Solanya. Rebecca and I look forward to enjoying the complaint.
[00:52:14] Speaker G: Thank you.
[00:52:32] Speaker H: Take a.
[00:52:33] Speaker D: Take.
[00:52:44] Speaker H: Take or take those lips away God, so sweetly, so sweetly, sweetly what was your.
And those eyes and those eyes that break of day lights that do mislead mislead alone let my kisses bring again seals of love, but feeling again seals of love.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: When talking with Reggie Mobley, we both lamented that relatively little of Sancho's music survives. Furthermore, the music that we do have, songs, minuets and country dances, struggles to fit into standard categories of art or concert music. So I asked Reggie how we might extend Sancho's legacy or find creative ways to bring it to a wider public.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: There's really only a handful of pieces that we have of his, and, you know, and we really only have his letters in his. In his own hands. So there isn't much, you know, there isn't like, literally Bachmann manuscripts falling out of, you know, out of crawl spaces, you know, and bird cages in every town in Poland. But the thing is, is that because of who he is and what he represents, even just hearing one or two of his songs is going to be new and revolutionary to someone in just about any audience. And so with what we have, I think it's important to just use a we have and play what we have, sing what we have, and also find ways to expand that. I mean, because the music that we have are basically songs for, you know, a few continual instruments. I mean, why not give him the same treatment as we've given Purcell and talus, you know, through the hands of Britten and von Williams and expanding things, Bach expanded Vivaldi, you know, why not see what hidden, you know, harmonies and. And what invention exists in the middle of just two lines, you know, in the way that so many other composers are treated? So why not find a composer or musician today who's willing to. To expand just a small galliarda reel into. Into a symphonic suite or an orchestral suite, you know, for period instruments are modern.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: Reggie has realized some of that work by facilitating the commission of a suite for strings after the works of Ignatius Sancho by composer and bass baritone Jonathan Woody. And Reggie regularly performs Sancho's music in concerts with orchestras such as the UK's Academy for Ancient Music and Boston's Handle and Hyde Society. Using a suite of Sancho's songs and dances expanded and arranged by Nicola Canzano, we close our episode with another of Sancho's songs, friendship, source of joy, and a short suite of country dances.
Sancho's dance music is so fun and infectious that I found myself wanting to know more about where these pieces might have first been heard and enjoyed. So I wrapped up my interview with Nicole by asking about this. It was funny when I found myself looking at mapping Black London, trying to think, like, where are the pubs? Where are the coffee houses where, you know that.
[00:57:25] Speaker F: I could imagine this sound of mirror. Yeah. Yeah. So we do have two pubs identified on that map. One of them is on the outskirts of London. So it's kind of on the road that you would take if you were coming from Bath or from north London. So it's kind of like the first stop and then the other one near Fleet street is where the second one is. It feels like he must have been there. You know, he's in London at the time, you know, after the announcement of the Mansfield decision in 1772, you know, that very famous decision that held that enslaved people brought to England could not be forced to return to the Caribbean. Right. So. And there's a lovely clip in the newspaper about a party that was held in one of the pubs where it was an all black party. And there were 200 black people that were at this party. And it seems, you know, makes sense if he's in London, you know, 1772, that maybe, you know, definitely. Absolutely.
One of the more vivid scenes in Patterson Joseph's novel. So he has this fabulous scene that takes place in a pub. And it's, you know, this is the first time Sancho has been around, you know, other people of color. I've heard him read it maybe three or four times. And every time I'm like, right there, you hear the music. And, of course, it helps that he's an actor. You get excited along with Sancho that for the first time he's in this place. The music is kind of, you know, getting in his body. And even though, you know, he has the beginnings of gout, he still kind of wants to get up and move around and all of that. And I can't help but think that those kinds of experiences definitely connected to his desire to write music that was not just for the elite. It's not just the cotillions and those kinds of things, but also write the country dances and that kind of thing.
[00:59:23] Speaker C: Thank you so much for your time.
[00:59:24] Speaker F: My pleasure. My absolute pleasure.
[00:59:27] Speaker A: Forward to sharing with you.
[00:59:29] Speaker F: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:59:30] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:59:31] Speaker F: Thank you so much.
[00:59:58] Speaker D: Our clarity our cash increase our cash increase we fought our name each carewave and rise and rise each day on the way let friendship cut in the.
[01:01:42] Speaker H: Fall.
[01:01:46] Speaker D: Cupid, no, cubinoid she.
[01:04:04] Speaker I: On June 17, we'll release the final episode of Solaniras fourth season, gilded Age Chicago. This episode is hosted by me, Hannah depriest, and focuses on two black american women who found artistic community in Chicago during the early 20th century, Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. Throughout the episode, we feature insights and remarkable performances from three black women who honor the legacy of price and bonds in every facet of their professional lives. Musicologist and pianist doctor Samantha Egay, soprano and educator doctor Christine Jobson and soprano Michelle Kennedy. We cannot wait to share Gilded Age Chicago with you on June 17.
[01:05:02] Speaker E: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Salon era. This episode was created by me, executive producer Deborah Nagy, associate producer Shelby Yalman, and Hannah da Priest, our scriptwriter and special projects manager.
This episode featured recorded performances of works by Charles Ignatius Sancho by the raritan players, featuring soprano Sonia Hedlam and keyboard player Rebecca Cypus, as well as Les Denise with bass baritone Jonathan Woody. We were grateful for the opportunity to talk with countertenor Reggie Mobley and doctors Rebecca Sipas and Nicole Aljo.
Support for Solanira comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Ohio Arts Council, and audience members like you Solaniras season sponsors are Deborah Malhamad, Tom and Marilyn McLaughlin, Greg Nosen and Brandon Rood, and Joseph Sopko and Betsy McIntyre. Special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Arthur Rotatore and Tara Fields.
A filmed version of this episode is available to Solan era members. Visit solanera.org where you can also get full performance details and learn more about the music and information shared in in this and any episode. Please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show.
