Jeremy specialises in English popular and dance music from 1550 to 1750, and also has a particular interest in the illustration of music and social dance over the centuries.

Hogarth

Lecture with digital slides and high quality recorded music

Hogarth and the Performing Arts: Musical and Cultural Contrasts in 18th Century London

'My picture was my stage and men and women my actors' wrote William Hogarth near the end of his life; he loved the theatre, yet the theatrical and artistic taste of high society frequently exasperated him. The lecture shows how Hogarth enjoyed contrasting the world of Italian opera, pantomime and French dancing masters with the street life of impoverished ballad singers, solo fiddlers, booth theatres and other entertainments, and how he used these contrasts to embellish and reinforce his moral messages.

The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery

More than 70 of Hogarth's works include some kind of musical reference, and the lecture examines his use of musical detail; often he uses low-class street musicians playing the fiddle, bagpipe and other instruments to 'blow a raspberry', both literally and metaphorically, at the targets of his moral satires. The lecture concludes with an analysis of his print 'The Enraged Musician', in which the noise of street musicians and vendors provoke the wrath of an Italian virtuoso violinist as he tries to practise.

Writing

The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
Link

Recordings

Music in England in the time of Hogarth (compilation including the Broadside Band, with essay by Jeremy Barlow), Harmonia Mundi (HMUK 986002).