The Life, Correspondence and Music of Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho, by Thomas Gainsborough

By Bill Jamieson, Executive and Artistic Director of EMSI

Appropriately for Black History Month, our upcoming concert features the music of Ignatius Sancho, a Black English composer who was a contemporary of Handel.

Ignatius Sancho was an extraordinary figure in his time. Born into slavery and orphaned, he earned a prominent role in London society as a man of letters, composer and businessman. He was the first person of African descent to have written works published in England, only the second known to have voted in a parliamentary election and the first to have a published obituary appear in the press. A collection of his letters were published shortly after his death, yet  another honour unheard of for a Black man at the time. I don’t think it is overstating things to say that his life was, in some ways, a significant inflection point in the history of Black people in England.

Sancho, unsurprisingly, was opposed to slavery and had an influence on a budding abolitionist movement in two ways. Upon its later publication, his brief exchange of letters with Laurence Sterne — author of Tristram Shandy, in which Sancho congratulated Sterne on his portrayal of Black people in the novel and encouraged him to speak out against the institution of slavery — quickly became ubiquitous in English and American periodicals, and no doubt influenced popular opinions about the slave trade. Additionally, Sancho’s very presence, with his evident intellect, literacy and stature in the upper reaches of English society, must have had an impact on prevailing contemporary attitudes regarding the supposed inferiority of people of colour.

Summarizing his life briefly, Sancho, an enslaved orphan, was sent from the West Indies to England at two years of age. He was given to three unmarried sisters who raised him in their household as their servant. At the age of 11, his intellect and personality were noticed by a neighbour, John, Duke of Montagu, who gave him the tools to help him learn to read and write and likely encouraged what must have been a prodigious musical talent.

Not much else is known about his early life. There is little knowledge of his legal status, as no documents exist either confirming his legal status as a slave, nor his emancipation as a free man. What we do know is that, shortly after the duke’s death, he struck out to make his way in society with some help from the duke’s widow, daughter and son-in-law, and ultimately gained his freedom and independence, spending the last years of his life as a shop owner (thus granting him the right to vote).

Sancho’s position in history is well-documented. His posthumously published letters, starting sporadically at the age of 39, and increasing in number (with three quarters of them coming in the four years leading up to his death at age 51), give fascinating insights into his personality, beliefs, loquacity and relationships. But as an early music society, our interest is, of course, in the musical side of his life.

We know that music composition was important to him, from the published works that bear his name, and his now-lost treatise on musical theory. What can we glean from his correspondence and musical compositions that might shed light on his musical efforts and inspiration?

Unfortunately, there is only one brief mention of his musical compositions in his letters.

“pray make my kindest respects to your good partner, and tell him, I think I have a right to trouble him with my musical nonsense.—I wish it better for my own sake—bad as it is, I know he will not despise it, because he has more good-nature”

His admiration for Handel is evident in a letter bemoaning the death of painter John Hamilton Mortimer, where he writes in praise:

“. . . universally esteemed as a man:—he winged his rapid flight to those celestial mansions—where Pope—Hogarth—Handel—Chatham—and Garrick, are enjoying the full sweets of beatific vision—with the great Artists—Worthies—and Poets of time without date.”

But this dearth of direct references flowing from his pen does not stop us from gleaning insights into his musical endeavours from the content and tone of the correspondence.

Reading his letters, one sees a man who admits good-naturedly to a weakness for fine things and indulgences alongside a keen interest in politics and current events, a propensity to generously hand out sage moral and practical advice to young people of his acquaintance, and who is quick and sincere in gratitude for patronage from others.

Humour is evident throughout and clearly a large part of his life, even when suffering from the debilitating gout that seems ultimately to have claimed him. A wonderful example of his wit is this description of a most disagreeable coach ride:

“I shall take no notice of the tricking fraudulent behaviour of the driver of the stage—as how he wanted to palm a bad shilling upon us—and as how they stopped us in the town, and most generously insulted us—and as how we took up a fat old man—his wife fat too—and child;—and after keeping us half an hour in sweet converse of the—of the blasting kind—how that the fat woman waxed wrath with her plump master, for his being serene—and how that he caught choler at her friction, tongue-wise;—how he ventured his head out of the coach-door, and swore liberally—whilst his ——[arse] in direct line with poor S——n’s nose—entertained him with sound and sweetest of exhalations.—I shall say nothing of being two hours almost on our journey—neither do I remark that S——n turned sick before we left G——, nor that the child
p——[issed] upon his legs:—in short, it was near nine before we got into Charles Street.”

His evidently good-natured and positive view of life, in the face of the hardships he encountered in his life, are illustrated by the contrast he makes between the humour of Jonathan Swift and that of his apparently favourite author, Laurence Sterne.

“They were two great masters, who painted for posterity—and, I prophesy, will charm to the end of the English speech.—If Sterne has had any one great master in his eye—it was Swift, his countryman—the first wit of this or any other nation;—but there is this grand difference between them—Swift excels in grave-faced irony—whilst Sterne lashes his whips with jolly laughter.” . . . “Swift and Sterne were different in this—Sterne was truly a noble philanthropist—Swift was rather cynical;—what Swift would fret and fume at—such as the petty accidental sourings and bitters in life’s cup—you plainly may see, Sterne would laugh at—and parry off by a larger humanity, and regular good-will to man.”

He was not averse to penning some satire himself, writing in a letter to an editor that the solution to the dilemma of manning the English navy was to conscript all hair-dressers, not only solving the manning crisis, but at the same time solving other societal problems since “the ladies once more getting the management of their heads into their own hands, might possibly regain their native reason and œconomy—and the gentlemen might be induced by mere necessity to comb and care for their own heads;—those (I mean) who have heads to care for.”

Above all, though, it is the sheer number of, and intimacy with, his correspondents that stands out from his letters. Sancho seems to have been a very social person, building and maintaining connections with many others through his charm, wit and regular discourse. In the last two years of his life, we see 78 letters to 30 different recipients, and each letter refers to multiple other mutual acquaintances.

This obviously had the advantage of helping him maintain his position in society, but it seems clear that he truly cared deeply about his friends. This is particularly evident in the generosity, candor and intimacy of his letters in the very late stages of his life, when he clearly knew he was failing physically and was not likely long for the world..

What do these qualities say about his musical endeavours? It certainly explains why most of his published music was composed for English country dance, one of the most social of activities at all levels of society at the time.

While he does not say so in the published letters, he must have been, in his younger, fitter days, an enthusiastic practitioner of country dance. It would have suited his temperament and joie de vivre.

His published dance music is accompanied by descriptions of the dance formations that were to be danced to the music, which suggests that he was well versed in the conventions of the dance. Notably, the first of the dances is titled “Lady Mary Montagu’s Reel”, the lady referred to being the daughter of Duke John Montagu, his early mentor, and, along with her husband, Montagu’s successor, Sancho’s ongoing patroness. It is tempting to speculate whether Sancho ever played the music for her while she danced that reel or perhaps taught her the steps of the dance. Could he have danced it with her in a set?

Sancho delighted in the theatre and even made a brief, unsuccessful attempt at an acting career. He knew and admired the great, influential actor of the time, David Garrick. Among the published works is a collection of songs that set text from Shakespeare plays, odes by Garrick and some other popular songs of the day utilizing the Baroque musical convention of the figured bass.

(There are recordings of these songs and other music by Sancho, by the ensemble Raritan Players, whom EMSI audiences will remember from their concert here in 2023.)

He also had published a collection of minuets, air, gavotte, reel and hornpipe set for violin, mandolin, or German [transverse] flute, horns and harpsichord.

To conclude, we do get a sense from reading his letters that the lively, popular, socially oriented music he left us was very much in keeping with his personality and his persona; he was a person who loved to laugh and convene with friends. He certainly faced challenges, and London society generally would have held up many obstacles to his success, but it seems his positivity, persistence and spirit served him well.

Perhaps we may speculate that the freedom he won and the upward trajectory of Sancho’s life within the foreign society into which he was thrust led him to compose music that is filled with joy, a love of life and a delight in social occasion.

That joy and delight will certainly be present in the sparkling performance of some of Sancho’s music at our concert February 28, “Strawberry Fields” by Ruckus.

Bill Jamieson

 

Bill Jamieson is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Early Music Society of the Islands. He holds a degree in performance from the University of Toronto on French horn and had careers as both a symphony musician and Chartered Accountant. Devoted to early music, he has mastered a variety of medieval and Renaissance wind instruments and is a practitioner and teacher of Scottish Country Dance.

 

Excerpts are from the Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, third edition, published 1784 by J. Nichols, available online through the Gutenberg Project.

Accepted known details of his life come from the brief biographical introduction to that publication and from readily available sources online.

Information on the impact of Sancho’s correspondence with Sterne is from “The Anti-Slavery Legacy of the Sancho-Sterne Correspondence in the Periodical Press” by Alex Solomon, Rutgers University.