Ignatius Sancho’s Minuet 5th
This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum.
Throughout February, I have highlighted works by Black composers throughout history, and although I have spent my life studying classical music, I discovered many composers who I had never heard of. The classical music curriculum has to change.
A great example of someone who should be in every music history textbook is Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729–1780). Sancho was born on a slave ship. His early life was spent working as a slave in a well-off household in Greenwich, England. Encouraged in his studies by a neighbor, the Duke of Montagu, Sancho was emancipated and was employed as a butler in the Montagu house. When he retired from that position, he owned and ran a small grocery shop in Westminster.
Brycchan Carey says, “Sancho composed music, appeared on the stage, entertained many famous figures of literary and artistic London, and his portrait was painted by Thomas Gainsborough. The first African we know of to vote in a British election, he wrote a large number of letters which were collected and published in 1782, two years after his death . . . to eighteenth-century opponents of the slave trade [Sancho] became a symbol of the humanity of Africans.”
Sancho published his own music, four collections of minuets, songs, dances, and cotillions, for a variety of instruments including the violin, mandolin, “German” flute, and harpsichord, as well as for chamber ensembles. His songs were set to poems by, among others, Shakespeare, Anacreon, and the actor David Garrick. The collection of Minuets &c. &c. (http://ks4.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/9/9e/IMSLP313571-PMLP506290-SANCHO_Dances_KBD_Horns_fl_vn_vc.pdf) says on the title page “Compos’d by an African. Book 2d.” and is “humbly” inscribed to the Duke of Montagu.
Although Sancho was better known for his literary activities, particularly his letters, his music should be part of the classical music curriculum. As Josephine Wright says, “There can be no pretense that the music of Ignatius Sancho equals that of the leading composers of his day. But his musical compositions reveal the hand of a knowledgeable, capable amateur who wrote in miniature forms in an early Classic style. His compositions are of great historical significance in understanding the roots and origins of a classical tradition among black musicians in the Western hemisphere.”
It is well-nigh impossible to find recordings of Sancho’s music online. I really would love to hear the songs, which Jane Girdham says were composed in the “galant” style that was very popular at that time. His minuets are charming, though, and a wonderful way to close out this month’s theme.
My classical music post for today is Ignatius Sancho’s Minuet 5th.
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