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Sheet music from 1746 – On Greenwich Park

Sheet music. On Greenwich Park, published 1746

On Greenwich Park. Engraving by Thomas Kitchin. Words by Mr Young set to music by Mr Jackson. Page 21 from the Universal Harmony or, the Gentleman & Ladie's Social Companion: consisting of ... English and Scots songs, cantatas &c. &c. With a curious design, by way of headpiece ... All neatly engraved on quarto copper plates, and set to music for the voice, violin, hautboy, German & common flute, with a thorough base for the organ, harpsichd. spinet, &c. by the best masters ... (London: J. Newbery, for the Proprietors, 1746).

Click here to view a complete copy of the 1746 volume in The British Library (digitised by Google).

According to Frank Kidson’s British music publishers, printers and engravers (1900), the same sheet was included in the edition of 1745. This was an expanded version of the first edition of 1743, which was an enlarged issue of The English Orpheus published that same year. The song is also understood to have been published by John Tyther around the same time. It is Kidson, who states that the words to the song were by Mr Young.

Click here to view a complete copy of the 1745 edition in the National Library of Scotland (digitised by the Internet Archive).

Verse two of the song refers to the birds in Greenwich Park. Reference to the birds was also made by the Observatory’s assistant William Rogerson in an article specifically about the birds in the Park which was published in two parts in the 1833 edition of The Youth’s Instructer and Guardian and found by Daniel Beltiki during the course of his research on the Observatory’s assistants.

Click here for part 1 (pp.203–206)

Click here for part 2 (pp.239–244). Note: some pages appear in duplicate