Music in Sarah Fielding's world
An international conference on the 18th-century writer Sarah Fielding featured a programme of harpsichord music from Fielding's milieu, programmed and performed by Music postgraduate Penelope Cave.
The conference at Chawton House Library was co-organised by Southampton's Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies with colleagues at McGill University and Cambridge University Press to celebrate the tercentenary of Fielding's birth.
On 5 November the concert featured as a highlight public event along with a lecture on Sarah Fielding's life and works given by Professor Isobel Grundy, Emeritus Professor at the University of Alberta and Trustee of Chawton House Library. The programme included pieces that were performed in London, Salisbury and Bath during Fielding's life and featured music by Handel, Chilcott, Elisabetta de Gambarini and J C Smith.
Penelope Cave is a professional early keyboard specialist who has recently begun a PhD at Southampton as part of the research project 'Music Collections, Music Rooms and Musical Practice in British Country Houses, 1780-1860,' directed by Professor Jeanice Brooks in collaboration with the National Trust. Click on the podcast below to hear Penny describe her concert for the Fielding conference and the scope of her doctoral research.
- Podcast: Penelope Cave interview