Charles Burney Sheet Music

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Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney. Burney wrote some music for Thomson's Alfred, which was produced at Drury Lane theatre on 30 March 1745. In 1749 he was appointed organist of St Dionis-Backchurch,Fenchurch Street, with a salary of £30 a year; and he was also engaged to take the harpsichord in the "New Concerts" then recently established at the King's Arms, Cornhill. In that year he married Esther Sleepe, who died in 1761; in 1769 he married Mrs Stephen Allen of Lynn. It was for his health that he went in 1751 to Lynn Regis in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an annual salary of £100, and lived for nine years. During that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of music. His Ode for St Cecilia's Day was performed at Ranelagh Gardens in 1759; and in 1760 he returned to London in good health and with a young family; the eldest child, a girl of eight, surprised the public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. The concertos for harpsichord which Burney published soon after his return to London were much admired. In 1766 he produced, at Drury Lane, a translation and adaptation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's opera Le devin du village., under the title of The Cunning Man.