Music and Musicians in Early Nineteenth-Century Cornwall: The World of Joseph Emidy - Slave, Violinist and Composer - Paperback

by Richard McGrady (Author)

Taken from Africa into slavery by the Portuguese, kidnapped by the British Navy and held captive aboard ship during the French wars of the 1790s before being abandoned in Falmouth, the stranger-than-fiction story of Joseph Emidy deserves telling in its own right. What makes it more remarkable is that Emidy - a violinist and composer - became a prominent figure in the musical scene in Cornwall for the remaining thirty years of his life. The richly varied pattern of local activity is illustrated by accounts in local newspapers, as well as by personal memoirs; many of the anecdotes are amusing and always enlightening in the view they offer of a provincial society at a time of great and hitherto unsuspected activity and change.

Author Biography

Dr Richard McGrady moved to Cornwall in 1973 to become music lecturer in the Department of Extra Mural Studies of the University of Exeter; he is currently Assistant Director of the Department of Continuing and Adult Education of the University.