J B Thomas, CURIOUS CONNECTIONS: MASTER MUSICIANS AND THE LAW Brisbane: Supreme Court of Queensland Library (www.sclqld.org.au), 2006. xi + 281 pp. ISBN 0975123068. AU$44.
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| DOI | 10.3366/E1364980909001759 |
| Pages | 374-375 |
| Author | Kenneth G C Reid |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
James Thomas is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland who, as a young man, chose a career in law over one in music.
Thomas’ list of lawyer-composers is certainly an impressive one, including Telemann, Handel, Schumann (the opening of whose piano concerto is the unidentified musical quotation on the cover), Tchaikovsky and Sibelius. But often the composers’ encounters with the law were decidedly brief. Schumann managed only two years of legal study, first at Leipzig University and then at Heidelberg, before giving up on the advice of no less a figure than Thibaut, who was himself a keen keyboard player and an admirer of “antique” music. Even less committed to law were Schütz (Marburg) and Sibelius (Helsinki), neither of whom got beyond the first year of study, and Handel (Halle), who gave up mid-way through his second. Four composers – Telemann (Leipzig), C P E Bach (Leipzig and Frankfurt), Chabrier (Paris) and Chausson (Paris) – managed to complete their course, although without being tempted into legal practice. Conversely, Arne and Elgar, in the English way, practised for a while as articled clerks but without making any systematic study of the law. Tchaikovsky undertook some legal study at school (St Petersburg's School of Jurisprudence), although not at university, and then worked for three and a half years as a civil servant in the Ministry Justice. Only one composer in Thomas’ list both completed his university studies and then went on to combine a career in law with one in music. This was Johann Kuhnau, J S Bach's predecessor as Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig but hardly a household name.
The record, then, is a patchy one. For some at least of the composers, legal study was neither welcome nor attractive. That they undertook...
To continue reading
Request your trial