Image: 18th-century musical family, possibly that of Carl Friedrich Abel

St Mary Magdalene Thornham Magna
Saturday 11th July 2026 4.00pm

Tassilo Erhardt & Patrick Rimes violins
Louise Jameson bass violin & violoncello
Sally Holman bassoon
Peter Holman harpsichord

with Lucy Jameson soprano

Tickets £20, children / students free

Interval refreshments

to book: email mail@musicatthornham.org.uk
Or telephone 01379 788130

We are delighted to be hosting this special concert in celebration of Peter Holman's 80th year. A varied programme ranging across the 17th and 18th centuries, the full programme is below.

 

Biagio Marini (1595–1663): Balletto Primo, op. 22 (published 1655)

Biagio Marini: Sonata sopra ‘Fuggi dolente cori’, op. 22

Giovanni Battista Fontana (1589–1630): Sonata no. 5 in C major (published 1641)

Gottfried Finger (c.1655–1730): Sonata in C major, op. 5, no. 10 (published c.1702)

Henry Purcell (1658/9–1695): Music for a while (from Nathaniel Lee’s tragedy Oedipus, ?1692)

John Weldon (1676–1736): Suite in D minor (c.1700)

Overture – Minuet – Almain – Corant – Two in One upon a Ground

Tarquinio Merula (1594/5–1665): Chiacona, op. 3 (published 1637)

Interval

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): Sonata in C major RV801 (c.1730)

            Largo – Allegro – Largo – Allegro

François Couperin (1668–1733): Concert XIII in G major

from Les goûts réunis ou Nouveaux concerts (published 1724)

Vivement – Agréablement – Sarabande (Tendrement) – Chaconne (Légère)

Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770): Sonata in G minor ‘Il trillo del Diavolo’ (1713, published 1798)

Sogni dell autore (The Composer’s Dream)

Andante – Allegro assai – Andante – Allegro assai – Andante – Allegro assai – Adagio

William Nisbet of Dirleton (c.1710–1783): The Sow’s Tail

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759): Suite in F major from the Oxford Water Music (c.1720)

Air – Menuet 1 & 2 – Boree – Hornpipe

 

Peter Holman studied at King's College, London with Thurston Dart, and founded the pioneering early music group Ars Nova while a student. He founded The Parley of Instruments with Roy Goodman in 1979, recording many CDs for Hyperion, and is now director of Leeds Baroque and the Suffolk Villages Festival. He has taught at many conservatoires, universities and summer schools in Britain, Europe, New Zealand and the USA, and was Reader and then Professor of Historical Musicology at Leeds University from 2000, retiring in 2010. He was awarded an MBE in the 2015 New Years Honours list.

Peter is a regular broadcaster and is much in demand as a lecturer at learned conferences. He spends much of his time in writing and research, with special interests in the early history of the violin family and early instrumental ensemble music, and in English music from about 1550 to 1850. He is the author of five books: the prize-winning Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), Henry Purcell (Oxford, 1994), Dowland: Lachrimae (Cambridge, 1999), Life after Death: The Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch (Woodbridge, 2010), and Before the Baton: Musical Direction and Conducting in Stuart and Georgian Britain (Woodbridge, 2020). His latest book, The Purcell Compendium, compiled with Bryan White, was published last year.