|
John Baptist Grano (c. 1692–c.1748) was a trumpeter, flutist, and composer based in London, England, who worked with George Frederick Handel at the opera house in the city's Haymarket.
From May 30, 1728 until September 23, 1729, Grano was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison in Southwark, owing 99 pounds to "Andrew Turner et al."[1] He kept a diary of his 480 days there, the 510-page manuscript of which is now in the Bodleian Library's Rawlinson collection, as "Rawlinson D34." It was published in 1998 as Handel's trumpeter: the diary of John Grano, with a foreword by Crispian Steele-Perkins, who writes that things have not changed much in the last two centuries for musicians, most of whom still subsist on irregular freelance payments.[2]
Grano was imprisoned in the so-called "Master's side" of the prison, which catered for wealthier prisoners able to pay both the prison fees and an additional fee that allowed them to leave the prison during the day.[3] These privileges existed in contrast to the squalid "Commons side," where prisoners routinely starved to death. His diary details his friendships, love affairs, and adventures as he struggles to earn enough money to buy his freedom from the Marshalsea.[4]
Grano has an entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. A book of his flute sonatas was published in 1728.[4]
Contents |
Grano's father, John Baptist Grano (also written Granom), and his mother Jane Villeneuve, who was originally from France, lived in London from the end of the 17th century onward. An entry in the poor rate returns in 1698 places them in Angel Court, Charing Cross. John Ginger writes that the father had possibly been a regimental trumpeter in the Dutch Guards, who had travelled to England during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when James II of England was overthrown by William III of Orange-Nassau.[5]
The family later moved to Pall Mall, an aristocratic street near Buckingham Palace, where they ran a haberdashery business. Their first son, John Baptist, died in 1691, so their second son, the John Baptist of this article, was also given the paternal first names, a common practice at the time. Other children were Jane, born in 1697, a brother Lewis, and another sister, Mary. John Baptist and Lewis were both given a musical education.[5]
John Baptist married Mary Thurman at St James Piccadilly on July 30, 1713; the marriage licence application states that bride and groom were both over 21, though the bride was, in fact, just 15 years old at the time.[5] The marriage produced one child and ended in or around 1719.[6]
The earlier record of John Baptist as a trumpeter is in or around 1711, when the Duchess of Shrewsbury hired him, as a teenager, to play during a reception in the Lord Chamberlain's apartment at Kensington Palace. In or around 1709, he joined the orchestra in the Haymarket for 10 shillings a performance, twice a week, playing the rest of the time at salons in Lincoln's Inn Fields or St James's Square, where he earned between two and four guineas an evening.[6]
Grano joined the Horse Guards, receiving a regular salary of 17s.6d., but in 1719 he departed suddenly for The Hague without leave. A reward of three guineas was offered for his return, a reward notice in a newspaper describing him as a "short black man in a light tye wig," reported by John Ginger as a malicious joke on the part of the Marquess of Winchester, who commanded the fourth troop of the House Guards from which Grano had absconded.[7] He returned to England in or around March 1720, playing his own trumpet and flute compositions in several salons, including in Drury Lane. In the same year, his name was added as a member of the orchestra of the proposed Royal Academy of Music, with George Frederick Handel as master of the orchestra and John James Heidegger as manager.[8] He set up home in Oxford Street—between Holles Street and Cavendish Street, the less fashionable part of the area—with John Jones, a second violinist at the opera house. By 1728, there is a record of John Jones's wife living with them.[9]
John Ginger writes that Grano's financial difficulties began with the so-called "South Sea bubble," an economic bubble caused by speculators' actions regarding the South Sea Company. Ginger writes that it was a bad time for anyone who relied for their living on the moneyed classes, as Grano did. A smallpox epidemic did not help to attract audiences to the opera.[10]
Grano, John Baptist and Ginger, John. Handel's trumpeter: the diary of John Grano. Pendragon Press, 1998.