Artistic Temperaments | From the desk of Jane Austen including the Songs of Harriett Abrams

Jane Austen was sent to school in Southampton when she was 7 years old and visited several more times before living in the city in her early 30s. Her eighteenth birthday party took place in the first-floor ballroom of the old Dolphin Hotel in the High Street. At the moment, the portable writing desk given to her by her father in December 1794 is on display at God’s House Tower, just round the corner from the Dolphin. It opens to provide a slope on which to write, and has various compartments, including a lockable drawer for paper and valuables. It has inspired this concert, where students have composed settings of extracts from the letters Jane Austen wrote while living in the city. A banquet of different styles and approaches!

Alongside extracts from Jane Austen’s letters, students will perform the songs of singer and composer Harriett Abrams (1758-1821). Abrams was such a respected part of the London scene that she was accompanied in three London Benefit Concerts by no less a musician than Joseph Haydn. Her biggest hit Crazy Jane was eagerly copied out by Jane Austen, and her collection of serious songs was dedicated to Queen Charlotte, by gracious permission.

These songs explore interesting social situations in a most imaginative way – the suicide of a despairing gambler who has ruined his family, the longing for rehabilitation of a released prisoner, the girl disappointed in love and locked up in what passed for a mental hospital. And Abrams could write a tune – our student singers and accompanists include a selection of ballads, some accompanied on the harp, some on the Broadwood.