ABSTRACT
Charles Burney's unprecedented success as a professional musician in the republic of letters made him a model for a generation of rising talents who were encouraged to follow his lead and aspire to the moral and intellectual rank conferred by study of the liberal arts. A. C. Schomberg's attempts to push his young charge into a more respectable profession failed completely. Once he accepted Crotch's career choice, he urged a balanced educational programme combining music with the liberal arts. A good illustration might be found in Crotch and Burney's uses of the late eighteenth-century catchword 'picturesque'. It was Burney's ingratiating personality and elegant turn of phrase that ultimately won him the role of elder statesman for his art, not his performance or composition. Since the aesthetic mythology of interest concerned the fabled music of antiquity, it is appropriate to begin by considering briefly what the late eighteenth century knew and thought about this music.
