ABSTRACT
William Kitchiner (1775–1827) was a wealthy individual best known as a food writer; his book The Cook’s Oracle (1817) contained hundreds of recipes as well as advice on organising a kitchen and entertaining guests. Kitchiner also wrote more generally on housekeeping as well as travel, singing, optics and health, and composed an operetta and many songs. His books are styled ‘William Kitchiner M.D.’, and he claimed association with the University of Glasgow, but there is no evidence that he took a medical degree.
The Observations on Vocal Music; and Rules for the Accent, and Emphasis of Poetry; Which Will Ensure the Proper Pronunciation and Effective Expression of the Words demonstrates Kitchiner’s interest in music’s communicative properties, and particularly the relationship between music and text. The main part of the essay considers accent and emphasis in English pronunciation, as well as the health of singers and actors, and other anecdotes concerning vocal performance.
The quotation on poetry in the first footnote is taken from The Lyric Muse Revived in Europe or a Critical Display of the Opera in All Its Revolutions by John Brown and Vincenzio Martinelli (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1768), p. 23, which focusses in particular on opera, oratorio and church music as well as the general question of music and text. On setting words to music, in footnote 2, Kitchiner cites a quotation from William Jackson’s Twelve Songs ; Jackson (1730–1803) published three sets of twelve songs published between c. 1755 and c. 1770, but only the third contains a preface and this does not include the text used by Kitchiner. The reference to Kircher is taken from Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence Between Poetry and Music (Dublin: James Williams, 1769), p. 92.
Kitchiner cites from John Brown on the separation of poetry and music, in A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions, of Poetry and Music (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1763). The quotation identified as from Essay on the Improvement of Music (pp. 5–8) is taken from Alexander Molleson, Melody – the Soul of Music: An Essay towards the Improvement 378of the Musical Art (Glasgow: n.p., 1798), pp. 62–63. The quotation in footnote 3 is again taken from The Lyric Muse, pp. 19–21. The quotation in footnote 4 can be found in James Plumptre’s A Collection of Songs, Moral, Sentimental, Instructive, and Amusing (Cambridge: n.p., 1805), p. 22, although the text is actually take from John Aikin’s Essays on Song Writing (London: Joseph Johnson, 1772), pp. 10–11. Mr Baumgarten, the ‘celebrated theorist’, is most likely Charles Frederick Baumgarten (c.1739–1824), a German violinist and composer whose Treatise on Music, Counterpoint, Fugue & Composition was written in the second half of the eighteenth century. 1
