Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 1.djvu/322

310 occasions under the title of 'True Blue.' In the latter part of his life Carey collected his principal dramatic pieces and published them in 1743 by subscription in a quarto volume.

In 1720 [App. p.579 "1713"] Carey published a small volume of his poems. This he afterwards enlarged and published by subscription in 29, with the addition of a poem called 'Namby Pamby' (a good-humoured satire on a poem written by Ambrose Phillips on the infant daughter of Lord Carteret), which received the commendations of Pope.

The songs and cantatas written and composed by Carey were very numerous. In 1732 he published 'Six Cantatas,' and in 1739–40 [App. p.579 "1737"], under the title of 'The Musical Century, in One hundred English Ballads on various subjects and occasions, adapted to several characters and incidents in Human Life, and calculated for innocent conversation, mirth and instruction,' issued two folio volumes of songs written and composed by himself, to the first of which his portrait is prefixed. A second edition appeared in 1740, and a third in 43. Of all his compositions, the most popular, and that which will transmit his name to posterity, is his ballad of 'Sally in our Alley,' one of the most striking and original melodies that ever emanated from the brain of a musician. The author's account of its origin is as follows:—'A shoemaker's prentice, making holiday with his sweetheart treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet shows, the flying chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields, from whence proceeding to the Farthing Pye House he gave her a collation of buns, cheese-cakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef and bottled ale, through all which scenes the author dodged them. Charmed with the simplicity of their courtship, he drew from what he had witnessed this little sketch of nature.' He adds, with pardonable pride, that Addison had more than once expressed his approbation of his production.

Carey died at his house in Great Warner Street, Clerkenwell, on Oct. 4, 1743. It has been generally said that 'he put a period to a life which had been led without reproach, at the advanced age of eighty, by suicide,' and the impulse to the act has been variously assigned to pecuniary embarrassment, domestic unhappiness, and the malevolence of some of his fellow professors. But the manner of his death seems doubtful. In the Daily Post of Oct. 5, 1743, we read 'Yesterday morning Mr. H. Carey, well known to the musical world for his droll compositions, got out of bed from his wife in perfect health and was soon after found dead. He has left six children behind him.' An advertisement in the same newspaper on Nov. 17, 43, announces a performance on that evening at Covent Garden Theatre 'For the Benefit of the Widow and Four small Children of the late Mr. Henry Carey,' in which the widow describes herself as 'left entirely destitute of any provision.' His age at the time of his death was probably much overstated. Sir John Hawkins thus estimates Carey's abilities:—'As a musician Carey seems to have been one of the first of the lowest rank; and as a poet the last of that class of which D'Urfey was the first, with this difference, that in all the songs and poems written by him on wine, love and such kind of subjects, he seems to have manifested an inviolable regard for decency and good manners.'

Carey's posthumous son, George Savile Carey [App. p.575 "1743–1807 "], inherited much of his father's talent. He became an actor, but not succeeding he contrived by giving entertainments of singing, recitation, and imitations, to earn a precarious living for about forty years. In the latter part of his life he claimed for his father the composition of 'God save the King,' and the claim occupied much attention for some time. Indeed it is still as hotly debated as ever, and will probably never be satisfactorily decided. G. S. Carey's daughter, Anne, was the mother of Edmund Kean, the tragedian. [ W. H. H. ]

CARILLON is the name given to a set of bells so hung and arranged as to be capable of being played upon, either by manual action or by machinery, as a musical instrument, i.e. so as to give out a regularly composed melody in correct and unvarying time and rhythm, in contradistinction to the wild and irregular music produced by change-ringing on a peal of bells hung to swing in the more usual manner. [ ../Bells.] A much larger number of bells are required to make a good carillon than are ever hung for an ordinary peal, which latter, owing to the difficulties of ringing and the space required for the bells to swing in, can scarcely exceed ten or at most twelve bells with advantage, whereas a carillon peal not infrequently includes as many as forty or more bells, the adequate performance of set tunes requiring not only a more extended range but the presence of the chromatic intervals of the scale, instead of the simple diatonic scale of the ordinary peal. The most radical distinction in the method of hanging and sounding a carillon as compared with a peal is that while in the latter the bells are slung to a wheel and axle, and are sounded by the stroke of the clapper inside on being swung round, in the carillon the bells are absolutely fixed on the frame, and are struck by a hammer on the outside. It is owing to this stationary position of the bell that so large a number of bells can be safely hung in a tower which would not accommodate half the number of swinging bells; and it is obvious that the precise moment of the stroke is much more under the control of the ringer when he has only to regulate the striking of the hammer than when he has to bring about this by causing the bell to swing: and it need hardly be mentioned that the system of striking on the outside of the bell is always employed when the latter is made use of for striking the hours upon in connection with a clock. In fact, the carillon system, when sounded mechanically (as in a majority of cases it is), may be regarded as an extension and multiplication of the stroke of the clock, with which it is generally connected, rather than as allied to bell-ringing properly 