Eccles, Henry (DNB00)

From Wikisource
Jump to: navigation, search

ECCLES, HENRY (fl. 1720), violinist, was the second son of Solomon Eccles [q. v.] He was a member of the king's band of music from 1694 to 1710. By 1716 his name is no longer on the list (the volumes of Chamberlayne's ‘Notitia’ for the intervening years are not in the British Museum). It is certain, therefore, that between 1710 and 1716 he went to France, having received, it is said, less encouragement than he thought his due in his native land. He became a member of the French king's band, and in 1720 he published in Paris ‘Twelve Excellent Solos for the Violin,’ written in the style of Corelli. The work is praised by Hawkins. He was living in Paris in 1735. In that year the youngest of the brothers, Thomas Eccles, also a violinist, but an exceedingly dissipated character, who was at that time an itinerant performer, said that he had a brother who was at that time in the service of the king of France, and that this brother had taught him to play. Mendel (Convers. Lex. iii. 315) asserts that Henry Eccles died in 1742, and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the statement even of so untrustworthy an authority may be taken as possibly true.

[Chamberlayne's Notitia (1694–1710, 1716); Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 481; Somerset House Gazette, i. 239 (1829); Mendel, as above.]

J. A. F. M.