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Incipit
(Lat.: ‘it begins’).
The opening words or music in a text or composition. First used in the cataloguing of medieval texts – which tend not to have titles as such – the word has been taken as a noun into English. A ‘text incipit’ is the opening fragment of text entered below the music in certain song manuscripts; or it is the text opening in an index. A ‘melodic incipit’ or ‘musical incipit’ is the opening fragment of music used in a melodic index or Thematic catalogue.
Incledon, Charles [Benjamin]
(b St Keverne, Cornwall, bap. 5 Feb 1763; d Worcester, 11 Feb 1826). English tenor. The son of a medical practitioner, he disliked his baptismal name and took the name Charles instead. He was a chorister at Exeter Cathedral under William Jackson and was locally renowned as a boy soloist before he joined the navy, where he attracted attention as a singer. In 1784 he made his stage début in Southampton as Alphonso in Arnold’s Castle of Andalusia and the next year moved to Bath, where he sang with the Bath-Bristol theatre company and studied with Venanzio Rauzzini, who helped him get an engagement in London at Vauxhall Gardens. He sang at Covent Garden (1790–1815) quickly establishing himself as the leading English stage tenor. He made many guest appearances in the provinces and Ireland and from 1802 toured widely with a series of solo entertainments. Incledon made a successful visit to North America in 1817–18, although his voice was then past its prime. His acting was not generally admired but his dramatic rendering of the ballad The Storm (with painted backdrop of a ship in distress) held audiences spellbound. His West Country accent and somewhat flashy personality limited his success as a concert artist, but he sang in several Covent Garden oratorio seasons and was a soloist in the first London performance of The Creation (1800). Haydn had heard him in Shield’s The Woodman (1791) and noted: ‘[Incledon] has a good voice and quite a good style, but he uses the falsetto to excess. He sang a trill on high C and ran up to G’. For many of his contemporaries his impassioned performances of nautical and sentimental ballads exemplified true English singing. Robson (1846) remembered that ‘never was so sound, so rich, so powerful, so sweet an English voice as Incledon’s’.
His eldest son, Charles Venanzio Incledon (1791–1865), sang at Drury Lane in 1829–30 and later lived in Vienna as a teacher of English.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BDA
DNB (L.M. Middleton)
LS
SainsburyD
A. Pasquin [J. Williams]: The Children of Thespis, ii (London, 13/1792)
[F.G. Waldron]: Candid and Impartial Strictures on the Performers (London, 1795)
J. Roach: Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room (London, 1796)
C.H. Wilson: The Myrtle and Vine (London, 1802)
‘Mr. Incledon’: Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, i (1818), 78–80
‘Mr Incledon’, The Musical World, xiii (1838), 63–5
W. Robson: The Old Play-Goer (London, 1846)
E. Brown, ed.: Henry Crabb Robinson: the London Theatre, 1811–1866 (London, 1966)
T. Fenner: Leigh Hunt and Opera Criticism (Lawrence, KS, 1972)
T.J. Walsh: Opera in Dublin 1705–1797 (Dublin, 1973)
T.J. Walsh: Opera in Dublin 1798–1820 (Oxford, 1993)
OLIVE BALDWIN, THELMA WILSON
Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM).
British organization founded in 1882 by James Dawber of Wigan and Henry Hiles of Manchester. Its objectives were ‘the union of the musical profession in a representative society; the provision of opportunities for the discussion of matters connected with the culture and practice of the art; the improvement of musical education; the organisation of musicians in a manner similar to that in which allied professions were organised; and the obtaining of legal recognition by means of the registration of qualified teachers of music as a distinctive body’. At first the society grew mainly in the north of England, but in 1886 it held a conference in London to recruit members from the rest of the country, gaining the membership of a number of influential London musicians. In 1892 it was incorporated as an artistic association and took its present title; in 1893 groups were formed in Scotland and Ireland. The society was reconstituted in 1928 to become more generally representative of the musical profession. While a concern for music education remained an important part of its activities, it no longer holds music examinations. Its stated objectives – ‘to promote the art of music, and maintain the honour and interests of the musical profession’ – still stand in its constitution. In its day-to-day work the ISM pursues three aims: to represent and protect those who work with music; to raise standards within the music profession; and to provide its members with advice and benefits. The society is regularly consulted by government departments and agencies on matters of policy. It has established its own professional development schemes, including postgraduate diplomas for private music teachers. In the late 1990s its membership was some 5000. Past presidents have included Boult, Beecham, Menuhin, Pears, Groves, Mathias, Brymer, Hurwitz and Partridge.
HENRY RAYNOR/NEIL HOYLE
Incredible String Band.
British folk-rock band. Its leading members were Mike Heron (b Glasgow, 12 Dec 1942) and Robin Williamson (b Glasgow, 24 Nov 1943). It was among the most imaginative of the many British groups which attempted to create new musical fusions as part of the underground and psychedelic cultures of the 1960s. Their eponymous début recording (on which Heron and Williamson were joined by Clive Palmer) used Celtic musical forms onto which were grafted elements of blues, pre-1945 American string band and classical Indian music. These wide-ranging stylistic interests were matched by the formidable instrumental skills of Heron and Williamson, who played over 20 instruments between them. The following albums, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (Elek., 1967) and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (Elek., 1968), brought these rhapsodic fusions to a peak in such compositions as First Girl I Loved, where shifting melody lines between verses mirrored the fluidity of Williamson's straggling lyrics and melismatic singing; these albums also underlined the pantheism which was a principal preoccupation of the duo's lyrics. This precarious musical and poetic synthesis began to unravel on later recordings and performances, and the Incredible String Band split up in 1974. Heron and Williamson have continued to write, perform and record as solo artists. C. Ford: ‘Gently Tender: the Incredible String Band's Early Albums’ Popular Music, xiv (1995), 175–84
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