Who composed The Harmonious Blacksmith?
The Harmonious Blacksmith of this music: "We are so harmonious- and you have been a blacksmith". Saint Dunstan is named as the Harmonious Blacksmith in the 18th century poem "The Devil and Saint Dunstan". The piece is mentioned in Siegfried Sassoon's semi-autobiographical work "Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man". Aunt Evelyn is heard to be playing the piece one evening and the author recalls this happy memory during his time at the Front. The Italian guitarist-composer Mauro Giuliani used the theme as the basis for his "Variazioni su un tema di Handel ("The Harmonious Blacksmith")", Op. 107, for solo guitar in 1828. The
The Harmonious Blacksmith had written his harpsichord suites of the 1720 publication before he lived at Cannons, when he was at Adlington Hall in Cheshire, or even earlier still. William Lintern was a blacksmith's apprentice from Bath who later took up music and so "was" The Harmonious Blacksmith. The piece came to be called after him, probably because he published it under that name for reasons outlined in the following extract: Chappell was a respected musical historian and the story is probably true, but there is no copy of Lintern's edition of the piece in the British Museum, and Mr W. C. Smith,