SHIELD, WILLIAM (17481829)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 856 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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SHIELD, WILLIAM (17481829) , English musical composer, was born at Swalwell, near Newcastle, in 1748. His father began to teach him singing before he had completed his

sixth

SIXTH

year, but died three years later, leaving him in 'charge of guardians, who made no provision whatever for continuing his musical education, for which he was thenceforward dependent entirely upon his own aptitude for learning, aided by a few lessons in thoroughbass which he received from Charles Avison. Notwithstanding the difficulties inseparable from this imperfect training, he obtained admission in 1772 to the orchestra at the Italian Opera in London, at first as a second

violin

VIOLIN

, and afterwards as principal

viola

VIOLA [Fr. viole, Ger. Bratsche, Ital. viola, alto]

, and this engagement he retained for eighteen years. In the meantime he turned his serious attention to composition, and in 1778 produced his first English comic opera, The Flitch of

Bacon

, at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, with so

great

GREAT

success that he was immediately engaged as composer to Covent

Garden

GARDEN (from O. Fr. garden, mod. Fr. jardin; this, like our words " garth," a paddock attached to a building, and " yard," comes from a Teutonic word for an enclosure which appears in Gothic as gards and O. H. Ger. gart, cf. Dutch gaarde and Ger. .garten)

Theatre, for which he continued to produce English operas and other dramatic pieces in

quick

QUICK

succession until 1797,when he resigned his office, and devoted himself to compositions of a different class, producing a

great

GREAT

number of very beautiful glees, some instrumental chamber music, and other miscellaneous compositions. In 1817 he was made master of the royal music. He died in London on the 25th of January 1829, and was buried in the

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

cloister at Westminster Abbey.
Shield's most successful dramatic compositions were Rosina, The Mysteries of the Castle, The Lock and Key and The. Castle of

Andalusia

ANDALUSIA, or ANDALUCIA

. As a composer of songs he was in no degree inferior to his great contemporary Charles Dibdin. Indeed The Arethusa, The Heaving of the Lead and The Post Captain are as little likelyto be forgotten as Dibdin's Tom Bowling or Saturday Night at Sea. His vein of melody was inexhaustible, thoroughly English in character and always conceived in the purest and most delicate

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

, and hence it is that many of his airs are still sung at concerts, though the operas for which they were written have long been banished from the stage. His Introduction to Harmony (1794 and 1800) contains a great deal of valuable information; and he also published a useful treatise, The Rudiments of Thoroughbass.

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