Taylor, Raynor
Taylor, Raynor
Taylor, Raynor, English-American singer, organist, teacher, and composer; b. London, 1747; d. Philadelphia, Aug. 17, 1825. He received his early training as a chorister in the Chapel Royal, and in 1765 became organist of a church in Chelmsford; that same year, he was also appointed music director at Marylebone Gardens and at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. In 1792 he emigrated to the U.S. He presented musical entertainments in Richmond, Va., Baltimore, and Annapolis, where he was organist at St. Anne’s Church. Moving to Philadelphia in 1793, he was organist of St. Peter’s Church (1795-1813); in 1820 he was one of the founders of the Musical Fund Soc. A gifted singer, he gave humorous musical entertainments which he called “olios” and in 1796 conducted an orch. concert that included several of his own compositions. In collaboration with A. Reinagle, who had been his pupil in London, he composed a monody on the death of Washington (Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1799), and a ballad opera, Pizarro, or the Spaniards in Peru (1800). Some of his song MSS are in the N.Y. Public Library.
Bibliography
J. Cuthbert, R. T. and Anglo-American Musical Life (diss., W.Va. Univ., 1980).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire