Funding London’s Elite Music Scene Through the Profits of Slavery in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond: Bio-Bibliographical Work as Reparative History

Nineteenth Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade

Lecture by David Hunter, Librarian Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin

Until eleven years ago, when David Hunter found Handel’s signature on several share transfer slips in the records of the Royal African Company at The National Archives, Kew, London, no one had thought to investigate the ways in which the profits of the slave trade and the plantation economy made their way into the musical world in London and elsewhere in Britain and its Caribbean and North American colonies. Those ways included subscription to opera and concert seasons, to music publications, the purchase of musical instruments, the hiring of teachers, private music-making sessions, and even the trafficking of a minor, Muzio Clementi. The bio-bibliographical research method, using printed lists of subscribers, such as those at the Clark Library for the Concerts of Antient Music, involves checking names against databases, notably “Legacies of British Slavery,” as well as in numerous collective and individual family histories. Its success in identifying families whose income derived largely from plantation ownership is unrivaled. It has also turned up a distinctive bibliographical genre, hand-held fans printed with a plan of the boxes at the King’s Theatre and the occupants’ names. As reparative history, the effort is both necessary and rewarding.

David Hunter was Music Librarian, and Senior Lecturer, at the University of Texas at Austin from 1988 to 2017. He is now Librarian Emeritus. After an intensive musical education as a chorister at Chichester Cathedral, he went on to sing with numerous collegiate and city choirs in Wales, England, Champaign, IL, and Austin, TX. He earned his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author or editor of several books including The Lives of George Frideric Handel (2015), in which he revealed that Handel had investments in the slave-trading Royal African Company. His articles have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals, most recently in the Galpin Society Journal (2021 and 2025) Music in Art (2024) and the Cambridge Opera Journal (2025). He has given invited lectures at universities across the United Kingdom  and the United States. He has been a consultant with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on slavery. Hunter is writing a book on the use of the profits of slavery to fund musical activity in Britain and its colonies ca.1660–ca.1850.

The lecture will be presented live by Dr. David Hunter remotely, to in-person attendees at the Clark and online via livestream, with Q&A and discussion with the audience to follow. A display of related materials from UCLA collections will be on view at the Clark before the lecture, please see here for the list of materials. A light reception for all attendees will follow the program.

The lecture is free to attend with advance registration. It will be held in-person at the Clark Library and livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel. No registration is required to watch the livestream. In-person registration will close on Tuesday, November 12. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.

Image: Lee, William. 1794. The Plan of the Boxes at the King’s Theatre, Hay-Market with an Alphabetical List of the Subscribers .. : 1794. England. Courtesy of the UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.