Background
Charles was born on April 7, 1726.
Charles was born on April 7, 1726.
Born at Shrewsbury, England, on Apr. 7, 1726, he was a son of James Macburney (or Burney), a surveyor and portrait-painter of Scottish descent, and his wife, Ann Cooper. He went to school at Condover, at Shrewsbury, and at Chester, and in 1742 became the pupil of his half-brother James Burney, then organist at Shrewsbury. His talents attracted the attention of the composer and musician Dr. Thomas Arne, who invited him in 1744 to become his apprentice in London.
Under the patronage of Fulke Greville, grandson of the fifth Lord Brooke, Burney was introduced into aristocratic circles, and after his marriage in 1749 to Esther Sleepe, became a busy and fashionable music-teacher in London, where he was also employed as organist at St. Dionis' Backchurch. A period of failing health led to his removal in 1751 to Norfolk, where he acted for nine years as organist at Lynn. Having long since fully recovered, he returned to London in 1760 and soon took a prominent place in musical and literary circles, counting among his intimate associates Johnson, Garrick, Burke, Reynolds, Sir William Herschel, and many other men of note. Besides leading a strenuous life as a teacher, performer, and composer of music, he found time to contribute poems and articles to periodicals, to keep a diary, to study astronomy, to write lively and voluminous letters, and to collect materials for his four-volume History of Music. In 1769 he took the degree of Doctor of Music at Oxford, and in 1773 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
His first wife having died in 1762, he married in 1767 a friend of his Lynn days, Mrs. Elizabeth Allen, whose son and two daughters were thus added to a family which consisted already of six children: Esther (1749-1832); James (1750-1821), who was later to accompany Captain Cook on his second and third voyages round the world and become a rear-admiral and F.R.S.; Frances (1752-1840), who was to be celebrated as a novelist and to marry at the age of 41 the French émigréemigre General Alexandre d'Arblay; Susannah Elizabeth (1755-1800); Charles (1757-1817), who was to gain some repute in his day as a classical scholar and doctor of divinity; and Charlotte Ann (1761-1838). There were two more children by the second marriage: Richard Thomas (1768-1808), who became headmaster of the military school at Kidderpore, Calcutta; and Sarah Harriet (1772-1844), who published several novels.
Burney made extensive tours, in 1770 in France and Italy, and in 1772 in Holland and Germany, to acquire for his History first-hand information about the music and musicians of those countries, and published accounts of them in the form of journals. In 1783 he was appointed organist at Chelsea Hospital (or College); there he spent the remainder of his life and died on Apr. 12, 1814. His portrait, painted in 1781 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.