William Gardiner

GARDINER, William. b. Leicester, 15 March 1769 (in some accounts of his life the date was falsified to hide the fact that he was born five months after his parents’ wedding); d. Leicester, 16 November 1853. His father was a stocking manufacturer. William followed his father into the hosiery trade, but (again like his father) he was an amateur musician of some stature in the local community and beyond. He acquired a copy of Beethoven’s String Trio, Op. 3, and played the viola in a performance in Leicester in 1794. He thus claimed to have been the first to introduce Beethoven’s music into England. From 1812 to 1838 he published a series entitled Sacred Melodies from Haydn, Mozart and...