A Little Music, or The Delights of Harmony

Although Gillray continued to live as a boarder with Hannah Humphrey until his death in 1815, by 1810 his creative life was virtually at an end. He had already retired from political caricature, incapable of keeping up the pace of work required to publish prints that had to address the current situation. Sixteen of the seventeen prints produced by Gillray in 1810 were social or comic caricatures which didn't depend upon timeliness and currency to be effective.

A Little Music, or the Delights of Harmony (1810) is almost certainly the best of the lot, showing what Gillray could still do when his physical and mental health allowed. But it may be based on a drawing he had done earlier. There is an untitled lithograph print in the British Museum attributed to Gillray and dated 1804 which contains figures similar to those in A Little Music and may suggest that he had been working on a print like this for some time.

A Little Music probably owes its title to the popularity of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and is a visual parody of "serious" conversation pieces that featured family and friends at home playing music together such as Zoffany's portrait of the Gore Family (1777). Its subject is precisely the lack of harmony in the room as sexual and musical dissonance prevails.

As with most comic caricatures, the figures in A Little Music are generic types and our enjoyment derives from the contrast of shapes and the variety of comic incident and expression. And including the guitarist, two percussionists on triangle and cymbals, and a cellist that appear in the background as fashionable chinese figurines, there is not just a little but a lot of "music" in this print.

Appropriate to the theme, " On Rosy Bed by Tinkling Billy," the military flutist in the center is gazing surreptitiously at the decolletage of the woman playing piano and singing. His powerful playing seems to be blowing and disturbing the hair of the gentleman/competitor turning pages. But while thus preoccupied, he is also unwittingly stepping on the tail of the dog at his feet provoking a howl of pain which may be causing the screech of reaction from the cat. And if this were not noise enough, the young boy, the product of another rosy bed, insistently blows his toy horn.

In the background, another potentially sexual situation is played out in a contrast of shapes and intentions. The homely and painfully thin woman is about to attract a different attention than she may be expecting as her out of fashion plumed headdress catches fire. The fat gentleman beside her already has his hand in his pocket, which often suggests sexual stimulation in other Gillray prints.

But the old and likely gouty gentleman with his wig upset has somehow managed to sleep through it all.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on A Little Music. . .
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #579

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