Born into one of the most distinguished families in eighteenth-century England, Samuel Wesley (1766-1837) distinguished himself as a child prodigy, an ardent devotee of the music of J. S. Bach, and as a composer, performer and music lecturer. His four extant overtures, written from the year 1778 to 1824, offer an insight into his development as a composer. This edition, drawn from the Wesley manuscripts housed in the British Library, is preceded by a commentary dealing with Wesley's life, the history of the overture as an independent for, and with Wesley's place in the history of English instrumental music.

Classical violin concertos by English composers are relatively obscure nowadays, as the genre is largely monopolized by Mozart’s last three concertos. This study explores the compositional and violinistic traits of ten English concertos from the late eighteenth century, as well as the social and cultural circumstances under which they were written. These concertos are challenging violinistically, suggesting that they were primarily intended as virtuosic showpieces. In addition, a number of the concertos display musical eccentricities that hint at the quirky personalities of their composers. In some respects, these concertos are unadventurous, particularly in terms of harmony and thematic contrasts. However, they contain a number of unique compositional features that are worthy of our attention. The most notable of these is the incorporation of Baroque features in a large number of the concertos, despite their general adherence to the new galant style. All evidence suggests that the two styles were combined deliberately as a compositional technique, and this is perhaps the most distinctly “English” characteristic of these concertos.