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A Musical Club, showing Joseph Emidy playing violin in Nov 1808
in the Concert Room of Truro's Assembly Building.
The Emidy Family
Joseph Antonia Emidy (1775-1835) was born in W Africa and sold to Portuguese slavers at the age of 12. He was transported to Brazil, where he may have learned to play the violin, and then back to Lisbon where he gained his freedom and became a violinist at the Lison Opera. In 1795 he was ‘kidnapped’ by Sir Edward Pellew, a British navy captain, who forced him to provide musical entertainment on his ship, only releasing him at Falmouth in 1799. Emidy’s musical talent served him well and he established a career in Cornwall, leading several ensembles, offering tuition, and arranging and composing music. Joseph married a local woman, Jenefer Hutchins, in 1802 and their second son, Thomas, followed in his father’s footsteps as a musician.
Thomas Emidy (1805-1871) was the second son of Joseph and Jenefer. He worked mainly around Falmouth and Truro and, according to his obituary, was ‘well known throughout Cornwall as the leader of a Brass and Quadrille Band’. He led the Truro Brass Band from 1849 until his death. . These Quadrilles are his only surviving composition and have been arranged from the solo piano version held in the British Library.
The Royal Cornwall & Devon Artillery Quadrilles, composed by Thomas Emidy and published in 1854, are the only surviving composition by either father or son though Joseph is known to have composed a violin concerto, symphonies and ensemble pieces.
The Quadrille (from the Italian quadriglia = small square) is a square dance for 4 couples, usually consisting of a sequence of 5 or 6 shorter dances. It originated in military parades for mounted horsemen before being adapted and developed as a fashionable dance in the 18th and 19th centuries and as folk dances in Britain and North America.
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