Tommasino: The Enigma of the English Mozart

‘The first biography of a forgotten star of Georgian music: Thomas Linley junior, virtuoso violinist and composer, son of a famous bass and brother of three beautiful celebrity sopranos. A child prodigy, taken up by George III and painted by Gainsborough, he made his debut aged six, and took lessons with the Master of the King’s Musick. At twelve he was sent to Italy to study violin, at the court in Florence he made friends with Mozart, and Dr Burney reported that the two boys were ‘the most promising geniusses of this age’.

Before he was twenty-two Linley had written sonatas and concertos, two comic operas, a cantata, an ode and incidental music for plays by his brother-in-law Sheridan – and was set to become, as Mozart himself said,’ one of the greatest ornaments of the musical world’.
But in the summer of 1778, while staying with his patron, the Duke of Ancaster, at Grimsthorpe Castle, he met a tragic end in an unexplained boating accident. Unravelling the mystery, Tony Scotland finds clues in a manuscript long buried in the archives at Blenheim Palace.’