Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1911 — JOHN BANISTER. [ARTICLE]

JOHN BANISTER.

An English Violinist Who Won Fame In the Seventeenth Century. Public concerts owe their direct encouragement to John Banister, who had won fame by his playing on the violin and who succeeded the celebrated Baltzar as leader of Charles H.’s band of twenty-four violins. Pepys, in an entry in his diary for February, 1667, tells us the court gossip of the day—"bow the king’s viallin Banister is mad that the king hath a Frenchnaan come to be chief of some part of the king’s musique.” Banister’s concerts at the close of the year 1672 were advertised in the London Gazette as follows: "These are to give notice that at Mr. John Banister’s house (now called the muslck school), over against the George tavern in White Fryers, the present Monday will be musick performed by excellent masters, beginning precisely at 4 of the clock in the afternoon, and every afternoon for the future precisely at the same hour." Four years later on we read again, "At the academy in Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields will begin the first part of the parley of instruments, composed by Mr. John Banister.” The admission was at this time as a rule a shilling, and these concerts seem to have been held pretty regularly down to within a short time of Banister's death, which took place in 1679.—London Graphic.