The Linleys were the most important and influential family of musicians in eighteenth-century Bath. Thomas Linley the elder was the son of a builder and carpenter who moved to the city in the late 1740s to take advantage of the building boom. He became a harpsichordist, singing teacher and composer, and started to direct concerts there in the mid 1750s, gradually involving his talented children in them: Elizabeth, Mary and Maria were precociously gifted singers, while Thomas junior played a violin concerto in Bristol at the age of eight. In 1776 he became one of the managers of the Drury Lane Theatre and the family moved to London.

from notes by Peter Holman ©