(b East Malling, Kent, 25 March 1650; d 17 July 1733). English cathedral singer and music copyist. He was educated at King’s School, Rochester, and St John’s College, Cambridge (sizar, 1668; BA, 1672–3). He was a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral, 1675–1733. In addition he was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1679 and a minor canon of St Paul’s Cathedral from 1683 to 1733. His post of sub-dean of St Paul’s (from 1689), sometimes mentioned separately, was attached to his minor canonry there. Besides holding posts as clergyman-singer, he was vicar of Littlebourne, Kent, from 1675 to 1733 and rector of Hope All Saints, near New Romney, Kent, 1682–1709. He was a non-residentiary canon (with prebend) of Lincoln Cathedral, 1689–1733. On 20 December 1689 he was sworn a personal Chaplaine in Ordinary to William III. Both he and his son William Gostling were involved in Canterbury’s first music club and concert series. John Gostling was also a noted amateur viol player. Still active in 1724, by the time of the accession of George II (1727) Gostling was so infirm that he was excused the journey from Canterbury to be re-sworn a member of the Chapel Royal.
John Gostling was a notable deep bass singer for whom, according to Hawkins, Purcell wrote They that go down to the sea in ships. He was a favourite of Charles II, and the Gentleman’s Magazine (1777, p.210) stated that the king presented him one day with a silver egg filled with guineas, telling him ‘he had heard that eggs were good for the voice’. He was a member of the Private Musick during the reigns of James II (who granted him an annual pension of £40 in October 1685) and William and Mary, but was not reappointed under Queen Anne. He occupied himself a good deal with copying music, particularly cathedral music. He acquired and added to the rough file copies left by Stephen Bing, who died in 1681; these ‘Gostling’ partbooks are now in York Minster and some later file copies of his own are now GB-Ob Tenbury 797–803. Specimens of his fair-copy choirbooks survive at Canterbury, St Paul’s Cathedral and as GB-Ob Tenbury 1176–82. There is a full score in manuscript with which his name is particularly associated (US-AUS; facs., Austin, 1977); a matching volume is in the Newberry Library, Chicago. Ford (1984) has identified other Gostling possessions by examining the sales catalogue of his son’s collection. Where an autograph is lacking of any work by Purcell, Blow and their contemporaries, a transcript by Gostling is clearly important; however, there has been some disagreement about the quality of his texts.
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HawkinsH
G.E.P. Arkwright and H.E. Woolridge: Introduction to Henry Purcell: Sacred Music, Part III, The Works of Henry Purcell, xvii (London, 1907)
F.B. Zimmerman: ‘Anthems of Purcell and Contemporaries in a Newly Rediscovered “Gostling Manuscript”’, AcM, xli (1969), 55–70; rev. as foreword to facs. of The Gostling Manuscript (Austin, 1977)
R. Ford: ‘Canterbury's Choral Manuscripts: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Handwritten Musical History’, Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle (1982), 43–7
R. Ford: ‘Osborn MS 515, A Guardbook of Restoration Instrumental Music’, FAM, xxx (1983), 174–84
R. Ford: Minor Canons at Canterbury Cathedral: The Gostlings and their Colleagues (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1984) [incl. list of works written for Gostling’s extraordinary voice-range]
H.W. Shaw: A Study of the Bing-Gostling Part Books in the Library of York Minster (Croydon, 1986)
I. Spink: Restoration Cathedral Music, 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995)
WATKINS SHAW/ROBERT FORD