(b Stockton-on-Tees, 18 Sept 1763; dWycliffe Rectory, nr Barnard Castle, 24 Nov 1829). English musician and inventor. Wright was instructed in music by his father, Robert, by John Garth and, as an articled apprentice, by Thomas Ebdon. On expiration of his articles about 1784, he succeeded Garth as organist at Sedgefield. In 1794 he married Elizabeth Foxton and set to music her operetta, Rusticity. In the ‘Advertisement’ to his Concerto for Harpsichord or Pianoforte (London, c1796), he promoted his invention of a pendulum for keeping musical time as more practicable than the timekeepers of Loulié, Sauveur and others. A model of the invention, owned by Wright’s granddaughter, Miss Edith Wright of Wakefield, was seen by Frank Kidson, when compiling his article for Grove’s Dictionary (3rd edn). In 1797 Wright succeeded his father as organist at Stockton. In 1817 he was organist at Kirkleatham near Redcar; but sometime after he returned to Stockton and remained there as organist, teacher and composer until his death.
SainsburyD
A.B.: Letter to the Editor, Monthly Magazine, ix (1800), 110–11
J.C. Kassler: The Science of Music in Britain, 1714–1830 (New York, 1979), ii, 1083–4
JAMIE C. KASSLER