William Bates (c.1732–1778) was as comfortable when writing imposing fugues as he was when evoking the cheerful grace of the English country dance, and his harmonic and rhythmic invention compel admiration. These qualities are fully evident in the concise three-movement overture scored for a typical theatre orchestra including oboes and horns that he wrote as his first essay in music for the stage: the extraordinarily successful ballad opera The Jovial Crew, which, premiered at Covent Garden in 1760, held the English stage for over three decades. Much of the overture is tuneful and simple, in the tradition of ballad operas, but flashes of complex counterpoint and imaginative touches in the scoring elevate it to the level of Bates’s sonatas and concertos.

 Music example (pdf)