Joseph Kelway

Joseph Kelway (also Kellaway, Kellway; c. 1702–1782)

In 1734, he succeeded Obadiah Shuttleworth as organist of St Michael, Cornhill in London; in 1736 he resigned this post to succeed John Weldon as organist of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. Charles Burney wrote that Handel was among the musicians who visited St Martin's to hear him play. Kelway became in 1739 a founding governor of the Royal Society of Musicians. Kelway, said Burney, "kept Scarlatti's best lessons in constant practice [and] executed the most difficult lessons in a manner peculiarly neat and delicate".

His only notable publication was Six Sonatas for Harpsichord (1764), influenced by Scarlatti. Towards the end of his life, his music went out of fashion: a new style was introduced by Johann Christian Bach, and the pianoforte became fashionable.