A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Clifton, John

by W. Barclay Squire

CLIFTON, John C., born 1781, studied for five years under Richard Bellamy. He subsequently became a pupil of Charles Wesley, and devoted himself entirely to music, resigning an appointment in the Stationery Office which he had held for about two years. After an engagement at Bath, where he conducted the Harmonic Society, he went in 1802 to Dublin, and in 1815 produced there a musical piece called 'Edwin.' He organized, together with Sir John Stevenson, a concert in aid of the sufferers by the Irish famine. In 1816 he invented an instrument called the 'Eidomusicon,' intended to teach sight-reading. An attempt made in 1818 to bring out his invention in London failed, and he then adopted Logier's system of teaching, and remained in London for some time. He married the proprietress of a ladies' school at Hammersmith, where he died Nov. 18, 1841, having become partially insane some three years previously.

[ W. B. S. ]