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Contents:
DDD Total Time = 68.03 - Recorded: York Minster - 18–21 May 1999 When asked for some autobiographical notes Samuel Sebastian Wesley had no hesitation in declaring that ‘My published 12 Anthems is my most important work’. Yet if that volume represents the summit of his achievement, it also stands as a memorial to a life whose early promise was only partially realized. Although at times his own worst enemy, many of the difficulties he encountered in a turbulent career as a cathedral organist reflected the circumstances under which church musicians were forced to work. ‘This state of things’ he once declared ‘is the natural result of such an anomaly as that of one professional calling being wholly supervised by another - viz, Musicians by Clergymen’. His struggle to improve matters became a lifelong crusade whose fruits were only beginning to appear when he died in 1876. Born in London in August 1810, the illegitimate son of the organist and composer Samuel Wesley and his housemaid Sarah Suter, Samuel Sebastian was named after his father’s hero, J.S. Bach. Showing early musical promise he was accepted as a Child (chorister) of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, in 1817, and was later said by William Hawes, Master of the Children, to have been ‘the best boy he had ever had’. On leaving the choir in 1826 he obtained the first of a series of organists appointments at London parish churches, but also continued his association with Hawes. By 1828 he was acting as pianist and ‘Conductor of the chorus’ at the English Opera House and in 1830 was appointed organist at the Lent Oratorio Concerts. One of his first published compositions was the short anthem ‘O God, whose nature and property’ (1831) whose clashing contrapuntal ‘Amen’ already contains the seeds of his mature harmonic style. Commended by The Harmonicon as ‘a composition no less pleasing than devotional’, it was followed by a setting of the Benedictus performed at the Oratorio Concerts and an Overture and ‘Melodramatic music’ to The Dilosk Gatherer given at the English Opera House. . Within six months, however, Wesley had chosen to forsake the musical life of the capital for the isolation of a rural cathedral, tempted by the opportunity to enhance his status and proclaim his independence. But little did he realise what he would encounter at Hereford:
Gradually, too, came the realisation that by leaving London he had effectively sacrificed any hopes of following up his early success as a composer. Yet the move to Hereford had one remarkable effect in that it triggered the composition of ‘The wilderness’. Written to commemorate the re-opening of the rebuilt cathedral organ in November 1832, it was Wesley’s first wholly characteristic piece of church music and, through a fascinating synthesis of the music he had encountered in London with the cathedral tradition, demonstrated how new life could be infused into the anthem. If the contrasting stylistic elements were more or less balanced in ‘The wilderness’, the pendulum soon swung further and in ‘Blessed be the God and Father’ and ‘Trust ye in the Lord’ (c.1835) he produced two works in which the contemporary idiom predominates. The latter in particular reveals a fondness for the seductive chromatic harmony of Louis Spohr and in form, too, represents a more radical break with the past. Yet perhaps Wesley’s most significant achievement was to re-introduce a sense of drama into Anglican cathedral music, a theme he was to develop after his move to Exeter Cathedral in 1835. Although a runaway marriage to the Dean’s sister probably hastened Wesley’s departure, Exeter offered a number of advantages, not least a considerably enhanced salary and a fine choir. It was doubtless the latter which prompted him to embark on a group of three double-choir anthems, including ‘Let us lift up our heart’ and ‘To my request and earnest cry’ (both c.1836), each lasting over fifteen minutes. If the influence of Spohr is now on the wane that of J.S. Bach is more prominent, particularly in the bold handling of diatonic dissonance and a greater emphasis on contrapuntal writing. Bach’s ghost can also be seen in the impressive fugue from the Introduction and Fugue in C sharp minor, issued in 1836 as the first number of a projected Studio for the Organ. The Introduction, in contrast, is very much a ‘modern’ work with some particularly dramatic harmonic juxtapositions. By the late 1830s Wesley had succeeded in developing a wholly individual musical language, characterised by harmonic richness, strong diatonic dissonance and, when he chose, a free use of chromaticism. We can see the last in the great baritone aria ‘Thou, O Lord God’ from ‘Let us lift up our heart’ and both this anthem and ‘To my request and earnest cry’ stand as monuments to his technical skill and to his ability to clothe the sentiments of the carefully selected texts with appropriate music. Particularly effective is the free triple fugue which forms the massive final movement of the latter. Framed by chorale-like sections, it builds up to a thrilling climax at the words ‘My fainting soul shall raise’ before a beautifully placed modulation leads to the expressive coda with its recapitulation of material from the opening. Yet amazing though it may seem, Wesley probably never heard the work. It was never sung at Exeter and, after its abortive publication in a volume of six Anthems in 1840, he seems to have lost interest in it. Since then even its survival has been precarious. While the first two movements are found in a handful of proof copies the last remained in manuscript, its textual and thematic links with the first movement unrecognised. Yet Wesley had not completely forgotten it and re-used material in his late Andante in E minor for organ, as well as basing an apparently extempore fugue (heard by Hubert Parry in 1865) on the section ‘Like some lost sheep we’ve strayed’. Such neglect of one of the finest anthems of the period suggests that all was not well at the Cathedral, and from the appointment of a new Dean in 1838 Wesley’s relationship with the Dean and Chapter deteriorated rapidly. Complaints were made about his absence from services and difficulties raised about the copying of new music into the choir part-books. As he later wrote
Personal problems also darkened his later years in Exeter and when in October 1841 he was offered the post of organist at the rebuilt Parish Church in Leeds he had no hesitation in accepting it. His feelings about Exeter were, however, reciprocated and the chapter clerk later annotated a bundle of his papers ‘The most to be avoided Man I ever met with’! Moving to Yorkshire in February 1842, Wesley had nothing but praise for the church whose choir could already put many cathedral ones to shame. It was while at Leeds, too, that his career as an organist reached its peak with ‘his fame and talents . . . on the lips of all Yorkshire musicians . . . [who] flocked in scores to hear his extempore fugues, etc.’. While none of these has been preserved we do have a brief introductory improvisation, the Andante in D. Played on 27 December 1846, it so pleased his friend Martin Cawood that he persuaded Wesley to write it down for him. In contrast to the expansive works of the previous decade the anthems written at Leeds are all relatively concise and reveal an unexpected interest in the music of the past. ‘Man that is born of a woman’ (c.1845) is a moving setting of words from the Burial Sentences and was intended to precede ‘Thou knowest Lord’ by Purcell: at the words ‘O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful saviour’ and the harsh dissonance used to depict the ‘bitter pains of eternal death’ it contains more than an echo of the earlier composer. By now, however, differences of opinion with the Vicar had begun to arise. ‘Disappointed as I was with Dr Hook & his powers to either aid his Church Music or me - I soon bitterly repented of leaving Exeter’ Wesley later wrote and when a vacancy arose at Winchester Cathedral in 1849, he was relieved to obtain the post; in view of his reputation and recently-published critique A Few Words on Cathedral Music the authorities demanded certain assurances before ratifying his appointment! Although only thirty nine, Wesley’s best years were already behind him and his main achievement in the city was to oversee the publication of his volume of twelve Anthems (1853), containing some of the finest church music of the century. Yet the press virtually ignored it and this, the attacks on ‘The wilderness’ when it was given at the 1852 Birmingham Festival and the criticism of the organ he had designed for St George’s Hall, Liverpool (completed in 1855), left him thoroughly dispirited. Professing little enthusiasm for music, he wrote practically nothing for several years. Not until the early 1860s did he again take up his pen, producing three extended anthems of which ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul’ (1861) is the best known. It was written to mark the opening of the new organ in Holy Trinity Church, Winchester, with the semiquaver figuration in the second movement designed to show off the instrument’s quick-speaking pipework. Markedly different from the anthems written at Exeter, it can match neither their grandeur nor their inspired intensity, yet at such moments as the phrase ‘Let all them that trust in thee’ in the second movement, it possesses real beauty. The anthems ends with the well-known setting of ‘Lead me Lord’ which gains immeasurably from being heard in its intended context. The appointment of a new precentor had done nothing to enhance Winchester’s waning attractions and it was with some relief that Wesley exchanged his post for that of organist of Gloucester Cathedral in 1865. Despite renewed involvement with the Three Choirs Festival, he found the city no more congenial than any of its predecessors and his final years were passed where ‘there is . . . no great demand for any peculiarly experienced musical ability and I must be content to rank with the low ones’. The sale of his copyrights to Novello & Co in 1868 brought financial security and he took the opportunity to revise a number of works, including ‘O God, whose nature and property’ (the version recorded here). Official recognition finally came in 1873 when he was offered a knighthood or Civil List pension and chose the latter. Increasingly dogged by ill-health he died in Gloucester on 19 April 1876, a tired and prematurely aged man. That one who had the potential to have made an outstanding contribution to the Romantic movement in this country should have passed his life in the backwaters of provincial cathedral cities was a tragedy for English music. For Wesley’s music speaks with a powerful and wholly distinctive voice and he was also one of the small group of native composers to have embraced Romanticism wholeheartedly. If his musical language was Romantic, so too were his vision of the composer as an artist and his conception of the Anglican choral service as an art-form embracing music, liturgy, architecture and ceremonial. It was such a vision which inspired his greatest works and well might he write ‘I think the style of my anthems should have notice’. Page revised 26.06.03 |
