Recollections of R.J.S.Stevens: An Organist in Georgian London

335 Pages·1992·27.86 MB·English

by  Mark Argent (eds.)

RECOLLECTIONS OF
R·].S·STEVENS
AN ORGANIST IN
GEORGIAN LONDON
RECOLLECTIONS OF
R·J·S.STEVENS
AN ORGANIST IN
GEORGIAN LONDON
Edited by Mark Argent
M
@MarkArgent, [992
5。此coverreprint ofthe hardcover 1s t edition 1992
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First published in the United Kingdom [992 by
The Macmillan Press Limited
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Auckland, Del恤， Dublin, Gaborone, Hamburg, Harare, Hong
Kong, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, Manzi叫 Melbourne， Mexico City, Nairobi,
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-349-12778-8 ISBN 978-1-349-12776-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12776-4
Typeset by Wyvern Typesetting Limited, Bristol
Contents
Editorial Procedure VI
Acknowledgments VI
Introduction vii
Select Bibliography xviii
RECOLLECTIONS OF A MUSICAL LIFE
I Early Years
2 1776-1780 16
3 1781-1785 36
4 1786-1790 53
5 1791-1795 74
6 1796-1800 99
7 1801-1805 1I8
8 1806-1810 137
9 181I-18I5 179
10 1816-1820 207
II 1821-1825 228
12 Closing the Account 261
Appendix A - Chronology 271
Appendix B - People and Institutions 284
Appendix C - Stevens' Indenture 305
Appendix D - Units of Money 307
Appendix E - Variant Readings 308
Index 309
Editon·al Procedure
For this edition the text of Stevens' RecoUections has been shortened. Cuts
are shown by the ellipsis character ( ...) in square brackets, either appear
ing in line, or centred on a separate line, where one or more paragraphs
have been cut. Stevens' underlinings have been replaced by italics, but his
spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been retained throughout
except for titles, which have been placed in italics rather than Stevens'
accustomed double quotation marks, and given uniform capitalization and
punctuation. Material quoted by Stevens has been reduced. in size and
indented, and appears without its surrounding inverted cbmmas. The divi
sion of the text into chapters spanning five-year periods is editorial, as are
the italicizing of dates at the start of each year, and all material between
square brackets ([ and ]).
Stevens' pencil additions to the text are shown between triangular brack
ets « and», and pen additions between braces ( { and}). Where he altered
the text, rather than simply adding to it, the new reading is shown between
appropriate brackets, accompanied by an asterisk (*) or dagger (t), and the
original reading is reproduced in Appendix E against the same symbol.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the late Helena Shire, with Mary Stewart and David
Cornick for encouraging the early stages of my work on glee singing in late
eighteenth-century London, and David also for his more recent advice on
nineteenth-century history. I am grateful to the staff of the Pendlebury
Library in Cambridge, which houses Stevens' papers, for their help in the
preparation of this edition and the research which preceded it. Sandra Dawe
and Ann Keith have always been cheerful and cooperative, even at the
library's busiest times, but I am most especially indebted to the Librarian,
Richard Andrewes, who first introduced me to the Stevens papers and has
since been an unceasing and invaluable source of enthusiasm and counsel.
All the illustrations come from the Pendlebury Library, except for that
on p. 1)8 (courtesy of the Trustees of the Fitzwilliam Museum), and that
on p. 198 (Cambridge University Library).
Very sadly, Helena Shire died while this book was in press; it is
dedicated to her memory.
Introduction
Four months after the accession of Queen Victoria The Times bore a brief
obituary: 'Mr R J. S. Stevens. By the death of this gentleman the appoint
ment of organist to the Charterhouse and the office of [m usic] Professor of
Gresham College has become vacant ...' That unassuming notice bore
witness to the passing, seven years after the premiere of Berlioz' Symplwnie
Fantastique, of a musician who had been born during the lifetime of Handel,
and who left behind a wealth of personal papers which give a fascinating
insight into the life of a very ordinary musician, as he was - and was not -
affected by the major events of his day.
In his RecoUections Stevens tells of the Gordon Riots, the largest riots of
the eighteenth century in England, because they 'deprived rp.e of some
pecuniary advantage', as the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, whose daughters
were Stevens' pupils, moved his family away from the capital, 'thinking
they were not safe from the vindictive spirit of the rioters'. A decade later,
in the remarkable season of 1791-2, when both Haydn and Pleyel were
directing concerts in London, Stevens says that he regularly attended 'to
hear the Modern German sryle of music ... by some of its most eminent
masters', but seems nevertheless to have been largely untouched by it, as
he was by Samuel Wesley's promotion of the works ofJ. S. Bach a decade
later, though he remained an enthusiast for the music of Handel.
During the summer of 1792 Stevens and his friend Samuel Birch visited
France, then in the upheavals of the Revolution, but fearing for their
safety, cut short their visit, Stevens returning on a passeport [sic] with the
royal insignia crossed out and the words 'liberte, egalite' hastily written in
by hand. When, a decade later, revolutionary France under Napoleon
threatened Britain with invasion, Stevens sent the Catch Club a volume
containing revised copies of all the pieces he had submitted for their
composers' competitions, newly copied out, and joined the volunteers
'wishing to assist in the defence of my country, now threatened with
Invasion by Buonoparte [sic]'; he records that he 'marched with my Corps
... to Hyde Park ... [and] passed in review before his Majesty .. .', but
'the exertion ... gave me the Piles most terribly' and, pleading illness,
withdrew, subsequently taking himself off to Bath, from where he returned
three months after his day on parade.
viii RECOLLECTIONS OF R. J. S. STEVENS
Stevens epitomized the nineteenth-century tendency to moral strictness,
though he turned a blind eye to the fact that his patron, the bachelor Lord
Thurlow, lived with his mistress who was the mother of his children, and
to whom Stevens always showed the greatest respect. In 1806 he strongly
approved of the expulsion of one of the elderly poor brothers from the
Charterhouse for 'having a woman to sleep with him every night' and of
another for 'inticing [sic] some young Girls into his room' during Bar
tholomew Fair, where he 'proceeded to take many liberties with them'; but
the following year Stevens went on holiday to Hastings and recounts
sitting by the seaside 0Ite day when 'five or six young girls, who did not see
me, came down to bathe ... they walked to the edge of the water in their
shifts, which they readily dropped to their feet, and all went into the sea.
The frolick, fun, and unusual method of their bathing was ridiculous
enough! ... playing with each other in a wanton manner in the sea. I kept
my station unseen by them, and after a little time, they departed'!!
BIOGRAPHY
Stevens' family were c1othworkers, and his grandfather had been one of the
many people who migrated to London in the early stages of the industrial
revolution. Stevens' father was a cloth-drawer and member of the
Haberdashers' Company, who, from the earliest, encouraged his son's
musical interests, placing him first in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, and
then as an apprentice to William Savage, Almoner and Master of the
Choristers at St. Paul's. Thus, the boy followed the same path of training
as many English musicians before the founding of the London music
colleges in the nineteenth century. Surviving among Stevens' papers is his
indenture, which is reproduced as Appendix C.
In the years immediately following the end of his apprenticeship,
Stevens eked out a living as an organist, teacher and singer. He was
disappointed when his hopes of succeeding Savage in the choirs of St.
Paul's and the Chapel Royal came to nothing (though Savage was a bass
and Stevens a tenor), but his description of engagements as a freelance glee
singer provide an entertaining picture of this genre of music-making, and
include an account of the Anacreontic Society which identifies John Stafford
Smith as the composer of the club's song which, as The Star-Spangled
Banner now serves as the national anthem of the United States of America.
In 1778 Stevens added Miss Le Cour's School at Dulwich to his
peripatetic teaching engagements, and found among his pupils the
daughters of the Attorney General, Edward Thurlow, who became Baron
INTRODUCTION ix
Thurlow and Lord Chancellor a few months later. A chance introduction to
Thurlow's mistress provided an entree to the Thurlow household, and he
soon began to enjoy the friendship and valuable patronage of the Lord
Chancellor. The other cornerstone of Stevens' career was laid in 1781
when, after intensive canvassing, he succeeded Theodore Aylward as
organist of St. Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London, a post which did
much to bring him wealthy pupils. Through the patronage of Lord
Thurlow he added to this post that of organist to the Inner Temple in 1786,
and to the Charterhouse in 1796, while his friend the Alderman Samuel
Birch helped him to become professor of music to Gresham College in
I80r.
Stevens' additional appointments and teaching commitments sat along
side his activities as a composer. Like John Wall Callcott he attempted
various forms but met with success only as a composer of glees. His Op. I
Sonatas for piano with violin accompaniment received a favourable review
from Samuel Arnold in the European Magapne, but neither this, nor his
Op. 2 songs, nor his various theatrical works made a lasting impression,
while his papers make no mention of any performances of his oratorio The
Captivity. By contrast, Stevens was genuinely surprised when he won a
medal for the first time in the Catch Club's composers' competition of 1782
with the glee See what horrid tempests rise, and wrote over 90 glees, of which
a few, including Ye spotted snakes, Sigh no more, ladies and Blow, hlow, thou
winter wind, have remained familiar into the twentieth century. Ever
methodical, Stevens revised his glees repeatedly, and after receiving a poor
price for It was a lover and his lass, set himself up as a self-publishing
composer, trading in partnership with his schoolfellow John Percy in the
I 790S. Most of the transactions with publishers recorded in Stevens'
account book are sales of sheet music, since most publishers were also
music sellers, but occasionally he released works through other publishers,
and in 1808 he sold the copyright in his Selections of Sacred Music to the
publisher Preston for 100 guineas, while in 1827, effectively in retirement
at the age of 70, he sold all his remaining plates and copyrights, again to
Preston.
Among Stevens' new pupils in 1788 who escaped mention in his Recol
lections of that year was the 20-year-old Anna Maria Jeffery, who quickly
established a place in her music master's affections and is most often
referred to as 'my favourite pupil' or 'my dearest Anna Maria'. The Recol
lections tell a story of mounting affection until, on 22 April 1799, when she
had been his pupil for I I years, 'I told her my afflicting situation with
respect to my Affection for her. She told me, that she was engaged. I was
undone. Unfortunately, I had staked all (like a desparate gambler), dreadful
x RECOLLECTIONS OF R. 1. S. STEVENS
to relate; I now lost all!!' Stevens recounts acute distress following this
event, and each year around its anniversary until her heart began to soften.
A month later he conducted (i.e. directed from the piano) a concert of glees
for Anna Maria's parents, and says that he was in a 'violent paroxysm of
tears all the way home'. Stevens' accounts, however, show that he gave -
and apparently charged for - lessons to Anna, her brother John, and
perhaps also her sister Susanna on this fateful day, and returned to the
house five times to give further lessons in the next month; this sits ill with
the stories of great distress, and suggests that, writing 15 years later, he
was exaggerating.
It seems likely that the reason for Anna's initial rejection of Stevens'
proposal was a social objection to her marrying a humble musician,' an
objection made stronger by the fact that she was the elder daughter. The
story is one of great sadness, for Anna's grandfather was the Revd. Dr.
Samuel Chandler, a learned Presbyterian minister who had been forced to
keep a bookshop in order to boost his income. His children included
George Chandler, who became senior surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital,
and Anna's mother, who seems to have been engaged as a servant by the
Haylock family (friends of Stevens' father) before her marriage. The Jeffery
family, especially Anna's brothers, seems to have been very sensitive to the
issue of wealth in consequence of Mrs. Jeffery's reduced origins, and
perhaps also of the affluence brought by Mr. Jeffery's trading. Ironically,
Stevens' and the Jeffery family's social circles overlapped considerably.
Col. Richard Starke, who was an early member of the Harmonists' Society,
knew Anna Maria before her marriage, and John Haylock, whose family
had engaged Anna's mother as a servant, was a close friend of Stevens, his
father, and Henry Allen. Stevens himself was an executor to John Haylock,
and his sisters Ann and Sarah, and it is a note'in his diary, made while
clearing out the belongings of Sarah Haylock after her death in 1825, which
mentions Mrs. Jeffery's having been a servant. Stevens does not say how
he was first introduced to the Jeffery family, but this may well have been
via John Haylock, Richard Starke, or Stevens' mother, who moved to
Peckham, where the Jeffery family had its country residence, when she
separated from Stevens father.
Stevens himself seems to have enjoyed warmer relations with Anna's
father than with her brothers during the 1800s; if Jeffery Snr. was a
practising draper, then he might well have had rather more in common
with Stevens the c1oth-drawer's son than his status-conscious sons would
have done with Stevens the music teacher. They did, however, gradually
I. I am indebted to Richard Andrewes for this suggestion.