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3. The Last of the Old Wine – John Goss

When John Goss became organist of St Paul’s in 1838 he found the music of the great cathedral, as well as almost every other aspect of its life, appalling. This could hardly have surprised him, since he had been involved in the capital’s musical life from an early age. What is more, only a slight acquaintance with other English cathedrals would have made him aware that the situation at St Paul’s was commonplace. There it was more deplorable than most, however, inasmuch as it had huge resources of money and manpower that a corrupt capitular regime had directed from the furtherance of the cathedral’s worship and witness to the pockets of a number of privileged clergymen.

Goss found a community that consisted of a dean, three residentiary canons, 30 prebendaries, 12 minor canons, six vicars choral, eight singing boys and a large complement of vergers and other minor functionaries. The deans of St Paul’s, who received a stipend of £5,000 per annum, had for many years also been diocesan bishops. The residential canons, who had £2,000 per annum, also held one or more other appointments in the church, while the 30 prebendaries, all appointed by the Bishop of London from among his relations and friends, received an income of varying amounts from the land allocated to their stalls; these also held one or more other appointments.

The minor canons, who were responsible for the ordering and conducting of worship on Sundays and weekdays, formed a college with its own legal identity, and its own endowments. They, too, held other appointments, usually livings in the City of London, and whenever vacancies occurred in the college, they recruited the replacements, nearly always from clergymen who were professional musicians. The vicars choral were laymen and professional musicians who also sang at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. One of their number was the organist, who employed a permanent deputy to sing in his place, another was the master of the choristers. All the appointments at St Paul’s were to freehold offices, tenable until death, and as at other cathedrals they continued to be held even when their occupants were incapable of performing their duties.

What should have been an impressive great church was, moreover, fatally flawed by persistent absenteeism. The dean put in an appearance only infrequently, he being preoccupied with his bishopric. The canons residentiary were required by the statutes to occupy houses in Amen Court for four months of the year and during this time to attend the daily services. Since they were answerable only to their apparently untutored consciences, they were often absent. One of their number, who held with his canonry the sinecure office of precentor, appeared so infrequently that on one occasion when he did turn up for a service the dean’s verger failed to recognize him and refused him admission to his stall. Sydney Smith, a fellow canon, referred to him as ‘the Absenter’. The minor canons were not much better than their superiors. In theory they should have been present and involved in the daily services, augmenting the choir, but they were frequently absent and there was rarely anyone in authority to hold them to account. They were a law unto themselves.

Morning Prayer was said on weekdays at 7 a.m. (8 a.m. in the winter), sung at 9.45 a.m., and Evening Prayer was sung at 3.15 p.m. The same pattern was observed on Sundays, except that Holy Communion was celebrated after 9.45 a.m. Morning Prayer, as it was also on saints’ days falling in the week. The east end of the building, which housed the choir stalls, was separated from the nave by the huge organ screen, and the mostly unrehearsed performance of the eight singing boys and as many of the vicars choral and minor canons as chose to turn up was poor – very much worse than that achieved in the best of the nearby City churches. The choice of anthems was determined, and generally limited, by the number of vicars choral likely to be available and sometimes had to be changed at the last minute. They tended therefore to be kept short and simple, though on one occasion Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus was attempted with only two men present.

Yet, in spite of this, the congregations at the daily services were often fairly large – as many as 150 at Evening Prayer – and on a Sunday, after the organ screen had been removed, the nave could be crowded with, it was reputed, ‘not a seat to be had except in the gallery and that by slipping half a crown to the verger’. Part of the explanation of this was that the canons were all distinguished scholars and, whatever their other shortcomings, they were fine preachers whom thoughtful people wanted to hear. It is also the case that sometimes, and especially on great occasions when everyone reported for duty, the worship could be of a very high quality and win praise.

By 1838 it was evident that the situation of the English cathedrals could not be tolerated for much longer. Reform was in the air and eleven years earlier there had been a faint, very faint, indication of change at St Paul’s when Dean Copleston, who stayed until 1849, chose to neglect the bishopric of Llandaff, to which he had also been appointed, and instead resided in the Deanery for most of the year. In response to the badgering of Miss Maria Hackett, ‘the choristers’ friend’, he appointed a master to teach and generally care for the singing boys. At the national level the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, appointed a Commission of Enquiry in 1834 to investigate the substantial finances of the Church of England’s bishoprics and cathedrals. This led in 1836 to a permanent Ecclesiastical Commission, which was given responsibility, with increasing power, for the administration of the church’s financial assets.

An Act of Parliament in 1840 required the dean and canons residential of cathedrals to be full-time appointments. Prebendaries were to be honorary rather than stipendiary posts. At St Paul’s, the college of minor canons was reduced from twelve to six, those remaining being required to undertake pastoral and educational work in the City and to live in the cathedral’s precincts rather than hold City livings. But the effects of these reforms on the music was for many years minimal, mainly because the freeholders remained in their offices, normally until death. When H. H. Milman, a poet as well as a church historian (he was the author of the hymn ‘Ride on, Ride on in majesty’), succeeded Copleston in 1849 and became the first full-time dean for more than 100 years, he and the chapter resolved to increase the choir to a size appropriate to the huge building. By this time, however, the capitular revenues had been so depleted by the 1840 reforms that expansion could not be afforded It was not until 1871, when the saintly R. W. Church became dean and acquired an outstandingly able chapter, that significant progress became possible. By this time Goss was within 12 months of retirement, his health having declined.

John Goss was born in 1800 at Fareham, Hampshire, where his father was the highly regarded organist of the parish church. By the age of eleven he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal in London, joining his uncle, an alto, who also sang at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. Young John boarded with the other choristers in a house near Westminster Abbey where the regime was strict and general education confined to one and a half hours on Wednesdays and Saturdays when a ‘writing master’ taught reading, writing and arithmetic and a little English grammar. If a boy wished to learn an instrument, he had to teach himself and this was not encouraged. Goss recalled:

Walking across the schoolroom one day with Handel’s Organ Concertos under my arm, Mr. Stafford Smith (the Choir Master and a son-in-law of William Boyce) met me and asked me what I had there. ‘If you please, Sir, it’s only Handel’s Organ Concertos; I thought I should like to learn to play them.’ ‘Oh! Only Handel’s Concertos’ replied my Master; ‘and pray, Sir, did you come here to learn to learn to play or to sing?’ Mr. Stafford Smith then seized the book and crowned the argument by hitting me on the head with it. I had bought it out of my hardly saved pocket money, and never saw it again.

Sometime later Stafford Smith advised Goss:

Remember, my child, that melody is the one power of music which all men can delight in. If you wish to make those for whom you write love you, if you wish to make what you write amiable, turn your heart to melody; your thoughts will follow the inclinations of your heart.

This precept was followed by a mild beating, designed to ensure that it would always be remembered. He left the choir when his voice broke and studied composition, with special attention to Mozart’s symphonies, under Thomas Attwood, the then organist of St Paul’s who had been a pupil of Mozart. He financed this by singing in the chorus at the opera – he was a fine tenor – and published a few secular part-songs.

In 1821 he was appointed organist of Stockwell Chapel, which became St Andrew’s Church in Lambeth, and three years later moved to a more prestigious and better paid post at the newly built St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, where he remained until 1838. Shortly before his twenty-seventh birthday he became Professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy of Music – a chair he occupied for the next 47 years, retiring on health grounds in 1874. He proved to be a gifted teacher as well as a virtuoso organist, though he was unwilling to use a pedalboard, then starting to be added to English organs, and once advised a young organist, ‘Charm with your fingers, not with your feet.’ This excluded from his repertory the great works of J. S. Bach, which were just becoming known in Britain, so eventually he came to be regarded as an organist from another era. In 1833 he won a prize for an anthem, ‘Have mercy upon me, O Lord’, and in the secular field he continued to compose part-songs that were popular with the Glee Clubs of that time.

Not long after the death of Thomas Attwood in 1838 Goss wondered whether he might apply to succeed him at St Paul’s, and sought a meeting with Sydney Smith the legendary wit, who had become a canon in 1831 and, contrary to all expectations, proved to be an industrious administrator.

‘I suppose Mr Goss, you are aware what the statutory salary is?’ ‘Not exactly.’ ‘Well, it is about £34 per annum.’ ‘Oh indeed, is that all? Well, as I am receiving about £100 at Chelsea, I think I will, if you will allow me, consider the matter a little further before I leave my name.’ As he was about to leave, Smith said, ‘Perhaps Mr Goss, before you go, you would like to know whether any other appointment or any other perquisite appertain to the office of Organist.’ He then gave details of these, which were not inconsiderable, and Goss immediately made his application. A long delay followed and Goss, anxious to know whether or not he had been successful, chanced to meet Smith at a large dinner party. He felt unable to enquire about the situation but Smith, who had been entrusted with carving a fine salmon, said on handing to Goss a generous slice, ‘I trust Sydney Smith will always be ready to assist Mr Goss through thick and thin.’ On his return home Goss found a letter offering him the post.

Appointment to St Paul’s was an honour, but was in many ways a poisoned chalice. For one thing, he was contracted only to play the organ. The choice of music for the services was in the hands of the succentor, and the training of the choristers, who often stayed long after their voices had broken, was delegated to one of the vicars choral – a tradition that remained throughout Goss’s time in office. A major reconstruction of the entire choral foundation was urgently needed but, in the circumstances of the time, this was impossible. Sydney Smith, being a Whig, favoured reform – at least up to the point where it might adversely affect his own income – and he was joined in 1840 by the appointment of Archdeacon Hale to an additional canonry, and he, too, was a reformer. The problems were, however, too deeply rooted for them to be solved overnight.

In any case, Smith was no lover of cathedral music and although he had promised to assist Goss ‘though thick and thin’, his help proved to be severely limited. Not long after he became organist, Goss drew his attention one day after Evensong to the organ’s limitations. Smith responded, ‘Mr. Goss, what a strange set of creatures you organists are. First you want the bull stop, then you want the tom tit stop; in fact you are like a jaded cab-horse, always longing for another stop. However, I will ascertain what may be done in this matter.’ Goss got his new stop. But he was not so lucky when he asked for an increase in the number of boys in the choir. Smith declared, ‘It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether Westminster bawls louder than St Paul’s. We are there to pray and the singing is a very subordinate consideration.’

Had the circumstances been favourable, it is by no means certain that Goss would have been a strong enough character to carry through a major reform of the cathedral’s music. But he soldiered on for 34 years within the constraints imposed upon him and, until the final phase of his career, raised the standard to a level well above that of most other cathedrals.

He was a prolific composer, in spite of a lean period in the 1840s following the cool reception given by St Paul’s choir to an anthem ‘Blessed is the man’ (1842). Based on Psalm 1, this was intended to begin an ambitious series of anthems relating to all 150 psalms, but he was so discouraged by the choir’s verdict that he composed no more anthems until 1850. He then produced two short works, ‘God so loved the world’ and ‘Let the wicked forsake his way’, which were widely acclaimed. These were followed in 1852 by his masterpiece, ‘If ye believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead’, a work of great beauty composed for the funeral in St Paul’s of the Duke of Wellington, attended by an astonishing 17,000 people. There was a choir of 150.

After his appointment as composer to the Chapel Royal in 1856 Goss composed many anthems and service settings which were at the time highly regarded (the competition was weak), but few proved to have enduring attraction. Most were too difficult for the non-professional parish church choirs for which they were primarily intended. Yet two of his hymn tunes – for ‘Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven’ and ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ – remain deservedly popular. So also about a dozen of his psalm chants, which still seem just right for Mattins and Evensong in any parish church or cathedral. He edited Chants Ancient and Modern (1843), which contained 257 chants, and, with James Turle of Westminster Abbey, who had been a fellow pupil of Thomas Attwood, three volumes of Cathedral Services Ancient and Modern (1848). All these had some influence on the development of church music during the nineteenth century.

Goss was a devout composer – many of the compositions in his sketchbooks are prefixed INDA (In Nomine Domini Amen) – kind, generous and modest. It was only under pressure from his friends that he exerted his right, as Composer to the Chapel Royal, to provide the Te Deum and anthem ‘The Lord is my strength’ for a Thanksgiving Service held at St Paul’s for the restoration to health of the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, in 1872. This involved the painful refusal of an offer of music from the great French composer, Charles Gounod, who often attended St Paul’s when in London, but Gounod took this in good part and dedicated one of his new anthems to Goss.

Soon after the thanksgiving service he was knighted and received the personal thanks of Queen Victoria. He then retired, but continued to worship at St Paul’s, rejoicing in the improvements wrought by his successor John Stainer, until his death in 1880.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Goss’s music became much less popular in cathedral and other choral foundations. In 1958 the anthem ‘If we believe that Jesus died and rose again’ was sung in 69 per cent of these, but in 1998 this was reduced to 15 per cent. ‘O Saviour of the World’ declined from 67 per cent to 21 per cent, and ‘O Praise the Lord’ from 24 per cent to 1 per cent. ‘The Wilderness’ still has its admirers, though it is not a patch on S. S. Wesley’s masterpiece. Of his canticles, only those in E remained in use and these were reduced from 61 per cent (82 per cent in 1938) to 12 per cent. It is possible, however, that some good parish church choirs view his work more favourably.