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4. The Beginnings of Reform – Samuel Sebastian Wesley

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–76) was the foremost church musician of the nineteenth century. A brilliant organist – generally considered the best of his time in Britain – he was also an unusually innovative composer, who initiated a breakthrough in church music, and a visionary who had firm ideas as to how the music of cathedrals might be rescued from the abyss into which it had descended during the previous 100 years. He was a long way ahead of his time and, given his combination of gifts and artistic temperament, it was unsurprising that he was a prickly character, quick to take offence, and found it virtually impossible to collaborate with others, especially those who chanced to be his capitular employers. In fairness, however, it must be recognized that his experience of negligent cathedral authorities would have tested the patience of a saint.

Wesley was the organist of four cathedrals – Hereford, Exeter, Winchester and Gloucester – as well as of the cathedral-like Leeds Parish Church. He composed about 30 anthems, a few service settings and some hymn tunes and psalm chants, but only a small amount of this is in current use. Part of the explanation is that his anthems and chief service settings are of considerable musical complexity and demand cathedral, rather than parish church, choirs for their performance. Fashion is another factor. Although Wesley was a pioneer, most of his music bears the clear stamp of the Victorian era, sometimes exhibiting an element of sentimentality, and many of the twenty-first century’s church musicians do not find this attractive. Dr Arthur Hutchings, who was Professor of Music at Durham in the 1960s, and who denied the existence of any significant church music between Purcell and Stanford, described Wesley’s work as ‘feeble’, but this probably tells us more about the limited taste of the professor than it does about the skill of the musician. Eric Routley, who appreciated him more, described him as

easily the most cultivated musician of his day ... and the most adventurously unreliable musician. He could write every cliché in the book; but he could also induce a sense of spaciousness and authority which none of his contemporaries could approach.

Wesley’s style was in fact a reversion to that of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century composers, but with the addition of the new harmonic concepts of his own time. Of his hymn tunes ‘Aurelia’ is still without serious competition for ‘The Church’s one foundation’, ‘Hereford’ seems just right for ‘O Thou who camest from above’ and ‘Harewood’ appropriately upbeat for ‘Christ is our Corner-stone’. ‘Alleluia’ has just about retained its claim on ‘Alleluia! Sing to Jesus’, but few of his many other fine tunes survived for long and today they are unknown to congregations.

In 1844 Wesley’s personal experience and accumulated knowledge of many English cathedrals led him to pen A Few Words on Cathedral Music and the Musical System of the Church, with a Plan of Reform. The ‘few words’ were a 90-page monograph which sold for 2s. 6d. and was not designed to win him friends among the deans and chapters. He began with a stark warning to aspiring cathedral organists:

Painful and dangerous is the position of a young musician who, after acquiring great knowledge of his art in the Metropolis, joins a county Cathedral. At first he can scarcely believe that the mass of error and inferiority in which he has to participate is habitual and irremediable. He thinks he will reform matters gently, and without giving offence; but he soon discovers that it is his approbation and not his advice that is needed.

The painter and the sculptor can choose their tools and the material on which they work, and great is the care they devote to the selection: but the musician of the Church has no power of this kind; nay worse, he is compelled to work with tools which he knows to be inefficient and unworthy – incompetent singers and a wretched organ. He must learn to tolerate error, to sacrifice principle, and yet to indicate by his outward demeanour the most perfect satisfaction in his office. His position, in fact, is that of a clergyman compelled by a dominant power to preach the principles of the Koran instead of the Bible. This censure may not apply to all Cathedrals, it is allowed; to some it assuredly may and does.

He then went on to make constructive proposals for reform.

1 Every cathedral foundation should employ at least twelve Lay Clerks, each to be paid a minimum of £85 p.a. If possible this should be raised to £100–£150 p.a. which would be sufficient to remove the necessity for the men to find additional employment.

2 Lay Clerks should be chosen by a panel consisting of the cathedral organist, the organists of two neighbouring cathedrals, to ‘judge’ their musical competence, and one or more members of the Chapter to ‘judge the religious fitness of the candidate’.

3 Besides the twelve Lay Clerks, another three deputies or supernumeraries should be appointed on a retainer of £52 p.a. to take the place of those who might be absent because of illness or for other good reasons. In large towns competent amateur singers should be recruited to augment the contribution of the professionals on special occasions or when the music demands larger forces.

4 The cathedral organist should be ‘a professor of the highest ability’, competent not only as an organist, but also as a choir-trainer and a composer. He should be chosen by the organists of seven other cathedrals and rewarded with a salary of £500–£800 p.a. (more at St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey) for ‘such men are the bishops of their calling – men consecrated by their genius, and set apart for duties which only the best talent of the kind can adequately fulfil.’ They would, however, be required to take no outside engagements.

5 A College of Music should be founded for training of all organists, choirmasters, composers and lay clerks – this to serve and be funded by several cathedral or other choral foundations.

6 A national ‘Musical Commission’ should be founded to advise, and where necessary exercise authority over, the church’s music. It should also administer a common fund to assist with the training of choristers, the purchase of printed music and the repair or rebuilding of organs wherever local resources were limited.

A few years later (1854) Wesley sent these proposals, accompanied by a number of characteristically pungent comments, in a published Reply to the Inquiries of the Cathedral Commissioners relative to the Improvement in the Music of Divine Worship in Cathedrals.

Admirable though Wesley’s ideas might, in principle, seem to those responsible for cathedral music in the twenty-first century, it was unrealistic to believe that they would be enthusiastically welcomed in his own time. He probably recognized this and offered them as a challenge that might provoke some positive response. But, although he lived and worked for almost another 30 years, he was destined to be disappointed. It was not until well into the twentieth century that most deans and chapters began to increase significantly the financial resources necessary for the production of high-quality music, and although cathedral music has now reached a standard never previously attained, except possibly in the High Middle Ages, this is due at least as much to the selfless dedication of the musicians as it is to the priorities of those who employ them.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley was born in London’s West End in 1810. His father Samuel was a son of Charles Wesley, the great hymn writer and brother of John, the founder of the Methodist movement. Samuel was one of the finest organists of his time, a notable composer and an early student and performer in Britain of the works of J. S. Bach, hence the choice of Sebastian for the second Christian name of his son. Samuel Sebastian was, in fact, the first of seven illegitimate children born after the failure of his father’s first marriage and when he had established a new relationship with his housekeeper. This irregularity undoubtedly stood in the way of a cathedral appointment for the gifted father; he also had a depressive personality that quite soon limited both the quality and quantity of his compositions.

Young Samuel Sebastian displayed unusual musical talent from his earliest years and in 1818 was sent to the Chapel Royal where the choir was under the direction of a notable musician, William Hawes, who combined this with responsibility for the music at the English Opera House and the training of the choristers at St Paul’s Cathedral. The musical education provided by Hawes could not have been bettered and he later described his prodigy as the best pupil he ever had. But the level of general education offered to the boys was poor and the boarding conditions harsh. Nevertheless, Samuel Sebastian flourished and in 1823 went to Brighton to sing before King George IV. In December of the same year he performed a piano duet with Rossini which so pleased the King that he presented him with a gold watch.

Aged 15 he was appointed organist of St John’s proprietary chapel in Hampstead and was capable enough to join his father in organ duets performed for audiences in London and Bristol. Four years later he moved to become organist of St Giles Parish Church, Camberwell, in South London, and quickly added to this responsibility for the music at what was then the new church of St John, Waterloo Road. He also found time and energy to play for the evening services at Hampton in West London, and, to keep himself occupied on weekdays, he conducted the band at performances of comic opera at the Opera House in the Strand. He once regretted that he had never managed to compose a comic opera.

In 1831, aged 21, he composed his first anthem, ‘O God, whose nature and property is always to have mercy’, and in the following year was appointed organist of Hereford Cathedral. The dean, John Merewether, was one of the earliest cathedral reformers and there was much to claim his attention, not least in the music department. The eight adult members of the choir were all clergymen, whose ages ranged from 49 to 78. Five of these were in poor health, two were deemed to be sub-standard, and the eighth, the 78-year-old, exempt from attending. In order to meet this situation, the previous organist, himself in an advanced state of infirmity, had composed three Communion service settings for boys and a single bass voice.

Wesley’s appointment was designed to deal with this situation, but, since the organ was due to be enlarged, his arrival in Hereford was delayed by just over a year. This left him with time for a lengthy holiday in the Black Mountains of Wales, the experience of which inspired his landmark verse-anthem ‘The wilderness and the solitary place’. This was performed for the first time (with what choral resources is unknown) at the re-opening of the organ in November 1832, and was widely acclaimed, though when he submitted it for the national Gresham Medal the adjudicators did not like it. One of them complained: ‘It is a clever thing, but it is not cathedral music.’ This did not prevent it from being performed subsequently in many cathedrals, some at the present time. Its length – a full 12 minutes – is now a major problem, and even Wesley admirers concede that it has some weaknesses, but it is a very remarkable work and would be welcomed by many cathedral congregations as an occasional substitute for the Sunday Evensong sermon. More accessible and still deservedly popular was the anthem ‘Blessed be the God and Father’, which he composed, at the request of the dean, for Easter Day the following year. This became his best-known anthem, and, after an inauspicious start – its first performance was by a row of trebles and a single bass (the dean’s butler) – it was sung in Westminster Abbey at the wedding of the present Queen and is part of the standard repertory of every cathedral choir and of many parish church choirs.

Wesley was at Hereford for a mere three years, which was just long enough for him to be the conductor of the Three Choirs Festival, which included an eclectic mixture of fine music – sacred and secular – and also in 1835 to marry the dean’s sister, Mary Anne. Evidently the dean did not approve of the union and the wedding took place quietly in Ewyas Harold Church, some miles from Hereford.

A few weeks later he moved to Exeter and in 1836, believing that he might one day secure an academic appointment, he applied for BMus and DMus degrees at Oxford. These required him to submit and perform one of his own compositions, and the anthem he chose for this purpose required a choir. The examination was therefore held in Magdalen College Chapel and the quality of the college choir at that time was candidly expressed in a local newspaper account of the event. Having congratulated Wesley on a fine composition and his introduction on the organ, it added, ‘but of the vocal line we could not fairly judge, the singers, in many parts, being both out of time and out of tune’.

Wesley’s early years at Exeter were without serious incident, though he was always short of money, and in a revealing letter to Vincent Novello, the music publisher, he explained his late delivery of a promised composition:

I hope to be able to comply with your desire respecting the Voluntary. I now have several engagements to fulfil with Publishers in London, but the dreadful nature of an organist’s, I mean a county cathedral organist’s, occupation, that of giving lessons all over the county from morning to night makes composing a pleasure hardly to be indulged in. How much should musicians strive that the offices connected with the art in Cathedrals are not of a nature to make them independent respecting money so that they might give their attention to the improvement of the decaying, much degraded musical state of the Church ... the clergy will never move in the matter. They know nothing of their real interests, and consequently the Establishment is going to ruin.

In 1839, however, the cathedral’s precentor – an office for which Wesley had not the slightest respect – was elevated to the deanery and things began to go badly wrong. He always resented the fact that the precentor chose the music and that his own contribution was limited to attending a Saturday morning chapter meeting at which the forthcoming week’s settings, anthems and hymns were discussed and authorized. But something more serious arose in 1840 when two choristers, with the dean’s permission, went to perform one evening in a local Glee Club. On hearing of this Wesley accosted the boys, one of whom he struck hard blows with his fist on the back, then kicked him on the point of his chin, leaving a mark for several days. The other boy was struck on the side of his face and knocked down with another blow. When he was on the floor Wesley kicked him.

When the dean and chapter heard of this they summoned him to their presence in the Chapter House where he admitted the truth of the boys’ evidence but argued that he was, as organist, entitled to punish them. The dean and chapter disagreed, said that he was unjustified in inflicting any punishment, deplored his uncontrollable temper and inability to apologize, and decided to suspend him from his duties, without pay, until the chapter’s Christmas audit meeting several weeks hence.

He was in trouble again the following year when he was reprimanded for taking leave of absence without permission and leaving an 18-year-old pupil to play at the services. The Devon rivers were too strong a temptation for so addicted an angler. Yet, in spite of all his difficulties, the standard of music at Exeter was raised to an unusually high level for the time. The choir was greatly improved. Better service settings and anthems were introduced and Wesley’s own organ playing was by now nationally famous. Large congregations were attracted. But Wesley was not happy and, after he had made a deep impression on the citizens of Leeds with his inaugural organ recital in their newly built parish church, he accepted the invitation of the vicar, Walter Farquhar Hook, to move there as organist. One person who was not sorry to see him leave Exeter was the cathedral’s chapter clerk who had dealt with most of the Wesley problems and described him as ‘the most to be avoided man I ever met with’.

Hook had gone to Leeds in 1837 and found there a medieval parish church which, although it provided for 1,500 worshippers, soon became too small to accommodate those who wished to attend the Sunday services. He rejected the suggestion that the decaying structure should be restored and enlarged – ‘I loathe it’, he declared, ‘I cannot preach comfortably in it, I cannot make myself heard. The dirt and indecorum distress me.’ So £28,000 was raised and the new cathedral-like church was completed and consecrated in 1841. It was intended that there should be daily choral services; there had, unusually, been a surpliced choir of men and boys in the old church since 1818.

Wesley was attracted by the enthusiasm for good music he had found in Leeds and also by a salary of £200 p.a. guaranteed for ten years by one of the city’s wealthy residents. The vicar, though not himself a musician, believed that only the best was good enough for the parish church’s worship and he was ready to find the money to make this possible. He and his new organist shared a dislike of plainsong and a determination to use only the new Anglican chants for the psalms. Wesley was soon admired throughout Yorkshire and the parish church became one of the county’s chief centres of music-making.

His lengthy Morning, Communion and Evening Cathedral Services in E were published in 1845 and demonstrated refreshingly that canticles could provide fitting material for great music. The influence of this proved to be considerable and is now experienced in cathedrals daily in the settings of composers such as Stanford, Wood, Britten and Howells. It also included a preface in which he began what was to become a prolonged onslaught on the lamentable state of cathedral music and the urgency of reform. Later he published an admired book of psalm chants.

Once again, however, he became restless, quarrelled with his employer, and, having given the opening recital on a new organ in Tavistock Parish Church, toyed with the idea of moving there, tempted again no doubt by the fishing prospects. This proved to be only a brief flirtation and Yorkshire after all was not without attractive rivers. It was while alone on a day’s fishing in the North Riding in December 1847 that he had a serious accident in which he sustained a compound fracture of his left leg. The combination of shock and infection endangered his life for a time and he had to be nursed in The Black Swan at Helmsley for almost six months. During this time he composed his masterpiece miniature anthem ‘Cast me not away’, which included the Psalmist’s plea ‘That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice’, and started to write his A Few Words ... He was left permanently lame, although his organ pedal work was not hampered.

It was about this time that he applied for the professorship of music at Oxford but, as with some other attempts to obtain a university chair, was passed over. Instead, he accepted in 1849 an invitation to become organist of Winchester Cathedral, aware that the Itchen was one of England’s premier trout streams and that Winchester College would provide an education for his sons. The dean and chapter were pleased to engage him but they were somewhat wary, as his reputation had gone before him, and on his arrival he was summoned to a chapter meeting at which those parts of the Statutes which referred to the duties of the organist were read to him. More than this would be needed, however, to keep him in order and maintain the peace.

There was ample scope for the employment of Wesley’s gifts and reforming zeal since the Winchester music was in a sorry state. But although he was able to negotiate a good salary (augmented by appointment also as organist of the college, then as the first Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music), and although the dean and chapter found £2,500 to purchase the organ built for the 1851 Great Exhibition, his behaviour was erratic. He was not respectful and often downright discourteous to the canons. Moreover, the choir’s performance was not improving and, in 1857, the chapter ordered an enquiry into the reasons for this. These were not difficult to find: of the 780 choral services held during the previous year, he had been present at only 397. He was now a prima donna who needed a national stage and, when not away from Winchester, was often to be found casting a fly on the Itchen. The organ was left in the hands of a 14-year-old pupil and, through lack of training, the choristers were well below an acceptable standard. Some of the lay clerks were drunkards, others were insolent and rude and sometimes deliberately sang wrong notes. Wesley was admonished for neglect of duty, but this made little difference and further censure was required two years later.

More constructively, his 16-year-long stay at Winchester was marked by the composition of some good anthems. ‘Ascribe unto the Lord’ (1853), ‘Praise the Lord my soul’ (1861), ‘Give the King Thy judgement, O God’ (for the wedding of the future King Edward VII in 1863) and most notably by the publication of his Twelve Anthems (1853) dedicated to the dean, Thomas Garnier, and considered by many to be the outstanding collection of nineteenth-century church music. ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace’ and ‘Wash me throughly’ are still in constant use – and deservedly, since they have deep spiritual power. Always suspicious of music publishers, whom he believed to cheat him of his dues, Wesley recruited a long list of subscribers. This included most of the eminent names in church music at that time and more or less covered the cost of the many plates required for the printing. Thereafter his creative power declined.

In 1865 Wesley was asked to serve as an assessor for the appointment of a new organist for Gloucester Cathedral and, at the end of the interviews, startled the dean and chapter with the announcement, ‘Gentlemen, I have decided to accept the post myself.’ The dean explained to a former lay clerk afterwards: ‘Dr. Wesley is fond of fishing and he hears that there is some good fishing to be had about here.’ Another attraction was the Three Choirs Festival and, since this was due to be held at Gloucester that year, he was immediately appointed conductor. This involved responsibility for the organizing of the programme (which he did for another two Festivals held at Gloucester), but he lacked the flair of an impresario and his choice of anthems and oratorios was sometimes too ambitious for the resources at his disposal. Moreover, his conducting was not always at an acceptable standard, but there were occasions when his own organ playing was a Festival highlight, and the performance for the first time in 1871 of Bach’s St Matthew Passion was considered a triumph, even though the audience for it was disappointingly poor. At this Festival Wesley displayed his versatility and the catholicity of his taste by conducting at an evening concert music from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. The publication in 1872 of The European Psalmist, a compilation of 615 hymn tunes, including 143 of his own, was a remarkable achievement though it proved to be a quarry of material from which other church musicians could mine, rather than a working hymn book.

Wesley’s final years, spent at Gloucester, were comparatively tranquil. As he grew older his proposals for cathedral reform became ever more radical and he proposed to a distinguished music critic of the time, Joseph Bennett, the possibility of conducting a campaign to abolish all cathedral chapters and precentors and replace them with a small staff of what he pointedly called ‘working clergymen’. organists should be given sole responsibility for the music, and the capitular funds should be directed to a central fund to be allocated to cathedrals according to need. In common with many of his musician colleagues, he had evidently heard too many poor sermons because he also proposed the setting up of a London-based College of Preachers, from which every cathedral would be supplied with a monthly preacher in residence who would have something worthwhile to say and the skill to communicate it. The campaign never got beyond the ideas stage and would have been quickly rejected if it had. He seems to have given up hope of raising the standard of his own choir.

With advancing years Wesley’s health gradually deteriorated and he became increasingly eccentric, not least in an obsessive concern about his diet. But he continued to derive great pleasure from angling and shooting. He was distraught when his adored bull terrier Rob died, and he conducted a solemn funeral for the animal in his garden, which many called Dr Wesley’s Wilderness. On Christmas Day 1875 he played the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah after the blessing at Evensong – a departure from his usual practice of playing or extemporizing one of Bach’s organ fugues – and this proved to be the last time he played the cathedral organ. He died in April of the following year and, after a simple funeral service in Gloucester Cathedral, was buried in the old cemetery at Exeter, next to the grave of his only daughter Mary, who had died when only nine weeks old.