In Tuneful Accord. Trevor Beeson

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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.