Discord in the choir
Michael Trend
John Stainer and the Musical Life of Victorian Britain Peter Charlton (David and Charles £16)
rr he revival of interest in recent years in 1 all sorts of arts practised by our Victo- rian ancestors has not extended itself to the music of the period. Who cares about Ouseley or Oakeley, Smart or Stegall, Garrett or Goss, Barnby, Bennett or Bridge (Sir Frederick not Frank)? Peter Charlton, the Director of Music at Clifton High School in Bristol, has brought a rare shaft of light into this Dark Age of music with his study of one of its most representa- tive figures, John Stainer; and his conclu- sions leave one in little serious doubt that most of the unheard corpus of Victorian music will remain unheard yet. Stainer's life and work are, however, of real interest in showing the extent of the laborious ground-work during the last part of the 19th century for the later renaissance of English music.
Stainer was a good and a sensitive musician, and his life's practical work was aimed at reforming old and decrepit music- al institutions and helping set up new ones. As the organist and choirmaster at St Paul's, Stainer brought about extensive reform in the music of the cathedral and set an example that was widely followed. But such reform is never easy. The musical world often falls into the hands of those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo — however barren — and this was particularly true in Stainer's day. He was appointed to St Paul's in succession to Sir John Goss in 1872 (Goss should perhaps hold a place in our affections for his remark — proudly made — that he was the only knight living in Brixton). Stainer at once ran head on into the fierce apathy of the choir and especially the abuses con- nected with the system of deputising that the vicars-choral jealously retained. (When one of them was unable to attend, he was obliged to send a deputy; but it did not necessarily have to be a singer of the same voice.) Some vicars-choral could hold their position for years without putting in an appearance at all. C. A. Belli, appointed in 1819, was refused admittance to the Duke of Wellington's funeral in 1852 because none of the cathedral officials knew him; and Charles Lockey was represented by a deputy from 1859 until his death in 1901.
The new choirmaster set about dealing with his problems as best he could, and it was not long before a breaking point was reached. The Sunday Evening Choir, a voluntary body who sang the second even- song in the cathedral at 6.30, resigned in a body and 'sat in the front of the Dome expecting a breakdown'. Stainer was deter- mined not to give way, however, and he won through in the end. That he was able to do so was in some part due to the support of some of the canons at St Paul's one of whom regarded the singing there at that time as 'unspeakably offensive to Almighty God' — and the new Dean, R. W. Church, who had been Gladstone's choice for the cathedral. Dean Church was a reformer of the 'High Church' party who believed that, among his many tasks, there was a need `to fight and reduce to order a refractory and difficult staff of singing men, etc, strong in their charters and inherited abuses'.
Stainer achieved considerable results during his years at the cathedral, and by the time he left in 1889 to take up the professorship at Oxford, St Paul's music had reached a completely new standard. At Oxford, Stainer's attempts to bring about much-needed change were also met with initial opposition; but the vast institu- tional lethargy and the infinite ability of the dons to prolong internal argument indefinitely were much more formidable obstacles to Stainer's ambitions than the tactics employed against him at St Paul's.
Much of the most substantial and lasting work of the best musicians of the second half of the 19th century was done in the reforming and creation of such institutions of music. Stainer's generation believed that it was imperative to raise the level of music 'made in England' and their success in laying down a firm basis for the extraordi- narily successful musical world that grew up in Britain in this century is a great testimony to their long-term vision. But, more than this, they tried also to make 'English music'. In his Oxford lecture of 1888 on 'The present state of music in England', Stainer set out to show that the German gibe about England being 'Das Land ohne Musik' was no longer true. He traced the decline of an English tradition of music to the early death of Henry Purcell and the arrival in London of Handel, both factors 'equally conducive to crushing the singularly rich development of early En- glish music'. Mr Charlton tells us that Stainer's 'Noble message was that con- structive things were being done to restore our musical heritage so that we could stand, without any sense of inferiority, by the side of our musically cultured Euro- pean neighbours'. And this was the leading impetus that was to establish a real and independent English music in the following generations, first in Stainer's pupil and admirer Parry, and then in Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Hoist, Bliss, Walton, Tippett, Britten and others.
But what of Stainer as a musician? In his day he was chiefly known and chiefly valued as an organist; his genius as an improviser and extemporist was attested to by many of his contemporaries. But it is chiefly by his Crucifixion that he is remem- bered now if at all. This work combines all that was best and all that was worst about Victorian Anglican churchmanship; it is a peculiar mixture of under- and over- statement, of simple and exaggerated emo- tions. 'Musicologists' and professional cri- tics have always tended to take a snobbish line about this work, but it has endured in a remarkable way. Heard in an ordinary parish church, its proper habitat, it has moments that can still have a profound effect upon its listeners, still convey to them something of the attractive man who was its composer.
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