BOOKS.
SIR FREDERICK BRIDGE'S REIMLATISCENCES.* Tam emeritus-organist of Westminster has led a full and success- ful life, and the record of his professional activitiee, fromthe days. when he was admitted a probationary chorister at Rochester in 1850 down to his retirement in 1918, makes excellent reading, for Sir Frederick Bridge is an admirable raconteur, though he has not by any means exhausted his repertory in these pages. He has held many appointments, presided at many important ceremonies, has taught and lectured and examined and con- ducted, and in the exercise of these functions been brought into close contact with many eminent musicians and officials. And he has met with many and well-earned gratifying recogni- tions of his services. But we do not think we are misinter- preting these reminiscences when we say that he has derived the keenest pleasure of his well-filled life from the pursuits and interests which lay outside his strictly professional duties. The late Sir George Darwin once said to the present reviewer that the happiest hours of his life were spent in the Cambridge Tennis Court. Sir Frederick Bridge's happiest hours have been prob- ably those spent on the Deveron in the Valley of Glass, for, like Samuel Sebaetian Wesley, whom he greatly delights to honour, he is an impassioned angler, though without any undue opinion of his skill. And in this context let us say that nothing in the whole book pleases us more than his comment on his share in collaborating with the Rev. H. G. Daniell Bainbridge in a volume entitled Palestrina and his School : " I have a greater pride in this volume than in any of my compositions." What he cane his mediaeval strain, coupled with the enthusiasm of a sports- man, gave a peculiar zest to his antiquarian researches, and he describes his finds—notably that of Purcell's 2'e Deurn—with true gusto. Sir Frederick's connexion with the Pepys Club, to the Presidentship of which he succeeded on Mr. Wheatley's death, illustrates this agreeable phase, and his notes on the musical references in the diary are embodied in an excellent little book.
The Muniment Room at Westminster proved an inexhaustible happy hunting-ground for relics of his illustrious predecessors, and he showed his reverence for them and earned the gratitude of all music-lovers by organizing admirable commemoration services in honour of Purcell and Orlando Gibbons. National celebrations and memorial services loom large in these pages. At no time a sinecure, the post of organist then becomes the target of an intense bombardment of applications for admission, and we read how at the Coronation of King Edward Sir Frederick was reduced in desperation to displaying a large placard on his door with the legend : " Sir Frederick Bridge has no Tickets, no Time, and no Temper." These great State ceremonials are fully described, with plenty of anecdotes, illustrating the writer's ingenuity, resoureefulnesa, and humour. Those who attended them will readily testify to their impressiveness and dignity on the musical side. But we are even more impressed by the zeal and intelligence displayed by Sir Frederick in selecting appropriate music and fitting words for the funeral or memorial services of great men—his efforts to secure a composition by Galuppi to play in honour of Browning ; his happy choice of the passage from Proverbs iii. 13 sew. for the funeral anthem when Darwin was buried in the Abbey ; and, most appropriate of all, his selection of Wesley's "The Wilderness" on the occa- sion of the dedication of the memorial window to Sir Benjamin Baker, who projected the great irrigation scheme of the Assuan Dam. The Dean thought the words almost too appropriate, but Sir Frederick carried his point, and earned the congratula. time of Lord Cromer on the ground that nothing better could • A W,A011,1145, Snag a Record of Serene in Church, Cathedral. sad Abbey, College, Clairersity, and Coneert.rocon, with a fen Rothe on Sams. By Sir Frederick Bridge, C.V.O., King Edward Profemor of Hush) at the Unisex. eft, of London, Gresham Professor of Slums, Emeritus-Organist of Westminster Abbey. London : Hutchinson. [ lee. net.]
have been selected or sung in honour of the man who had helped to make the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. The story of the request for Bach's G minor Fugue must be told in the author's own words :-
" An interesting visitor to the organ-loft put in an appearance during the war, while I was playing the voluntary after service. An officer came up the stairs and stood by me. As I Salsbod, he asked me to play Bach'e G minor Fugue, saying he was devoted to music, and to this great specimen of organ mush, in particular. I excused myself on the plea that I was tired, and should have to practise it a little beforehand. He could not conceal his disappointment, and answered that he was off to the Front the following day, and would have liked to hear hi/ favourite work from the instrument. At this I said ' Well, if you come back, and are able to tell me that you've killed ten Germans. I'll play you the fugue any day. Some mouths later, while I was away in Scotland, the same officer reappeared in the organ-loft, considerably to the surprise of my assistant, and inquired for me, explaining that he had come to ask me to redeem my promise. ' But,' said my assistant, have you, on your part, killed those Germans 4 ' The reply was quiet, but forceful : ' I don't know about that, but I'm going to Buckingham Palace to-morrow to receive the V.C. He heard that Fugue." Thus it will be seen that organists have their privileges as well as their trials. Sir Frederick Bridge has had his share of both. One of the greatest honours that fell to him was the request that he should edit the Methodist Hymn-book. In accepting it he was prompted by his " sound respect for John Wesley for his inspiring work that rattled the dead bones of the moribund Church of his day, and also for Charles Wesley, his brother, whose magnifi- cent hymns are a priceless heritage throughout Christendom." The work was very well received, and led to an invitation to address three thousand Wesleyan ministers at the Conference at Sheffield. The speech, to judge by the summary, must have been one of the beat of the many incisive and genial addresses which Sir Frederick has delivered. But he has never lacked stimulus, encouragement, and criticism—often finding them in the most unexpected quarter. A cabman reproved him for his tempi and introduced him to Perosi ; and he reckoned amongst his most sympathetic musical friends a city waiter and a Lancashire collier.
Sir Frederick Bridge was born in Worcestershire, but went with his parents to Rochester in 1850 and lived there till he was twenty. He "clings tenaciously to every remembrance of his childhood days," which open with his being allowed to assist the blind bell-ringer to toll the bell for the Iron Duke in Novem- ber, 1852. Of Rochester as Dickens knew it, of Dickens himself, of his fellow-choristers and friends, of Canons and Precentors and Deans, there are many pleasant and humorous stories, From Rochester he went as organist to Trinity Church at Windsor, where he made many friends, notably Mrs. Oliphant; from Windsor to Manchester; and thence to Westminster in 1875. This is, as we have said, the record of a busy, happy, and prosperous life, which has not allowed the writer to forget the claims of other leas prosperous members of his profession ; the plea for the better regularization of the status of organists derives a special weight from his long and varied experience of an arduous and ill-remunerated calling. A propos of musical education generally, Sir Frederick has some interesting obser- vations on the modern swing of the pendulum in the direction of instrumental idiom.
We have noted one small inaccuracy. It was Eduard not Charles Hecht who was Halle's choir trainer in Manchester. And Halle's story of the German servant-girl who applied for the number 23 in a lottery because she had dreamed of seven three times running is shorn of its sequeL Halle told it in the presence of Dean Stanley, who innocently asked : " But isn't three times seven 23 1 " Dean Stanley neither loved nor understood music, but Sir Frederick Bridge appreciated his great personality, and pays him a fine tribute when he says that " he had a burning desire to make the Abbey loved and used by the people."
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