op.6 and Dithyramb op.7 for organ
were composed at Ely. Thomas Tertius Noble was organist from 1892 to 1898.City in England. The earliest reference to music in the city, located near Cambridge, is found in the 12th-century Liber eliensis in which Cnut is reputed to have been impressed with the singing of the Ely monks. Before the Reformation, polyphony was sung in the Lady Chapel, contrasting with the plainsong of the monks’ choir in the cathedral; no music from this period survives. In 1539 the monastery was dissolved and in 1541 the King’s New College at Ely was established.
Tye was appointed Magister choristarum at the cathedral in 1543 and was succeeded in 1561 by Robert White. Some music survives from their late 16th-century successors, John Farrant, William Fox and George Barcroft. Towards the end of the 16th century the dean and chapter provided viol lessons for the choristers, although there is no evidence that viols were actually played in the services. From 1580 to 1685 reference is made in Dickson’s catalogue to ‘other instructors in musick and on the viols occasionally’. A considerable quantity of fine music, much of it recently published, was written by a native of Ely, John Amner, who was organist from 1610 to 1641. The music-loving dean, Henry Caesar, was a generous patron of the cathedral music and Amner dedicated some works to him. Amner enlarged the cathedral music library, copying and making new books (now in GB-Cp). Services were dramatically stopped in 1643 by Cromwell who, with soldiers and rabble, entered the cathedral during a service and drove out the congregation.
The 1662 statutes stipulated that the choir should include eight clerks but there soon developed a practice of appointing probationary lay clerks on half-salary, sometimes making a total of ten adult singers. John Ferrabosco and James Hawkins were organists after the Restoration; both were indefatigable copyists who set about gathering the fragments of the old partbooks, though Hawkins often remarked that a part (or parts) may be ‘torn out of ye books’ (Dickson). During 1690–91 Gerard Smith rebuilt the organ but Hawkins had to transpose when playing because ‘the organ here is three quarters of a note higher than the pitch of the organs are now’ (Dickson). Hawkins was also a prolific composer whose output includes chanted services where single chant alternates with more florid passages, a style continued by later Ely organist-composers, Thomas Kempton and Richard Langdon. In 1770 Alan of Walsingham’s magnificent choir stalls were removed from the octagon, where they had been since the 14th century, to the extreme eastern end of the cathedral. They were moved again to their present position during the mid-19th century.
Robert
Janes, organist from 1830 to 1866, was trained at Norwich where a previous
organist, John Christmas Beckwith, had devised a system of pointing the psalms.
Janes was the first to publish a pointed psalter, printed at Ely in 1837 by
T.A. Hills. In 1851 the organ was rebuilt by Hill in a case designed by Sir G.
Gilbert Scott in imitation of the one in Strasbourg Cathedral. In 1853 there
were two daily services sung by eight lay clerks and ten choristers. During the
19th century the Ely Confession gained a wide reputation among choirs.
It appears in the Ely Annual Choir Festival Book for 1867, where precise
instructions demand that the priest and people shall sing alternately. Though
often thought to be a work of Janes, there is no mention of his name in a long
list of acknowledgments. His successor, Edmund Chipp, became popular as a
composer and as a champion of Schumann’s music, and was followed in 1887 by
Basil Harwood, a prolific composer whose Service in A op.6 and Dithyramb op.7 for organ
were composed at Ely. Thomas Tertius Noble was organist from 1892 to 1898.
Most 20th-century Ely organists have maintained the tradition of composing. They have included Archibald Wilson, who also approved the specification for the Harrison organ, and Noel Ponsonby, usually remembered for his Five Fancies for Small Organ. Arthur Wills, organist from 1958 to 1990, was a prolific composer in many genres; notable are his organ music, mainly in the modern French style, and choral compositions showing an awareness of changing liturgical needs. He was succeeded by Paul Trepte. The entire old choir library, catalogued by precentor W.E. Dickson in the 19th century, was moved to the University Library of Cambridge in 1970.
B. Willis: A Survey of the Cathedrals (London, 1727–30)
J. Bentham: The History and Antiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely (Cambridge, 1771)
Handbook to the Cathedral Church of Ely (Ely, 1852)
W.E. Dickson: A Catalogue of Ancient Choral Services and Anthems … in the Cathedral Church of Ely (Cambridge, 1861)
D.J. Stewart: Architectural History of Ely Cathedral (London, 1868)
A. Kingston: East Anglia and the Great Civil War (London, 1897)
J.E. West: Cathedral Organists, Past and Present (London, 1899, 2/1921)
B.E. Dorman: The Story of Ely and its Cathedral (Ely, 1945/R)
N. Boston: The Musical History of Norwich Cathedral (Norwich, 1963) [orig. pubd in Reports of the Friends of Norwich Cathedral, 1938–9]
M. Hawkins: ‘Robert Janes’, MT, cviii (1967), 165
MAURICE A. RATLIFF