Smith, John Stafford

(b Gloucester, bap. 30 March 1750; d London, 21 Sept 1836). English musicologist and composer. He was the son of Martin Smith (d 1786), organist of Gloucester Cathedral from 1739 to 1781. He was sent to London to study with Boyce, and in 1761 became a chorister of the Chapel Royal. He continued to sing there after his voice had broken; on 16 December 1784 he was made a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and on 22 February 1785 a lay vicar of Westminster Abbey. In 1790 he was engaged as organist for the Gloucester Music Meeting; in 1802 he was appointed one of the organists to the Chapel Royal and on 14 May 1805 Master of the Children. He resigned the latter post in June 1817.

Smith gained an early reputation as a glee composer, winning two prizes from the Catch Club in 1773 and several more during the next few years. He published five collections of glees as well as several separate pieces; many others appeared in Warren's collection and other anthologies of the time. The later glees are strikingly original; one, Sweet poet of the woods, uses quarter-tones. He also produced a madrigal, Flora now calleth forth each flower, which is a genuine essay in the old madrigal idiom. He published a collection of songs, and a set of 20 anthems, besides composing a number of hymn tunes and chants. His anthems, too, display unusual boldness, both in the choice and treatment of texts, and deserve revival. He became a member of the Anacreontic Society in 1766. His song, To Anacreon in Heaven, was composed for this drinking and singing club; he published a harmonized version (A,T,B) in his 5th Book of Canzonets, Catches, Canons and Glees (1799). In much altered form, this was later adapted to The Star-Spangled Banner, now the national anthem of the USA.

He is now chiefly remembered for his pioneering work as a musical antiquary. He began early to collect old music manuscripts and editions, and he placed his collection and his knowledge at the disposal of Sir John Hawkins, who acknowledged his debt to him in the preface to his General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776–89). Smith transcribed and edited many of the music examples in that work. In 1779 he issued A Collection of English Songs … Composed about the year 1500. Taken from MSS. of the same age, which was perhaps the first scholarly edition printed in England. He continued to build a collection of music that is priceless by today's standards, but was probably acquired at little cost. It included the Mulliner Book, the Old Hall MS (which he bought in 1813), and the copy of the Ulm Gesangbuch (1538) formerly owned by J.S. Bach and presented to Smith by C.P.E. Bach at Hamburg in 1772. Some of the riches of Smith's library can only be guessed at, for it passed on his death to a daughter. In 1844, the daughter being pronounced insane, her property was sold by an incompetent auctioneer, and the greater part of it disappeared without trace and without even an adequate catalogue or description being made. 2191 volumes of music were disposed of, including 578 in manuscript. The Old Hall MS, however, was retained by the family, and was presented to St Edmund's College, Ware, by Smith's great-grandson, Thomas Tordiffe, in 1893.

Smith was much more than a mere collector; in Young's words, he was ‘virtually the first English musicologist’. In a copy of Burney's General History of Music which he bought in 1789 he wrote copious marginalia which show not only his rancour against Burney for stealing Hawkins's thunder but also his ability to see through the shallowness of the doctor’s musical scholarship. He continued to study and to edit early music, and his labours culminated in Musica Antiqua. This outstanding achievement drew not only on Smith's own library but on many other available sources. He transcribed 11 trouvère songs from the Chansonnier de Mesmes, which was soon afterwards destroyed by fire; in Karp's view these transcriptions ‘occupy a historical position among the earliest attempts at a rhythmic solution of the Trouvère notation’. The collection was approximately chronological in arrangement, extending from Gregorian chant to Geminiani. It includes much early English keyboard music and movements from the Jacobean masques, but there is also a good representation of continental composers including Ockeghem, Obrecht, Willaert, Wert, Clemens and Morales. Historical notes on each piece are provided; considering the state of knowledge at the time they are by no means contemptible. Scholars continued to draw on Musica Antiqua for many decades.

WORKS

printed works published in London

editions

theoretical works

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HawkinsH

Biographical sketch, The Harmonicon, xi (1833), 186

J.S. Bumpus: A History of English Cathedral Music 1549–1889 (London, 1908/R), 377–81

O.G.T. Sonneck: The Star-Spangled Banner (Washington DC, 1914/R)

B. Frith: John Stafford Smith, 1750–1836, Gloucester Composer (Gloucester, 1950)

D. Stevens: The Mulliner Book: a Commentary (London, 1952)

E. Cole: ‘Stafford Smith's Burney’, ML, xl (1959), 35–8

T. Karp: ‘A Lost Medieval Chansonnier’, MQ, xlviii (1962), 50–67

A.H. King: Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge, 1963), 43, pl.vii

W. Lichtenwanger: ‘The Music of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from Ludgate Hill to Capitol Hill’, Library of Congress Quarterly Journal, xxxiv/3 (1977), 136–70; also pubd (Washington DC, 1977)

J.C. Kassler: The Science of Music in Britain, 1714–1830 (New York, 1979), 947–8

N. Temperley: ‘Music in Church’, Music in Britain: the Eighteenth Century, ed. H.D. Johnstone and R. Fiske (Oxford, 1990), 357–96

W. Shaw: The Succession of Organists (Oxford, 1991), 15

M. Argent, ed.: Recollections of R.J.S. Stevens (London, 1992), 25–7

NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY