Wesley.

English family. The relationship of the musical Wesleys to the great 18th-century religious leaders of the same name is most easily shown by a family tree (fig.1). Despite the statements of many writers, there is no evidence to connect this family with that of garret wesley Mornington.

(1) John Wesley

(2) Charles Wesley (i)

(3) Charles Wesley (ii)

(4) Samuel Wesley

(5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY (1–3), PHILIP OLLESON (4; work-list with STANLEY C. PELKEY II), NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY/PETER HORTON (5)

Wesley

(1) John Wesley

(b Epworth, Lincs., 17 June 1703; d London,2 March 1791). Clergyman, the founder of Methodism; his views on music were of great importance in English and American musical history.

He was the 15th child of Samuel Wesley (1662–1735), an Anglican clergyman of nonconformist forebears, and Susanna née Annesley (1669–1742), a woman of remarkable learning, was educated at home by his mother and then at Charterhouse and Oxford, and was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England. The Methodist movement began in the religious group he founded at Oxford in 1729. During his missionary voyage to Georgia in 1735–8 and subsequently in London he was much influenced by the Moravians, and his first Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737) contained five translations of German hymns. In 1739 he secured the Foundery at Moorfields which was to remain the headquarters of the London society, and in 1742 he issued the Foundery Tune Book which contained the first collection of Methodist church music. Later he produced Select Hymns with Tunes Annext (1761), the tunes of which were issued separately as Sacred Melody (1765); Sacred Harmonyfollowed in 1781 (revised c1790), to go with his Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780, ed. Hildebrandt and Beckerledge). Much of Wesley’s life was spent in incessant travelling, to preach in churches, in meeting-houses and in the open air, and to supervise and inspire the growing numbers of his followers. In face of rising opposition from the Church, he nonetheless maintained his Anglicanism to the last: from many points of view he was a high churchman. His ideas were influential not only on the Wesleyan Methodists, but on the other dissenting bodies and on the Church of England as well. Indeed he was as much the originator of the Evangelical party in the Church of England as of the sect that bears his name. But he eventually parted ways with the majority of them on a theological issue: he was Arminian, they were Calvinist.

Wesley’s opinions about music are to be found scattered in his Journal, essays, letters and prefaces; in the minutes of the Methodist conferences; and in the selections of tunes which he compiled or approved for Methodist use. He believed in the great power of music over men’s hearts and wanted to harness this power for good. Though he himself could on occasion be profoundly moved by purely instrumental music, his Arminian theology led him to take the view that church music must be joined to words, and those words must come from the hearts of the worshippers. He had no puritanical dislike of elaborate music, or of organs: indeed his personal ‘conversion’ on 24 May 1738 came to him while listening to an anthem at St Paul’s Cathedral. But he could not tolerate voluntaries. If a choir sang, they must sing words with a clear meaning and appeal, and so that all could hear them. If the congregation sang, they must sing heartily, standing up, not too slowly, and without vain repetition. At the Bristol Conference of 1768 he attacked ‘complex tunes which it is impossible to sing with devotion’, long hallelujahs, and ‘the repeating the same word so often (but especially while another repeats different words – the horrid abuse which runs through the modern church-music) as it shocks common sense, so it necessarily brings in dead formality and has no more of religion in it than a Lancashire hornpipe’. The type of tune described has often been called ‘Methodist’, but actually the ‘repeating’ and ‘fuging’ tunes were developed in the Anglican parish churches at about the time Wesley began his movement.

The novelty in the Wesleyan tunes was their secularity. Wesley saw no objection to adapting popular or operatic songs to religious words (‘plunder the carnal lover’, as his brother put it), and the new tunes in the Methodist collections were uninhibited in their adoption of the fashionable galant style of the day. It was this that shocked the more conservative element in the Church. But it was hugely effective with the people at large, showing them that religion need not be formal, dreary and old-fashioned. By 1757 Wesley was able to boast of the great superiority of Methodist singing:

Their solemn addresses to God are not interrupted either by the formal drawl of a parish clerk, the screaming of boys who bawl out what they neither feel nor understand, or the unseasonable and unmeaning impertinence of a voluntary on the organ. When it is seasonable to sing praise to God, they do it with the spirit and the understanding also … all standing before God, and praising him lustily, and with a good courage.

Until the Church put its house in order, the music of the Methodists was a powerful draw. Dr Vincent in 1787 considered that ‘for one who has been drawn away from the Established Church by preaching, ten have been induced by music’. In the USA the Methodists’ tunes contained the seeds of the popular religious music so important in the 19th-century evangelical movements.

EDITIONS WITH MUSIC

A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music as they are Commonly Sung at the Foundery (London, 1742)

Select Hymns with Tunes Annext (London, 1761); 2nd edn, with tune suppl. separately titled Sacred Melody (1765)

Sacred Harmony, or A Choice Collection of Psalms and Hymns (London, 1781/R)

WRITINGS

The Power of Music (1779); repr. in The Methodist Hymn Book (1933)

Preface to Sacred Harmony (London, 1780)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Vincent: Considerations on Parochial Music (London, 1787)

L. Tyerman: The Life and Times of John Wesley (New York, 1872)

R. Green: The Works of John and Charles Wesley: a Bibliography (London, 1896, 2/1906)

N. Curnock, ed.: The Journal of John Wesley (London, 1909–16)

J.T. Lightwood: Methodist Music in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1927)

J. Telford, ed.: Letters of John Wesley (London, 1931)

R.M. Stevenson: Patterns of Protestant Church Music (Durham, NC, 1953)

R.L. Harmon: Susanna, Mother of the Wesleys (London, 1968)

E. Routley: The Musical Wesleys (London, 1968), 15–27

N.F. Adams: The Musical Sources for John Wesley's Tune Books (Ann Arbor, 1974)

F. Hildebrandt and O.A. Beckerledge, eds.: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, The Works of John Wesley, vii (Oxford, 1983), 738–91

H.D. Rack: Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (Philadelphia, 1989)

C.R. Young: Music of the Heart: John and Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians (Carol Stream, IL, 1995)

Wesley

(2) Charles Wesley (i)

(b Epworth, Lincs., 18 Dec 1707; d London, 29 March 1788). Clergyman and hymn writer, 18th child and youngest son of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford and ordained an Anglican clergyman. In 1749 he settled in Bristol, then moved to St Marylebone, London, in 1771. Although remaining more consistently Anglican, he supported and followed his brother John Wesley in all his work. His particular contribution to Methodism was in the writing of hymns. He is said to have written over 8000, and they include some of the greatest in the English language; hundreds are still in use today. They were innovative in their use of the first person, expression of intense personal feeling, and vivid depiction of the suffering of Christ.

As his hymns show, Wesley was profoundly affected by music. His son Samuel recalled that he was ‘fond of the Old Masters Palestrina, Corelli, Geminiani, Handel, and among the English chamber composers Croft, Blow, Boyce, Greene’. As an itinerant preacher he made constant use of singing in varying circumstances: Carlton Young has assembled more than 100 references to singing in Wesley's journal (1736–56). He adapted many songs of art and folk music to sacred words, and some of his best-known hymns are pointed religious parodies of secular poems intended for use with their tunes, such as He comes, he comes, the judge severe (after Henry Carey's ‘He comes, he comes, the hero comes’) and Love divine, all loves excelling (after Purcell's ‘Fairest isle, all isles excelling’).

Late in life he encouraged the talents of his two musically gifted sons, (3) Charles and (4) Samuel, despite his brother's disapproval, and placed them under the influence of leading musicians of the day. Between 1779 and 1787 he gave a series of private concerts at his house in Marylebone, entirely secular in content. Their programmes were not unlike those of the Ancient Concerts, with the addition of compositions by the two boys.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Jackson, ed.: Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. (London, 1849/R)

Register of concerts by the Wesley family, 1779–85 [1894 copy], GB-Lbl Add.35017

R. Green: The Works of John and Charles Wesley: a Bibliography (London, 1896, 2/1906)

L.F. Benson: The English Hymn: its Development and Use in Worship (London, 1915), 219–61

E. Routley: The Musical Wesleys (London, 1968), 28–57

F. Hildebrandt and O.A. Beckerledge, eds.: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, The Works of John Wesley, vii (Oxford,1983)

W. Weber: The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992), 164–5

R.W. Brown: Charles Wesley, Hymnwriter (Bristol, 1993)

C.R. Young: Music of the Heart: John & Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians (Carol Stream, IL, 1995)

J.R. Watson: The English Hymn: a Critical and Historical Study (Oxford, 1997), chap.10

Wesley

(3) Charles Wesley (ii)

(b Bristol, 11 Dec 1757; d London, 23 May 1834). Composer, elder son of (2) Charles Wesley (i). He inherited musical ability from both parents. In infancy he displayed a talent almost without parallel: before he was three years old he could ‘play a tune on the harpsichord readily and in just time’ and ‘always put a true bass to it’. His later development hardly fulfilled this promise. During his childhood and adolescence his father discouraged him from becoming a professional musician, and would not let him take up an appointment as chorister or (later) organist at the Chapel Royal. But under Joseph Kelway he became an excellent organist, and held appointments at several dissenting chapels, the Lock Hospital Chapel (1797–1801) and finally St Marylebone parish church. He learnt composition chiefly from William Boyce, to whom he dedicated his set of string quartets. His brother Samuel called him an ‘obstinate Handelian’ and indeed his compositions, especially those for organ and piano, are extremely conservative in style. In 1822 he published a revised edition of John Wesley's Sacred Harmony.

WORKS

all printed works published in London

instrumental

vocal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DNB (H. Davey)

D. Barrington: Miscellanies(London, 1781), 289–90, 301

T. Jackson, ed.: Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. (London, 1849/R)

J.T. Lightwood: Samuel Wesley, Musician (London, 1937)

N. Temperley: ‘The Lock Hospital Chapel and its Music’, JRMA, cxviii (1993), 44–72

C.R. Young: Music of the Heart: John and Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians (Carol Stream, IL, 1995), 80–82, 184

Wesley

(4) Samuel Wesley

(b Bristol, 24 Feb 1766; d London,11 Oct 1837). Composer and organist, younger son of (2) Charles Wesley (i). Like his elder brother he was a child prodigy. According to his father's account, he was able to play his first tune before he was three, at four had taught himself to read from a copy of Handel's Samson, and at five ‘had all the recitatives, and choruses of Samson and the Messiah: both words and notes by heart’. He had his first organ lessons at the age of six from David Williams, a Bristol organist, and at seven was able to play a psalm tune during the service at St James's Church. He also became proficient on the violin. His fame rapidly spread, and in 1774 William Boyce came to visit the family, saying to Wesley's father, ‘Sir, I hear you have got an English Mozart in your house’. Shortly afterwards Wesley presented Boyce with the score of his oratorio Ruth, which he had composed two years earlier, but had only recently learnt to write down.

In 1771 Wesley's father acquired the lease of a large house in Chesterfield Street (now Wesley Street), Marylebone. For a while, the family divided their time between London and Bristol, but in 1776 they moved permanently to London. By this time Charles Wesley had become reconciled to the idea of his sons becoming musicians, despite his own misgivings about the suitability of music as a profession and the disapproval and open criticism of his brother John and many of his Methodist friends. In 1779 the two brothers began to give subscription concerts at the family home, where there was a large room with two organs and a harpsichord. The concerts included instrumental and vocal solos, duets, and orchestral pieces played by a small professional ensemble; they attracted fashionable audiences numbering sometimes over 50, and continued for nine seasons, the last being in 1787. Both ‘ancient’ music (by Handel, Corelli etc.) and modern works were performed, including compositions and improvisations by both brothers. Among the works written by Wesley for the concerts were symphonies, violin concertos, a Sinfonia obbligato for violin, organ, cello and orchestra, and an organ concerto.

The concerts provided invaluable opportunities for Wesley and his brother to perform a wide range of music and to hear their own compositions. At the same time they were protected from full exposure to London's public music-making; the concerts thus substantially fulfilled their father’s aim to provide for his two sons ‘a safe and honourable opportunity of availing themselves of their musical abilities’, while at the same time keeping them ‘out of harm’s way: the way … of bad musicians who by a free communication with them might corrupt both their taste and their morals’.

Around 1778, when he was 12, Wesley began to attend services at one or more of the Roman Catholic embassy chapels. It was initially the music rather than the doctrines of Roman Catholicism which attracted him, for it was at the embassy chapels that the most elaborate church music in London was to be heard, performed in surroundings of considerable splendour. At the Portuguese and Sardinian embassy chapels Wesley would have been made welcome by Samuel Webbe (i), who was organist of both chapels and the teacher of a whole generation of Catholic church musicians. The services provided further opportunities for Wesley to compose. His first dated piece of Latin church music was written in November 1780, and many further works for the Roman rite followed in the next four years or so. In 1784, much to the distress of his family, Wesley converted to Roman Catholicism, marking the event by composing an ambitious setting of the Mass which he dedicated to and sent off to Pope Pius VI. The Missa de Spiritu Sancto, for six soloists, chorus and orchestra and lasting some 90 minutes, is Wesley's longest choral composition. It appears not to have been performed either in Rome or in London at the time, and the first known performance was in Dublin in 1997.

Wesley's period of wholehearted adherence to Roman Catholicism appears to have been short, and his conversion a cause of subsequent embarrassment to him. In later life he denied that he had ever been a convert, saying that although the Gregorian music had seduced him to their chapels, the tenets of the Romanists had never obtained any influence over his mind. His attitude to Roman Catholicism was characterized by a fascination with its music and liturgy coupled with distaste for its doctrines, well summed up in his remark in a letter to Benjamin Jacob that ‘if the Roman Doctrines were like the Roman Music, we should have Heaven upon Earth’. His association with Roman Catholic church music continued for much of the rest of his life, most notably during the period c1811–24, when he was assistant to Vincent Novello at the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy, for which he wrote further large amounts of Latin church music.

In 1787, according to his obituary in The Times, Wesley suffered a serious accident in which he fell into a builders’ excavation and severely damaged his skull. According to this account, the accident, and Wesley's subsequent refusal to follow his doctors' advice and undergo the operation of trepanning, was the cause of the attacks of depression to which he was subject for the rest of his life. It is unlikely, however, that such an event could have been the sole cause of Wesley's considerable mental health problems, which in any case appear to have begun well before this date. A more plausible diagnosis, supported by the evidence of other events in his life, his letters, and the pattern of his creativity, in which periods of great productivity alternated with periods of inactivity, is that he suffered from bipolar or manic-depressive illness, the first manifestations of which appeared during his adolescence.

On 5 April 1793 Wesley married Charlotte Louisa Martin, whom he had known since 1782, and with whom he had been living in rural seclusion at Ridge, a small village near St Albans. Wesley and Charlotte had objections to the ceremony of marriage, and their determination to remain unmarried seems to have come to an end only with Charlotte's pregnancy. Their eldest child, Charles, was born on 25 September 1793; two further children (John William and Emma Frances) were born in 1799 and 1806. The marriage was stormy and unhappy from the start, but survived until early 1810, when Wesley's liaison with his 16-year-old housekeeper Sarah Suter precipitated a final separation. Wesley and Sarah subsequently set up house together, and they lived together unmarried until his death. Their eldest child (5) Samuel Sebastian is treated separately below; among six subsequent children to survive to adulthood were Eliza (1819–95), who edited her father's letters to Benjamin Jacob (the Bach Letters) and bequeathed many of his manuscripts to the British Museum; Matthias Erasmus (1821–1901), who was treasurer of the College of Organists between 1875 and 1893; and Robert Glenn (1830–1915), who was for a time organist of Wesley's Chapel in City Road.

Wesley's career, particularly in early adulthood, was badly disrupted by periods of depression. The high productivity of the early 1780s, probably coinciding with a hypomanic phase in his illness, was followed by a period in the later 1780s and early 1790s in which he appears to have withdrawn almost completely from public music-making and from composition; the only notable work from this time is the Ode to St Cecilia of 1794. During this period he continued to earn his living by teaching at a number of London girls’ schools, an occupation he hated and despised as ‘ABC drudgery’. A crop of new compositions and concert appearances in the late 1790s indicates his return to an active involvement in London music-making, on the concert platform, in the Roman Catholic chapels, and in more informal contexts. In 1799 he composed his magnum opus, Confitebor tibi, Domine, a large-scale setting of Psalm cxi for soloists, choir and orchestra which he may have intended for performance at one of the Lenten oratorio concerts. No performance materialized, however, and it had to wait until 1826 for its première. But Wesley's brilliance as an organist was by now generally recognized, and on 21 April 1800 he was the soloist in one of his own concertos between the acts of one of the first London performances of Haydn's The Creation.

The most active and successful period in Wesley's career was from around 1808 to early 1817, when he played a major role in almost every aspect of London's music. He was much in demand as an organist, both as a recitalist and as a soloist in his own concertos. From 1813 to 1817 he was the regular organist at the Covent Garden oratorio concerts, for which he later recalled that he was paid 6 guineas per concert, or 10 guineas if he played a concerto. He also appeared frequently in the provinces: he directed and performed at festivals in Tamworth in 1809 and Birmingham in 1811, and also played at Margate, Ramsgate, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich. In addition he promoted his own concerts, gave lectures on music at the Royal and Surrey Institutions, and wrote reviews of music in the European Magazine. Although not a founder-member of the Philharmonic Society, he was elected to full membership in June 1815, became a director in November of the same year, and for a short time played an active role in its affairs. It is notable, however, that he never directed a concert of the society, and that only one of his compositions was performed by the society during his lifetime. He was also involved in freemasonry. He had originally joined the Lodge of Antiquity in December 1788; in May 1812 he was appointed Grand Organist (a post created for him by the Duke of Sussex) and in December of that year was organist at the important ceremony marking the union of the two Grand Lodges of England.

Wesley was also a leading member of the English Bach movement. According to his own account in his manuscript Reminiscences, he had first been introduced to Bach's music by the violinist and composer George Frederick Pinto, who lent him a copy of Das wohltemperirte Clavier. This was probably in 1804 or 1805. Wesley's wholehearted ‘conversion’ to the Bach cause (to adopt the religious language he himself habitually used) seems to have occurred some time later, probably in the spring or early summer of 1807. From then on, in conjunction with Karl Friedrich Horn, Vincent Novello, Benjamin Jacob and others, he did everything he could to promote Bach's music. He included the keyboard music and the violin music at his own recitals and at a celebrated free concert which he organized with Jacob at the Surrey Chapel on 29 November 1809. In collaboration with Horn he published the six organ trio sonatas in 1809, and the Wesley-Horn edition of Das wohltemperirte Clavier followed in four instalments between 1810 and 1813. He subsequently planned to publish an edition of the Credo of the B minor Mass, but failed to receive sufficient subscriptions and had to abandon the enterprise. His enthusiasm for Bach also led to the blossoming of his friendship with Charles Burney from late 1807 until Burney's death in 1814, and to Burney's own involvement with the English Bach movement in the final years of his life.

Wesley's long run of success came to an end with a serious breakdown following the death of an infant child in August 1816. Following an incident in May 1817 in which he threw himself from a window in a fit of delirium, he was confined for some time in a private lunatic asylum. His recovery was slow and at first only partial. Although he was back in his usual position as organist of the Covent Garden oratorio concerts by the beginning of the 1819 season, he remained for some time severely depressed and unable to compose. fig.2 By 1823, however, he had regained much of his former confidence and optimism. In 1824 he published his Anglican Service in F, parts of which dated back to 1808, and in May 1826 he promoted the first performance of Confitebor tibi, Domine at the Argyll Rooms. In 1824 he was appointed organist at the Camden Chapel, his first paid church appointment following many unsuccessful applications elsewhere.

In early 1826 Wesley followed Vincent Novello in obtaining permission from the University of Cambridge to publish music from the collection bequeathed to it by Lord Fitzwilliam in 1816. During a visit to Cambridge in September 1826 he discovered three tunes by Handel to hymns by his father, which he transcribed and published later in the same year. This venture reopened his contacts with Methodism, and in 1828 he published a volume of tunes suitable for the hymns in the Methodist hymnal then in use. During the later 1820s he gave frequent organ recitals and further courses of lectures, at the Royal Institution and elsewhere in London. In 1829 he visited Bristol, the city of his birth, and gave three recitals to open the new organ at St Mary Redcliffe. During this visit he also played at a number of other Bristol churches including St James's, the parish church of his boyhood, where his friend Edward Hodges was now organist. He returned to Bristol for the last time in January 1830 to give a course of lectures at the Bristol Institution.

Later in 1830 Wesley suffered another attack of depression which brought his active career to a close. In his final years he rarely performed in public; one of his last public appearances was at his brother Charles's funeral in 1834, where his anthem All go unto one place was first performed. In or around early 1836, probably with the encouragement of his family, he wrote his Reminiscences, which in their lack of structure, repetitiveness and laboured handwriting show all too clearly his declining mental and physical powers. At around the same time, as his final piece of musical journalism, he contributed an article on the history of music in England to the first issue of the Musical World.

Shortly before his death Wesley had a final late flowering of activity. In July 1837 he was able to write out from memory the full score of his Ode to St Cecilia, which he had thought lost. On 12 September he attended Mendelssohn's recital at All Saints, Newgate Street, and afterwards was persuaded to play. Mendelssohn was generous in his praise, but Wesley could only say, ‘Oh, Sir, you have not heard me play; you should have heard me forty years ago’. He died a little over four weeks later after a short illness.

Wesley was an anomalous and maverick figure in English music of the period. Although widely recognized as the most brilliant organist of his age, he never received the recognition that his abilities merited. Unlike his brother Charles he had no taste for court life and manners, held no official appointments, and did not hold a church position until late in his life. His outspoken manner, disrespect for authority and scandalous private life all no doubt contributed to his lack of advancement, both in church and court circles and within the music profession. Despite his very great abilities as a performer, which were apparent to all, he was never fully part of the innermost circle of professional music-making in London. His mental health problems contributed to the erratic and haphazard progress of his career, both as a performer and as a composer. Because of extended periods of depression in early adulthood he was not able to build on the considerable achievements of his compositions of the early 1780s and to consolidate them through the following decade. Although he enjoyed a long period of success between 1808 and 1817 his breakdown in May of that year was a major setback to his career from which he never fully recovered.

In common with most of his London contemporaries, Wesley pieced together a living from a number of different musical activities, of which teaching was the most dependable and regular, if also the most tedious and routine. The range and variety of these activities are reflected in copious quantities of letters to his friends and colleagues in the music profession. Almost half are to Novello, with smaller numbers to Jacob (the Bach Letters), the Norwich organist Alfred Pettet, Burney and others. Entertainingly and stylishly written and frequently displaying Wesley's caustic wit, they are the largest and most important collection of letters by an English musician of the period, and are a particularly rich source of information on all aspects of London's musical life during the early 19th century.

Wesley's reputation in his lifetime was chiefly as an organist. He was particularly noted for his improvisations, the brilliance and originality of which are recorded in a number of rapturous first-hand accounts. According to his obituary in The Times, ‘his resources were boundless, and if called upon to extemporize for half-a-dozen times during the evening, each fantasia was new, fresh, and perfectly unlike the others’. Edward Hodges, hearing him play at Bristol in October 1829, described his performance as ‘truly astounding … the most wonderful I ever heard, more even than I had before been capable of conceiving; the flow of melody, the stream of harmony, was so complete, so unbroken, so easy, and yet so highly wrought that I was altogether knocked off my stilts’.

During his most active period Wesley earned a good living from his various musical activities. Under the terms of a Deed of Separation drawn up in 1812 following the breakdown of his marriage he agreed to pay maintenance to Charlotte of £130 per annum: a figure which suggests an annual income of around £400. This was a considerable amount for a musician. But it was a precarious living, which continued only for as long as he was active: extended periods of illness, as in 1817–18, rapidly brought him to the verge of financial ruin, from which he had to be rescued by subscriptions organized by his musical and masonic friends. Maintenance payments to Charlotte were a continuing drain on his financial resources, and on at least one occasion he was imprisoned for a short time for non-payment.

Wesley's music reflects the wide range of influences to which he was exposed during his early years: the ‘ancient’ style of Corelli, Handel and other late Baroque composers heard during his childhood, the more ‘modern’ style of J.C. Bach and C.F. Abel, which he encountered after the move to London, and Gregorian chant and the idioms of continental Roman Catholic church music, which he heard at the embassy chapels. To these were added at various later stages the Haydn of the London symphonies and The Creation, and as much of the music of J.S. Bach as was available: the keyboard works, the solo and accompanied violin sonatas, and the Credo of the B minor Mass.

The largest category of Wesley's output is the Latin church music, spanning over 40 years from the early 1780s to the 1820s. Most remained unpublished in his lifetime (see ex.1), and only a tiny proportion is familiar to modern audiences: the deservedly celebrated setting for double choir, In exitu Israel, the eight-part Dixit Dominus, and a few others. These show Wesley's deep knowledge of Renaissance and Baroque polyphony, of Gregorian chant, and of more modern styles, and a willingness to combine them in a synthesis which is wholly individual.

Wesley largely abandoned his ‘ancient’ style in his three largest choral works with orchestra, although all contain large choral fugues at the expected points. In the case of the youthful Missa de Spiritu Sancto, the model is clearly a ‘cantata’ mass of particularly generous dimensions, although it is unclear what works in this genre Wesley could have encountered at this stage in his career. Performances of Confitebor tibi, Domine since its publication in Musica Britannica in 1978 have confirmed the accuracy of Wesley's own high opinion of it: of particular note are the extended choral fugue ‘Mandavit in aeternum’, with its wide-ranging modulations, apocalyptic timpani roll and concluding adagio, and the virtuoso soprano aria ‘Fidelia omnium’, probably written with the exceptional vocal talents of Elizabeth Billington in mind.

A large proportion of Wesley's instrumental music dates from the early 1780s, a particularly prolific period when the family concerts provided a regular outlet for new compositions of all kinds. Apart from the later organ concertos, his one mature orchestral composition is the splendid Symphony in B of 1802, written for an unsuccessful concert series and apparently never subsequently performed in his lifetime. It is an ambitious and wholly original work, which in the richness of its wind scoring and its well-integrated use of counterpoint nonetheless shows how much Wesley had learnt from the London symphonies of Haydn. The Overture in E formerly ascribed to him is now thought to be by his son Samuel Sebastian.

Given Wesley's fame as a keyboard player, it is not surprising that keyboard music should form an important part of his output, and the largest category of his music published in his lifetime. Despite a good deal of recent publishing activity, however, only a small proportion of his keyboard music is available in modern editions. In the organ music, Wesley's grand manner is heard at its best in the op.6 voluntaries, while a more intimate and miniaturist side to his musical character is apparent in the Twelve Short Pieces. The piano music, written for a burgeoning domestic market, divides into two categories: unashamedly opportunistic potboilers such as the battle-piece The Siege of Badajoz and the jubilee waltz The Sky Rocket on the one hand, and more serious and substantial works such as the Sonata in D minor and many of the rondos and variation sets on the other.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley

WORKS

full details of sources in Kassler and Olleson (forthcoming)

printed works published in London unless otherwise stated

exercises, sketches, lost and incomplete works omitted

latin sacred

oratorios

service music and anthems

hymn tunes and sacred songs

secular choruses, glees, partsongs

songs, duets

orchestral

chamber

organ

other keyboard

editions and arrangements

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

latin sacred

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

oratorios

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

service music and anthems

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

hymn tunes and sacred songs

published collections

individual pieces

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

secular choruses, glees, partsongs

for 3 voices, unaccompanied, unless otherwise stated

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

songs, duets

for solo voice with bass instrument unless otherwise stated

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

orchestral

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

chamber

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

organ

published

unpublished

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

other keyboard

published

unpublished

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley: Works

editions and arrangements

(selective list)

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley

WRITINGS

Lectures on music, GB-Lbl

An Exploration of the Gregorian Chant, Lbl

Reminiscences, 1836, Lbl

Letters (principal collections only): Cfm, Lbl, Lcm, Mr, US-ATu

E. Wesley, ed.: Letters of Samuel Wesley to Mr Jacobs (London, 1875); facs. repr. as The Wesley Bach Letters (London, 1988)

P.J. Olleson, ed.: The Letters of Samuel Wesley: Professional and Social Correspondence, 1797–1837 (Oxford, forthcoming)

Wesley: (4) Samuel Wesley

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Barrington: Miscellanies(London, 1781), 291–310

H.J. Gauntlett: ‘The Ecclesiastical Music of this Country’, Musical World, ii (1836), 49–52

Obituary, The Times (12 Oct 1837)

‘Professional Memoranda of the Late Mr. Samuel Wesley's Life’, Musical World, vii (1837), 81–93, 113–18

T. Jackson: The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, MA (London, 1841), 337–69 [contains the first extended biographical account of Wesley, with lengthy discussion of the Roman Catholic incident and the supposed influence of Martin Madan; up to the death of his father only]

‘Memoir of Samuel Wesley, the Musician’, Wesley Banner and Revival Record, iii (1851), 321–8, 361–70, 401–11, 441–53

‘Biographical Sketches of Eminent (Deceased) Freemasons I: Samuel Wesley, P.G. Org.’, Freemason's Magazine and Masonic Mirror, v (1858), 151–61

T. Jackson: Recollections of my Own Life and Times (London, 1874), 231–2 [account of Wesley's old age and death]

W. Winters: An Account of the Remarkable Talents of Several Members of the Wesley Family (London, 1874)

G.J. Stevenson: Memorials of the Wesley Family (London, 1876), 490–538

J. Higgs: ‘Samuel Wesley: his Life, Times and Influence on Music’, PMA, xx (1893–4), 125–47

F.G. Edwards: ‘Samuel Wesley’, MT, xliii (1902), 523–8, 798–802

W.B. Squire: ‘Some Novello Correspondence’, MQ, iii (1917), 206–42

O.A. Mansfield: ‘J.S. Bach's First English Apostles’, MQ, xxi (1935), 143–54

J.T. Lightwood: Samuel Wesley, Musician: the Story of his Life (London, 1937/R)

N. Temperley: ‘Samuel Wesley’, MT, cvii (1966), 108–10

P. Holman: ‘The Instrumental and Orchestral Music of Samuel Wesley’, The Consort, no.23 (1966), 175–8

H. Ambrose: The Anglican Anthems and Roman Catholic Motets of Samuel Wesley (1766–1837) (diss., Boston U., 1969)

J.I. Schwarz: The Orchestral Music of Samuel Wesley (diss., U. of Maryland, 1971)

J. Marsh: ‘Samuel Wesley's “Confitebor”’, MT, cxiii (1972), 609–10

B. Matthews: ‘Wesley's Finances and Handel's Hymns’, MT, cxiv (1973), 137–9

J.I. Schwarz: ‘Samuel and Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the English Doppelmeister’, MQ, lix (1973), 190–206

J. Marsh: The Latin Church Music of Samuel Wesley (diss., U. of York, 1975)

L.I. Ritchey: ‘The Untimely Death of Samuel Wesley, or The Perils of Plagiarism’, ML, lx (1979), 45–59

P. Norman: ‘More Wesley Organ Duets?’, MT, cxxv (1984), 287–9

R. Langley: ‘Samuel Wesley's Contribution to the Development of English Organ Literature’, JBIOS, xvii (1993), 102–16

P.J. Olleson: ‘Family History Sources for British Music Research’, A Handbook of Studies in 18th-Century Music, iii, ed. M. Burden and I. Cholij (Edinburgh, 1993), 1–36 [contains discussion of Wesley's marriage and children]

M. Dirst: ‘Samuel Wesley and the Well-Tempered Clavier: a Case Study in Bach Reception’, American Organist, xxix (1995), 64–8

P.J. Olleson: ‘Samuel Wesley and the European Magazine’, Notes, lii (1995–6), 1097–111

P.J. Olleson: ‘Spirit Voices’, MT, cxxxviii/Sept (1997), 4–10 [on the Missa de Spiritu Sancto]

P.J. Olleson: ‘Samuel Wesley and the Music Profession’, Music and Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. C. Bashford and L. Langley (Oxford, 2000), 23–38

M. Kassler and P.J. Olleson: Samuel Wesley: a Sourcebook (Aldershot, forthcoming)

Wesley

(5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

(b London, 14 Aug 1810; d Gloucester,19 April 1876). Composer and organist, illegitimate son of (4) Samuel Wesley and Sarah Suter. He was the greatest composer in the English cathedral tradition between Purcell and Stanford.

1. Life.

2. Works.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wesley: (5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

1. Life.

He was named after his father and his father’s hero, Bach. In his eighth year he was elected a chorister of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, under William Hawes, and subsequently also sang regularly in the royal chapel at Brighton, delighting George IV. Like other choristers he was often taken by Hawes to sing at St Paul’s Cathedral and at the Madrigal Society and the Concert of Ancient Music. After leaving the choir in 1826 he held several appointments as organist in the London area and assisted his master, Hawes, both as pianist and ‘conductor of the chorus’ at the English Opera House at the Lyceum, Adelphi and Olympic Theatres (1828–32) and as organist in the Lenten Oratorios (1830–32). At the former he was responsible for the overture and ‘melo-dramatick’ music to Edward Fitzball’s drama The Dilosk Gatherer; at the latter he had a setting of the Benedictus performed. During this period he published his first compositions – various songs and pieces for piano and organ, as well as his earliest works for the church. His father and Thomas Adams were both early influences on his work.

In 1832 Wesley left London and began his long career as a cathedral organist, interrupted only by his term at Leeds Parish Church. The most complete data available about his various appointments are given here:St James’s Chapel, Hampstead Road: appointed 25 March 1826
St Giles, Camberwell: appointed 8 Jan 1829, resigned Nov 1832
St John, Waterloo Road: appointed 29 Nov 1829, resigned 27 March 1831
Hampton Parish Church, Middlesex (evening organist only): appointed 21 Nov 1831, resigned early Sept 1832
Hereford Cathedral: appointed 10 July 1832, began Sept 1832, resigned 2 Sept 1835
Exeter Cathedral: appointed 15 Aug 1835, began 7 Oct 1835, resigned 4 Jan 1842
Holy Trinity Chapel, Exmouth (evening organist only): appointed Easter 1837, resigned Easter 1838
Leeds Parish Church: began Feb 1842, resigned 1849
Winchester Cathedral: appointed 21 Aug 1849, began 5 Oct 1849, resigned 23 Feb 1865
Winchester College (Sunday evenings only): appointed Dec 1850, resigned 1865
Gloucester Cathedral: appointed 18 February 1865, began 24 June 1865, died 19 April 1876

His appointment to Hereford probably owed something to the influence of the recently appointed dean, John Merewether, who had formerly been incumbent at Hampton. Although Wesley was later to regret the move, it had a remarkable effect on his development as a composer: for the opening of the rebuilt cathedral he wrote his famous anthem The wilderness and the solitary place, first heard on 10 November 1832. Later in the same year he submitted it for the Gresham Prize Medal, but it was too late for consideration and was held over until the following year. Its contemporary style failed to satisfy the judges, one of whom, R.J.S. Stevens, wrote: ‘It is a clever thing, but not cathedral music’. Crotch also condemned it, but it was to prove a landmark in the history of English cathedral music. Another of his famous anthems, Blessed be the God and Father, was written for an Easter Day service at Hereford at which, because of the particular circumstances (all of the adult members of the choir being in Holy Orders and holding livings), ‘only Trebles and a single Bass voice’ were available; it was for similar forces that Wesley first wrote the settings of the Nicene Creed and Responses to the Commandments (no.2), later published in his Service in E.

By virtue of his office Wesley conducted the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford in September 1834, when a manuscript overture (probably that in E major), the sacred song Abraham’s Offering and a setting of the Sanctus were performed. As his predecessor’s pension was deducted from his salary he received only £60 a year, which he supplemented by teaching – a ‘degrading occupation’ in his view. His runaway marriage at the village of Ewyas Harold to the dean’s sister, Mary Anne, on 4 May 1835 doubtless accelerated his departure. Although he arrived in Exeter with high hopes and initially enjoyed an amicable working relationship with the dean and chapter, this quickly soured after the appointment of the precentor as dean in 1839 and thereafter he was almost constantly at loggerheads with his clerical superiors. Despite his growing reputation as organist and composer (attested by Gauntlett’s articles in The Musical World, 1836), there were few opportunities except cathedral organistships open to him. He therefore decided to take the degrees of BMus and DMus at the University of Oxford, submitting his anthem O Lord, thou art my God as an exercise and graduating on 21 June 1839. Thus qualified for an academic appointment he was a candidate for the Reid professorship at Edinburgh in 1841, 1844 and 1845, for the Oxford professorship in 1848, and for that at Cambridge in 1856; but in every case he withdrew or was defeated. Such appointments were still based on influence more than merit and Wesley’s abrasive personality had deprived him of the influence his ability deserved.

In addition to his work at the cathedral Wesley was involved with both the Devon Glee Club and the Devon Madrigal Society, frequently chairing the monthly meetings of the latter. He also organized a series of subscription concerts for the 1836–7 season and attempted to form an orchestral society in 1837 and a choral society a year later. None of these ventures was particularly successful, and he was further frustrated by the apparent refusal of the chapter to pay for the copying of the parts for two further large-scale anthems, Let us lift up our heart and To my request and earnest cry. As a result neither received a single performance. In such circumstances and with his relations with the cathedral chapter under increasing strain, the offer of the post of organist at Leeds Parish Church – where he had opened the organ on 18 October 1841 – was one he could not refuse, although he was often later to regret leaving Exeter. Provocative to the last, he unilaterally chose to leave his articled pupil, William Spark, to serve out his notice by proxy and then made repeated demands to the chapter for money he claimed was owed to him. Their attitude towards him is probably summed up in the words of the chapter clerk: ‘The most to be avoided man I ever met with’.

At Leeds the situation seemed highly promising for Wesley. The high church (but not Tractarian) vicar, Dr Hook, had stimulated the building of a new church, equipped with choir stalls and a new organ. Although unmusical himself, Hook was determined to introduce fully choral services on cathedral lines, and at his own financial risk had formed an efficient surpliced choir that already put most cathedral choirs to shame; Wesley was offered a salary of £200, guaranteed for ten years. His enthusiastic reception stimulated another masterpiece, the service in E (begun at Hereford and continued at Exeter), while he also completed his two sets of Three Pieces for a Chamber Organ, revised his Selection of Psalm Tunes and prepared a pointed psalter with chants. The service was published in 1845 with a lengthy preface in which he argued the need for reform in cathedral music and vented some of his bitterness against cathedral clergy in a way that probably did more harm to himself than good to his cause. In December 1847 Wesley, whose great hobby was fishing, fell and suffered a severe fracture of his right leg while returning from an expedition to the river Rye near Helmsley, Yorkshire. During his convalescence he composed the anthems Cast me not away and The face of the Lord, both of which contain references to bones and injury: Spark believed that the crunching discords at the passage ‘the bones which thou hast broken’ in the former are more than a metaphorical expression of pain.

As at Exeter, Wesley initially took a prominent part in local music-making, but following the demise in 1845 of the ‘new’ Leeds choral society (which he conducted) he was seen less in public; that the ‘old’ choral society meanwhile prospered under his rival, R.S. Burton, must have irked him greatly. He continued to appear as an organist, however, and gave two highly acclaimed performances as solo organist at the Birmingham Festivals of 1843 and 1849; he also gave two series of lectures on choral music at the Collegiate Institution, Liverpool (1844 and 1846), in which he continued his campaign for the improvement of cathedral music and the better treatment of church musicians. Its culmination was reached with his two outspoken pamphlets (A Few Words on Cathedral Music and Reply to the Inquiries of the Cathedral Commissioners) in which few people’s feelings were spared. His relations with Hook gradually cooled: ‘Disappointed as I was with Dr Hook & his powers to either aid his Church Music or me – I soon bitterly repented of leaving Exeter’. His departure from Leeds was attended by another dispute, this time with his successor, R.S. Burton, over the sale of his teaching practice; he eventually won an action for £100 at York Assizes.

He took the Winchester appointment partly in order to send his sons to Winchester College. The cathedral chapter, aware of his reputation, tried to anticipate possible difficulties by laying down rules about the organist’s duties and attendance; he was required to agree to these conditions, and was then offered the position at the favourable salary of £150. In December 1850 the college organistship was also offered him at a salary of £80, for which he was required only to play for the Sunday evening service. Wesley’s attendance at the cathedral was satisfactory at first, and for several years relations were harmonious. During this period he persuaded the chapter to buy a new organ, consisting of about three-quarters of the instrument built by Willis for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and this was installed in 1854. Concurrently Willis had been working on the organ Wesley had designed for St George’s Hall, Liverpool. Completed in 1855 (though conceived a decade earlier), it met with a mixed reception. While there was praise for the tone of the stops, Wesley was publicly taken to task over the unadventurous specification and his insistence on the old-fashioned ‘G’ compass and mean-tone tuning. He conducted his anthem The wilderness and the solitary place (with orchestral accompaniments) at the 1852 Birmingham Festival. The performance was poor and criticism of the music harsh. A protracted quarrel in the press, principally between Wesley and Gauntlett, followed. In 1853 he published by subscription his Twelve Anthems. Comprising works written during the previous 20 years, it had first been announced (as a volume of six) in 1836 and printing had begun in 1840, only to cease when the plates were destroyed by fire. Not until his convalescence at Helmsley did Wesley return to it, adding further compositions from his periods in Leeds and Winchester. ‘My published 12 anthems is my most important work’, he was later to write, and it ranks as one of the most significant church music publications in English history. Thereafter his spare time was increasingly occupied with the harmonization and composition of hymn tunes, which were published in the musical edition of Kemble’s Psalms and Hymns (1864) and, eventually, in the long-awaited European Psalmist, which also contained the largest number of chorale harmonizations by J.S. Bach yet published in England. He was also, from 10 August 1850, the first professor of organ at the Royal Academy of Music.fig.3

Following the appointment of a new precentor in 1858 the chapter minutes show signs of tension over Wesley’s performance of his duties. When in 1865 he was asked by the dean and chapter of Gloucester to judge candidates for the post of organist, he surprised all by offering to take it himself. He seems to have been no happier in the new situation. The organ was in a poor state; the choir was generally inefficient; the authorities were uncooperative. He wrote in 1870: ‘I ever regret leaving Devon, and Gloster is very objectionable. There is however no great demand for any peculiarly experienced musical ability and I must be content to rank with the low ones’. After more than 30 years Wesley found himself once again conductor of the Three Choirs Festival (1865, 1868, 1871 and 1874). At the 1871 festival he introduced Bach’s St Matthew Passion for the first time. He seems not to have been admired as a conductor; his tempos were too fast, his expression perfunctory. As an organist, however, he was still renowned; many accounts record the thrilling quality of his performances. Hubert Parry wrote after hearing him play a concluding voluntary at Gloucester in 1865: ‘He began the accompaniments in crotchets alone, and then gradually worked into quavers, then triplets and lastly semiquavers. It was quite marvellous. The powerful old subject came stalking in right and left with the running accompaniment entwined with it – all in the style of old Bach’. Wesley’s concluding years were clouded by illness and increasing bitterness, though his financial position at least had improved after the sale of most of his copyrights to Novello for £750 in 1868. Having declined the honour of knighthood, he was in 1873 granted a Civil List pension of £100 a year, which was continued after his death to his widow, until her death in 1888. In 1875 Wesley had increasing difficulty in breathing. He played the organ for the last time on Christmas Day. His will is dated 19 February 1876, and he died two months later from Bright’s Disease, after a long decline. By his own wish he was buried alongside an infant daughter in the old cemetery at Exeter.

Wesley’s professional conduct is difficult to justify, and he failed in many respects to meet the standards he laid down for others. While accusing cathedral bodies (with much justice) of failing in their duty to maintain choral music, he himself failed in that duty by persistently leaving his work to be carried out by inexperienced deputies. He condemned rival candidates for musical professorships because they had used influence instead of relying on their merits, but he offered a bribe to London critics to induce them to review his European Psalmist favourably, and asked his sister to try to influence J.W. Davison of The Times ‘through some intimate friend of his’. He seems to have suffered from acute paranoia in his dealings with superiors and rivals. Yet his pupils and choir members seem to have loved him, and he was unfailingly kind to younger musicians. Parry, in his account of him, made no mention of the eccentricities that have given rise to so many anecdotes; his pupil Kendrick Pyne also dismissed them: ‘The most aprocryphal tales are told as to his eccentricites. I lived with him for some time and do not share in the view. He was moody, often absent-minded, nervous, and irritable; but not more than one would expect from an artist, who is usually not accustomed to hide his feelings’. While his opinions on musical matters were unconventional and sometimes irrational, he was not alone in his lack of sympathy for most early English cathedral music or in his admiration for that of Spohr. He admired Bach, and regarded his own father as one of the few representatives of the ‘pure style’, although he seldom imitated this in his own music. He hated Gregorian psalm tones (though he used a tone-like melody in his Chant Service in F) and was in general hostile to the Tractarian movement; he was contemptuous of the sentimental hymnody of Dykes and Monk. He had a violent dislike of equal temperament and revealed his conservatism by his attachment to the extended English ‘G’ compass for the organ (which allowed greater use of the left hand in octaves when accompanying vocal music). Yet his Service in E and the anthem The wilderness and the solitary place not only modulate freely, but are written in a key which brings out the worst defects of the old mean-tone temperament. When a correspondent pointed out this inconsistency in The Musical Standard, Wesley was evasive in his reply. It is difficult to see how he can have preferred to have his own music performed in such a temperament.

Though his compositions have won wide acclaim, contemporaries asserted that – at least as far as the organ was concerned – his improvisations were even more imaginative. The Musical Examiner in 1843 pronounced him, ‘without disparagement to other men of genius – and before all to Dr. Mendelssohn’, to be the ‘greatest organist now living’. The poet T.E. Brown imagined Wesley appointed organist in heaven by acclaim of the angelic orders; and when Wesley played there,

I heard the mighty bars
Of thunder-gusts, that shook heaven’s dome,
And moved the balanced stars.

Even if such tributes are exaggerated, Wesley’s powers were sufficient to induce even cathedral chapters to overlook, as far as they could, the grave defects of his personality and behaviour.

Wesley: (5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

2. Works.

In youth Wesley tried various kinds of composition, but after his move to Hereford in 1832 he found his true vocation as a composer of Anglican cathedral music. In that field he concentrated his chief creative effort for the rest of his life, though he occasionally used his mastery of choral writing for secular purposes, as in his glees and the chorus The Praise of Music. Among his other works are two deeply felt three-movement ‘sacred songs’ for baritone and orchestra (Abraham’s Offering and I have been young and now am old), some fine pieces for organ (particularly the Introduction and Fugue in C minor and the Andante in F from the first set of Three Pieces for a Chamber Organ), a virtuoso March and Rondo for piano and, in A Selection of Psalm Tunes, some outstanding harmonizations of hymn tunes.

Settings of the daily canticles had reached a low point by 1830. They had changed very little in outward character since the late 17th century, and their performance had long ceased to be anything more than a tedious duty. Wesley’s great Service in E, begun at Hereford and completed at Leeds, showed how these familiar texts could be made vehicles for imagination. Written on a scale rarely attempted since the 17th century and with an independent accompaniment which allowed the organ to make its own contribution to the musical argument, it forms a towering monument in the history of English church music. It was well timed to satisfy the growing demand for more meaningful worship in the church and became a direct model for the best settings of the later 19th century. Wesley discovered a practical problem, however: a fully worked-out setting of this kind is too long for frequent liturgical use,

designed as it is for performance during the very brief space of time allotted to our daily Cathedral worship; a period so brief – while the subjects to be treated are so various, of such grand universal applications – as necessarily to divest composition of its ordinary features; rendering almost every species of amplification of a particular subject either difficult or impossible; and this, too, in connection with words which seem, in the musician’s judgement, to demand of him the most exalted efforts of which his art is capable.

His other services are attempts, as he said, ‘to attain the utmost brevity without sacrificing Expression in setting Te Deum &c. to Music’. But the restriction on his creative process was too severe, and these shorter settings have little character.

In the anthems, on the other hand, Wesley was free to choose his texts. In fact he allowed himself much greater licence than had been usual, putting together verses or even portions of verses from different parts of the Bible, mixing the Bible and Prayer Book translations of the psalms, sometimes incorporating parts of the liturgy or a hymn or even (in By the word of the Lord) verses from Paradise Lost. By these means he could construct a text to his own satisfaction, giving it the desired shape, imagery, dramatic contrasts and climaxes, and avoiding all ‘dead’ or perfunctory passages. There is evidence in his autographs that he sometimes shaped the text of an anthem while the composition of the music was already in progress. His strong evangelical feeling for the biblical words was closely bound up with his musical sensibility; because of this, his anthems convey a glowing sincerity that is seldom evident in the music of his immediate predecessors – or of his successors. There are moments of inspiration paralleled only in Purcell. Like Purcell’s, his church music draws freely on secular influences. The drama of both The wilderness and Blessed be the God and Father has its roots in the theatre, while the highly coloured and emotionally charged harmonic style of his mature works (seen to perfection in Let us lift up our heart and Wash me throughly) owes little to the Anglican cathedral tradition.

In short full anthems, such as Wash me throughly or Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, Wesley was able to produce some profoundly beautiful effects simply by skilful management of four or five voices in full harmony. The manner was derived from such works as Mozart’s motet Ave verum corpus; the Roman Catholic influence, absorbed through his father, was a fruitful new element here, and the detail of word-setting was comparatively unimportant. In his longer anthems, some of them almost miniature oratorios, Wesley combined several elements with new effectiveness: the ‘learned’ fugue, with touches of Bach; the ‘full’ harmonic style described above; the aria-like solo, influenced at times by Spohr’s oratorios; and a kind of recitative, sometimes sung by the men’s voices together, which was all his own. In putting these together Wesley seldom lost sight of his dramatic and devotional purpose. Ascribe unto the Lord, Let us lift up our heart, O Lord, thou art my God and The wilderness and the solitary place have a monumental integrity rare in anthems of their length.

Wesley’s achievement in these and other works is not to be underestimated. Not only had he forged a wholly individual style but, through his willingness to employ elements of the up-to-date idiom he had encountered – and used – in the concert hall and theatre, he had also succeeded in revitalizing the moribund tradition of English cathedral music. Although his early works for the church (Blessed be the God and Father, the Creed from the Service in E and Trust ye in the Lord, for example) reveal the influence of Mendelssohn and Spohr, he rarely imitated either: the well-known treble duet ‘Love one another’ from Blessed be the God and Father at first recalls Mendelssohn, but its turn of phrase and irregularity of structure are original. By 1840, however, his music had become increasingly independent of these and other influences and his mature works are characterized by strong diatonic dissonance – particularly the 9th on the mediant (ex.2, bar 13) – which can be traced to his father, the confident handling of chromaticism, and a fondness for bold harmonic effects and textures enlivened by frequent suspensions, appoggiaturas and accented passing notes. They also demonstrate a growing sympathy for the native tradition of cathedral music. The resulting amalgam of the old and the new was aptly described by Spohr: ‘The sacred music is chiefly distinguished by a noble, often even an antique style, and by richly chosen harmonies, as well as by surprisingly beautiful modulations’. Works such as the canticles from the Service in E, the bass solo ‘Thou, O Lord God’ in Let us lift up our heart or the beginning of Ascribe unto the Lord (ex.2) could be mistaken for no other composer’s work.

Because so much of Wesley’s music was written for the services of the Church of England it has never been well known on the Continent; neither is it easily placed in the wider framework of European music. Bold and courageous as many of his innovations are in the Anglican context, they are hardly advanced compared with those of Berlioz, Schumann or Chopin. Yet his music possesses great individuality and in a few pieces – the fluid, side-stepping chromaticism of Wash me throughly, for example – is remarkably forward-looking. With his vivid imagination and firm grasp of the techniques of composition Wesley could, when inspired by the devotional text, rise beyond influence or imitation to the level of genius.

Wesley: (5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

WORKS

printed works published in London unless otherwise stated

MSS autograph unless otherwise stated

Editions: Anthems (1853) [An]The European Psalmist (1872) [EP]Original Compositions for the Organ, ed. G.M. Garrett (1893–1900) [Ga]Samuel Sebastian Wesley: Anthems, ed. P. Horton, MB, lvii (1990), lxiii (1993) [H1, H2]; 3rd vol. (forthcoming) [H3]

service music

anthems and hymn settings

latin sacred music

secular choruses, glees, partsongs

songs (sacred and secular)

stage

orchestral

organ

piano

editions and arrangements

Wesley: (5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

WRITINGS

Preface to A Selection of Psalm Tunes [for organ] (London, 2/1842)

Notes for Liverpool lectures on church music (MS, 1844, GB-Lcm 2041f)

Preface to Service in E major (London, 1845)

A Few Words on Cathedral Music (London, 1849)

Reply to the Inquiries of the Cathedral Commissioners Relative to the Improvement in the Music of Divine Worship in Cathedrals (London, 1854)

Words of Anthems Used in Cathedral and Other Churches (Gloucester, ?1869)

Wesley: (5) Samuel Sebastian Wesley

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DNB (F.G. Edwards)

Letters from and to Wesley, GB-Cfm 26E, Lbl Add.35019, Add.69435, Lcm 3052–61, 3063–4, 3066, 3071, 3074–4004

Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings relating to Wesley, Lbl Add.35020

List of Wesley’s works, partly autograph, Lcm 4039

Morning Post (11 and 17 March 1823)

H.J. Gauntlett: ‘English Ecclesiastical Composers of the Present Age’, Musical World, ii (1836), 113–20

W. Spark: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, MT, xvii (1876), 490–92

G.J. Stevenson: Memorials of the Wesley Family (London, 1876)

W. Spark: Musical Memories (London, 1888)

G.M. Garrett: ‘S.S. Wesley’s Organ Compositions’, MT, xxxv (1894), 446–9

J.K. Pyne: ‘Wesleyana’,MT, xl (1899), 376–81

F.G.E [Edwards]: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, MT, xli (1900), 297–302, 369–74, 452–6

G. Haddock: Some Early Musical Recollections (London, 1906)

J.S. Bumpus: ‘The Church Compositions of Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, Musical News, xxxix (1910), 138–41, 159–60, 179–81, 199–200, 224–6, 240–41

R.R. Terry: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, A Forgotten Psalter and Other Essays (London, 1929)

J.K. Pyne: ‘Dr. Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, English Church Music, v (1935), 4–8

G.W. Spink: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley: a Biography’, MT, lxxviii (1937), 44–6, 149–50, 239–40, 345–7, 432, 438–9, 536–8

H.C. Colles: ‘S.S. Wesley’, Essays and Lectures (London, 1945)

A.J. Hiebert: The Anthems and Services of Samuel Sebastian Wesley (diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, TN, 1965)

E. Routley: The Musical Wesleys (London, 1968/R)

A. Rannie: The Story of Music at Winchester College, 1394–1969 (Winchester, 1969)

B. Rainbow: The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church 1839–1872 (London, 1970)

W. Shaw: ‘The Achievement of S.S. Wesley’, MT, cxvii (1976), 303–4

W. Shaw: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley: Prolegomenon to an Imagined Book’, English Church Music, xlvi (1976), 22–30

P. Chappell: Dr. S.S. Wesley (Great Wakering, 1977)

N. Temperley, ed.: Music in Britain: the Romantic Age 1800–1914 (London, 1981), 193–9, 274, 420–22, 446

P. Horton: The Music of Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–1876) (diss., U. of Oxford,1983)

W.J. Gatens: Victorian Church Music in Theory and in Practice (Cambridge, 1986), chap.7

D. Gedge: ‘The Reforms of S.S. Wesley’, The Organ, lxvii (1988), 126–36, 180–93; lxviii (1989), 41–51

P. Horton: ‘Samuel Sebastian Wesley at Leeds’, The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music, ed. N. Temperley (Bloomington, IN, 1989), 89–101

N. Thistlethwaite: The Making of the Victorian Organ (Cambridge, 1990)

W. Shaw: The Succession of Organists (Oxford, 1991), 125–7

P. Horton: ‘“An Organ should be an Organ”’: S.S. Wesley and the Organ in St George's Hall, Liverpool’, JBIOS, xxii (1998), 84–125

P. Horton: ‘The Unknown Wesley: the Early Instrumental and Secular Vocal Music of Samuel Sebastian Wesley’, Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, i, ed. B. Zon (Aldershot, 1999), 134–78