The Organs and Organists of the Parish Church of St Nicholas

The Organs and Organists of the Parish Church of St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, 1733-1894 Andrew Hayden School of Music, Cardiff University Thesis Submitted to Cardiff University in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date: 22 February 2018 This thesis is copyright material and no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. 3 Table of Contents Part I: Introduction 9 Methodology 27 Great Yarmouth – A Brief History 36 Religious Establishments and Organs in Pre-Reformation Great Yarmouth 40 Dissent in Great Yarmouth 44 The Development of Leisure and the Music Profession in Great Yarmouth 47 Parish Church Music from 1660 to ca.1800 51 Parish Church Music: The Nineteenth Century 66 The Anglican Church Choir in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century: An Overview 69 The Yarmouth Situation 76 Part 2: The Eighteenth Century 99 Dr Musgrave Heighington 109 Potts Crookenden 131 Johann Christian Scheidemantel 133 Henry Richard Chicheley 137 1788 – 1803: Interregnum 143 John Eager 145 James Woolman 149 David Fisher and Joseph Baxfield 150 Part 3: 1843 – 1850: George Warne 152 Part 4: 1850 – 1895: Henry Stonex 178 Early Years 184 Church Music at St Nicholas under Henry Stonex 202 Henry Stonex, Music Educator 210 Stephen Kemp 211 William Sexton 214 Edgar Lane 217 Part 5: Rebuilding of the Organ – First Phase 1864 – 1870 Background 219 4 The Preston Campaign 233 The Vestry Meeting 246 The Consistory Court Hearing, 11 January 1869 259 The Judgment, 25th January 1869 270 Reopening of the Organ, 23 February 1870 272 Part 6: The 1875 Reconstruction 279 Chancel Organ 295 Conclusion 297 Appendices: A. Organ Specifications and Documents 1733 – 1894 311 B. Letter from Henry Smart to the Restoration Committee, 5 February 1870 331 C. Illustrations 333 D. Music Performed at St Nicholas 1821-1891 344 Bibliography and Abbreviations 347 5 ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship which developed between the organ and organists of St Nicholas's Parish Church, Great Yarmouth, and the Borough of Great Yarmouth and its administrative body, the Corporation and Assembly. Hitherto, most research regarding organs and organists has tended to view them in isolation without exploring the interactions that might take place between them as the apparatus of the church's music, and secular bodies, in this case the governing agencies and populace of the Borough. That the two became so entwined and that the fortunes of one were so heavily dependent on the other and hence so mutually influenced, is the key finding of this research. It has revealed how it was to separate the immediate function of the organ and its players —namely, to provide music for the church's liturgy--from what the organ represented in the eyes of the Borough; how the organ became symbolic of the Borough's wealth and status: an outward display of the power and authority wielded principally by the Borough and to which the Church itself had become subordinated. It is also shown here that the ability of the organ to channel these attributes resided not in its physical qualities as first constructed, though they represented a starting point, but in the shifting perceptions of what the organ came to mean when measured against prevailing ideas of progress and modernity. Missing was any kind of ability to attribute value to historical sentiment, though there were those for whom this did have meaning. 6 The result was that the physicality of the organ became ever more diluted until all that was left were a few remnants such as the organ's casefront, and even that demoted to irrelevance. Instructively, the Church appears to have concurred with a perception of the instrument as a 'civic church organ', while at the same time looking to the Borough to give concrete expression to that perception. 7 Acknowledgements A project of this magnitude would not have been possible single handed and many people were involved in its inception, helping maintain the impetus for researching and writing it, and for overseeing it to finality. Chief among these are my mother whose interest and material support were pivotal. She ensured that I was born in Great Yarmouth and insisted I should take an interest in the Borough and its history such that the parish church, its music and its relevance to the wider community became objects of particular significance. I should also like to thank my colleagues at the British Institute of Organ Studies for having set examples of what it meant to undertake research at doctoral level into the organ and matters connected with it. It was only once the research was underway that I began to realise just how complex and convoluted the subject was and how a multitude of seemingly disparate areas of interest could be so heavily intertwined, especially when considering the ramifications of apparently unconnected actions however insignificant they appeared at the time. In particular, my thanks must go to Professor David Baker for his friendship and close interest and scrutiny of the text as it evolved, and for his invaluable advice and mentoring at a time when matters might well have taken a wrong turn. I should also like to thank Dr Thomas Roast whose experience in researching East Anglian church music and musicians was invaluable in shaping the nineteenth century elements of the thesis. For help in sourcing documents, often quite obscure, I should like to thank Frances Pond, library manager at the Royal College of Organists, and the staff variously at Birmingham University Special Collections (British Organ Archive), and Norfolk Record Office and Norfolk Libraries, especially Great Yarmouth, who provided access to a unique set of records including newspapers, Corporation documents, and organ builders' papers. The value of holdings such as these is inestimable. Mention should also be made of the assistance afforded me by Dr Maurice Merrell, Principle of Bishop & Son, organ builders, London, with regard to the Bishop letterbooks which provided such a wealth of detail concerning the 1875 rebuilding. For assistance with the sections about Musgrave Heighington, my thanks must go to Dr Simon Fleming at Durham University, and Dr Michael Honeybone who enlightened me about the Spalding Gentlemen's Society. Thanks are also due to Gill Blanchard for her help with the genealogies of George Warne and John Roope. I should also like to thank Professor Kenneth Hamilton, Head of Faculty at Cardiff University School of Music who, despite my not quite knowing where I was heading, encouraged me to pursue the lines of enquiry set out in this thesis. Finally, I should like to thank my wife, Joy, for having so marvellously created an ambience at home which was conducive to study. Her quiet presence and attendance to matters temporal and spiritual meant so much and enabled my researches to be pursued with far greater ease than might have been the case. 8 The Organs and Organists of St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth 1733-1895. Introduction The purpose of this study is firstly to document and analyse the history of the organs and organists of a major parish church on the East coast: St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth. Secondly, it is to focus on the organ as an object of civic and religious significance through the medium of biographical accounts of its organists, some of whom were important as major contributors to the life of the borough and who were therefore bound up in its fortunes. In so doing, it will examine in detail how changes in the political, economic and religious life of the town had a bearing on the instrument and its players and why those changes should be of concern to us. Very few studies exist upon which to base an account of this nature. Much of what has been written about organs and music in parish churches has focused on the instruments themselves - mechanism, tonal design, players, repertoire - primarily from musical and organological perspectives. Wider aspects such as: the influence of civil and ecclesiastical authorities; organists as functionaries; the workings of what is termed the 'faculty jurisdiction' and church planning law, and the symbolism of the organ within the social fabric of a borough such as Great Yarmouth have been regarded as of secondary interest, if of interest at all. 1 Conventional writing about the organ of the kind described above, including some very recent landmark studies is, in itself, a substantial undertaking, given the vast amount of material to hand though until recently, it had been the work of enthusiasts and amateurs rather than academic historians or organologists. The late Stephen 1 'Faculty Jurisdiction' refers to the legal mechanism within the Church of England which is the equivalent of Planning Law in civil administration. It regulates matters ranging from major repairs and alterations to items such as church buildings and organs, to the provision of graves in a churchyard. 9 Bicknell, an organ builder himself, in his The History of the English Organ , 1996, noted that much of what had been written was 'the product of twentieth century commentators and their enthusiasms' and that the history of the English organ was 'viewed at least in part as a series of lessons on the tonal appointment of new [instruments]'. 2 He also acknowledged that his own account was 'old-fashioned' in that it concentrated on the most famous organ builders and their products and that a 'truly definitive work would explore a wider variety of craftsmen … and a larger number of more varied instruments'. Other writers, for example Nicholas Thistlethwaite, concentrate on a particular segment of the organ's history such as the Victorian era, producing a near exhaustive account of the metamorphosis of the instrument from its eighteenth century classical antecedents to its state at the height of the Victorian era, the product of a typically Victorian attitude to engineering and musical development on an almost industrial scale but equally, the object of criticism, often on the part of those for whom its use was thought to be out of necessity rather than because of any artistic merit it might possess.

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