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Vol.21 No.4 April 2019 Journal April 2019 Vol. 21, No. 4 The Elgar Society Journal 28 Nottingham Road, Bingham, Nottinghamshire, NG13 8AT Email: [email protected] April 2019 Vol. 21, No. 4 Hugh Blair: Worcester’s Forgotten Organist 3 President Kevin Allen Julian Lloyd Webber FRCM ‘However, it tells its own story, and needs no explanation.’ 19 Vice-Presidents Elgar and Schumann, Uhland and Longfellow, and The Black Knight Diana McVeagh Burkhard Sauerwald Dame Janet Baker, CH, DBE Leonard Slatkin The Life of Jesus in the works of Arthur Sullivan and Edward Elgar 28 Sir Andrew Davis, CBE Meinhard Saremba Christopher Robinson, CVO, CBE Andrew Neill Sir Mark Elder, CBE Book Reviews 54 Martin Bird, Steven Halls Martyn Brabbins Tasmin Little, OBE CD reviews 56 Andrew Neill, Barry Collett, Martin Bird Chairman Letters 65 Steven Halls Kevin Allen, Andrew Neill Vice-Chairman Stuart Freed Elgar viewed from afar 66 Michael Schwalb Treasurer Helen Whittaker 100 Years Ago 69 Martin Bird Secretary George Smart The Editor does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the Elgar Society accept responsibility for such views. Front Cover: Hugh Blair (Bennet & Son, Worcester) and Edward Elgar (Raymond Monk Collection) Notes for Contributors. Please adhere to these as far as possible if you deliver writing (as is much preferred) in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format. Copyright: it is the contributor’s responsibility to be reasonably sure that copyright permissions, if Hugh Blair: Worcester’s Forgotten Organist required, are obtained. Illustrations (pictures, short music examples) are welcome, but please ensure they are pertinent, cued into the text, and have captions. Kevin Allen Presentation of written text: Subheadings: longer articles benefit from judicious use of these. Hugh Blair (1864-1932), a versatile and innovative executant, conductor, and composer, was Organist of Worcester Cathedral Dates: use the form 2 June 1857. Decades: 1930s, no apostrophe. and Conductor of the Festival Choral Society during the 1890s, Plurals: no apostrophe (CDs not CD’s). until a scandal forced him to leave the city and work in London for the remainder of his career. He forged a close relationship with Foreign words: if well established in English (sic, crescendo) in Roman, otherwise italics. Elgar, and worked together with him to mount an ambitious and Numbers: spell out up to and including twenty, then 21 (etc.) in figures. pioneering series of choral and orchestral concerts whose eclectic programmes revolutionised Worcester’s musical atmosphere and Quotations: in ‘single quotes’ as standard. Double quotes for quotes within quotes. provided the composer, gradually recovering from his earlier Longer quotations in a separate paragraph, not in italic, not in quotes; please leave a blank London failure, with a valuable feeding ground. Blair used line before and after. his position to intervene significantly in Elgar’s development, commissioning works and ensuring their first performances. He Emphasis: ensure emphasis is attributed as ‘[original emphasis]’ or ‘[my emphasis]’. may be said to have launched Elgar’s career by promoting one Emphasized text italic. item in particular, the cantata ‘The Black Knight,’ which first References: Please position footnote markers after punctuation – wherever possible at the end of made the composer’s name among the Midlands choral societies. a sentence. On settling in London, Blair was able for a short time to continue developmental work as Borough Organist and Conductor for Battersea, while retaining the post of Organist and Choirmaster of In footnotes, please adhere as far as possible to these forms (more fully expounded in the longer Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, for many years. On Elgar’s move to Hampstead in 1912 the version of these notes): close family-style friendship of Forli days was resumed and Blair became a frequent visitor to Books: Author, Title (Place of publication: Publisher, year of publication), page[s]. Thus: Robert Severn House for music, meals and billiards. This article, a lightly edited version of a talk first Anderson, Elgar (London: Dent, 1993), 199. given at the Worcester Three Choirs Festival, 2017, focuses on Blair’s earlier life in Worcester. Periodicals: Author, ‘Title of article’, Title of periodical, issue number and date sufficient to identify, page[s]. Thus: Michael Allis, ‘Elgar, Lytton, and the Piano Quintet, Op. 84’, Music & Letters, 85 (May 2004), 198. No occasion could be more appropriate than a Worcester Three Choirs Festival for an opportunity of blowing the trumpet, or should I say pulling out all the stops, for the subject of my current End a footnote with a full stop, please, and never put a comma before a parenthesis. research on the Worcester musician and good friend of Elgar, Hugh Blair. As a young man Blair Titles that are ‘generic’ in Roman: e.g. Violin Concerto. Others in italics (e.g. Sea Pictures; the was organist of Worcester Cathedral in the 1890s, where he pursued an energetic and successful Musical Times). Units within a longer work in single quotes, e.g. ‘Sanctus fortis’ from The Dream policy of musical progress and reform. But he was dismissed by the authorities after only two of Gerontius. years. At first I thought this might be a story of a brilliant young man with new ideas up against an At the end of the essay, add about a hundred words about the author, please. entrenched conservative establishment, but it wasn’t so simple as that and I went on to discover something of a tragedy, for Blair was his own worst enemy and his fatal flaw was drink. He worked Full version of the ‘Notes for Contributors’ please see http://elgar.org/elgarsoc/wp-content/ hard, and came to depend on it. Hardened topers know that its not necessarily a question of how uploads/2014/04/Notes-for-Contributors_longer-version_February-2017.pdf on http://elgar.org/ much you drink, rather one of how their drinking is managed. With Blair, the habit gradually got elgarsoc/archive/ out so out of control that the Dean and Chapter had no alternative but to dismiss him after he was found insensible in the organ loft one Christmas day, unable to accompany the afternoon services. 2 The Elgar Society Journal Vol.21 No.4 — April 2019 3 The story has lost nothing in the telling. I gather that generations of Worcester choristers have Cambridge and Stanford been reared on the legend of Blair suddenly passing out and collapsing on to the organ console Those trips to Yorkshire seemed not to interfere with the organ producing a hideous dissonant chord like something out of ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ If there is lessons. Within a year of beginning them Blair was able to take anything that can be said in his defence, he may not have been the only organist to have over- part in Cathedral services, and at the age of 17, he became an indulged. I’ve heard it said that drink might be the organist’s occupational hazard, hidden away articled pupil of the then organist, William Done. Two years after up there in the organ loft with not much else to do to pass the time during sermon. There’s a story that, Blair went up to Christ’s College Cambridge not just as a of the organist who passed the time to such an extent that he was found more or less upside down student, but as a professional as it were – being immediately trying to operate the pedals with his hands and the keyboards with his feet. Percy Young has pointed appointed to the vacant post of College organist. His Cambridge out that the 18th Century at Worcester and Gloucester Cathedrals was ‘played in by two notorious career was a successful one. As you had to in those days, he drunks,’ Jeffries and Cherington. Even Elgar’s own organist father was known for nipping out of studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree before being allowed to take St. George’s Worcester during sermon, for a ‘quick one’ in the Hop Market hotel. a B.Mus., and later gained a Doctorate for his biblical cantata Today we recognise alcoholism as an illness and treat it as such. In 1897 when Blair had Deborah and Barak. But there was no dedicated music faculty to leave his home town of Worcester for good, it was a scandal to be hushed up. Today it seems at Cambridge during Blair’s time there. He studied privately more tragedy than scandal, all the more so as Blair’s hard fall followed a very high rise and years with George Garrett, the church musician and organist to the of dedicated hard work by a highly talented musician with a progressive vision who elevated William Done University. But I imagine that the most important influence on Worcester’s musical culture as never before and nourished a musical genius in the process; a (Bennet & Son, Worcester) the young Blair at Cambridge would have been Charles Stanford, forgotten inheritance on which I shall try to shine some light. then at his youthful and brilliant best. We hear so much of Stanford’s worst side over his fallings I have called Blair Worcester’s forgotten organist although I have to admit that’s not quite true. out with Elgar, Parry, and others, so it is good to be able to see him in a more positive light and in Lovers of church music will be familiar with his magnificent evening canticles in B minor, ‘Blair a context that was new to me. in B minor,’ although you may not know of his many other compositions. And if you have read If you’ll bear with me, I think it’s worth a little diversion to look at an unfamiliar side of any of the standard biographies of Elgar you will also know that Blair is also not quite forgotten Stanford as a musical reformer who I am sure made a long-lasting impact on Hugh Blair as a as an important friend of the composer and as midwife to some of his early works.
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