Tickhill and District Local History Society Some Highlights of Tickhill’s Musical Past Philip L. Scowcroft Occasional Paper No. 1 © Philip L. Scowcroft and Tickhill and District Local History Society 2007 Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the Rev. J. A. Bowering for his encouragement at an early stage in researching this monograph. The following are also thanked for their help in its preparation: Rosemary Cornish, John Marsden, Hazel Moffat and Steve Payne. The following are thanked for their comments on an early draft: Claire Brown, Jackie Thorns and David Walters. Several people and organisations have kindly allowed their photographs to be copied and are acknowledged beside the relevant photograph. 2 Some Highlights of Tickhill’s Musical Past Philip L. Scowcroft We know little or nothing about the beginnings of music in Tickhill, though, bearing in mind its importance even in medieval times, there would surely have been a considerable amount of it. Perhaps minstrels entertained the Castle garrison, the villagers undoubtedly amused themselves with folk dancing and one would like to think that the singing in the Parish Church of St Mary enhanced the quality of its services. Certainly that church hosted the first notable musical event in the town of which we have a record. The Doncaster Gazette of 22 August 1792 wrote ‘We hear the Oratorio of the Messiah, performed in Tickhill Church on Wednesday last, was very grand and complete in all its parts and gave universal satisfaction to a very genteel and numerous audience’. There was a repeat twelve months later about which we know more. This was given on 22 August 1793 by a ‘very numerous band of Vocal and Instrumental performers selected from the Musical Societies in Yorkshire. Principal Songs by Mrs Shipley from Lancashire, Messrs Bray, Beckett, Barber, Siddall etc [this suggests that the alto arias were sung by a counter­tenor, not uncommon in the 18 th Century]. The Grand Choruses will be supported with Kettle Drums, Trumpets, French Horns, Double Bass etc.’ The performance was scheduled to begin at the early hour of 11 a. m.; admission was Middle Aisle 2/­ (10p), Side Aisle 1/­ (5p), not expensive by the standards of the time. Even before 1800 we are into the age of the great choral festival, the proceeds of which were usually devoted to charity. The Three Choirs Festival was by then long established, while, nearer home, Sheffield and Doncaster had more than once tried their hands before Tickhill, on 28 and 29 July 1818, followed suit. There were 100 performers in the ‘band’ (i.e. orchestra) and chorus (combined), and a gallery was erected in Church, presumably a temporary affair, for ‘the reception of the fashionable audience’. On the first morning, a Tuesday, Messiah was again the selected work; on Wednesday there was a miscellaneous selection of sacred music, by Handel, Haydn and one Foster, a South Yorkshire composer, represented by anthems based on Psalms 89, 92, 117 and 119 – the Handel oratorios excerpted in this concert were Esther, Israel in Egypt, Samson, Jephtha and Joshua. On the Tuesday evening there took place at the Concert Room (the other programmes were in Church) a miscellaneous secular concert by Mr Wakeley. (This implies, I believe, that Wakeley was the performer not the composer). Soon after this, the Church was closed for alterations but its re­ opening was celebrated on 20 August 1826 with a grand selection of sacred music by Handel (excerpts from Messiah, Judas Maccabeus, the Dettingen Te Deum and Samson), Haydn, Pergolesi and Foster. Isaac Brailsford, the Organist at St George’s Parish Church, Doncaster, led the orchestra. By the 1830s important secular concerts were taking place in Tickhill, most of them perhaps in the Concert Room used for the Festival of 1818 and whose location is not clear, but may be in Northgate, as was the case later. On 19 April 1832 there was a programme for the benefit of 17 year­old Master Richardson, ‘a youth of outstanding Musical Talent’, as he was dubbed when he appeared the following month in a concert in Doncaster and who, as Joseph Richardson, was 3 to become (and remain) one of England’s leading flautists for many years and to re­visit Doncaster on several occasions. Later that same year (27 December) a Grand Miscellaneous Concert took place and on 17 November 1844 the orchestral playing in overtures by Beethoven and Mozart was highly praised; a Mr Skelton played a cello concerto and duets with the leader of the orchestra and the programme was filled out with a trumpet concerto (Haydn’s maybe, or Hummel’s) and vocal solos. Early in 1856, at the Tickhill Institute in Northgate, a concert took place by the ‘Minstrel Fairies’, four juvenile members of the same family who had played for H. M. Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. Miss Turner, the eldest of them, and Miss Sophia Turner (12 years old) sang songs and duets; the elder Miss Turner also played Elias Parish­Alvars’ Grand Fantasie on the harp, Sophia contributing Paganini’s The Carnival of Venice on her violin. The youthful Master Lorenzo Turner, only eight, performed on the cello the air Hope Told a Flattering Tale with variations composed by the celebrated and recently deceased Rotherham­born cellist Robert Lindley (1776­1855); his younger brother Albert (6 years old) played a ‘difficult’ Fantasia in A Minor (possibly on the piano) and ‘sustained a part on the Double Bass’. This was described as a ‘return visit’ so there was presumably an earlier Tickhill concert by these juveniles. In March 1858 again at Tickhill Institute, two noted singers of the day, Henry Phillips and Mrs Susan Sunderland (‘Yorkshire’s Queen of Song’, who has given her name to a long­established musical festival), appeared together. On 13 March 1865 various soloists from South Yorkshire figured at the Concert Room with the Mexborough Church Choir and a Sheffield pianist, Stubbs by name. Benefit concerts took place from time to time: for a Mr Dufty (Organist at St Mary’s) in December 1884 when the performers included himself and Walter Spinney, Organist of Christ Church Doncaster, and for the blind Willie Dickinson in February 1886 when the programme included glees (a glee was a short choral piece, in common parlance interchangeable with what we would call a partsong), vocal trios, solo songs, a piano duet and items from the Tickhill Handbell Ringers. A Primrose League concert in January 1887 put on Offenbach’s operetta The Blind Beggars, presumably not a staged performance. A ‘fashionable concert attended by all local persons of quality’, in January 1890, featured Doncaster artistes Charles Reasbeck (of the Doncaster Orchestral Society and later its conductor, playing violin solos) and J. M. Kirk (Conductor of Doncaster Musical Society, singing humorous songs) plus glees and piano solos. The Conservative Clubroom was the scene of a concert on 10 January 1896 when piano solos, violin solos, readings and a zither­banjo solo The Cyclists’ March figured in the programme. A similar one on 9 April 1896 included a solo for the auto­harp. Tickhill audiences heard some unusual instruments at that time. Tickhill had its own Choral Society at least as early as 1832. This got together in January 1833 with choirs from Worksop, Braithwell, Maltby and Loversall to perform choruses from Handel's Messiah and William Gardiner’s oratorio Judah. 4 A photograph of Joseph Richardson 1814­1862, the celebrated flautist can be viewed on the National Portrait Gallery website www.npg.uk. You can find it by searching the npg website and then searching the collection, looking for the portrait under “sitters A­Z”. Alternatively, a paper copy of this article, containing the portrait, can be purchased from Tickhill & District Local History Society by contacting David Walters, Secretary, on 01302 742918 Mrs Susan Sunderland 1819­1905, Yorkshire’s ‘Queen of Song’ Courtesy © West Yorkshire Archive Service, Kirklees, Ref: KC10670/11/1/3 5 We hear of a Tickhill Harmonic Society in 1849 which may have been a new organisation or merely a new styling for the earlier organisation as ‘Harmonic Society’ was a favoured title for choirs generally during the early part of Victoria’s reign. In January 1849 it held a meeting with the Doncaster Harmonic Society on ‘neutral ground’ at the Fox and Hounds Inn at Wadworth, when excerpts from oratorios by Handel and Haydn, plus glees and solos, were sung with an orchestra of thirty: a rehearsal rather than a concert, perhaps. In its report of this event the Doncaster Chronicle implied that an ‘amalgamation’ between the two choirs was being sought. If this was true it never took place, as the Tickhill Harmonic Society is mentioned as having given concerts on 22 March 1861 and 14 January 1862, while a Doncaster Harmonic Society had a separate existence, on and off, until at least 1866. A permanent merger would have involved travelling problems for many choir members. The probable truth of the matter was that the Doncaster society, who were planning their first public concert in March 1849, were seeking reinforcements from the Tickhill society for that single concert. As the Wadworth affair appears to have included most of the same music for the DHS’s concert this seems to confirm us in our belief that it was a rehearsal. Tickhill and Worksop Harmonic Societies did certainly combine to perform a Messiah selection in Blyth Parish Church on 3 January 1850. It is probable that, in view of the generally sacred nature of the repertoire, the Tickhill Society did perform at least at times in St Mary’s Church, though the 1861 concerts referred to above were at the Lecture Room in Northgate and were given in aid of the Indian Famine Relief Fund.