Early Victorian Era
Click here to hear the service music.
Having wakened, refreshed by our afternoon nap, we can proceed to the next stop on our journey. The latter half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries were sleepy times in the development of Anglican Church Music. Anglican Church life had become lazy and sloppy. The Evangelical movement was in full swing. Singing classes emerged. In some churches choir practice had become a congregational event. Some hymnals had up to sixty anthems included for the congregation to sing along with the choir. This all took place outside the sphere of the Anglican Church.
Portrait of Samuel Sebastian Wesley found on CPDL .org; used under the CPDL license.
We are awakened in 1833 by the dawning of the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement proposed a return to the devotions of the medieval (a revival of the daily offices) and a return to the Eucharist as the principal service of worship on Sundays. One composer stood tall in this counter-reformation. Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876) knew more music by other composers than his contemporaries. Organist at several cathedrals as well as Leeds Parish church, he was a brilliant organist. He wrote about thirty anthems, a psalter, and recitative with the competency of Purcell before him, and two pamphlets on Cathedral Music reform. His accompaniments support his vocal writing which is rich in harmonic effects as heard in today's anthem, "Wash Me Throughly". The style demonstrates characteristics of the romantic musical period which developed on the continent. It is not by accident that Wesley's middle name was Sebastian. His father loved and respected the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Portrait of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy by Eduard Magnus; found on Wikimedia Commons; Public Domain.
S.S. Wesley, along with Felix Mendelssohn (a German composer: Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy known as Felix Mendelssohn), was instrumental in resurrecting the masterful music of Bach (1685-1750). In 1829, Mendelssohn made his first trip to England. He performed Bach's organ works and later his own. This organ music needed an adequate pedal board and a wide selection of sounds. Until this time English organs were small. They usually lacked a pedal board of any significance. Mendelssohn's playing and interest in organ music planted a desire for a new concept of the instrument and its music in England. Today's organ music demonstrates Mendelssohn's compositional style for organ.
