BIRMIN GUAM MUSIC

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 21, 19 October 1938, Page 5

BIRMIN GUAM MUSIC

Connection With Hansom Cab’s Invention

FAMOUS OLD FESTIVAL The Birmingham and Midland Counties’ Association was addressed last night by Mr. Karl Atkinson on ••Music and Musicians of the Midland Counties,” in tbe course of . which lecture lie gave a review of the contribution musicians and composers hailing from tbe midland counties of England to music. He dealt more particularly willi the contributions from Birmingham itself, Warwickshire. Worcestershire, and part of Staffordshire, .taking Birmingham, in the first place, lie spoke of tbe history of the Birmingham Musical Festival. That festival was organised iu the cause of charity, and dated back to 1768. “A new epoch began iu .1802 when Joseph Moore was placed virtually at the head of the organising committee, and from then, until his death, bis interest and devotion to this cause were continuous,” Mr. Atkinson said. "Under his control the festivals grew rapidly in importance and reputation. Although by 1802 the population of Birmingham had increased to 60,000, the audience was drawn from a very wide area of the surrounding country. Iu 1823, so successful had tbe performances become that the committee resolved that they would ‘make the performances finer and more perfect titan any that have ever taken place in the Kingdom.’ Hitherto the performances had been held in St. Philip’s Church, and Joseph Moore, with an ambitious eye to the future, visualised a magnificent town hall for Birmingham.

“The new Town Hall was an accom-plished-fact in 1834, that is, In the next eleven years. Birmingham is obviously the place to go to get things done. The Birmingham Streets Commissioners went to work to engage a Yorkshireman to design this magnificent edifice. They induced him to guarantee financially its completion. The poor Yorkshireman became bankrupt in the process, and, irony of ironies, the same commissioners brought in a Lancashire architect to complete the work . and bask in the glory. In the ‘Birmingham Town Hall, 1934, Centenary Handbook,’ the whole sorry business is set out with scrupulous fairness and is not Hansom’s glorious building designed upon the basis of the Temple of Jupiter at Rome sufficient memorial to his architectural genius? The Town Hall was used for the first time in October, 1934, but on December 23 of the same year Joseph Aloyslus Hansom took out bis patent for the new ‘safety-cab’—later to Immortalise his name in the ‘hansom cab.’ This invention yielded the bankrupt architect £lO,OOO, so you sec yon can’t keep a good Yorkshireman down! “The Town Hall has been the civic centre of a remarkable city and has been a rallying point for many outstanding musical enterprises. The festival owed much to Joseph Moore, who visited Mendelssohn in Berlin, and to Moore must be assigned the credit for the composer's visit to Birmingham, and the first production of his greatest work “Elijah” at the 1846 festival. Moore, furthermore, formulated the policy of producing new works of great merit and works of lessen-known composers, who thus were stimulated to renewed effort. Moore’s intimate connection with the Birmingham Town Hall ended with the fulfilment of hi s ambition, but his interest in the festivals continued until his death In 1851 in his eighty-fifth year. The festivals, to which .he had devoted so much endeavour, continued until 1912. The next festival would have been held in 1915, but the war cast them, with many other honourable institutions, into an obscurity whence they have not yet emerged.” Air. Atkinson gave sketches of the composers of the Midland counties, enlarging on the splendid legacy of elevated music contributed by Sir Edward Elgar, whose “Dream of Gerontlus” had the germ of immortality. Others mentioned were Albert Katelbey, composer, Harry Engleman, pianist, Sydney Grew, critic, Frederick Nichols, composer, Tom Jones) light orchestra leader, Dorothy Howell, composer, Walter Hyde and Frank Titterton, tenors, Maggie Teyte, soprano, Frank Mullings, tenor, Jack Payne, conductor and composer of dance music, Rosa Newmarch, famous writer on music, Dennis King, baritone, John P. Hullah, song writer, Sir Frederick Bridge, formerly organist of Westminster Abbey, Julius Harrison, composer, Easthope Martin, song writer, and Raymond Newell, baritone.