THE SKETCHER. AN APOSTLE OF MUSIC.

Otago Witness, Issue 1815, 3 September 1886, Page 34

THE SKETCHER. AN APOSTLE OF MUSIC.

John Hullah's Work.— Musical England — • The Commencement of Hullah's MisSiON.— lts Immense Success. Hutlah should ever be an honoured name in English musical annals. "And why?" someqne will ask. Because fifty years ago this country was in a state of comparative musioal darkness, and the one who did most to help us through it was John Hullah, born at Worcester in 1812. We all know what is implied ' nowadays in the term " musical England," and if we are not quite what Sir Juliu/Benedict once declared us to be— THE MOST MUSICAL NATION IN THE WORLD— we may at least console ourselves with the belief fthat we are getting on that way. For this happy condition we are much indebted to the great propagandist of quavers and crotclvets, whose work has gone hand in hand with many other civilising influencespainting and literature, for instance— which have marked the last half of this century. From the pleasant memoir which hayS recently appeared,* many a home in which, twenty-five years ago, Hullah was quite a household word, will now learn for the first time imore than it knew before of this worthy populariser of music. And we ought to remember all we can of such a one. Thersls.,a tendency that, amid the bustle of musical circles, the name of the promoter of much. Of , what now is artistically and finan-cially-a large item in our social economics, may disappear aud lose itself in the labyrinth of musicians— native and foreign— who are here mainly as the result of the labour and asseverations of this apostle of the musical art. But for Hullah the present musiqaV taste would not be what it is. We should have fewer musical minds, no gigantic choruses and thousands of young voices forming the very backbone of our musical societies ,and gatherings ; while it is hard to say what would have become of the " old notation " in music amid the puncturings of numerous competing methods, had not Hullah held on to it until he had trained the nation to realise its full merit and superiority over all so-called "improved" systems of notation. Hullah showed NO SPECIAL APTITUDE FOB MUSIC EARLY IN LIFE. He used to sit up and snuff the candles While his schoolmaster fiddled away as most village sohoolniasters did fiddle, and when home, for his holidays he would now and then indulge' in the first bars of that even then not unknown strain, " God Save thG King," but he had often been praised for not attempting the second part of the tune ! pss^lfe seems, however, to have had a turn for genealogical rummaging which might have made' him a useful official at the College of Arms, and he could trace a connection with Palestrina (1514) in a manner which any heraldic searcher might well envy. From John Danby, a distinguished professor of his maternal grandfather's 'day, " my mother," says Hullah, " had her firsb lessons in singing, and through him I have a connection with Palestrina, for Danby was a pupil of Domenico Corri, Corri of Alessandro Scarlatti, Scarlatti of Carissimi, and Carissimi of Palestrina." Yet nobody suggested the calling of a musician as a vocation when young Hullah left school, and no very clear reason is given for his not being a lawyer, architect, civil engineer,- or one other of the professions. What* 'is really certain is that in 1829 he became a pupil of Horsley, the celebrated glee-writer, and in 1832 he had entered as a student" at the Royal Academy of Music, staying there for about two years, chiefly because of the excellent singing instruction that was- being given by Crivelli— "in his art," says Hullah, " ultimiis Romanorum ; slightly accomplished as a musician, but in all that concerns the formation and delivery of the. voice transcendent." It was about 1838-40, soon after his marriage, that HULXAH AWOKE TO WHAT WAS TO BK HIS LIFE'S MISSION. " About this time," he says, " the idea of forming a school for popular instruction in vocal music first dawned upon my mind. Something similar had before this occurred to two -or three persons — to aMr Hickson, an amateur, and possibly to others, for it will be found that such schemes are never quite solitary. Rumours of the work of a German musician, Mainzer, in Paris, had early reached my ears ; but a second visit to that capital had proved that they had come to nothing, and that neither classes nor any fruits of Mainzer's teaching had maintained an existence. It was during this second visit that I first heard of Wilhom, whose books; classes, &c. were already beginning to excitenotice." Hullah saw at once that the Wilhem method was the plan for him to work upon in the realisation of his great scheme for spreading music among the people, or, in other words, of musically educating England. This great enterprise he deemed could be best accomplished by making music a subject of teaching in elementary schools. But a formidable obstacle presented itself in the fact that the school teachers themselves were deplorably ignorant of music. The Normal School for Schoolmasters had just been opened at Battersea — the only school of its kind then existing in England — and among its occupants only " two or three had any knowledge of music, and as many any voice or apparent knowledge of the subject." This was a state of artistic barbarism which Hullah would have been excused had he shuddered at. It indicates, too. the scope that existed for the energies of THE APOSTLE OF MUSIC, as he was coming to be termed. Hullah began on the Training School students ; he ?o^ hls / li ; st le sson there on February 18, 1840, and from that day dates the great musical movement in England— a movement that has done so much to benefit each one of us, that has raised us morally and in telcctually, that has changed the whole face f public amusements in this country, and " Life of John Hullah," by his wi.low. Longman • and Co.

has given to all classes an element of education only inferior to that which is afforded by literature itself. That the country is better for all this nobody doubts. No one lives for whom music is a thing of indifference. It affects all, no matter what the grade of life may be ; our sooial and religious life is wrapped up in it ; and the more we have of it in-doors and out of doors, the better shall we all be for it. The Hullah-Wilhem method soon got outside the walls of the Battersea Training College. The work was already growing, and it was evident that something should be done in London. Accordingly Exeter Hall was seized upon, and here Mr Hullah opened a school for the instruction of schoolmasters of day and Sunday schools in vocal music. There Was a preliminary lecture on February 4, 1841, at which Mr Charles Greville, of the "Memoirs" fame, and Mr Sydney Smith were present ; so, too, was Lord Lansdownej who took up the idea readily, for he saw that musical education was a neutral ground on which all parties — those most divided — might agree. The effect of this meeting was magical. Schoolmasters and the general public flocked to Exeter Hall to obtain instruction, while country musical professors came in shoals to learn the system, and to carry home with them certificates that they were qualified to teach it. Classes accredited and non-accredited sprang up in and near London and throughout the provinces, at many of which Hnllah lectured with such success that no less than 50,000 pupils were in the singing classes he had established, and this in the space of twelve months. Already, indeed, the scheme was developing itself beyond all anticipation. The educational and social aspects of such a movement were readily apparent to keen-sighted men like the Pi'ince Consort, the Duke of Wellington, Keble, Lords Lansdowne and Wharncliffe— the latter of whom i soon saw the necessity of appealing to the House of Lords in favour of granting financial aid to the movement as A BECOGNISED BBANOH OP NATIONAL EDUCATION. King's College, too, opened its doors to the classes, and the Charterhouse, Merchant Taylors', Eton, and Winchester followed in the wake. Meanwhile Exeter Hall was proving too small for the thousauds that flocked to it. From his elementary classes Mr Hullah formed two schools, an upper and a lower, and commenced giving concerts in Exeter Hall, the members of his upper school forming his chorus, and the orchestra being completed by professional singers and instrumentalists. Remarkable among these performances were four historical concerts illustrating in chronological order the rise and progress of English vocal music. In 1847 matters reached a climax. Something bigger than Exeter Hall was needed, so Mr Hullah's friends and supporters banded together and built for him St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre. Three years afterwards it was opened, and then and there began a series of performances of unknown works, old and new, all involving the introduction of vocal and instrumental soloists, many of whom made their debut there, and have since become established favourites in this country — performances to which may doubtless be traced much of the now all but UNIVEBSAL STUDY OF MUSIC BY EVERY CLASS IN ENGLAND. For ten years the great teacher worked mind and body for the cause he had at heart. This, indeed, was the period of Hullah's greatest activity, and was only abruptly terminated by the fire which left the hall a ruin, and administered to him a blow from which he never really recovered. Nevertheless, he still clung to his work, and in 1861 was lecturing on the " History of Modern Mubic" at the Royal Institution. Later on — 1865 — we see him competing unsuccessfully with (Sir) Herbert Oakeley for the Reid Professorship at Edinburgh, and in 1870 he was appointed to the post of conductor to the orchestral and choral concerts of the Royal Academy of Music. There were yet other institutions where he was exercising a healthy musical influence. At Queen's College and Bedford College, where his services had been secured by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, Hullah formed the musical tastes of many ladies who afterwards rendered him signal help in his cause, and many of whom are at the present time exercising their musical influence in society. As conductor, too, of the annual concert of the Metropolitan Schools at the Crystal Palace he"was to be seen, year after year, throwing his whole energies into the musical life of the thousands of young lungs under his baton. And, as he now aged, he was delegated "to a post for which no better man could have been found — being appointed (1872) by the Committee of Council on Education Inspector of Training Schools for the United Kingdom. The post was a crowning point in the life of such a labourer as Hullah. He held it to his death (1884), and his reports during that period are valuable enough. No educationist could turn from them without the conviction that music is an indispensable factor in the school curriculum — especially in the schools of the poorer classes who are without the art's refining influences in their homes. Hullah foresaw that the musical education of the masses, while children, would be AN INCALCULABLE BOON TO THE SOCIAL STATUS of England, and had Parliament followed him closely in giving effect to many of the suggestions he so strenuously urged, we should have less cause to regret that so I small a result should be shown year by year in return for the Government musical grant. Yet it is not too late for the Education Department to take to heart Hullah's 1880 report, the last this honest son of art ever wrote. Four years later he passed away, leaving behind him a fame which two of. his songs, " The Storm " and " The Three Fishers," will long preserve. The work to which he devoted his life — the spread of music among the people — goes on bearing fruit. And so it will ; and in that work, or indeed in any work, we shall be all the better if we keep in mind Hullah's motto, the full significance of which we may be sure was ever present to him — "Per scalam ascendi-

mus." — Frederick J. Crowest, in Cassell's Magazine.