‘The highest point up to that time reached by the combination of Hebrew and Christian sentiment in music’

In 1835 Samuel Sebastian Wesley had been appointed organist of Exeter Cathedral, even further from London than Hereford Cathedral and without the bonus of the annual Three Choirs Festival. Despite a continuing misconception that England was a musical desert during the first half of the nineteenth century, the London of Wesley’s youth was one of Europe’s foremost musical centres, albeit largely foreign-domi- nated. While much of the impact of Wesley’s church music is due to the uncompromising rigour of his harmonic language, it is equally dependent on his ability to build up convincing extended musical structures. The occasional novelty - one might almost say naivety - of Wesley’s handling of chromaticism must surely owe something to his physical isolation in Exeter. Wesley, however, had no English composers of such distinction to emulate and therefore sought inspiration in the timeless music of the Leipzig cantor.