ABSTRACT
Despite the recent growth of interest in nineteenth-century British music, large areas of the repertory still remain almost unknown, among them the group of works for the concert hall, theatre or domestic use by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. Embracing all genres except chamber music, they provide evidence of his complete grasp of the contemporary early romantic idiom and, in a number of works, an increasingly idiosyncratic use of it. Painful and dangerous is the position of a young musician who, after acquiring great knowledge of his art in the Metropolis, joins a country Cathedral. At first he can scarcely believe that the mass of error and inferiority in which he has to participate is habitual and irremediable. The prospect of an enhanced status and professional independence doubtless proved irresistible and it was not until he had been there for several months that the full extent of his isolation, both physical and musical, began to sink in.
