ABSTRACT
Today the organist of a cathedral or major parish church invariably plays a leading role in local musical life, but 200 years ago the situation was very different and many restricted themselves to their professional duties, teaching (to augment their generally inadequate salaries), and participation in the activities of a local glee club or private concert society. There were exceptions, of course – notably in London and the ‘Three Choirs’ cities of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester – but in the main, cathedral organists (whose twice-daily duties kept them more fully occupied than their present-day counterparts) were primarily local church musicians, trained as articled pupils and content to follow in the footsteps of their masters. Such teacher-pupil successions were by no means unusual; at York Minster, for example, three generations of the Camidge family held the post of organist between 1756 and 1859. 1 As the nineteenth century advanced, however, this situation began to change, due not least to easier and more reliable transport – so much so, in fact, that by 1900 it was becoming comparatively unusual for a vacancy for an organist to be filled by a ‘local’ candidate. 2 In addition, the growth of local choral societies and provincial music festivals provided an incentive for 256organists to broaden their horizons, although it long remained customary for the latter to import both conductor and orchestra. At Norwich, for example, the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Musical Festival, established in 1824, was directed initially by Sir George Smart, and subsequently by other metropolitan musicians: Julius Benedict, Alberto Randegger, and Sir Henry Wood. The first Cathedral organist to be involved to any extent with music-making in the city – but not the Festival – was Frank Bates, appointed in 1886, who in 1902 founded a new Norwich Choral Society. 3 Well before then, voices had been raised in complaint when it seemed likely that ‘local interest’ (as the Musical World put it) would be preferred at Worcester Cathedral in 1844. 4 But William Done, assistant to and former pupil of his predecessor, Charles Clarke, received the appointment in preference to several established organists, among them Henry Ford (organist of Carlisle Cathedral), Frederick Gunton (organist of Chester Cathedral), William Marshall (organist of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford), and Samuel Sebastian Wesley (organist of Leeds Parish Church). 5
