BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ADRIAN BATTEN, JOHN WELDON, THOMAS TUDWAY, MUS. D., WILLIAM BLAKE, D.D., AND CHARLES KING, M.B.
WE now proceed towards the conclusion of our notices of the most distinguished composers of English cathedral music, down to the end of the last century, which branch of musical biography will be completed in our next Number.
ADRIAN BATTEN was organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the reigns of Charles I. and II. He is called by Sir John Hawkins, not in very courteous terms, a ‘singing man,’ and certainly appears on the books as a vicar-choral of the church, for then the duty at the organ was executed by one of that body; and the organist still draws most of his emoluments from his share in the property belonging to the vicars-choral. The name of this composer is even now well known in all our choirs, from his short full anthem, ‘Deliver us, O Lord,’ which has continued in use up to the present day. Batten was, says Burney, ‘merely a good harmonist of the old school, without adding any thing to the common stock of ideas in melody or modulation with which the art was furnished long before he was born. Nor did he correct any of the errors in accent with which former times abounded.’ It is, however, just to remark, that his anthem, ‘Hear my prayer,’ for five voices, is, in point of construction and effect, equal to most of the compositions of his time. He undoubtedly exhibited no great talent, and owes the transmission of his name more to the convenient brevity of the above-mentioned anthem, than to his musical genius.
JOHN WELDON, born at Chichester, received his first musical instructions from John Walter, organist of Eton College, and afterwards became a disciple of Purcell. He was at an early age chosen organist of New College, Oxford. In 1701, he was appointed gentleman-extraordinary of the Royal Chapel; in 1708 he succeeded Dr. Blow, as organist thereof; and seven years after, upon a second composer being added to the establishment, he was named to that situation. He was a great pluralist; for while he held all these offices, he was also organist of St. Bride’s; and George I. having presented the parish of St Martin in the Fields with an organ, Mr. Weldon, perhaps in compliment to the king, Hawkins adds, was elected organist.[54]
Weldon’s compositions were chiefly confined to the service of the church; but he assisted in setting Congreve’s masque, The Judgment of Paris, to music, in which is the air ‘Let ambition fire thy mind,’ a lovely melody, and still as fresh as if the production of the present century. This was introduced by Arne in Love in a Village, and is known to all as ‘Hope, thou nurse of young Desire.’ Some of his songs are to be found in the Mercurius Musicus, and other collections. Among these are ‘From grave lessons and restraint,’ a very popular air, and as such remembered in Sir John Hawkins’s time, who has reprinted it in his fifth volume; and it would even now be occasionally sung by lovers of natural melody, but that the words partake of that pruriency which does not tell well for ‘the wisdom of our ancestors.’
The great and deserved fame of this composer is built on his anthems, ‘In thee, O Lord,’ and ‘Hear my crying,’ of which Hawkins very justly observes, ‘it is difficult to say whether the melody or the harmony of each be its greatest excellence.’ Dr. Burney speaks very slightingly of Weldon’s powers; and it seems to us that on this subject he was either prejudiced, or imperfectly acquainted with the works he criticised.
Weldon died in 1736, and was succeeded in the Chapel Royal by Dr. Boyce.
THOMAS TUDWAY, Doctor in Music, was educated under Dr. Blow, with Turner and Purcell. Soon after quitting the Chapel Royal he was admitted into the choir at Windsor, as a tenor singer. Like his fellow-disciples, he endeavoured to distinguish himself early as a composer, and inserted in the collection of church music, which he selected and transcribed for Lord Harley, an anthem composed by himself in 1675, when he was only nineteen, with six more of his early productions for the church, of which, Dr. Burney tells us, the counterpoint is but ordinary and clumsy.
In 1681 he was admitted to the degree of Bachelor in Music, at Cambridge; and in 1705, when Queen Anne visited that place, he produced an anthem, ‘Thou, O God, hast heard my vows,’ which was performed as an exercise for a doctor’s degree. He then was appointed public professor of music in that university. As an acknowledgment for other anthems composed for the use of Queen Anne, he was appointed her organist and composer-extraordinary.
In the latter part of Dr. Tudway’s life he resided chiefly in London, and was much patronized by the Oxford family. The valuable scores of English church music, in six thick quarto volumes, now in the British Museum, and forming part of the Harleian Collection, (No. 7337,) were collected and transcribed by himself at this time. During the same period he was in the habit of meeting Prior, Sir James Thornhill, Christian the engraver, and other eminent characters, at Lord Oxford’s, once a week; and Sir James drew all their portraits, among which is Tudway playing on the harpsichord. Prior wrote humorous verses under these drawings, which were in the possession of Mr. West, formerly President of the Royal Society. There is also a picture of Dr. Tudway in the Music-school at Oxford, a present from Dr. Rawlinson. ‘At Cambridge,’ Burney rather sarcastically remarks, ‘he was longer remembered as an inveterate punster than as a great musician.’[55] His intimacy with Purcell furnished him with the means of forming an accurate judgment both of the character and talents of that great composer, of which he thus speaks in a letter addressed to his son:—‘I knew him perfectly well: he had a most commendable ambition of exceeding every one of his time, and succeeded without contradiction, there being none in England, nor anywhere else I know of, that could come in competition with him for compositions of all kinds,’ &c.
Dr. Tudway died in 1726.
WILLIAM BLAKE, Doctor in Divinity, was prebendary of Salisbury, and rector of St. Thomas’s church in that city. This is all that we can learn of his history. We conjecture that his death must have taken place more than fifty years ago, for in a volume of anthems published about the year 1780, he is mentioned as ‘late prebendary,’ &c. Burney does not speak of him; his name therefore, of course, does not occur in Hawkins; and we do not meet with it in the new edition of Wood’s Athen. Oxon., or in the Biographical Dictionary. But though he is thus unnoticed, no anthem is more generally known and admired than his ‘I have set God always before me,’ which, for beauty of melody, elegance in construction, and correctness in setting, is without a superior. It has been contemned by those whose beau ideal of excellence consists in canons and fugues, but long-continued public approbation is a sure test of merit, and this the composition in question has enjoyed, till the criticism of pedants is nearly if not quite silenced.
CHARLES KING, Mus. B.—Sir John Hawkins, who seems to have been personally acquainted with the subject of this sketch, states that he was bred up in the choir of St. Paul’s, under Dr. Blow, and was at first a supernumerary singer in that cathedral, for the small stipend of 14l. a year. In 1704 he was admitted bachelor in music at Oxford; and on the death of Jeremiah Clark, whose sister was his first wife, was appointed almoner and master of the children of St. Paul’s; and in 1730 became a vicar-choral thereof. He was also organist of St. Bennet Fink, London; and held these several appointments till his death in 1745. ‘With his second wife,’ says Sir John, ‘he had a fortune of seven or eight thousand pounds, left her by the widow of Mr. Primatt, the chemist, who lived in Smithfield, and also in that house at Hampton which is now Mr. Garrick’s. But notwithstanding this accession of wealth, he left his family in but indifferent circumstances. King composed some anthems, and also services to a great number, and thereby gave occasion to Dr. Greene to say,—and indeed he was very fond of saying it, as he thought it a witty sentiment—that “Mr. King was a very serviceable man.” His compositions are uniformly restrained within the bounds of mediocrity; they are well known as being frequently performed, yet no one cares to censure or commend them, and they leave the mind just where they found it. Some who were intimate with him say, he was not void of genius, but averse to study; which character seems to agree with that general indolence and apathy which were visible in his look and behaviour at church, where he seemed to be as little affected by the service as the organ-blower.’ Hawkins was very much enamoured of the works of Blow, and such laborious, dry composers, and appears to have had little if any genuine taste for what is natural in music—for flowing melody and unaffected harmony,—for both of which King’s productions are eminently distinguished. Their best praise is, that they have continued to be performed from the moment they were brought forth to the present time; they are in constant use in every cathedral in England and Ireland: this is an incontestable proof of merit, and silences all criticism. He who can listen to King’s Service in B flat with indifference, may be assured that he has no true taste, though he may be a great admirer of canons recte and retro, and four in one.