We have all heard of "Single-speech Hamilton," a Member of Parliament, who, it is said, made a "single speech," and by it achieved lasting fame. As a matter of history, Hamilton made other speeches, but it was by the first that he earned his well-known cognomen. And we have a somewhat similar example in connection with a celebrated musician, John Jenkins. Born in 1592, he lived until 1678, and wrote, as North expresses it, "horse-loads of music." He was most prolific and most celebrated, and yet until a few years ago, when I revived many of his compositions—Dialogues, Fancies for Strings, and Latin Motets—not a note of his music was heard anywhere, save one little piece. But this was sung in every school where vocal music was taught—it is the charming little round A boat, a boat, haste to the ferry.
The subject of our present consideration is another example of the same fate. "Pelham Humfrey, Composer of the Grand Chant" is about all people know of him. This so-called Grand Chant is known and sung in every Protestant Church in the world. Humfrey is, however, a worthy member of the band of musicians whose work I am following, and we will see what else he did besides writing the Grand Chant.
Born in 1647, he is said to have been a nephew of Colonel John Humphrey, Bradshaw's sword-bearer.
From the arms which were on his tomb we can learn a little of his family and forbears—these arms, I regret to say, have long since been obliterated, in fact they had gone in Sir John Hawkins' time, together with the epitaph; and at the present time the exact position of the grave can be only a matter of conjecture.[[1]] But what was on it has been preserved to us in a valuable old work, Keepe's Monumenta Westmonasteriensia, 1682. In this work a description is given of the armorial bearings, and by them we can trace him to an old Northamptonshire stock. The family is mentioned as being settled in the County in The Visitation of Northampton of 1564, but had disappeared from it before the next Visitation some years later.
We know nothing of Pelham Humfrey's life until 1660, the year of the Restoration, when we find him, at the age of thirteen, entered as one of the first set of children of the reconstructed Chapel Royal Choir, under Henry Cooke, generally known as Captain Cooke, who having fought in the Civil War, obtained his Captain's Commission as early in the struggle as 1642; and retained his military title for the rest of his life.
While at the Chapel Royal, Humfrey displayed signs of that precocity which so often shows itself in the musical genius. He began composition while yet a boy, and in 1664 we find the words of no fewer than five of his Anthems published in Clifford's Divine Services and Anthems.
A reference to one of these Anthems is in the Diary of Samuel Pepys, which contains, by the way, several interesting references to Humfrey's career. Under date November 22nd, 1663, we find:
At Chapel: I had room in the Privy Seale pew with other gentlemen, and there heard Dr. Lilligrew preach. The Anthem was good after Sermon, being the 51st Psalm made for five voices by one of Captain Cooke's boys, a pretty boy. And they say there are four or five of them that can do as much. And here I first perceived that the King is a little Musical and kept good time with his hand all along the Anthem.
Now that Anthem was written by a Choir-boy in the Royal Chapel, but it is a remarkable fact, as Pepys says, that he was not the only boy-composer in the same choir and at the same time. Captain Cooke appears to have been rarely fortunate in having in his newly-formed choral body a set of phenomenally gifted boys, and doubtless no small credit is due to the loyal and gallant musician for the skill and care he must have devoted to their training.
Captain Cooke must have been a clever teacher and a still cleverer selector of boys for his choir; and this brilliant little school he gathered round him (including such names as Humfrey, Blow, and Purcell) shines out like a beacon light in our musical world. A curious and interesting fact bearing upon this came to my knowledge quite lately. A Thesis for a Doctor's degree in the University of Paris (in 1912) was on the subject of Captain Cooke's Choir Boys, and it was a clever yet concise account of the work done by these three pupils of Cooke—Humfrey, Blow, and Purcell. English music seems to be looking up when we find a period of our musical history and three of our past great musicians taken as the subject for a thesis in a foreign University!