English Opera-Ballad
18th Century
Fifteen years after the period in which Purcell glorified English music, Handel went to England and gathered about him composers who wrote along the lines which he popularized. In addition to this, ballad-operas, part songs, “catches” (separate songs or ballads) were very popular. In London, there were comic plays made of strings of songs such as Gay’s Beggar’s Opera which were sisters to opera buffa in Italy, opéra bouffe in France, and the Singspiel in Germany.
Forty-five of these ballad-operas were produced in 15 years. The arrangers of these amusing song-plays included the names of Dr. Pepusch, a German who lived in London; Henry Carey (1692–1743), famous as the composer of Sally in our Alley, God Save the King (our America); and Thomas Arne (1710–1778) who wrote many masques, numerous ballad-operas, and set many of the Shakespeare lyrics and wrote many glees and ballads. Some of these part songs were very beautiful and somewhat like the madrigals of earlier days.
Many of the church composers in their lighter moods wrote some of these ballad-operas, among them: Samuel Arnold, with his Maid of the Mill, a pasticcio, “Notable,” says Waldo Selden Pratt, “as the first native music drama, since Purcell”; William Jackson; Thomas Atwood and Charles Dibden who was so successful with his Shepherd’s Artifice that he wrote seventy others, and thirty musical monologues, among which were Sea Songs. Some other well known men were Michael Arne, son of Dr. Thomas Arne with his Fairy Tale, Almena and Cymon from Garrick’s play of the same name; James Hook with some two thousand songs and twenty-five plays; William Shield, the viola player and song writer; Stephen Storace, clever violinist and the author of The Haunted Tower and Pirates, and his sister Ann Storace, a singer. At this time there were two clubs, one called the “Catch Club” and another the “Glee Club,” and one also called “Madrigal Society,” and before 1800 we have a list of glee writers including the two Samuel Webbs, Sr. and Jr., Benjamin Cook and his son Robert, John Wall Callcott, a pupil of Haydn, who won many medals from the “Catch Club.”
From now on, England was influenced by foreign composers, especially Mendelssohn, Weber and Gounod, and made ballad operas and operettas freely adapted from continental works, besides glees and songs and music for the Church of England services. The interest in music was great and some of the church music and glees at the time were excellent. In this period, the Birmingham Festivals were started, Horsley founded the Concentores Sodales (1748–1847), a group formed along the lines of the earlier Catch and Glee Clubs. The Philharmonic Society also was formed (1813) and among its great leaders were Cherubini in 1815, Spohr 1820 and 1843 and Weber 1826 and Mendelssohn many times after 1829. Through the effort of the Earl of Westmoreland, the Royal Academy of Music was organized in 1822. Among the composers of this period were Samuel Wesley (1776–1837). He was a Bach enthusiast and wrote much church music and other classic forms; William Crotch (1775–1847), George Stark, an intimate of Weber and Mendelssohn, who edited Gibbon’s Madrigals; William Horsley, who edited Callcott’s Glees and wrote glees himself, symphonies and songs and handbooks. There were many others in this period but too numerous to mention here.
In the next period England’s composers free themselves from the Mendelssohn School and begin to branch out. Do not think that Mendelssohn was not good for them. He gave much that England needed, and also brought English composers in contact with European music. But they liked church music and the ballad opera and the charming part songs, rather than the heavier operas of Europe. Among writers of cathedral music, are Sir George A. MacFarren, John Bacchus Dykes, whose name appears in our hymn books, Joseph Barnby, Samuel Wesley mentioned above, and Henry Smart. In 1816, Sir William Sterndale Bennett was born, he was a choir boy and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1835. The House of Broadwood (English piano makers) sent him to Leipsic to study and he came under the influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He was the director of the Royal Academy of Music, a fine pianist and wrote many compositions, among which his Cantata A Woman of Samaria is not as dry as the usual sacred works of this period.
Another great writer of this time was Sir John Stainer (1840–1901). Some of his things are given today in our churches and are very beautiful and impressive. He is the author of valuable text-books.
Light Opera
At this time, some writers of a sort of belated ballad opera appeared in the persons of:
Michael William Balfe who wrote thirty operas among which is The Bohemian Girl, still played and greatly admired; William Vincent Wallace, like Balfe an Irishman, who is famous for his Maritana; and then of course, Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842–1900), who probably needs very little introduction to any American or any Englishman for he wrote The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, the only fairy opera without a mortal in it, Pinafore, Patience, Princess Ida, Trial by Jury, Ruddigore and many others, including the first light opera, Cox and Box, which was the first time that he and W. S. Gilbert, as librettist, worked together. W. S. Gilbert was the author of the inimitable and amusing Bab Ballads. If you haven’t read them you have a treat in store for you! They wrote together in a fresh, mock-heroic, humorous vein, and it seems as if they were made for each other, so delightfully did they play into each other’s hands.