It may interest my readers still further to learn that the MSS. were, in most instances, re-written for me by the composers, with the object of their being produced in The Strand Magazine. They are given here as specimens of their compositions when ready for publication, for the first jottings of a composer are, as a rule, intelligible only to himself.
Joseph Barnby.
Sir J. Barnby, the late Precentor of Eton College, and newly elected Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, writes:—
"As a rule I do not work at the piano except to test what has already been written down. I have found ideas come most readily in the railway carriage or during a drive, and the time I prefer for composition is the morning."
"Sweet and low"
Part-song
Lord Tennyson Barnby
As to writing on commission he says:—
"I see no objection to a composer writing 'to order,' as long as he sends out nothing of which he does not approve. Handel's 'Dettingen Te Deum,' Mozart's 'Requiem,' Mendelssohn's 'Elijah,' and a hundred other works furnish us with successful examples of this class of composition.