Henry Gadsby

Gadsby was one of a number of eminent musicians who sang in the choir for the open-air service at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897.

The Musical Times thought that"As the composer tells us he merely desired to "determine the mood" in which the audience should listen to his work, we may at once say that, judged according to his own direction, he may credit himself with a very fair amount of success.

We have very little hesitation in awarding a higher amount of praise to the first than to the second movement; but this may be partially traceable to the fact of the conventional nature of "hunting music", which even in its commonest form can scarcely be mistaken.

"The Autumn Morning" is graceful and refined throughout, delicately scored, and treated with musicianlike feeling, the second theme, especially, arresting the attention by its tunefulness and sympathy with the subject of the work, and a well written Coda bringing the movement to a highly effective termination.

"[1]Herbert Howells was deprecating of Gadsby's work, saying that Stanford was revolutionary because he:"swept aside the pretentious, empty gaudiness of the Victorian organist-composer of the Gadsby-in-C type".

Autograph full orchestral scores of Symphony No.2, Andromeda, Harold and the Festal Symphony and piano duet arrangements of Andromeda and The Forest of Arden, are at the British Library, London (Music manuscripts 1198-1202: 1862-88), having been purchased at Bonhams on 29 June 2004 (lot 500) for £478, together with lithographed orchestral parts for King and Empire (Music Collections h.3210.h.(11.)).