John Liptrot Hatton

Although largely self-taught as a musician, he became a pupil of Michael Maybrick (uncle of the singer and composer Stephen Adams), who was also the teacher of Charles Santley's father, and also studied in the academy of a Mr. Molyneux.

[7] Josef Staudigl, the eminent German bass, was a member of the company: at his suggestion Hatton wrote a more ambitious work, Pascal Bruno, again to a text by Fitzball.

Fitzball, finding that his text had been presented, in German, without his consent, the playbill naming 'Herr Fixball' as the English author, was obliged to accept the situation, but it seems to have ended his association with Hatton.

[10] Among Hatton's settings for his collaborator were "Streamlet gently flowing", "Autumn reflections", "The goldsmith's daughter", and 'My days have been so wondrous free".

Mr. Hatton gave some capital specimens of pianoforte music by various masters including Corelli, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.

[15] Hatton composed various songs to poems by Robert Herrick (including his famous "To Anthea"), Ben Jonson and Charles Sedley at this time which were published in and before 1850.

The rest with one exception were written entirely for my own amusement during the time I was away, and all of them were composed without any view to their publication... On my return to England I was urged by one of my friends... to make a complete collection of these little compositions and publish them in a consolidated form.

[18] Charles Santley, who championed "To Anthea" and "Simon the Cellarer" singing them with Hatton accompanying,[19] lived long enough to record them both, twice, in the early 20th century, preserving his association with the composer.

[25] Hatton composed Anglican church music including a morning and evening service in E, and a number of anthems such as Come Holy Ghost and Blessed be the Lord of Israel.

[27] When, for instance, he sang it before the Leeds Rational Recreation Society in April 1853, he also performed 'La ci darem la mano' with Mme D'Anteny, gave his own song 'Day and Night', and finished off with Handel's 'O ruddier than the cherry' (from Acis and Galatea).

[29] Hatton became a foremost exponent of the writing of glees and part songs, both through his love of English madrigals, and through the influences he derived from German music.

On his return from America Hatton became conductor of the Glee and Madrigal Union, and it was during the 1850s, while working with Charles Kean, that he published the first of his several collections of part songs, including "Absence", "When evening's twilight", "The happiest land", etc.

Kean sought authenticity: Hatton rewrote it completely, 'based on Indian airs... founded on melodies published in Rivero and Tschudi's work on Peruvian Antiquities as handed down to us by Spaniards after the conquest.

It had the advantage of Helen Lemmens-Sherrington and Mr and Mrs Willoughby Weiss, George Perren, Henry Corri, and Aynsley Cook,[34] but it met with little success.

[37] His daughter, Frances J. Hatton, emigrated to Canada in 1869, where she became a respected composer and the singing instructor at the Hellmuth Ladies' College in London, Ontario.

'[39] His selection also drew substantially on Chappell's Popular Music of Olden Time,[40] in which many of the accompaniments were rewritten by George Alexander Macfarren, and contrasted with Hullah's Song Book of 1866, in which only the unaccompanied melodies were given.

[44] Hatton and Oxenford also produced editions of Shield and Mrs. Brooke's Rosina, Arne and Bickerstaffe's Love in a Village and Storace and Hoare's No song, no supper.

In 1875 Hatton went to Stuttgart, and also wrote a sacred musical drama, Hezekiah, given at The Crystal Palace in 1877; like all his larger works it met with moderate success.

Hatton's sheer versatility, his multifarious skills and interests, his energy and the exuberance of his good nature, characterised one of the extraordinary musicians of his age: and yet these same qualities led some to disparage his brilliance.

His biographer for the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 wrote: "Hatton excelled in the lyrical forms of music, and, in spite of his distinct skill in the severer styles of the madrigal, &c., he won popularity by such songs as "To Anthea", "Good-bye, Sweetheart", and "Simon the Cellarer", the first of which may be called a classic in its own way.

His glees and part-songs, such as "When Evening's Twilight", are still reckoned among the best of their class; and he might have gained a place of higher distinction among English composers had it not been for his irresistible animal spirits and a want of artistic reverence, which made it uncertain in his younger days whether, when he appeared at a concert, he would play a fugue of Bach or sing a comic song.