John Stainer
Sir John Stainer (6 June 1840 – 31 March 1901) was an English composer and organist whose music, though seldom performed today (with the exception of The Crucifixion, still heard at Passiontide in some Anglican churches), was very popular during his lifetime.
When he retired owing to his poor eyesight and deteriorating health, he returned to Oxford to become Professor of Music at the university.
[1] The family lived in Southwark, London, where his father joined his brother in his cabinet making business, later becoming a vestry clerk and registrar of births, and a parish schoolmaster.
He built a small chamber organ at home on which the precocious John used to accompany him when he played hymn tunes on the violin.
He was already an accomplished player on keyboard instruments and possessed perfect pitch and a fine treble voice and soon became the choir's principal soloist.
In 1854, he was invited to sing in the first English performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion under William Sterndale Bennett at the Hanover Square Rooms.
[5] At the age of sixteen, Stainer was appointed by Sir Frederick Ouseley to the post of organist at the newly founded St Michael's College, Tenbury.
About this time he wrote several anthems, the most successful of which was I saw the Lord, a bolder and more original work in a more contemporary idiom.
He was permitted to study for a degree as long as it did not interfere with his duties, and he chose to do so in the expectation that it would raise his social status.
[10] Unfailingly conscientious as a choirmaster, Stainer introduced new anthems and service music, bringing the choir to a higher level of attainment than it had previously seen.
[11] It had been the custom for the adult choir members, the lay clerks, not to attend practice at all; but Stainer had a magnetic personality and persuaded them to come.
Attending at evensong at Magdalen College in 1866, Parry wrote in his diary "Stainer played the last 3 movements of the Sonata in B-flat (Mendelssohn) afterwards most gloriously".
He was employed to play solo organ works at weekly concerts at Crystal Palace and took part regularly in the Three Choirs Festival.
[17] Other parish music followed with a congregational Te Deum in C which was regularly sung at Magdalen on Sundays and a verse anthem "Sing a song of praise".
[18] In 1871, Goss resigned as organist of St Paul's Cathedral and Stainer was appointed to the position early in 1872 at a salary of £400 per annum.
The appointment of vicars choral was for life, and the tenor and bass voices saw no need for rehearsal, meaning that the repertoire was static.
Stainer was able to change their attitude, and new anthems and liturgies were introduced, a choir school built, and the number of choristers increased from twelve to thirty-five.
[24] In 1882, Stainer was offered the post of Inspector of Music in Schools and Colleges, a position he took with great seriousness and which he occupied for six years.
Together they worked towards raising standards in music teaching and toured the country, visiting schools and colleges and examining candidates.
He conducted pioneering research into early music, notably the output of Netherlandish Renaissance composer Guillaume Du Fay and Gilles Binchois, then scarcely known even among experts.
As Bumpus was to write, "Such honours as are at the disposal of his fellow musicians have been freely showered upon him, for he is universally beloved and esteemed, but his many onerous duties, his organistship of this, his presidency of that, and his incessant hard work as an examiner, have all involved responsibility and constant application, and the result is that his sight and general health have given way under the severe strain of sheer hard work.
His body was taken back to England, and his funeral service was held on 6 April at St Cross Church, Oxford with a large number of friends and colleagues present,[30] followed by burial in adjacent Holywell Cemetery.
Lady Stainer was devastated by his death and went into mourning for a year, but as she confided to a friend, the pianist Francesco Berger, "I am thankful he has been spared long illness and the weariness of old age, which he always dreaded".
[31] She gave a memorial stained glass window to St Cross Church and arranged for a monument to be erected at Magdalen College.
Her husband's valuable library of antiquarian music books passed to his elder son, J F R Stainer, who allowed its use for study and research purposes.
[31] Stainer's output of sacred music was extensive, including the Passion cantata or oratorio The Crucifixion (1887), the Sevenfold Amen (this latter piece was especially admired by the lexicographer Sir George Grove), and numerous hymn tunes, including "Cross of Jesus", "All for Jesus" (both from The Crucifixion), and "Love Divine".
The book includes Stainer's arrangements of what were to become the standard versions of "What Child Is This", "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "Good King Wenceslas", "The First Nowell", and "I Saw Three Ships", among others.
