Discovering Jenkins

Andrew Ashbee's acclaimed introduction to the life and works of John Jenkins (1592-1678) has recently been published in paperback by Toccata Press. Jenkins was the most prolific and the most esteemed of English composers between the death of Byrd and the rise of Purcell. Here, Dr Ashbee reveals how he discovered this underrated master:

I was first made aware of a composer called John Jenkins in a book: Maidstone 1549-1949, commemorating the quarter-centenary of the granting of the town’s royal charter. It opened with ‘A pageant of history’, compiled by the curator of the Maidstone Museum, Mr. L.R.A.Grove, and included a paragraph about Jenkins sandwiched between two unedifying entries: ‘1590: The quarters of some traitors are displayed upon two poles set upon the battlements of the county prison’; and ‘1600: a baker is put in the stocks, with a sample of his bad bread placed before him, as a punishment.’ 1949 was the year I entered Maidstone Grammar School, becoming a flautist, and Jenkins was put out of mind. On moving to the Royal Academy of Music I noticed (in my first year) that the Peter Latham Prize was available to a third-year student presenting a 5000-word essay on a musical topic of their choice. I determined to enter, with John Jenkins as my subject, and during the intervening years found out what I could via the Academy’s library and that of the University of London. ‘John Jenkins and his times - a biographical introduction’ was ready for presentation at the due time, but no notice of the competition appeared. On enquiring why not, I was told that the competition had garnered no entries in the years since it was first offered, so it would not be held!

The exercise had naturally stimulated my interest in the composer, although my research had indicated that there was little published about him. Nor were there more than a handful of pieces by him available. In my fourth year I was fortunate to be included among a small group of students for a one-year course ‘The Performance of Early Classical Music’, which Sir Thomas Armstrong had arranged. We had the experience of some of the finest scholars and musicians as our tutors: Thurston Dart, Denis Stevens, Paul Steinitz, George Malcolm, Geraint Jones. We learned for the first time about microfilms and Xeroxes, about editing early music and ways to perform it. I also completed my B.Mus degree that same year. One invaluable off-shoot was that I was able to gain a Reader’s ticket to the British Museum (as it was then), giving me access for the first time to a wealth of Jenkins’s music in contemporary manuscripts.

The next logical step was to work towards a Ph.D. degree with Jenkins as my topic. A working title proved difficult to establish and I was sent to see H. K. Andrews at Oxford, who devised a lengthy one. But Thurston Dart, newly appointed Professor at King’s College, London, threw this out and we eventually agreed that Jenkins’s four-part music would be an ideal subject: of manageable size, with music varied in style and form. He offered the further temptation that my music examples could become a volume in the Musica Britannica series - this materialised in 1967 as volume 26.

When I began, I had no idea of the quality of Jenkins’s music. I became aware that two American scholars, Robert Warner and Helen Sleeper, had both studied him. Warner’s dissertation on Jenkins’s fantasias (1951) was the only substantial work. Helen Sleeper published very little before she died, except for a fine edition of various Jenkins pieces (Wellesley Edition, No. 1). But her notes are at the Pendlebury Library of Music, Cambridge, and these gave me many leads. When I compare the bibliography I made for the Academy competition with what is available now, I am gratified that I have played some part in bringing Jenkins’s music to a wider audience. Today editions of virtually all of his major works are published or planned. The one or two recordings of his music available in 1961 have been replaced by a substantial list of CDs. Likewise the few pioneering viol consorts of the 1950s have been replaced by a great number of amateur and professional groups, encouraged by the Viola da Gamba Society. My assessment of Jenkins in Harmonious Musick I as ‘the most important and successful mainstream composer of instrumental music in England in the fifty years between the death of Gibbons and the emergence of Purcell’ holds true. Of course his great contemporary William Lawes tends to acquire all the publicity. Lawes’s music is flamboyant, extrovert, angular and daring, compared with Jenkins’s quieter, smoother lines, with their subtle exploitation of harmonic and key colours. The one boldly fought for (and sacrificed his life for) his King, the other served his time quietly in the country, supporting Royalist families in those ‘Barbarous and Calamitous Times’. Both enrich our musical life immeasurably.

The Harmonious Musick of John Jenkins I: The Fantasias for Viols by Andrew Ashbee is available now in paperback from all good booksellers.

Sterndale Bennett at the RCM

Last month, Peter Horton, musicologist and Deputy Librarian at the Royal College of Music, organised a Sterndale Bennett Study Day with the pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi, Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellow at the RCM. Here is his report for From Beyond the Stave:

Despite being hailed by Mendelssohn and Schumann as one of the most promising composers of his time, William Sterndale Bennett (1816-75) never achieved the greatness they believed he was capable of. Were their claims inflated, or were there other reasons for his failure? Combining talks and performances, the recent Sterndale Bennett Study Day at the Royal College of Music explored the life and music of this fascinating musician and attempted to place his work in its historical context.

But how did Mendelssohn and Schumann come to be promoting the career of a forgotten English musician? The answer can be traced back to a fateful day in June 1833 when the seventeen year-old composer and pianist played his first piano concerto at the Royal Academy of Music end-of-year concert. The audience included Mendelssohn who promptly invited him to Leipzig, not as a pupil but as a friend. It was not until 1836 that Bennett was able to take up his offer, but the eight months he spent in Germany (October 1836 to June 1837) had a profound influence on his career. Supported by a small legacy, he immersed himself in the city’s invigorating musical environment, so far removed from that of the commercially-orientated concerts that dominated London’s musical life. No less significantly, he recorded his impressions in a diary that provides a fascinating insight into his life in the city – his first sight of a Christmas tree, his thoughts on the music and musicians he heard, the evenings spent drinking beer or champagne with Schumann, German lessons, his 21st birthday, his debut at the Gewandhaus concerts. But there are also regular hints of homesickness and from this time onwards he was caught between two stools – the artistic satisfaction and encouragement that he found in Germany, or the ties of nationality, family and friends that bound him to his homeland. Here, in a nutshell, we find one reason for Bennett’s failure to develop the immense achievement of his youth.

The key to understanding Mendelssohn and Schumann’s excitement over Bennett’s prospects is to be found in the substantial body of music he had composed before the age of 21 – four piano concertos, four symphonies, four concert overtures and several substantial works for solo piano – and, after an aptly-titled ‘A family perspective’ by Barry Sterndale-Bennett (his great, great grandson), this was explored by Peter Horton. A lunchtime recital of piano music by Bennett and Schumann served as a reminder of the former’s links to Leipzig – Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques were dedicated to Bennett, while Bennett’s Piano Sonata in F minor was written as a wedding present for Mendelssohn. Bennett’s German connections surfaced again in Basil Keen’s study of his role in the foundation of the Bach Society in 1849 and in Bettina Mühlenbeck’s examination of the cultural significance of his two sets of bi-lingual songs. Stephen Varcoe and RCM students later offered a practical demonstration of how these works, together with songs by Mendelssohn, Schumann and their English contemporaries, fitted into the contemporary musical landscape. In his inimitable way David Owen Norris explored Bennett’s writing for the piano, and later, in the concluding concert, gave a thrilling performance of the Three Romances. Other works heard in the evening were a further selection of songs from Stephen Varcoe, the Cello Sonata – one of Bennett’s few works to date from the early 1850s – and the Sextet for piano and strings. The pianist in the last was Hiroaki Takenouchi who, together with Peter Horton, organised the Study Day, and his inspired playing brought proceedings to a very satisfying close.

No one who attended could have been left untouched by this intriguing, contradictory, figure, about whom so many questions remain to be answered. How, for example, does one connect the academic Bennett of the Lectures on Musical Life with the young man who so enjoyed champagne with Schumann? Or reconcile the superb pianist with the reluctant player, always on the lookout for an excuse not to perform? But perhaps the most sobering thought to emerge from a fascinating day was the fact that the majority of the music heard had been written before he reached the age of 22. But thoughts about what went wrong are another story!

Peter Horton and Bettina Mühlenbeck are currently working on an edition of Sterndale Bennett's Leipzig Diaries.