John Henry Maunder Explained

Background:person
John Henry Maunder
Birth Date:1858 2, df=yes
Birth Place:Chelsea, England
Occupation:Composer, organist
Instrument:Organ

John Henry Maunder (21 February 1858 – 21 January 1920) was an English composer and organist best known for his cantata "Olivet to Calvary" .

Life

John Henry Maunder was born in Chelsea and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He was organist at St Matthew's, Sydenham 1876-7, and St Paul's, Forest Hill 1878-9, neither of which now exists, as well as churches in Blackheath and Sutton, and accompanied concerts in the Albert Hall. He was conductor of the Civil Service Vocal Union from 1881, and also trained the choir for Henry Irving's original production of Faust at the Lyceum Theatre in 1887.

Compositions

Like the music of his close contemporary Caleb Simper, Maunder's music goes unmentioned in Baker's and Grove's dictionaries, as well as in the Oxford Companion to Music, probably because he did not emerge from the cathedral tradition. His works are characteristic expressions of the Victorian era – a style replaced by the music of Stanford, Parry, Wood and Noble, among others.

Maunder's many church cantatas were widely performed and admired, but have gone out of fashion. However, there is a revival of interest in his music, notably in The Netherlands, and in parts of the United Kingdom. Many choirs used to sing Maunder's Olivet to Calvary (words by Shapcott Wensley – pseudonym for H S Bunce) regularly with Stainer's Crucifixion at Passiontide in alternate years.[1] [2] Other seldom performed cantatas include Bethlehem; Penitence, Pardon and Peace; and one called The Martyrs initially written for men's voices.

The harvest anthem Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem (1897), perhaps one of his finest, is a typical multi-sectional work of 150 measures (bars). Maunder wrote a number of part-songs, including a piece called Thor’s War Song (from Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn), and a musical setting of the Border Ballad by Sir Walter Scott.

Maunder also wrote operettas. His Daisy Dingle received its first performance in Forest Hill in 1885. Another, a Comic Opera, entitled The Superior Sex, was performed at the Empire Theatre, Southend, in March 1909, and again at the Cripplegate Theatre, London, in February 1910. Set in 2005 A.D., it takes a humorous look at female emancipation by setting an inept army regiment (the 125th Indefencibles) against legendary female-warriors, the Amazons. The balance of power then shifts from one side to the other, and receives much comment, before reverting in a dramatic final scene.

Critical opinion

In his A Short History of English Church Music, Erik Routley traced John Stainer's The Crucifixion (1887) as the archetypal choral work deliberately written for amateur choirs that others imitated, and often diluted.

However, in 1922, an American reviewer for The New Music Review wrote the following concerning Maunder's work:

In the 1955 edition of the Oxford Companion to Music Percy Scholes damnned him with faint praise, writing that his 'seemingly inexhaustible cantatas, Penitence, Pardon and Peace, and From Olivet to Calvary long enjoyed popularity, and still aid the devotions of undemanding congregations in less sophisticated areas.' In 1966, Basil Ramsey wrote in the Musical Times of the LP recording of Olivet to Calvary by Barry Rose and the Guildford Cathedral Choir: "Here is a perplexing problem. Does this work warrant the preparation that has resulted in such an irresistible performance? Sweeping transformations can be made to music, however questionable its worth; and even poor words take on a superior air in such circumstances. The delusion will work for some and not others."[3] According to Robert Young, author of The Anthem in England and America (1970), Maunder's music was probably more esteemed by volunteer church choir singers than his peers.[4]

Phillip Tolley, in the website of British Choirs on the Net, wrote:

List of works

Anthems

Cantatas

Carols

Hymns

Services and Canticles

Songs, Ballads, and Part-songs

Instrumental

Operettas

Other

Sources

Notes

  1. Web site: The Choir of Leeds Minster. 2021-04-05. leedstownhall.co.uk. en.
  2. Web site: 2020-04-10. Good Friday – Stainer's Crucifixion and Olivet to Calvary. 2021-04-05. The Parish of Meltham – Christ the King. en-GB.
  3. The Musical Times, Vol. 107, No. 1475 (Jan., 1966), p. 64
  4. Young, Robert H. & Elwyn A. Weinandt, The Anthem in England and America (New York: The Free Press, 1970) pp.290-291

External links

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