John Stainer
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Sir John Stainer (London, 6 June 1840 – Verona, 31 March 1901) was an English composer and organist. Born in Southwark, he sang as a boy in the choir of St Paul's Cathedral and at the age of 16 was appointed by Sir Frederick Ouseley to the post of organist at the newly founded St. Michael's College, Tenbury. In 1860 he became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, moving to St Paul's Cathedral in 1872. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music which are still influential today. He was also active as an academic, becoming professor of music at Oxford University in 1889 (the year after Queen Victoria knighted him) and conducting pioneering research into early music, notably the output of Guillaume Dufay, then scarcely known even among experts. According to Peter Charlton's Stainer biography, Arthur Sullivan's tribute to Stainer was blunt and memorable: "He is a genius".
As a composer Stainer produced abundant sacred music of varying quality, including the cantata The Crucifixion, the Sevenfold Amen (this latter piece especially admired by the lexicographer Sir George Grove), and numerous hymn tunes. He achieved all this, and his pedagogical feats, despite impaired vision: in a childhood accident he permanently lost the use of one eye, and for part of 1875 he lost the use of his other eye too.
The Crucifixion was for many years one of several Passion cantatas performed in English churches during Holy Week (another example is J. H. Maunder's Olivet to Calvary). Despite widespread critical derision, it survives in the repertory of numerous choirs — mostly Protestant — in the English-speaking world.
Stainer also made a lasting contribution to the music of Christmas in his Christmas Carols New and Old (1871), produced in collaboration with the Revd H. R. Bramley, which marked an important stage in the revival of the Christmas carol. 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.
Always extraordinarily industrious, Stainer combined his executant and creative duties with those of peripatetic examiner. He died during a long-delayed Italian vacation.
Bibliography
- Peter Charlton, John Stainer and the musical life of Victorian Britain (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1984)
- H. R. Bramley (ed. words) J. Stainer (ed. music) Christmas Carols, New and Old (London, Novello, 1871)
- The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford University Press, 1928), pp. xvi-xvii.
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