I Was Glad: The legacy of Sir Hubert Parry

Lead image: Drawing of Parry by Sidney Kent. Image Courtesy of RCM collections

October marks 100 years since the death of former RCM Director Sir Hubert Parry. In February, the RCM welcomed author and journalist Dr Simon Heffer to mark the centenary in the annual Crees Lecture. While Parry’s contribution as a composer is now widely recognised, Dr Heffer honoured the equally significant contribution he made as teacher and leader of the College.

In a year of centenaries – the end of WW1 and the beginning of universal suffrage to name just a couple – Parry’s in particular is held dear by the Royal College of Music. The composer led a remarkable life, by anyone’s standards. He received a knighthood from Queen Victoria in 1848, an honorary doctorate from both Cambridge and Oxford, and became a baronet in 1902. Today, he can count Prince Charles among his fans. (In a BBC4 documentary about Parry’s music, HRH said, ‘It gives you tingles up the spine and tears in your eyes’). Indeed, despite beginning his official musical career relatively late (he spent seven years as an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London after graduating) Parry managed to become one of the most appreciated and important composers of his time, often referred to as the nation’s ‘unofficial composer laureate’.

Even as a young boy, Parry excelled both musically and intellectually. He was born in 1816 and attended Twyford School and Eton College, where he became the youngest person ever to successfully sit the Oxford Bachelor of Music exam. On 28 October, choirs from both Twyford and Eton will join with RCM musicians to honour their past pupil in a special anniversary evening concert in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall. A study day will also take place at the College, co-organised by the RCM and the University of Southampton, which will examine Parry’s work as Professor and Director, and his legacy throughout the 20th century.

Sir Hubert Parry pictured aboard his yacht by an annonymous photographer. Taken 'off Sark', c1900. Photo courtesy of RCM collections

Parry first became involved with the College through his friend – and the first ever Director of the RCM – Sir George Grove. After leaving his position at Lloyd’s, Grove appointed Parry as sub-editor of his Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to which he was to contribute more than 200 articles. Later, in 1883, Grove invited

Parry to become Professor of Musical History at the newly founded RCM. And then, in 1895 and at the height of his fame, Parry succeeded Grove as Director.

A man with strong humanitarian convictions and artistic ideals, Parry was also a man of huge ambition – both for his own work and that of the College. In 1915, he told his students that, ‘The Royal College of Music has always been a place with big aims of doing special services to the nation, and it was organised from the start with a view to their attainment’.

In February, author and journalist Dr Simon Heffer marked the centenary of the former Director in the College’s annual Crees Lecture. In his address, Dr Heffer remarked that, ‘Parry seems to have grasped from early on that in England the art of music would require institutions to carry it forward if it were ever to be something more than light entertainment’. Parry saw the RCM as one such institution. For the following 35 years, he made it his life’s work to ensure that the conservatoire, and its musicians, were at the forefront of British music.

Dr Heffer continued, ‘His teaching, and his inspiration, launched the careers of some of the greatest names in the history of English music. Through them, not only did Parry succeed in putting music at the centre of our national culture to the point where our great composers – most of them his pupils – were household names, but he was godfather to the creation of what perhaps his most celebrated pupil, Ralph Vaughan Williams, called a truly “national music”’.

Parry (right) and his close friend Anslem Guise (left), pictured in 1860. Photo courtesy of Twyford School archives.

Parry was a talented and influential teacher who vividly communicated to his students not only a passion for music, but also the important role that music plays in British society. Dr Heffer

commented that, ‘It became the main part of Parry’s mission to ensure that no sheep became lost in the pastures that were English music, and he succeeded brilliantly. One of his gifts as a teacher was to make his pupils understand the greatness of a composer even if they could not come to like his idiom. His contribution to the understanding of the nature of music was, thereby, prodigious’.

Parry, who obtained a Law and History degree from Oxford as well as a BMus, also opened the College doors to lecturers from other disciplines, providing his musicians with an education that stretched beyond their classical training. The composer was himself a prolific writer on all aspects of musicology, as well as a published poet and historiographer. In particular, he felt an affinity with literature and contemporary poetry – a number of his works are set to Shakespeare, while his ninth set of songs is devoted entirely to Mary Coleridge.

When Britain entered WW1 in 1914, Parry was faced with the inevitable prospect of losing several gifted musicians to the Front Line. That year, he stood in front of his students and delivered a stirring Director’s speech. ‘If we have to stand in rows over against the Albert Hall with files of Prussian soldiers ready to demolish us,’ he said, ‘we shall all look down the murderous barrels without winking an eyelash’.

Earlier this year, RCM Research Fellow Dr Jonathan Clinch secured permission from the Parry family to prepare the first edition of another, previously unpublished, piece that Parry penned as the war was drawing to a close: Elegie in C for organ. The work was then performed by William Whitehead at the Royal Festival Hall in April, and is now freely available on the IMSLP website.

‘WW1 had a tremendous effect on Parry,’ explains Jonathan. ‘His vision for the Royal College of Music was that it would produce musicians who would play a full role in society, so in his eyes it was the duty of the men to fight. At the same time, the slaughter of so many of his

young musicians caused him great distress. This beautiful miniature was written in March 1918 and, excluding the orchestration of his earlier song England, was the final music he wrote’.

In 1908 ill health forced Parry to give up his chair at Oxford University. He did, however, retain his directorship at the RCM until his death in 1918. It was a position that, whilst not as publicly lauded as his musical works, is still just as deserving of honour. As Dr Heffer remarked, ‘Parry’s contribution to national culture, thanks to his work at the RCM and to that of the pupils he shaped and guided, far exceeds the great music he wrote. It puts him in a league of his own among English musicians’.