Henry Fothergill Chorley
Encyclopedia
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
literary, art and music critic and editor. He was also an author of novels, drama, poetry and lyrics.
Chorley was a prolific and important music and literary critic and music gossip columnist of the mid-nineteenth century and wrote extensively about music in London and in Europe. His opera libretti and works of fiction were far less successful. He is perhaps best remembered today for his lyrics to "The Long Day Closes
The Long Day Closes (song)
The Long Day Closes is a part song by Henry Fothergill Chorley and Arthur Sullivan published in 1868. This song is one of seven part songs that Sullivan published that year, and it became Sullivan's best-known part song. Sullivan wrote most of his twenty part songs prior to the beginning of his...
," a part song set by Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
in 1868.
Life and career
Chorley was born in Blackley Hurst, near BillingeBillinge
Billinge is a village within the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, in Merseyside, England. It forms the larger part of the civil parish of Billinge Chapel End...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
, England. Chorley was the youngest of four children of Quaker parents, John Chorley (1771–1816), an iron worker and lock maker, and Jane Chorley, née Wilkinson (1779–1851). Chorley's father died, leaving his mother alone with young children. Jane Chorley moved her family to Liverpool to help take care of her half-brother, Dr Rutter, when he became ill. Chorley was educated by private tutors in Liverpool and then the school of the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
. His youth was shaped partly by spending time in the household of the wealthy and intellectual Mrs Benson Rathbone of Green Bank
Green Bank
Green Bank may refer to:* Green Bank , rural bank in the Caraga region, Philippines* Green Bank, Cumbria, place in England* Green Bank, West Virginia, community in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, USA...
, and he became a close friend of her son Benson, who died in an accident in 1834.
Journalism and non-fiction works
He began working in merchants' offices, hoping to become a musician, but his uncle discouraged that as an impractical ambition. However, Chorley soon took to musical and literary criticism. He began to write for the AthenaeumAthenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
in 1830 and remained its music and literature critic until 1868. While there, he reviewed approximately 2,500 books. He also became music critic for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and wrote, for these and other journals, reviews and musical gossip columns, discussing composers and performers in Britain and on the European continent. In these positions, he had much influence. He had strongly conservative views and was a persistent opponent of innovation, but was a lively chronicler of London life. In 1850 and 1851, Chorley edited the Ladies' Companion, which covered fashion and domestic women's issues. In the Athenaeum and elsewhere, Chorley often criticised the music of Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
and Wagner for what he called "decadence".
In addition to criticism for journals, Chorley wrote voluminously on literature and art. His non-fiction books were widely-read and included Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841), which includes a detailed description of contemporary opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in Paris and Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's career in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, Germany. He expanded the German section of this book and published it 1854 as Modern German Music. His masterpiece was Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862), which covers, year-by-year, the opera seasons of European operas in London between 1830 and 1859. In the work, he blames the autocratic manager of Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
, Benjamin Lumley, for a decline in the quality of performances there. On the other hand, he praises the efforts of Giulia Grisi
Giulia Grisi
Giulia Grisi, also known as Madame De Candia was an Italian opera singer...
, Mario
Mario (tenor)
Giovanni Matteo "Mario" was an Italian opera singer. The most celebrated tenor of his era, he was lionized by audiences in Paris and London.-Early life:...
and Michael Costa
Michael Costa (conductor)
Sir Michael Andrew Angus Costa was an Italian-born conductor and composer who achieved success in England.-Biography:He was born in Naples as Michaele Andrea Agniello Costa, to a family, according to some, of Sephardic stock...
, together with a group of journalists (including himself), for successfully creating the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
in 1847. He also wrote the well-received Memorials of Mrs. Hemans (1836), Handel Studies (1859), an annotated edition Mary Russell Mitford
Mary Russell Mitford
Mary Russell Mitford , was an English author and dramatist. She was born at Alresford, Hampshire. Her place in English literature is as the author of Our Village...
's letters (2 vols., 1872) and The National Music of the World (1882).
Fiction and playwriting
Chorley also wrote, with far less success, novels, stories, drama and verse, and various librettos. His works of fiction included Sketches of a Seaport Town (1834), a collection of stories, essays, and novellas related to Liverpool. The next year, he wrote Conti the Discarded. Neither of these achieved success. His plays, Old Love and New Fortune (1850) and Duchess Eleanour (1854), did not gain a following. He wrote two novels, Roccabella (1859) and A Prodigy: a Tale of Music (1866). His libretti included The Amber Witch for composer William Vincent WallaceWilliam Vincent Wallace
William Vincent Wallace was an Irish composer and musician.-Early life:Wallace was born at Colbeck Street, Waterford, Ireland. Both parents were Irish, his father, of County Mayo, was a regimental bandmaster....
, The May Queen - A Pastoral (1858) for William Sterndale Bennett
William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer. He ranks as the most distinguished English composer of the Romantic school-Biography:...
, and two for his friend Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
: The Sapphire Necklace
The Sapphire Necklace
The Sapphire Necklace, or the False Heiress , was the first opera composed by Arthur Sullivan...
and The Masque at Kenilworth
The Masque at Kenilworth
Kenilworth, A Masque of the Days of Queen Elizabeth , is a cantata with music by Arthur Sullivan and words by Henry Fothergill Chorley that premiered at the Birmingham Festival on 8 September 1864.In 1575, Queen Elizabeth visited Robert Dudley at Kenilworth Castle, where he presented her with...
. He published an English version of Meyerbeer's Dinorah, and wrote the words for several well-known songs, including Gounod's "Nazareth", Edward Loder
Edward Loder
Edward James Loder was an English composer and conductor. His best remembered work is the 1855 opera Raymond and Agnes.-Biography:...
's "The Brave Old Oak" and "The Three Ages", the English form of the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria", Sullivan's "The Long Day Closes
The Long Day Closes (song)
The Long Day Closes is a part song by Henry Fothergill Chorley and Arthur Sullivan published in 1868. This song is one of seven part songs that Sullivan published that year, and it became Sullivan's best-known part song. Sullivan wrote most of his twenty part songs prior to the beginning of his...
", and the hymn "God, the Omnipotent!
God, the Omnipotent!
"God, the Omnipotent!" is a hymn with words written in 1842 by Henry F. Chorley and 3rd and 4th stanzas by John Ellerton in 1870. It is based on a text from , "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth"...
".
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, for its first presentation in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1863 (at Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
). During rehearsals, it was found that the lines were unsingable. Both Sims Reeves
Sims Reeves
John Sims Reeves , usually called simply Sims Reeves, was the foremost English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist of the mid-Victorian era....
and Charles Santley
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
made strenuous and persistent complaints to Messrs. Chappell's
Chappell's
Chappell's was a family-owned department store chain. Based in Syracuse, New York, it first opened in 1893 and remained in business in the area until 1992. Many of the stores were converted to The Bon-Ton.-External links:...
, and new translations were made secretly, since no-one dared to tell Chorley. The first he knew of it was at the first performance. Chorley, as reviewer, waited to make his comment until the final announced performance, of which he wrote that it was "seriously imperilled by a singular translation". Unfortunately for him, the final performance in question had not taken place, so the Musical World was able to compliment him on his poetic imagination. Nevertheless, Chorley's translations of several songs from Faust were published and widely performed, such as "The Flower Song", "When All Was Young" and "Glory and Love". A similar Chorley effort, albeit of an obscure work, fared better: his translation of Mendelssohn's
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde, which Chorley rendered as "Son and Stranger," for the work's London premiere in 1851 is still heard today in that work's rare revivals.
Personality and last years
Chorley was considered eccentric and abrasive, but he was respected for his integrity and kindness. Chorley enthusiastically gave and attended dinner parties and was known as a big drinker. He cultivated friendships with Elizabeth Barrett and Mendelssohn, and later Charles DickensCharles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
and Charles Santley
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
, among others. After the death of his brother, John Rutter Chorley (1806–1867), he inherited enough money to retire from the Athenaeum, although he continued to contribute articles for that paper and also for The Orchestra.
In spite of his efforts to promote the music of Charles Gounod in England, the composer disliked Chorley intensely. When Gounod lived in England during the early 1870's, he wrote a satirical character piece for piano that was intended to be a parody of Chorley's personality. It greatly amused Gounod's English patron, Georgina Weldon
Georgina Weldon
Georgina Weldon was a British campaigner against the lunacy laws, a celebrated litigant and noted amateur soprano of the Victorian era.-Early years:...
, who described Chorley as having a "thin, sour, high-pitched sopranish voice" and moving like a "stuffed red-haired monkey." Gounod intended to publish the piece with a dedication to Chorley, but the latter died before this was possible. Weldon then invented a new program for the piece, which was re-titled "Funeral March of a Marionette". It became popular as a concert piece, and in the 1950s, its opening phrases became well known as the theme music for the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock. The series featured dramas, thrillers, and mysteries. By the premiere of the show on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades...
.
Chorley died at his home in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1872, at the age of 63, and is buried there in Brompton Cemetery
Brompton Cemetery
Brompton Cemetery is located near Earl's Court in South West London, England . It is managed by The Royal Parks and is one of the Magnificent Seven...
. He left a very considerable estate of £45,000.