Thomas Attwood (composer)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Thomas Attwood died at his house at 75 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the 24th of March 1838 -- and was buried a week later beneath the very organ he had played for over four decades at St Paul's Cathedral. That detail tells you something essential about this man: his life and his instrument were inseparable.

  Born in London on the 23rd of November 1765, Attwood grew up in the shadow of the royal court and ended his life at the center of English musical life. He studied under Mozart. He was mourned by Mendelssohn. He played at the funerals of admirals and the coronations of monarchs. How did the son of a royal band musician become one of the most connected figures in nineteenth-century British music? The answers run through Naples and Vienna, through the nave of St Paul's, and through a gate bell in Norwood.

• 2. A Royal Education

  ›

  James Nares and Edmund Ayrton first shaped Attwood's ear, training him as a chorister at the Chapel Royal from the age of nine. The Chapel Royal was not merely a church choir; it was an institution that formed English musicians at the highest level, and Attwood absorbed its traditions deeply.

  In 1783, the Prince of Wales -- later King George IV -- was so impressed by the young Attwood's skill at the harpsichord that he funded two years of study abroad at his own expense. Attwood first went to Naples, then moved on to Vienna, where he became a favourite pupil of Mozart. On returning to London in 1787, he briefly held an appointment as one of the chamber musicians to the Prince of Wales. That court connection would define his career for the next half century, though not always smoothly.

• 3. Cathedral, Court, and Coronations

  ›

  In 1796, Attwood was chosen as organist of St Paul's Cathedral. That same year he was made composer of the Chapel Royal, a dual appointment that placed him at the intersection of England's grandest ecclesiastical and royal musical institutions.

  In January 1806, he played his own composition, the Grand Dirge, on the organ at the funeral of Lord Nelson. It was the only piece specially written for that occasion. Five years later, his anthem I Was Glad, composed for the coronation of George IV, proved durable enough to be used again at the coronations of King William IV and Queen Victoria.

  The king had earlier neglected Attwood on account of his connection with the Princess of Wales. But by 1821, that estrangement was over: George IV appointed him organist to his private chapel at Brighton. At the time of Attwood's death, he was at work on a new anthem for the coronation of Queen Victoria. He had written the anthem O Lord, Grant the King a Long Life for William IV's coronation, and a similar task for Victoria was simply the next commission in a long line of royal service.

• 4. Institutions and Colleagues

  ›

  Attwood was one of the original members of the Royal Philharmonic Society, founded in 1813. He also helped establish the Regent's Harmonic Institution in 1818 -- a music publishing firm backed by the Royal Philharmonic Society. Soon after the Royal Academy of Music opened in 1823, Attwood was chosen as one of its professors.

  His students included John Goss, Cipriani Potter, and the child prodigy Elizabeth Jonas. His godson, Thomas Attwood Walmisley, studied with him and later edited Attwood's services and anthems for posthumous publication. Through his friendship with Felix Mendelssohn, Attwood also encouraged the young William Sterndale Bennett at a critical stage in that composer's development.

• 5. A Friendship With Mendelssohn

  ›

  Attwood first heard Felix Mendelssohn play during the younger composer's visit to London in 1829. After a tour of Scotland and Wales, Mendelssohn returned to London and fell from a carriage, suffering a leg injury. Attwood sent him a large hamper and invited him to recover at the family home at Beulah Hill in Norwood.

  Mendelssohn composed a piece for harp and piano, The Evening Bell, inspired by the gate bell at Attwood's house in Norwood. During a second stay there in 1832, the friendship deepened further. Mendelssohn ultimately dedicated his Three Preludes and Fugues for the Organ, his Opus 37, to Attwood -- a tribute from one of Europe's leading composers to an Englishman who had befriended and housed him during his convalescence.

• 6. The Composer's Legacy

  ›

  Attwood wrote music for roughly twenty musical plays and comic operas between 1792 and 1807, and he produced a substantial body of glees, including a setting of Robert Burns's poem A Rose-Bud by my Early Walk, composed around 1819. His short anthems are what survive most visibly: Teach me, O Lord from 1797, O God Who by the Leading of a Star from 1814, Turn Thy Face from my Sins from 1831, and Come, Holy Ghost from 1834.

  Critics and contemporaries noted what his biographers later confirmed: his music carries the mark of his Viennese training alongside the Georgian tradition of English church music he absorbed at the Chapel Royal as a child. That union of styles, as it has been described, ran through his output and kept influencing English church music well after his death. He is buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, beneath the organ -- the same organ over which he presided for more than forty years.