Footnotes

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SCORE OF WESLEY'S CONCERTO FOR ORGAN IN B FLAT, ONCE OWNED BY HIS FRIENDS VINCENT NOVELLO & CHARLES STOKES.

This manuscript brings together three musical friends, Samuel Wesley (1766-1837), Vincent Novello (1781-1861) and Charles Stokes (1784-1839). Wesley, the younger son of Charles Wesley, was a noted child prodigy, his musical prowess leading William Boyce to call him 'an English Mozart' (Olleson & Pelkey, Grove online). He became much in demand as an organist, as a recitalist and a soloist playing his own concertos, and met pianist Vincent Novello through the English Bach movement, which worked to promote the composer's music through lectures, performances and publishing. The friends shared this passion '...at a time when Bach's music was known to few in England outside a tiny group of organists (called 'the Sebastian Squad' by its moving spirit Samuel Wesley) whose devotion did much to prepare for the later Bach revival...' (Rosemary Hughes, Grove online).

Of the many surviving letters of Samuel Wesley, almost half are to Novello. Stokes, in turn, had taken piano lessons with Wesley and was also a close friend of Novello, appearing with him in a portrait of the Novello family and friends seated round a piano by Edward Petre Novello of 1830. Both Wesley and Novello encouraged Stokes' musical career. They played Wesley's composition Trio for Three Pianofortes together at Hanover Square in 1811 and nine months after Stokes' death in 1839, Novello and friends performed a benefit concert for his widow and children. It seems that this is not the only Wesley manuscript presented to Novello by Charles Stokes' widow. On the first page of the score for Wesley's Gregorian Mass (BM Add. MS 1773), Novello makes a similar comment: '...I prize this MS the more highly for its having been kindly presented to me by the widow of our beloved friend Charles Stokes after his death in 1839...' (Francis John Marsh, The Latin Church Music of Samuel Wesley, University of York, 1975).

It has been noted by scholars that '...Wesley's organ concertos have suffered cruelly from the disappearance of vital parts which make realistic reconstruction impossible. Scores or orchestral parts of four concertos are to be found in the British Museum, their dates ranging approximately from 1787 to 1815, but only in the first two concertos are the organ parts still extant...' (Geoffrey Ernest Brown, The Organ Music of Samuel Wesley, Durham University theses online, p.44). It is possible, therefore, that our manuscript could be the missing organ part from the manuscript of the Concerto in B flat held at the British Museum (BM Add. 35009). Our manuscript is dated 1800 by Wesley, and so it serves to more accurately date that score, which has hitherto been dated to c.1811.

Provenance: Charles Stokes (1784-1839); given by his widow to Vincent Novello (1781-1861); estate of Henry Sandon (1928-2023).