CONFITEBOR TIBI DOMINE SAMUEL WESLEY

CONFITEBOR TIBI DOMINE SAMUEL WESLEY (17661837)

(I will give thanks to Thee, 0 Lord)

I greatly welcome the opportunity to perform once again in April 2008 (along with John Rutter’s popular Magnificat) the wonderful “Confitebor Tibi Domine” by Samuel Wesley, a rarely-heard work which we last gave in 1986. Why is it so little known? There are many reasons, often sound ones, why a composer's work may lie neglected and unperformed. It may be too difficult or require unusual or expensive forces. But occasionally circumstances conspire to prevent a fine and important composer ever getting a fair hearing at all, and a masterpiece may languish unknown for centuries. It is not an exaggeration to place Samuel Wesley and his "Confitebor" in that category.

Samuel Wesley, son of Charles Wesley the hymnwriter, and father of the betterknown Victorian cathedral organist and church composer Samuel Sebastian Wesley, lived from 17661837. As well as being a prolific composer, at any rate early in life, he was the outstanding organist of his day, pioneering in England the concept of the virtuoso solo organ recital. He was a good violinist and later on became increasingly active as a freelance conductor and lecturer on music. He was widely read and had a far deeper knowledge of the composers of earlier times Byrd and Palestrina in particular than most other musicians of his generation. In his teens he chanced to hear a service at the chapel of the Portuguese embassy in London and from this developed a lifelong fascination with Gregorian chant and the music of the Roman rite much more elaborate, as performed in that embassy chapel, than anything to be heard in Anglican churches at that time. Wesley was involved in the impresario Salomon's London performances of Haydn's music in the 1790's, and at the turn of the century discovered the music of J. S. Bach, then totally unknown in Britain. Thereafter he inspired and led a movement to introduce Bach's music (or what little of it was then available) to English audiences.

But in struggling for recognition Wesley laboured under some severe disadvantages. In the first place he had the misfortune to live at a particularly low point in the history of English music, with little public patronage and no established tradition of concert-giving. Perversely, he wrote most of his major choral works to Latin texts, at a time when Catholics were still disenfranchised and such music had scant chance of being performed or published. More seriously, Wesley seems to have been a manic-depressive, and suffered throughout his life from long periods of acute depression, often coming at critical junctures for his career. One such, from around 1787 to the mid 1790s, was a severe setback in his early maturity; another, in 1817, led to a year’s incarceration in a private lunatic asylum.

Despite his talent he failed to secure a permanent, salaried post until the end of his life and in consequence had to support two large families mainly by teaching. (Two, because his stormy first marriage ended in separation in 1810, following his liaison with his 16-year-old housekeeper, with whom he thereupon set up house and had five further children.) He was always impecunious, frequently under threat of imprisonment for debt, and had at times to resort to humdrum music-copying jobs and the generosity of friends to keep going. He could afford little time for composition, and opportunities and resources to secure performances of major works were few. Nor did it help that there was virtually no market in England, other than the Spanish and Portuguese embassy chapels, for the Latin sacred music that was his preferred form of composition.

The Confitebor is Wesley's greatest work. Written in 1799 (one year after Haydn's Creation) it is a setting in 15 movements of the Latin text of Psalm 111 (112 in the Anglican Psalter) "I will give thanks unto thee, 0 Lord, with my whole heart, secretly and in the congregation". It lasts some 65 minutes. The verses of the psalms are variously set for solo quartet, trio, duet or for single soloists, and there are five fine choruses. The orchestral forces are as for a late Haydn symphony: two each of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets with drums, strings and organ.

The Confitebor appears to have been written purely to satisfy some inner creative urge. Indeed, it had to wait 27 years for its first performance when we hear that it was given on 4th May 1826 in the Argyll Rooms, Regent Street, London, and was "universally approved". In 1868 Wesley's son Samuel Sebastian performed sections of it at the Three Choirs Festival, after which it languished forgotten for another 100 years. It was performed in York Minster in 1972 in a concert organized by its first modern editor, John Marsh, and repeated (with a later broadcast) in the Queen Elizabeth Hall a year later. The full score was finally published only in 1978, but a performing edition suitable for use by choirs was not available until Redcliffe Edition published one in 1984. Thus only then could the Confitebor at long last lay claim to its rightful place as a major work in the choral repertory and a landmark in English music. But, of course, publication alone is not enough these days to ensure recognition. To gain it a piece needs to be noticed in the press, performed several times by a well-known choir and conductor, broadcast and (above all) commercially recorded. Apart from one further broadcast (many years ago on a Wednesday afternoon) the Confitebor has yet to receive any of this. Let us hope it will not have to wait too much longer!