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An obituary notice appeared in the Year Book of the Congregational Union of England & Wales, 1896.
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He was brought to England in 1562 by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, who liked to entertain musicians in his home. After 1579 Damon was a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I and organist of the Chapel Royal. Little else is known of him except that he married and had five children.
Apart from his collection of 79 psalm tunes (see below), he composed some Latin motets, madrigals and lute pieces.
(See also GDM; OCM)
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She was a long-time collaborator with Jack Segal, the author of the original text of `Scarlet Ribbons', by far the most successful of several `pop' songs written or arranged by her. (Whether she was the composer or only the arranger of the `Scarlet Ribbons' melody remains unclear.)
She wrote two operas, `Hester' and `Three for Tonight' for the singer Harry Belafonte; and in the 1930s she had her own radio programme `Treble and Clef'.
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(See also Julian pp.279b-280a)
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He studied organ with Walter Parratt and composition with C.V.Stanford at the Royal College of Music; and taught there for fifty years 1919-69. He was organist of Stoke Newington Prebyterian Church 1904-06; Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead 1906-11; St James's Parish Church, Paddington 1911-16; and then for fifty years of the city church of St Michael's Cornhill, which, through his organ and choral recitals, became a centre of musical activity. In 1919 he founded the St Michael's Singers and in 1925 the City of London Choral Union.
From 1917-20 he was one of a small group of musicians (also including Henry Ley and Martin Shaw) who prepared Conference Hymns for the Summer Conferences of the Student Christian Movement; their work led to the commissioning of ®A Students' Hymnal (Hymns of the Kingdom) edited by Walford Davies. From 1941-45 he took temporary charge of the music at King's College, Cambridge.
He wrote songs, chamber music and choral works, and a large amount of organ and church music. His most widely known and perhaps most enduring composition is his setting of Christina Rossetti's `In the bleak mid-winter' which regularly features in choral carol services, and from which he received only minimal royalties throughout his life-time.
(See also GDM; OCM)
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He was the son of the Rector of Haughton; and was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Brasenose College Oxford, graduating in 1756. He became curate of St Matthew's Church Walsall in 1761, and was Vicar there from 1769 until his death.
He wrote hymns and poems and, as a keen amateur musician, composed a tune for each of the 150 metrical psalms. Few were published, and only the `148th' survives. He also published two volumes of piano sonatas.
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He became a chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor, in 1882; and organ assistant to Walter Parratt (later Sir Walter) there from 1885-90. He studied with C.H.H.Parry and C.V.Stanford at the Royal College of Music, and later taught counterpoint there. He was organist at St Anne's, Soho, 1890-91; Christ Church, Hampstead, 1891-98; the Temple Church, 1898-1923; and conductor of several choirs. He was Professor of Music at University College Aberystwyth 1919-26; organist of St George's Chapel Windsor 1927-32; and Master of the King's Music 1934-41.
He composed a good deal in various forms; but his most influential work was as choirmaster, teacher, adjudicator, editor, pioneer of community singing, and as a popular music educator especially through broadcasting. He edited In Hoc Signo: Hymns of War and Peace 1915; A Students' Hymnal (Hymns of the Kingdom) 1923 - particularly notable for several examples of corporate tune-writing by his students and himself at Aberystwyth; and co-edited The Church Anthem Book 1933. He wrote The Pursuit of Music 1933; and, with Harvey Grace, Music and Worship 1935. He was knighted in 1922 and created KCVO in 1937.
(See also DNB; GDM; OCM)
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His father was a coal-miner, originally from the Welsh-speaking north of Wales, who married a girl from the English-speaking south and settled in the mining valley of Mountain Ash (Aber Pennar). English was spoken in the home; but Pennar was taught Welsh at school by an enthusiastic teacher, and became fluent in the language which he was to use for most of his immense subsequent literary output.
Like many of his contemporaries and compatriots, he was academically gifted and well-trained, particularly in languages; and he obtained first-class degrees at Cardiff University in Latin and English (1932/33), and then at Balliol College Oxford (B.Litt. 1936) and Yale (Ph.D. 1938). He moved to Mansfield College Oxford in 1940, as one of a gifted group of ordinands; his contemporaries included R.T.Brooks, George Caird, and Erik Routley. During this period he met and married Rosemarie Woolff, one of a number of refugees from Nazi Germany who emigrated to England at this time.
In 1943 he was ordained as minister of Minster Road Congregational Church, Cardiff; but after three years he began a long and distinguished teaching career: first as Professor of Church History at Bala-Bangor Independent College (1946), then a similar post at Brecon Memorial College (1950) where he became Principal in 1952. The Brecon College moved to Swansea in 1959, and he remained Principal until his retirement in 1981. In 1973-4 he was President of the Undeb yr Annybynwyr Cymreig (Union of Welsh Independents), of which he remained a life-long member.
He began early to write poetry in Welsh, and at first his poems appeared under the pseudonym `Davies Aberpennar', a name which he seems to have discontinued after c.1948. During the 1940s he was a member of Cylch Cadwgan (`The Cadwgan Circle', named after the home of it founders Gwyn and Kate (Bosse-)Griffiths in which the group met). This was a group of writers and musicians with pacifist and Welsh Nationalist ideals and sympathies, which Pennar himself maintained throughout his life. These were not merely theoretical ideas; his active involvement and campaigning continued, even to the extent of a brief imprisonment for a protest offence.
He soon turned his attention to prose writing, which included psychological and religious studies (with a significant element of self- analysis), novels and short stories reflecting similar interests, and scholarly theological studies especially in the fields of Christology and Welsh religious thought.
His last year or two of life was marred by loss of memory and inability to recognize people; but to the end he remained dear in the affections of his friends and former colleagues, and of his wife and five children who survived him.
It is perhaps curious that, notwithstanding his immense gifts of spiritual insight and creative writing including much poetry, he appears to have done little or no hymn-writing, apart from the one verse contributed to Congregational Praise and repeated in Rejoice & Sing. Possibly the crippling constraints of metrical hymn-writing and its necessarily small scale, which to a great hymn-writer are a creative challenge and whose boundaries lesser writers hardly reach, were not congenial to someone whose literary and spiritual activism was so widely spread.
(See also OCLW, in which an entry for his son Meirion Pennar also appears)
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He was brought up by his uncle, a blacksmith, and learnt to play an instrument he constructed himself out of old horse-shoes. Later he was a pupil of William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral. From 1800 he played in the Covent Garden Orchestra; and wrote much theatre music, including incidental music to `The Tempest', and many songs, of which `The Bay of Biscay' achieved particularly wide fame.
(See also DNB; GDM)
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(See also DNB; OCM; Julian p.1628a)
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Having become a Benedictine monk, he was appointed Provost of the monastery at Steterburg, nr Brunswick, from 1519-22/23; then after studying theology at Wittenburg and with Luther's support he became pastor of St Nicholas's Church, Stettin. A number of moves followed, including posts at Liebstadt, M7uuml;lhausen and K7ouml;nigsberg.
Differing accounts are given concerning his death. Julian, relying (apparently) on Edward Koch's Dictionary of Hymns, gives the 1541 date mentioned above, and adds that there was "some suspicion of [Decius's] being poisoned by his enemies of the Roman Catholic faction". Wesley Milgate, however, reports that Decius returned to Mülhausen from Königsberg in 1543, left Mülhausen again in 1546, and died some time later
He is credited with three hymns in Low German, based on the Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Gloria in excelsis, and set to melodies based on the corresponding plainsong chants; the last of these, beginning "Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr", was set to the tune now known by that name, and gave rise to a number of English versions translated from the German. (NCHB-291, LBW-166, &c.)
(See also Julian p.285b)
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He was educated at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, where he later became Director of Music. He has been co-ordinator of the Caribbean Church Music programme for the Caribbean Council of Churches.
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(See also Julian pp.302b-303a)
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(See also DAB; Julian pp.303b-304a)
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[ Note: born one month earlier than William Croswell Doane, son of George Washington Doane; but no connection as far as we know. ]
He worked in a cloth manufacturing business with his father; later he became head of a firm making wood-working machinery in Cincinnati, Ohio, where for many years he was a Baptist Sunday School superintendent. He conducted choirs from the age of 14. He wrote more than two thousand hymn tunes, for many of which his friend Frances van Alstyne (Fanny Crosby), provided texts.
He was associated with Moody and Sankey, wrote sacred and secular songs, anthems and cantatas, and published over forty song collections for Sunday Schools and mission meetings. He left a fortune in trust which has been used for many philanthropic causes.
(See also GDM)
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He was organist of Dursley Tabernacle (Congregational) 1936-40, while a pupil at Dursley Grammar School; then, after graduating in music at the University of Wales, he taught music at Stanley grammar School, Durham 1944-47. He was County Music Organizer for Durham 1947-51; and then had a variety of posts in music education before becoming Director of Music Studies, and latterly Deputy Principal, at Dartington College of Arts 1967-87. In `retirement' he researched, at Oxford, into 17th-century Quaker theology.
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(See also DNB; OCEL; Julian pp.305-6)
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He was a pupil of J.S.Bach at the Thomasschule, Leipzig; he was Cantor of the Cathedral and three other churches in Freiburg 1744-56; and himself became director of the Thomasschule 1756-89.
He had a high reputation among his contemporaries as a teacher; but his compositions were in a lighter, more operatic style than Bach's and it was felt that he allowed the standard set by his master to slide.
His name is pronounced `Doh-less'.
(See also GDM; OCM)
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At the age of 15 he went to sea; but his seafaring career was cut short in 1794 when, during a gun salute to celebrate Lord Howe's victory over the French fleet, an accident cost him his eyesight and his right arm. He then studied music and became a teacher of singing. From 1800 until 1860 he gave an annual concert in Greenock.
He published a small volume of poems in 1854, and wrote about one hundred hymn tunes.
(See also DNB)
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(See also Julian pp.1629b-1630a)
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(See also DNB; Julian p.311)
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[ He was a `mixed' twin; son of a barrister ]
(See also Julian p.1630b)
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Little is known of him except that he was organist of the London churches of St Mary-at-Hill 1730-62, and St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange (demolished 1841) 1732-62. On his appointment to St Bartholomew's he was said to be a native of the parish; but his name is not in the baptismal register.
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Dunkerley, W.A. (see `John Oxenham')
[ We have not positively identified him; but he could well have been . . . (guess what) ]
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Dykes Bower, J. (see Bower, John Dykes)
His father was a banker and a noted amateur musician. At the age of ten young J.B. began playing the organ at St John's Church, Hull, where his grandfather was vicar; and his first hymn tunes were written for the Sunday School there. At Cambridge he became known as a solo singer, and he helped to found the University Music Society. After a year's curacy at Malton, North Yorkshite, he became a minor canon and precentor of Durham Cathedral 1849-62; from 1853 he was also librarian, master of the boys and deputy organist.
He was vicar of St Oswald's, Durham, 1862-75; but the strain of his parish work and of a long dispute with his `low-church' bishop over ritual caused a breakdown of health, and he moved to St Leonards, Sussex. After his death the bishop with whom he had been in dispute instituted a fund which raised £10,000 for Dykes's widow and children.
Dykes composed some anthems and other church music; but he is remembered now for his hymn tunes, some 300 in all, of which a remarkably high proportion survive.
(See also DNB; GDM; OCM)
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The son of a blacksmith, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, 1900-04; and then the Mendelssohn travelling scholarship, enabling him to study in Italy, Austria and Germany. From 1908 he had a career as a public-school music master (Osborne, Marlborough, Rugby, Wellington, Winchester), and was Director of the Royal College of Music 1937-52. He was knighted in 1941 and created KCVO in 1953.
His compositions embrace many forms, including large-scale choral works (e.g. `The Canterbury Pilgrims', 1930) and much church music; his books include The New Music 1930, The Progress of Music 1932, and the auto-biographical Fiddling While Rome Burns 1954.
(See also DNB; GDM; OCM)
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End of Biographies D. Return to Top . . .
(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 20/12/03)