# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Davison, James

​DAVISON, James William, was born in London, Oct. 5, 1813. He was educated with a view to the Bar, but forsook that career for music, and studied the pianoforte with W. H Holmes, and composition with G. A. Macfarren. His early friends were W. S. Bennett, H. Smart, G. A. Macfarren, T. M. Mudie, E. T. Loder, and other musicians. He composed a great deal for orchestra, piano, and the voice, and will be remembered by some elegant and thoughtful settings of poetry by Keats, Shelley, and others. He made the acquaintance of Mendelssohn during one of his early visits to England, and deepened it in 1836, when, in company with Sterndale Bennett, he attended the production of 'St. Paul' at Düsseldorf. He gradually forsook composition for criticism. In 1842 he started the 'Musical Examiner,' a weekly magazine which lasted two years; and in 1844 succeeded Mr. G. A. Macfarren, sen., as editor of the 'Musical World,' which continued in his hands down to his death. Mr. Davison contributed to the 'Saturday Review' for ten years, and for long to the 'Pall Mall Gazette' and 'Graphic.' But it was as musical critic of the 'Times' that his influence on music was most widely exercised. He joined the staff of that paper in 1846, and his h'rst articles were those on the production of 'Elijah' at the Birmingham Festival of that year. But Mr. Davison's activity in the cause of good music was not confined to newspaper columns. He induced Jullien in 1844 to give classical pieces in his Promenade Concerts. The Monday Popular Concerts, in their present form (see vol. ii. p. 352), were his suggestion; and the important analyses contained in the programme-books were written by him down to his death. So were those for Charles Hallé's recitals, and it is unnecessary to call attention to the vast range of works which these covered. All these efforts were in support of the best and most classical taste; so was his connexion with Miss Arabella Goddard, whose studies he directed from 1850, and who under his advice first made the English public acquainted with Beethoven's Sonatas, ops. 101 to 111 (excepting op. 106, which had been played by Billet), and many another masterpiece. He married Miss Goddard in the spring of 1859, and they had two sons, Henry and Charles.
Mr. Davison's position naturally brought him into contact with all musicians visiting England, and he was more or less intimate with Mendelssohn, Rossini, Auber, Spohr, Meyerbeer, Halévy, Hiller, Berlioz, Ernst, Joachim, Piatti, L. de Meyer, etc., etc., as well as with Jules Janin, Théophile Gautier, and other prominent members of the French press. Among his friends, too, he was proud to number Dickens, Thackeray, Shirley Brooks, and other English literary men.
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* ↑ His mother, née Duncan, was an eminent actress, and was chosen by Byron to deliver his monody on Sheridan at Drury Lane theatre.
* ↑ The overture to the Naiads was sketched in going up the Rhine after the performance.
* ↑ This was humorously embodied in an epigram by his friend Charles Kenny:—  'There was a J. W. D.  Who thought a composer to be:  But his muse wouldn't budge.  So he set up as judge  Over better composers than he.'