The Sun.
London, England, 1835-05-08 00:00:00

FESTIVAL of the SONS of the CLERGY

The Anniversary Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, which
takes plape under the auspices of the highest authorities in
Church and State, was celebrated yesterday morning at St.
Paul's Cathedral. The sermon was preached by the Dean of
Norwich. The orchestra, consisting of the Members of the
Royal Society of Musicians and Gentlemen of his Majesty's
Chapels Royal, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey,
performed the various compositions alluded to in our notice of
Tuesday's rehearsal. Boyce's anthem " Lord I thou hast
been our refuge," is the most beautiful of his compositions,
and next to Purcel he was the greatest Cathedral writer of
this country. We had deceived ourselves in the expectation
of hearing from Sir George Smart, who conducted on this oc-
casion, and is one of the organists of his Majesty's Chapels
Royal, one of those pieces of florid and learned counterpoint,
of which the German school of organ writers is so prolific ;
and we more especially looked for this great gratification as we
saw Mr. Attwood in the body of the Church. St. Paul's Ca-
thedral is eminently suited to display and enhance the charac-
teristic beauties of the organ, _

Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on, as loth to die ;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality."
The voluntary after the service consisted of Sebastian Bach's
pedal fugue in D minor (No. 9), performed by the son of the
deputy Organist. The composition was played too slowly.
Dr. Forkel observes that Bach, " in the execution of his own
pieces, generally took the time very brisk ;" and indeed by
deviating from this example, many of his harmonies have an
appearance of harshness which do not belong to them, and the
exquisite and brilliant melody of the sequence is destroyed.
To show the difference between our Chapel Royal organists
and their Continental brethren, we extract from an amus-
ing little volume (ascribed to Dr. Crotch) an account of
John Schneider, the leviathan of organists in Germany
" In one of the morning feasts of Sebastian Bach, in which
though privately concerted with M. Schneider we never failed
of participators, that inimitable artist indulged us with some of
those organ fugues which I had not before heard. Let me in-
stance those in C and F sharp minor, and in A flat major, of
all of which the bass parts were entirely executed by the pe-
dals. Had I not been an eye-witness of the rolling passages
that were thus given by the feet with the greatest smoothness
and certainty, I should still have been sceptical as to its possi-
bility." And again the writer says—" One morning on which
we visited the church, happening to be rather sultry before be-
ginning to play, he whipped off his coat, saying to his company,
" Verzeihen sie, mean Herrn" (your pardon, gentlemen), and
in that pleasant state of unformality plunged into the thick of
the Kyries of Sebastian Bach, playing the whole of six andseven
parts with such a towering skill in the pedals as to make one
think the old author returned from his grave." We have only
to observe with regret that there is nothing of this kind to be
heard in our Chapel Royals at present : probably organ play-
ing is less studied by his Majesty's servants than any other
branch of the fine arts.

We regret to have to announce the death of Mrs.
Blaxland, eldest daughter of the Hon. James Dowling, Judge
of the Supreme Court, Sydney, New South Wales. Mrs.
Blaxland died at the early age of nineteen, on the 15th De-
cember last, having been married only eight months to a gen-
tleman of the highest respectability in the colony. The blow
is rendered doubly severe to the Learned Judge, her father,
from the circumstance of his wife having died only in the month
of August preceding.

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