page_title: George Grove
section_title: Music and biblical scholarship
hierarchical_section_title: George Grove / Biography / Music and biblical scholarship
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped version of File:August-manns-1898.jpg, reproduced in The Musical Times, March 1898, p. 154
context_page_description: Sir George Grove CB was an English engineer and writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
  Grove was trained as a civil engineer, and successful in that profession, but his love of music drew him into musical administration. When responsible for the regular orchestral concerts at the Crystal Palace, he wrote a series of programme notes from which eventually grew his musical dictionary. His interest in the music of Franz Schubert, which was neglected in England at that point in the nineteenth century, led him and his friend Arthur Sullivan to go to Vienna in search of undiscovered Schubert manuscripts. Their researches led to their discovery of the lost score of Schubert's Rosamunde music, several of his symphonies and other music in 1867, leading to a revival of interest in Schubert's work.
  Grove was the first director of the Royal College of Music, from its foundation in 1883 until his retirement in 1894. He recruited leading musicians including Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford as members of the College faculty and established a close working relationship with London's older conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music.
context_section_description: While working on the Britannia Bridge Grove came into contact with Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sir Charles Barry and other eminent visitors to the works. "These distinguished men", Grove later recalled, "noticed me and were as good as gold to me. They counselled me to go to London and forced me into the secretaryship of the Society of Arts, then vacant by the retirement of Mr. Scott Russell." This was in 1849, when the Great Exhibition of 1851 was in preparation. Grove was the society's secretary for the duration of the exhibition. On 23 December 1851, he married Harriet Bradley, the sister of his old school friend George Bradley. After the Great Exhibition closed in 1852, its principal building, known as "the Crystal Palace", was dismantled and rebuilt in the south London suburb of Sydenham as a centre for education, the arts and leisure. Grove was appointed secretary of the Crystal Palace. He engaged a wind band and a conductor, Heinrich Schallehn. The latter was found to be unsatisfactory, and was replaced by August Manns, who, with Grove's encouragement, developed the band into a full-sized symphony orchestra. With programmes chosen by Grove and Manns, the Crystal Palace concerts became a central feature of London's musical scene and remained so until the end of the century. Grove wrote the programme notes for the concerts. In 1901, a biographer wrote:
  The daily and weekly orchestral performances at Sydenham prompted those admirable analytical notices of musical compositions with which the name of George Grove was so long and is so favourably associated. He had always shown a great fondness for music, but had never received any technical training in the art. Entirely self-taught, his knowledge was acquired solely by 'picking up' information. "I wish it to be distinctly understood," he said, "that I have always been a mere amateur in music. I wrote about the symphonies and concertos because I wished to try to make them clear to myself and to discover the secret of the things that charmed me so; and from that sprang a wish to make other amateurs see it in the same way."
  Grove's musical analyses avoided all hint of technical jargon and tried to make clear to everyone who read them what, in Grove's opinion, listeners should be aware of in each piece. In a note on Mozart's Symphony No. 39, after referring to Mozart's extraordinary productivity in the year 1788, Grove wrote:
  The circumstances which necessitated such fearful exertion on this and many other occasions in Mozart's life we have no means of ascertaining. Whatever they were, they were in accordance with a common custom of Nature. She seems to delight in condemning her most gifted sons to an ordeal the very reverse of that which we should anticipate. It seems equally true in Art and in Morals, that it is not by indulgence and favour, but by difficulty and trouble, that the spirit is formed; and in all ages of the world our Davids, Shakspeares, Dantes, Mozarts, and Beethovens must submit to processes which none but their great spirits could survive – to a fiery trial of poverty, ill health, neglect, and misunderstanding – and be "tried as silver is tried," that they may become the teachers of their fellow-men to all time, and shine, like stars in the firmament, for ever and ever.
  Grove's Crystal Palace programme notes did not concentrate solely on his favourite Austro-German composers. He embraced a representative selection of composers, notably the Frenchmen Berlioz, Bizet, Delibes, Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns, and the rising generations of British composers – Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, Hamish MacCunn, Edward German and Granville Bantock.
  Among the composers whom Grove sought to popularise was Schubert, whose music was largely neglected in England. Grove and Manns presented the first performance in England of the Great C major Symphony. Together with his friend Arthur Sullivan, Grove went to Vienna in 1867 in search of Schubert manuscripts. They found several of Schubert's symphonies and much other music, some of
caption: August Manns, Grove's musical director
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