Hubert Parry

He is the famous composer of Jerusalem and I was glad… but what to call him?!

If we consult the usual oracle on this topic (the New Groves, 1980 edition), he is listed as Parry, Sir (Charles) Hubert (Hastings). Brackets around a name usually mean they're optional: so the suggestion is, he should be catalogued as vanilla “Hubert Parry”. My 1940 copy of the old Groves lists him as PARRY, Sir Charles Hubert Hastings, with no indication of optionality for any of the names… but then goes on to list him as plain 'Hubert Parry' in the opening of its second paragraph and includes a photo of him captioned 'Hubert Parry'. The Encyclopedia Britannica lists him as Sir Hubert Hastings Parry, Baronet, which dispenses with the optional Charles but retains the allegedly equally-optional Hastings. The 2001 listing for him under the updated New Groves (and Groves Online) catalogues him as Parry, Sir (Charles) Hubert, making the optionality of the Charles obvious but not even mentioning the Hastings! Clearly, this gets complicated really fast!

If we look for clarification at the front page of any of his published scores, you will get mixed results, too. Printed front matter almost invariably lists him as C. Hubert H. Parry, which means the 'optional' names were certainly truncated into mere initialisms, but they're still used nonetheless. Indeed, on the front page of the manuscript of the anthem 'Hear my words ye people', we see this:

…which tells us he was quite comfortable signing things with all four of his names in mind, even if he truncated most of them into mere initials. To counter that, however, there is the not-so-small matter of how he's buried. His grave is in St. Paul's Cathedral, London as it turns out… and, despite being casually bestrewn with chairs, is as follows:

The grave marker was arranged and organised by the likes of Charles Villiers Stanford, a long-time colleague, and his daughter Gwendoline Maud Greene. The same people were also involved in the dedication of a memorial to Parry that stands in Gloucester Cathedral which reads plain Hubert Parry - Musician. I think Stanford and Gwendoline probably would have known how best to call the man!

In short: He may well have himself signed with initials for all his names, but that doesn't mean he used all of them in regular speech (my signature similarly always includes an initial for my middle name, but no-one ever uses that name around me and I never use it myself!). Meanwhile, almost every authority is comfortable dispensing with the 'Hastings' name and many are apparently equally comfortable with dropping the 'Charles', too: including those who knew him best and arranged his burial. Summing all that up, therefore, I'm therefore cataloguing him on this website and in my music collection as plain Hubert Parry, likewise.

Now, with all that out of the way, what is to be said about the man and his music? Well, he was born in 1848 in Bournemouth on the English south coast, into a wealthy and landed family. Music was encouraged in the family, but only as an amusement, never to be taken seriously or regarded as a professional suitable for a gentleman. At school, aged 8 onwards, he was given lessons in piano and basic harmony. He progressed to Eton, and took extra lessons from the organist of the nearby St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He then went to Oxford University, reading Law and Modern History, following which he joined Lloyds insurance firm as an underwriter: a 'proper' profession for the youngest son of a gentleman. He lasted seven years, but eventually took a post with George Grove editing the eponymous Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eventually contributing over 120 articles to it. In 1883, Grove appointed his former assistant as the Royal College of Music's first professor of composition and musical history. It was around this time that his own first, major works began to be published and performed: a piano concerto appeared in 1880, for example; his famous ode Blest Pair of Sirens in 1887. The late 1880s saw many commissions and the declaration by some of an 'English musical renaissance', in which Parry was deemed to be a leading light, along with the likes of Charles Villiers Stanford. His composing career took something of a backward step, however, as he was appointed director of the Royal College of Music in 1895 (a post he retained until his death in 1918): his academic and administrative duties there left little time for composing. As head of the Royal College of Music, Parry numbered among his leading pupils Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and John Ireland: these would, of course, in time teach the likes of Benjamin Britten. The thread weaving them all together is thus unbroken …and always ends up with Parry.

He was knighted in 1898 and appointed baronet in 1902. He resigned his role as professor of music at Oxford University in 1908: his last decade was thus spent with a little more time for composition, resulting in a fifth symphony, the Songs of Farewell and the setting of Jerusalem for which he is today probably most famous. He was eventually to succumb to the Spanish Flu pandemic in October 1918.

As regards to his music, it is conventional to dismiss it as somewhat unimaginative, terribly conservative, reeking of the Anglican oratorio tradition and not terribly well orchestrated at that. Factually, however, little of that is true: he was a Darwinist, a liberal humanist, a religious sceptic and a supporter of women's suffrage. He even expressed sympathy for pacifists at the outbreak of World War 1. With no British predecessors to use as models, he took his musical inspiration from German musical giants like Brahms and Schumann. His first major work, Scenes from Prometheus Unbound, was considered extremely avant garde at is premier. Whilst venerating the the music of Bach, he nevertheless also assimilated as much as he wanted of Schumann, Brahms and Wagner's music, while at the same time acknowledging the English cathedral influences of Stainer and SS Wesley. The result is usually a set of sweeping melodies with a robust diatonic harmony, yet spiced with the use of the dissonant language of suspensions and appoggiaturas. Putting that more simply: he perhaps sounds conventional to our ears today, but his music is soundly constructed and always attractive to listen to.