Anthems for Doomed Youth

Thomas Wyse advocated musical education. Writing in 1836, Wyse bemoaned the fact that middle class boys were given no musical education whatsoever. Music as a subject, was deemed to be effeminate.

Yet working class boys may well have got a musical education. It seems some church singers were descended from earlier church singers, and sometimes inherited their music and instruments, and got an education in reading music, because they got it at home. Our own John Fisher, Stillingfleet survivor, was the great grandson of the 1740's and 50s, Stillingfleet parish clerk, Thomas Fisher. At this date, it is thought parish clerks often were responsible for teaching music to the singers - unless the parish bought in expertise from itinerant musicians. Clerks would lead the responses, during services, and almost definitely would have to be musically capable, by the 1750s. It's more than likely whatever instrument John played, was a cherished possession, possibly handed down from the time of his great grandfather. It's interesting that in the parish records, Christopher Spencer and John Fisher have remarkably neat hands, and George Eccles and John's cogency at the inquest strongly suggest they were intellectually capable of learning, say music notation. Many rural church singers would have been capable and dedicated musicians. Ironically, music was one field in which the male working classes may have had the chance to be better educated than the middle and upper. (Music had always been seen as a desirable 'accomplishment' for young ladies).

Even so, many contemporary writers complained about off key and out of time and tune singers - often, not always, in urban parishes. Wyse wrote:

" .... It is urged, that... the people roar and scream, because they have heard nothing but roaring and screaming from their childhood. Is harmony not to be taught?...."

[Quoted by Bernarr Rainbow, In 'The Rise of Popular Music Education in Nineteenth-Century England', p 17ff, from 'The Lost Chord, Essays on Victorian Music', edited by Professor Nicholas Temperley, Indiana University Press, 1980].

Sometimes it wasn't just the music that onlookers found laughable. Charlotte Bronte, whose father Patrick was a keen advocate of the church organ as opposed to the church band, wrote to her father from Filey,Yorkshire, in 1852:

"... On Sunday afternoon I went to a church... It was certainly not more than thrice the length and breadth of our passage - floored with brick - the walls green with mould - the pews painted white but with the paint almost worn off... at one end there is a little gallery for the singers - and when these personages stood up to perform - they all turned their backs upon the congregation - and the congregation turned their backs on the pulpit and parson - The... effect of this manoeuvre was so ludicrous - I could hardly help laughing...."

[Quoted in 'The Brontes', Juliet Barker, Phoenix, London, 1994].

By the 1830s, churches were stripping out the West Gallerys, and investing in organs. Less wealthy parishes made do with barrel organs. The Singers were becoming the sign of a more remote parish, and starting to look archaic. The age of the organ, mock medieval music, and young male choristers in surplices, was coming!

In 'The Music of the English Parish Church', Cambridge, 1979, Professor Nicholas Temperley said:

"... A writer in 1832 said that 'with a few solitary exceptions on very extraordinary occasions, an anthem in a parochial church is perfectly obsolete'...though he might not have made such a remark if he had visited some remote country churches..."

Professor Temperley's statement is substantiated by the little we know of the Escrick Singers, who performed at the funeral. Our Singers' funeral was one such 'extraordinary occasion'. We can glean some very specific details about the music from one newspaper account. The very last part of the service, the singers' last moments above ground, were accompanied by the sound of other church singers:

"...The Escrick choir, who had taken their station in the gallery, sang an anthem from Revelations 14c. 13v. “I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me, write, blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord, from henceforth: Yea, sayeth the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours.” The performer of this anthem was far above mediocrity, - and the voices of the singers attuned well with the instrumental music. After the anthem, the bodies were removed from the church in their last sad home..."

[York Gazette, January 4th, 1834].

Scanning the January 1834 papers, for any further reference to the tragedy, we found this piece which describes a choral festival elsewhere in Yorkshire, where the choristers (note they are 'choristers' not 'singers') remembered our victims:

"CHORAL FESTIVAL: - On Tuesday last, the Choristers of Catton church held their annual festival at the house of Mr William Sherwood of Kexby Bridge... Supper was served at 7 o'clock, and thru the liberality of Paul Beilby-Thompson Esquire, M.P., was abundantly supplied with [ ]... After the cloth was drawn, the healths of Paul Bielby Thompson and the Hon. Mrs. Thompson, were drank with respectful enthusiasm... the evening was enlivened by the excellent singing of the choristers, and the performance of an instrumental band. The memory of the late lamentable accident in the river, occasionally spread a hue of sadness, over the otherwise cheerful scene, and the Dead March was played by the band, as a token of respect to the unfortunate sufferers..."

[The York Courant, January 4th, 1834].

[Photo: Stillingfleet church in the snow, January 2008. This picture was taken 175 years to the week, after the accident].