Born in London on 14 August 1810, Samuel Sebastian was the son of the celebrated organist and composer Samuel Wesley, grandson of Charles Wesley the hymn writer and great nephew of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church. (His middle name was given as a sign of his father's lifelong admiration for the music of Bach.) Despite the stigma attached to being illegitimate – a very considerable burden at the turn of the nineteenth century – Samuel Sebastian Wesley was to become the most important English church composer between Purcell and Stanford.
His father Samuel frequently found himself in debt, burdened by substantial maintenance payments, with an ever-growing family and an inability to live within his means. In 1817 he jumped from a first floor window to escape imagined creditors and for his own safety was placed in a private asylum for close on twelve months. It was then that his seven year old son’s formal musical education began with his acceptance as a Child (chorister) of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, by the Master of the Children, William Hawes.
Although beginning to make a name for himself in London at the time, Samuel Sebastian accepted an appointment as organist at Hereford Cathedral in 1832. During his career he held appointments at Leeds Parish Church (now Leeds Minster), Winchester Cathedral, Winchester College and Gloucester Cathedral. In 1839 he received both his Bachelor of Music degree and a Doctor of Music degree from Oxford, becoming Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music in 1850. He died at his home in Gloucester on 19 April 1876 aged 65 and is buried next to his daughter in St. Bartholomew's Cemetery in Exeter by the old City Wall. There is a wonderfully full and interesting biography of his life here on The Church Music Society.
Music
Famous in his lifetime as one of his country's leading organists and choirmasters, he composed almost exclusively for the Church of England, which continues to cherish his memory. Wesley himself considered that his best work was the 1853 collection of Anthems and all of these pieces would become cornerstones of the Anglican Church repertoire. Wesley produced 38 anthems in all, and almost 20 works for the organ. He composed service music in both Latin and English, secular songs, a tiny bit of orchestral music, and a handful of works for the piano. Certainly the originality of Wesley’s work stands out, but rather than blaze a trail he tempered his originality with conservatism as he represented the summit of old traditions of composition, musical technique and organ composition. One notable feature of his career is his aversion to equal temperament, an aversion which he kept for decades after this tuning method had been accepted on the Continent and even in most of England. Despite this he made substantial use of chromaticism in several of his published compositions which would have sounded quite different from a performance on a modern organ. SS Wesley, with Father Willis, can be credited with the invention of the concave and radiating organ pedalboard, this joint idea was adopted as an international standard for organs.
His better-known anthems include "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace" and "Wash me throughly". He also wrote several rather late examples of verse anthems, which contrast unison and contrapuntal sections with smaller passages for solo voice or voices. Blessed be the God and Father is an example of this and a favourite here.
Blessed be the God and Father
Wesley composed this piece to be sung at Easter Sunday 1834 in Hereford Cathedral where only a small number of trebles and a solitary bass was available to sing. Rumour persists that the only bass present was in fact the Dean's butler! It sets the verses from I Peter i. 3-5, 15-17, 22-25 in the Bible to music and reminds us of Jesus' final commandment to his disciples at The Last Supper to love one another. I have extremely fond memories of my youngest son singing the treble solo in this wonderful verse anthem three years ago.
