1840–1901 · United Kingdom · Romantic
John Stainer (1840–1901) was an English organist and composer who served for many years at St Paul's Cathedral in London. He wrote mostly church music, and his best-known work is the oratorio The Crucifixion. He was also a professor of music at Oxford. The site has his choral piece Love Divine.
Stainer came into the world on 6 June 1840, in Southwark, London. Music lessons began when he was seven. His father, an untaught musician, played the piano, violin and flute, and had put together a little chamber organ in the family home; the boy would accompany him on it while the elder Stainer played church hymns on his fiddle. By the age of seven John was able to play a fugue in E major by Bach.
In 1849 he joined the boys' choir of St Paul's Cathedral. He was already skilled at keyboard instruments, had perfect pitch and a lovely treble voice, and before long was singing the main solos. In 1854 he was asked to take part in the earliest English performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, which William Sterndale Bennett conducted.
Choristers at the cathedral were schooled as well as trained to sing: Latin, arithmetic and writing filled the hours between services. For organ lessons Stainer went to George Cooper, who assisted the cathedral organist. A six-month engagement as organist of St Benet's, Paul's Wharf, came his way in 1855; it went well and was extended several times. Being under age, Stainer had his annual pay of thirty pounds handed to his father.
Sir Frederick Ouseley picked Stainer, then sixteen, to be organist of St Michael's College in Tenbury, a brand-new foundation. Ouseley, a professor of music at Oxford, intended the college and its church to serve as a pattern for Anglican church music. Stainer had little age on the choristers yet directed them, and he taught the boys piano for two hours each day.
Ouseley, a keen student of music history, owned a big library and took Stainer under his wing. With his help Stainer turned into the youngest candidate ever to succeed in the Oxford Bachelor of Music degree. His exercise was a cantata, Praise the Lord, O my soul, setting words from Psalm 103. A number of anthems date from this period too, I saw the Lord proving the best of them.
Magdalen College, Oxford, took Stainer on as organist in 1860, at first on a six-month basis and paid one hundred and twenty pounds a year. He did well enough for the arrangement to become permanent. Study for a degree was allowed provided his duties did not suffer. His BA came in 1864, and the MA followed after two more years.
Stainer was a conscientious choirmaster who brought in fresh anthems and service music and raised the choir beyond anything it had achieved. Lay clerks had never bothered with rehearsals, yet his persuasive personality brought them along. The university's vice chancellor appointed him in 1861 to be University Organist at the church of St Mary the Virgin, which meant playing for a service each Sunday.
Two groups were under Stainer's direction: the Magdalen Madrigal Society and the Magdalen Vagabonds, who toured towns in the vacations to raise money for restoring churches. Novello issued some madrigals of his own. His doctoral exercise was the oratorio Gideon, first heard in November 1865, and it earned him the degree. Afterwards he examined for Oxford music degrees, and in that role came to know Hubert Parry.
History of music and folk songs appealed to him, and carols were enjoying a revival. He turned up forgotten carols, gave fresh settings to some, and brought in modern pieces. His book Christmas Carols New and Old sold well, and a year later a second edition included a contribution from Arthur Sullivan. Stainer's hymn tunes survive in Anglican hymnals, Love divine, all loves excelling being a wedding favourite. In 1871 appeared his first theoretical book, A Theory of Harmony Founded on the Tempered Scale.
Stainer became chief organist of St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1872 and stayed until 1888. Henry Willis was rebuilding the organ to a plan drawn up by Stainer. He turned to the choir as well: vicars choral held their posts for life and felt no need to rehearse, which left the repertoire static. Stainer won them round, brought in new anthems and liturgies, saw a choir school built, and the choir grew from twelve boys to thirty-five.
More and more roles came his way. Among the founders of the Royal Musical Association in 1874, he began teaching at the newly opened National Training School of Music in 1876. In 1877 the Royal Academy of Music made him an honorary fellow, and he started examining for doctorates in music at the universities of Cambridge and London. He sat on a jury at the Paris exhibition in 1878, was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1879, and judged at the Welsh Eisteddfod in Caernarvon in 1880.
Stainer was offered the inspector's job in 1882 for music teaching in schools and colleges, and he held it for six years. His assistant, William Gray McNaught, travelled with him around the country to visit schools and colleges and to test candidates. Stainer favoured teaching through notation and tonic sol-fa over the previous method of learning by ear. All this activity cut into his composing time. Still, the oratorio Mary Magdalen was finished in 1883, and The Crucifixion, his best-remembered work, in 1887.
Durham University gave Stainer an honorary degree in 1885. His research into early music was ground-breaking: he studied the Netherlandish Renaissance composers Guillaume Du Fay and Gilles Binchois, hardly known then even to specialists. For Novello's series of musical primers he wrote a short treatise, Harmony, plus one more, Composition, and for young organists he wrote The Organ, which still finds readers. Contributions to a dictionary of musical terms were also his.
Poor health and weak eyesight led Stainer to retire in 1888, the same year Queen Victoria made him a knight. Back in Oxford, he was made a professor of music in the university in 1889, once Ouseley had died.
Each year, he and his wife travelled to the Riviera, Florence or Mentone for rest. During one such trip, to Verona, he felt unwell on Palm Sunday, 31 March 1901, and died of a heart attack that afternoon. His body went back to England. A funeral service took place on 6 April at St Cross Church, Oxford, and he lies in Holywell Cemetery next door.
Church music in many genres makes up most of what Stainer left behind. Its best-known item is the oratorio The Crucifixion (1887), still performed in some Anglican churches in the days before Easter. Two hymn tunes, Cross of Jesus and All for Jesus, are drawn from it. Further works include the Sevenfold Amen and numerous hymn tunes, Love Divine among them. At the coronation of Edward VII in 1902, his settings of the Gloria and Sanctus were sung.
His anthems include Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion and We sing the glorious conquest. He also wrote full services in E-flat, B-flat and D. Among his hymn tunes is Sebaste, dated 1875 and set to the words of Hail Gladdening Light, and St Paul's, set to Lord Jesus, think on me.
Christmas music owes Stainer a good deal. His book Christmas Carols New and Old marked an important stage in reviving the carol. Its arrangements by Stainer became the usual versions of the carols What Child Is This and Good King Wenceslas, among others. The Village Organist (1893) appeared under his editorship.
His larger vocal works also include oratorios. He composed Gideon as his test piece for the doctorate; it was performed in 1865, and completed Mary Magdalen in 1883. Among his early pieces are the cantata Praise the Lord, O my soul and the anthem I saw the Lord, which is bolder and more original in idiom than the cantata.
Scholarship made him better known still. He wrote on the organ and on music theory, contributed articles to a dictionary of musical terms, and produced several studies of medieval and Renaissance music across the continent that were basic reading in his day. These include A Theory of Harmony (1871) and The Music of the Bible, which also traces how modern instruments developed. For players and singers: the site has Stainer's choral piece Love Divine, marked medium-plus.