Henry Fothergill Chorley
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Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808 – 16 February 1872) was an English literary, art and music critic and editor. He was also an author of novels, drama, poetry and lyrics. He is best remembered today for his lyrics to "The Long Day Closes," a part song set by Arthur Sullivan in 1868.
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[edit] Life and career
Chorley was a member of an old Lancashire family. He began working in a merchant's office but soon took to musical journalism. He began to write for the Athenaeum in 1830 and remained its music critic for more than a generation. He also became music critic for The Times. In these positions, he had much influence. He had strongly conservative views and was a persistent opponent of innovation, but was a lively chronicler of London life.[1]
In addition to musical criticism, Chorley wrote voluminously on literature and art. He also wrote novels, drama and verse, and various librettos, including The Amber Witch for composer William Vincent Wallace, The May Queen - A Pastoral (1858) for William Sterndale Bennett, and two for his friend Arthur Sullivan: The Sapphire Necklace and The Masque at Kenilworth. He published an English version of Meyerbeer's Dinorah, and wrote the words for several well-known songs, including Gounod's Nazareth, Henry Russell's The Brave Old Oak, Edward J Loder's The Three Ages, the English form of the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, Sullivan's The Long Day Closes, and the hymn God, the Omnipotent!.
Chorley wrote the English libretto for Gounod's Faust, for its first presentation in London in 1863 (at Her Majesty's Theatre). During rehearsals, it was found that the lines were unsingable. Both Sims Reeves and Charles Santley made strenuous and persistent complaints to Messrs. Chappell's, and new translations were made secretly, since no-one dared to tell Chorley. The first he knew of it was at the first performance. Chorley, as reviewer, waited to make his comment until the final announced performance, of which he wrote that it was "seriously imperilled by a singular translation". Unfortunately for him, the final performance in question had not taken place, so the Musical World was able to compliment him on his poetic imagination.[2]
Chorley also published several books, including Memorials of Mrs. Hemans (1836), Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841), Modern German Music (1854), Handel Studies (1859), Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862) and The National Music of the World (1882).
Chorley died in London in 1872, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Chorley, Henry Fothergill, Autobiography, Memoir and Letters, edited by H. G. Hewlett (1873).
- Chorley, Henry Fothergill, Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (Hurst and Blackett, 1862). Available online here
- Bledsoe, Robert Terrell, Henry Fothergill Chorley: Victorian Journalist. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. ISBN 978-1-84014-257-0
- Bledsoe, Robert Terrell, "Henry Fothergill Chorley and the Receptions of Verdi's Early Operas in England" Victorian Studies; Summer 85, Vol. 28 Issue 4, p. 631
[edit] External links
- Portrait of Chorley in the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Works by or about Henry Fothergill Chorley in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- A literary review piece by Chorley
- Old Love and New Fortune, a play by Chorley
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
