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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
A good deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the relationships between Methodists and Catholics in England in the eighteenth century and, in particular, to John Wesley’s own dealings with Catholics and Catholicism. This article examines a link with Catholicism at the very heart of Methodism’s first family: the involvement of Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), the younger of the two musician sons of Charles Wesley, and the nephew of John. As will be seen below, Wesley converted in 1784, marking the occasion by composing an elaborate setting of the Ordinary of the Mass (the Missa de Spiritu Sancto) which he sent to Pope Pius VI. This article discusses the background to the composition of the Mass, its musical content, and the subsequent history of its autograph score. It is prompted by the publication of a performing edition of the work and by a subsequent performance (almost certainly the world première) in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 10 September 1997, which was recorded and later broadcast on both Irish and British radio.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article which first appeared under the title ‘Spirit Voices’ in Musical Times 138 (September 1997), pp. 4–10, to mark the publication of the performing edition of the Mass and its world première in Dublin. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Editor of the Musical Times for permission to reprint material previously published there.
1 Butler, David, Methodists and Papists: John Wesley and the Catholic Church in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1995)Google Scholar; see also Todd, John Murray, John Wesley and the Catholic Church (London, 1958)Google Scholar. For a bibliography of articles and books on relations between Methodism and Catholicism, see Davies, Rupert, Raymond George, A., and Rupp, Gordon, (eds.), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, 4 vols. (London, 1988), vol. 4, pp. 706–7.Google Scholar
2 Lightwood, James T., Samuel Wesley, Musician (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Marsh, John, The Latin Church Music of Samuel Wesley (Ph.D diss, University of York, 1975)Google Scholar.
3 Samuel Wesley, Missa de Spiritu Sancto, ed. Francis Routh (London, 1997).
4 By the National Chamber Choir of Ireland and the RTE Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Kraemer, with Mary Nelson and Rachel Fisher (sopranos), Thérèse Feighan (mezzo-soprano), Andrew Carwood (tenor), and Philip O’Reilly (bass).
5 Charles Wesley to Sarah Gwynne Wesley, September 5–7 1778, quoted in Butler, , Methodists and Papists, p. 185.Google Scholar
6 Norman, Edward: Roman Catholicism in England: From the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council (Oxford, 1985), p. 50.Google Scholar
7 Samuel Webbe II’s date of birth is usually given as c. 1770, but in his application for membership of the Royal Society of Musicians he states that he was born on 15 October 1768.
8 British Library, Add. MS 31222, which also contains some secular vocal compositions from the same period.
9 ASV CD GAU 157.
10 Modern edition by Geoffrey Webber, Oxford, The Church Music Society, 1998.
11 de Castro, J. R, The Gordon Riots (London, 1926)Google Scholar; Hibbert, Christopher, King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (London, 1958)Google Scholar. For Charles Wesley’s own account of the riots, see his letters of the period, quoted in Jackson, Thomas, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. (London, 1841), pp. 320–1.Google Scholar
12 Jackson, , The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, pp. 359–68 Google Scholar; Marsh, , The Latin Church Music of Samuel Wesley, pp. 12–31 Google Scholar; see also my ‘The Wesleys at Home: Charles Wesley and his Children’, Methodist History 36 (1998), pp. 139–52.
13 Lightwood, , Samuel Wesley, Musician, pp. 76 and 84 Google Scholar. Lightwood is mistaken about the place of the Wesley marriage: it was at Hammersmith, not at Ridge, Hertfordshire, as he states.
14 See my ‘Family History Sources for British Music Research’, in Burden, Michael and Cholij, Irena (eds.), A Handbook for Studies in 18th-century English Music III, (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 1–36 Google Scholar, particularly p. 20.
15 Quoted in his obituary in The Times, 12 October 1837.
16 Letters of Samuel Wesley to Mr. Jacobs relating to the Introduction into this Country of the Works of John Sebastian Bach, ed. Eliza Wesley (London, 1875); facsimile reprint with an introduction by Williams, Peter as The Wesley Bach Letters (London, 1988), p. 36.Google Scholar
17 British Library, Add. MS 35000.
18 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MUS MS 730.
19 A.A.W. A42, item 67; I am grateful to Andrew Drummond for this translation. Latin text: ‘Venerabilis Frater salutem et Apostolicam Benedictionem. Pergratus Nobis accidit codex nitide eleganterque compactus, quem a Fraternitate tua nomine Samuelis Wesley accepimus; sed gratior fuit nuntius Iiteris tuis allatus, quo intelleximus musicos modos, quibus ad Missam habendam Codex praestat, eo animo fuisse compositos, ut gratias misericordiarum largitori Deo referat Auctor de ingressu ei dato ad Catholicam Ecclesiam, a qua Majores sui excludebantur. Nos minime improbamus studium musicae artis ad Ecclesiam accomodatae, quum per oblectamenta aurium infirmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat: Sed id potissimum delectat, ac in majorem juvenis dilectionem Nos adducit, peritia in fidei controversiis, qua ipsum praecellere asseris, atque spes optima de eo a te suscepta. Gratum animum, quem ob acceptum munus in ipsum gerimus, paternis verbis nomine nostro explicabis, ac si quando occasio tulerit, re comprobabimus….’ An earlier translation, included in W. H. Cummings’s Notes and Queries contribution (see below and note 24), is also quoted in Lightwood, Samuel Wesley, Musician, pp. 67–8. The letter concludes with material not relevant to Wesley and the Missa de Spiritu Sancto.
20 Anon, , ‘Memoir of Samuel Wesley, the Musician’, Wesley Banner and. Revival Record 3 (1851), pp. 321–8, 361–70, 401–11, 441–53: p. 370 Google Scholar. This account is very close in wording to that of Stevenson, G. J. in Memorials of the Wesley Family (London, 1876)Google Scholar, and it seems likely that its author was Stevenson.
21 See his obituaries in The Times, 11 June 1907 and The Tablet, 15 and 22 June 1907.
22 Jackson, , The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, p. 368 Google Scholar; Stevenson, , Memorials of the Wesley Family, p. 508 Google Scholar; see also the earlier account in Wesley Banner and Revival Record 3 (1851), p. 370. According to the Wesley Banner account, repeated in Memorials of the Wesley Family, Mary Freeman Shepherd (a friend and confidante of Wesley, closely involved with him at the time of his conversion, and influential in London Catholic circles) obtained from Bishop Talbot a copy of Pius VFs letter for him, ‘on purpose that he might, by showing it to his father, give a father’s partial heart the delight of his son’s praise’. Although the accuracy of this anecdote cannot be taken for granted, it does appear that Pius VI’s letter was publicly known in London at the time: some of it is quoted in the Whitehall Evening Post, 21–23 August 1798, as part of an explanatory footnote to a poem, probably by William Seward (1747–99), describing a visit that Wesley had made to Richmond in the summer of that year. In 1836, at the very end of his life, Wesley himself described the composition of the Mass and the letter from Pius VI in his manuscript Reminiscences (London, British Library, Add. MS 27593, f 39), quoting the same passage.
23 Enquiry from Everard Green, FSA, in Notes and Queries, 6th Series, 4 (1881), p. 147. According to Green, the edition was ‘on English paper, and on the title page is I.H.S., with the three nails in pile surrounded by a glory, which is the usual badge of the Society of Jesus. The music was printed by J. Whetman and J. Buttenshaw.’ This edition remains a mystery: there is no other record of the Mass having been published, no copies of it have been traced, and Whetman and Buttenshaw are not to be found in directories of eighteenth-century printers, either of music or of books.
24 Notes and Queries, 6th Series, 4 (1881), pp. 251–2.
25 For further details of this correspondence, see Marsh, , The Latin Church Music of Samuel Wesley, pp. 63–6.Google Scholar