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Henry F. Chorley

1808 - 1872 Person Name: H. F. Chorley Composer of "[A song for the oak, the brave old oak]" in The Assembly Hymn and Song Collection Chorley, Henry Fothergill, was born at Blackleyhurst, Lancashire, Dec. 15, 1808, and educated at the Royal Institution, Liverpool. In 1834 he was engaged as a member of the staff of the London Athenaeum. This connection he retained for 35 years. He died Feb. 15, 1872. He published some novels and a large number of songs. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907) ============ Born: De­cem­ber 15, 1808, Black­ley Hurst, near Bil­linge, Lan­ca­shire, Eng­land. Pseudonym: Paul Dell. Died: Feb­ru­a­ry 16, 1872, Lon­don, Eng­land. Buried: Bromp­ton Cem­e­te­ry, Lon­don, Eng­land. Son of an ir­on work­er and lock mak­er, Chor­ley moved with his fam­i­ly to Li­ver­pool af­ter his fa­ther’s death in 1816. He was ed­u­cat­ed by pri­vate tu­tors in Li­ver­pool and at the school of the Roy­al In­sti­tu­tion. His youth was shaped part­ly by time spent in the house­hold of the wealthy and in­tel­lect­u­al Mrs. Ben­son Rath­bone of Green Bank, and he be­came a close friend of her son Ben­son, who died in an ac­ci­dent in 1834. Chorley be­gan writ­ing for the Lon­don Athen­æ­um in 1830, and was the pa­per’s mu­sic critic and lit­er­a­ry re­view­er un­til 1868. He al­so be­came mus­ic crit­ic for the Lon­don Times and wrote, for these and other jour­nals, re­views and mu­sic­al gos­sip col­umns, dis­cuss­ing com­pose­rs and per­form­ers in Bri­tain and on the Eur­o­pean con­ti­nent. He was quite con­ser­va­tive, and was a per­sist­ent op­po­nent of in­no­va­tion, but was a live­ly chron­ic­ler of Lon­don life. In the Athen­æ­um and else­where, Chor­ley oft­en cri­ti­cized the mu­sic of Schu­mann and Wag­ner for what he called "de­ca­dence." In 1850 and 1851, Chor­ley ed­it­ed the La­dies’ Com­pan­ion, which co­vered fa­shion and do­mes­tic wo­men’s is­sues. Chorley was al­so a jour­nal­ist, no­vel­ist, play­wright, and po­et, and op­era li­bret­tist. One of his best known piec­es was his obit­u­ary of Tur­ge­nev, mis­tak­en­ly writ­ten while the Russ­ian was still ve­ry much alive. Tur­ge­nev was not of­fend­ed by the er­ror near­ly as much as he was by the cri­tic­al opin­ions of his work Chorley gave in the obit­u­a­ry. Chorley was con­sid­ered ec­cen­tric and abras­ive, but was re­spect­ed for his in­te­gri­ty and kind­ness. He en­thus­i­as­tic­al­ly gave and at­tend­ed din­ner par­ties, and cul­ti­vat­ed friend­ships with Eliz­a­beth Bar­rett, Fe­lix Men­dels­sohn, Charles Dick­ens, Ar­thur Sul­li­van and Charles Sant­ley. Af­ter the death of his bro­ther, John Rut­ter Chor­ley (1806–1867), Hen­ry in­her­it­ed enough mo­ney to re­tire from the Athen­æ­um, though he con­tin­ued to con­trib­ute ar­ti­cles for that pa­per and for The Or­ches­tra. In spite of Chorley’s ef­forts to pro­mote the mu­sic of Charles Gou­nod in Eng­land, the com­poser dis­liked Chor­ley in­tense­ly. When Gou­nod lived in Eng­land in the ear­ly 1870’s, he wrote a satir­i­cal pi­a­no piece in­tende­d to be a par­o­dy of Chor­ley’s per­son­al­i­ty. It great­ly amused Gou­nod’s Eng­lish pa­tron, Geor­gi­na Weld­on, who de­scribed Chor­ley as hav­ing a "thin, sour, high-pitched so­pran­ish voice" and mov­ing like a "stuffed red-haired mon­key." Gou­nod in­tend­ed to pub­lish the piece with a ded­i­ca­tion to Chor­ley, but died be­fore this was pos­si­ble. Wel­don then in­vent­ed a new pro­gram for the piece, which was re-titled Fun­er­al March of a Mar­i­onette. It be­came pop­u­lar as a con­cert piece, and in the 1950s, its open­ing phras­es be­came well known as the theme mu­sic for the tel­e­vi­sion pro­gram Al­fred Hitch­cock Pre­sents. Chorley’s works in­clude: Music and Man­ners in France and Ger­ma­ny, 1841 Pomfret, 1845 Roccabella, 1859 The Pro­di­gy, 1866 --www.hymntime.com/tch/

E. J. Loder

Author of "The Brave Old Oak"

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