Aged 15 he was appointed organist of St John’s proprietary chapel in Hampstead and was capable enough to join his father in organ duets performed for audiences in London and Bristol. Four years later he moved to become organist of St Giles Parish Church, Camberwell, in South London, and quickly added to this responsibility for the music at what was then the new church of St John, Waterloo Road. He also found time and energy to play for the evening services at Hampton in West London, and, to keep himself occupied on weekdays, he conducted the band at performances of comic opera at the Opera House in the Strand. He once regretted that he had never managed to compose a comic opera.
In 1831, aged 21, he composed his first anthem, ‘O God, whose nature and property is always to have mercy’, and in the following year was appointed organist of Hereford Cathedral. The dean, John Merewether, was one of the earliest cathedral reformers and there was much to claim his attention, not least in the music department. The eight adult members of the choir were all clergymen, whose ages ranged from 49 to 78. Five of these were in poor health, two were deemed to be sub-standard, and the eighth, the 78-year-old, exempt from attending. In order to meet this situation, the previous organist, himself in an advanced state of infirmity, had composed three Communion service settings for boys and a single bass voice.
Wesley’s appointment was designed to deal with this situation, but, since the organ was due to be enlarged, his arrival in Hereford was delayed by just over a year. This left him with time for a lengthy holiday in the Black Mountains of Wales, the experience of which inspired his landmark verse-anthem ‘The wilderness and the solitary place’. This was performed for the first time (with what choral resources is unknown) at the re-opening of the organ in November 1832, and was widely acclaimed, though when he submitted it for the national Gresham Medal the adjudicators did not like it. One of them complained: ‘It is a clever thing, but it is not cathedral music.’ This did not prevent it from being performed subsequently in many cathedrals, some at the present time. Its length – a full 12 minutes – is now a major problem, and even Wesley admirers concede that it has some weaknesses, but it is a very remarkable work and would be welcomed by many cathedral congregations as an occasional substitute for the Sunday Evensong sermon. More accessible and still deservedly popular was the anthem ‘Blessed be the God and Father’, which he composed, at the request of the dean, for Easter Day the following year. This became his best-known anthem, and, after an inauspicious start – its first performance was by a row of trebles and a single bass (the dean’s butler) – it was sung in Westminster Abbey at the wedding of the present Queen and is part of the standard repertory of every cathedral choir and of many parish church choirs.
Wesley was at Hereford for a mere three years, which was just long enough for him to be the conductor of the Three Choirs Festival, which included an eclectic mixture of fine music – sacred and secular – and also in 1835 to marry the dean’s sister, Mary Anne. Evidently the dean did not approve of the union and the wedding took place quietly in Ewyas Harold Church, some miles from Hereford.
A few weeks later he moved to Exeter and in 1836, believing that he might one day secure an academic appointment, he applied for BMus and DMus degrees at Oxford. These required him to submit and perform one of his own compositions, and the anthem he chose for this purpose required a choir. The examination was therefore held in Magdalen College Chapel and the quality of the college choir at that time was candidly expressed in a local newspaper account of the event. Having congratulated Wesley on a fine composition and his introduction on the organ, it added, ‘but of the vocal line we could not fairly judge, the singers, in many parts, being both out of time and out of tune’.
Wesley’s early years at Exeter were without serious incident, though he was always short of money, and in a revealing letter to Vincent Novello, the music publisher, he explained his late delivery of a promised composition:
I hope to be able to comply with your desire respecting the Voluntary. I now have several engagements to fulfil with Publishers in London, but the dreadful nature of an organist’s, I mean a county cathedral organist’s, occupation, that of giving lessons all over the county from morning to night makes composing a pleasure hardly to be indulged in. How much should musicians strive that the offices connected with the art in Cathedrals are not of a nature to make them independent respecting money so that they might give their attention to the improvement of the decaying, much degraded musical state of the Church ... the clergy will never move in the matter. They know nothing of their real interests, and consequently the Establishment is going to ruin.
In 1839, however, the cathedral’s precentor – an office for which Wesley had not the slightest respect – was elevated to the deanery and things began to go badly wrong. He always resented the fact that the precentor chose the music and that his own contribution was limited to attending a Saturday morning chapter meeting at which the forthcoming week’s settings, anthems and hymns were discussed and authorized. But something more serious arose in 1840 when two choristers, with the dean’s permission, went to perform one evening in a local Glee Club. On hearing of this Wesley accosted the boys, one of whom he struck hard blows with his fist on the back, then kicked him on the point of his chin, leaving a mark for several days. The other boy was struck on the side of his face and knocked down with another blow. When he was on the floor Wesley kicked him.
When the dean and chapter heard of this they summoned him to their presence in the Chapter House where he admitted the truth of the boys’ evidence but argued that he was, as organist, entitled to punish them. The dean and chapter disagreed, said that he was unjustified in inflicting any punishment, deplored his uncontrollable temper and inability to apologize, and decided to suspend him from his duties, without pay, until the chapter’s Christmas audit meeting several weeks hence.
He was in trouble again the following year when he was reprimanded for taking leave of absence without permission and leaving an 18-year-old pupil to play at the services. The Devon rivers were too strong a temptation for so addicted an angler. Yet, in spite of all his difficulties, the standard of music at Exeter was raised to an unusually high level for the time. The choir was greatly improved. Better service settings and anthems were introduced and Wesley’s own organ playing was by now nationally famous. Large congregations were attracted. But Wesley was not happy and, after he had made a deep impression on the citizens of Leeds with his inaugural organ recital in their newly built parish church, he accepted the invitation of the vicar, Walter Farquhar Hook, to move there as organist. One person who was not sorry to see him leave Exeter was the cathedral’s chapter clerk who had dealt with most of the Wesley problems and described him as ‘the most to be avoided man I ever met with’.
Hook had gone to Leeds in 1837 and found there a medieval parish church which, although it provided for 1,500 worshippers, soon became too small to accommodate those who wished to attend the Sunday services. He rejected the suggestion that the decaying structure should be restored and enlarged – ‘I loathe it’, he declared, ‘I cannot preach comfortably in it, I cannot make myself heard. The dirt and indecorum distress me.’ So £28,000 was raised and the new cathedral-like church was completed and consecrated in 1841. It was intended that there should be daily choral services; there had, unusually, been a surpliced choir of men and boys in the old church since 1818.
Wesley was attracted by the enthusiasm for good music he had found in Leeds and also by a salary of £200 p.a. guaranteed for ten years by one of the city’s wealthy residents. The vicar, though not himself a musician, believed that only the best was good enough for the parish church’s worship and he was ready to find the money to make this possible. He and his new organist shared a dislike of plainsong and a determination to use only the new Anglican chants for the psalms. Wesley was soon admired throughout Yorkshire and the parish church became one of the county’s chief centres of music-making.
His lengthy Morning, Communion and Evening Cathedral Services in E were published in 1845 and demonstrated refreshingly that canticles could provide fitting material for great music. The influence of this proved to be considerable and is now experienced