| Anglican organist Samuel Sebastian Wesley is considered by many to have been the most promising English composer of the mid-nineteenth century. This was a period when art music was dominated by foreign compositions and a native English style had not been established to differentiate it from Continental styles. The Anglican church was also in severe decline at this time, and the music of English composers written for the church was poor to average in quality. Wesley, however, fused elements of the English tradition, namely Chapel Royal influences, with the forms and counterpoint of J. S. Bach to the German Romantic harmonic idiom. This study focuses on select anthems from Wesley's output and questions why his innovations did not inspire a renaissance of native English music in the mid-nineteenth century. It also considers whether the sociological implications of tenacious foreign influences in Germany suppressed Wesley's role in this renaissance. |
