John Andrew Stevenson (1761 - 1833)

Born 1761 in Dublin, Ireland

Descendants

Died 14 Sep 1833 at about age 72 in Headfort house, Kells, County Meath, Ireland

Biography

Sir John Andrew Stevenson (1761 – 14 September 1833) was an Irish composer. He is best known for his piano arrangements of Irish Melodies with poet Thomas Moore. He was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Dublin and was knighted in April 1802.^[1]

He was appointed stipendiary at St. Patrick's Cathedral on 20 July 1775 by Dean Craddock and at Christ Church Cathedral in 1781 (despite his nationality, due to the intercession of the wife of the Dean). Appointed vicar choral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1783 and at Christ Church Cathedral in 1800. He received the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa by the University of Dublin in 1791.

Stevenson was knighted on 27 April 1803 by Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, lord lieutenant of Ireland. He was appointed the first organist and musical director at the newly erected Chapel Royal of Dublin Castle in 1814.

Stevenson died on 14 September 1833 at Headfort House in Kells, County Meath. In 1843, a marble cenotaph sculpted by Thomas Kirk was erected in the Musicians Corner at Christ Church Cathedral. In the south aisle of St. Patrick's Cathedral, a stained glass window was placed in 1864 in his honour. His daughter Olivia was the wife of Thomas Taylour, 2nd Marquess of Headfort, mother of Lady Olivia FitzPatrick and grandmother of Mary Cornwallis-West.

Stevenson's secular works include operas, catches, glees, odes, operas, songs and arrangements of traditional music. He was knighted for his composition of the ode You Ladies of our Lovely Isle and a glee with accompaniment Give me the Harp of Epic Song, a translation of the second Ode of Anacreon. He was much renowned for his composition of glees. In 1775 he was awarded the Glee and Catch Club's prize for the glee One Night When All the Village Slept. Other glee and catch compositions include "Alone on the Sun-Beaten Rock", Buds of Roses (which was awarded the gold medal by the Glee and Catch Club in 1813), and the tuneful catch Come Buy my Cherries, popularly known as The Dublin Cries.

Stevenson composed some airs for O'Keeffe's Dead Alive in 1780, which was performed with success in June 1781. Stevenson's songs include, among others, Faithless Emma (written for John Spray), Dearest Ellen, better known from its opening line "When the rosebud of summer", and O Ever Skilled, written before Stevenson received his knighthood. Stevenson composed music for the comic opera Love in a Blaze (after Lafont), which was first performed in Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, on 29 May 1799, and The Patriot, or Hermit of Saxellen (1810). Stevenson's glee They Play'd in Air was performed at the inaugural concert of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, Massachusetts, in December 1815.

Stevenson is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Thomas Moore (1779–1852) in several musical works, to which he provided piano accompaniments: the Irish Melodies (ten volumes, 1808–34), The Sacred Melodies (published in periodical numbers, 1808–34), and National Airs (first edition 1815). Differences arose between Moore and Stevenson as may be seen in the correspondence of Moore edited in 1852 by Lord John Russell, and after the seventh number of Irish Melodies the music was provided by Sir Henry Bishop (1786–1855). Despite this, Thomas Moore wrote a memorial poem for Stevenson entitled Silence is in our Festal Halls.

By 1825, Stevenson had composed a large quantity of church music amounting to twenty-six anthems and eight service settings, not to mention chants, double chants, hymns and the oratorio The Thanksgiving, a "pasticcio" from several of his other anthems. In 1825, a selection of his cathedral works was printed in two volumes and published by James Power of The Strand, London, with a dedication to George IV. Three service settings in C, E flat and F, twelve anthems as well as twelve double chants and a set of Responses for Holy Days were selected for publication. Addison issued a reprint of these two volumes some years later, in which each anthem and service was published separately. John Hullah reprinted the concluding chorus The Lord is my Strength from the anthem I am well Pleased in his Singers Library (c.1860), and Joseph Robinson edited three of the twelve together with the unpublished By the Waters of Babylon. Apart from their popularity in Irish collegiate churches and cathedrals in the later nineteenth-century, several of Stevenson's anthems and service settings were in use and in circulation at some English provincial cathedrals such as Bristol, Chester, Chichester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Manchester, and Wells.

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Andrew_Stevenson

• Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3rd Edition. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. p. 411. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
• The Irish Monthly Magazine of Politics and Culture (1833), p. 378.

Article on James-Joyce-Music.com Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Public Domain obituary of Stevenson, with considerable information. Portrait Another portrait Free scores by John Stevenson in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki) Free scores by John Stevenson at the International Music Score Library Project Last edited 7 months ago by Iridescent RELATED ARTICLES Richard Woodward (organist) Irish composer Joseph Robinson (composer) Irish composer and conductor Philip Cogan Irish composer Wikipedia

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Irish Pedigrees

5. Isabella Bayly, mar. in 1807, to Dr. John Bartholomew Mosse, Enniscorthy, who d. 1825, of grief at the death of his son John, who was accidentally poisoned, aged 16. She died in 1849, leav- ing three daughters, one of whom, Susanna Mosse, born 1815, mar. in 1839, George Eeynett,M.D. (who d. 1876, at London, Ontario), great- great grandson of Henri de Eenet, a Huguenot landed proprietor in Vivarais, in Languedoc, whose five sons became refugees, in 1684. (See Agnew's History of Huguenots).

6. Elizabeth Bayly, mar. 1818, to Andrew Carr, who in- herited a fortune of £80,000, portion of £250,000 left by his maternal uncle, Henry Walker, of Belgriffin House, CO. Dublin, who died 1817,

intestate and without leg mate issue, upon which 1 suits arose which have cupied the Dublin lawyers the present day. Peter Bayly, married thirdly, 1 805, the celebrated beauty, Harri Cowell, dau. of Michael Cowell the Cowells, of Logadowda, com Dublin, a great Military family, which Major-Gen. Sir John Clayt Cowell, Master of the Quee Household, is (in 1887) a disi guished member), and whose th sisters were married to milit; officers. She was taught music Sir John Stevenson, Mus. Doc, v. had been engaged to teach . cousin, Anne Butler Morton Eehobotb, South Circular Eos then aged 21, with whom he el op and whose parents greatly dis proved of the match. (See Sir Ec Stewart's Lectures on " Musician Olivia Stevenson, who died 18 issue of this marriage, m. the sec( Marquis of Headfort, and is gra mother of the present Earl of I tive, who in 1867 mar. Lady A Hill, dau. of the fourth Marquij Downshire. Harriott Cow< grandmother (a Miss Butler) s Anne Butler, Morton's mother (IV. garet Butler), were near connecti and descendants of the Ormond. family, Kilkenny Castle, and he the Headfort family are entitlec claim descent from that dis guished Anglo-Irish family. I: riott Cowell died 23rd Sept., 16 having survived her husband years. Issue, with several whc young or unmarried :

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