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John Stainer: A Life in Music.

Article Excerpt
John Stainer: A Life in Music. By Jeremy Dibble. (Music in Britain, 1600-1900.) Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007. [xiv, 362 p. ISBN-10: 1843-832976; ISBN-13: 9781843832973. $55.] Illustrations, music examples, work-list, bibliography, index.

Aside from his other scholarly activities, Jeremy Dibble is a gifted biographer, having produced the excellent studies C. Hubert H. Parry: His Life and Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), and Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). His new exploration of the life and music of John Stainer (1840-1901) is finer still, and all the more impressive because of the neglected terrain that he covers. Although some of Stainer's works have found their way into studies of English church music, his life has received much less attention. With the resurgence of interest in nineteenth-century British music in recent scholarship, Dibble's book is a timely reminder of Stainer's significance as a public musician of a stature comparable to his contemporary and friend Arthur Sullivan, despite their very different careers.

Stainer started his musical life as a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral in London; his training there led to a position as organist at St. Michael's College, Tenbury when he was only seventeen....