Samuel Wesley (1766-1837): A Source Book

The significance of this reference volume devoted to the organist and composer Samuel Wesley the youngest reveals itself in the very first sentence of the authors' "Preface": They have determined to celebrate "the extraordinary life" of the second surviving son of the Methodists' principal poet and the nephew of the founder and leader of that religious organization. The extent of Samuel Wesley's reputation as church organist, composer of sacred and secular music, and musicologist might well engender considerable debate among music historians, but no one among them could question the extraordinary turns of his extraordinarily twisted and troubled life. His journey from child prodigy to the highest rank among organ performers ex tempore, his enthusiasm for the works of J.S. Bach and his contributions to the propagation of that artist's works in England, and his competence as a composer of choral and symphonic pieces contrast sharply to periodic states of moodiness, occasional bouts with serious mental depression, intemperance, indebtedness, flirtations with mistresses, siring of illegitimate children, and pauses before the baptismal fonts of at least three theological institutions. Simply, Samuel Wesley, a child of eighteenth-century Methodism, would have occasioned notes of joy from the pages of Smollett and Sterne, but only sounds of sorrow would be heard from within the respective crypts of father Charles and uncle John.

Despite Samuel Wesley's firm and obvious anchorage to the vessels of music and music history, the strength of the Kassler-Olleson effort lies in the approximately 1100 letters and "related documents" (94-558) gathered, identified, and summarized by the two musicologists, beginning with Charles Wesley's notes to his wife (July, August 1766) evidencing serious parental concern about infant Samuel's health, and ending seven decades later, with letters from Ole Bull and to Frederick Davison, the latter written but five months before Wesley's death. Therein lies the meat which students and scholars of the late Hanoverian and early Victorian periods will chew and digest with delight. In addition to epistolary exchanges between the subject and brother Charles, sister Sarah the younger, mother Sarah the elder, and daughter Eliza, the reader observes relationships, direct and indirect, between Samuel Wesley and the likes of Charles Burney, William Crotch, Vincent Novello, Felix Mendelssohn, Benjamin Jacob, Joseph Haydn, Charles Cowden Clarke, Frances Burney d'Arblay, Daines Barrington, and Christian Ignatius Latrobe. Of equal importance to social and professional activities outlined by that parade of correspondents involving major and minor artistic and social contemporaries, those letters (by way of the thorough scrutiny and reasonable conclusions of Kassler and Olleson) reveal new insights into and information on the life of Samuel Wesley: his confinement to a private asylum for lunatics; doubt upon his performance, in July 1786, before Gorge III at Windsor; his incarceration for debt in 1825; a "revised and refined knowledge" of the subject's musical activities; consideration of heretofore unsolved bibliographical problems; the casting of doubt upon the accident to Samuel Wesley at Snow Hill, London, in 1787, which biographers have continued to claim as the cause for the musician's later mental disruptions. Most importantly, through those 1100 epistolary summaries, Kassler and Olleson have handed to current and potential scholars of the life and times of Samuel Wesley clear and plentiful blocks with which to construct a useful account of this "extraordinary life" and the general intellectual and artistic milieu in which it so painfully endured.

Little has evaded the authors' scholarly eyes. In addition to the calendar of summarized epistles and epistolary documents, they provide students and scholars with detailed background information-the Wesley family; a chronology of the significant events in the life of Samuel Wesley the youngest; an outline of iconographic and verbal portraits of their subject; a note on Wesley's library; a workable list of printed sources from 1779 to 2002. The authors reserve a section of 148 pages for the musicologists among their readers, presenting thoroughly annotated entries of Wesley's musical works: sacred and secular vocal music; orchestral and chamber music; music for the organ, harpsichord, and pianoforte. They complement that listing with a discussion (567-72) of repositories, public and private, that house Wesley's music manuscripts.

As suggested at the outset of this review, the contributions of Samuel Wesley the youngest to the tablature of Western world music history lie ripe for argument. Indeed, when one examines the final twenty-four entries of the bibliographical section of this source book-those items appearing in print between 1993 and 2002-eighteen bear the names either of Kassler or Olleson. Thus, the present cadre of Samuel Wesley scholars appears, at least, extremely limited. Nonetheless, this Source Book merits considerable recognition beyond the scope of its subject. As scholars of eighteenth-century English religious studies have long argued for substantive and interpretive biographies of John and Charles Wesley, so, also, now arises the need for equally substantive and interpretive biographical studies of the entire Wesley family, beginning with the late seventeenth-century Wesley forbearers ejected from their pulpits for Nonconformity; through Samuel Wesley the elder and his sons Samuel the younger, John, and Charles Wesley; continuing with the musicians Charles, Samuel and Samuel Sebastian Wesley; down to all Wesleys who do and might remain at this moment. George Stevenson's Memorials of the Wesley Family (1876) weighs heavy with the dust of anecdotes and misinformation, while Erik Routley's The Musical Wesley's, 1703-1876 (1968) requires serious biographical up-dating. In the end, therefore, the Kassler-Olleson Source Book will contribute significantly to both knowledge and understanding of all of the Wesleys; upon removing it from the shelf, the reader quickly will become intrigued with both an extraordinary person and musician, as well as with the inescapable presence of his extended family, friends, and associates. With this work, the authors have indeed fulfilled the principal requisites of legitimate scholarship, while at the same time satisfying the demands of scholarly inquirers.