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George Grove
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Grove in the 1890s

Sir George Grove CB (13 August 1820 – 28 May 1900) was an English writer on music,
known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Grove was trained as a civil engineer, and successful in that profession, but his
love of music drew him into musical administration. When responsible for the
regular orchestral concerts at the Crystal Palace, he wrote a series of programme
notes from which eventually grew his musical dictionary. His interest in the music
of Franz Schubert, which was neglected in England at that point in the nineteenth
century, led him and his friend Arthur Sullivan to go to Vienna in search of
undiscovered Schubert manuscripts. Their researches led to their discovery of the
lost score of Schubert's Rosamunde music, several of his symphonies and other music
in 1867, leading to a revival of interest in Schubert's work.

Grove was the first director of the Royal College of Music, from its foundation in
1883 until his retirement in 1894. He recruited leading musicians including Hubert
Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford as members of the College faculty and
established a close working relationship with London's older conservatoire, the
Royal Academy of Music.

In addition to his musical work, Grove had a deep and scholarly knowledge of the
Bible. He contributed to the English literature on the subject, including a
concordance in 1854 and about a thousand pages of Sir William Smith's 1863 Bible
Dictionary. He was a co-founder of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Contents

1 Biography
1.1 Early years
1.2 Music and biblical scholarship
1.3 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
1.4 Royal College of Music
1.5 Retirement and last years
2 Notes
3 Further reading
4 External links

Biography
Early years

Grove was born in Clapham, the eighth of the eleven children of Thomas Grove (1774–
1852), fishmonger and venison dealer, and his wife, Mary (1784–1856), née Blades.
[1] He went to a preparatory school, on Clapham Common, where one of his
schoolfellows was George Granville Bradley, later Dean of Westminster, whose sister
Grove subsequently married.[2] He next entered Stockwell (later known as Clapham)
Grammar School, run by Charles Pritchard, the astronomer, who was inspired by the
progressive principles of King's College, London. The educational curriculum was
based on classics, divinity, mathematics and natural philosophy, and rigorously
tested by annual examination. Pritchard also encouraged his pupils to develop
interests in literature and music.[3] Grove was a regular worshipper at Holy
Trinity church, Clapham, where he heard the music of Bach and Handel. By the age of
sixteen, he was competent in classics and mathematics; he left the school in 1836
and was apprenticed to Alexander Gordon, a well-known civil engineer in
Westminster. In his free time, he immersed himself in music, attending concerts and
studying scores.[1]
Some of Grove's engineering mentors: Stephenson, Brunel and Barry

After completing his apprenticeship, Grove was admitted as a graduate of the

Institution of Civil Engineers, in 1839. A year later he went to Glasgow, gaining
further experience in the factory of Robert Napier.[2] In 1841 Grove had an affair
with a woman called Elizabeth Blackwell, who gave birth to his illegitimate son,
George Grove Blackwell, in March 1842. Between 1841 and 1846, Grove spent most of
his time in the West Indies, as resident engineer during the building of cast-iron
lighthouses.[3] After this he joined the staff of the Chester and Holyhead Railway
and then became assistant to Edwin Clark, working on the Britannia Bridge across
the Menai Strait. An account of the first floating of the tubes of the bridge is
recorded in The Spectator of 23 June 1849, which was Grove's first appearance in
print.[4] During this period, he lived in Chester, hearing music in the cathedral
and also becoming familiar with Welsh folksong.[3]
Music and biblical scholarship

While working on the Britannia Bridge Grove came into contact with Robert
Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sir Charles Barry and other eminent visitors
to the works. "These distinguished men", Grove later recalled, "noticed me and were
as good as gold to me. They counselled me to go to London and forced me into the
secretaryship of the Society of Arts, then vacant by the retirement of Mr. Scott
Russell."[5] This was in 1849, when the Great Exhibition of 1851 was in
preparation. Grove was the society's secretary for the duration of the exhibition.
On 23 December 1851, he married Harriet Bradley, the sister of his old school
friend George Bradley. After the Great Exhibition closed in 1852, its principal
building, known as "the Crystal Palace", was dismantled and rebuilt in the south
London suburb of Sydenham as a centre for education, the arts and leisure. Grove
was appointed secretary of the Crystal Palace. He engaged a wind band and a
conductor, Heinrich Schallehn. The latter was found to be unsatisfactory, and was
replaced by August Manns, who, with Grove's encouragement, developed the band into
a full-sized symphony orchestra. With programmes chosen by Grove and Manns, the
Crystal Palace concerts became a central feature of London's musical scene and
remained so until the end of the century.[1] Grove wrote the programme notes for
the concerts. In 1901, a biographer wrote:
August Manns, Grove's musical director

The daily and weekly orchestral performances at Sydenham prompted those

admirable analytical notices of musical compositions with which the name of George
Grove was so long and is so favourably associated. He had always shown a great
fondness for music, but had never received any technical training in the art.
Entirely self-taught, his knowledge was acquired solely by 'picking up'
information. "I wish it to be distinctly understood," he said, "that I have always
been a mere amateur in music. I wrote about the symphonies and concertos because I
wished to try to make them clear to myself and to discover the secret of the things
that charmed me so; and from that sprang a wish to make other amateurs see it in
the same way."[2]

Grove's musical analyses avoided all hint of technical jargon and tried to make
clear to everyone who read them what, in Grove's opinion, listeners should be aware
of in each piece. In a note on Mozart's Symphony No. 39, after referring to
Mozart's extraordinary productivity in the year 1788, Grove wrote:

The circumstances which necessitated such fearful exertion on this and many
other occasions in Mozart's life we have no means of ascertaining. Whatever they
were, they were in accordance with a common custom of Nature. She seems to delight
in condemning her most gifted sons to an ordeal the very reverse of that which we
should anticipate. It seems equally true in Art and in Morals, that it is not by
indulgence and favour, but by difficulty and trouble, that the spirit is formed;
and in all ages of the world our Davids, Shakspeares, Dantes, Mozarts, and
Beethovens must submit to processes which none but their great spirits could
survive – to a fiery trial of poverty, ill health, neglect, and misunderstanding –
and be "tried as silver is tried," that they may become the teachers of their
fellow-men to all time, and shine, like stars in the firmament, for ever and ever.
[5]

Grove's Crystal Palace programme notes did not concentrate solely on his favourite
Austro-German composers. He embraced a representative selection of composers,
notably the Frenchmen Berlioz, Bizet, Delibes, Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns,
and the rising generations of British composers – Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry,
Charles Villiers Stanford, Hamish MacCunn, Edward German and Granville Bantock.[6]
Franz Schubert (top), whose music Grove and Arthur Sullivan (below) rediscovered in
1867

Among the composers whom Grove sought to popularise was Schubert, whose music was
largely neglected in England. Grove and Manns presented the first performance in
England of the Great C major Symphony. Together with his friend Arthur Sullivan,
Grove went to Vienna in 1867 in search of Schubert manuscripts. They found several
of Schubert's symphonies and much other music, some of which they copied. They were
particularly excited about their final discovery, which Grove described thus: "I
found, at the bottom of the cupboard, and in its farthest corner, a bundle of
music-books two feet high, carefully tied round, and black with the undisturbed
dust of nearly half-a-century. … These were the part-books of the whole of the
music in Rosamunde, tied up after the second performance in December, 1823, and
probably never disturbed since. Dr. Schneider [Schubert's nephew] must have been
amused at our excitement; but let us hope that he recollected his own days of
rapture; at any rate, he kindly overlooked it, and gave us permission to take away
with us and copy what we wanted."[5]

In the early years of the Crystal Palace, Grove devoted much of his leisure time to
Biblical scholarship. Discovering that there was no full concordance of the proper
names in the Bible, Grove, helped by his wife, began work in 1853 making a complete
index of each occurrence of every proper name in the Bible, including the
Apocrypha.[3] Between 1860 and 1863, Grove was assistant editor to Sir William
Smith in a comprehensive Bible dictionary, contributing more than a thousand pages.
Some entries written by Grove, such as that on the prophet Elijah, were equivalent
almost to book-length.[3] He visited the Holy Land in 1859 and 1861, and helped to
found the Palestine Exploration Fund, of which he became honorary secretary,
labouring incessantly on its behalf.[1] The Archbishop of York said that Grove was
"virtually the founder and institutor of the Society, and has done wonders for it
throughout."[5] Grove later observed, "People will insist on thinking of me as a
musician, which I really am not in the very least degree. I took quite as much
interest in my investigations into the natural features and the little towns of
Palestine which I did for Smith's Dictionary of the Bible or for Arthur Stanley's
Sinai and Palestine, as I did for Beethoven and Mendelssohn, indeed perhaps more
so."[7]
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians

After nearly twenty years of service at the Crystal Palace, Grove resigned the
secretaryship at the end of 1873 and accepted an offer from the publishers
Macmillan and Co. to join their staff and become a director of the firm. He edited
Macmillan's Magazine and wrote a primer of geography for Macmillan's "History
Primers". By far the most important outcome of his connection with Macmillan was A
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, for which his name is best remembered. The idea
of the dictionary was entirely his own. He stated, in the prospectus of the
dictionary, in March 1874, that "The want of English works on the history, theory,
or practice of Music, or the biographies of musicians accessible to the non-
professional reader, has long been a subject of remark."

Grove conceived of a work to fill the gap he had identified; he originally proposed
two volumes of about 600 pages each, but by the time of its first publication, it
ran to four volumes containing a total of 3,125 pages.[5] It was issued by
Macmillan in alphabetical volumes over a 12-year period ending in 1889. Grove
criticised Parry, a leading contributor, for being "inclined to be wordy and
diffuse", but articles by Grove on his own particular interests, Beethoven,
Mendelssohn and Schubert, were even longer.[6] The Musical Times wrote of the work,
"His masterly biographies of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert are models of
biographical literature, and are written in a most fascinating style. He made two
special journeys to Germany to obtain materials for his Mendelssohn article, and
more than two to Vienna in connection with Schubert and Beethoven."[5]
Royal College of Music
Grove as head of the Royal College of Music, as seen by Punch

In the 1880s, London's musical academies were in poor shape. The Royal Academy of
Music was moribund, and the National Training School for Music, of which Sullivan
was the reluctant and ineffectual head, was in financial and administrative
difficulties.[6] There was a proposal to merge the two bodies to create a single
effective conservatoire, but the Royal Academy insisted on retaining its
independence and later revitalised itself under the leadership of Alexander
Mackenzie.[8] The National Training School was re-formed as the Royal College of
Music in 1882, and Grove was appointed its first director.[1] Throughout 1882 he
led a successful fund-raising campaign that ensured the official opening of the new
college by the Prince of Wales on 7 May 1883. Grove received a knighthood on the
same day. The teaching staff, whom he appointed, were led by Parry and Stanford,
and, as a biographer of Grove says, "carried the college with distinction into the
twentieth century."

Grove focused the College's attention on two main activities: practical training
and examining. He was determined to raise the general standard of orchestral
playing by replacing the existing ad hoc methods of apprentice-based training,
private lessons, or study abroad.[9] His second focus, examination, followed the
Victorian trend to form professional bodies regulating and standardising the
activity of members of each profession. An example is the Institution of Civil
Engineers to which Grove had been admitted in 1839.[9] When the Royal Charter
establishing the College was being drawn up, Grove ensured that, unlike the Royal
Academy, the College should have degree-awarding powers.[9] Mackenzie, seeing the
prospect that the new institution would overshadow the Academy, successfully
proposed that both bodies should award qualifications jointly. Grove agreed,
realising that this course would do much to dispel the damaging hostility that
existed between the Academy and the College.
The Royal College of Music

The new Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music thus formed offered musical
qualifications to external candidates from anywhere in the British Empire who could
meet its rigorous standards. 1,141 candidates entered for the first examinations in
1890, despite the high entry fee of two guineas. The income helped both
institutions to keep their own student fees at an affordable level, which enabled
the College to make a full three-year course of study its basic standard.[9]
Because of the thorough training thus offered, the high standard of playing of the
College's students quickly became known. Leading musicians willingly appeared with
the College orchestra, including Joseph Joachim and Hans Richter. Manns, Eugène
Ysaÿe and Bernard Shaw praised it strongly.[9] The historian David Wright says of
Grove's legacy: "The founding of the RCM in 1883 clearly represents the major
turning point for musical training in Britain. The new attitudes it espoused
stemmed directly from the professionalizing ethos that modernized and transformed
Victorian society."[9]
Retirement and last years

Grove retired at Christmas 1894, when he was succeeded by Parry. By this time, a
new building had been constructed for the College. In 1896 Grove's Beethoven and
his Nine Symphonies, "addressed to the amateurs of this country", appeared.[2]
Early in 1899, Grove's health began to fail, and he died, aged 79, on 28 May 1900,
in the house at Sydenham in which he had lived for nearly 40 years.[3] He was
buried in the Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.
Notes

Young, Percy M. "Grove, Sir George (1820–1900)", Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2006 accessed 2
November 2010 (subscription required)
Edwards, F. G. "Grove, Sir George (1820–1900)", Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography archive, Oxford University Press, 1901; online edition, May 2006 accessed
2 November 2010 (subscription required)
Graves, C.L. and Percy M. Young. "Grove, Sir George", Grove Online, Oxford Music
Online, accessed 2 November 2010 (subscription required)
Part of Grove's text is quoted by The Musical Times (October 1897), pp. 657–64
"Sir George Grove, C. B.", The Musical Times, Vol. 38, No. 656 (October 1897), pp.
657–64
Thomson, Andrew. "Victorian Values", The Musical Times, Vol. 145, No. 1888 (Autumn,
2004), pp. 95–99
"Sir George Grove, C. B.", The Musical Times, Volume 41, No. 689 (July 1900), pp.
459–61
Barker, Duncan J. "Mackenzie, Sir Alexander Campbell", Grove Music Online, accessed
27 September 2009 (subscription required)

Wright, David. "The South Kensington Music Schools and the Development of the
British Conservatoire in the Late Nineteenth Century", Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, Vol. 130 No. 2, pp. 236–82

Further reading

(in German) Gerrit Waidelich. „nicht das Verdienst der im J. 867 nach Wien
gekommenen Englishmen“? – Legenden und Tatsachen zu Sullivans und Groves Sichtung
des „staubigen“ Aufführungsmaterials von Schuberts Rosamunde-Musik (Teil II), in:
Sullivan-Journal. Magazin der Deutschen Sullivan-Gesellschaft e. V. (Hrsg. von
Meinhard Saremba) – Nr. 13 (Juli 2015), S. 18-32. ISSN 2190-0647.

External links
George Grove
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Media from Wikimedia Commons

Quotations from Wikiquote
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Data from Wikidata

Works by George Grove at Project Gutenberg

Works by or about George Grove at Internet Archive

vte

Directors of the Royal College of Music

 Sir George Grove (1882) Sir Hubert Parry (1895) Sir Hugh Allen (1918) Sir
George Dyson (1938) Sir Ernest Bullock (1953) Sir Keith Falkner (1960) Sir David
Willcocks (1974) Michael Gough Matthews (1985) Dame Janet Ritterman (1993) Colin
Lawson (2005)

Authority control Edit this at Wikidata

BNE: XX959390 BNF: cb13568276d (data) GND: 118719025 ISNI: 0000 0001 2139 6428
LCCN: n90642129 NDL: 00550436 NKC: jn20011210211 NLG: 224866 NLI: 000057220 NTA:
068648200 ICCU: IT\ICCU\RAVV\030103 SELIBR: 188750 SNAC: w6bz6hzm SUDOC: 03158702X
Trove: 844539 VIAF: 74018712 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n90642129

Categories:

English musicologistsEnglish book editorsCompanions of the Order of the

BathDirectors of the Royal College of MusicPeople from Clapham1820 births1900
deathsKnights BachelorWriters about music

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