Maurice Greene (1696-1755)
- Morning Service (in C); Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis (c.1735)
Performers: Choir of Ely Cathedral
Further info: Maurice Greene (1696-1755) - Anthems
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English composer and organist. He came of a well-to-do family which,
claiming descent from the medieval Greenes of Green's Norton, had held
estates in Essex since the end of the 16th century. His grandfather,
John Greene (1616-1659), had been Recorder of the City of London; his
father, the Rev. Thomas Greene DD (1648-1720), a chaplain of the Chapel
Royal and canon of Salisbury, was vicar of the London parishes of St
Olave Jewry and St Martin Pomeroy. As the youngest of seven children,
Maurice is said to have been brought up in the choir of St Paul's
Cathedral under Jeremiah Clarke and Charles King, and in 1710, to have
been articled to Richard Brind, organist of the cathedral since Clarke's
death. In March 1714 he took up his first appointment as organist of St
Dunstan-in-the-West and in February 1718 he also became organist of St
Andrew's, Holborn. A month later Brind died, and he was immediately
chosen to succeed him at St Paul's. Though technically a vicar-choral,
he was responsible, as organist, not only for the daily round of
cathedral services but also for the music at the annual Festival of the
Sons of the Clergy, and in that capacity he composed many large-scale
orchestral anthems and occasional settings of the Te Deum. By this time
too, he had become intimate with Handel who, it appears, had a
particular liking for the organ of St Paul's and was a frequent visitor
to the cathedral. Later they fell out so violently that, to quote
Burney, ‘for many years of his life, [Handel] never spoke of [Greene]
without some injurious epithet’. Greene's marriage to Mary Dillingham
(1699-1767), a cousin of Jeremiah Clarke, must have taken place shortly
after his appointment to St Paul's, for the first of their five children
was born in May of the following year. In addition to his duties at the
cathedral and his work as a teacher – Travers, Boyce and Stanley were
among his first pupils – he was also involved in a good deal of secular
music-making, as a founder-member of the Castle Society, and also of the
Academy of Ancient Music, at whose weekly meetings some at least of
Greene's own works were performed.
Before long, however, he was caught up in the celebrated Bononcini
affair which, in 1731, split the ranks of the academicians and,
according to Hawkins, ‘made a great noise in the musical world’. As the
agent of the deception by which Giovanni Bononcini sought to pass off a
Lotti madrigal as his own, Greene found himself on the losing side and
promptly withdrew from the academy, taking the boys of St Paul’s and
many of the society’s best performers with him. They then set up a rival
body, the Apollo Academy, at the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, which
was apparently devoted mainly to the interests of its three leading
composer-members, Greene, Boyce and Festing. In 1738, together with
Festing, he was also instrumental in establishing the Fund for the
Support of Decay'd Musicians and their Families (later the Royal Society
of Musicians). On Croft's death in August 1727, he was appointed
organist and composer of the Chapel Royal. On 6 July 1730 the new Senate
House in Cambridge was opened with a performance of his setting of
Pope's Ode on St Cecilia's Day, specially adapted for the occasion by
the poet himself. The next day the composer was formally admitted
‘Doctor in Musica’ and, ‘in compliment to his performance’, was shortly
afterwards made professor of music, a purely honorary position which had
been vacant since the death of Tudway in November 1726. The Mastership
of the King's Musick followed in January 1735. Greene, not yet 40, now
held every major musical appointment in the land. In January 1750
Katharine Greene (1729-1797), the composer's only surviving child,
married the Rev. Michael Festing, son of one of Greene's oldest friends
and professional associates. About this time, his health began to
deteriorate: the Apollo Academy was disbanded and the conductorship of
the Sons of the Clergy festival passed to Boyce. His last years were
largely occupied with preparations for a projected collection of church
music, ancient and modern, copies of which he apparently intended to
present to every cathedral in England.
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