In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many visitors to St. Austell commented favourably on the imposing nature of the Parish Church in what most observers considered an otherwise unremarkable town. In 1797 the young Rev. John Skinner recorded in his diary[i] the growing population of the town following developments in tin mining and processing, though commenting that ‘the streets are very narrow, and not having any pavement for foot passengers are somewhat unsafe.’ The importance of the town had increased after 1760 when the turnpike road from Plymouth to Falmouth had been diverted to pass through it, and with the industrial expansion of the early nineteenth century. Its population grew significantly from the 3,686 of the censuses returns of 1811 to 6175 in 1821. The atmosphere of the town was probably very similar to that described by Murray in 1859 in his Handbook for Travellers in Devon and Cornwall.
“It is seated on a southern slope of one of the great hills, and is a place of some bustle from the continual transit through its streets of heavy waggon loads of china clay for the harbours of Par and Charlestown. It is an old-fashioned and somewhat gloomy town, but can yet boast its cheerful villas on the outskirts.”
The ‘handsome fabric’ of the church-particularly the fifteenth century additions, with the ‘fancifully ornamented’ tower caught Skinner’s imagination as they did those of most visitors: “various carvings, monstrous heads, angels, and other figures appear on the cornices. Round the second story of the Tower, are eighteen statues in rich ornamented niches: six on the West side, and four on each of the others … The shields or ornaments on the outside of this fabric, are also carved on many of the seats; and from the repetition of the shovel, pick axe, and field and the hammers, and other tools, it seems probable that the Miners were the principal contributors towards the expenses of the building.”
No visitor, however, remarks upon the presence of an organ within this imposing building. Along with a number of other churches in the 1820s the parish church of St. Austell was considering ways of improving the musical contribution to its services. Like many other establishments a decision to install a barrel organ appeared the best compromise between financial and musical considerations; the sum of £150 was set aside to purchase one.[ii] Later a two-manual instrument was installed to replace it; though Canon Hammond, the historian of the parish, does not date the arrival of the new instrument, it was probably during the Victorian refurbishment of the church that this took place. What musical standards the church had possessed before the 1820s is difficult to determine though there is evidence of a continued tradition of choral singing; the obituary of the 83 year old John Jolyon, printed in the West Briton of 20 October 1826 describes the deceased “as for more than half a century clerk of that parish, and from the seventh year of his age a constant church singer.”
Hammond notes that in 1814 twenty pounds annually had been voted from the parish rates for the singing ‘which is of late very much improved’, so we may assume that the church paid serious attention towards the promotion of a good standard of music.
During the 1820s the activities of the parish church choir, under the direction of Bennett Swaffield, became a feature of the accounts of musical events noticed by the newspapers. No record of instrumental concerts taking place in the town has been found, but the performances of the choir, both in contributing to the services and, more significantly, in giving concerts of sacred music, are the first real evidence anywhere in Cornwall of the beginnings of the amateur choral tradition which was to grow in importance as the century progressed. Unlike musicians at Bodmin, Falmouth and Truro, Swaffield was never called ‘organist’ in these reports but invariably described as ‘Teacher of the Choir’; the modem designation would be choirmaster. This supports the view that, at the period of his appointment, the church did not possess a full organ. The Bibliotheca Cornubiensis provides most of the known biographical details. He had been born in Beaminster, Dorset, in March 1796, but the date of his move to St. Austell, or the reasons for it are not known. It is probable that he came as young man in his early twenties to further his musical career by filling a vacancy for a choirmaster at St. Austell, but no advertisement for the post has yet been discovered. Few provincial organists or choirmasters could manage financially on the church salaries and Swaffield supplemented his income from music with a clerical post in the St. Austell solicitor’s firm of Messrs. Coode. In the 1830 edition of Pigot’s National Commercial Directory he is identified as ‘Inspector of Corn Returns’ for the St. Austell district. In 1827 he married Helena Walker and remained in the town until his sudden death in October 1854. The identically worded death notices in the West Briton and Royal Cornwall Gazette give his age as 55, though according to Boase and Courtney he would have been 58. In the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis he is described as ‘organist’ so it is probable that the replacement of the barrel organ by a full instrument took place during the thirty or more years when he was responsible for musical activities in the church. There is no doubt that it was due to Swaffield’s enthusiasm that the innovations in concert giving in the 1820s took place, matched, presumably, by a good standard of music for the liturgy. The concerts normally took place at the parish church and normally included a selection of anthems, psalms and solos; occasionally there was a modest instrumental accompaniment introduced to support the choir.
“. . . a miscellaneous selection of Sacred Music was performed, by the choir to a numerous and most respectable audience. The progress the choir has made is highly creditable to the talents and taste of Mr. Swaffield the teacher. The recitative ‘Like as the dew of Hermon’ in Hooper’s anthem from the 133rd Psalm, was given with great effect by Miss Nancollas, as were several solas [sic) from other anthems. In Kent’s anthems, from the 37th chap. of Job, ‘Hearken unto this, 0 man’ and the 29th. Psalm, ‘Give the Lord the honour due’, the solos were sung with unusually good taste, by Miss Nancollas and Mr. Tremelling. The choir were greatly assisted by Mr. Roseola’s violoncello” ·[iii]
Inevitably the music of Handel appears in a number of concert reports, and in 1826 the choir performed ‘for the Benefit of the Distressed Manufacturers in Lancashire’ in a concert which raised a collection of £20-0-6 for the cause and which gained further praise from the correspondent of the West Briton.
“Independently of the pleasure the audience felt in the object of the performance, they were highly gratified by the manner in which the various pieces from Handel, Kent and others, were sung, and which reflects the greatest credit on Mr. Swaffield, the Teacher of the Choir, to whom additional praise must be given of assisting so excellent a cause by the exercise of their abilities.”[iv]
Swaffield and his choir did not confine their performances to the parish church but gave some of their concerts in other suitable premises. In the same year as their charity concert they made a small contribution to the ecumenical movement!
“On Sunday evening last, the body of singers which compose the Church Choir, attended Divine Service at the Independent Chapel, St. Austell: at the conclusion of which some pieces were sung with good effect under the direction of Mr. Swaffield. The Chapel was much crowded.”[v]
Like many provincial musicians Swaffield composed and some of his work survives. The West Briton advertised on 1 March 1822 the publication of a volume called Sacred Harmony ‘for the use of Churches and Families’.[vi] The announcement promised twenty five original melodies for new versions of the Psalms and two anthems and the author was appealing for a subscription list to finance publication; the music was to be published by Falkner’s Opera-Music Warehouse of Old Bond Street, London and sold at a cost of seven shillings and six pence through booksellers in the principal Cornish towns. The advertisement was repeated in the West Briton on 4th October 1822, possibly after Swaffield had put together his list of subscribers, though, in an advertisement a month later for the sale of a ‘very fine toned CREMONA violin’ for eight guineas[vii] there may be a sign that he had to realise personal assets to finance the printing of his music. Twenty Five Original Melodies – the published collection has a more prosaic title than the advertised Sacred Harmony-consists of psalm settings, two Sanctus’s, a dismission, a group of wordless psalm chants and a short anthem. All the psalm settings are drawn from Tate and Brady’s A New Version of the Psalms of David which was a popular source of words for hymnody and devotional music throughout the eighteenth century. The fact that Swaffield was using these poems more than a century after their first publication is an indication of the long-lived success of Tate and Brady’s achievement. In their own way ‘Tate and Brady’ had become as much a part of the common fabric of devotional language as the Authorised Version of the Bible or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
The spirit of eighteenth century hymnody also pervades the music; all the pieces are written for four part chorus with occasional passages for solo voices, together with a simple accompaniment playable either on the piano or organ without pedals. One can be quite certain from the layout of the music that the choral alto parts were written for men’s, not women’s, voices. There is no way of determining whether the highest part was for male or female voices. Swaffield certainly used a woman soloist-Miss Nancollas in his concerts, but the dominant Anglican tradition was for boys to sing the highest part in church music; one suspects that a similar tradition was followed in St. Austell. The texture of the music is predominantly homo phonic with few contrapuntal passages to tax an average choir or domestic singers. The harmonic idiom is straight-forward as the music has none of that cloying chromaticism which was to taint so much devotional music in the Victorian era. There are graceful, flowing melodies in 3/2 time
characteristic of many fine eighteenth century hymn tunes in nine of the items, and many of the remainder in variants of common time have a hymn like character. A few pieces-‘To God, the mighty God’, ‘Praise ye the Lord and ‘Just Judge of Heaven” are on a more ambitious scale, contrasting music in different metres and use a more varied blend of solo and chorus passages. Though Swaffield’s technique as a composer shows some limitations, especially in his command of harmony and in the generally un ambitious accompaniments, at his best in a vigorous setting like ‘Jehovah reigns’ or in the touching simplicity of ‘Have mercy Lord’, there is a direct dignity unmarred by technical weakness.
Bennett Swaffield is not a lost genius; his music does not merit revival except out of a sense of curiosity, yet it does illuminate some details of church music for which there is little other surviving evidence. It is also particularly fortuitous that the music of one of the pioneers of choral music in the region has survived.
Extract from Richard McGrady: Music and Musicians in Early 19th Century Cornwall University of Exeter Press, 1991 pp.103 – 108. By Kind permission of Exeter University Press 7th April 2022.
[i] Ed R Jones, West Country Tour pp 87 -90
[ii] Canon J.Hammond, A Corish Parish. P144.
[iii] West Briton 12/11/1824
[iv] West Briton 02/06/1826
[v] West Briton 21/07/1826
[vi] See R. J. McGrady “Bennet Swaffield’s Sacred Harmony”, Journal Of The Royal Institution of Cornwall X, pp.44-57, See also Kresen Kernow ref CMA/1/1/24
[vii] West Briton 15/11/1822