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Life
1761-1833 [John Andrew Stevenson; Sir John A. Stevenson]; b. Crane Lane, off Dame St., Dublin, son of namesake coachmaker and voilinist; taken in by Gibson, of Gibson and Woffington, the Grafton St. instrument-maker, at the early death of both his parents; become endentured chorister at Christ Church Cath., 1711, and stipendary at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1775 - both posts normally reserved for English boys; taught piano there by Richard Woodward and Samuel Murphy; grad. Doctor of Music, TCD 1791; taught musical theory to Irish [uilleann] pipe-player, Edmund Keating Hyland, 1800; knighted 1803; provided scores for John Atkinson’s Love in a Blaze (1800); a selection of his work was printed by James Power in two vols. (London 1825), ded. to George IV.
best-known for his collaboration with Thomas Moore [q.v.] in adapting Edward Bunting’s music for Moore’s Irish Melodies (London: Power 1808-33); knighted by Viceroy Earl of Hardwick (Philip Yorke), 1803; organist and mus. dir. at Chapel Royal, 1814; awarded hon. D.Litt by TCD; d. 14 Sept., 1833, at Headfort House, Kells, Co. Meath, the seat of his son-in-law, the Marquess of Headfort; the accompaniments for Power’s edition of Moore’s Irish Melodies were continued by Henry Bishop at his death; a marble cenotaph by Thomas Kirk erected in his honour in Musicians' Corner, Christ Church; a commemorative window by Ballantine of Edinburgh was set in the south aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1864; there is life by J. Bumpus (1893). ODNB DIB [WIKI]
Criticism
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Commentary
Thomas Moore (1): Moore wrote of Stevenson: ‘He who, if aught of grace there be, / In the wild notes I write or sing, / First smooth’d their links of harmony, / And lent them charms they did not bring; / He of the gentlest, simplest hear / With whom, employed in his sweet art / (That art which gives this world of ours / A notion how they speak in Heaven), / I’ve passed more bright and charmed hours/Than all earth’s wisdom could have given.’
Thomas Moore (2): commenting on the republication of Bunting’s collection, Moore writes that he himself frequently ‘ventured in these very allowable liberties’ [of changing the original] and that Sir John was entirely innocent of them.’ (Diary entry for 15-17 July 1840, in Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence, II, 278; see Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980, p.299.)
James Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches (London: Chapman & Hall): ‘The Colonial Parliament, in which the Prior of Christ Church always held a seat, passed a law in 1380 that no native should be suffered to profess himself in this institution; “an enactment,” says Mr. Gilbert, “so strictly observed, that, excepting in the reign of James II, no Irishman was admitted even as Vicar-Choral of Christ Church until John A. Stevenson was enrolled among the pupils of its music school, late in the eighteenth century.’ (p.34; without ref. - though clearly to Sir John Gilbert’s History of Dublin.)
Belfast Public Library holds J[ohn Skelton] Bumpus, Sir John Stevenson (1893).
Notes
Love in a Blaze: Stevenson also provided music for John Atkinson’s Love in a Blaze (1800). See Irish Book Lover, 11.
Hadyn-esque: According to a BBC 3 broadcast at Christmas 1996, Stevenson’s settings of Moore’s songs are in the style of Hadyn.
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