[Sir] John Stevenson
Life 1761-1833 [John Andrew Stevenson]; b. Dublin, prolific composer; chorister, and later vicar-choral at St. Patricks and Christ Church, Dublin; Doctor of Music, TCD 1791; knighted 1803; provided scores for John Atkinsons Love in a Blaze (1800); best-known for his collaboration with Thomas Moore in adapting Buntings music for the Irish Melodies (1808-33); d. 14 Sept. Headfort House, Kells, Co. Meath, the seat of his son-in-law, the Marquess of Headfort; the accompaniments for Powers edition of Moores Irish Melodies were continued by Henry Bishop at his death; there is a commemorative window by Ballantine of Edinburgh in St. Patricks Cathedral and a life by J. Bumpus. ODNB DIB
Criticism J[ohn Skelton] Bumpus, Sir John Stevenson: A Biographical Sketch (London: T. B. Bumpus 1893), [12] 75pp., music & port.; incls. The Dublin cathedral organs [pp.69-75].
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 smoothd 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), / Ive passed more bright and charmed hours/Than all earths wisdom could have given.
Thomas Moore (2): commenting on the republication of Buntings 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.)
References Belfast Public Library holds J[ohn Skelton] Bumpus, Sir John Stevenson (1893).
Notes Love in a Blaze: Stevenson also provided music for John Atkinsons Love in a Blaze (1800). See Irish Book Lover, 11.
Hadyn-esque: According to a BBC 3 broadcast at Christmas 1996, Stevensons settings of Moores songs are in the style of Hadyn.
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