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Early in 1880, Annabelle had been approached by the conductor Julius Benedict after one of his concerts at the Crystal Palace, and asked if she might be interested in going to America to teach violin in New York.  The famous entrepreneur Theodore Thomas was looking for someone to teach young people (mainly young women) who… Read more

A remarkable event took place at the Crystal Palace on 7 July 1872.  This was a contest for Choirs from across England and Wales, arranged by August Manns.  For me, the most outstanding Choir came from South Wales, mainly because their unique sound, their ‘hywl’ (as they call it), resonated within me richly.  The large… Read more

At all events, August Manns did a great service by consistently pressing for the standard pitch of 440 cycles per second, and consequently my pegs, as well as my strings, were glad not to be fiddled with so often! However, I believe there is a profound and spiritual aspect to the whole matter of pitch… Read more

The Fair at Wroxham drew large crowds every year, and 1863 was no exception. Consequently, I felt ‘used’ again!  I was handled, picked up, and fiddled with, by a vast array of people, including an eleven-year-old Frank Schuster, a boy of German Jewish ancestry, who with his mother Mary Schuster was visiting his grandmother in… Read more

The next few years witnessed some very serious discontent within the Wesleyan community, with North Norfolk particularly badly affected.  It was such a serious dissonance that a number of members of the Richardson family were torn apart by it. John and his uncle Isaac remained with the Wesleyans, but one of John’s older brothers, another… Read more

On our adventurous train journey out of London, I could hear anxious voices above the hissing steam engine and rattling machinery as the passengers discussed the news of ‘revolutions’ in Sicily, France, Germany, Italy and the Austrian Empire.  For me, all this excitable ‘chatter’ resonated with those experiences of conflict I had picked up at… Read more

Early in 1845 my friends Isaac and Esther Richardson back in Norfolk had seen a newspaper advertisement for a female domestic servant in the home of a prominent London musician.  Many local women and girls were taking work in London, and it did cross my mind whether Isaac had had an ‘inkling’ that I might… Read more

After four years of ‘being made use of’, I was finally rescued by the Master of the (new) Queen’s Musick, Franz Cramer.  Of all the luminaries around John Ella, Franz Cramer was the only one who had that special Schleiermacher ‘Stimmung’ quality which had now become firmly ingrained into my frame and sounding board.  And… Read more

Samuel Wesley told the truth about my being stolen to his close friend Vincent Novello.  Perhaps it was at a Freemason’s Lodge Meeting, where all manner of secrets are shared.  To cut a long story short – or to bring this over-long Norfolk ‘symphony’ to its coda – Sir George Smart had ‘cut a deal’… Read more

For a couple of years Isaac and I travelled relentlessly from one Methodist meeting to another across swathes of north Norfolk, accompanying the hearty singing of these well-meaning people, in Meeting Houses, chapels, farmer’s barns, in beer shops, public houses, and often in the open air.  These were people who had clearly found a voice… Read more