Smith, John Stafford
Smith, John Stafford
Smith, John Stafford , English music scholar, organist, and composer; b. Gloucester (baptized), March 30, 1750; d. London, Sept. 21, 1836. He studied with his father, Martin Smith, organist at Gloucester Cathedral, and later with Boyce and Nares. In 1784 he was made a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and in 1802 was made one of its organists; from 1785 he served as lay-vicar at Westminster Abbey; also served as Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal (1805–17). His importance to music history rests upon his work as a music scholar. He acquired an invaluable collection of early music MSS and editions, which included the Mulliner Book and the Old Hall MS. In all, he acquired 2, 191 vols, of music, of which 578 were in MS. After his death, the collection was sold at auction and dispersed without a trace. As a composer, he became best known for his glees. In the 5thcollection of his glees (1799), he included an arrangement of the tune To Anacreon in Heaven, to which Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner (1814); but there were several reasons for questioning whether he was the composer; his authorship was doubted by many reputable American scholars. William Lichten-wanger, in his “The Music of The Star-Spangled Banner: From Ludgate Hill to Capitol Hill,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress (July 1977), seems to have dispelled these doubts by publ, excerpts from the “Recollections” of Richard John Samuel Stevens, an active member of the Anacreontic Society of London, who states in the rubric for 1777: “The president was Ralph Tomlinson…He wrote the Poetry of the Anacreontic Song; which Stafford Smith set to Music.” Smith was an excellent musician. He transcribed into modern notation early MSS for the History of Music by Sir John Hawkins, ed. Musica antiqua, containing compositions “from the commencement of the 12th to the 18th century” (2 vols., 1812), and publ. A Collection of Songs of Various Kinds for Different Voices (1785).
Bibliography
B. Frith, J.S.S., 1750–1836, Gloucester Composer (Gloucester, 1950); F. Grameny, J.S.S., 1750–1836: An Early English Musicologist (diss., Boston Univ., 1987).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire