J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

composers, one of whom can make the same kind of material ‘tell’ in the way another
cannot. It is this, as much as anything, that accounts for the appeal of Samuel
Wesley’s music to us today.
TEACHING HIMSELF TO COMPOSE
Evidence of this is can already be seen in this early oratorio. Of course, apart
from young Samuel’s feat in remembering at least some of the movements for two
years until he was able to write them down, the most remarkable thing about Ruth is
the fact that he finished it at all—for, make no mistake, Ruth is a real oratorio in three
acts, complete with a Handelian ouverture, recitatives, arias, and choruses (some of
them fugal): ‘an amazing achievement for a child of eight, let alone for one of six.’ 31
A comparison might be made with nine year old Daisy Ashford’s novel The Young
Visiters (1890). 32 Both show much the same naïve charm, the same pleasure in
manipulating stock phrases, and the same impressive but short-breathed inventiveness.
When Daisy Ashford runs out of ideas she simply stops: ‘Here I will end my chapter’,
and Samuel Wesley does much the same. Few of the arias are more than two pages in
length. If an accompanying figure bores him or proves unmanageable, he drops it or
changes it. He scores for an orchestra during the choruses and when he wants
orchestral effects (showing a particular fondness for trumpets), but otherwise the organ
does most of the work. Many of the arias are remarkably successful—exploring at the
keyboard, 33 he was able to reproduce by ear the most obvious features of his models,
just as Mozart had been able to do when he was slightly older. 34 By and large they are
31 Olleson, Wesley, p.251.
32 London: Chatto and Windus, 1919.
33 When he is said to have composed parts of the oratorio some years before writing them down, this
presumably means that he worked them out with his fingers rather than in his head.
34 See p.331 below.
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