7
MUSICAL C OU RI È Й
May 3, 1923
THE CENTENARY OF HOME, SWEET HOME
AT CONVENT GARDEN THEATER, LONDON May 8, 1823
FIRST SUNG IN THE OPERA GLARI, OR THE MAID OF MILAN
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
who wrote the words of Home, Sweet Home.
SIR HENRY BISHOP
who composed (or arranged) the music of Home, Sweet Home.
ANNE MARIA TREE,
operatic soprano, the first to sing Home, Sweet Home.
SIR HENRY R. BISHOP
Composer of Home, Sweet Home
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Author of Home, Sweet Home
Underwood & Underwood.	THE PAYNE HOMESTEAD
still standing, at East Hampton, L. I. John Howard Payne lived here as a hoy; in fact, some claim he was horn here instead of—as is commonly reputed—An the city of New Y or1'. ■
By A. T. King
John Howard Payne, author of the words of Home, Sweet Home, was born June 9, 1791. New York City has always been given as his birthplace, but of late some evidence has been produced that he may have first seen the light of day in the old Payne family homestead, still standing in East Hampton, Long Island. As a young man he took up the profession of an actor. He went to England first in 1812 and won considerable reputation upon the stage there, appearing first' at Drury Lane.
It was on May 8, 1823, that his immortal song. Home, Sweet Home, was sung in public for the first time. In that year Charles Kemble, manager of Covent Garden Theater, London, bought a quantity of Payne’s writings, among them being a play entitled Clari, or The Maid of Milan. At the time, Payne was living in Paris in reduced circumstances, so that he was glad to receive Kemble’s request to make the play into an opera, for which, with other manuscripts, he was to receive $1,000. It was in this opera, known by the same name as the play, that the words of Home, Sweet Home were introduced.
Anne Maria Tree, elder sister of Mrs. Charles Kean, was^, prima donna of the opera company. The music was composed by the then Mr. Henry Bishop, afterwards Sir Henry Bishop. Its success was instantaneous. It is said to have won a wealthy husband for Miss Tree and to have enriched all who handled it, excepting the author. He did not even receive the $125 which he reckoned as the share this opera should have brought him of the price for which he sold his manuscripts. There were 100,000 copies sold in a year, and the publisher is said to have made over $10,000 within two years.
When the opera was produced in London, notices of it said: “The libretto was written by a wandering America?),
John Howard Payne.” It had only a short life and was soon forgotten.
Payne returned to this country in 1832, and in 1841 was appointed consul at Tunis. All biographies are silent on his removal from this office, but here are his own words : “How often have I been in the heart of Paris, Berlin, London or some other city, and have heard persons singing, or hand organs playing Sweet Home without having a shilling to buy myself the next meal or a place to lay my head! The world has literally sung my song until eve*־y heart is familiar with its mei-ody, yet I have been a wanderer from boyhood. My country has turned me ruthlessly from office, and in my old age I have to submit to humiliation for my bread.”
He died at Tunis on April 10, 1852.
[The three upper photographs on this page were specially made in London for the Musical Courier by Clarence Lucas, from the original portraits. Payne as Hamlet is from the Sibley Collection, Rochester.]
By Clarence Lucas
One hundred years ago, in 1823, Payne and Bishop gave the waiting world the song called Home, Sweet Home. Why the world should have preserved this tune and let the rest of Bishop’s music perish is a mystery. If this is the best of Bishop, what must the worst be like? Why should the stream of time have cast this chip upon the shore of history and swept the remaining litter into the ocean of oblivion? The tune has unquestionably been kept alive by the sentiment of Payne’s words. Children hear this song in their earliest years. Later on in life it awakens memories of time long past. It has associations of the far away and brings visions of mother in her prime and father in his strength, before they were laid to rest under the daisies on the hillside. It reunites in fancy long separated friends and families and sheds a golden light on scenes of departed days. It has a message for the traveler in foreign lands and the sailor on the lonely sea. If it does none of these things it is a silly tune and no better than ten thousand of its class.
John Howard Payne, the author of the words, was born in New York in 1791. He went to London in 1813, and ten years later his verses, Home, Sweet Home, were sung to Sir Henry Bishop’s music at Covent Garden Opera House. Payne spent about twenty-five years in England, and then became American consul at Tunis, where he died April 10, 1852, after eleven years of life in Africa. He saw very little of his own home, sweet home.
Henry Rowley Bishop, the composer of the music, was born in London in 1786. All his eighty-eight operatic entertainments have disappeared. Only a few songs remain to show what manner of composer he was. His most famous tune, Home, Sweet Home, was originally published as a Sicilian Air in a collection of small piano pieces he collected and composed. It is not nearly as much Sicilian !as Mozart’s Turkish rondo is Turkish. It fitted Payne’s words and he did not trouble to compose another tune. Little did he suspect that his little piano air was to become familiar to the entire English ■speaking world for at least a century. Bishop’s home life, too, was anything but sweet. His wife, then a famous singer, left him for the more interesting companionship of a French harpist named Bochsa. In an article by the American writer, N. P. Willis, on Mrs. Anna Bishop, is to be found the following information:
Mrs. Bishop should be called Lady Bishop, for her husband is a Knight; and if she has a right to his name at all she has a right to his title. How she comes to be away from Sir Henry, and under the charge of an old gentleman of sixty, who weighs three hundred pounds, and plays the harp divinely, it is each subscriber’s business to guess for himself.
In another article by another author, J. Ella, is to be found more information about Bos-cha :
At a meeting of directors, March 22, 1827, it was resolved that M. Bochsa’s suspension from all connection with the Royal Academy of Music be confirmed and promulgated
(Continued on Page 8).
JOHN, HOWARD PAYNE as Hamlet.
THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF HOME, SWEET HOME
By H. O. Osgood
The Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music, which is a part of the Rochester University, Rochester, N. Y., recently acquired by purchase through the generosity of its donor and founder, Robert Sibley, the original manuscript of Home, Sweet Home, a number of pages of which are reproduced herewith through the courtesy and by permission of the Sibley Library, which furnished the photographs to the Musical Courier.
Home, Sweet Home was one of the numbers from an opera called Clari, or the Maid of Milan, first performed (Continued on page 8)