A colorless, drizzly late-November afternoon in Sydenham, south east London. Seagulls trudge across the spreading puddles the place as soon as the stupendous Crystal Palace proudly stood… and died, in a heart-stopping, heart-breaking conflagration in November 1936.

Even with the elegant stone staircases and balustrades nonetheless tracing the location’s define – and even with the Victorian ground plan handy – it’s exhausting to boost the ghost of Crystal Palace’s legendary musical hero. Over right here, says the plan, is the world the place August Manns drove on his musicians with unflagging vitality, throughout greater than 12,000 concert events. Twelve thousand! A dizzying stat certainly that describes Manns’s marathon stretch because the venue’s music director from 1855-1901.

Manns it was who enticed and educated a brand new public for classical music, his affect spreading throughout the UK. His concert events have been a formative affect on the younger Elgar, who day-tripped by prepare from his Worcester dwelling to attend the maestro’s Crystal Palace ‘Saturday Live shows’, departing on the break of day and returning late.

Manns supplied acquainted classical favourites, but in addition repertoire journey of many sorts. His championing of rising native expertise led one commentator to dub him ‘the daddy of English music’, seeing in him the catalyst for a brand new period wherein British composers (and never forgetting performers) might maintain their very own internationally.

AJ Fuller-Maitland’s 1902 English Music within the Nineteenth Century mentioned of this ‘English Musical Renaissance’ that ‘so far as its supply might be ascribed to anyone spot, that honour have to be ascribed to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham’. And thus to August Manns.

Effectively over a century later, Manns authority Michael Musgrave affirms Fuller-Maitland’s judgment. ‘Everybody wished to play and be carried out on the Crystal Palace,’ he says. ‘Manns was generally known as a really delicate conductor, and supportive of younger composers and new developments in music. These days we take the “repertory” of British music as a right, however Manns was a significant determine in establishing what we’ve now lengthy taken over.’

Who was August Manns?

And but Manns – like his counterpart musical catalyst in Manchester, Charles Hallé – was no home-grown hero. Each have been born in Germany – Manns in 1825, in Stolzenberg, close to Leipzig. His father was a glassblower of restricted means, however an avid music fanatic.

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After a broad coaching in strings, woodwind and composition, the younger August spent the bigger a part of his early profession as a Prussian military bandmaster. That background is probably what in 1854 drew him to Crystal Palace (the yr it opened) the place he was appointed to play the clarinet in what was a military-style band, whereas additionally conducting, arranging and copying components. All for £3 every week.

The next yr, Manns assumed full duty for musical efficiency on the invitation of the secretary of the Crystal Palace Firm, George Grove (founding father of the go-to Dictionary of Music and Musicians). Grove can hardly have imagined the revolution that might be wrought by this unknown immigrant. Manns was to put in writing that in 1855 he ‘discovered neither orchestra, library, live performance room nor musical viewers [and] needed to battle with strongly rooted prejudices towards classical instrumental music. It was actually a matter of persistence, prudence, perseverance and pluck.’ Traits which paid off handsomely on the Crystal Palace.

Joseph Paxton’s monumental glass construction had been eliminated to Sydenham from its 1851 Nice Exhibition web site in Hyde Park after which modified for quite a lot of future makes use of. It was envisaged as an leisure/occasion house – and within the following a long time was the setting for the whole lot from nice artwork exhibitions and Shakespeare festivals to circus acts, cat and canine reveals and vehicle extravaganzas. On the outset, provision for musical efficiency was thought of low precedence. To Manns’s eternal credit score, classical music grew to become a significant aspect in defining Crystal Palace’s profile and status.

It was as effectively that Manns had perserverance. He refused to bow to Groves’s view that the venue’s mammoth acoustic dominated out string gamers. At first, his concert events featured separate repertoire for strings and wind, however Manns quickly formed two standard orchestras. Of central significance was the enclosure of a devoted Live performance Room inside the Palace inside.

Very quickly, Manns was providing concert events six days every week. A fundamental of two concert events per day, Monday to Friday, have been carried out by the Crystal Palace Firm’s Band. On the weekend got here the showpiece ‘Saturday Live performance’, given by the bigger (and increasing) Crystal Palace Orchestra – a weekly magnet for eager music-lovers, not least these after serious-minded novelty. Particular festivals and single-composer seasons diverse the musical attraction. Nowhere else did a conductor have such shut, each day contact together with his musicians, who have been supplied a uncommon secure revenue.

On the coronary heart of Manns’s technique was a deal with acquainted and fewer well-known (to British audiences) core classical repertoire – first UK performances have been a big function right here, together with a string of symphonies by Schumann and Schubert (amongst them the ‘Unfinished’ Eighth and ‘Nice C Main’ Ninth). Brahms’s music was largely established on this nation through Manns’s concert events. Past this, particularly on Saturdays, got here new music from the likes of Saint-Saëns, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and plenty of different non-Germanic composers. The performances have been enhanced by detailed programme notes – Groves led the best way as their author, however Manns and others additionally contributed.

What actually catches the attention is the variety of first performances of works by British composers, the bulk barely remembered (if in any respect) at present… corresponding to Ebenezer Prout, George Macfarren, Thomas Wingham, Henry Holmes and plenty of extra. Equally, each established and up-and-coming British singers and instrumentalists discovered a welcome at Crystal Palace. ‘There may be scarcely one British musician distinguished earlier than the general public at present who doesn’t owe his first listening to to August Manns,’ wrote a journalist trying again on the conductor’s reign.

Manns’s conducting appears to have been marked by a rhythmic vigour which in the best repertoire would possibly set a efficiency on hearth, even when his beat might be erratic. That hectic weekly schedule of concert events meant preparation was important: those that examined his scores noticed a mass of crimson and blue markings. A very historic Handel recording is our sole alternative to listen to him in motion, displaying the fruits of such diligence.

Manns took musical duty for the good Handel Triennial Festivals at Crystal Palace from 1885. In 1888, a passage from Israel in Egypt was captured (at distance) on an Edison phonograph – one of many very earliest surviving recordings of classical music. The technical high quality is execrable, however by the appalling hiss and crackle we nonetheless get a vivid sense of a conductor totally in management, albeit at sluggish speeds necessitated by the sheer dimension of the thousands-strong choir and the truth that the efficiency occurred within the gargantuan acoustic of the primary Crystal Palace transept. Tuning and steadiness are spectacular and there’s an actual physique to the sound.

There might be no larger tribute to Manns than the lengthy listing of nice performers his concert events attracted: famous person violinists included Joachim, Wieniawski, Sarasate and Ysaÿe; among the many pianists, Clara Schumann, Anton Rubinstein, Saint-Saëns, Busoni and Liszt.

One Liszt story speaks volumes. The Hungarian attended a day live performance of his music at Crystal Palace below Manns’s baton, earlier than happening that night to a dinner in his honour in London. Manns arrived late to this occasion, however to forestall a really public embarrassment Liszt ostentatiously rose from his seat to greet him, reportedly with the phrases: ‘I have to thanks once more for this glorious afternoon. I’ve typically heard of the excellence of your orchestra, however I by no means thought it was something like it’s. And greater than this, I by no means thought I had written such lovely music.’

Alas, Crystal Palace’s prominence as a significant orchestral venue couldn’t final. Live performance halls in central London have been on the up, with Queen’s Corridor’s arrival in 1893 the crowning glory. Arguably they benefited from Manns’s work in constructing that new viewers for classical music. Having to journey ten miles or so from central London all the way down to Sydenham had all the time been a possible disincentive for concertgoers – therefore the printing of prepare occasions in Crystal Palace programmes and the supply of cut-price mixed rail/live performance tickets.

The 2 Crystal Palace orchestras have been disbanded in 1900. Gratifyingly, Manns (who grew to become a British citizen in 1894) was honoured with a knighthood in 1903. June the next yr noticed the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Crystal Palace. Manns duly performed a jubilee live performance on a suitably large ‘Handel Competition’ scale. A ten,000-strong viewers gathered within the central transept to listen to 3,000 performers blast out Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Reward and different favourites. On the shut, the ageing maestro was offered with a wreath to recognise his personal 50 years on the venue. Within the night, he and Woman Manns have been visitors of honour on the jubilee banquet, after which fireworks (courtesy Messrs Brock) haloed the good glass edifice.

Manns continued to stay close by till his loss of life in 1907 on the age of 81. The multitude attending his funeral included Hubert Parry and Charles Stanford, two central figures in selling that ‘British Musical Renaissance’, each as composers and academics. Every owed a lot to Manns’s championing of their music.

The modest grandeur of Crystal Palace railway station stays as a memorial to the times when tens of 1000’s would possibly move by en path to the well-known web site. They used additionally to reach right here for Crystal Palace FC dwelling video games, performed within the constructing’s shadow from 1905. Though the membership is now based mostly two miles south, it’s comforting to assume that on match days a choir of 1000’s nonetheless chants within the title of Crystal Palace. No Handel… however a minimum of they’re singing.

Photographs © Getty Photographs