John Varley Roberts and Religious Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain

David Baker chronicles the extraordinary life and achievements of John Varley Roberts (1841-1920), a working-class Yorkshireman who became a popular composer and one of Victorian England's most celebrated choral trainers as well as Organist of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Roberts’s influence was considerable and enduring at a time when church music was undergoing a significant transformation in Britain. Roberts influenced generations of choristers, musicians, and choir directors, sitting alongside John Stainer and Walter Parratt as one of the greats of his generation. During his long tenure of office at Magdalen (1883-1918), the choir was widely regarded as the very best in the country and beyond. He was a prolific and popular composer and wrote forty anthems, four complete services, organ solos, songs, part songs, and the cantata Jonah. His anthem ‘Seek ye the Lord’ remains popular internationally in countries as diverse as the USA and Japan. His compositions form a valuable indicator of taste and fashion, music making and publishing of the time. Roberts’s life, work and achievements are considered in the context of changes in Anglican Church music, and especially the rise of cathedral-type services, alongside educational and societal developments in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.