Angel of Life: a neglected basso classic

 

Thoroughly neglected. You Tube doesn't even know what it was. Why? In its time -- and for decades thereafter -- it had its place on the richest programmes and in the ritziest London and Festival programmes, sung by the greatest bass singers of the early 19th century.

Has no one ever recorded it? When was it last sung in comparable company? 

'Angel of Life' the song was first performed, in manuscript, in 1802, at Mr Harrington's Benefit at London's King's Theatre (7 May) by the acknowledged outstanding English bass singer of the era, James Bartleman (1769-1821). Its words were taken from 1799 poem 'The Pleasures of Hope' by the Scots writer Thomas Campbell 

The musical setting was the work of Dr John Wall Calcott (1766-1821), a prolific writer of glees,.

After its initial performance, Bartleman gave 'his' song regularly, at the Hanover Square Rooms, at the Worcester Festival, at the Theatres Royal, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, always to huge approbation. Other gentlemen followed where he led -- a Mr Harrington at Fareham, Mr Lees at Chester, Mr William Pardy Lacy at Warrington, Mr Elliot at Salisbury et al. It was performed with a bassoon accompaniment, and a 'cello obbligato, it was interpolated into Acis and Galatea at Chichester ...

Mr Lacy became the 'if you can't get Bartleman' performer on many occasions, including at the two competing London Oratorios, where Mr Tinney and Mr Charles Smith, and later Mr Thorne, also took a turn, but mostly -- in London and at the Festivals, it was Bartleman. But by the later 1810s, in the last years of Bartleman's life, and with Lacy having shufflled off for an extended stay in China, W H Bellamy became a prominent purveyor, while down in the fashionable purlieux of Bath and environs, popular basso Edward Rolle featured it regularly in his repertoire.

After twenty years of classy life, most songs had drifted from the lists in favour of newer pieces. But 'Angel of Life' was one of the survivors. Here it is, in 1835, over 30 years old, sung at Drury Lane by Bartleman's heir, Henry Phillips .. hopefully not accompanied by the twelve harps!

Phillips was still singing the piece at the Ancient Concerts 1839, at the Norwich Festival in 1842 ...
Others in the 1850s ....

A song which was such a favourite for half a century ... why has it disappeared ... or am I just looking in the wrong places?

Basses of the world .. here is a 'classic' waiting to be rediscovered.