Works
In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, W H Husk and Bruce Carr write of Goss, "His glees enjoyed long popularity for their grateful vocal writing. As a church composer his reputation came later, through the grace and the careful word-setting of his anthems, composed mostly after 1850." They quote a contemporary as saying that Goss's music "is always melodious and beautifully written for the voices, and is remarkable for a union of solidity and grace, with a certain unaffected native charm." Judith Blezzard, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, writes:
Goss was one of the most important early Victorian church composers, his anthems and services being most notable for their flexibility of phrasing, attention to detail in word-setting, and sense of proportion and balance. … In 1852 his anthem "If we believe that Jesus died", written for the funeral of the duke of Wellington, created a profound impression. In 1854 he produced the anthem "Praise the Lord, o my soul" for the bicentenary festival of the sons of the clergy. … Some of his anthems, including "The Wilderness" (1861), "O taste and see" (1863), and "O saviour of the world" (1869), have held a modest but enduring place in the repertory of English church music.Blezzard adds that Goss is chiefly remembered for his two most famous hymn tunes: "Praise my soul the King of Heaven" (1869) and "See, amid the winter's snow" (1871).
In the Dictionary of National Biography in 1890, J A Fuller Maitland wrote, "The best of Goss's works are distinguished by much grace and sweetness, underlying which is a solid foundation of theoretic and contrapuntal science. It is difficult to resist the assumption that at least some part of this happy combination was inherited, through Attwood, from Mozart. Goss was the last of the illustrious line of English composers who confined themselves almost entirely to ecclesiastical music." Among Goss's works, Fuller Maitland singled out for particular praise the glee "Ossian's Hymn to the Sun", and the anthems "The Wilderness," "O taste and see," and "O Saviour of the World".
Read more about this topic: John Goss (composer)
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“In all Works of This, and of the Dramatic Kind, STORY, or AMUSEMENT, should be considered as little more than the Vehicle to the more necessary INSTRUCTION.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)