John Stanley was born in London on 17
January 1712. A precocious musician, by
the age of nine he was playing the organ
(probably as an occasional deputy) at All
Hallows, Bread Street.
When the titular organist there – the
composer and harpsichordist William
Babell, a former pupil of Handel – died on
23 September 1723, an eleven year-old
Stanley was appointed in his place. At the
age of 14 he was chosen as organist at St.
Andrew’s, Holborn and at the age of 17
became the youngest person ever to obtain
the BMus degree from Oxford University.
In 1734 he was appointed organist to the
Society of the Inner Temple, a position he
held until his death.
As a musician whose primary responsibilities
were liturgical, John Stanley was
required to accompany the service
music every Sunday, and also to improvise
voluntaries at various points in the
service. A voluntary was a piece improvised
extemporaneously and, prior to the 19th
century, in the Church of England there
were two principal forms of voluntary.
These were a First Voluntary – generally an
introduction and a movement or two for
solo stops such as the trumpet or cornet
– placed between the psalms and the first
lesson at Morning and Evening Prayer, and
a Second Voluntary – generally an introduction
and fugue – at the end of the service.
John Stanley’s primary responsibility in
his sixty-three years as organist at these
various churches, was to improvise a
voluntary before the first lesson (comprising
an introduction and an additional
movement or two for the solo stops) and
an introduction and fugue at the end of
the service. Stanley’s improvisations were
reportedly so fine that on Sundays none
other than Handel himself, who attended
St. George’s, Hanover Square, would sometimes
leave church early and rush over to
the Temple Church to hear Stanley’s final
voluntary.
Most voluntaries were never written down
as compositions, and very few voluntaries
for organ were published in England
before Stanley’s Op.5 of 1748. But written-out
voluntaries did serve two main purposes:
first, they were often used for recital
purposes, as for example when organists
like Stanley played at the dedication of a
new instrument; second, they were widely
used as exercises for apprentices or organ
students, or for church organists new to their
roles. Some of the manuscript collections
produced for this purpose have survived.
One important collection of this kind is the
so-called Southgate Manuscript, a collection
of 64 voluntaries in the library of the
Royal College of Organists in London. This
seems to have been compiled around the
year 1750 in order to instruct choristers of
the Chapel Royal who were learning the
organ. This manuscript contains several
of the early organ works of John Stanley.
Recorded June 2024 in Rocca Massima, Italy
Booklet in English contains liner
notes by Romeo Ciuffa, organ specification
with stop list and a profile of the organist