Leslie Stuart - WikiHQ

right|thumb|Leslie Stuart

Leslie Stuart (15 March 1863 – 27 March 1928) born Thomas Augustine Barrett was an English composer of Edwardian musical comedy, best known for the hit show Florodora (1899) and many popular songs.

He began in Manchester as a church organist, for 14 years, and taught music while beginning to compose church music and secular songs in the late 1870s. In the 1880s, he began to promote and conduct orchestral and vocal concerts of popular and theatre music as "Mr. T. A. Barrett's Concerts". He began to focus his composition on music hall, including songs for blackface performers, such as "Lily of Laguna"; songs for musical theatre, such as pantomimes and London shows touring through Manchester; and ballads such as "Soldiers of the King". Stuart later campaigned against the interpolation of new songs into musical theatre scores and for better enforcement of musical copyrights.

In 1895, Stuart began to write songs for George Edwardes's London shows at the Gaiety Theatre and Daly's Theatre. His first full musical comedy score was Florodora in 1899. The show became an international hit, and its song "Tell me, pretty maiden", became a vaudeville standard. Other musical comedy successes followed, including The School Girl (1903), The Belle of Mayfair (1906) and Havana (1908). Of his later shows, only Peggy made much of an impact. By 1911, Stuart's gambling debts sent him into bankruptcy. Unable to adapt to changing musical tastes, he was no longer in demand as a composer, although he had some success as a piano sketch artist in variety theatre.

Life and career

right|thumb|upright|Sheet music for "[[Lily of Laguna", 1898]]

Early years

According to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Stuart was born in Southport, on the Lancashire coast on 15 March 1863. He was the younger son of Thomas Barrett, a cabinet-maker, and his wife, Mary Ann Burke, née Lester, who were both from western Ireland. He grew up in Liverpool, where he attended St Francis Xavier's College. His family moved to Manchester in 1873.

He began his career aged 15 as organist at Salford Cathedral. He held the post for seven years, and then moved to be organist at the Church of the Holy Name, Manchester, where he remained for another seven years. To augment his salary he composed church music and taught. These concerts featured popular orchestral music and selections from comic operas by such composers as Sullivan and Cellier, and excerpts from English grand operas by Balfe and Wallace. Singers included Zélie de Lussan, Marie Roze, Ben Davies, David Ffrangcon-Davies, Durward Lely and Charles Manners. Instrumental soloists included Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Eugène Ysaÿe.

Thomas Barrett had been property master at the Amphitheatre, Liverpool, and both his sons had quickly gained a taste for the theatre. Stuart's elder brother, Stephen (1855–1924), became a music-hall performer, appearing under the stage name Lester Barrett.

left|thumb|upright|Sheet music for [[Florodora, 1899]]

Stuart's earliest theatrical composing and writing was also for the Manchester theatre. Here he provided songs and incidental music for, in particular, the local pantomimes, which boasted famous names in their casts. Stuart made a name in the 1890s by writing popular individual numbers that were interpolated into several West End and touring musicals by other composers. Later in his career, he would actively oppose this practice. The first of these songs was "Lousiana Lou". This had already been published and performed in music hall before being picked up by Ellaline Terriss and inserted, along with "The Little Mademoiselle", into the original production of The Shop Girl (1894), at the Gaiety Theatre.

During the run of George Edwardes's An Artist's Model (1895), Stuart wrote several numbers that were interpolated (including "The Soldiers of the Queen", which was later famous as "Soldiers of the King"), and both wrote the lyric and composed "Trilby Will Be True" for Maurice Farkoa to perform at Daly's Theatre. Subsequently he had songs used in Baron Golosh, The Circus Girl (1896), the London production of the American musical A Day in Paris (1897), Carl Kiefert's The Ballet Girl (1897) and The Yashmak (1897).

Stuart composed some 65 songs including, in addition to those mentioned above, "The Bandolero", and "Little Dolly Daydream". His instrumental pieces included at least one Cakewalk. As a songwriter, Stuart suffered so much from the effects of copyright infringement that it can be speculated that his move to the musical theatre was an attempt to avoid the loss of royalty income from the publication of sheet music and performances. The music critic Neville Cardus wrote about the "beautiful and unexpected phrasing and transitions" in the number, continuing, "it begins with a long phrase, rather like the opening bars of a Brahms symphony. It is extraordinary to find music such as this in a musical comedy". He ended by writing that in its own way it was "just as perfect a composition … as is the quintet in Meistersinger".

Florodora was followed by The Silver Slipper (1901), The School Girl (1903), The Belle of Mayfair (1906), and Havana (1908). All these shows were successful and were produced internationally.

Stuart was an active campaigner for intellectual property rights and called for tighter laws on both national and international copyright. Publishers and wealthy second-rate songwriters would pay producers, for the exposure, to insert their songs into a hit musical. With the strength of the fame of Florodora behind him, Stuart succeeded in stopping this practice in his next few pieces. Similarly, he had succeeded from time to time in parts of his fight in Britain and in America against unauthorized music distribution and on behalf of firmer national and international copyright laws. His next production, The Slim Princess (1910), made only a modest impact, though it was produced in New York as well as in London. Peggy was produced at the Gaiety in 1911 and had a reasonable but not outstanding run, from March to November in London, as well as a Broadway run. In the words of Stuart's biographer Andrew Lamb, these pieces "failed to add to his reputation". He was declared bankrupt in 1913 and not discharged until 1920. although he did write a number of songs that were inserted, against his principles, in the shows of other composers and a musical, Bubbles (1914), that was produced only in the provinces on a small scale. They were collected and republished in 2003 under the title My Bohemian Life. Stuart and his wife, Kitty, had five children who survived to adulthood, Mary "May" (1886–1956), Thomas "Leslie" (1888–1970), Marie "Dollie" (1891–1949), Stephen "Chap" (b. 1894) and Constance "Lola" (b. 1896).

Stuart died at his daughter May's home in Richmond Hill, London in 1928, and was buried in Richmond Cemetery following a requiem mass at St Elizabeth of Portugal Church.

Reputation and legacy

The mid-20th century critic James Agate said that he had proved the quality of Stuart's music: he took a Stuart song, halved the tempo, supplied German words – and serious musicians accepted without demur his assertion that it was a recently discovered cradle song by Brahms. In 2003 the critic Rodney Milnes called Stuart "the most gifted composer of musical comedy in Britain between Sullivan and Vivian Ellis". Stuart's songs have been used in over a dozen other films. A bronzed plaster plaque of Stuart, made by John Cassidy, was placed in the Manchester Central Library in April 1939, inscribed "A son of Manchester who moved the nation to song".

Notes

References

External links

Leslie Stuart at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
Leslie Stuart recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings
Leslie Stuart at Illustrated Sheet Music