From the Archives: Joseph Thomas Cooper

Joseph Thomas Cooper (25 May 1819 – 17 November 1879)

One of only three copies of the Cambridge Chimes.

“The Cambridge Chimes”: Voluntary for the Organ [Op.31]. Composed and dedicated to the Members of the University by Joseph Thomas Cooper.

Cambridge: Ling, & Son [and] London: Novello, Ewer, & Co. [1869].  MBM180. 

Cooper was not a Member of RSM although did donate his publication to the Society: this copy, one of only three known copies (the other two are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Royal College of Music, London), is inscribed at the head of the title-page “The Royal Society of Musicians: Presented by the Composer”.  

Cooper was an Associate of the Philharmonic Society, a member of the Society of British Musicians and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Cooper was organist of Christ Church, Newgate St., & St Leonard’s, Foster Lane, London, according to the title. Prior to this he had been at St Michael Queenhithe (1837-1844) and St Paul, Ball’s Pond Road (1844). The British musical biography: a dictionary of musical artists, authors and composers born in Britain and its colonies by James D. Brown and Stephen S. Stratton (Birmingham, 1897) noted that he had been a pupil of the famous pianist/composer Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) and “Henry Holmes”, presumably William Henry Holmes (1812-1885), and that he was also organist at Christ’s Hospital. He died at 113 Grosvenor Road, Highbury. 

The publication, like many of the period, has a charming title-page with an architectural surround featuring two vignettes, one of St Mary’s Church in Cambridge and other of the Clock Tower at Westminster, London.  It is printed in sepia, lithographed by M. & N. Hanhart [Nicholas Hanhart (1815-1902), his brother Michael having died in 1865].  

The Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Library to 1980 (London, 1981-1987) lists about 30 publications to his name, mostly of hymn tunes volumes, carols, anthems and sacred music, with about five items of piano music, organ music and one song (‘The Railway platform’). 

The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular of 1 April 1869 (p.55) included a faintly damningly-praised review of the publication reading:  “A Fantasia for the Organ on clock chimes is somewhat novel, to say the least of it; but why the Cambridge chimes have been fixed upon to give a title to the piece, seeing that they and the Westminster chimes are to all appearance identical, it is difficult to say. Perhaps the Cambridge ones were invented first, and the Westminster are a base imitation; or, perhaps – but enough of hypotheses, suffice it that Mr. Cooper has entitled his voluntary “The Cambridge Chimes,” and evolved out of those unpromising progressions a sufficiently interesting voluntary to please amateurs who are able to play a pedal obbligato of not too difficult a nature. There are also some combinations of stops indicated, which are of a somewhat startling and agreeable nature; and, above all, there is a musicianly quality about the whole composition which proves Mr. Cooper to be able to do better things than even this”.