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Frederic Emes Clay (3 August 1838 – 24 November 1889) was an English composer known principally for songs and his music written for the stage. Although from a musical family, for 16 years Clay made his living as a civil servant in HM Treasury, composing in his spare time, until a legacy in 1873 enabled him to become a full-time composer. He had his first big stage success with Ages Ago (1869), a short comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert, for the small Gallery of Illustration; it ran well and was repeatedly revived. Clay, a great friend of his fellow composer Arthur Sullivan, introduced the latter to Gilbert, leading to the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership.
In addition to Gilbert, Clay's librettists during his 24-year career included B. C. Stephenson, Tom Taylor, T. W. Robertson, Robert Reece and G. R. Sims. The last of his four pieces with Gilbert was Princess Toto (1875), which had short runs in the West End and in New York. Clay's other compositions include and numerous individual songs. His last two works were both successful operas composed in 1883, The Merry Duchess and The Golden Ring. He then suffered a stroke that paralysed him at the age of 44 and ended his career.
The historian Kurt Gänzl has called Clay "the first significant composer of the modern era of British musical theatre",Gänzl (2001), p. 389 but even his most successful stage works were soon eclipsed by those of Gilbert and Sullivan. During his lifetime he was best known for his parlour songs, which were familiar throughout Britain. Clay's music was widely regarded as not particularly original or memorable, but musicianly and pleasing.
At the age of 20 Clay experienced what he called the "opening up" of his musical senses: hearing Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore at Covent Garden and Daniel Auber's Les diamants de la couronne at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, he was enthused by "the strength of vocal declamation in the one work and the delight of musical comedy in the other". In his free time he studied music with Moritz Hauptmann in Leipzig, and composed what his biographer Christopher Knowles calls "songs and light operas for the drawing rooms of high society". With his fellow Treasury clerk B. C. Stephenson as librettist he wrote three one-act operettas for amateurs: The Pirate's Isle (1859), Out of Sight (1860) and The Bold Recruit (1868). The Era commented on the second of these: "The composer is an amateur, but he has shown a dramatic power and a skill in instrumentation that would justify him in entering the lists with professional musicians"."The Theatres", The Era, 14 July 1861, p. 10
Clay had a modest operatic success with a one-act operetta, Court and Cottage, to a libretto by Tom Taylor, produced at Covent Garden in 1862 as an after-piece to Meyerbeer's Dinorah."Royal English Opera", The Times, 24 March 1862, p. 12 A second one-act piece for Covent Garden followed in 1865: Constance, a curtain-raiser for the annual pantomime, had a libretto by T. W. Robertson."Royal English Opera", The Times, 24 January 1865, p. 9 Like Court and Cottage, it was favourably reviewed in the press,"Royal English Opera", The Morning Post, 24 March 1862, p. 6; "Royal English Opera", The Standard, 24 March 1862, p. 3; "Music." The Daily News, 24 January 1865, p. 2; "Royal English Opera", The Standard, 24 January 1865, p. 3; and "Royal English Opera", The Times, 24 January 1865, p. 9 but did not remain in the theatrical repertoire.
In the mid-1860s, Clay and his close friend and fellow musician Arthur Sullivan were frequent guests at the home of John Scott Russell. By about 1865 Clay became engaged to Scott Russell's youngest daughter, Alice May, and Sullivan wooed the middle daughter, Rachel. The Scott Russells welcomed the engagement of Alice and Clay, but it was broken off, for unknown reasons.Ainger, p. 87; Jacobs, p. 53 Alice married another suitor in 1869; Clay remained single all his life.
Over the next four years Clay composed four further operatic pieces. The first, The Gentleman in Black (1870, with Gilbert), contained many of the Topsyturveydom ideas the librettist was to develop in his later collaborations with Sullivan and others.Gänzl (2001), p. 758 The premiere was enthusiastically received – in a favourable review The Morning Post noted that almost every number was encored"The Gentleman in Black", The Morning Post, 27 May 1870, p. 3 – but the piece ran for only 26 performances.Gänzl (2001), p. 758 The next three, In Possession (1871, for German Reed), Happy Arcadia (1872, with Gilbert), and Oriana (1873, with James Albery) all had short London runs. Clay contributed some of the music for other London shows in these years, including the extravaganzas Ali Baba à la Mode (1872) and Don Giovanni in Venice (1873), the "grand opéra-bouffe féerie" The Black Crook (1872) and the "fantastic music drama" Babil and Bijou, or The Lost Regalia (1872). The last of these, given at Covent Garden was a spectacular production that ran for some eight months and attracted highly favourable notices for Clay and his fellow composer, Jules Rivière.Rivière, pp. 176–177
Green Old Age, a "musical improbability", with a libretto by Robert Reece (1874) to which Clay contributed some of the music," Green Old Age", Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 7 November 1874, p. 3 was followed by a commission from Kate Santley for an opéra-bouffe, Cattarina, or Friends at Court, with a libretto by Reece. This successfully toured the provinces, with the composer conducting and Santley starring as Pincione; it was given at the Charing Cross Theatre, London, during the winter season of 1874–75.Gänzl (2001), p. 389; and "Advertisements and Notices", The Era, 27 June 1875, p. 12
The final collaboration between Clay and Gilbert was a three-act comic opera, Princess Toto, (1876), another vehicle for Santley.Gänzl (2001), p. 390 On tour and in the West End it attracted mixed notices, both for the libretto and the score. The Timess later comment that the piece was "probably surpassed by no modern English work of the kind for gaiety and melodious charm"Obituary, The Times, 29 November 1889, p. 5 was not generally shared: a recurring theme in reviews was that Clay's music was musicianly and pleasing but not strikingly original or memorable."Theatre Royal", Birmingham Daily Post, 5 July 1876, p. 7; "Drama", The Daily News, 6 October 1876, p. 3; "The Strand", The Era, 8 October 1876, p. 13; "Standard Theatre", The New York Times, 14 December 1879, p. 7; and "The Drama in America", The Era, 11 January 1880, p. 4 At its first London production Princess Toto ran for less than a month. A New York production fared still worse.Gänzl (2001), p. 1657 When it was revived in London in 1881 The Times commented that the piece had not appealed to audiences in 1876, "accustomed to a more broadly humorous style of extravaganza" and hoped that by 1881 public taste had become more cultivated under the influence of Gilbert's other comic operas."Opera Comique", The Times, 18 October 1881, p. 4 Nonetheless, the revival ran for only 65 performances.
Clay's cantata Lalla Rookh (containing his best-known song, "I'll sing thee songs of Araby" and also "Still this golden lull"), was given successfully at the Brighton Festival in 1877, and was later performed elsewhere in Britain and the US. Clay found a lack of opportunity in Britain and moved to the US in 1877. He met with only mixed success there and returned to London in 1881. His last stage works were two collaborations with the librettist G. R. Sims: a "sporting comic opera", The Merry Duchess, (1883) given at the Royalty Theatre, starring Santley,Gänzl (1986), p. 228 and The Golden Ring starring Marion Hood (1883). The latter was written for the reopening of the Alhambra Theatre, which had been burned to the ground the year before.Gänzl (1986), p. 230 These shows were both successful and, in Gänzl's view, showed an artistic advance on Clay's earlier work.Gänzl (1986), pp. 228 and 230
Clay had been in precarious health during the year, and had been obliged to abandon work on a third cantata, Sardanapalus, commissioned for the Leeds Festival.Rivière, p. 220; and Jacobs, p. 184 After conducting the second performance of The Golden Ring in December 1883 he suffered a stroke that paralysed him and cut short his productive life. In 1889 at the age of 51, he was found drowned in his bath at the home of his sisters in Great Marlow. The coroner's verdict was suicide while of unsound mind. Clay was buried in Brompton cemetery on 29 November 1889.
In the article in the 2001 edition of Grove, Christopher Knowles sums up Clay's music:
Although even his most successful stage works were soon eclipsed by those of Gilbert and Sullivan, and his music was widely regarded as musicianly and pleasing but not particularly original or memorable, in Gänzl's view he was "the first significant composer of the modern era of British musical theatre".
1866 to 1873
In 1866 Clay's first cantata, The Knights of the Cross was performed in London, conducted by Sullivan. It was politely received, but the composer's "talent and good taste" did not, in the opinion of one reviewer, result in "much originality of character"."Civil Service Musical Society", The Standard, 23 July 1866, p. 7 In 1869 came Clay's first substantial theatrical success, the "operatic entertainment" Ages Ago, written for the German Reeds at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The piece, described by the historian Kurt Gänzl as "an enormous success", ran for 350 performances during its first run, and was revived several times.Gänzl (1986), p. 19 and (2001), p. 389 The first production was in a double bill with Sullivan's Cox and Box."Royal Gallery of Illustration", The Morning Post, 23 November 1869, p. 3 Clay dedicated the published score of Ages Ago to Sullivan;Searle, p. 21 at a rehearsal of the piece, probably in 1870, Gilbert met Sullivan for the first time, introduced by Clay.Crowther, p. 84
Full-time composer
Foreseeing, and not relishing, a long period of Conservative government after the party's election victory in February 1874, Clay resigned from the Treasury. A legacy from his father, who died in September 1873, left him financially independent and able to devote his energies to full-time composition."Mr Frederic Clay at Clarence Chambers", The Yorkshire Post, 18 April 1883, p. 6
Music
Sullivan wrote the article about his friend in the early editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He said of Clay's music:
Music theatre
The Pirate's Isle operetta ? B. C. Stephenson Private amateur performance 1859 Score and libretto lost Out of Sight operetta 1 Stephenson Bijou Theatre, London February 1860 Court and Cottage operetta 1 Tom Taylor Covent Garden 22 March 1862 Constance opera 1 T. W. Robertson Covent Garden 23 January 1865 The Bold Recruit operetta 1 Stephenson Theatre Royal, Canterbury 4 August 1868 Ages Ago musical legend 1 W. S. Gilbert Gallery of Illustration, London 22 November 1869 The Gentleman in Black musical legend 2 Gilbert Charing Cross Theatre, London 26 May 1870 In Possession operetta 1 Robert Reece Gallery of Illustration 20 June 1871 Babil and Bijou, or The Lost Regalia fantastic music drama 5 J. R. Planché after Dion Boucicault Covent Garden 29 August 1872 Collaboration with Hervé. Jules Riviére and J-J. de Billemont Ali Baba à la Mode extravaganza ? Reece Gaiety Theatre, London 14 September 1872 Collaboration with George Grossmith and others Happy Arcadia musical entertainment 1 Gilbert Gallery of Illustration 28 October 1872 The Black Crook grand opéra-bouffe féerie 4 Harry Paulton and John Paulton after the Cogniard brothers' La Biche aux bois Alhambra Theatre, London 23 December 1872 Collaboration with Georges Jacobi Oriana romantic legend 3 James Albery Globe Theatre, London 16 February 1873 Don Giovanni in Venice extravaganza ? Reece Gaiety 18 February 1873 Collaboration with James Molloy and Meyer Lutz Don Juan Christmas extravaganza 7 scenes H. J. Byron Alhambra 19 January 1874 Collaboration with Jacobi. Other music by Charles Lecocq and Offenbach Cattarina, or Friends at Court comic opera 2 Reece Prince's Theatre, Manchester 17 August 1874 Green Old Age musical improbability 1 Reece Vaudeville Theatre, London 31 October 1874 Princess Toto comic opera 3 Gilbert Theatre Royal, Nottingham and later Strand Theatre, London 26 June 1876 Don Quixote grand comic and spectacular opera 3 H. Paulton and Alfred Maltby Alhambra 25 September 1876 The Black Crook rev. version 4 Alhambra 3 December 1881 The Merry Duchess sporting comic opera 2 G. R. Sims Royalty Theatre, London 23 April 1883 The Golden Ring fairy opera 3 Sims Alhambra 3 December 1883
Incidental music
Choral
Songs
Numerous, including "She Wandered Down the Mountainside", "The Sands of Dee", and "'Tis Better Not to Know".
Notes, references and sources
Notes
Sources
External links
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