Stevens, Richard John Samuel
Stevens, Richard John Samuel
Stevens, Richard John Samuel, English organist and composer; b. London, March 27, 1757; d. there, Sept. 23, 1837. He was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. From 1786 to 1810 he served as organist at the Inner Temple, and from 1801 he was a prof. of music at Gresham Coll. He ed. Sacred Music…from the Works of the Most Esteemed Composers, Italian and English (c. 1798–1802). Stevens was one of the finest glee composers of his day. His most celebrated glees were Ye Spotted Snakes (1782; rev. 1791), Sigh No More, Ladies (1787), Crabbed Age and Youth (1790), Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind (1792), and The Cloud-Cap’t Towers (1795). He also wrote an opera, the oratorio Emma, The Captivity, various keyboard pieces, including 3 sonatas, church music, and songs. M. Argent ed. his Recollections of R. J. S. Stevens: An Organist in Georgian London (Basingstoke and London, 1992).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire