This month we celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of August Manns with the complete obituary from The Times interspersed with images.  At the time of his death, The Musical Times estimated that he had conducted an astonishing 12,000 concerts during his 42 years at the Crystal Palace.

THE TIMES
Monday, 4th March 1907

Obituary

We regret to record the death of Sir August Manns, which occurred on Friday at his residence at Norwood.

Born at Stolzenburg, near Stettin, in North Germany, on March 12, 1825, August Friedrich Manns was the fifth child of a glassblower who chanced to be fond enough of music to stimulate his children’s love of it to the utmost.  From a family party of five instrumentalists he passed under the tuition of a village musician named Tramp, who taught him the flute, clarinet, and violin, the last of which was his chief instrument.  The years of drudgery in these surroundings, and subsequently under Urban, the town musician of Elbing, gave him that familiarity with the chief orchestral instruments which was to be of such service in after life.  He was for some time among the first clarinets in an infantry regiment stationed at Danzig, where he also played the violin in the theatre; after joining Gungl’s orchestra in Berlin he was made conductor and solo violinist at Kroll’s Garden, a post he held from 1849 to 1851, when the place was destroyed by fire.  Another military engagement brought him, at Cologne, under the notice of a certain Herr Schallehn, who had been appointed conductor of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, shortly to be opened; he was engaged to play the clarinet, to be sub-conductor, and copyist.  It is interesting to know that he played at the opening of the Crystal Palace in 1854.  In the same year he was dismissed in circumstances which reflected most discreditably upon Schallehn; this worthy had appropriated a set of quadrilles arranged by Manns, and on Manns’s expostulations got him discharged.  Happily, after an engagement as violinist in Wood’s opera band in Scotland, he was appointed in the autumn of 1855 to succeed Schallehn as conductor of the music at the Crystal Palace.  So rare a piece of poetical justice deserves record.  Before the following year the brass band, which was the germ of the orchestra afterwards to be famous, was converted into a full band; and from that time forward Manns conducted the concerts with ever-increasing distinction and artistic success.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of Manns in the renaissance of musical life in this country, which dates from the latter half of the 19^th century.  Through the sixties and the seventies he stood practically alone as the conductor of the one series of orchestral concerts accessible to Londoners where the best music of all schools, new as well as old, was properly interpreted, and where a sound catholicity of taste regulated the choice of the music to be performed.  To add to all the usual difficulties of such a position, the distance from London was a continual stumbling-block to the attainment of perfect performances, and through a long course of years it may well be imagined what sort of influences on the part of directors, &c., had to be withstood.  In this side of his work it is matter of common knowledge that Sir George Grove’s constant and ready assistance was of the greatest service, and the maintenance of a high artistic standard was due almost as much to one as to the other.  Not only was Manns a conductor of the strongest individuality and artistic insight in every detail of the orchestra, but when Sir Michael Costa was unable to conduct the Handel Festival of 1883 Manns turned out to possess the very qualities that were most desired.  At a few hours’ notice he carried that festival to a high degree of success, and he conducted many subsequent festivals with all possible energy and breadth of style.

By means of the Saturday concerts he was an agent of the utmost importance in the musical education of the whole of London, and by the daily concerts through the week the musical needs of the district near the Crystal Palace were amply met.  In later life Manns’s work seemed to be of minor importance owing to the increased interest taken in orchestral music in central London; but it must be remembered that this interest was in a great measure due to his own unfailing perseverance in setting the best music before the public.  It was due to him more than to any one else that the music of Schubert and Schumann was first thoroughly appreciated in England, and without Manns’s constant interest in English music the younger school of native composers would have fared badly indeed.  From Sullivan, whose music to The Tempest was given for the first time under his direction in 1862, down to the present day there is hardly an English composer who does not owe to Manns his first chance of being heard by the London public.

Plates from August Manns and the Saturday Concerts: A Memoir and a Retrospect by H. Saxe Wyndham, London, 1909.

The services of August Manns to music in this country received official recognition in 1903, when the honour of a knighthood was conferred upon him.  In the following year he signalized his retirement by conducting at the jubilee concert, which was given in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the Crystal Palace.  Sir August married, in 1897, Katharine Emily Wilhelmina, daughter of the late Colonel A. J. B. Thellusson, grandson of the first Baron Rendlesham.

THE TATLER
9th December 1903

A GERMAN WHO HAS MADE ENGLISHMEN LOVE MUSIC