Charles King Hall

Charles King Hall (1845–1895), often credited as King Hall, was an English composer and church organist in Victorian London. He favored sentimental ballads, dance music, organ and piano pieces, and "much church music."[1] He also specialized in arranging for the keyboard and voice the works of famous composers such as Handel, Gounod and Mendelssohn. Active in the London theatre, he contributed regularly to the German Reed Entertainments at St. George's Hall, Langham Place. King Hall's entry in A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians calls his German Reed operettas "his most popular works."[2]

Charles King Hall, circa 1880

Early life and family

Charles King Hall was born 17 August 1845, St Pancras, London.[3] His father, Charles Frederick Hall (1815–1874), was a violinist[4] who was the musical director of the Adelphi Theatre in London.[5] King Hall's mother, Eleanor Eliza Jane Vining, came from a family of well-known dramatic and comedic actors. King Hall's cousins included the English actor and stage manager George Vining (1824–1875) as well as the American actors Fanny Vining Davenport and her son, Harry Davenport.[6]

In 1876, King Hall married Isabel Maud Penton (1852–1932) at All Saints Church, Gordon Square.[7]

King Hall's widow, Isabel, and youngest daughter, Grace, circa 1900

They had five children. The eldest, Edith Jane Gertrude King-Hall (1877–1963),[8] is sometimes confused with the Edith King Hall who wrote children's books. The composer's younger son, Ernest Vincent King-Hall (1885–1941) was a Royal Navy officer who married Hylda May Shallard, a chorister in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1907 to 1909; he died during the Second World War.[9][10] King Hall's remaining three children were Lucy Harriet Greenfield King-Hall (1879–1900), Frederick Charles William King-Hall (1880–1963) and Grace Isabel King-Hall (1881–1960).[11]

Career and later years

King Hall composed both sacred and secular music, especially sentimental ballads and organ voluntaries. He contributed regularly to the popular German Reed Entertainments at St. George's Hall, Langham Place. His obituary in The Musical Times called his German Reed music "his most popular works".[12] Kurt Gänzl wrote that King Hall's music was "pretty [and] forgettable." Yet, it gave steady, reliable satisfaction over the course of nearly twenty years with the Reeds.[13] King Hall collaborated with such librettists as Arthur Law, F. C. Burnand, Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, Walter Frith and J. Comyns Carr, composing the scores for Foster Brothers (1877), A Happy Bungalow (1877), Doubleday's Will (1878), A Tremendous Mystery (1878), The Artful Automaton (1878), Grimstone Grange (1879), A Christmas Stocking (1879–1880), A Merry Christmas (1880–1881), A Strange Host (1882–1883), The Naturalist (1887), The Verger (1889–1890) and Missing (1894).[14] Most of these entertainments were accompanied by piano and harmonium only.[15]

King Hall began to compose musical theatre early on. His father was also a composer, and it is unclear which of them supplied the incidental music for Dion Boucicault's The Streets of London, a play performed first at the Princess's Theatre in 1864 when King Hall was 19. A contemporary review of the first production said that the composer won "the goodwill of the audience" by incorporating "the street tunes of the times".[16] From 1867 ("Golden Moments Gallop for the Pianoforte") to the year of his death ("An Emblem of Life; A Duet for Female Voices"), his work appeared regularly in both England and America. Examples of King Hall's original compositions include his score for Edward Oxenford's humorous cantata Beauty and the Beast (1890), published by the London firm of Hutchings & Romer, and his series of six "society dances" published by Joseph Williams in the 1890s.[17]

"Barn Dance," the first of King Hall's society dances, circa 1890
Ivy-choked tombstone of the King Hall family in Highgate Cemetery, 2017

King Hall also supported his family as an organist, teacher, composer, and consultant to Chappell & Co., who published much of King Hall's sheet music. In the 1890s Chappell's Vocal Library numbered quite a few of King Hall's vocal arrangements and organ transcriptions, including "On Angels' Wings" (from Viviani's Silver Trumpets), "Mighty Lord" (from Gounod's Marche Religieuse), and "Soft and Low" (from Gounod's Mock Doctor).[18] He specialized in arranging for piano and voice the theatre scores of other British composers, such as Arthur Sullivan's Haddon Hall and Ernest Ford's Jane Annie.[19][20] Examples of his adaptations were Alfred Cellier's "Andante Pastorale", which King Hall arranged for the organ in 1892[21] and Arthur Sullivan's Imperial March, which King Hall transcribed for the organ in 1893.[22]

King Hall also wrote two primers for Estey Organ, the American maker of reed organs and harmoniums. Both were published in 1880.[23] He included in the organ primer his own testimonial for the instrument, saying "The tone of the Stops individually is mellow and sweet, and entirely free from the harshness which so frequently characterizes Reed Instruments; while the ensemble stresses solidity and fulness, and resembles very closely that of a thoroughly good Pipe Organ."[24] That same year, King Hall wrote a short piece for a popular girls' magazine about the challenge of playing the harmonium, urging frustrated novices to persevere and "not let your disappointment keep you from trying again."[25] King Hall was one of the few English composers writing specifically for the harmonium at the time.[26]

As church organist, King Hall served the Anglican parishes of St. Paul's, Camden Square, badly damaged in the Second World War; St. Luke's, Kentish Town, declared redundant in 1991 but reopened in 2011; and Christ Church, Brondesbury, now Christ Church with Saint Laurence Brondesbury.[27] A newspaper review of one of King Hall's organ concerts in December 1884, in which the organist "gave evident delight to his audience," refers to him as the organist and choir director of St Clement Danes on the Strand in the city of Westminster, London, as well as "of the Royal Albert Hall."[28]

On 1 September 1895, King Hall died of throat cancer at the age of 50 at his home in Islington.[29] He was buried in Highgate Cemetery.[30] A notice of his death in a Scottish newspaper recalled KIng Hall's "connection with the old German Reeds’ entertainment, to which he contributed a large number of operettas and musical sketches."[31]

References
  1. A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, edited by Theodore Baker, published in New York in 1905 by G. Schirmer, page 245
  2. 245
  3. Birth Certificate for Charles King Hall, born at 33 North Street, Islington, to Charles Frederick Hall, professor of music, and Eleanor Eliza Jane Hall, formerly Vining, certified as a true copy by General Register Office in the Registration District of Clerkenwell, County of Middlesex, 5 March 2004
  4. Dubourg, George. The Violin, chapter 6, pp. 303–306, Robert Cocks & Company (1852 )
  5. Nelson, Alfred L, Gilbert B Cross and Joseph Donohue (eds). "Authors and Titles: The Adelphi Theatre Calendar", University of Massachusetts, 2016
  6. Ancestry.com, Penton family tree, administered by David Finnell
  7. Marriage certificate, 23 September 1876, between Charles King Hall, professor music, and Isabel Maud Penton, whose fathers were Charles Frederick Hall, professor of music, and George Anen Penton, custom house officer, certified on 18 December 2007 by the General Register Office
  8. Baptismal certificate, 8 October 1877, Saint Matthew, Saint Pancras, Camden (states date of birth 2 August 1877)
  9. Marriage certificate, dated 20 February 1915, for Ernest Vincent King Hall, motor engineer, and Hilda May Shallard. Certified 13 May 1999, at the General Register Office, Islington
  10. Stone, David. "Hylda May", Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 12 April 2004, accessed 18 September 2019
  11. Ancestry.com, Penton family tree, accessed 30 August 2019
  12. The Musical Times, 1 October 1895
  13. Gänzl, Kurt. The British Musical Theatre, Volume 1 (1865–1914), Oxford University Press, 1986
  14. Ganzl, British Musical Theatre, p. 136
  15. Maitland, J A Fuller, ed. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 4, pg. 44, Macmillan, New York, 1909
  16. Kerry Powell, editor,The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre (2004), p. 79
  17. Sheet music in the collection of David Finnell
  18. Google e-books,The Musical Times, volumes 34 (1 Dec 1893) and 39 (1 Feb 1898)
  19. The Musical News, 4 January 1908, accessed 16 September 2019
  20. Hall, King. Piano/vocal arrangement of Jane Annie, Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 20 July 2012
  21. Cellier, Alfred. "Andante Pastorale", Chappell & Company: London, 1892
  22. "Imperial March", Royal College of Music, accessed 16 September 2019
  23. King Hall, Charles. The Harmonium, Novello, Ewer & Co. (1880)
  24. Estey Organ Tutor, published by the Estey Organ Company, with its London office in Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, in the private collection of David Finnell
  25. "How to Play the Harmonium," The Girls Own Paper (1880), pages 472-473, referenced in Iain Quinn, The Organist in Victorian Literature, Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature: 2017, page 82
  26. Review, "Irish Airs," The Musical Standard: A Newspaper for Musicians, Professionals and Amateurs, 12 Apr. 1884, p.237, Reeves and Turner, London, e-books.google.com/books?id=TD80AQAAMAAJ&dq=the+musical+standard,+12+april+1884&source=gbs_navlinks_s
  27. "Obituary: Charles King Hall", The Musical Times, vol. 36, issue 632, JSTOR, accessed 16 September 2019
  28. 20 Dec 1884 issue of Southern Times and Dorset County Herald, British Newspaper Archive, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, accessed 7 Jun 2020
  29. Death Certificate for Charles King Hall, issued 1 September 1895, given at the General Register Office, Islington, County of London, Entry of Death Number 159
  30. Burial Record for Charles King Hall, Grave Number 31585, St James' Cemetery in Swain's Lane, Highgate, Register Number 78620
  31. Dundee Advertiser, 5 Sep. 1895, Dundee, Scotland. The British Newspaper Archive, www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
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