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~ WHO'S WHO ~
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George Augustus L�hr
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The first full-time professional church organist in Leicester was George Augustus L�hr. Born in Norwich in 1824, L�hr received his early music training, as a chorister, at Magdalen College, Oxford before attending the universities of Leipzig and Munich. Assistant to Dr Zachariah Buck of Norwich Cathedral, L�hr came to Leicester in 1845 to take up the appointment of organist at St Margaret�s Church, a post he held for forty years. By the beginning of 1846, from his home at 34 Granby Street, he was teaching music, with fees ranging from one guinea a quarter. A few months later, with an ever-increasing number of pupils, L�hr was giving piano and singing lessons from a room in John Shouler�s draper�s shop in Hotel Street. One of L�hr�s pupils was the daughter of Henry Martin Mills Hanford, the headmaster of the Alderman Newton School and choirmaster of St Mark�s. Miss Hanford, who married E. C. Elton, was organist of the church of St Nicholas, from 1868 to 1879, for which she received a salary of �20 a year.�
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September 1861 saw the first of many annual music festivals organised by L�hr when over two hundred singers from the associated choirs of the district sung in a packed St John�s Church. The largest of these festivals was in 1867 when nineteen choirs with over three hundred choristers took part. The following year there were not so many participants because the music had not been distributed until the last minute and some felt that they could not do justice to the music with so little rehearsal. L�hr was a very conservative musician. Not until 1876, and then only after much persuasion from his sons and other young musicians, did he consent to have the organ, which as we saw in the Prelude had been tuned so as not to interfere with the bells, tuned to concert pitch. A local examiner for the Royal Academy of Music, L�hr died in September 1897 and was buried in Welford Road Cemetery where there is a memorial to his memory. His wife Sophia died twelve years later in 1909. One of L�hr�s pupils was William Henry Barrow, who, in 1874, when he was sixteen, became deputy organist at St Martin�s. A year later he took over at St George�s, where a new organ was about to be built by the Bryceson Brothers. Barrow, who worked in his father�s piano shop at 2 Argyle Terrace, Belgrave Road, also played cello and, in non-musical moments, enjoyed a game of whist or chess. A linguist, he spoke French, Spanish and Italian, as well as studying microscopy and entomology. He was awarded his doctorate from the University of Dublin in 1891.�
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One of Barrow�s pupils, Walter Groocock, became organist at St Leonard�s. During the Boer War, in which national pride in music echoed the poetry of Kipling, Groocock wrote a song patriotically entitled �Sons of England�. During the war there were a number of musical events arranged in Leicester such as, in February 1900, when the Leicester Association of Dancing Masters arranged an all-night ball in the County Rooms. The tickets cost 3s 6d each, and, as the musicians gave their services free, all proceeds went to the fund.8 L�hr�s three sons: Charles became an ecclesiastical architect and was responsible for the choir stalls at St John�s. George, who became organist of St Judas, Southsea, wrote a symphony which was performed in London in January 1875. In 1877 L�hr�s third son, Richard Harvey, while organist at St Mark�s, was awarded the Santley Prize of ten guineas for the best accompanist able to transpose music from sight. Although Richard eventually settled in London he regularly visited Leicester to give lessons and recitals. Held in the Museum Lecture Hall, with tickets costing five shillings each, these gatherings were obviously aimed at the middle classes. Indeed the reports of the concerts take pains to mention that they were attended by a "fashionable audience." L�hr�s nephew Frederick, organist of the parish church in Helston, Cornwall, also made occasional visits to Leicester. On one of these visits, in March 1872, a packed concert in the Temperance Hall (which also featured Sims Reeves and Helen Dalton), his "Ave Maria" for solo, band and chorus was performed to an "appreciative audience."
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The above was taken from the book�"Musical Leicester"� by local author Max Wade-Matthews. For more information on Leicester's History, and to find out about the many colourful characters from Leicester's past, please visit Max's website Leicester Research.
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�[Leicester Research] ~*~ [Musical Leicester]