Recollections of R.J.S. Stevens: An Organist in Gregorian London

The career of R DJ S Stevens (1757–1827) lasted from the late baroque to early romanticism. Trained as a choirboy, he was apprenticed at the age of eleven to William Savage, who undertook to instruct him in the "Science of Musick." After leaving Savage, Stevens pursued, somewhat unsuccessfully at first, a career as an organist. In 1782 his luck changed when he was elected an organist to St. Michael’s, Cornhill. He spent the rest of his life earning his living as a composer, organist, and music teacher whose pupils included the illegitimate daughters of Lord Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor. Among Stevens’s works is The Anacreontic Song, which serves as the melody for The Star Spangled Banner.

Mark Argent was educated at Robinson College, Cambridge, where he began his research into the musical life of eighteenth-century London. He has written on the performance of glees and keyboard concerti and published nine performing editions of glees.