Prof William Henry Bell

Prof William Henry Bell 

Professor of music and composer

(20 August 1873 in Saracen's Head Yard, Holywell Hill, St Alban's - 13 April 1946 at Gordon's Bay)

William Henry Bell was educated at the St Alban's Grammar School, sang as choirboy in the local cathedral and received instruction in harmony, counterpoint and piano from Mary Toulmin. At times his father assisted him in his violin playing. Through the offices of Dr Turpin, Head of the St Albans Music School, Bell successfully entered for the Goss Bursary Competition and became a student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) where the strongest influence on him was exerted by Frederick Corder who lectured on harmony, counterpoint and composition. Sir Charles B. Stanford of the Royal College also advised him in his original work. Bell's practical subjects were organ, piano and violin. This period lasted until 1893 when he completed his studies at the RAM and was appointed organist of St Alban's Cathedral. At a later date he was organist at Oswestry in Shropshire. Although he composed a great deal at this time, few of his early compositions have been preserved; but on 30 April 1898, August Manns conducted Bell's Symphonic prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury tales at the Crystal Palace and his works achieved some recognition. Henry Wood, Thomas Beecham, Hans Richter and Arthur Nikisch all in turn conducted performances of his works. The RAM appointed him professor of harmony and counterpoint in 1903 and he became the organist of All Saints Church in London.

In January 1912 he was appointed Principal of the South African College of Music in Cape Town and he resigned from his position at the RAM. The College was at first an independent institution in Strand Street and later in a building at Stalplein, but after it had become affiliated to the University of Cape Town, by the introduction of music as a course for the BA degree (1919), its incorporation into the University followed as a matter of course in 1923. Two years later the college moved from Stalplein to its present location on the university grounds at Strubenholm in Rosebank. The Little Theatre was established in 1931 for drama and lesser operas, and the Ballet School was introduced in 1934. The college was the second permanent institution for advanced music teaching in the history of South Africa and through Bell's vigour and drive it has exerted an influence felt throughout South Africa's cultural life. 

Among the students at the college whilst he was principal, were J.C. Douthwaite, A. Ashworth, Johannes Fagan, Raie da Costa, Cecilia Wessels, Adelaide Newman, Blanche Gerstman, and Joyce Kadish. He retired in 1935 and to mark the occasion, the University of Cape Town awarded him an honorary doctorate in Law. 

The Bells stayed in England for a short while and then returned to South Africa and settled at Gordon's Bay. Bell was a temporary director of the college when Stuart Deas resigned (1939) and continued to teach composition. Young men who were guided by Bell's tuition until his death in 1946 were Hubert du Plessis, John Joubert and Stefans Grove. 

The Cape Town City Orchestra often included Bell's works in their programmes and Betsy de la Porte and Albina Bini frequently appeared on the stage to sing his orchestral songs. In this way his Five preludes were performed on 4 June 1942, the Song of the last passage (composed on the death of his son) were sung on 19 August 1943 and the Symphonic fantasia, Aeterna Munera was played on 11 November 1945. Usually Bell himself conducted the orchestra on these occasions. Feelings of reverence and gratitude prompted a number of his students to dedicate compositions to his memory: John Joubert's Threnody was performed by the City Orchestra on 8 August 1946; Stefans Grove dedicated his String quartette in D major to the memory of his old mentor and Hubert du Plessis' String quartette, opus 13 (composed between 1950 and 1953) is inscribed "To the memory of William Henry Bell". 

He was married to Helen McEwen, a sister of Sir John McEwen who had been principal of the RAM. She had been a student of Tobias Matthay and was an accomplished pianist. Bell was not only the most productive and the most important of the foreign composers who had settled in South Africa, he was also the most active of the educationists who had come to live here. The combination of composer and pedagogue is a strong one, a fact to which Bell's career in South Africa amply testifies. Under his leadership the College of Music became a conservatoire for advanced musical education with the emphasis on the practical side, an adaption to a South African University of the institutions at which he himself had been trained and which he in turn had served as teacher. Consequently, of the hundreds of students who studied at the College of Music during Bell's term as Dean of the Faculty of Music, only a handful entered for a degree in Music and slightly more were trained for a licentiate. His educational policy was simply to cater for the needs of the country, for a variety of practical musicians and not for musicologists. His own creative and hard-working example served as an inspiring model for the students at the College. Through mutual assistance in the matter of accompaniments, through public performances and the acknowledgement of their achievements by the press, they were soon welded into a homogeneous body. Bell's own weekly columns in The Cape; The South African Nation and The Cape Argus, written in an easy and fluent style of great vitality, contributed materially to the idea of the College as it existed in the mind of the Cape public. For this work of disseminating knowledge about musical matters and the importance of music in a community, he was exceptionally well equipped by his own variety of interests, first and foremost English drama and literature, but also architecture, politics and cultural interest generally (including the cinema!). The creation of the Little Theatre owes much to his exertions on behalf of opera as a dimension of the educational work being done at the College.

With his intimate knowledge of music in all its forms (including opera and ballet) and by virtue of his logical thinking and exceptional gift for expressing himself clearly and unambiguously (often with the assistance of a considerable vocabulary of expletives), Bell was destined to be a teacher and a guide to young composers. His correspondence with Hubert du Plessis testifies to his considerable talents in this direction. The letter written to Du Plessis on the 11th of August 1942 (the year in which Du Plessis became his pupil in composition) is a fine example of his educational and powerful style: "I want you to cultivate a certain attitude towards your composition, that will keep you always cheerful, and contented, contented to wait on God's good time if and when you seem to have no ideas, or have the ideas and cannot get to grips with them ... Worry always connotes the idea of fear and the finest artist I ever knew used to say 'the greatest enemy of all art is fear'. So don't worry and cultivate instead an unflagging faith, or if that sounds preachified, just call it pluck - ... The kind of attitude towards one's art that I am trying to present to you is a certain child-like, not childish way of looking at it, the way a child looks on everything it does as a gallant adventure". How clearly he saw South African problems is exemplified by a letter written on the 11th of November 1943: "The whole issue of Afrikaner music is so confused by appallingly mediocre, if not actually bad music. A real Afrikaner composer could sweep everything in front of him, and establish a standard that would sweep most of what is being done at present into Limbo (a mixed metaphor I am afraid ... )" In another letter he praises the drive of young Afrikaners (1st of July 1944,) or criticises the Afrikaner sentimentality (6th March 1944) and in a letter dated 5th of November he expresses his disappointment that South Africa had refused to consider his scheme for the advancement of young composers: "My thirty years of experience here should have taught me that so often on the verge of doing a really useful and big thing, S.A. always just stops short, and goes for a compromise .... " These quotes from his correspondence illustrate the fact that Bell was intensely interested in South African music and in the rise of a generation who could take the lead. 

Bell"s works are all in the custody of the University of Cape Town.

-J.P.M.

SOURCE

Malan, Dr. Jacque P., ed. South African Music Encyclopaedia. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979, 152-160.