George Henry Robinson

Tchaikovsky Research

English organist and music teacher (b. 22 July 1840 [N.S.] in Leamington; d. 10 September 1909 [N.S.] in Leamington), also known as George H. Robinson [1].

George Henry's father was a bookbinder and stationer in the spa town of Leamington, in Warwickshire. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a musical career from an early age and he had piano lessons with Karl Klindworth in London which helped him to develop into “a brilliant piano player” who “could play any or all of Bach's fugues by heart” according to a later account [2]. Aged just eighteen, he was appointed organist at St Mary Abchurch in London in 1858. He took up a similar post at the famous St Bartholomew's Hospital (Bart's) in 1864. In the second half of the 1860s he also began giving piano lessons to pupils from Charterhouse School, which was then still based in London. When the school moved to Godalming in Surrey in 1872, Robinson was offered a fixed post as organist and choirmaster there. Alongside his teaching duties at Charterhouse Robinson, in 1879, he enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge as a student for the Bachelor of Music degree, which he was eventually awarded in 1886.

Robinson was elected a director of the London Philharmonic Society in the early 1890s. When towards the end of 1892 he found out that the University of Cambridge intended to confer honorary degrees on Saint-Saëns, Boito, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Max Bruch he wrote a letter in January 1893 to the Society's Honorary Secretary, Francesco Berger, suggesting that these composers be engaged for concerts at the Philharmonic at the same time, and mentioning, in particular, how "Tschaikowski has written two fine overtures, one to Romeo & Juliet, the other a superb work to Francesca da Rimini" [3].

Robinson, who had first met Tchaikovsky during the composer's second concert in London at which he had been particularly impressed by Vasily Sapelnikov's playing of "your ravishing concerto", wrote to Tchaikovsky during the composer's third ‘tour' of London to invite him to a dinner at the St Stephen's Club on 2 June 1893, the day after Tchaikovsky conducted the British premiere of the Fourth Symphony at the Philharmonic Society [4]. Due to his obligations at Charterhouse, Robinson was unable to attend the ceremony in Cambridge at which Tchaikovsky, on 13 June 1893, was awarded an honorary doctorate in music. However, he had written to the composer a few days earlier to give him some advice on accommodation in Cambridge and inviting him to stay at his house in the countryside [5]. Tchaikovsky was unable to accept this invitation. However, it seems that during the summer of 1893, when Berger and he exchanged letters discussing the possibility of his conducting the Sixth Symphony in London in May 1894, Robinson repeated his invitation through Berger. In his reminiscences of Tchaikovsky, Berger wrote: "It had been arranged that at his next visit to England, in the following year [i.e. 1894], he should accept the invitation of a friend of mine to stay with him at his charming house; but on the very morning when I received a letter from this friend enquiring on what day he might expect his guest, I took up the Daily Telegraph to read he had passed away" [6].

The boarding house Robinites at Charterhouse, which was established when the school moved to Godalming, and which exists to this day, is named after Robinson, its first House Master. Robinson served as the school's organist and choirmaster and also as House Master of Robinites until his retirement in 1901. Among the pupils who were at Robinites during his tenure was the future composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), who would later recall: "Robinson was a sensitive musician and a kind-hearted man and gave me, and others, leave to practise on the chapel organ" [7].

Correspondence with Tchaikovsky

One letter from Tchaikovsky to George Henry Robinson has survived, dating from 1893, which has been translated into English on this website:

Two letters from George Henry Robinson to Tchaikovsky, dating from 1893, are preserved in the archive of the Tchaikovsky House-Museum at Klin (a4, Nos. 3824–3825).

Bibliography

External Links

Notes and References

  1. A copy of Robinson's birth certificate was kindly provided by Catherine Smith, the Archivist of Charterhouse School.
  2. See: J. L. Smith-Dampier, Carthusian Worthies (Oxford, 1940), p. 284. A scan from this book was kindly provided by Catherine Smith.
  3. Letter from George Henry Robinson to Francesco Berger, 2 January 1893 — London (England): The British Library. Manuscripts Division (RPS MS. 361, f. 18). The full text of the letter can be found in Čajkovskijs Londoner Sinfonien. Der Briefwechsel des Komponisten mit Francesco Berger (2013), p. 97.
  4. Letter from George Henry Robinson to Tchaikovsky, 30 May 1893 — Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky House-Museum (a4, No. 5638). Published for the first time thanks to the kind assistance of Polina Vaidman in Čajkovskijs Briefwechsel mit George H. Robinson im Jahre 1893 (2013), p. 148.
  5. Letter from George Henry Robinson to Tchaikovsky, 10 June 1893 — Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky House-Museum (a4, No. 5665). Published for the first time thanks to the kind assistance of Polina Vaidman in Čajkovskijs Briefwechsel mit George H. Robinson im Jahre 1893 (2013), p. 149.
  6. Some musical celebrities I have known. Tschaikowsky (1913), p. 88.
  7. Quoted from Brahms and Tchaikovsky (2008), p. 95.