Klarinet Archive - Posting 000383.txt from 2004/09

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Bio of Waterson
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:43:08 -0400

The following brief bio of Waterson was sent to me by Michael
Bryant of the British Library (where I once became faint on
seeing the manuscript of Mozart's Haydn quartets). I did not know
that he was British, later Australian, later a bandmaster in
British India. I presumed that he was an American baseball player
who didn't like clarinet players and only wrote things that they
couldn't play without laughing.

Dan Leeson

"James Waterson (? 1834-1893 Windsor)

Wrote many works for the clarinet,
4 quartets, 3 trios, several duets, solos and studies.
He seems to have attached "Grand" to the title of most
of his works which are written in a the style of 19th century
Italian opera.

He was born in Britain but grew up in Australia and India, was
then
a clarinet student at Kneller Hall, the Royal Military School of
Music,
Twickenham, Middlesex, England. The manuscripts of some of his
works
have been preserved there.He started out as a bass clarinettist
in the Lifeguards
and later became the band master of that regiment. He raised the
standard
of playing to such degree that he was publicly and privately
praised by his
Commander in Chief, Queen Victoria's cousin, the Duke of
Cambridge,
and by Dickens, Tennyson, Gounod and the Sultan of Turkey. He
became
bandmaster of the Viceroy of India's (1st Marquis of Ripon,
George Robinson
1827-1909 appointed in 1880) private band (1883) but shortly
afterwards
he became ill ( a stroke?) and took early retirement.

One of his quartets was recorded on an LP in Japan in the early
1980s"

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