Vincent Novello

Vincent Novello (6 September 17819 August 1861), was an English musician and music publisher born in London. He was an organist, chorister, conductor and composer, but he is best known for bringing to England many works now considered standards, and with his son he created a major music publishing house.

Life Vincent, born at 240 Oxford Street, was the son of Giuseppe Novello, an Italian confectioner who moved to London in 1771. As a boy Vincent was a chorister at the Sardinian Embassy Chapel in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he learnt the organ from Samuel Webbe; and from 1796 to 1822 he became in succession organist of the Sardinian, Spanish (in Manchester Square) and Portuguese (at the Portuguese Embassy chapel off Grosvenor Square), and from 1840 to 1843 of St Mary Moorfields. He taught music privately throughout his career. One of his most notable pupils was musicologist and music critic Edward Holmes. He was an original member of the Philharmonic Society, of the Classical Harmonists and of the Choral Harmonists, officiating frequently as conductor, and was a conductor/accompanist at the King's Theatre.

Musical activities Many of Novello's original compositions were sacred music, such as the cantata Rosalba, commissioned by the Philharmonic Society and premiered in March 1834. One sacred composition is the tune 'Albano' to the hymn 'Once, only once, and once for all'. A secular example is Old May Morning, which won the Manchester Prize for best cheerful glee in 1832. the works of Palestrina, the manuscripts of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many other works that are now in the core repertoire.

Novello and his wife Mary held regular musical evenings at his home, attracting a wide range of literary, artistic and musical figures, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Percy Shelley, William Hazlitt, Charles Cowden Clarke, John Keats and his pupil Edward Holmes. The evenings were described by Lamb in his essay ‘A Chapter on Ears’. The young Felix Mendelssohn and the singer Maria Malibran attended later meetings. It was Alfred who really established the business, and he is credited with introducing affordable music and departing from the method of publishing by subscription. From 1841 Henry Littleton assisted him, becoming a partner in 1861, when the firm became Novello & Co., and, on J.A. Novello's retirement in 1866, sole proprietor. Having incorporated the firm of Ewer & Co. in 1867, the title was changed to Novello, Ewer & Co., and still later back to Novello & Co., and, on Henry Littleton's death in 1888, his two sons carried on the business.

Family The Novello Family, c. 1830 by Edward Petre Novello. Vincent Novello is seated at the keyboard Novello and his wife, Mary Sabilla (née Hehl), had eleven children. Five of his daughters survived to adulthood, four of them gifted singers. Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke (née Novello) (1809–1898), was a literary scholar and writer. She married the author (and friend of Keats) Charles Cowden Clarke, edited The Musical Times for four years and compiled one of the first concordances of Shakespeare. Edward Petre Novello (1813-1836) showed promise as a painter but died young. Emma Aloysia Novello (1814–c. 1880), painter. Sidney Vincent Novello (1816–1820)