A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Peace, Albert

PEACE, Albert Lister, Mus. Doc., is a native of Huddersfield. He exhibited in his childhood precocity hardly exceeded by that of Crotch or even Mozart; naming with unerring accuracy individual notes and combinations of notes when sounded, before attaining his fifth year. At the age of nine he was appointed organist of the parish church of Holmfirth, and subsequently of other churches in that neighbourhood. In 1866, at the age of 21, he removed to Glasgow, to fill the office of organist to Trinity Congregational church, and soon afterwards, along with other posts, that of organist to the University. In 1870 he graduated as Bachelor, and in 1875 as Doctor of Music in the University of Oxford.

Dr. Peace is one of a school of organists which has come into existence in this country only within the last half century, and which may be said to owe that existence to the late S. S. Wesley. Its distinguishing characteristic may be said to be the employment of the feet as a third hand, concurrently with the extension of the pedal-board downwards, from G to C below it, and also upwards, to the E or F, two octaves and a third or fourth above it. This extension enables the performer to lay out harmonies after the manner of the 'harmonic chord,' in which the largest intervals are found between the lowest notes. More than this, it has brought within his reach, what on the old G pedal-board was obviously outside it, the organ compositions of J. S. Bach and his school. Fifty years ago, or even later, there were probably not half a dozen Englishmen who could have played one of the Organ Fugues of that great master; certainly there were not as many organs on which they could have been played.^[1] Both C organs and players competent to use them may now be reckoned by hundreds. Of this school of performers Dr. Peace is one of the most distinguished members living. His mechanical powers enable him not merely to deal with everything as yet written expressly for his instrument, but to realise upon it compositions designed for all the combinations of the modern orchestra. This he does with unsurpassed taste and readiness. Dr. Peace's published compositions are for the most part connected with the Service of the Church of England. They form however but a small portion of those still in MS., among which may be especially mentioned a setting of the 138th Psalm, and a cantata 'The Narrative of John the Baptist,' composed respectively for his degrees as Bachelor and Doctor of Music. On the recent completion of the new organ at Glasgow Cathedral—an instrument by Willis embracing all the most recent improvements in the organ-builder's art—Dr. Peace was appointed organist there. On this and on the organ, by Lewis, at the Glasgow New Music Hall, and on various instruments in different parts of England and Scotland, Dr. Peace is a frequent and most popular performer.

[ J. H. ]

1. In the programmes of the numerous organ recitals of the late Thomas Adams, the organist par excellence of the first half of this century, it is highly probable, if not certain, that no one of these compositions ever appeared. One of Adams's most favourite showpieces was the Fugue in D in the 1st book of the 'Well-tempered Clavier.' But this—though Mendelssohn also played it—is not one of Bach's pedal-fugues.