to the level of the taste of the day, but in his adaptations from the works of great foreign musicians he altered and defaced them so as to bring them to a level with his own weak productions. If, as he complained, he suffered from the public taste veering round to the music of continental composers, it was in some sort a revenge brought about by the whirligig of time, for from no one did the works of the great masters receive worse treatment than they met with at the hands of Bishop himself. Amongst the manuscript scores in his handwriting which are preserved in the Liverpool Free Library there is a volume entirely consisting of ‘additional accompaniments’ (mostly for brass and percussion instruments), and alterations which he made in works by Beethoven, Mozart, Cherubini, Rossini, and many others, a volume which must ever remain a disgrace to the man who wrote it, and a record of the low state of musical opinion that could have allowed such barbarisms to be perpetrated without a protest. With regard to his original compositions, there is no doubt that his style was very much based upon that of his master Bianchi, as an examination of the somewhat rare compositions of the latter will show. But, though Bishop's music is in this respect less original than is usually supposed, he was possessed of a singularly fertile vein of melody, in which the national character can be perpetually recognised, although the dress in which it is presented is rather Italian than English. In this respect Bishop may be regarded as the successor of Arne, who in the latter part of his career came under the influence of the Italian school in which Bishop received his early training. In his glees Bishop was without a rival, and it is probable that it is on this form of composition that his future fame will rest; for his songs, with the exception of a very few, are even now but seldom heard, and it is safe to predict that the entire operas in which all his best glees and songs originally appeared will never bear revival.
Bishop was twice married. His first wife was a Miss Lyon, who came out as a singer at Drury Lane in ‘Love in a Village’ on 10 Oct. 1807, and to whom he was married soon after the production of ‘The Circassian Bride,’ in which opera and ‘The Maniac’ she sang small parts. By her he had two sons and a daughter. By his second wife [see Bishop, Ann] he had two daughters and a son.
During the greater part of his life he lived at 4 Albion Place and 13 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park. In his latter years he suffered much from cancer, and eventually died from the effects of an operation he underwent for that disease. His death took place at his house in Cambridge Street on Monday evening, 30 April 1855. He was buried on the Saturday following at the Marylebone Cemetery, Finchley Road, where a monument was erected to his memory by public subscription. The manuscript scores of most of Bishop's operas are preserved in the libraries of the British Museum, the Royal College of Music, and the Free Library of Liverpool. There are two portraits of him in the National Portrait Gallery, both by unknown painters. There are engravings of him (1) drawn by Wageman, engraved by Woolnoth, and published on 1 June 1820; (2) engraved by S. W. Reynolds from a painting by J. Foster, published in July 1822; and (3) engraved by B. Holl and published 1 April 1828.
[Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 245; Dictionary of Musicians, i. (1827); Add. MSS. 19569, 29905; Musical World, xxxiii. 282; Musical Times for April 1885; Athenæum, 5 May 1855; Fitzball's Memoirs, i. 152, 196, ii. 276; Parke's Memoirs, ii. 36; Gent. Mag. 1838, i. 539; manuscript scores in the Royal College of Music and Liverpool Free Library; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, viii. and ix.; information from Messrs. G. Scharf, H. Wakeford, Doyne C. Bell, and A. D. Coleridge.]
BISHOP, JOHN (1665–1737), musical composer, was born in 1665, and (according to Hawkins) educated under Daniel Roseingrave, but, as the latter was organist of Winchester Cathedral from June 1682 to June 1692, and Bishop only came to Winchester in 1695, this is probably an error. Between Michaelmas and Christmas 1687 he became a lay clerk of King's College, Cambridge, where in the following year he was appointed to teach the choristers. In 1695 he was appointed organist of Winchester College, on the resignation of Jeremiah Clarke, but he continued to receive his stipend at Cambridge until the Easter term of 1696. In November 1696 he was elected a lay-vicar of Winchester Cathedral in the place of Thomas Corfe, and on 30 June 1729 he succeeded Vaughan Richardson as organist and master of the choristers of the same cathedral. Bishop's rival for this post was James Kent, who was esteemed a better player, but the 'age and amiable disposition' of the former, coupled with the sympathy felt for some family misfortune he had suffered, induced the dean and chapter to give him the appointment, Bishop remained at Winchester until his death, which took place 19 Dec. 1737. He was buried on the Avest side of the college cloister, where his epitaph styles him 'Vir singulari probitate, integerrima vita, moribus innocuis, musicæque
