Scan 169
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians: ed. by J. A. Fuller …, Volume 5, 1910
13 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 137. See the scan on archive.org.
1TOVEY
2and they show no signs of wearing out. Tourte never stamped his bows. Genuine ones are sometimes found stamped with the name, but this is the work of some other hand. His original nuts are usually of tortoise shell, finely mounted in gold, but wanting the metallic slide on the stick, which was introduced by Lupot.
3Like Stradivari and Nicholas Amati, Tourte continued to work to within a very few years of his death, at an advanced age. His atelier was on the fourth floor of No. 10, Quai de l'École: after making bows all day he would descend in the evening, and recreate himself by angling for gudgeon in the Seine. His peaceful career came to an end in April 1835, in his eighty-eighth year — nearly the same age as that attained by the two famous violin-makers of Cremona above mentioned. [See Bow, vol. i. p. 376.] E. J. P.; with additions by E. H.-A.
5TOVEY, DONALD FRANCIS, the son of an Eton master, the Rev. Duncan Crooks Tovey, was born at Eton, July 17, 1875, and at an extraordinarily early age showed musical precocity, being able in his fourth year to sing at sight quite correctly. Up to the age of nineteen his education, both musical and general, was in the hands of Miss Sophie Weisse, who trained him for the career of a pianist. (In after years he had advice and help from Deppe, but was never his pupil.) As he had the inestimable advantage of not being exploited as a prodigy, his powers were allowed to develop naturally, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the music of Bach was already manifested in his teens, when he played the thirty variations from memory. His playing of the six-part 'Ricercar' from the 'Musikalisches Opfer' is perhaps his greatest achievement as a pianist. As early as the age of eight years he began to compose works in sonata form, and soon was allowed to learn counterpoint, Sir Walter Parratt being his teacher. He subsequently studied with James Higgs, and when he was thirteen had a few lessons from Sir Hubert Parry. In June 1894 he was elected Lewis Nettleship scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated in classical honours in 1898. In 1894 he had given a concert at Windsor, at which he was assisted by Joachim, who took the keenest interest in his artistic development, often bearing testimony to the phenomenal nature of Tovey's gifts. He definitely entered the musical profession in 1900, when he gave a series of four concerts in St. James's Hall, at which several of his own compositions were given. Two more sets of concerts were given in 1901, and in 1901-2 he gave concerts in Berlin and Vienna. A more important concert, with orchestra, in November 1903, showed his powers of orchestration in his own pianoforte concerto which produced a strong impression; it was conducted by Mr. Wood and played by the composer, and was repeated under Richter in 1906.
6The list of his compositions is as follows (only those with an asterisk are published):—
8TOWER. A group of organ pipes arranged in the form of a turret or tower. T. E.
9TOWER DRUMS, THE. Handel frequently borrowed a pair of kettledrums from the Master-General of the Ordnance for his own performances of his oratorios; and as they were kept in the Tower of London, they were usually called 'the Tower Drums.' They were in frequent request after his death, including the Commemoration Festival in Westminster Abbey in 1784. Dr. Burney, in his account of this Festival, says they were taken by Marlborough at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709.
10A much larger pair, 39 and 35 inches in diameter, were made expressly for that Festival from the design of a Mr. Asbridge, of Drury Lane orchestra, and have since obtained the name of 'Tower Drums,' from a notion that the head of one of them was made from the skin of a lion in the Tower menagerie. These drums came into the possession of the late T. P. Chipp, the well-known kettledrummer, and on the sale of his instruments were bought by H. Potter & Co., military musical instrument makers. They added a brass T-shaped key to each tuning-screw, and presented them (1884) to the Crystal Palace Company, who placed them in their large orchestra.
11Larger drums were made for the Sacred Harmonic Society (47 and 43 inches in diameter), but no tone can be got from such overgrown instruments. V. DE P.
12TOWERS, JOHN, born at Salford, Feb. 18, 1836, was for six years choir-boy in Manchester Cathedral, in 1856 entered the Royal Academy of Music, London, and in the following year became pupil of A. B. Marx in Berlin, where he remained for more than two years, at the same time with J. K. Paine and A. W. Thayer. He then returned to England, and after a residence of two years in Brighton, settled at Manchester, as choirmaster, conductor, and organist. He
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