George Case: Trombonist, Antiquarian and Angler

By Alexander McGrattan

George Case, professor of trombone at the Royal College of Music, London, from 1896 to 1909, is remembered today primarily as Gustav Holst’s trombone teacher. Case is mentioned in newspapers and the musical press for about fifteen years, from 1885 on, as leader of a trombone quartet that specialised in the early ensemble repertoire. Curiously, however, very little else is known of his activities as a performer. On the face of it, his absence from surviving orchestral rostra is surprising, since orchestral playing constituted the mainstay of the work of his quartet colleagues and fellow brass professors.

That Case enjoyed a lifestyle unlike that of other London brass players is clear from the circumstances leading to his death in November 1909 at the age of 54. According to an obituary in the Tamworth Herald, this resulted from a bout of sunstroke that he sustained on a fishing trip to the Orkney Isles, a destination he had visited regularly for twenty-five years. Orkney seems an unlikely holiday destination for a professional brass player from London at this time - and an improbable place to succumb to sunstroke - and sets Case apart from his colleagues, for whom, it seems safe to assume, regular leisure trips to such an exotic location would have been prohibitively expensive. Evidence from 1885 and 1892 confirms Case’s long association with the Northern Isles. In 1885 he was appointed an Honorary Member of The Orkney & Zetland Association, a charitable organisation that funded educational opportunities for young people from the islands, and in 1892 he sent a reward to the staff at the railway station in Dundee from his hotel in Kirkwall for recovering his luggage.[1] The obituary also reveals that Case’s abiding passion, besides angling, was researching the history of the trombone, and that he was involved in instrument design.

George Edward Case, the son of a stockbroker, was born in London in 1855. He was educated at a prestigious boarding school in Hertfordshire, after which he embarked on a career in the City. In 1875 his father died, leaving an estate valued at £180,000 (worth more than £8 million today). In the 1881 census, George Case, aged 26, was recorded as a ‘Member of the Stock Exchange’, living with his mother and two siblings in the family home in an affluent district of central London. Precisely when Case abandoned his career in the City to devote his attention to music is not known. Nor are there any details on his musical education and his activities as a trombonist during his early adulthood.

 In August 1885 Case was described by George Bernard Shaw as ‘the wellknown [sic] trombone player’ in a review of the second of two lecture-recitals on the history of the trombone that he presented at the International Inventions Exhibition in London. The musical examples for the lecture included Beethoven’s Equale for four trombones and Schütz’s ‘Lamentatio Davidis (Fili mi, Absalon), from his Symphoniae sacrae (Venice, 1629) for four trombones, bass voice and organ. Case, playing alto trombone, was joined by Charles Geard and ‘Antoine’ [Albert] Matt on tenor, and John Matt on bass trombone.[2] An indication of Case’s standing in the profession at this time is evident from the production that year of a series of ‘Case model’ trombones by Boosey of London. Thirteen of these instruments were manufactured, their defining characteristic being the positioning of the tuning slide on the bow of the main slide.[3]

The Musical Times for October 1885 included the advertisement:

TO ORGANISTS and CHOIRMASTERS. GEORGE CASE (Alto-Trombone) is prepared to accept ENGAGEMENTS for the Trombone Quartet, which performed on August 5 at the Music Section of Inventions Exhibition, or other parties of Brass Instrumentalists, for the performance of Church Music in Town or Country. 27 Inverness Terrace W.

How effective this advertisement was in procuring engagements is not known, since no further trace of the quartet has been found before March 1890 when it performed Beethoven’s Equale and Schütz’s ‘Lamentatio Davidis’ at a meeting of the Wind Instrument Chamber Music Society at the Royal Academy of Music. Performances of these works were given at provincial music festivals during the following few years. Case was not engaged for these events, but his quartet performed the same repertoire at a concert of the Bach Choir at London’s Queen’s Hall in May 1894.

A review of the Bach Choir concert in The Musical Times reveals that the bass trombonist, John Matt, used an instrument with an aluminium slide that had been development by George Case and the acoustician David James Blaikley, Boosey’s factory manager and chief instrument designer. At one-third of the weight of a conventional slide, and not susceptible to the accumulation of verdigris through oxidation, this development reportedly facilitated slide movement. Since aluminium cools more slowly than metals normally used in brass instrument construction, the instrument was also reportedly less prone to fluctuation in pitch when players were required to rest for extended periods. Several ‘Case-model’ trombones from 1885 survive, but there are no known examples of his instruments with an aluminium slide.

In his review of Case’s 1885 lecture-recital, Shaw asserted that Beethoven’s ‘Equalen’ was composed in 1812and first performed at the composer’s funeral. In fact, the work was first performed in Linz Cathedral on All Saints’ Day 1812, and two movements were set to the words of the Miserere for Beethoven’s funeral in 1827. The Miserere, with trombone accompaniment, was performed at provincial music festivals in England during the first half of the nineteenth century. The association with Beethoven’s funeral was routinely noted on these occasions and in relation to the laterperformances of the Equale in England. It is not surprising therefore that the work found a place in funeral services.

In February and August 1896 a trombone quartet led by George Case performed Beethoven’s Equale at funeral services at St Paul’s Cathedral for two of Britain’s most eminent artists: the painter and sculptor, Frederic, Lord Leighton, and the painter Sir John Millais, Leighton’s successor as President of the Royal Academy. In both services the trombonists were positioned in the western gallery of the Cathedral, from where, shortly before the arrival of the funeral cortège, they sounded the Equale, or, as one account of the funeral of Lord Leighton evocatively reported, ‘gave forth a wailing dirge-like music quite appropriate to the sad occasion’.[4] Reporting the funeral of Sir John Millais, London Daily News (21 August 1896) noted:

‘To many persons the trombone is an instrument of torture, but they would have viewed it differently had they heard its sweet rendering yesterday of the great composer’s plaintive music, broken by many pauses, as of one bowed down by grief.’

An even more elaborate funeral service was performed in Westminster Abbey for the former Prime Minister William Gladstone on 28 May 1898. On this occasion Case was joined by the trombonists Charles Hadfield, Albert Matt and John Matt, who performed the Equale from the Henry V Chantry, high above the congregation, at the east end of the Abbey. According to report in The Times (20 May 1898): ‘The effect of the pure sounds echoing among the vaulted spaces of the roof was something never to be forgotten’. Similar allusions to the emotive effect of the Equale appeared in the regional press, with one paper reporting that ‘both melody and harmony descend in showers of exquisite delicacy and mourning’ and another likening it to ‘the first wail of grief from mourners when a dear one is taken’.[5]

The state funeral for Queen Victoria on 2 February 1901 was held in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Beethoven's Equale was not included in this service, but Case's quartet performed the work at a memorial service in Westminster Abbey the same day. A report that appeared in several regional newspapers noted that the sound of the trombones ‘reverberated through the long and lofty aisles and from the groined roof with sometimes startling, but always fascinating, effect’.[6] Services were held across Britain that day, and in Manchester Cathedral, the Equale was performed by the trombone players of the Hallé Orchestra.[7]

According to the obituaries in the Tamworth Herald and The Royal College of Music Magazine, at the time of his death Case was close to completing a history of the trombone, the result of twenty years research in the British Museum and elsewhere. The RCM Magazine lamented the fact that he did not live to complete the work ‘which was so much a labour of love, and for which he had so patiently prepared'. The only surviving example of his scholarship is a letter to The Musical Times, in which he challenged various assertions made by Canon Francis Galpin in his seminal paper on the history of the trombone to members of The Musical Association in November 1906, at which Case was present.

George Case was recognised during his lifetime as an authority on the history of the trombone. As a performer he was praised by no less a figure than George Bernard Shaw, but he evidently did not strive to advance this aspect of his career. Having the financial security to pursue his personal interests, he chose to indulge his passions for historical research and fishing. Gustav Holst studied with George Case between 1896 and 1898, precisely when Case was leading his trombone quartet in performances of Beethoven’s Equale in high profile funeral services. Holst did not disclose details of his lessons with Case or the impact they had on his development as a composer, but considering Case’s keen interest in the history of the trombone and its repertoire, we can assume that this would have featured in his teaching. The most discernible influence of George Case on Holst’s orchestral writing is arguably the short funeral march for three trombones in ‘Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age’ from The Planets (1914-16). The trombone’s age-old associations with death and mourning were well known, but it is tempting to suppose that this symbolism would have held particular poignancy for Holst through the influence of his late trombone teacher.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Johanna Byrne, Assistant Librarian, Royal College of Music, and Arnold Myers, Senior Research Fellow, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, for their assistance in the research for this article.