Richard Slater - Father of Salvation Army Music
Excerpts from article, by Colonel Brindley Boon on the 150th anniversary of Richard Slater's birth, reproduced from The Salvationist, June 5th, 2004.
ALTHOUGH I have been writing for the Army’s press for nearly 70 years, this is the first time I have had the privilege of writing about a 150th birthday anniversary. The fact that my subject is Lieut-Colonel Richard Slater OF, the Father of Salvation Army Music, adds pleasure to the task.
It was Bramwell Booth, as Chief of the Staff, who conferred that well-deserved title upon him. During a session of bandmasters’ councils in the early days of the last century the future General announced: "Now I am going to ask the Father of Salvation Army Music, Major Slater, to speak to you." The assembly of 700 delegates rose and ‘cheered vociferously’. One of those present later recalled: "The major seemed most surprised and embarrassed."
RICHARD SLATER was a Londoner, born on 7 June 1854 in Bagnigge Wells Road, off Farringdon Road and within view of St Paul’s Cathedral. His birthplace was long ago demolished with other thoroughfares to make way for Mount Pleasant, the central sorting office of the Post Office. His father, an engineer and something of an inventor as well as a capable violinist with the Sacred Harmonic Society, died at the age of 28, when Richard was 5. Reduced to extreme poverty, Richard’s young mother moved with her three children to nearby King’s Cross, living first in one room in Cromer Street (where Richard was required to sleep on a ‘bedstead’ of two chairs) and then in Bidborough Street.
Young Slater’s knowledge of Victorian London was unsurpassed. His diaries, which he wrote daily from his boyhood, reveal that on 14 June 1870, when aged 16, he was present at the funeral of Charles Dickens in Westminster Abbey, heard Dean Stanley give the oration and ‘saw Tennyson within the altar rail looking dreamingly down the body of the building’.
DISCERNING an inherent musical bent in Richard, his mother encouraged him. From an early age he attended Cromer Street Mission, becoming a flautist in its drum and fife band and eventually teaching in the Sunday school. He was highly regarded as ‘a good Christian young fellow’. One Sunday afternoon, at the age of 21, the youth stood up and startlingly announced: ‘I’ve finished with Christian teaching; there’s nothing in it!’ That was no sudden decision. Always an avid reader, by the age of 13 Richard had absorbed himself in books covering a wide area of interest. It was a great day for him when he was old enough to be issued with a reading ticket for the British Museum.
Freed from his Christian inhibitions, Richard threw himself wholeheartedly into his new pursuits and became involved in public discussions on science, philosophy and religion. He was also a successful lecturer, on the science of human character as well as on music, for by this time he was a first violinist in the Royal Albert Hall Amateur Orchestral Society and having compositions recommended to publishers. At one time a brass plate on the door of his home announced to passers-by that ‘Richard Slater – Phrenologist – lives and practices here’.
With all his new theories, Slater retained his long-held desire to lift men’s thoughts to higher things. It distressed him that much of his lecturing, particularly on Sunday evenings, had to be done in working men’s clubs, with their lax moral tone and amid the drinking of intoxicating liquor. ‘The things that I saw and heard,’ he wrote, ‘caused me to be sick at heart when I had revealed to me what was the true condition, morally, of those who boasted of being in the ranks of advanced thinkers and national reformers.’
RICHARD SLATER had heard of The Salvation Army, of its distinctive uniform and strange methods, and was startled and puzzled by a poster bearing the inscription: ‘The Salvation Army is coming. The kingdom of Beelzebub will be stormed, his prisoners taken, and during the day’s proceedings there will be great rejoicings over the slain of the Lord.’ This was an announcement of the opening of a converted dance hall at Flask Walk in the Vale of Health vicinity of Hampstead Heath as a Salvation Army barracks. The young infidel went along one Sunday afternoon in July 1882 and took his place in the gallery. The soldiers of the corps sat on the platform facing the congregation and when testimony time arrived a servant-girl jumped to her feet and hurriedly proclaimed: ‘My missus says she believes I am saved because I sweep beneath the mats now and I didn’t before.’ The crowd laughed and applauded. Not so Slater. Much he saw and heard that afternoon failed to impress him, but those words caused him to wish a triumphant power like that could come into his life.
In this way the name of Harriet Craddock passed into Army history and led the 28-year-old seeker to return to his Christian roots. He went home to turn once again to the gospels and to read the life of Jesus from a new standpoint. Richard Slater wanted to know more about the Salvationists. After visits to Whitechapel, Chalk Farm and Regent Hall – at each of which corps he made copious shorthand notes of all he saw and heard – he was present at a Friday evening holiness meeting at Regent Hall. There, as ‘Just As I Am’ was being sung, he surrendered at the mercy seat. It was most moving for me to attend Richard Slater’s memorial service at the ‘Rink’ on a wartime Sunday afternoon in December 1939 and see Bandmaster Herbert Twitchin – who as a boy of eight had witnessed the scene – point to where the smartly dressed young man had sat, and at the spot at the mercy seat where he had knelt and been faithfully dealt with by the corps officer, Captain William Baugh. The convert was immediately advised to take his place among the Salvationists who occupied the platform at Regent Hall, to wear an outsize Salvation Army shield on his jacket, to testify in the meetings and seek to win others for the Kingdom of God.
Brother Slater, however, was not yet convinced that he should become a Salvationist. Maybe his refined mind and inherited physical weakness held him back. However, true to his convictions, he cancelled his lecturing, with its remunerative fees, and much of his musical work ceased. As he grew to love The Salvation Army more and more and wanted to work full-time for God in its ranks he believed he could never face the rigors of a field officer’s life, but believed a channel of usefulness would open up to him.
ON the first anniversary of his conversion, Slater wrote the words and music of his first Army song. The chorus is still a classic of total commitment:
Ever thine, thine alone,
Within nine days of writing the song came the divine call to take up what was to be his life’s work. William Booth was conducting Sunday meetings at Regent Hall. Richard Slater was on the platform as a soldier, playing his violin, testifying and also taking shorthand notes of the General’s addresses. The Founder’s attention was drawn toward the talented musician and his interest deepened when the corps officer, Captain Stonehill, told him Brother Slater’s future plans might take him away from the Army. Before the end of the meeting the General asked to see Slater in the officers’ room. The Army’s future chief musician recorded in his diary: ‘When I entered the room he [the General] drew a chair close to my own and exclaimed: “I think you are a man for whom we are waiting.” He asked what instruments did I play. Did I know anything about brass? Did I understand harmony and through-bass? What subjects had I lectured upon?’ This unexpected interview resulted in Richard Slater meeting the General at International Headquarters the next morning when, in the presence of Herbert Booth, he learnt of their decision to set up a special department to write and produce vocal and instrumental music to meet the needs of the growing Movement.
POSSESSING a beautiful voice, Eliza Archer was employed at a well-known emporium at Oxford Circus, frequently entertaining the girls in her department with her singing. When one of them invited her to a meeting at Regent Hall she went along ‘for the fun of the thing’. Well acquainted with the popular secular tunes to which some of the congregational songs were being sung, she joined in singing, but using the original words. In a subsequent Friday holiness meeting Eliza knelt at the penitent form. Forced to leave home by her disgusted, unforgiving parents, the girl experienced happiness in her newfound service and became frequently used as a soloist in the meetings. Her passionate singing of ‘Not My Own, But Saved By Jesus’ and her glowing testimony stirred the heart of Richard Slater. His interest was not readily reciprocated, although Eliza was mindful of his excellent violin accompaniments to her solo singing. She thought him somewhat of an eccentric but his patient, gentle wooing culminated in their marriage on 17 September 1884, the first such ceremony to take place at Regent Hall.
Many of the composer’s early songs were introduced as vocal duets by the young couple, notably ‘God Is Near Thee’ and ‘Nothing But Thy Blood Can Save Me’. Richard’s earlier affection for the Great Masters never left him. The Slaters’ daughters – Elsa (Mrs Key) and Brunnhilde (Mrs Lieut-Commissioner Victor Rolfe) – were named after Wagnerian heroines. Wagner was his favorite composer.
THE Army’s first Music Department (as it was called) was established on 22 October 1883 in a small basement room beneath Clapton Congress Hall, under the overall supervision of Commandant Herbert Booth with Richard Slater in charge of operations. He was assisted by Fred Fry, the Army’s first bandsman, and Harry Hill, a former policeman from Hull. A successful bandmaster at Hull Icehouse, Harry took charge of the band at Clapton Congress Hall. The three men were given the rank of bandmaster, treated as officers and paid the princely salary of 25 shillings (£1.25) a week. Slater remembered that frequently the cash was paid on a Friday and ‘borrowed back’ on the Saturday to help meet a shortage of funds at the training garrison. This memory always amused him.
Remaining Head of the International Music Editorial Department (as it became) for 30 years, Slater was compelled to retire as a brigadier because of overwork and continuing ill-health in 1913 at the age of 58. When his successor, Colonel Fred Hawkes, suffered a similar breakdown ten years later, Slater, now greatly recovered, was called upon to take temporary charge of his old department. During that period he was promoted to lieut-colonel and admitted to the Order of the Founder.
As a songwriter Lieut-Colonel Slater must have first place in our history. Sixty-five years after his death his considerable output has not been surpassed, nor is it likely to be. Of his published songs he wrote the words of 127, the music of 166 and the words and music of 294. Another 264 were in manuscript at the time of his passing, making a grand total of 851. The colonel’s record of instrumental music is equally impressive.
Richard Slater was a great walker, acquainted with geographical details of Thanet and for some distance beyond. When old friends on holiday in the area called to see him it was not unusual for them to find walking tours already planned, also the subject to be discussed. Colonel Hawkes had recollections of walking miles and sharing the topic of Wagner’s orchestrations. Hawkes returned a wiser, if footsore, man.
The Father of Salvation Army Music was promoted to Glory on 7 December 1939. At the graveside in the quiet Margate cemetery his family, Salvationist comrades and friendly neighbors who had long known and respected ‘Mr Slater’, sang his chorus:
My soul has found a resting-place,
Those words are inscribed on the composer’s headstone.
ALTHOUGH I have been writing for the Army’s press for nearly 70 years, this is the first time I have had the privilege of writing about a 150th birthday anniversary. The fact that my subject is Lieut-Colonel Richard Slater OF, the Father of Salvation Army Music, adds pleasure to the task.
It was Bramwell Booth, as Chief of the Staff, who conferred that well-deserved title upon him. During a session of bandmasters’ councils in the early days of the last century the future General announced: "Now I am going to ask the Father of Salvation Army Music, Major Slater, to speak to you." The assembly of 700 delegates rose and ‘cheered vociferously’. One of those present later recalled: "The major seemed most surprised and embarrassed."
RICHARD SLATER was a Londoner, born on 7 June 1854 in Bagnigge Wells Road, off Farringdon Road and within view of St Paul’s Cathedral. His birthplace was long ago demolished with other thoroughfares to make way for Mount Pleasant, the central sorting office of the Post Office. His father, an engineer and something of an inventor as well as a capable violinist with the Sacred Harmonic Society, died at the age of 28, when Richard was 5. Reduced to extreme poverty, Richard’s young mother moved with her three children to nearby King’s Cross, living first in one room in Cromer Street (where Richard was required to sleep on a ‘bedstead’ of two chairs) and then in Bidborough Street.
Young Slater’s knowledge of Victorian London was unsurpassed. His diaries, which he wrote daily from his boyhood, reveal that on 14 June 1870, when aged 16, he was present at the funeral of Charles Dickens in Westminster Abbey, heard Dean Stanley give the oration and ‘saw Tennyson within the altar rail looking dreamingly down the body of the building’.
DISCERNING an inherent musical bent in Richard, his mother encouraged him. From an early age he attended Cromer Street Mission, becoming a flautist in its drum and fife band and eventually teaching in the Sunday school. He was highly regarded as ‘a good Christian young fellow’. One Sunday afternoon, at the age of 21, the youth stood up and startlingly announced: ‘I’ve finished with Christian teaching; there’s nothing in it!’ That was no sudden decision. Always an avid reader, by the age of 13 Richard had absorbed himself in books covering a wide area of interest. It was a great day for him when he was old enough to be issued with a reading ticket for the British Museum.
Freed from his Christian inhibitions, Richard threw himself wholeheartedly into his new pursuits and became involved in public discussions on science, philosophy and religion. He was also a successful lecturer, on the science of human character as well as on music, for by this time he was a first violinist in the Royal Albert Hall Amateur Orchestral Society and having compositions recommended to publishers. At one time a brass plate on the door of his home announced to passers-by that ‘Richard Slater – Phrenologist – lives and practices here’.
With all his new theories, Slater retained his long-held desire to lift men’s thoughts to higher things. It distressed him that much of his lecturing, particularly on Sunday evenings, had to be done in working men’s clubs, with their lax moral tone and amid the drinking of intoxicating liquor. ‘The things that I saw and heard,’ he wrote, ‘caused me to be sick at heart when I had revealed to me what was the true condition, morally, of those who boasted of being in the ranks of advanced thinkers and national reformers.’
RICHARD SLATER had heard of The Salvation Army, of its distinctive uniform and strange methods, and was startled and puzzled by a poster bearing the inscription: ‘The Salvation Army is coming. The kingdom of Beelzebub will be stormed, his prisoners taken, and during the day’s proceedings there will be great rejoicings over the slain of the Lord.’ This was an announcement of the opening of a converted dance hall at Flask Walk in the Vale of Health vicinity of Hampstead Heath as a Salvation Army barracks. The young infidel went along one Sunday afternoon in July 1882 and took his place in the gallery. The soldiers of the corps sat on the platform facing the congregation and when testimony time arrived a servant-girl jumped to her feet and hurriedly proclaimed: ‘My missus says she believes I am saved because I sweep beneath the mats now and I didn’t before.’ The crowd laughed and applauded. Not so Slater. Much he saw and heard that afternoon failed to impress him, but those words caused him to wish a triumphant power like that could come into his life.
In this way the name of Harriet Craddock passed into Army history and led the 28-year-old seeker to return to his Christian roots. He went home to turn once again to the gospels and to read the life of Jesus from a new standpoint. Richard Slater wanted to know more about the Salvationists. After visits to Whitechapel, Chalk Farm and Regent Hall – at each of which corps he made copious shorthand notes of all he saw and heard – he was present at a Friday evening holiness meeting at Regent Hall. There, as ‘Just As I Am’ was being sung, he surrendered at the mercy seat. It was most moving for me to attend Richard Slater’s memorial service at the ‘Rink’ on a wartime Sunday afternoon in December 1939 and see Bandmaster Herbert Twitchin – who as a boy of eight had witnessed the scene – point to where the smartly dressed young man had sat, and at the spot at the mercy seat where he had knelt and been faithfully dealt with by the corps officer, Captain William Baugh. The convert was immediately advised to take his place among the Salvationists who occupied the platform at Regent Hall, to wear an outsize Salvation Army shield on his jacket, to testify in the meetings and seek to win others for the Kingdom of God.
Brother Slater, however, was not yet convinced that he should become a Salvationist. Maybe his refined mind and inherited physical weakness held him back. However, true to his convictions, he cancelled his lecturing, with its remunerative fees, and much of his musical work ceased. As he grew to love The Salvation Army more and more and wanted to work full-time for God in its ranks he believed he could never face the rigors of a field officer’s life, but believed a channel of usefulness would open up to him.
ON the first anniversary of his conversion, Slater wrote the words and music of his first Army song. The chorus is still a classic of total commitment:
Ever thine, thine alone,
Henceforth, Savior, I will be;
This my hope, my life’s ambition,
Day by day to grow like thee.
Within nine days of writing the song came the divine call to take up what was to be his life’s work. William Booth was conducting Sunday meetings at Regent Hall. Richard Slater was on the platform as a soldier, playing his violin, testifying and also taking shorthand notes of the General’s addresses. The Founder’s attention was drawn toward the talented musician and his interest deepened when the corps officer, Captain Stonehill, told him Brother Slater’s future plans might take him away from the Army. Before the end of the meeting the General asked to see Slater in the officers’ room. The Army’s future chief musician recorded in his diary: ‘When I entered the room he [the General] drew a chair close to my own and exclaimed: “I think you are a man for whom we are waiting.” He asked what instruments did I play. Did I know anything about brass? Did I understand harmony and through-bass? What subjects had I lectured upon?’ This unexpected interview resulted in Richard Slater meeting the General at International Headquarters the next morning when, in the presence of Herbert Booth, he learnt of their decision to set up a special department to write and produce vocal and instrumental music to meet the needs of the growing Movement.
POSSESSING a beautiful voice, Eliza Archer was employed at a well-known emporium at Oxford Circus, frequently entertaining the girls in her department with her singing. When one of them invited her to a meeting at Regent Hall she went along ‘for the fun of the thing’. Well acquainted with the popular secular tunes to which some of the congregational songs were being sung, she joined in singing, but using the original words. In a subsequent Friday holiness meeting Eliza knelt at the penitent form. Forced to leave home by her disgusted, unforgiving parents, the girl experienced happiness in her newfound service and became frequently used as a soloist in the meetings. Her passionate singing of ‘Not My Own, But Saved By Jesus’ and her glowing testimony stirred the heart of Richard Slater. His interest was not readily reciprocated, although Eliza was mindful of his excellent violin accompaniments to her solo singing. She thought him somewhat of an eccentric but his patient, gentle wooing culminated in their marriage on 17 September 1884, the first such ceremony to take place at Regent Hall.
Many of the composer’s early songs were introduced as vocal duets by the young couple, notably ‘God Is Near Thee’ and ‘Nothing But Thy Blood Can Save Me’. Richard’s earlier affection for the Great Masters never left him. The Slaters’ daughters – Elsa (Mrs Key) and Brunnhilde (Mrs Lieut-Commissioner Victor Rolfe) – were named after Wagnerian heroines. Wagner was his favorite composer.
THE Army’s first Music Department (as it was called) was established on 22 October 1883 in a small basement room beneath Clapton Congress Hall, under the overall supervision of Commandant Herbert Booth with Richard Slater in charge of operations. He was assisted by Fred Fry, the Army’s first bandsman, and Harry Hill, a former policeman from Hull. A successful bandmaster at Hull Icehouse, Harry took charge of the band at Clapton Congress Hall. The three men were given the rank of bandmaster, treated as officers and paid the princely salary of 25 shillings (£1.25) a week. Slater remembered that frequently the cash was paid on a Friday and ‘borrowed back’ on the Saturday to help meet a shortage of funds at the training garrison. This memory always amused him.
Remaining Head of the International Music Editorial Department (as it became) for 30 years, Slater was compelled to retire as a brigadier because of overwork and continuing ill-health in 1913 at the age of 58. When his successor, Colonel Fred Hawkes, suffered a similar breakdown ten years later, Slater, now greatly recovered, was called upon to take temporary charge of his old department. During that period he was promoted to lieut-colonel and admitted to the Order of the Founder.
As a songwriter Lieut-Colonel Slater must have first place in our history. Sixty-five years after his death his considerable output has not been surpassed, nor is it likely to be. Of his published songs he wrote the words of 127, the music of 166 and the words and music of 294. Another 264 were in manuscript at the time of his passing, making a grand total of 851. The colonel’s record of instrumental music is equally impressive.
Richard Slater was a great walker, acquainted with geographical details of Thanet and for some distance beyond. When old friends on holiday in the area called to see him it was not unusual for them to find walking tours already planned, also the subject to be discussed. Colonel Hawkes had recollections of walking miles and sharing the topic of Wagner’s orchestrations. Hawkes returned a wiser, if footsore, man.
The Father of Salvation Army Music was promoted to Glory on 7 December 1939. At the graveside in the quiet Margate cemetery his family, Salvationist comrades and friendly neighbors who had long known and respected ‘Mr Slater’, sang his chorus:
My soul has found a resting-place,
And I am now, through heavenly grace,
At peace with God, at peace with God.
Those words are inscribed on the composer’s headstone.
