John Liptrot Hatton (12 October 1809 – 10 September 1886) was an English musical composer, conductor, pianist, accompanist and singer.See "John Liptrot Hatton", Musical Times 50 (1909), pp. 641–46.
Early career Hatton was born in Liverpool to a musical family, for both his father John and grandfather were violinists. Although largely self-taught as a musician, he became a pupil of Michael Maybrick (uncle of the singer and composer Stephen Adams), who was also the teacher of Charles Santley's father, and also studied in the academy of a Mr. Molyneux. By the age of 16 he had become organist in the churches of Woolton and Childwall and at the Roman Catholic church in Liverpool. (Auditioning for Woolton, he played a voluntary upon the street-song "All round my Hat", hinting at his own name.) A man of many-sided talents and a broad humour attending them, he appeared as an actor on the Liverpool stage. Subsequently, he found his way to London as a member of Macready's company at Drury Lane, appearing in a cast led by Macready and Kean in Shakespeare's Othello in December 1832. Santley tells that Hatton took the part of Joe Blueskin (who has the song "Jolly Nose") in the play of Jack Sheppard when it was mounted independently at the Liver Theatre (the "Little Liver") in Liverpool. It happened to be staged simultaneously with the London production during 1839 in which Paul Bedford took the same role: Hatton scored so great a success that the London production disappointed when it came to Liverpool. Meanwhile, he was making his mark as a musician: in 1835 Thomas Attwood wrote to Mendelssohn, "We have recently had a new establishment here which is called 'The Society of British Musicians', in the hope of bringing forward native talent... I, however, wish you would look at your cloak, or great-coat, lest you should have had a bit cut out of it: for there is a young man of the name of Hatton, who seems to have got a little bit of it, indeed he seems to assimilate to your style without plagiary more than anyone I have met with."Letter of 9 February 1835, quoted in Musical Times, cited in .
The composer in London and Vienna In the winter season of 1842–43 he obtained an appointment directing the choruses in the English opera series at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and in February 1843 his own first operetta, Queen of the Thames, or, The Anglers (libretto by Edward Fitzball), obtained a successful run of six performances. This included the madrigal "The merry bridal bells", sung by Miss Romer, Mr H Phillips and Mr Allen.Published by D'Almaine & Co, London 1843, see worldcat. Josef Staudigl, the eminent German bass, was a member of the company: at his suggestion Hatton wrote a more ambitious work, Pascal Bruno, again to a text by Fitzball. Hatton and Staudigl presented this new arrangement at Vienna in October 1844, as a benefit for Staudigl, who took the principal part. It had a mixed reception, and was not presented to a London audience, yet still the "Revenge" song, the only part to be published, was made very popular in England by Staudigl. Fitzball, finding that his text had been presented, in German, without his consent, the playbill naming "Herr Fixball" as the English author, was obliged to accept the situation, but it seems to have ended his association with Hatton.E. Fitzball, Thirty-Five Years of a Dramatic Author's Life, 2 Vols (T Newby, London 1859), II, 159–60. But Vienna greatly admired Hatton's piano playing, especially the fugues of J. S. Bach which he played from memory. While in Vienna he took the opportunity to study counterpoint under Sechter.
Soon after this he composed a number of songs modelled on the style of German classics, including some eighteen songs to words by Thomas Oliphant, who commissioned the songs, with German translations. Oliphant was a collector of music, and between 1840 and 1849 he catalogued the manuscript and printed music collections of the British Museum. He was "unsurpassed as a snapper-up of unconsidered madrigalian trifles", and his personal collections were made up, after his death in 1873, into nearly 600 lots for sale.Alec Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music, c. 1600–1960 (Cambridge University Press 1963), pp. 37–59 passim, at p. 59. Hatton's Oliphant songs were published in England under the pseudonym "P. B. Czapek" (alluding to the Hungarian word for a Hat, for "Hatton"), and became Oliphant's property, as did other of Hatton's copyrights. Among Hatton's settings for his collaborator were "Streamlet gently flowing", "Autumn reflections", "The goldsmith's daughter", and "My days have been so wondrous free".
In 1846 he appeared at the Three Choirs Festival as a singer, and also played a piano concerto of Mozart. He undertook concert tours at about this time with Sivori, Vieuxtemps and others, serving both as accompanist and solo pianist. He also gave monodramatic entertainments, as for example in this description of a concert in the Assembly Rooms at Peckham in December 1846: "Mr J.L. Hatton was the Atlas of the entertainment, and bore the weight of the concert on his own shoulders. He lectured, sang, and performed on the pianoforte. Like Malaprop's Cerberus, he was three gentlemen at once. The entertainment was novel and interesting. Mr. Hatton gave some capital specimens of pianoforte music by various masters including Corelli, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. He sang songs comic, sentimental, and serious. He levied contributions upon many nations for their compositions, and kept his audience alternately moved with delight and excited with laughter. Mr Hatton was modest enough not to obtrude too many of his own works upon his visitors. 'The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe', a song intended, no doubt, to be very comic, was the only composition of Mr Hatton's performed during the evening."Musical World, 26 December 1846: cited in . Although differing in that – on that occasion – Hatton did not perform many of his own compositions, this style of one-man entertainment with speech, songs and a keyboard with accessories had been pioneered by Charles Dibdin more than fifty years previously, in his Entertainments Sans Souci:G. Hogarth (Ed.), The Songs of Charles Dibdin, Chronologically Arranged, with Notes Historical, Biographical and Critical, with a Memoir of the Author, 2 Vols. (G.H. Davidson, London 1842, 1848), Vol 1, pp. xxiv–xxv. Hatton was certainly well aware of the example of Dibdin.
First American tour From 1848 to 1850 Hatton was in America, and in 1848 gave several public and private concerts in New York City. For example, on 12 September, at the Apollo Theatre, he performed his own comic songs as well as works by Handel, Field and Scarlatti. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in that year, he shared the stage with Stephen C. Foster. "Contemporary [American] critics deplored the failure of the public to appreciate his great art." He did pander to the public on occasion: in Boston, where he obtained a position in the Handel and Haydn Society, he performed Bach Fugues and a Mendelssohn piano concerto, but also sang "Christmas Sleigh Ride" while he played the piano and jangled sleigh bells, all to the great amusement of the crowd. It is said that on the next day he was due to conduct a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah (first performed 1846) at which, the baritone being indisposed, Hatton in the relevant numbers turned to face the audience from the conductor's podium and sang the title role himself.B. Levison and F. Farrer, Classical Music's Strangest Concerts and Characters: Extraordinary But True Tales of Harmony and Discord (Anova Books, 2007), pp. 101–02.
Song-writer and accompanist Hatton composed various songs to poems by Robert Herrick (including his famous "To Anthea"), Ben Jonson and Charles Sedley at this time which were published in and before 1850.J. L. Hatton, Songs and Poems by Herrick, Ben Jonson and Sedley (Brewer & Co., London 1850). Read at HathiTrust Others became the property of Thomas Oliphant.E.g. "Fair Daffodils, we weep to see" (R. Addison & Co., London 1848). In his August 1850 Preface, Hatton says that they were written "at different times under various circumstances. Some few of them were composed previous to my departure to America in the autumn of the year 1848, and presented as little souvenirs to several of my friends on my leaving England. The rest with one exception were written entirely for my own amusement during the time I was away, and all of them were composed without any view to their publication... On my return to England I was urged by one of my friends... to make a complete collection of these little compositions and publish them in a consolidated form. The kindness of my friends in restoring me some of my MSS. has enabled me to do this, and I now send these songs forth into the world, satisfied if they should be the means, in however humble a degree, of adding to the material of musical enjoyment, or of contributing anything to the regeneration of the popular taste in an important department of chamber music." It was also during the 1840s that he wrote "Simon the Cellarer", another abiding favourite (which he sold to Oliphant for "a £10 note"). This was incorporated into the ballad opera Diamond cut diamond by Henri Drayton in 1859.Brian C. Thompson, "Henri Drayton, English opera and Anglo-American relations, 1850–72", Journal of the Royal Musical Association 136 no. 2, pp. 247–303, at pp. 262 ff. Charles Santley, who championed "To Anthea" and "Simon the Cellarer" singing them with Hatton accompanying, lived long enough to record them both, twice, in the early 20th century, preserving his association with the composer.Santley recorded them first in 1904 for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company (10-inch G & Ts, "To Anthea" 2-2864 and "Simon the Cellarer" 2-2862), see John R. Bennett, Voices of the Past, A Catalogue of Vocal Recordings from the English Catalogues of The Gramophone Company (etc) (Oakwood Press, 1955), p. 50: and afterwards for Columbia Records.
Hatton was one of the great accompanists of his time, and during the 1850s he toured with Mario and Grisi, and with Sims Reeves. For Mario he composed his famous song "Good-night, sweetheart, good-night", instructing him in the pronunciation of the words and coaching him in the music before it had been committed to manuscript. It was this, and "Com'è gentil" from Don Pasquale, that became the two favourite songs most associated with Mario. Hatton toured with Reeves in 1850 before returning briefly to America, and made a tour to Dublin, Belfast and Manchester with him in 1853, on which occasion, in Dublin, Reeves first sang "Good-night, sweetheart".C. E. Pearce, Sims Reeves, Fifty Years of Music in England (Stanley Paul & Co, London 1924), pp. 172–73. Mario sang it suavely, and with an Italian accent, so as to break one's heart; Reeves made it vigorous and soul-stirring. Hatton composed Anglican church music including a morning and evening service in E, and a number of anthems such as Come Holy Ghost and Blessed be the Lord of Israel.