Henry Bishop (composer)

Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (18 November 1786 – 30 April 1855) was an English composer. He is most famous for the songs "Home! Sweet Home!" and "Lo! Here the Gentle Lark." He was the composer or arranger of some 120 dramatic works, including 80 operas, light operas, cantatas, and ballets. Knighted in 1842, he was the first musician to be so honoured. Bishop worked for all the major theatres of London in his era — including the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Vauxhall Gardens and the Haymarket Theatre, and was Professor of Music at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. His second wife was the noted soprano Anna Bishop, who scandalised British society by leaving him and conducting an open liaison with the harpist Nicolas-Charles Bochsa until the latter's death in Sydney.

Bishop was born in London, where his father was a watchmaker and haberdasher. At the age of 13, Bishop left full-time education and worked as a music-publisher with his cousin. After training as a jockey at Newmarket, he took some lessons in harmony from Francisco Bianchi in London. In 1804 he wrote the music to a piece called "Angelina", which was performed at Margate.

After his second success on the stage with The Maniac (1810), Bishop became music director of Covent Garden for the next 14 years. In 1813, he was a founding member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1825 Bishop was induced by Robert Elliston to transfer his services from Covent Garden to the rival house in Drury Lane, for which he wrote, among others, the opera Aladdin, based on the story from 1001 Nights. It was intended to compete with Weber's Oberon, commissioned by the other house. Aladdin failed, and Bishop's career as an operatic composer came to an end. He did, however, rework operas by other composers. An 1827 Covent Garden playbill records a performance of the Marriage of Figaro with "The Overture and Music selected chiefly from Mozart's operas – the new music by Mr Bishop". It included an aria called Follow, follow o'er the mountain, sung by Miss Paton.

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