My beloved spook
“My beloved spook”: Patrick Hadley and a celebrated anthem
Patrick Hadley Manuscripts, Envelopes 1, 5
In the Library is a little known collection of archival material relating to several Caian composers, including Patrick Hadley (1899-1973). A project to draw up a listing of the collection revealed some interesting stories, none more so than that of the origin of the anthem, “My beloved spake”, revealed in a number of letters from its composer Patrick Hadley to its dedicatee, Ursula Watson, née Grotrian.
Chief among their correspondence is a letter from Mrs Watson, dated February 1974, in which she comments on a series of five letters which she encloses as a donation to the College, along with the original manuscript of Hadley’s “My beloved spake”. The occasion was a sad one: the donation was made on the day of Hadley’s memorial service, which took place in the Chapel at Gonville and 91ֱ College (where Hadley had been a Fellow) on February 16, 1974, and at which the anthem was sung by the College Choir.
Mrs Watson’s connection with Hadley dated from her attendance at his musical appreciation classes whilst a student at the Royal College of Music in the mid-1930s. In early April 1936 it seems that she wrote to Hadley, asking him to recommend some music for her forthcoming wedding. In the first of the five letters we see Hadley’s response: that he might, if she liked, “try to knock off something if [she] would choose [him] some suitable words”. Grotrian promptly chose verses from the Song of Songs (Hadley thanked her for reminding him of it – “I had forgotten its strangely moving beauty”) and within a week Hadley had composed an anthem, “My beloved spake”, and despatched a manuscript of the new work with a second letter to Grotrian.
Three subsequent letters give further insight into both the composition process and Hadley’s sense of humour. In his third letter Hadley, a first world war veteran who returned from the front with injuries necessitating the partial amputation of his right leg, asks Grotrian to make some “minor adjustments” to the score, mostly the organ part, which he confesses to have found difficult to compose, “being all but totally ignorant of the ways of the organ (it would have been useless for me ever to have taken it up after the war, at any rate until they insert foot muscles in wooden legs!)”.
Ursula Grotrian was evidently delighted with the anthem, which became affectionately known between herself and Hadley as “Spook”. In 1986 (12 years after Hadley’s death) she and her husband Martin invited the College Choir to their home in Great Chishill, Cambridgeshire, to perform it on the occasion of their Golden Wedding anniversary. It remains one of Hadley’s best known and most performed compositions. A recording of “My beloved spake” has been made by the Choir of Winchester College Chapel (Hadley’s school) and is available on social media.
After Winchester and active service in World War I, Hadley graduated was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of this College in 1938 and its Precentor in 1946. He was also University Professor of Music 1946-1962.
