Sir George Grove increased the popularity and understanding of classical music among the general public. His greatest achievement was the Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878–89), but he is also remembered for organising regular concerts at the Crystal Palace. His blue plaque can be found close to the Palace, at his former home at 14 Westwood Hill in Sydenham.

THE CRYSTAL PALACE AND SYDENHAM

Sir George Grove was appointed secretary of the Society of Arts in February 1850 and helped to organise the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace, which had housed the Exhibition in Hyde Park, was subsequently re-located to Sydenham, and Grove was appointed secretary of this new cultural centre.

He followed the path beaten by the Crystal Palace and moved from Westminster to Sydenham in 1852, living at 14 Westwood Hill until 1860, when the area was still known as Church Meadow. While there he witnessed the reconstruction of the Palace, which was formally re-opened by Queen Victoria at its new location on 10 June 1854.

Grove held the role of secretary until 1873 and he used it as an opportunity to promote classical music to a new and wider audience. From 1855 until the end of the century many thousands of Londoners took the new railway southwards to the Crystal Palace for Saturday concerts, conducted by its musical director, August Manns.

The programme notes – or ‘synoptical analyses’ – were written by Grove (initially in collaboration with Manns, but by Grove alone from the late 1860s onwards). Signed ‘G’, these were among the earliest such accessible critical appreciations and Grove later recalled writing them ‘in my dressing room in our first house in Sydenham, near the church’. The notes were widely admired, although George Bernard Shaw found them ‘idiotic’. Shaw also observed that working-class Londoners were largely frozen out of the concerts, despite relatively low ticket prices.

THE DICTIONARY

Grove had a parallel career in publishing and his editorial skills and passion for music were finally united in 1874 when he was commissioned to create a new dictionary of music. Grove outlined his ambition to provide a source ‘from which an intelligent inquirer can learn, in small compass, and in language which he can understand, what is meant by a Symphony or Sonata, a Fugue, a Stretto, a Coda’. The dictionary also summarised the lives of leading musical figures and the development of instruments and musical forms. The four volumes of the Dictionary of Music and Musicians were published between 1878 and 1889, and by the time of Grove’s death the dictionary was known simply as Grove.

Knighted in 1893, Grove died at his second Sydenham home on 28 May 1900. Towards the end of his life he wrote to a correspondent:

Never hesitate to ask me when you think I can do anything. I shan't be here much longer I dare say; and while I live nothing gives me greater pleasure than to work for music!