Alfred Hollins (1865-1942): Organist and Composer - Life

Alfred Hollins (1865-1942) was an eclectic composer & performer. Many of his contemporaries thought that he was a much finer pianist than organist. This is a contention we can no longer decide on one way or the other. Furthermore he played the organ at a Presbyterian church in Edinburgh for some 45 years of his life, yet he felt able to write several anthems of a particularly Anglican and Roman Catholic nature.

Most organists and organ enthusiasts estimation of Hollins today is based on two key facts - firstly that he was blind and secondly, he wrote a piece of music for the organ called A Song of Sunshine. This is the sum of the received wisdom on this very accomplished performer and composer. 

Most organists and organ enthusiasts estimation of Hollins today is based on two key facts - firstly that he was blind and secondly, he wrote a piece of music for the organ called A Song of Sunshine. This is the sum of the received wisdom on this very accomplished performer and composer.

Alfred Hollins was born a Yorkshireman in Hull on 11 September 1865, and notwithstanding his extensive travels while giving recitals and his residence in Scotland for more than half his life, was proud of his birth right. He was born blind –although an apocryphal story tells that he had sight at the moment of his coming into the world and then promptly lost it.

Hollins mother died early in the young child’s life. There is little known about his father. Young Alfred was moved to York to live with his ‘Aunt Mary’ This was fortuitous as he was to receive his very first piano lessons from this lady. A degree of hagiographic detail has sprung up around the composer. It is rumoured that he was able to pick out tunes on the piano at an extremely early age. Furthermore it is believed he had perfect pitch at the same age. He could name any two notes struck on the keyboard and give their relationship! His aunt noted his early ability to improvise at the piano. However, the budding composer’s grandmother is reputed to have ordered him to ‘stop that strumming.’

It was in the year 1874 that his remarkable education began. He was enrolled into the Wilberforce Institution for the Blind at York. By a strange coincidence he was taught by a certain William Barnby who was the eldest brother of the then popular church composer Joseph Barnby.

Four years later, Alfred moved south of the Thames and was entered at the Royal Normal College for the Blind at Upper Norwood. Almost at once he was able to impress the principal at that time, a certain Sir Francis Campbell, of his potential as a musician. He was given the opportunity to study the piano under Fritz Hartvigson and the organ under Dr. E.J. Hopkins who was then organist at Temple Church, just off Fleet Street. His genius was soon recognised. Concert success followed concert success. He played the solo part in the Emperor Concerto under the bâton of August Manns at Crystal Palace. He was only sixteen years old. A year later he was performing at a private concert at Windsor in the presence of Queen Victoria.

The opportunity presented itself for the young man to study with the great and magisterial Hans von Bulow in Berlin. Whilst in Germany he did a series of concerts – at one time playing three concerti in the one evening - The Liszt Eb, the Schumann A minor and the ‘Emperor.’ He played before the royal families of Germany and the Low Countries.

His first ‘professional’ appointment was as organist at St John’s, Redhill in 1884. He appeared at the Music and Inventions Exhibition in 1885 – this time he was playing the concert organ. Shortly afterwards another period of study presented itself at the Raff Conservatorium in Frankfurt.

The following eleven years found Hollins as organist at Upper Norwood Presbyterian Church, as the first appointed organist at the Peoples Palace (Crystal Palace) and a period of professorial activities at his old ‘alma mater’ – teaching piano and organ at the Royal Normal College.

In-between all this activity he managed to find time to sail to the United States and make a major tour of the concert halls of New York and Boston. He played with many important orchestras and on many impressive organ consoles.

Soon there was to be a sea change in his life. The Reverend Hugh Black was the assistant minister at the Free St. George’s Church in Edinburgh. He was a popular preacher who attracted quite a crowed of auditors. He had rebelled somewhat against the strict ‘no music’ attitudes of his predecessors. At that time the ‘Free Church’ had little to do with music – either secular or religious. In fact, the founder of the church the Reverend Robert S. Candlish had virulently opposed the installation of the ‘kist of whistles’ into his church. He regarded it as the thin edge of the wedge – to the sacramental system of popery and the work of the very devil himself! He even authored a pamphlet called ‘The Organ Question.’

However the Reverend Black was able to persuade the Presbyterian kirk session to move with the times – after all it was nearly the beginning of the Twentieth Century. An organ was procured, and an organist had to be found. The tale goes that Black journeyed all the way to Nottingham to hear Hollins play and offered him the job there and then.

Hollins accepted and from that moment was committed to the life and worship of St George’s. That is not to say that he did not continue with his tours. In 1904 he sailed by liner to Australia and New Zealand. In 1907 and again in 1909 and 1916 he travelled to the Union of South Africa to deliver a series of concerts in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In fact, he gave the opening recital at the new Town Hall there. He had been instrumental in developing the specification for the organ.

Hollins gave a major recital tour of the United States in 1925/26 where he visited some sixty five cities.

It has been estimated that he travelled some 600,000 miles on his recital tours – a remarkable achievement for any person – let alone a blind man.

In the latter years of his life he wrote down his reflections on his life as an organist and teacher. The book he published was called A Blind Musician Looks Back.  It makes entertaining reading and gives great insight into an organist’s existence at the turn of the century.

Hollins died in Edinburgh on 17 May 1942.

The Musical establishment saw fit to award him an Honorary Doctor of Music from Edinburgh University in 1922. This was in addition to being made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1904.

With thanks to MusicWeb International where this essay was first published.