Composers Corner
Gideon Stove (1874-1954)
by Magnus J. Stove
In January, 1954, under the headline ‘Maestro Dies’ there appeared in one of the National Newspapers the following obituary :-
“Nimble fingers that set the Shetland Isles dancing have been stilled by the death of Mr Gideon Stove, Lerwick’s oldest music master. He was 79. A violinist, self-taught, and an expert in Shetland reels and folk tunes, he was equally accomplished in the classics. “He had been playing his fiddle for more than 60 years at local musical events and was a member, and for a long time leader, of the first Lerwick orchestra. He played at successive Gilbert and Sullivan operas and was also fiddler to a squad of Guizers at the Norse festival of Up-Helly-A’. He taught the violin to hundreds of children.”
That was a fair enough summing-up of Gideon’s career as a teacher and music maker, but one which failed to do justice to the great influence he had on fiddle-playing throughout the islands, for his music room at 24 Burns Lane, on the site of the present Swimming Pool, was a Mecca for fiddlers from all over Shetland. They would come to him for advice, for instruction, and to show him their instruments for his approval and appraisal. Very often their visits were just for the sheer pleasure of playing together with him.
Nor does it give Gideon credit for the hundreds of tunes that he kept composing, and whose echoes still linger on in the memories of those still alive who remember his skilled and technically perfect performances.
The present volume will, I hope, introduce some of those tunes into the ken of the present generation of fiddlers and music makers.
My father, Gideon Stove, was born in Burravoe, North Roe on 28th June, 1874. Shortly after the death of his mother, nee Margaret Ratter, the family moved from North Roe to 4 Burns Lane, where the Peerie Shop is now, when Gideon was only five years of age.
Gideon was the youngest of a family of eight, most of whom, prior to the move to Lerwick had married or gone further afield. Jeannie, Mrs Nicolson, was in Ediinburgh, married to a contractor. Grace died young. William, who had settled in Australia, became engaged to a teacher, but died tragically of a fever on what was to be his wedding day. Mary, Mrs Smith, lived in Whiteness. Katie married Laurence Tulloch of Lerwick. Magnus went to Edinburgh and became a head confectioner with McVitie and Price. John went sailing and was lost at sea.
When my grandfather, Magnus Stove, came to Lerwick he worked as a stonemason. The only photo extant of him is in Tom Henderson’s excellent publication ‘Shetland from Old Photographs’ at photo No 52 where he is seen standing at the foot of Burns Lane wearing his stonemason’s leggings in the year 1895.
In that year Magnus was still corresponding with a relative in Bergen, and my grandfather’s tale was that, in the long ago, three Stove brothers came from Norway and settled in different parts of Shetland, giving rise to the different branches of the Stoves. This correspondence petered out, probably on the demise of the Bergen correspondent.
Probably with the intention of emulating his brother Magnus’s success as a confectioner, Gideon started work as a baker and completed his apprenticeship with Bally Mouat. However, very soon he found that the hours of work in a bakery conflicted with the late night musical engagements that he was constantly called upon to fulfill and furthermore there was an ever growing demand on his time as more and more pupils came to him for lessons. He therefore, made the brave decision to leave the bakery and try to make a career out of music, teaching, playing, collecting and composing.
As a self-taught musician he was so keen that he probably did more daily practice than any student at music college, setting himself a rigorous routine of daily practice in the studies of Kreutzer, the classics and the main schools of music, until he reached such a high standard of technical excellence that he was tempted to join a Symphony Orchestra in the south when an approach was made to him. However having just got married to Miss Jessie C. Sandison of 15 Market Street and having put a brass plate on the door of 24 Burns Lane, which read ‘G. Stove, Teacher of Music’, he decided to persevere with a musical career in Shetland. Making music in those days did not make much money, but Gideon was happy doing what he most wanted to do – to devote his life to music.
Gideon was in great demand for playing at Lerwick dances in the days when violin and piano were the only instruments used, except when occasionally augmented by drum or guitar. In those days Miss Joan Williamson, later to become Mrs Mustard, was his most frequent accompanist on the piano, and together they made an excellent partnership for all the big occasions in the Lerwick dance halls, until the days when ‘the wireless’ popularized the big bands and there came a demand for bigger bands in Lerwick too.
As the family grew up and we all learned to play instruments, we had our own ‘G. Stove’s Band’ of father, mother and three sons augmented at times by some of the Burns Lane boys who could play. Between the wars, before we left home to follow our own careers, our band was in demand to play at functions in Lerwick and in the country districts.
About 1933 Gideon moved house to 15 Market Street, to the house which had been built by my maternal grandfather, when the Market Street Company of Fishermen had built a West Side to Market Street. There, in his retirement years, Gideon continued to give some lessons. Mr Peter Fraser, the well-known folk music devotee, was a frequent visitor as they co-operated in collecting and writing down the old Shetland tunes.
Gideon’s Pupils
Many good pupils passed through his hands and benefited from his meticulous instruction. Two of the most prominent and well-known of his pupils still actively playing at the present day are Arthur Scott Robertson, who gained renown as Scotland’s Champion fiddler and Willie Hunter, who is also regarded as one of Scotland’s finest fiddle players.
My brother Harold, Gideon’s youngest son, who died last year, was also one of his best pupils. He reviled in playing the classics and often performed solos with the Lerwick Orchestra. For a time he was leader of a Palm Court type orchestra which gave regular Sunday evening performances.
Gideon’s second son, Alex Gideon, was a Head Postman, who was affectionately known as Dollar. He received his training from his father, and after starting on the fiddle, took up the accordion and became renowned as an expert on that instrument.
I also started on the violin and played first violin in the Lerwick Orchestra while still at school. Then I took up the piano and clarinet, playing both in the dance band. Now in my retirement, I am a church organist, playing the pipe organ in the Congregational Church, where James Stout Angus, for whom my father composed a strathspey, was a deacon.
When I was Headmaster at Uyeasound School I took after-school classes in violin and piano and continued to do so when I went to Mid Yell Junior High School. After a serious operation in 1959, I had reluctantly to give up the evening classes in music and thereafter I concentrated my music teaching into the school hours during the day.
After I retired I was delighted when the Education Committee instated an enlightened policy of employing violin instructors to visit schools. Of these instructors, the best known is Dr Tom Anderson, who did good work with the ‘Forty Fiddlers’ and the ‘Young Heritage’. Gideon Stove would most certainly have heartily approved of what Tom did in the cause of Shetland music.
The Strad
Gideon’s brother John, on his penultimate voyage to the Mediterranean, brought back for his brother, Gideon, the present which was to delight his heart and thrill its hearers. John is said to have parted with all he possessed to acquire this magnificent instrument which was to inspire Gideon to practice on it to reach a high degree of perfection in violin technique. This present from his brother was to become known as ‘Gideon Stove’s Strad’.
As years went by, substantiated by the opinion and appraisal of visiting experts, he became convinced that it was indeed a genuine Stradivarius violin. Be that as it may, the violin had a marvelous tone and great carrying power and was admired by all who heard it. Mr C. Williamson of the Studio in Scalloway once told me that he heard my father’s violin ringing out, over the rooftops of Scalloway, from a Christmas dance in the Scalloway Hall, to the Studio at the shore where he was standing listening; and that was before the days of amplifiers.
It was tragic that John was lost at sea on the very next voyage after presenting Gideon with such an instrument. Perhaps it was traumatic experience that steeled Gideon’s resolve to “practice, practice, practice” as he would always exhort his pupils to do.
I have no doubt that this instrument was an inspiration to my father. He gave it all his loving care and attention. We were not allowed to touch it and we began to revere it as much as he did. Very few were allowed to play on it, but Willie told me that, during a lesson, as a special favour, he was once allowed to draw a bow across the strings to test the tone and to be able to say that he had held a ‘Strad’ in his hands.
On the death of my father in January, 1954, I waived my right as eldest son to claim the ‘Strad’ and told my brother, Harold, that, as he was now the violinist in the family, he could take charge of it and I would get it when he was finished with it. Sad to say, while in Harold’s possession, but through no fault of his, the violin met with a serious accident, the exact details of which were never made clear to me. Harold told me that the violin was beyond repair although some attempt had been made to repair it.
I never saw it again and I felt as though a death had occurred in the family. I could not help thinking of how Gideon would have felt had he known the sad end to the ‘Strad’ that had been the 'apple of his eye.’
Gideon collected so many of the photogravure plates of famous violins presented by the ‘Strad’ magazine, which he read monthly from cover to cover, that it is surprising that he never, to my knowledge, had a photo taken of his ‘Strad’.
However, he was photographed many times holding the instrument in the many group photos of the String Band, the Lerwick Orchestra and the Gilbert Sullivan Opera Groups, but the violin itself is usually more or less in the shade.
Sadly these shadows are all that remain of ‘Gideon Stove’s Strad’.
The above article appears as the ‘Introduction’ to The Shetland Violinist, The Gideon Stove Tune Book, Volume 1, and was written by his son Magnus J. Stove in 1986. It gives us a very full picture of his father’s life and therefore is reproduced here in its original form.
This Book is available at £6.50 +p&p from High Level Music in Lerwick Tele 01595 692618
Box and Fiddle
October 1998
“Nimble fingers that set the Shetland Isles dancing have been stilled by the death of Mr Gideon Stove, Lerwick’s oldest music master. He was 79. A violinist, self-taught, and an expert in Shetland reels and folk tunes, he was equally accomplished in the classics. “He had been playing his fiddle for more than 60 years at local musical events and was a member, and for a long time leader, of the first Lerwick orchestra. He played at successive Gilbert and Sullivan operas and was also fiddler to a squad of Guizers at the Norse festival of Up-Helly-A’. He taught the violin to hundreds of children.”
That was a fair enough summing-up of Gideon’s career as a teacher and music maker, but one which failed to do justice to the great influence he had on fiddle-playing throughout the islands, for his music room at 24 Burns Lane, on the site of the present Swimming Pool, was a Mecca for fiddlers from all over Shetland. They would come to him for advice, for instruction, and to show him their instruments for his approval and appraisal. Very often their visits were just for the sheer pleasure of playing together with him.
Nor does it give Gideon credit for the hundreds of tunes that he kept composing, and whose echoes still linger on in the memories of those still alive who remember his skilled and technically perfect performances.
The present volume will, I hope, introduce some of those tunes into the ken of the present generation of fiddlers and music makers.
My father, Gideon Stove, was born in Burravoe, North Roe on 28th June, 1874. Shortly after the death of his mother, nee Margaret Ratter, the family moved from North Roe to 4 Burns Lane, where the Peerie Shop is now, when Gideon was only five years of age.
Gideon was the youngest of a family of eight, most of whom, prior to the move to Lerwick had married or gone further afield. Jeannie, Mrs Nicolson, was in Ediinburgh, married to a contractor. Grace died young. William, who had settled in Australia, became engaged to a teacher, but died tragically of a fever on what was to be his wedding day. Mary, Mrs Smith, lived in Whiteness. Katie married Laurence Tulloch of Lerwick. Magnus went to Edinburgh and became a head confectioner with McVitie and Price. John went sailing and was lost at sea.
When my grandfather, Magnus Stove, came to Lerwick he worked as a stonemason. The only photo extant of him is in Tom Henderson’s excellent publication ‘Shetland from Old Photographs’ at photo No 52 where he is seen standing at the foot of Burns Lane wearing his stonemason’s leggings in the year 1895.
In that year Magnus was still corresponding with a relative in Bergen, and my grandfather’s tale was that, in the long ago, three Stove brothers came from Norway and settled in different parts of Shetland, giving rise to the different branches of the Stoves. This correspondence petered out, probably on the demise of the Bergen correspondent.
Probably with the intention of emulating his brother Magnus’s success as a confectioner, Gideon started work as a baker and completed his apprenticeship with Bally Mouat. However, very soon he found that the hours of work in a bakery conflicted with the late night musical engagements that he was constantly called upon to fulfill and furthermore there was an ever growing demand on his time as more and more pupils came to him for lessons. He therefore, made the brave decision to leave the bakery and try to make a career out of music, teaching, playing, collecting and composing.
As a self-taught musician he was so keen that he probably did more daily practice than any student at music college, setting himself a rigorous routine of daily practice in the studies of Kreutzer, the classics and the main schools of music, until he reached such a high standard of technical excellence that he was tempted to join a Symphony Orchestra in the south when an approach was made to him. However having just got married to Miss Jessie C. Sandison of 15 Market Street and having put a brass plate on the door of 24 Burns Lane, which read ‘G. Stove, Teacher of Music’, he decided to persevere with a musical career in Shetland. Making music in those days did not make much money, but Gideon was happy doing what he most wanted to do – to devote his life to music.
Gideon was in great demand for playing at Lerwick dances in the days when violin and piano were the only instruments used, except when occasionally augmented by drum or guitar. In those days Miss Joan Williamson, later to become Mrs Mustard, was his most frequent accompanist on the piano, and together they made an excellent partnership for all the big occasions in the Lerwick dance halls, until the days when ‘the wireless’ popularized the big bands and there came a demand for bigger bands in Lerwick too.
As the family grew up and we all learned to play instruments, we had our own ‘G. Stove’s Band’ of father, mother and three sons augmented at times by some of the Burns Lane boys who could play. Between the wars, before we left home to follow our own careers, our band was in demand to play at functions in Lerwick and in the country districts.
About 1933 Gideon moved house to 15 Market Street, to the house which had been built by my maternal grandfather, when the Market Street Company of Fishermen had built a West Side to Market Street. There, in his retirement years, Gideon continued to give some lessons. Mr Peter Fraser, the well-known folk music devotee, was a frequent visitor as they co-operated in collecting and writing down the old Shetland tunes.
Gideon’s Pupils
Many good pupils passed through his hands and benefited from his meticulous instruction. Two of the most prominent and well-known of his pupils still actively playing at the present day are Arthur Scott Robertson, who gained renown as Scotland’s Champion fiddler and Willie Hunter, who is also regarded as one of Scotland’s finest fiddle players.
My brother Harold, Gideon’s youngest son, who died last year, was also one of his best pupils. He reviled in playing the classics and often performed solos with the Lerwick Orchestra. For a time he was leader of a Palm Court type orchestra which gave regular Sunday evening performances.
Gideon’s second son, Alex Gideon, was a Head Postman, who was affectionately known as Dollar. He received his training from his father, and after starting on the fiddle, took up the accordion and became renowned as an expert on that instrument.
I also started on the violin and played first violin in the Lerwick Orchestra while still at school. Then I took up the piano and clarinet, playing both in the dance band. Now in my retirement, I am a church organist, playing the pipe organ in the Congregational Church, where James Stout Angus, for whom my father composed a strathspey, was a deacon.
When I was Headmaster at Uyeasound School I took after-school classes in violin and piano and continued to do so when I went to Mid Yell Junior High School. After a serious operation in 1959, I had reluctantly to give up the evening classes in music and thereafter I concentrated my music teaching into the school hours during the day.
After I retired I was delighted when the Education Committee instated an enlightened policy of employing violin instructors to visit schools. Of these instructors, the best known is Dr Tom Anderson, who did good work with the ‘Forty Fiddlers’ and the ‘Young Heritage’. Gideon Stove would most certainly have heartily approved of what Tom did in the cause of Shetland music.
The Strad
Gideon’s brother John, on his penultimate voyage to the Mediterranean, brought back for his brother, Gideon, the present which was to delight his heart and thrill its hearers. John is said to have parted with all he possessed to acquire this magnificent instrument which was to inspire Gideon to practice on it to reach a high degree of perfection in violin technique. This present from his brother was to become known as ‘Gideon Stove’s Strad’.
As years went by, substantiated by the opinion and appraisal of visiting experts, he became convinced that it was indeed a genuine Stradivarius violin. Be that as it may, the violin had a marvelous tone and great carrying power and was admired by all who heard it. Mr C. Williamson of the Studio in Scalloway once told me that he heard my father’s violin ringing out, over the rooftops of Scalloway, from a Christmas dance in the Scalloway Hall, to the Studio at the shore where he was standing listening; and that was before the days of amplifiers.
It was tragic that John was lost at sea on the very next voyage after presenting Gideon with such an instrument. Perhaps it was traumatic experience that steeled Gideon’s resolve to “practice, practice, practice” as he would always exhort his pupils to do.
I have no doubt that this instrument was an inspiration to my father. He gave it all his loving care and attention. We were not allowed to touch it and we began to revere it as much as he did. Very few were allowed to play on it, but Willie told me that, during a lesson, as a special favour, he was once allowed to draw a bow across the strings to test the tone and to be able to say that he had held a ‘Strad’ in his hands.
On the death of my father in January, 1954, I waived my right as eldest son to claim the ‘Strad’ and told my brother, Harold, that, as he was now the violinist in the family, he could take charge of it and I would get it when he was finished with it. Sad to say, while in Harold’s possession, but through no fault of his, the violin met with a serious accident, the exact details of which were never made clear to me. Harold told me that the violin was beyond repair although some attempt had been made to repair it.
I never saw it again and I felt as though a death had occurred in the family. I could not help thinking of how Gideon would have felt had he known the sad end to the ‘Strad’ that had been the 'apple of his eye.’
Gideon collected so many of the photogravure plates of famous violins presented by the ‘Strad’ magazine, which he read monthly from cover to cover, that it is surprising that he never, to my knowledge, had a photo taken of his ‘Strad’.
However, he was photographed many times holding the instrument in the many group photos of the String Band, the Lerwick Orchestra and the Gilbert Sullivan Opera Groups, but the violin itself is usually more or less in the shade.
Sadly these shadows are all that remain of ‘Gideon Stove’s Strad’.
The above article appears as the ‘Introduction’ to The Shetland Violinist, The Gideon Stove Tune Book, Volume 1, and was written by his son Magnus J. Stove in 1986. It gives us a very full picture of his father’s life and therefore is reproduced here in its original form.
This Book is available at £6.50 +p&p from High Level Music in Lerwick Tele 01595 692618
Box and Fiddle
October 1998