Josiah Andrew Hudleston
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A 19th Century civil servant in Madras, Josiah Andrew Hudleston became an accomplished guitar player and composer. That frequent contributor to The Hindu from New South Wales, Dr. A. Raman, has been on Hudleston’s music trail ever since. The following is a summary of his findings.
Josiah Hudleston, the fourth of five sons of John Hudleston who had served in the East India Company’s Indian Civil Service, was one of three brothers who followed in their father’s footsteps; the other two joined the Company’s China Service. He passed out of Haileybuy, the Company’s college where its civil servants were trained, in 1816, and arrived in Madras the next year. It was at the College that he took up the guitar, inspired, it is believed, by Fernando Sor’s first performance in London on the Spanish Guitar in 1915 and others by him that followed over the next 18 months. And it was with a guitar that Hudleston travelled to Madras, no doubt entertaining those aboard the East Indiaman.
Madras was his first posting and he was to spend most of his time in India there, eventually becoming the Collector of Madras in 1843, serving in that position till he retired in 1855. With work done for the day – the day was 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a break from 11 to 2 for a compulsory siesta -- Hudleston had plenty of time to practise and, in time, to entertain with his guitar. He was a member of an orchestral group, perhaps a chamber ensemble, called the ‘Society of Amateurs’ and led by T. Recontre, a violinist.
The southern capital appears to have had at the time several shops selling musical instruments and sheet music. These included James Hogg, who sold sheet music; as for John Eastmure’s and Franck & Co., they sold musical instruments as well. Eastmure’s, for instance, regularly advertised the arrival of ‘Panormo guitars, expressly manufactured for this climate’ at Rs.100 each and Wrede guitars for Rs.50 each. There were also concerts where professionals from Europe and local amateurs performed. All of these are places where Hudleston would have caught up with the latest in music from Europe.
It was, however, in St. George’s Cathedral that he got the nudge to become a composer and an arranger, for which he became better known than as an instrumentalist. Frederic Zcherpel, the organist and music director of the church in the 1840s, encouraged him to spend more time on composing and arranging music. Hudleston’s original compositions are exclusively for solo guitar and are mainly variations of popular songs and airs. His arrangements are said to be better, most of them being of the work of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and other well-known composers. All of the arrangements, it was said, required a high technical proficiency from the performers.
In the year he spent in London after retirement, before moving to Ireland to put down his last roots, Josiah Hudleston was very much a mover in the highest guitar circles in the British capital, befriending such leading guitarists as Giulio Regondi, Carl Eylenstein, Ciebras, and the Huertas. Hudleston dedicated his works to them and they reciprocated in the same manner.
Hudleston’s collection of music is in the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and includes more than 1,000 pieces of printed music for the guitar and more than 800 pieces in manuscript, one of the largest guitar music collections anywhere in the world.
