Paradise Lost: The Forgotten Music of Clement Harris

In this evocative essay, Emre Aracı steps into the gilded Ballroom of Buckingham Palace to uncover a forgotten thread of musical history. What begins with a gold-embossed concert programme from 1896 unfolds into the brief yet radiant life of Clement Harris—Wagner devotee, friend of Siegfried Wagner, and companion of Oscar Wilde—whose Paradise Lost symphonic poem and heroic death in the Greco-Turkish War at twenty-five left behind a luminous fragment of idealism. Through Harris’s story, Aracı entwines Victorian splendour, Romantic yearning, and Proustian reverie, reminding us that the only true paradise may indeed be the one that is lost.

The first time I beheld the magnificent Ballroom of Buckingham Palace, I felt as though I had stepped into one of those state occasions I had for years glimpsed only on television screens or across the pages of broadsheet newspapers. Between gilded columns where the splendour of a bygone age still seemed to draw breath, the light cascading from crystal chandeliers cast the lingering shadow of the Victorian era upon the present. This, the largest interior space within the Palace, was erected between 1853 and 1856, its architectural vision realised by the English architect Sir James Pennethorne. The sumptuous interior decorations were completed under the discerning supervision of Ludwig Gruner, a German-born art historian and decorator, whose aesthetic drew inspiration from the poised and graceful lines of the Italian Renaissance.

Ball at Buckingham Palace, 17 June 1856 by Louis Haghe, (image © The Royal Collection)

The Ballroom was unveiled in the summer of 1856 with a series of resplendent balls, held in celebration of the peace that followed the Crimean War. From fashion to music, and from newspaper columns to the novels of the time, all the threads which had connected London with the front lines and the logistical heart of the conflict in Constantinople seemed to find their subtle expression in these gatherings. The themes of those evenings, though unspoken, were undoubtedly coloured by the residue of war and the pageantry of diplomacy.

Queen Victoria

The very first of these balls took place on the evening of 8 May 1856. On that occasion, Grand Vizier Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha was presented to Queen Victoria and conferred upon Prince Albert the Order of the Medjidie, encrusted with diamonds, a gift from Sultan Abdülmecid. The significance of the moment was not lost on the Queen, who recorded it in detail in her handwritten journal. She even took note of the fact that Âli Pasha had served in London as the Ottoman ambassador some fourteen years prior. A little later, she added: “[We proceeded] straight into the Ball Room, which did indeed look quite magnificent. The Band handsomely dressed in scarlet & gold, looked very effective, & when everyone came in, the seats were already all occupied. The elegant ‘toilettes’ of the ladies & numerous uniforms, brilliantly lit up, made a splendid ensemble”. This very scene—brilliant and ceremonial—was immortalised in the vivid brushwork of Louis Haghe, the Flemish-born British painter. His rendering of the second of these balls, held on 17 June 1856, has endured within the Royal Collection, a luminous fragment of history preserved for posterity.

In that resplendent Ballroom—where, in our own day, countless heads of state are hosted at formal banquets by protocol and necessity—one senses that, in the Victorian era, it was not merely the realm of politics that held sway, but the arts too commanded reverence. Alongside the glittering balls, concerts were held there regularly, each occasion imbued with a sense of ceremony befitting its regal surroundings. Indeed, these palace concerts, each possessing the gravitas of a state ritual, were accompanied by delicately printed programmes—lavishly embossed with the royal arms in gold leaf—and offered with due care to the assembled guests.

As I added to my personal archive the programme from one such concert, held on the evening of 29 June 1896 and among the final performances of that season at Buckingham Palace, I could not help but imagine the guest who once folded it neatly and slipped it into a pocket, preserving a fleeting memory of that summer evening. Perhaps, by holding it now, I was brushing against the memory of that unknown figure, and in so doing, returning—if only in reverie—to that gilded night.

Concert programme for 29 June 1896 held at Buckingham Palace (image © Emre Aracı)

The orchestra on that occasion was conducted by Sir Walter Parratt, Master of the Queen’s Musick. Long-serving organist of Magdalen College, Oxford, Parratt was also a formidable chess player, said to have performed the entirety of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier from memory by the age of ten. The programme opened with the “Coronation March” from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, a resplendent specimen of the grand French operatic tradition of the nineteenth century. This was followed by Handel’s tender aria 'Ombra mai fu', the opening of his opera Serse (Xerxes), in which the Persian king extols the gentle shade of a plane tree with the words: “Never was a shade so dear.” In this brief, exquisite moment, nature’s tranquillity and man’s grateful awe were distilled into music.

Sir Walter Parratt
Master of the Queen's Music

Thus, imperial majesty on the one hand, and the quiet benevolence of a tree’s shadow on the other—the opening items of the programme offered Buckingham Palace’s distinguished guests a poetic counterpoint: a delicate harmony between power and repose, so rarely achieved, yet so effortlessly conjured through the art of music. And yet, nestled within the programme was a composition by a name utterly unfamiliar to me—a work which, most remarkably, had followed directly upon the heels of that unforgettable 'Liebeslied' from the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre, where Siegmund sings: “Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond”—“Winter storms have fled before the moon of delight”. One imagines that for its composer, to have his work performed immediately after such an iconic declaration of love must have been a moment of no small satisfaction.

That composer was a young man named Clement Harris. And more than merely having his piece performed, Harris had, in fact, taken the baton from Sir Walter Parratt himself and conducted his Festival March—a work he had written in honour of the forthcoming wedding of Princess Maud to Prince Carl of Denmark, which was to take place that very summer. This musical offering was, in effect, a gracious gesture towards a royal future not yet realised; for in 1905, following the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union, Carl and Maud would ascend the throne as King and Queen of Norway.

Ottoman Ambassador
Kostaki Anthopoulos Pasha

The concert held that evening at Buckingham Palace, as reported in the newspapers of the day, was a grand occasion, drawing a vast and distinguished gathering. Though Queen Victoria herself was not in attendance, her son, the Prince of Wales—later Edward VII—and his elegant consort Princess Alexandra were present among the listeners. And amidst the ranks of the diplomatic corps, representing the Sublime Porte, stood Ambassador Kostaki Anthopoulos Pasha—bringing, one dares say, a faint but distinct breath of the East into that august assembly. It was as though I were translating a page from Proust’s monumental À la recherche du temps perdu—the splendour of the room, the delicate filigree of music, the graceful silhouettes, all suspended in a haze where time seemed to dissolve behind a misted veil. And yet, my thoughts returned again and again to Clement Harris. Who was this young musician—just twenty-five years old when he stood before the orchestra—whose name, printed in faint gold upon the programme I held, now lingered like a forgotten line, all but effaced from memory’s page?

My research led me to an unexpected path, opening the door to a world of surprising connections that extended as far as Oscar Wilde. I found myself turning the pages of Siegfried Wagner-Kompendium, Volume I (2001), and reading a scholarly article by the Greek musicologist Ion Zottos, titled Clement Harris and the Wagner Family. What emerged before me was a life delicately threaded through with culture, idealism, and quiet defiance—a life scarcely remembered, yet remarkable in its brief span.

Clement Harris was born in 1871 in the Wimbledon district of London, the son of an eminent and well-established English family. His father was a partner in a venerable shipping firm whose origins stretched back a century and a half. Harris spent his childhood amid the soft greenery of the Surrey countryside, in a fine house surrounded by a broad park where peacocks wandered beneath stately cypress trees. It was a joyful and lively household, and his early years passed in an atmosphere of familial warmth and cultivated ease.

Vaughan Library at Harrow School (image © Emre Aracı)

He was admitted at a young age to the prestigious Harrow School; yet the two years he spent there kindled neither a love of study nor any great enthusiasm for athletic pursuits. Instead, he could be found retreating into the quietude of the Vaughan Library, reading the old English authors under the ghostly influence of Lord Byron. Even then, he was in search of something—a calling he could not yet name, an inner restlessness shaped by a nascent artistic yearning. At last, in the winter of 1887–1888, he left for Germany, determined to fulfil his heart’s true desire: to become a composer. He enrolled at Dr Hoch’s Conservatorium in Frankfurt, where he came under the tutelage of a pupil of Clara Schumann. Immersed in the cultural life of Germany, he developed a deep literary devotion to Schiller and Goethe, which ran in parallel to his musical education. 

Clement Harris

Seven years later, in December 1894, recalling those first wintry days abroad, he would write in his diary: “It was the sudden plunge into the world of Art and Idealism that brought about the most unexpected and astounding change in my nature. From a state of the most abject disinterestedness and apathy I emerged into a region of subjectiveness and ambition which in the course of a few weeks decided my future life for me . . . Music is the only way in which I can express my real feelings . . . Music is the eye of the soul”.

“Music is the eye of the soul”. Though the phrase may, at first hearing, seem perilously close to cliché, in its quiet simplicity it contains a truth both profound and unassailable. For indeed, the eye that illuminated Clement Harris’s inner world would soon lead him into the enchanted realm of Tristan und Isolde—Wagner’s great testament to eternal and transcendental love, whose reverberations found an unmistakable echo in Harris’s soul. Every artist adrift in the storm of their own sensibility requires some fixed star by which to steer—a haven in which to anchor their restless spirit. For Harris, that lodestar was Wagner. In his diary, he wrote: “To me he is the guiding star, a lighthouse in the midst of a stormy sea and a harbour in which I may find rest and safety”. In an entry dated 4 January 1891, Harris also describes a long visit to Oscar Wilde’s London residence at 16 Tite Street. There, they had engaged in deep philosophical conversations on Kant, Schopenhauer, the nature of the afterlife, idealism and realism. Harris had also played selected works by Wagner, Beethoven and Schumann for Wilde at the piano.

At 16 Tite Street Harris visited Oscar Wilde

It was in this introspective and intellectually charged spirit that, upon his return to Germany, Harris accepted an invitation extended to him by Siegfried Wagner, son of the composer, whom he had met at a social gathering. And so it was that in the summer of 1891, Harris found his way to the Bayreuth Festival. At Villa Wahnfried, he was warmly received by Cosima Wagner. During the course of the festival, he undertook—with earnestness and elegant discretion—a number of responsibilities: assisting with international guests, hosting English visitors, and managing correspondence. In this rarefied atmosphere, where the refinement of English aristocracy met the fervour of German Romanticism, Harris seemed not so much a visitor as a kindred spirit—an idealist who had, at last, come home.

Villa Wahnfried where Harris was warmly received

Siegfried Wagner

The bond with Siegfried deepened the following year, when Harris invited him to join a six-month sea voyage to the East. This remarkable journey, extending to India and China, was made aboard merchant vessels belonging to the Harris family’s shipping firm. As the two young men travelled, they immersed themselves in the world of classical European letters. Harris had brought with him Milton’s Paradise Lost, and began sketching a symphonic poem inspired by that epic. Siegfried, for his part, found the first inklings of an orchestral work based on Schiller’s poem Sehnsucht (“Longing”). Years later, in his memoirs, Siegfried Wagner would reflect: “The voyage to India and China, undertaken shortly after my stay in Karlsruhe, prompted me to abandon architecture and devote myself entirely to music”. Thus it was not, as many might assume, his illustrious father Richard Wagner who awakened Siegfried’s vocation for the musical stage—but rather this idealistic young Englishman, Clement Harris: a fellow traveller in both art and soul.

 

The score of Paradise Lost

The Paradise Lost symphonic poem that emerged from this journey would become one of Harris’s most ambitious compositions. Expansive in its musical breath, it stands as a testament to both his compositional genius and his philosophical idealism. Within its pages, one senses not only the infinite gulf between God and Adam, but also the existential conflict waged within the artist’s own soul. And yet, having completed this work—this personal Eden—Harris would be torn, all too soon, from both his music and from the earthly journey he had only just begun.

In the very year of that concert at Buckingham Palace, his path led him to an altogether different geography. After a quiet winter spent on Corfu, shaped by his Romantic idealism and a Wagnerean belief in heroic sacrifice, Harris made the fateful decision to join the Greek army as a volunteer. In the Greco-Turkish War that broke out in 1897, he was gravely wounded in a skirmish near Pente Pigadia, and died on 23 April. He was just twenty-five years old. Like Lord Byron, he too had pursued a dream across Greek soil, and a life steeped in art came to a sorrowful end amidst the sound of gunfire. For those who received the news, it was not simply the quiet closing of an idealist’s diary, but the last flicker of a star extinguished too soon. His friend Siegfried Wagner, unable to forget, kept a photograph of Harris on his desk for many years after his death.

Each time I listen to the recording of Paradise Lost released under the Marco Polo label, I hear within me the echo of that unforgettable line from Proust: “The only true paradise is the one that is lost”. And I find myself wondering—was that folded, gold-embossed programme from the Buckingham Palace concert once carried in the pocket of Clement Harris’s evening coat that night? Such a thought, like Harris’s music itself, wraps around me like a vision—a reverie drifting out of some long-lost paradise.

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Buckingham Sarayı’nda bir geçmiş zaman konseri’ in the September 2025 issue (No. 227) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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