Clement Cotterill Scholefield

Clement Cotterill Scholefield was an English Church of England priest and hymn-tune composer. Born at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on 22 June 1839, he was educated at Pocklington School and St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1864 and M.A. in 1867. After beginning a legal career, he entered ordained ministry, becoming a deacon in 1867 and priest in 1869. He served curacies at Hove, St Peter’s in South Kensington, and St Luke’s in Chelsea, was chaplain at Eton College from 1880 to 1890, and then vicar of Holy Trinity, Knightsbridge, from 1890 to 1895. He died at Godalming, Surrey, on 10 September 1904.

Scholefield was an enthusiastic musician and accomplished pianist despite lacking systematic professional musical training. The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology credits him with forty-one hymn tunes, six of which appeared in Church Hymns with Tunes in 1874. His best-known tune is ST. CLEMENT, first published in that collection under Arthur Sullivan’s editorship. Other tunes by Scholefield circulated more narrowly, including FIDES and several settings represented in nineteenth- and twentieth-century hymnals. His reputation in church music therefore rests chiefly on a small body of hymn tunes, especially ST. CLEMENT, within the musical culture of Victorian Anglican worship.