June-December, 1927: 316,997. The initial sales figures were staggering. HMV’s innocent-seeming recording of Mendelssohn’s motet Hear My Prayer featuring the treble Ernest Lough and the choir of London’s Temple Church ‘took off like a rocket’ recalled John Whittle, a sound engineer for the company. ‘The accountants couldn’t believe it.’ Part of the explanation was the critical acclaim for the recording – in the Westminster Gazette, for example: ‘This boy has a voice of beautiful quality and sings with a maturity of style and phrasing most unusual for one of such tender years.’ Spot on. Well over a quarter of a million more sales followed in 1928. Crowds flocked to Temple Church services in the hope of hearing Lough sing ‘live’.
HMV catalogue number C1329 went on selling for decades. It was Lough’s delivery of that ‘O for the wings of a dove’ finale to the motet that especially tugged at the emotions. Missionaries in on the family gramophone.
