The Friends of the Music of Leeds Minster

Registered Charity No 1055944

present

ROMANTIC ORGAN MASTERWORKS

2016

Leeds Minster Organ Console – Photo courtesy of Michael Denton Esq

Sunday evenings

7, 14, 21 and 28 August 6.30 to 7.40 pm

Gordon Stewart [Celebrity Recitalist, Sunday 7 August]

and

Simon Lindley organists

SOUVENIR PROGRAMME BOOK with notes on the music

Free Admission

Retiring Collections for Organ Maintenance The Collection on 7 August is towards the costs of Flora Leodis

in early September

It is very much appreciated if you sign a gift aid declaration

and place your gift in the envelope provided.

PROGRAMMES

Sunday 7 August Celebrity Concert in support of Flora Leodis

Dr Gordon Stewart, Guest Recitalist Tchaikovsky/Goss Custard Waltz of the Flowers [Suite: The Nutcracker]

Rheinberger Sonata III in G, Op 88 [Pastoral]

Peeters Lied to the Flowers

Delibes/Munday Flower Duet [Lakmé]

Cockroft Hollyhocks [First Performance, written for this recital]

Renaud Toccata in D minor

This Recital is followed by Wine and Refreshments

Sunday 14 August

Reger Dankpsalm, Op 145 No 2

Reger Benedictus, Op 59 No 9

Harris Processional March [1960]

Haydn Wood Roses of Picardy [1916]

Butterworth/Tambling The Banks of Green Willow

Warlock Capriol Suite: Basse Danse – Pavane – Tordion

Bransles – Pieds en l'air – Mattachins

Jongen Sonata Eroica, Op 94

Sunday 21 August

Fricker Fantasy-Overture in G minor

Rawsthorne Celtic Lament

Rawsthorne The Londonderry Air

Lefébure-Wély March in C

Cockroft Scherzetto

Whitlock Sonata in C minor [1937]

Grave – Animato – Andante – Poco lento

Canzona (Andante) – Scherzetto

Choral (Grave – Alla Marcia – Allegro – Con fuoco)

Lemare Fantasy on themes from Bizet’s Carmen

Sunday 28August Finale!

Ireland/Gower Epic March

Elgar Sonata in G, Op 28

Morandi/Best Bell Rondo

Grainger/Stockmeier Clog Dance: Handel in the Strand

Henry Wood Fantasia on British Sea-Songs [1905]

Elgar/Lemare March: Pomp & Circumstance No 1 in D, Op 39

Parry Jerusalem, sung by all

FRIDAY LUNCHTIME RECITALS IN SEPTEMBER at 12.30 EACH WEEK

Friday 2 September – Keith Swallow at the piano

Fridays 9, 16, 23 and 30 September – Dr Christopher Newton organ

Dr Newton’s programmes for September are on the back cover of this booklet.

Sunday 7 August Please stay for Refreshments after the first recital in our series this

year. These are generously provided by two members of the Friends

of the Music of Leeds Minster to whom our very grateful thanks

are expressed

The famous and much-loved Ballet: The Nutcracker, one of the

final works of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky [1840-

1893], was based on Alexandre Dumas’ translation of a Hoffmann

tale, in which a young girl comes to the aid of her Christmas gift (a

magical nutcracker in the costume of a soldier) in his battle with an

army of mice. Her assistance is rewarded when her toy transforms

into a prince and takes her into his kingdom of sweets and other

colourful delights. The subjects of that kingdom each dance for

their guest in a series of amazing set-pieces that comprise some of

the most gorgeously evocative music Tchaikovsky ever wrote. The

Waltz of the Flowers occurs late in the second act and serves as

the final movement of the suite Tchaikovsky extracted for concert

performance in March of 1892.

Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger [1839-1901] , a native of Vaduz in the

tiny principality of Lichtenstein (a region known for superb garlic

sausage, colourful postage stamps, and Rheinberger – and not

much else), was the son of the paymaster to the Prince. His talent

was in evidence in early childhood and at the age of twelve his

sensible parents packed young Josef off to Munich for serious

musical study. Becoming a Professor of Piano, and later of

Composition, at the age of only nineteen, Rheinberger held a

number of major Munich posts including that of Organist of St

Michael’s Church and Conductor of the Oratorio Society. He was

in 1877 made Kapellmeister to the Royal Court, dying in his

adopted city on 25 November 1901. His twenty sonatas and

numerous other organ pieces comprise a hugely significant corpus

of music for the king of instruments. The commemoration in 2001

of the centenary of the composer’s death proved an

understandable catalyst for programme planners. The Sonatas

were produced between 1868 and 1901 and the Sonata III in G

major – the Pastoral – its composer’s Opus 88, was written during

1874. The outer of the three component movements utilise the

Plainchant eighth mode psalm tone, the manifestations of which

range from the heraldic opening pedal solo at the outset of the

work to the most tender of lyrical harmonies of the fugal episodes

in the finale. At the heart of the sonata is a gently lyrical Intermezzo

and the work closes with a brilliant and energised fugue.

Created a Baron by the King of the Belgians for his services to

music, Flor Peeters [1903-1986] was distinguished in equal

measure as composer, executant and teacher for, on and of the

organ. Nor was his output confined to music for the King of

Instruments. There are several fine Masses, including the widely-

used Missa Festiva (sung regularly at York Minster and St John’s

College Cambridge), and numerous motets for liturgical usage -

together with fine solo songs and a small group of secular vocal

pieces - including stylishly set Flemish folk tunes. At the very early

age of twenty-two Peeters was named Titular Organist of St

Rombout’s Cathedral, Mechelen by Cardinal Mercier (of Malines

Conversations fame). He served at the Cathedral for over sixty years

and was also Director of the Antwerp Royal Conservatoire.

Peeters’ creative output includes a substantial amount for the

organ. His career was hugely influential both in his native Belgium

and further afield. As a student, he had been a pupil of both Dupré

and Tournemire, and dedicated works to each. Peeters’ Lied

Symphony Op 66 was drafted on an American tour in 1947 and

written out the following year. The work was conceived as a kind

of symphonic Benedicite – a hymn to nature and its Creator. Lied

to the Flowers – a beautiful, subtly coloured miniature is the third

of the five component movements.

The Six Pièces, Ops 16 to 21 inclusive of César Franck [1822-1890]

date from the years 1860 to 1862. The Pastorale dedicated to the

master organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll is its composer’s Op 19

and the fourth of the set. There are two main elements thematically

speaking - a lilting Cavatina mostly over a sustained pedal point,

but interluded with brief chorale-like passages and a livelier

movement, marked Quasi Allegretto in the tonic minor. This light

scherzo comprises the majority of the piece and is the more

effective by being enclosed within the portals of the dreamy

rhapsody with which this evergreen piece begins and ends.

Initially the two motifs of the E major section had been presented

consecutively. In the final portion of the work, Franck weaves

them together simultaneously.

The “Flower Duet” is a famous and greatly-loved extract from the

opera Lakmé [1836-1891] by Léo Délibes first performed in Paris

in 1883. The duet takes place in act 1 of the three-act opera,

between characters Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and

her servant Mallika, as they go to gather flowers by a river. The

duet is frequently used in advertisements and films and is, in

addition and outwith its position in the opera, popular as a concert

piece.

Written especially for today’s recitalist, Dr Stewart, to play at this

evening’s concert to fit in with the floral theme Hollyhocks by

Robert Cockroft [born 1951] unfolds misterioso from a subdued

opening. This delightful work is housed within the tonality of D

minor with an ending in the tonic major – the more lively central

section is marked giocoso. The composer advised Dr Stewart that

it’s not flower-pretty but it is what emerged when I started

writing. The little winter requiem at the end needs sumptuous

strings and a lovely solo, possibly a rich diapason.

A pupil of both Franck and Délibes, Albert Renaud [1855-1924]

enjoyed a full career in the French capital as composer, organist

and music critic. His output for the organ amounted to around

sixty works in all, most of them published during his lifetime. The

Toccata in D minor, the piece by which he is largely remembered

today, is the first of two such works comprising their creator’s Op

108. The harmonic structure is straightforward, yet imbued with

repetitive tension and excitement. The work is inscribed to the

great Alexandre Guilmant [1837-1911] who must, surely, have

been well-pleased to receive the dedication.

Sunday 14 August As a student, Max Reger [1873-1916] studied in Munich and

Wiesbaden, settling in the former city before moving in 1907 to

Leipzig as Professor of Composition at the University there.

Besides his teaching work, he was very prominent nationally, and

internationally, as a conductor and solo pianist. His organ music

owed much to the formidable advocacy of Karl Straube, one of

Bach’s successors as Thomas-kantor in Leipzig. As a composer,

Reger excelled at variation and fugue forms – both of which figure

prominently in a substantial tally of organ pieces. The production

of organ music was a serious undertaking for him, and over 62

pieces were written between 1901 and his early death. The famous

Dankpsalm, Op 145 No 2 is one of his most concise works and

combines bravura recitative with lyrically imitative sections. Two

Lutheran chorales form the basis of the thematic material. Of these,

the first – heard at its outset in hushed tones – is developed

through variations. The second, heard on full organ, is known to

English ears as the hymn melody Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the

King of Creation. Like Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Max Reger was a giant of

the late-Romantic German school. His Benedictus, Op 59 No 9 is,

appropriately, in two sections – the first reflective and awe-struck,

the second – embued with greater momentum – is a refrain whose

rhythms reflect the verbal text of this part of the Mass – Ho-san-na

in the High-est…. After a vast expansion to full organ, the music

subsides – all passion spent – and the ecstatic mood of the opening

is regained. The piece ends in hushed tones.

London-born Sir William Harris [1883-1973] taught music to Her

Majesty the Queen and her sister, the Princess Margaret, during

their youth and his own distinguished service as Organist of St

George’s Chapel Windsor from 1933 to 1961. Harris’s earlier posts

had been as Assistant Organist of Lichfield Cathedral, Organist of

St Augustine’s, Edgbaston and then in turn at New College and

Christ Church at Oxford. He composed much liturgical music for

the Anglican tradition devised for a great diversity of choral

resources as well as a deal of larger-scale works, such as

Michaelangelo’s Confession of Faith, that deserve to be far better-

known. His organ music includes a fine sonata, Flourish for an

Occasion composed for the Garter Service in 1947 and today’s

noble Processional March (1960) for the Sovereign’s entrance at

the marriage of HRH The Princess Margaret to Mr Antony

Armstrong-Jones in Westminster Abbey on 8 May 1960.

Slaithwaite-born Haydn Wood [1882-1959] was one of the most

celebrated ballad composers of his day with well over 200 songs in

print mainly of the ballad type, which he began composing when

he married the soprano Dorothy Court in 1909 and continued to

publish for the rest of his life. Roses of Picardy, still popular after

eighty years, is merely the best known of them. Nearly as popular

is A Brown Bird singing and other popular titles were Bird of Love

Divine, Love’s Garden of Roses, Dear Hands that gave me Violets, O

Flower Divine, The Island of Love (the last four were all recorded in

1914-18), Elizabeth of England, Casey the Fiddler, When Dawn breaks

through, A Bird sang in the rain, A Leafland Lullaby, Daffodil Gold, I

want your Heart and Homeward at Eventide. Last to be published

appears to have been Give me your Hand in 1957. Wood’s formative

years from his very early childhood were spent in the Isle of Man

and much of his orchestral output reflects the Isle’s scenery.

The very considerable musical gifts of George Sainton Kaye

Butterworth [1885-1916] had emerged early. Some five years or so

prior to his tragically early death in action on 5 August 1916, he

had met both Vaughan Williams and folk music guru Cecil J Sharp

at Oxford and became involved as a founder member, with them,

of the English Folk Dance Society. He was something of an expert

as a morris-dancer, apparently. Famed today still for his

extraordinarily vivid and heart-rending Shropshire Lad songs and,

of course, his celebrated Shropshire Lad Rhapsody first heard at

Leeds Town Hall during the 1913 Leeds Musical Festival under the

great Arthur Nikisch. Today’s Idyll: The Banks of Green Willow

dates from the same year and has in more recent times gained

much popularity in the same way as, for example, has Vaughan

Williams’ Rhapsody: The Lark ascending inspired by a poem of

George Meredith and composed a year after today’s work.

Butterworth, in his Idyll, achieves a heart-easing lyricism that is

quite wonderfully etched, with deft and exquisite orchestral

scoring to underpin it. In just a very few minutes, the listener is

transported into a wistful kind of ecstasy deployed by very few

early 20th century English composers as well, or as seemingly

effortlessly, as here. Besides composition, the young Butterworth’s

fledgling musical career, cut so cruelly short in its prime, included

music criticism for The Times and piano teaching at Radley College,

the public school just south of Oxford. It is well-recorded that, to

an extent, Vaughan Williams felt Butterworth’s loss so very keenly

that he never really got over it. In this, the year of the centenary of

the younger composer’s death, one can only recall the tragic level

of creative loss experienced by British youth of Butterworth’s

generation during the so-called ‘war to end all wars’; two

mournful lines of song set by him are indicative of what might

well serve as a lament for the loss of so great a talent:

With rue my heart is laden for golden friends I had….

The finely-crafted organ arrangement is by Christopher Tambling

[1964-2015] long-serving Director of Music at Downside in

Somerset, whose early death last year deprived English organ-

playing of one of its most persuasive advocates.

The origins of the Capriol Suite from the pen of “Peter Warlock” ,

the nom-de-plume of Philip Heseltine [1894-1930] date back some

four hundred years or so and the production of a work called

Orchésographie of 1588 attributed to Thoinot Arbeau (the

anagrammatic nom de plume of the priest Jehan Tabourot [1519-

1595]. Tabourot’s tome contains guidance on etiquette and conduct

in the ball-room as well as lovely renaissance dance music. “Why

Capriol?” is a question often asked in connection with the work.

The answer is to be found within the text of Orchésographie itself,

taking the form of a dialogue between “Arbeau” and his dancing

pupil “Capriol”. Additional to the movements treated by Warlock

in Capriol, Orchésgraphie also includes the very famous Bransle de

‘l’official known, loved, and sung universally to The Reverend Dr G

R Woodward’s romantic carol stanzas beginning with the lines

Ding, dong! merrily on high in heaven the bells are ringing. Arbeau’s

music is also utilised as the basis for much of Stravinsky’s

evocative ballet score to Agon. The lively Basse Danse swings along

in a broad, one-to-the bar lilt; this is a dance for senior folk

involving as it does the participants’ sliding across the floor rather

than leaping into the air. Pavane is, appropriately, slower, steadier

and more stately. Tordion is fragmentary and disintegrates into

silence. Bransles – literally a “brawl” is possessed of suitably hectic

momentum. The emotional heart of the work is the exquisitely

beautiful Pieds en l’air – here the title is clearly linked to the dance

technique required: movement so fleet of foot and light of touch

the feet literally hardly touch the ground. The music of this portion

of the work is known to, and loved by, generations of cradle

Catholics in the versification of Dom Gregory Murray as Come to

Bethlehem, and see the new-born King and it is within the music of

this movement that the very considerable influence of Delius is felt

the most strongly. For his finale, Warlock provides a swash-

buckling accompaniment for the celebrated sword-dance entitled

Mattachins – an energetic endeavour in which four men in pretend

combat are energetically engaged with the movement, and the

work as a whole, climaxing into violent dissonance. The story of

Heseltine/Warlock’s life makes for sad reading. His unique

contribution to the traditions of English Song and Carol place

posterity for ever in his debt.

Like another famous 19th century organist composer, César Franck

[1822-1890], Joseph Jongen [1873-1953] was a native of the Belgian

city of Liège and served as organist of his home town’s Cathedral of

St Jacques. It is, however, for his work as Director of the Brussels

Conservatoire that he is best remembered, and for an extensive

compositional output. Jongen’s Opus 94, his Sonata Eroïca, was

composed in 1930 and published in Paris two years afterwards. The

work, dedicated to the great French virtuoso Joseph Bonnet, is less

of a sonata and more of an extended, yet utterly brilliant, fantasia in

three broad sections. First comes a thoroughly “heroic” opening

movement – a vivid toccata preceded by three rhetorical flourishes.

The toccata, massively chordal in its outpouring, eventually

subsides – all passion seemingly spent – to yield the utterly

exquisite strain which forms the motto theme of the whole work. It

is likely that the melody is original, but it contains such heart-

rending pathos that could so easily come from a traditional carol or

folk-song melody – recalled either consciously or, more likely, sub-

consciously by the composer. Two initial variations are followed by

a massive development section in which the resources of instrument

as well as player are stretched to the limit. After a stupendous

harmonisation of the theme, the music becomes more peaceful to

give place to a central aria for a solo flute stop atop shimmering

strings in the left hand. Further development and a gradual build-

up of texture and volume follows before the full Eroico treatment on

full organ against brilliant pedal work. A final fugal section brings

this fabulous piece, and today’s imaginative and vividly varied

programme, to a resounding close.

Sunday 21 August Herbert Austin Fricker [1868-1943], second City Organist of Leeds,

was a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral Choir becoming in the

fullness of time Assistant Organist there. He came to Leeds after

tenure of a post at Holy Trinity, Folkestone. During his time in this

city he was for a short period Organist and Choirmaster at the

magnificent byzantine basilica of Saint Aidan, Roundhay Road, but

pressures of work as City Organist and as Chorus Master to the

famous Triennial Festivals led to his resignation from Saint Aidan’s.

The Festival Chorus reached a very high degree of proficiency

under his sterling direction and he is generally acknowledged to

have brought it to a remarkable state of excellence. Among the

works he prepared for premieres was Vaughan Williams’ A Sea

Symphony for the 1910 Festival. He relinquished his Leeds

appointments on nomination to the position of Organist at the

Metropolitan United Church, Toronto, Canada. Fricker emigrated in

1917 and also taught at the University of Toronto. Important other

work included the conductorship of the Toronto Mendelssohn

Choir which grew to great fame under his directorate. The Fantasie-

Overture in G minor [1910] is a recent discovery for this month’s

recitalist, is cast within the tonality of G, minor and, ultimately

major and is inscribed to the great British-born virtuoso organist

and composer Edwin H Lemare.

Organists and audiences alike continue to be profoundly grateful

for, and deeply appreciative of, the important contributions to the

repertoire emanating in recent years from the fertile imagination

and greatly gifted creative pen of Dr Noel Rawsthorne [born 1929],

Organist Emeritus of Liverpool Cathedral. Rawsthorne’s influence

on English organ playing remains immense. His many recordings

and performances enhanced playing standards and his

compositions are now sustaining a similarly significant influence on

concert programmes and the provision of liturgical music. Dr

Rawsthorne’s evocative Celtic Lament features the haunting tones

of Lady Nairne’s fine song Will ye no come back again? Inscribed to

the composer’s friend and colleague Dr Gordon Stewart, the piece is

one of Rawsthorne’s most atmospheric shorter works and has made

many friends over the years. Will ye no come back again? – the text of

this famous song is widely known by this, its final line –is a Scots

poem by Lady Nairne who is believed to have penned the four

stanzas – each has a refrain – to fit a traditional Scottish folk tune.

As in several of the author’s poems its theme is the aftermath of the

Jacobite Rising of 1745, that ended at the Battle of Culloden. Written

well after the events it commemorates, it is not a genuine Jacobite

song but is common to many other songs were composed in the late

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but ... passed off as

contemporary products of the Jacobite risings. Lady Nairne came

from a Jacobite family, and Prince Charles had stopped to dine at

Nairne House on 4 September 1745, during the march to Edinburgh.

Her father was exiled the year after, but the family “hoarded” a

number of objects “supposedly given to him by Prince Charles.”

The song, especially its melody, is widely and traditionally used as

a song of farewell - often in association with Auld Lang Syne, and

generally with no particular Jacobite or other political intent.

Dr Rawsthorne’s prelude on the Londonderry Air has become very

widely known, both in the composer’s own recitals, and more

generally since publication in Rawsthorne’s Twelve Pieces in 1992.

After a brief, preludial introduction with some deft chromatic

harmony the melody unfolds in the right hand as a solo for the

clarinet stop. A second verse is set in the tenor register for solo

strings and flute before a more effulgent verse on more substantial

sonorities which builds to an expansive climax before the mood and

tonal colours of the opening are gloriously regained and this

fabulous lyrical melody subsides in peace and tranquility.

Musician and author Robert Cockroft [born 1951] is represented in

our series by two works, the first of which – in our opening

celebrity concert – was receiving its first performance. Mr Cockroft

studied music at the University of London. His main career has

been as a writer and journalist, his last post prior to retirement

being that of Editor of the Barnsley Chronicle. Previous endeavour as

Music Critic of the Yorkshire Post and its food correspondent has

also been particularly effectual and informative. He is very active as

a composer, especially for the organ and choirs. Dr Gordon Stewart

is the dedicatee of the finely-scored Prelude on Anima Christi

published in 2002 with the modal Soliloquy of 2011 inscribed to

Leeds Organist David Houlder. Mr Cockroft’s Scherzetto recalls the

garden-play activity of son Adam as a youngster at the family home

near Huddersfield. The piece celebrates the centenary of the 1914

Binns instrument at Providence United Reformed Church in New

Mills, where Dr Stewart lives.

1 May 1946 was a dark day for English music, witnessing the

passing of both Sir Edward Bairstow, full of years and honour, and

the young and prodigiously gifted Percy Whitlock [1903-1946]. As

Organist of the Bournemouth Pavilion from 1935 until his

tragically early death only eleven years later, Whitlock was one of

the most famous players in the land - heard very frequently on

BBC Radio. His early career was as Assistant to Charles Hylton

Stewart at Rochester Cathedral, where the young Whitlock’s

prodigious talent – sympathetically and generously nurtured –

flourished in abundance. It was by no means every provincial

Assistant Cathedral Organist who was having all his work

published by the then fledgling music department of the Oxford

University Press almost as soon as the ink was dry! The Sonata in

C minor was some two or three years in the making and its creator

re-wrote the fine finale more than once. It is an extensive work and

a highly ingenious one.

In the preface to the reprinted score – today’s performing edition –

Whitlock’s biographer Malcolm Riley, writes as below. We are

very grateful to Malcolm for allowing us to reprint this material.

During his lifetime, Percy William Whitlock [1903-1946]

wrote three sonatas, the first two being early works – a

Sonata for Violin and Organ composed in 1919 when he was a

pupil at the King’s School, Rochester and a Sonata for Violin

and Pianoforte composed in 1924 when Whitlock was in his

final year at the Royal College of Music, London. Both works

are at present missing. The Organ Sonata in C minor [1937]

represents a major landmark, firstly in Whitlock’s

development as a composer, and secondly as one of the

greatest sonatas in the organ repertory. Its origins go back to

a day in April 1934 when Whitlock, confined to his bed with

influenza, happened to tune in to a broadcast of

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony [1907]. He was

immediately bowled over by the work and it exerted a

considerable influence on much of his later orchestral music

[in particular the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra of 1936

and the Conversation Piece for Organ and Orchestra of 1942],

and such organ pieces as the Sortie from the Seven Sketches

published in 1935 and the Allegro risoluto from the Plymouth

Suite composed in 1937. Writing under his literary

pseudonym “Kenneth Lark” for the Bournemouth Daily Echo

of 29 September 1939, he had this to say about a performance

of the Rachmaninov by the Bournemouth Municipal

Orchestra:

….this particular symphony happens to be a particular

favourite of mine….one feels again the far-seeing mind

behind it all, the noble thought that inspired it, the master’s

hand that wrote it down to be a glory for all time.

This revelatory experience bore the fullest fruit in the outer

movements of the Sonata, especially in the introductory

“brass” chords of the first movement and in the rhythm of

the first subject in the Animato proper, together with the

serenity of the second subject clarinet solo [compare this

with the equivalent clarinet solo in the slow movement of the

Rachmaninov]. The two middle movements are more

quintessentially Whitlock and they were inspired by a

recuperative holiday that he and his wife Edna took at

Bradford-on-Avon in May 1934 with several long walks in

the surrounding countryside and a visit to Bath Abbey and

its then organist Ernest Maynard. The melody line of

Canzona could almost have been composed by Roger Quilter

[the analogy here is to his song Fair house of joy from the

Seven Elizabethan Lyrics Op 12 which the Whitlocks knew

well]. The movement belongs to a group of slow pieces for

which Whitlock has become especially renowned: others

include Folk Tune and Andante tranquillo [Five Short Pieces],

Carol and Fidelis [Four Extemporizations], Pastorale, Plaint and

Preambule [Seven Sketches]. In the Scherzetto, Whitlock

surpasses himself: it is possibly the best extended light

movement by an Englishman for the organ. One organ

commentator described it as “cunning” to which Harvey

Grace added that “the word [cunning] hits off the artfulness

of its rhythmic devices”. It reflects Whitlock’s own Puck-ish

sense of humour and his love of light music: he was

perfervid in his admiration of Quentin Maclean and he fell

for Sidney Torch’s 1933 record Hot Dog! The last movement,

Choral, is the longest of the four and it gives the listener –

and performer – some idea of Whitlock’s legendary skills as

an extemporiser. The title also links it closely to the earlier

Two Fantasy Chorals of 1932, although this later movement is

more exciting and contains better fugal writing. The return

of the final, full statement of the melody derived from the

Choral is pure Rachmaninov; and the final page with its

subdued, hushed is pure Whitlock. He was quite content to

end many a recital in this quiet fashion, after which (to quote

his widow) he would “creep off the organ stool like a

mouse.”

From the age of twenty-one Organist of the Parish Church (now

the Cathedral) and the Albert Hall in the City of Sheffield, Edwin

Henry Lemare [1865-1934] left Yorkshire early in his career to seek

fame and fortune in London, first as Organist of Holy Trinity,

Sloane Street and then at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. From

1915 until his death in 1934, Lemare resided in America where his

playing attracted vast audiences. He held a number of civic posts

including those at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, the San

Francisco Civic Auditorium and the Sailors’ Memorial Auditorium

in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As a performer and recitalist, Lemare

has left many clues to the thinking behind his exceptional virtuoso

playing and imaginative programming. Writing in 1917 he asserts

The appeal of the organ is fundamentally spiritual, or emotional.

The normal listener to music doesn’t listen to an organ recital as he

listens to an orchestra. The latter challenges his attention, the

former woos it. There is that in the organ which passeth

understanding. It is persuasive, spiritual and golden. It is never

merely pretty….

Lemare’s Carmen Fantasy is a model of concise transcription and a

medley cast economically rather than in rambling vein. Melodies

and harmonies are cleverly caught and the true heart of Bizet’s

original is brilliantly projected.

Sunday 28 August On the evidence of a considerable corpus of pieces from his early

career, it is a sadness that London-based composer John Ireland

wrote so very little organ music in his later years. His tenure of

posts in Chelsea (at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street and at St Luke’s -

he served the latter as Organist for twenty-two years) represented

a continuing commitment to organ and choral music. Service

settings written by him for his Chelsea choirs are among those at

the cornerstones of the Anglican 20th century repertoire. The

Remembrance-tide anthem Greater love hath no man is sung

universally at or around Armistice Day in November while his

output of songs include several show-stoppers of the calibre of his

setting of Masefield’s Sea Fever. The Epic March of 1942 [its

composer’s last orchestral piece] was written in the darkest days of

the Second World War to a commission from the BBC who seemed

to want to have a piece that would lift the nation’s spirits.

Nowadays, the piece is normally the preserve of the organist,

thanks to a very fine transcription by Robert Gower made from the

orchestral original.

The history of the Sonata in G, Op 28 by Edward Elgar [1857-1934]

is absorbingly fascinating. Known as No 1, though the second of

two published as such, is actually an arrangement of the Severn

Suite for brass band. Elgar’s Op 28 was designed for, and first

performed at, a visit to Worcester Cathedral in 1895 by a group of

American organists, and thus shares – with Whitlock’s Plymouth

Suite – a link in being connected with a gathering of musicians

devoted to the king of instruments. Elgar’s score was late in

getting to Cathedral Organist Hugh Blair who had, by all accounts,

insufficient time to prepare it and had probably lunched rather too

well (some say much too well). At any rate, the premiere was less

than successful and the considerable difficulties of the score – even

for the virtuoso player – meant that it took a considerable time to

become established in the repertoire. Herbert Sumsion’s

electrifying account of the piece on his EMI Great Cathedral Organ

recording and Simon Preston’s idiomatic recital and broadcast

performances did much to ensure the rehabilitation of the work in

the 1960s. Major errors and misreadings in the printed copy have

now been widely corrected and the sonata has been the recipient

of important research by Elgarian scholars such as Reading

University’s Dr Christopher Kent. The Sonata is written in very

much the same vein as Elgar wrote for the orchestra. Dr Gordon

Jacob’s stupendous transcription for full orchestra is now happily

available on recordings and has been very recently heard at the

BBC Proms. There are four movements. The opening Allegro

maestoso unfolds, processional-like, from a strongly mobile main

theme which recalls in tonality and style parts of Elgar’s The Black

Knight. The scherzo comes second, with a glorious Largo preceding

the stupendous finale. Listen for the delicious shimmering strings

in F sharp major in the slow movement and for the effervescent

liquidity of the central section of the rather stern scherzo. A similar

sense of compositional assurance is shot through the marvellous

finale to that which but some thirty months later was to prove so

effective a conclusion to Elgar’s Op 36 [1899]– the Variations on an

Original Theme – the Enigma Variations. These, together with The

Dream of Gerontius of 1900, established Elgar’s reputation

nationally and internationally. The creative importance of the

sonata in this process can be discerned clearly and has too often

been neglected.

Born a century ago this year, Dr Bernard Rose [1916-1996] held

important posts at the University of Oxford including those of

Organist of The Queen’s College, 1939 to 1957 and Organist of

Magdalen College from 1957 until retirement in 1981. He was also

Choragus to the University and a Faculty Lecturer in Music. His

early training had been at Cambridge and the Royal College of

Music. Chimes is an ingenious musical palindrome inspired by

the bell chimes of Magdalen College Tower that sounds the same

backwards as it does front-wards following the example of

Medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut, who quotes the lines:

in my beginning is my end….in my end is my beginning

ahead of one of his own palindromes.

Giovanni Morandi [1777-1856] came from a well-known Italian

musical family and wrote well over 800 works for the organ.

Husband of the celebrated diva Rosa Moroli, Morandi had a busy

professional schedule prior to his retirement in 1824 following her

death. ‘Retirement’ involved the position of Maestro di Capella at

Senigallia Cathedral. The famous Bell Rondo Op 17 survives to us

in an idiomatic transcription by Carlisle-born W T Best [1823-1897]

the famous first Organist of St George’s Hall, Liverpool.

Judged even by the standards of composers, Percy Aldrige

Grainger [1882-1961] must be considered an eccentric! His main

influence was as a pianist though he was active in the “folksong”

movement in his young adulthood. Of Handel in the Strand he

wrote:

My title was originally Clog Dance. But my dear friend William

Gair Rathbone (to whom the piece is dedicated) suggested the title

Handel in the Strand, because the music seemed to reflect both

Handel and English musical comedy (the “Strand” is the home of

London musical comedy). [At various points] I have made use of

matter from some variations of mine on Handel’s “Harmonious

Blacksmith” tune.

Sir Henry Wood [1869-1944] devised his celebrated Fantasia on

British Sea-Songs in 1905 for a special concert in commemoration

of the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar exactly a century

earlier. The piece has been a particular favourite with audiences

ever since and is an indispensable part of the Last Night of the

Proms tradition.

Both the 1897 Imperial March for the Diamond Jubilee of Her

Majesty Queen Victoria and the Triumphal March from Caractacus

– the Leeds Festival commission of 1898 – look forward clearly to

the glories of Elgar’s set of Pomp and Circumstance marches. Of

the P&C set, the first march is by far the best known. As the

composer remarked “I’ve written a tune that’ll knock ‘em flat!”

The March is inscribed to the composer’s close friend “Alfred E

Rodewald, and the members of the Liverpool Orchestral Society”.

This evening’s is the first and most famous of the five marches

bearing the title Pomp and Circumstance and enjoys a position

similar to that of Parry’s Jerusalem in the nation’s heart. If the

work’s Liverpool première was a success, the march’s first London

airing (without the Land of hope and glory words, by the way) was

almost a riot. As Sir Henry Wood tells us:

I shall never forget the scene at the close of the first (of the two

marches being performed)...the people simply rose and yelled. I had

to play it again - with the same result; in fact, they refused to let

me get on with the programme....I went off and fetched the vocal

soloist (for the next item), but they would not listen. Merely to

restore order, I played the March a third time....

Jerusalem [1915] to the text of William Blake [1777-1827] with

music by Sir Hubert Parry [1848-1918] has become a worthy

companion piece to the National Anthem. This noble number

emerged from a request from the Poet Laureate of the early 20th

century, Robert Bridges, for a setting to use at a meeting of the

Fight for Right movement at London’s Queen’s Hall. The work

enjoyed particular impact when used at the Royal Albert Hall in

March of 1918. Here in Leeds we may take not a little pride in

recalling that the stupendous orchestration of the accompaniment

to this soaring melody was the work of no less a figure than Sir

Edward Elgar - being first heard in the Victoria Hall at Leeds

Town Hall during the 1922 Leeds Triennial Festival.

And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.

The Organists

Gordon Stewart was born in Scotland and after studies in

Manchester and Geneva with Gillian Weir, Eric Chadwick and

Lionel Rogg, he was for 15 years a cathedral organist, first in

Manchester then in Blackburn. For 25 years he has been Borough

Organist of Kirklees where he plays regular concerts on the 1860

Father Willis organ in Huddersfield Town Hall. He has recorded

on organs in the UK and in South Africa on the Priory, Dolcan and

Lammas labels and has played concertos with the BBC

Philharmonic Orchestra, the Northern Chamber Orchestra,

Orchestra of Opera North and Orchestra Victoria. For over 20

years he broadcast regularly as organist and conductor on BBC

radio and television, chiefly as a musical director on Daily Service,

Sunday Half Hour and Songs of Praise.

Gordon’s repertoire is large and covers all the major schools of

organ composition. He is well-known as a teacher and after several

years as Senior Organ Tutor at the Royal Northern College of

Music, is now one of the organ teachers at Cambridge University,

teaching the organ scholars at, amongst others, King’s, St John’s

and Jesus Colleges. He has appeared as visiting tutor at courses for

the Royal College of Organists, Oundle Organ Week, Gothenburg

Organ Academy and Shenandoah Church Music Institute in

Virginia.

Gordon has played concerts throughout the UK including

Celebrity Concerts at St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey,

Westminster Cathedral and Symphony Hall, Birmingham,

throughout Europe, and in the United States, South Africa,

Australia and New Zealand.

Gordon is a former president of the Incorporated Association of

Organists. He has been awarded honorary fellowships by the

Royal College of Organists, the Royal School of Church Music and

the Guild of Church Musicians, and an honorary doctorate by the

University of Huddersfield.

Simon Lindley

A notable recital debut at London’s Westminster Cathedral in

1969, and, particularly, his performance of the Elgar Organ Sonata

at the 1975 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts broadcast live on

BBC Radio Three, established Simon’s reputation as a player of

distinctive style –a reputation enhanced by numerous solo concerts

over many years. He has given over 600 recitals at Leeds Town

Hall, and is to be heard regularly in leading national venues and

occasionally overseas.

A leading exponent of the art of orchestral organ playing and

accompaniment, he is to be heard on many Naxos CDs made at

Leeds Town Hall by the Orchestra of Opera North, the BBC

Philharmonic and Huddersfield Choral Society as well as on

cornet virtuoso Phillip McCann’s Chandos series The World’s most

beautiful Melodies. Simon also has two best-selling Naxos discs to his

name: French Organ Music from Leeds Minster and Handel

Concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Recent and forthcoming engagements include the Cathedrals of

Bradford, Ripon and Wakefield, the Minsters of Beverley,

Dewsbury, Doncaster and Halifax, St Columba’s URC in York,

Methodist Churches in Epworth and Scarborough, Unitarian

Chapels in Leeds and Wakefield, Charterhouse Chapel Hull and

Parish Churches in Barton-on-Humber, Berwick-upon-Tweed,

Bury, Farsley, Finchley, Hebden, Hessle, Otley, Sheffield,

Wentworth and, last November, at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street in

Chelsea. He toured North Germany and Holland with St Peter’s

Singers in Autumn 2015.

Simon is active in the choral field as Director of the famous Choir

of Leeds Minster [a post from which he retires at the beginning of

next month] and as Music Director of St Peter’s Singers. He also

serves as Conductor of Sheffield Bach Choir, Doncaster Choral

Society and Overgate Hospice Choir, Halifax. He is Organist to the

Masonic Province of Yorkshire West Riding and was Grand

Organist to the United Grand Lodge of England between 2010 and

2012. Dr Lindley’s non-musical interests include Victorian

architecture, travel (especially rail travel), writing, print and

typography.

Simon was educated at Archbishop Sumner’s Memorial School in

Lambeth, in Oxford at SS Philip James Primary and Magdalen

College School and at the Royal College of Music. He is a Fellow,

and former President, of the Royal College of Organists and

Trinity College of Music. Honorary Fellowships include the Royal

School of Church Music, Leeds College of Music and the Guild of

Church Musicians. Simon is also the recipient of two honorary

doctorates – from Leeds Beckett University in 2001 and the

University of Huddersfield in 2012. He is to receive The Leeds

Award from Leeds City Council in September.

Dr Lindley is the long-standing Secretary of the Church Music

Society, the senior trustee of the John Pilling Trust, Chairman of

the Ecclesiastical Music Trust in his capacity as a director of the

English Hymnal Company Limited and also a Trustee of Leeds

Philharmonic Society, of which he is a Vice-President, and of the

Friends of the Music of Leeds Minster.

The Friends of the Music of Leeds Minster present September Fridays 2016 – Lunchtime Organ Concerts each week at 12.30 pm

in

LEEDS MINSTER

Friday 2 September Keith Swallow at the piano

generously sponsored by a Minster Parishioner

Piano by courtesy of Besbrode Pianos

DR CHRISTOPHER NEWTON

presents organ concerts on September Friday lunchtimes

DANCES AND DIVERTIMENTI

Admission Free – Retiring Collections for Organ Maintenance

Friday 9 September

Alfred Hollins A Trumpet Minuet

Christopher Tambling Sarabande in Seven

Louis Vierne Divertissement

Johann Pachelbel Chaconne in F minor

Pietro Yon Minuetto antico e Musetta

Edwin Lemare Concert Polonaise

Friday 16 September

Jean-Baptiste Lully [arr W T Best] Rigaudon

Fredrik Sixten Tango

Sverre Eftestøl Dance to your Daddy

William Russell Larghetto and Polacca

John Gardner Five Dances

Lavolta - Pavin - Jig - Lament - Fling

Friday 23 September

Antonio Soler Minuet - The Emperor's Fanfare

Andrés Laprida Florinda

Robert Cundick Divertimento

Allegro - Sicilienne - Scherzo - Minuet - Finale

Herbert Howells de la Mare's Pavane [Lambert's Clavichord]

Christopher Steel Dancing Toccata

Friday 30 September

Peter Planyavsky Toccata alla Rumba

Marco Enrico Bossi Divertimento [Giga]

Jehan Alain Deuils [Trois Danses]

Hugh Aston Hornpype

Admission Free – Retiring Collections