Page 48 - Church Music Quarterly June 2019

will therefore be familiar with the Tickell instrument installed high
up in the quire in 2008. If you go to Worcester, you cannot miss the fine casework. In the pieces that follow we’re certainly given a comprehensive tour of the organ’s varied tone colours. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Prelude
on the Welsh tune Rhosymedre and Pietro Yon’s Toccatina show off the gentler sonorities as well as some delightfully ‘twinkly’ stops. This CD is a comprehensive recital of short pieces ranging from local musician Easthope Martin and Percy Whitlock to Louis Lefébure-Wély and Percy Fletcher. Dubois’s Fiat Lux and Karg-Elert’s Marche Triomphale on Nun danket alle Gott certainly show off the gritty reeds on an instrument with entirely new pipework except for two historic ranks of pipes. The CD closes with a fine performance that popular Toccata by Widor, played at a good steady pace. Stuart Robinson
SIR WILLIAM HENRY HARRIS: ORGANIST, CHOIR TRAINER AND COMPOSER
JOHN HENDERSON
AND TREVOR JARVIS
RSCM: 333pp.
P/B 978-0-85402-279-3 £27.00
‘They were the best choristers I
ever had.’ This was an observation
Sir William Harris (1883–1973)
made to me shortly before his death –
a reference to his years as organist
of New College, Oxford. Roy Massey (then at Birmingham Cathedral) and
I (then at New College) had gone to visit him in Petersfield – Roy to talk to him about St Augustine, Birmingham, where they had both been organist, and I to ask him about his New College days (1919–29). He was hard of hearing but generous with his time and fascinating to listen to. We left with inscribed copies of his latest (final?) choral works, fresh from OUP.
Harris’s 10 years at New College were but one chapter in a varied career beginning as assistant organist at
Lichfield Cathedral, then organist of
St Augustine’s, followed by New College, Christ Church Cathedral and St George’s Chapel, Windsor (1933–61). All the while he taught (mainly at the Royal College of Music, where Howells rated him highly), composed and conducted.
The authors of this richly illustrated biography have not only written up
all the known facts of Harris’s life and career but have augmented these with innumerable comments from those who knew him, in addition giving fascinating background information about all the places where he worked. However, the value of this book is far greater than that: pages 93–320 form a catalogue of his works (some 250 of them), with facsimile music pages as illustrations. This is very well done; it adds great musicological value to the book. One error (p. iii): Petersfield
is in Hampshire, not Sussex.
As with other Jarvis / Henderson
books, it is excellently produced (though I lament the use of the Gill Sans font, with its lack of visual flow), featuring an attractive line drawing of Windsor Castle on the cover.
Paul Hale
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: A VERY BRIEF HISTORY Andrew Gant
SPCK: 124pp.
H/B 978-0-281-07957-5 £12.99; P/B 978-0-281-07958-2 £7.99
This ‘very brief history’ is published at a very reasonable price and tells a story that is valuable for any reader singing, playing or listening to Bach’s music. There are two sections, firstly ‘The History (What do we know?)’ since placing Bach in his social, political
and religious background is such a help to understanding the music. Then ‘The Legacy (Why does it matter?)’ explores why he is still important today. It is
a history of Bach’s music from its
CHURCH MUSIC QUARTERLY JUNE 2019 54
composition through its decline in popularity and subsequent revivals and interpretations. The first chapter describes the world into which Bach was born, starting ‘Thuringia is a pleasant region of wooded hills, stern castles, cobbled streets and tall church towers soaring over wide market squares in handsome medieval towns. Luther was born here – he and Bach attended the same school in Eisenach two hundred years apart ...’. And so it continues, all told with a light touch. There is also technical discussion
and music examples (especially in a chapter headed ‘The learned musician: Some technical aspects’), a good index and a seven-page chronology from 1685 (Bach’s birth) to 1955 (first volume of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe). Readers of David Stancliffe’s article ‘Bach and Architecture’ last year (CMQ, March 2018) will find here a similar concern
to understand what Bach wrote and why he wrote as he did. The 10 judiciously chosen, full-colour illustrations are
all relevant to what is discussed in
the text. It is a highly readable fusion of scholarship and storytelling.
RECOLLECTIONS OF A
ST ALBANS ABBEY CHORISTER TREVOR JARVIS
Available from the author at RSCM, 19 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EB Cheques for £8.00 should be payable to ‘Trevor Jarvis’
The listing of this title under the heading ‘Composers and Organists’ results from so much of the book being about St Albans after a ‘new broom’ arrived in the form of Peter Hurford, with descriptions of Hurford’s rehearsing, conducting and playing – complete with biography and list
of his published choral works. It is fascinating to read of the impression made on Trevor Jarvis, a chorister at St Albans, looking back 60 years later at Hurford’s work there. Discipline was tightened, repertoire broadened and standards raised. Jarvis remembers his initial encounter with ‘someone
in a hurry – like a whirlwind –
with a surfeit of nervous energy’.
In addition we have a valuable reminiscence of Hurford’s predecessor, Peter Burton, who died in post at the age of 41 in an accident while swimming, and more generally a description of life as a cathedral or abbey chorister in the late 1950s, ranging from choir camps to royal visits, along with documentation
REVIEWS OF CDS AND BOOKS
BOOKS
COMPOSERS AND ORGANISTS