The English Organ Sonata: 1937
Colm Carey
The year 1937 was surely one of the richest years of the 20th century
for the English organ repertoire. That peculiarly English genre the
organ sonata gained two new major works with the publication of Percy
Whitlock's sonata in C minor and Edward Bairstow's sonata in Eb.
Percy Whitlock studied composition at the Royal College of Music with
Vaughan Williams. His C-minor organ sonata was conceived whilst laid low
with illness and dependent upon the radio, where he was thrilled to hear a
broadcast of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony in C minor. Then during a
period of convalescence, Whitlock enjoyed a series of country walks which
sowed the seeds of the second and third movements of his sonata. The
sonata is a brooding work of symphonic scale and complexity. In it, the
organ is treated very much as an orchestra, requiring the player to be
more than usually adroit at manipulating the stops to achieve specific
tone-colours. The sonata is recognised as the finest of the very good,
light, British organ pieces that exist (with most of the others being by
Whitlock anyway).
In the 1930s Sir Edward Bairstow was Professor of Music at the
University of Durham and had not written for the organ since 1911, chiefly
concentrating instead on the composition of choral works. A nationally
recognised academic, he came to regard some of his earlier organ works as
somewhat sentimental but he had never the less had a yearning to write an
organ sonata. By giving the work slow and quiet outer movements which rise
in the middle, and a bright, strong central one, Bairstow inverts the
usual pattern. He establishes the overall mood as quiet and introverted,
suiting his love of restraint.
The disc concludes on an upbeat note with the arresting Flourish for
an Occasion from the pen of Sir William Harris, organist of St
George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. St George's is the home of the Most
Noble Order of the Garter, and the occasion for which this piece was
composed was the annual Garter service of 1947.
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