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SOME YORKSHIRE ORGANIST-COMPOSERS by Philip Scowcroft

Up and down the country there are at any one time thousands of organists. Many of these at some time or another try their hands at composition. Comparatively few achieve print and fewer still achieve fame in so doing, but many achieve performance, however ephemeral. Most are soon forgotten, which is a pity as they have made a vast contribution to the infrastructure of British music.

My home town of Doncaster may serve as an illustration of this general thesis. Of the organists of its Parish Church, maybe five have earned at least some distinction as composers.

Edward Miller (1735-1807: Organist 1756-1807) produced some forty songs, many of them good, some church music including a Service and Psalms of David (of which the tune Rockingham is still frequently sung as a hymn), several tutors, a set of bright, if slight, organ voluntaries, six keyboard sonatas of quality and others transcribed from Corelli trio sonatas and, probably his finest work, the six "solos" (sonatas in several movements) for flute and continuo, Opus 1. Much later, Wilfrid Ernest Sanderson (1878-1935):Organist 1904-23) showed that his horizons, like Miller's, stretched well beyond the organ loft by conducting the town's amateur operatic societies and main choral society and by publishing some 170 highly popular songs of the ballad type and a few short, salon-style piano pieces, but hardly any church music. Percy Saunders, Organist 1930-46, who left Doncaster for Wakefield Cathedral, composed church music, including a Service setting and two oratorios, but mostly before he arrived in the town. His successor, Owen Franklin, Organist 1946-57, produced an anthem or two and some Responses while the present Organist, Magnus Black, Organist from 1957 to 1994, has written service music and several organ works, including a Trio Sonata which has had several performances outside Doncaster. Other local churches have had their composers. Christ Church, founded 1829 and now closed, could point to George Havelock (d. 1915) who composed a cantata-type setting of Psalm 145 as a doctoral thesis for Toronto University but who normally preferred to arrange or compose pieces for his "ladies orchestra" of strings, guitars and mandolins like, for example, a Maltese Suite, Alfred Taylor (also d. 1915), who composed some organ pieces but more piano miniatures with titles like Album Leaf and Melody, which he used in his piano recitals, also dance music - Sandringham Waltz and The Merry Cricketers Polka - and two operas, Amanda and The Bachelors, and Walter Spinney. Spinney's father was organist of Salisbury Cathedral and Spinney was at one time his Assistant. Spinney died in 1894, having been Organist at Christ Church 1880-8. His compositions included anthems (He Watereth the Hills, published in 1890, soon after he left Doncaster, sold 27,000 copies in four months), services, hymn tunes, piano miniatures like Swiss Clock and Tuning Key Valse, songs, much organ music - marches, voluntaries, interludes, Harvest Home and Song in the Night - which enjoyed currency not only in Doncaster and Leamington, where he went in 1888, but as far afield as America, and a three-act operetta The Whack'em Academy. Doncaster's Methodist churches produced: Harry McKenzie, Organist and Schoolmaster at Oxford Place who wrote music for children's orchestras and choirs and for his other instrument the violin (Cavatina and Cradle Song have been revived in Doncaster in recent years) as well as secular-sounding organ movements like Berceuse, Gavotte and a Fantasie on Rousseau's Dream; Asa Litchfield, Priory Church Organist 1888-1917, whose compositions were brief and for organ or piano; and Arnold Williams, Priory Organist 1918-27, whose effusions were mainly vocal, both solos and choral items for male, female or mixed choirs, many of which were published, though after he had left Doncaster for Southampton in 1927 - a few may still be heard. G.H. Adams, Organist at nearby Askern and then at St. Jude's, Doncaster wrote church music and religious cantatas in a mid-Victorian style as late as the 1930s. Douglas Coates, sometime connected with Swinton in the 1920s published Seven Short Improvisations and preludes on Nun Danket and Schonster, Herr Jesu for organ, a scherzo Pip: A Yorkshire Terrier, for piano, and, for unison voices, The Cherubic Carol. And we could go on.

To cover the whole of Yorkshire even in such summary form would need a sizable volume. Here we can point to only a few figures. It is natural and reasonable to begin at York Minster. Of two of its organists in the present century we need not perhaps say much as their music is quite often to be encountered. Edward Bairstow (Organist 1913-46) composed much church music and some for organ, including a Sonata, plus a few secular choral and vocal works like the (choral), I Dare Not Ask a Kiss and the (solo) The Oak Bough, all knowledgeably written and often beautiful if not always especially individual.

Francis Jackson, O.B.E. Bairstow's successor, is still delighting us with his organ playing and his compositions, even though he is well turned 70 and has been retired from his position at York Minster for many years. His church music is used by many choirs while his organ works, which are in a style often owing much to the French school, embrace for sonatas and a huge number of single movement. There are few, if any, better composers for organ alive today. His successor Philip Moore has ability as a composer, too.

We should also remind ourselves of their predecessors. James Nares (1715-83: Organist 1735-56) composed many anthems, of which The Souls of the Righteous is still quite often to be heard, services, secular odes, glees and catches, and various lessons for harpsichord solo, plus the Six "Fugues" for organ or harpsichord, possibly his best work and still sometimes to be encountered (Dr. Jackson loyally plays them!) Virtually all these compositions appeared after Nares had left York for London. He was succeeded by an amazing dynasty of Camidges: John, Matthew and John II, who reigned in the Minster organ loft until 1859. All the Camidges composed, mostly church music and keyboard pieces, but especially Matthew (1764-1844), who produced Preludes for piano, easy sonatas and other sonatas for piano with instrumental accompaniment, church music (psalms, hymns, chants etc, etc.) a few secular songs and six rather Handelian concertos (but with a few galant touches) for organ or piano, some of which have been revived in our own day. E.G. Monk (1819-1900): Organist 1859-83) is better known for his editions than for original compositions, just as John Naylor (1838-97: Organist 1883-97) achieved less distinction in composition than his son Edward (1867-1934) and his grandson Bernard (b.1907), both of them organists, incidentally, but Monk and John Naylor nevertheless begat church music and cantatas conscientiously. Thomas Tertius Noble, trained at the RCM under Parratt, Frederick Bridge and Stanford, and previously organist at Ely Cathedral, was Organist at York 1898-1912 and his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in B Minor may still be heard. He wrote several other services, including a Communion Service with brass and drums, at least ten anthems (The Souls of the Righteous, The Soul Triumphant, Grieve Not Holy Spirit, O Sapienta, Come O Thou Traveller, O Wisdom Spirit, Fierce Was the Wild Bellow, Come O Creator Spirit, Lord of the Worlds Above and Thy Kingdom and Dominion Endeth for Ever), the cantata Gloria Dominum (The Dedication of the Temple), Opus 15, orchestral music (he founded the York Symphony Orchestra in 1899 and his orchestral works include a Suite for violin and orchestra, the Introduction and Passacaglia, first performed in England at the Proms in 1945 and music for The Wasps of Aristophanes and the York Pageant of 1909), secular choral items, chamber music, songs and organ pieces, such as the Elizabethan Idyll (1915), Introduction and Passacaglia (1934, presumably an earlier version of the orchestral work just mentioned), Nachspiel (1901), Air and Variations, Solemn March and chorale preludes on Dominus Regit Me (1929), Eventide (1949), St. Ann (1925) and other tunes. Noble (1867-1953) outlived his successor Bairstow, but he spent his last forty years in the United States, many of them as Organist of the Church of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue, New York. But he contributed much to music in the York area, not only at the Minster but as Conductor of the York Musical Society between 1901 and 1912 and as Director of the Hovingham Festival from 1906.

We move now to Leeds. The most famous Organist of the Parish Church, which has daily sung services, was S.S. Wesley (1810-76), who was in post 1842-9 but was also associated with Hereford, Exeter, Winchester and Gloucester Cathedrals and much of his work was composed in these places. However, his fine Service in E was completed in Leeds, as was a substantial proportion of his small corpus of organ music: two books of Pieces for Chamber Organ and the Fantasia in G. Also dating from the Leeds years is the anthem Cast Me Not Away, composed while recuperating from an accident incurred when fishing at Helmsley in the North Riding, the chromatic setting of the words "the bones Thou hast broken" having a personal connotation! Wesley's articled pupil from his Exeter days, William Spark (1823-97) went with him to Leeds where he became Organist of St. George's and then, after designing the Town Hall organ, Borough Organist from 1859 to 1897. His brother Frederick was a guiding light of the Leeds Triennial Festival and William played at each Festival between 1874 and 1886. Grove's Dictionary dismisses his compositions as "numerous but unimportant". Unimportant or not, they were nevertheless widely performed. His oratorio Immanuel figured in the Leeds Festival of 1877 and Spark's recitals in and around Doncaster in the 1870s and 1880s (he appeared in the town as early as February 1853, conducting thirty voices of his own Leeds Madrigal and Motet Society) included his Concertstuck, a Fantasie and (several times) Variations and Fugue on Jerusalem the Golden, also solo songs and excerpts from Immanuel. Spark's Yorkshire Exhibition March was written in 1875 for the grand organ in the Exhibition building. He wrote and lectured tirelessly, his lecture subjects in Doncaster at that same period including "The Vocal Music of the Victorian Era", "The Minstrelsy of Old England", "National Ballad Music of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales" and "Glees and Partsongs", the illustrations for the latter talk including at least one of his own compositions. He edited books of music by others for organists to play. He was never Organist of Leeds Parish Church but this has had many fine musicians since Wesley. Robert Senior Burton composed a popular chant in B Flat. William G. Creser (1844-1933) was later Organist of the Chapel Royal; born in York and educated in Oxford, he composed diligently, including an oratorio Micah, the cantatas Eudora and The sacrifice of Freia, both performed in Leeds, a setting of The Golden Legend, made at roughly the same time as Sullivan was working on his, a Mass, psalms, organ music, an orchestral Old English Suite in three pleasant movements, and a String Quartet in A Minor, a Piano Trio in A Major and a Sonata for violin and piano, none of which Cobbett's Dictionary deigns to mention. Creser was followed by Alfred Benton, Edward Bairstow, Albert Tysoe, Melville Cook, Donald Hunt and now Simon Lindley; all of these produced music for choirs of which we may mention Cook's church music and his West Sussex Drinking Song for male voices and, by Lindley, the part song How Dazzling Fair and the carol, Come Sing and Dance. Hunt's works are more numerous and include a St. Peter Mass, a Missa Leodiensis (Leeds Mass), a Missa Brevis and a Te Deum, Music of the Spheres and Invocation to Music are both for chorus and orchestra. An Organ Sonata and various carols, anthems and motets complete the tally.

Herbert Austin Fricker (1868-1943) was also particularly associated with the City of Leeds, where he was City Organist (1898-1917), acted as Chorus Master to the Leeds Festival Choir up to 1913, conducted other local choirs, at Bradford, Halifax and Morley, and founded the Leeds Symphony Orchestra, which later changed its name to the Northern Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1917 he emigrated to Canada where among other things he conducted the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. His compositions included a number of original pieces and arrangements for mixed voices, cantatas such as The Shield of Faith, A Song of Thanksgiving and The Hermit, service music, anthems for organ, most notably the Concert Overture in C Minor of 1906, the Cantilene Nuptiale, a Fantasie Overture in C Minor and the Adagio in A Flat. When the Concert Overture was played in Doncaster in 1928 by the then Parish Church Organist H.A. Bennett, the local press described it as "teeming with exuberance"; Bennett himself must have liked it as he repeated it in a recital the following year. Fricker's two recitals at Doncaster's Oxford Place Methodist Chapel on 8 February 1900 were devoted respectively to Mendelssohn and to Alfred Hollins, Dvorak, Saint-Saens, E.H. Lemare and Widor.

This article should not ignore William Jackson, called "Jackson of Masham" to distinguish him from the earlier William Jackson "of Exeter" (1730-1803). Born at Masham in 1815, the son of a miller, the Yorkshire Jackson was Organist in Masham in 1832. Self-taught as a composer, he published an anthem, then a glee. Then he set Psalm 103, performed by the Huddersfield Choral Society in 1841, capping this in 1847 when his oratorio The Deliverance of Israel From Babylon was performed in Leeds. He then settled in Bradford where he carried on a music business, played the organ (at St. John's Church and at Horton Lane Independent Chapel) and directed choirs. He acted as chorus-master to three Bradford festivals (1853-56-59) and became Conductor of the Bradford Festival Choral Society in 1856. He died in 1866 before hearing his Praise of Music for voices and orchestra, written for the Festival of that year. His music was mainly choral;, besides the titles already mentioned there was the oratorio Isaiah (1851), a second setting of Psalm 103 (1856), the cantata The Year (1959), a Mass, an Anglican service, about twenty anthems (Come and Let Us Return was available well into the present century), partsongs, three books of hymn tunes and a Singing Class Manual. The best known of his songs was the Address to the Wood-Lark, twice arranged earlier this century by Leslie Woodgate, once for male voices, once for SATB. No organ music of Jackson's appears to survive, but he did produce a slow movement and a Rondo for piano solo in 1844. His work owed nothing to the then modern idiom of Mendelssohn and Spohr and was very Handelian in outlook. It has been criticised for occasional crudity (he was, we must remember self-taught) and praised for its vigour. At least The New Grove, which has savagely excised so many British 19th Century composers from its pages, retains a substantial article on him.

What of Sheffield's contribution in this field? The Parish Church (Cathedral from 1914) has had many fine organists since the time of William Sterndale-Bennett's father Robert, who died in 1818. Thomas Tallis Trimnell, Organist 1875-85, composed considerably for the church but is now little remembered. Much more famous is Edwin Harry Lemare (1865-1934), who became an organist of international repute. He was at Sheffield, as Organist of both the Parish Church and the Albert Hall for only the six years 1886-92, but during that time he gave over 300 recitals in the North of England. He composed a few service settings, an Easter Cantata and a large quantity of organ music, his opus numbers running to over a hundred. Much of this is obviously secular in character as Lemare toured widely as a concert organist, latterly in the United States, where he died. Little if anything, had been published when he left Sheffield. His organ music includes major pieces like two Symphonies, arguably the acme of the "orchestral" style among British organists and owing much to Widor and Franck, not to mention the top orchestral composers of the day like Wagner and Tchaikovsky, plus Concert Fantasies, two Concertstucken, some large-scale fugal works in the style of Bach, suites like the Summer Sketches, Twilight Sketches, Festival Suite and Arcadian Idylle and countless shorter movements and transcriptions for organ, notably of Wagner and, still played, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. Best known of the short pieces is the Andantino in D Flat, an account of the words Moonlight and Roses later fitted to it, greatly to Lemare's disgust as he was so often asked to play it as a "request"! It was arranged in 1909 for small orchestra by no less a figure than Gustav Holst. His invention in major work shows expansiveness and, in the fugues, considerable contrapuntal resource He wrote for orchestra, too: Caprice Orientale, Minuet Nuptiale, a Rhapsody, Opus 43A and the Shenley Overture.

Mention of Lemare's activities as a concert organist brings to mind those of the remarkable blind performer Alfred Hollins (1865-1942), born in Hull, who, after study with E.J. Hopkins, Bulow and Raff, travelled all over the world giving organ recitals, though he was also Organist of a church in Edinburgh and a Professor at the Royal Normal College for the Blind. His compositional energy was unbounded too. His Concert Overtures in F Minor (written as early as 1899), C Major and C Minor were substantial works, rather in the manner of Mendelssohn, valuable for giving solid beginnings to his own recitals, which doubtless also featured pieces like the Concert Toccata in B Flat (1926 and the Concert Rondo, in the same key, of 1900. Other pieces, such as A Song of Sunshine, Spring Song, the gavotte Maytime and marches, elegies, "prayers" and sundry dances available almost by the acre, were "lollipops", doing much the same for the organ repertoire as Eric Coates and others were at that time doing for the orchestra. One is pleased to see his work still being performed by organists, whether in recital and on record. His other compositions included a Romance for violin and piano, solo piano music (he was also a concert pianist), songs like My Mary and Divided and anthems like The Earth is the Lord's and O Worship the Lord, all of which titles were published.

Of Lemare's successors at the (Cathedral) it is worth mentioning T.W. Hanforth (1867-1948), born in Hunslet (Leeds) and a chorister at Leeds Parish Church and then York Minster, who was in post from 1892 to his retirement in 1937 and R. Tustin Baker (1900-66). Both composed modestly. Hanforth's (choral) Beyond the Darkness was performed by a Doncaster choir in 1927; Baker's publications included the carol Christ Was Born on Christmas Day for accompanied SSA voices and, for the same combination, the Wordsworth lyric, I Wandered lonely as a Cloud. His output generally embraced anthems, services, carols and other partsongs. Among Sheffield's suburban organists we must note George F. Linstead, lecturer, critic and composer, organist successively at Walkley and Fulwood Parish Churches, and Norman J. Barnes, music-master at my old school, King Edward VII Grammar, from 1947 and Organist of St. John's Ranmoor (in Sheffield), who had the SATB anthem The Spirit of the Lord published; I remember, too, and with pleasure, his setting of Siegfried Sassoon's Everyone Sang which he gave his School Choir (including me!) to sing in 1949.

John Arthur Meale, born in Slaithwaite in 1880, was Musical Director at the Central Hall, Westminster from its opening in 1912 until his death in 1932, giving some six hundred Wednesday recitals and many Saturday Popular Concerts. A noted exponent of the "orchestral" school or organ playing, a FRCO and a recitalist much in demand all over the country (he recorded for HMV) he came to Doncaster on several occasions after the First World War and played among other things his own "tone pictures" The Mighty Andes, Fountain Melody, In Peril on the Sea, the Introduction, Variations and Fugue on The Vicar of Bray, the pedal study "The Magic Harp, At Sunrise, Impressions sur la Belgique, A Night at Sea and March Patrol. Other organ solos by him included Sunny, The Storm, composed as a feature for a church bazaar at Selby, Twilight, Cante Religioso and A Summer Idyll (1917); his output included also anthems and many songs, of which Coming to You was perhaps the most popular. He prepared the specification for the organ in Hull City Hall and for many others. He was another in the mould of Lemare and Hollins.

This paper would not be complete without some mention of Walter Parratt (1841-1924), a native of Huddersfield and subsequently Organist at Magdalen College, Oxford and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, combining this with academic posts such as Professor of Music at Oxford (1908-18), Dean of the Faculty of Music of London University (1916-20) and a Professorship at the RCM. He was Master of the (Queen's) Music for over thirty years from 1893 to 1924 and was knighted in 1892. His organ playing was renowned for its skill and taste and he wrote a number of articles on music, but his compositions are not numerous. (His Who's Who entry did not specify any). They include music for Agamemnon and The Story of Orestes, an Elegy to Patroclus, a few anthems, e.g. Death and Life and Give Rest O Christ, and the Comfortare he wrote for the Coronation of 1911 plus a few secular songs: The Triumph of Victoria (SSATB) and, for solo voice, Sing Me a Song, The Knight's Leap, Rosy Maiden, Winifred and If a Pig Wore a Wig, most of these latter dating from 1916.

Herbert Walton, born in Thursk in 1869, studied at the RCM under Parratt, Parry and Frederic Cliffe, later becoming Organist of St. Mark's Leeds, then (1897) of Glasgow Cathedral. His most popular composition for organ was the Rhapsodic Variations.

Edward Woodall Naylor, born in Scarborough in February 1867, was, as we have seen, the son of a York Minster Organist; he became Organ Scholar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and, after study at the RCM in 1888-92, an organist at two London churches - St. Michael's, Chester Square (1889) and St. Mary's Kilburn (1896) - before returning to Emmanuel as Organist (1898) and Lecturer (1902) (while in Cambridge he taught at the Leys School) and eventually died in the fateful year of 1934. He was less known for his organ music than in other directions. A scena, Merlin and the Glen, was performed at the RCM when he was a student and two operas come from his pen, The Angelus and Slaves of Liberty, the former being produced at Covent Garden in 1909. Described as a "romantic opera in a Prologue and four Acts", it won a prize offered by Ricordi but suffered from a stilted libretto, Naylor's inexperience of the stage and by being put on during a foggy winter season. It enjoyed more success when revived by the Carl Rosa in 1921. A Requiem, Pax Dei, showing the influence of both Verdi and Stanford(!) was performed in Cambridge in 1913 with orchestra; a cantata, Arthur the King, was aired at Harrogate in 1902. Other Naylor choral works included many canticle settings, notably a Magnificat for double choir (1903) and some for male voices (TTBB) only, also a motet Vox Dicentis (1911) and the partsongs The Merry Bells of Yule and The Charge of the Light Brigade. His orchestral works include the Variations in B Flat and the overture, Tokugawa, chamber works, a Quintet and a Piano Trio in D Minor. More popular than any of these were his arrangements of Shakespeare's Music (a subject on which he wrote a book in 1896) for various combinations. Other publications were The Poets and Music (1928) and An Elizabethan Virginal Book (1905). E.J. Dent described him as an erratic but stimulating lecturer and the finest Cambridge University teacher of his time after Stanford. He was certainly more than useful as organist, pianist and composer.

Bernard Johnson was Organist at Bridlington Parish Church for some years prior to the Great War and composed considerably and not only for organ. As to his compositions these included the choral songs The Brooklet (unison) and The Tide Rises (SATB), the set (four numbers) of solo songs A Fairy Ring the Faerie Suite for piano and the sacred cantata for solo quartet, chorus and organ, Ecce Homo. Organ works, published between 1907 and 1932 but mostly in the five years 1907-12, were a Andante Con Moto in B Minor, Aubade in D Flat, Canzonet in E

Of Lemare's successors at the (Cathedral) it is worth mentioning T.W. Hanforth (1867-1948), born in Hunslet (Leeds) and a chorister at Leeds Parish Church and then York Minster, who was in post from 1892 to his retirement in 1937 and R. Tustin Baker (1900-66). Both composed modestly. Hanforth's (choral) Beyond the Darkness was performed by a Doncaster choir in 1927; Baker's publication included the carol Christ Was Born on Christmas Day for accompanied SSA voices and, for the same combination, the Wordsworth lyric, I Wandered lonely as a Cloud. His output generally embraced anthems, services, carols and other partsongs. Among Sheffield's suburban organists we must note George F. Linstead, lecturer, critic and composer, organist successively at Walkley and Fulwood Parish Churches, and Norman J. Barnes, music-master at my old school King Edward VII Grammar, from 1947 and Organist of St. John's Rarmon, who had the SATB anthem The Spirit of the Lord published; I remember, too, and with pleasure his setting of Siegfried Sassoon's Everyone Sang which he gave his School Choir (including me!) to sing in 1949. There was also a Caprice in B, the two Duologues (The Sigh, The Smile), Elfentanz, Lullaby in F, Intermezzo in D Flat, Pavane in A (also orchestrated) and the Overture in C Sharp Minor, subtitled "Homage to Tchaikovsky", a piece received with success by Chester Cathedral Organist, Roger Fisher at Doncaster Parish Church in 1990. Fisher has recorded the piece, which quotes from the Pathétique Symphony.

Samuel Liddle differs from most of our other examples in that he was only briefly an organist as such. Born in Armley, Leeds in 1867, he became Organist of St. James' Leeds at 16 years old but after study with Stanford at the RCM he went into concert life as a pianist, working with Clara Butt, Ada Crossley, Plunket Greene and W.H. Squire; his robust, virile style as accompanist was much appreciated. He appeared in Doncaster at least four times: in 1902, when the "judgement, taste and precision" of his accompaniments were praised; in 1904, when Clara Butt sang his Abide With Me; in 1906; and in 1912. He composed no organ music, as far as I know, and I have traced only one instrumental piece, an Elegy for cello and piano; but he composed many solo songs of the ballad type. Many of these, including the best remembered ones, had sacred words: Abide With Me, How Lovely are Thy Dwellings, Like as the Hart, The Lord is My Shepherd, Thy Faith Hath Saved Thee and Ye Shall Be Comforted. But there were more secular examples too, of which we can cite, Arabic Love Song, sung by McCormack, among others, A Farewell, Fall Snowflakes, At Last, Home Song, Lovely Kind and Kindly Loving, My Lute, The Gay Gordons, The Young Royalist, the Seven Old English Lyrics, the duet Now Is the Month of Maying and his very popular arrangement of The Garden Where the Praties Grow. He died late in 1951.

Other Yorkshire born organists have included Edward Allan Wicks (born 1923). Organist of Canterbury Cathedral 1961-88, Keith Vernon Rhodes (born 1930), Organist of Bradford Cathedral 1963-82 and composer of a Communion Service, Philip Marshall (born 1921), prolific composer of organ music, anthems, chants and a superb improviser and Organist of Ripon and Lincoln Cathedrals, Gordon Archbold Slater (1896-1979, Marshall's predecessor at Lincoln and composer of organ, piano and choral music, Norman Cocker (1889-1953), Organist of Manchester Cathedral 1943-53 and writer of organ music - Interlude and Paean, Angelus and the ever-popular Tuba Tune, and Harrison Oxley (born 1933), Organist at Bury St Edmunds 1957-84, also noted as a composer.

And there we must stop. Some of the organists we have discussed remain at least modestly popular but most do not; yet all of them and countless others we have not had space to mention contributed worthily to the sum of musical experience in their own time and, as we have seen, by no means all of them confined themselves to writing for their instrument or for church services.

Philip Scowcroft

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