Healey Willan plays the organ - Hymn and Improvisation
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Healey Willan (1880-1968), the great Anglo-Canadian church musician plays the organ of St Mary Magdalene, Toronto at the age of 86.
Hymn: Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones
[Lasst uns erfreuen]
followed by an
Improvised Postlude.
Recorded during a service in 1966.
![Healey Willan [Live] Hail Thee Festival Day - Processional Hymn](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aDba301hJPU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Healey Willan [Live] Hail Thee Festival Day - Processional Hymn](/img/tr.png)
![Healey Willan at Evensong and Benediction [Live] - Magnificat, Ps. 117 and improvisation.](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQaN1A9LmUo/mqdefault.jpg)
I grew up at SMM listening to this glorious music every Sunday, as my mother sang in the gallery choir and my father was cantor in the ritual choir. I remember Dr. Willan in his waistcoat and spats... having tea in the long room after mass... pretending to crack his nose as he snapped his watch case shut.... Thanks for posting this - it really takes me back.
I was steeped in this music from childhood: one could even say before I was born.
My father was in the ritual choir and my mother was in the gallery choir. They met through their friendship with Healy Willan. Breaking with family tradition, I was named after him--my middle name is Healey.
Despite growing up in a musical family, I never became a musician, but music is nonetheless part of the way I think, enfused through every memory of note, and as much a part of my daily diet as a cup of coffee.
Je découvre l'œuvre de H Willan. Je suis vraiment enthousiasmé. C'est superbe.
@mstrungify I was not raised in that congregation, but my parents had friends in the choir, and we attended services and special performances often. One, memorable to me, was going back to the choir area afterwards, meeting up with the friends, and a lovely little old man, my height ( I was 11yo at the time), wearing a "comfortable" old flannel shirt: "and did you enjoy the performance, my dear?". Later, I asked my mother who the old man was! Wasn't MY jaw on the floor at the response!
An acoustic to die for!
Ordinarily I would say this is unbelievably slow, but with the acoustics and the pacing it's just heavenly.
Good old Lasst uns...love the way he carries over the last note into the next line...
I've been a fan of Healey Willan since I found myself living in the vicinity of St. Mary Magdalene church in Toronto. I was not very informed of his stature at that time, though not completely unaware. Having friends who were very knowledgeable of church choral and organ music, I knew of his existence. But between occasional occurrences on CBC FM (especially around Christmas time) and taking my kids to the parkette nearby the church while the splendid church choir practiced on a Saturday evening, I have many fond memories of his timeless, beautiful music! All these years later, as an ex-pat living far from that hallowed ground, I will never forget those beautiful, wonderful reverberations!
Wonderful to hear Willan's "Old Girl" at her best.
My Grand Father who passed 6 years before I was born knew Dr Willan and they were contemporaries and visited each others homes. Dr Harry Freeman was organist at St Judes in 1916. I have been a chorister at St Martin in the Fields since 1966. I always fully appreciated Willan and then more so when my aunt told me of their relationship one day...........................
This instrument sounds like our 1916 Casavant. I just got off the bench 45 minutes ago
(Vespers). A treat to hear H. Willan. We did get to hear the organ live in Toronto some years ago at a Mass. Inspiring.
Wonderful!!!
Spent the 66-67 "school year" in the gallery choir: rehearsals every Friday evening, and service on Sunday with the kids in the SS along with Albert Mahon's gang (the cantor). What a fine way to re-experience the glories of that time...incomparable beauty, never hurried. Fellow "worshippers" (it didn't seem to matter if they were worshipping God or the music) feeling the same emotion at the same time... I was always surprised at how the Doc would bring down a bony hand to start an anthem, or whatever, and the choir started exactly together nearly a second later.
This makes me feel so much better! I always feel as if I'm screwing up when the congregation are jumping ahead of or behind me. But I know Willan's doing it perfectly...
The organ is a wonderful instrument. Not quite as dark in person. However, I attended a Sunday morning service there several years ago, and the organist that day takes the hymns even slower than this. I thought we would never get through the six stanzas of "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. Very few people were in attendance. Perhaps if the hymns were speeded up where non-trained singers could sing them more comfortably, more folk might attend!
The instrument is Canadian,,,a 1909 Breckels and Matthews...updated with tonal additons by Alan Jackson, Casavant's Toronto agent in Willan's memory after his death.
My favorite Western hymn
Judging by his enormous output and tremendous success as a choral composer and his widely-acknowledged gifts as a choral conductor, I'd say he was certainly a singer. And judging by this tempo, I'd say he was playing for his congregation, not his choir.
Great composer, great musician . Thanks for the posting.
Dr. Willan was one of my heroes growing up. My choirmaster, T.Leslie Morris, was a dear friend of "The Doc's"; and my music teacher at school sang in the Gallery Choir. I sang at St. Thomas's Huron Street for years with Walter MacNutt, one of Willan's students. I received an award at Choir School from Willan. We always chatted when we met, and my formation was with his choral and harmonic flavours./ I always claimed to be weaned 'in the grand manner' as an organist. What an influence!! dls
A legend
wow, he tatkes it really slow! but majestic. organ sounds quite dark, must be an early Casavant.
Actually it isn't a Casavant - it was (and still is) a 3 manual instrument built in 1907 by a firm called Breckels and Mathews ...
Do you remember my family then? Bert Rees in the ritual choir and Ella Rees up in the Gallery. I get back to church as often as I can, but not often enough since I'm 4.5 hrs away.
Willan referred to this organ as "the old girl"
@kjell484
Where about in Barnsley? I am of the Ango Catholic Tradition too! I am to be the new curate of Dodworth in July of next year.
Hymns are generally played slower in the Anglican church than other Protestant denominations.
We sometimes have the Willan Mass of St peter in the local cathedral , it is truly spiritual , one of the finest settings . Is this by him ?
we sometimes have the Willan Mass of St Peter in our local cathedral , is he the writer of this
He may have been a brilliant organist and composer, but surely he wasn't a singer. A singer would never take hymns that slowly.
the organ isnt like a piano, you have to take into account the building etc, maybe faster would sound to mushy in the accoustic.
Hymn tempos depend on several factors. You have to think about the acoustics and the size of the congregation. Prevailing philosophies for appropriate tempos have changed as well. There have been times where the approproate tempo was a full breath for every note (when live acoustic spaces were normal). In the US, fast tempos have been the norm because most sanctuaries in the US have dry acoustics.