The Oxford Book of Ceremonial Music for Organ, Book 2

On retirement from a teaching career spent successively at St Paul's Boys' School, Barnes, Radley College, Oxfordshire, and Glenalmond College, Perthshire, (where he was also a Housemaster and Senior Tutor), Robert Gower worked as Organist at St Barnabas Catholic Cathedral, Nottingham, before moving briefly to the most northerly parish in the Church of England at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Returning to Scotland so as to be nearer to family, he is now Director of Music at Dundee Parish Church. Robert's commitment to English 20th-century repertoire is reflected through his founding and leadership of the Percy Whitlock Trust between 1981 and 2016 and in his longstanding Chairmanship of the Gerald Finzi Charitable Trust, from which he retired in 2022. He enjoys transcribing music for organ (with a wide range recently embracing both Leroy Anderson and Maxwell Davies) and in liturgical composition, completing a three-year cycle of responsorial psalms for the Church Music Society.

The first thing to say about this handsome new collection (2019) is that the word 'ceremonial', is somewhat misleading . . . Francis Jackson's Prelude on East Acklam is lovely (despite the weird harmonies of the hymn itself) though hardly ceremonial . . . There are some new commissions: Gabriel lackson's dashing (in both senses of the word) Carillon for Louise and Nick, for instance, with its dizzying changes of time signature. And the distinguished Paisley organist George Mcphee's expressive Prelude on 'Bunessan' (Morning has broken). A useful and well-produced selection of pieces for a 'wide range of uses' indeed.