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Gwilym Beechey

List of Compositions, Arrangements and Editions

 Organ

A suite of vividly characterised pieces in effective and convincing arrangements for organ.

A useful collection of both the familiar and the less familiar.

Beautifully written and ideal as pre-service material

It is easy to spot a winner!  Here are three quietly dignified voluntaries based on famous Tallis tunes - the Third Mode Melody is that used by Vaughan Williams in his ‘Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis’ and Dr Beechey’s lovely piece will make an ideal voluntary for Lent/Passiontide.

The master does it again with this very interesting seasonal selection.  The first three items are quite straightforward, but the final two will require careful preparation with commensurate rewards

Gwilym has written a fair amount of useful Christmas music which Fagus is pleased to publish, and here he has turned his attention to French carol melodies.  The ‘Noël’ was of course a favourite invention of French Baroque organ composers and in many ways this set evokes the spirit of earlier times.

Gwilym Beechey’s earlier volumes of music based on hymn tunes (including plainsong and traditional melodies) have proved to be highly acceptable, and the music in these two issues expresses a profound faith and spirituality, which will greatly enhance music for these seasons.  In ‘The Cross of Christ’ the tunes are ‘Horsley’, ‘Pange Lingua’, ‘Petra’, ‘O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid’, ‘Jesu dulcis memoria’ (the Rosy Sequence) and ‘Agnus Dei’ (William Blow).  In ‘Easter Preludes’ the melodies are ‘Salva, Festa Dies’, Lux Eoi’, ‘St John Damascene’, ‘Würtemburg’, and ‘Gelobet sei Gott’.

The Four Pieces op 53 will make highly suitable voluntaries or teaching material.  They are in a sweetly tonal idiom and are not too difficult. The pieces on very familiar Gibbons hymn tunes follow the pattern established by the composer’s earlier volume of music based similar material by Thomas Tallis which has proved to be very popular.

 In the late 1870s Grieg wrote 12 Songs op 33, to poems by Aasmund O Vinje (1818 - 1870).  Two of these songs, the third and second respectively, were soon arranged for string orchestra as Two Elegiac Melodies op 34 (1881).  Spring is the better known of these two pieces and has often been regarded as one of the composer’s finest and most memorable melodic inspirations.  Like Arthur Will’s arrangement (see below) this piece is issued in honour on the centenary of Grieg’s death in 1907.

This lovely, lovely anthem is reissued from the Oecumuse list in tribute to the late composer. If you don’t like this you are in the wrong job !

Choir

Reliable modern editions of classic church music.

Last updated: 05 January 2020