I mentioned some time ago that the organ of York Minster was being restored to more or less its 1931 specification. The project is due to be completed in 2020. This is an exciting development.
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Mendelssohn first visited England in 1829, was composing sacred choral works with organ in 1830-31, and published his 3 Preludes and Fugues for organ in 1837… It would be interesting to hear a little anthology of pieces somehow characteristic of each time of rebuilding.
Oddly, 1829 was also the year when the madman Jonathan Martin burnt down the choir of the cathedral destroying just about everything. Thus the choir stalls are from the 1830’s as was the Eliot & Hill organ. Mendelssohn went to Scotland but I don’t know if he stopped off at York when they needed to rest the horses. Anyway, it was on hearing Dr Francis Jackson play these preludes and fugues of Mendelssohn (especially no. 3 in A major) that I got keen on this composer.
Whew! I’d forgotten what little I knew about that! (I, who crawl around any choir stalls I’m allowed, to see the misericords!)
I don’t know those properly, but must look them up – I got keen thanks to a version of ‘If with all your hearts’ arranged for choirboys!
As we look to Lent, our Chaplaincy choir is practicing a setting of the Litany by Henry Loosemore, a Seventeenth-century composer new to me. When I began trying to look him up, just now, Wikipedia gave me a fascinating – and, finally, heartening – little family history of Loosemore organists and organ-builders, and of the vicissitudes of another cathedral and its organ – Exeter’s.