Prelude in D-flat

Arthur Murray Goodhart (christened 25 July 1866 – 1941) was a British composer and organist. He was born in Wimbledon, Surrey, England in 1866, and was educated at Eton College and then King's College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Pitt Club. He was a pupil of Sir Joseph Barnby, Dr. George M. Garrett, Dr Charles W. Pearce, C. Forsyth, and Frank Bridge. He Taught classics at Eton School, and was a housemaster there.

As a composer, he wrote orchestral, organ, and piano pieces, songs, carols, military band music.

As a performer he was said to have "flair and a light hand."

The "Prelude in D-flat" was published by George Withers & Sons and is dated 1908. It was composed "In memory of John Oliver Hobbs."

John Oliver Hobbs was the pen-name of Pearl Mary Teresa Richards (November 3, 1867 – August 13, 1906), an Anglo-American novelist and dramatist. Though her work fell out of print in the twentieth-century, her first book "Some Emotions and a Moral" was a sensation in its day, selling eighty-thousand copies in only a few weeks.

The "Prelude in D-flat" is a long, and oddly grandiose lament. It's conceived on a rather grand scale, and is yet another one of those "Goodheart oddities" that initially impressed me as "un-doable," not so much for the difficulty, although it's hard, but for the conception and compositional directions that make it very hard to grasp, and then execute.

When you listen, you may find it just another slow "grand arch piece," but it really does seem to be a lament, and not without some significant moments of beauty and poignancy.

As with all his compositions, Goodhart is specific about his registrations, but I don't know just what organ he had in mind. The one at King's College is a possibility, but some of the registrations called for are highly unusual for the standard English organ.

The score is attached below, as well a photo of Goodheart, of "John Oliver Hobbs," and several of the chapels of King's College and of Eton.