Chorale Prelude on "O Traurigkeit"

The Canadian Enclycolpedia say this about the "early" organ works of Healey Willan (1880-1968): With the music for organ one enters a different world. Here Willan was thoroughly at home and made a significant and lasting contribution. One work stands out: the monumental "Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue" of 1916. It represents the culmination of Willan's first period of organ composition, which started ca 1906 with a Fantasia on 'Ad coenam agni.' The Preludes and Fugues in C minor and B minor and the "Epilogue" are the other major works from this period. While not exploring the possibilities of the instrument as searchingly as his masterpiece, they are idiomatic and very typical of their time. They combine an innate Englishness (with a Stanfordian flavour) and a European chromaticism that can be found in Reger and Karg-Elert. (Willan knew and played a few pieces by the latter, but it is doubtful he had heard much Reger at the time he was writing these pieces.)

Willan's later works are much smaller, and more "conservative" in their approach. He uses "regular" harmonies in "non-regular" ways - at least to my way of thinking.

These three preludes were published by Concordia in 1951, and are "unique" because they were comissioned for use in the Lutheran church, as opposed to Willan's usual Anglican association. To save space, I'll give a brief explanation of each piece in the first "response" posts.