Canon in F-sharp Minor & Major (A Study on a Cipher, No. 2)

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.

"Study in Canon upon a Cipher - No. 2" was published by Novello in 1911. If you found the previous Goodhart pieces to be "intellectually stimulating," THIS one, will blow your mind!

You MUST watch the score while listening, or you'll miss what's going on, and doubt it when I say this is a VERY difficult little piece. :-)

It is in fact based upon a number of ciphers, and the pitches indicated MUST be used, or the music will be incorrect. The odd registrations, such as "Twelfth 2 2/3' alone" are essential to the outcome.

I've followed his registrations "exactly," while still enhancing and refining where I could.

Parts "interchange" between hands constantly, with a good deal of thumbing needed.

When you first attempt to go through this, you feel like you're losing your mind! It's all over the place and makes NO sense! However, when you get it done, it's a rather suave and interesting "exercise" in "musical academics!"

Goodhart wrote quite a bit of solo organ music, but it seems that all of it has virtually just disappeared. Another "organ composer" just vanished away into distant history.

Thanks to the kindness of Dr. John Henderson, I'll be sharing some of these pieces in the coming days.

The score is attached below, as well as a photo of Arthur Goodhart (perhaps the ONLY surviving photo of him), and one of the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. In this one the view is famous, but the picture is a little older than we are used to seeing.