Four Extemporizations iii.Fidelis

Fidelis (faithful)
Dedicated to C.F.W.K. (Charles Frederick William Keel).
Charles Keel (b.1916) was Whitlock’s faithful head chorister at St. Stephen’s Bournemouth. Charles would become a close family friend but was posted abroad during the war.

There exists a photo of Charles with Edna Whitlock on the roof of 88B Wimborne Road, Bournemouth in 1933. I think this property has been renumbered to 288 and now fronts an Indian takeaway! It is almost opposite St. Luke’s Church.

Keel married Joan Murial Witter in 1946, in Bournemouth. He died in Maidenhead as late as 2011, at the age of 94.

This wistful and elegiac piece is one of Whitlock’s most heartfelt compositions, standing alongside his Canzona, the second movement from the Organ Sonata in C minor, Dolcezza from Reflections or his Elegy from the Symphony in G major. In his CD notes for a recording from Bath Abbey (1991) Peter King described it as ‘the Anglican preamble par excellence’. It has one of his most tender final cadences and his friendship with Keel seems to have been quite inspirational.