Fantasie Choral No,2 in F sharp minor

This second of the two Fantasie Chorals, in F sharp minor, appeared first and was dedicated to Edward Norman Greenwood, a friend and fellow student at the Royal College of Music. He was later assistant to George Thalben-Ball at the Temple Church, London. Greenwood asked Whitlock for his assistance in compiling the Christian Science Hymnal in 1931, Whitlock contributing four hymn tunes. While still in manuscript form, the 2nd Choral was performed by Whitlock to the Organ Music Society in 1932 at Holy Trinity Church. Sloane Square, London.

In 1936, on publication, the movement was broadcast live, twice within four days: firstly, by Dom Gregory Murray from Downside Abbey on 25 September and by the composer from Broadcasting House, London on 28 September. Whitlock sent Murray a letter of thanks which said that he was ‘electrified by the long gap I had left before the final Full Organ chord’. Murray passed this on to Edna Whitlock forty years later in 1976.

Whitlock described the second Choral as ‘a set of free variations on a sixteen-bar tune of folk-song character. The first four bars of the introduction and the first six notes of the theme proper form the basis of the whole work, which roughly consists of four variations. The work is continuous, the variations being joined by material formed from the introduction’. (Riley ‘PWO&C’ p.60)

The Oxford University Press removed the two Fantasie Chorals from their print lists in the late 1950s as sales were dwindling. Whitlock’s widow, Edna, obtained the copyrights of them in 1980. In 1985, the Percy Whitlock Trust were able to fund a second edition published by Basil Ramsey. A third edition was published in 1990 by Banks Music Publications in association with the Trust and includes several corrections and ‘Whitlock’s own timings as given in his recently discovered Repertoire Book’ (Malcolm Riley – Preface to the Third Edition).