by Dr. HAROLD RHODES
Relayed from the Cathedral, Coventry
ERNEST BRISTOW FARRAR , born at Blackheath in 1885, was barely thirty-three when he was killed in action in the Great War, but already he had won for himself a position of no small distinction among composers of the younger school. His published works had reached the considerable number of Opus 36, and these are for the most part music in the larger forms.
This fine Epilogue for organ on one of the most splendid of the old Psalm tunes is conceived in a truly devotional spirit.
'REUBKE, the composer of this impressive Introduction and Fugue,in the formal old style of German organ music, was the son of an organ builder. Although ho died, in 1858, at the early age of twenty-four, he left work of real ripeness and imaginative strength. His best-known work-a Sonata in one continuous movement-is based, like this, on the Psalms. He was a favourite pupil of the great Liszt.
BEST known in this country by a great volume of organ music which is at once melodious and thoroughly sound in workmanship, Rheinberger was one of the most remarkable of child prodigies.
Already at the age of five his gifts had attracted attention, and his first appointment as organist in a parish church was given to him at the age of seven. He, held many important appointments in the course of his busy life, teaching as well as playing, and he conducted more than one musical
Society. He was an amazingly i n dustrious composer, in almost every form, but except for one or two pieces of chamber music and solos for pianoforte, it is almost only by his organ music that he is now known. No one has now much doubt that the organ furnished him with t h opportunities which suited him best; he deserves to be honourably remembered always as having worthily carried on the organ traditions which had come ' down from Bach and his predecessors.