By 1911, Healey Willan was well-established in London. He was the Organist & Choirmaster at St John the Baptist, Kensington, and he had music proofreading work for Novello\u2019s. He often deputized at All Saints\u2019 Margaret St. for Evensong. He had a small number of private students and he conducted a number of choral societies as well. He was busy playing organ recitals, and had passed the demanding FRCO exam (Fellow of the Royal College of Organists) at the tender age of 18, some 13 years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan was immersed in London\u2019s rich cultural life and was acquainted with the panoply of characters associated with it. He had studied the organ with William Stevenson Hoyte, the organist of All Saints\u2019; at the time, one of Hoyte\u2019s other pupils was a young Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski and Willan became great friends. Willan attended the Thursday evening parties at Westminster Cathedral organist Richard Runciman Terry\u2019s home, where discussion surrounded the newly-discovered polyphonic choral works of the Renaissance, and particularly the Tudor music which Terry unearthed. Willan had been made an associate of the Philharmonic Society, which meant he was allowed to attend any or all of the London Philharmonic Orchestra\u2019s rehearsals. He was a great fan of Philharmonic conductor Arthur Nikisch, who succeeded Elgar as Director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan had exquisite and exacting taste, and was always \u201cdressed to kill\u201d in the manner of an Edwardian gentleman. In fact, his bearing and manner of dress changed little throughout his long life. It was not unusual in the 1950s and \u201860s to find him sporting a tweed suit, bow-tie and lemon-yellow spats on his immaculately-polished shoes. Willan was no stranger to fine food and drink either, and London was a place where there was no dearth of establishments where such things could be had. The circles in which Willan traveled were heady ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan\u2019s first setting of \u201cAve verum corpus\u201d was published in 1909 and had made its way as far as Toronto, Canada. His name and reputation were known there, and in the fall of 1912, an invitation was extended to Willan to head the Theory Department at the Toronto Conservatory. Willan\u2019s family was growing. He had to support his wife and children, and London, then as now, was an expensive place. His financial needs were rapidly outpacing his financial resources. The salary for the Conservatory position was a generous one, and would alleviate his financial worries. It would seem that it was an offer which he could not refuse!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after Willan\u2019s arrival in Canada, he accepted the position of Organist & Choirmaster at St Paul\u2019s Bloor Street in Toronto, Canada\u2019s largest and most important Anglican parish. Henry John Cody, one of the great pulpit orators of the early 20th century was the rector. St Paul\u2019s had recently completed a new gothic building with cathedral proportions and a seating capacity of 2500 to accommodate the crowds that were drawn to hear Canon Cody preach. A new organ, to rival the organ of Ely Cathedral, both in size and quality, was in the works. The Canadian firm of Casavant was chosen for the job, but consultantLt-Col George Dixon had invited several English organ builders to make particular contributions to the work, in what was at times, an uncomfortable collaboration, but it resulted in an instrument which exceeded expectations. It was this Cathedral-worthy organ which Willan would preside over for the next eight years. It inspired a flurry of practice and recitals, as well as his greatest organ work, the monumental \u201cIntroduction, Passacaglia and Fugue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan now had two very fine positions in Toronto with an excellent income. He was asked to become an examiner at the University of Toronto, beginning his long-time association with that institution. He continued to compose works in various genres, something he had done regularly since he was a teenager. By the end of his life, he had a catalogue of over 800 works, including two symphonies and two operas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan\u2019s family joined him in Toronto just as the First World War broke out. Despite his good fortune in securing steady and rewarding work, the transition from life in London to life in Toronto was not altogether an easy one. In comparison to Edwardian London, Healey and Nell Willan found Calvinistic Toronto a backward and provincial place. Willan himself relates: \u201cYonge Street then was about as interesting as an English village street. It seemed like the last place in the world for the development of music\u2026. Sir Robert Falconer told me when I arrived: \u2018You\u2019ll find a great difference here: it\u2019s a young country; the errand boy has not yet learned to whistle.\u2019\u201d Nevertheless, Willan had a very busy schedule of teaching and lecturing, composing, recital playing. He even became musical director at the Hart House Theater for the University Players Club. He also became a life-long member of Toronto\u2019s Arts & Letters Club, where he was able to hold forth with his colleagues, and where his reputation as raconteur became legendary. To this day, his portrait hangs in the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the large organ and Cathedralesque surroundings, Willan\u2019s work at St Paul\u2019s was not entirely satisfying; St Paul\u2019s was of a low church persuasion but Willan had grown up in Anglo-Catholic surroundings. Father Griffin Hiscocks, an Englishman who had been a member of the London Gregorian Association, had recently been named rector of St Mary Magdelene\u2019s on Ulster St. It was Hiscocks\u2019 mission to advance Anglo-Catholic teaching and practice at this very modest neighborhood parish church. Willan had become re-acquainted with Hiscocks after his arrival, and to Hiscocks\u2019 delight and surprise, Healey WIllan presented himself as a candidate when the job of Organist & Choirmaster opened in 1921. It is very likely that the idea had crossed Hiscocks\u2019 mind, but St Mary\u2019s was a very poor neighborhood parish, and Willan held the most prestigious and well-paid church job in all of Canada. It is the famous story of a man leaving his very well-paying post to accept a position for almost no pay at all; yet at this new position such a man could take on a project for which he had a real passion. Willan and Hiscocks planned and created the advanced ethos of the place themselves, and not without some opposition. It was the music program at St Mary\u2019s which Willan considered his most important work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willan went about building two choirs for the church: a small men\u2019s choir to sing plainsong from the chancel stalls, and a mixed choir to sing polyphonic music from the rear gallery. There was simply no money for music and none of the singers were paid. In fact, there was not even any provision for the purchase of sheet music, so Willan \u201ctaxed\u201d his choirs for the privilege of membership. He himself said \u201cThey paid up like good\u2019uns and we established a choir fund.\u201d Willan set about writing his own motets and made-to-order masses in English for the gallery choir, as well as creating his own versions of plainsong chants in English for his chant or so-called \u201cRitual Choir.\u201d The choral music was simple at first, but began to attract immediate attention for its purity of tone and chaste affect in the reverberant acoustic of St Mary\u2019s. Willan\u2019s choirs consistently created a sound quite unlike the meatloaf and mashed-potatoes timbre generated by the typical Protestant church choir of the day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The chancel was renovated by sealing up the apse windows, and adding a tall dossal on the east wall above the High Altar. This arrangement, complemented by a hanging rood cross and the \u201cbig six\u201d altar candlesticks created a new vertical visual emphasis. Lastly, electric action was applied to the modest chancel organ, and a remote console moved to the rear gallery so that Willan could direct his mixed choir as well as play the organ from there. The mass was celebrated with the full Western Rite ceremony, with three sacred ministers and incense. Three hymns from the English Hymnal, plainsong settings of the Asperges, Gloria and Creed as well as the various responses were all sung by the congregation. The mixed choir sang polyphonic settings of the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei as well as motets. The Ritual Choir supplied the Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion chants. Choral repertoire was unaccompanied. Most often, Willan lightly accompanied the plainsong on the organ, in very tasteful and correct style. In contrast, improvised organ interludes and hymn-playing were in Willan\u2019s unique and full-bore Edwardian style: rolling chords, pedal-points and Brahmsian harmonies made the modest organ sound much grander than it actually was. Willan would hold this church position until his death in 1968. His singers were his extended family; all sorts and conditions of friends, students and musicians passed through Willan\u2019s choirs over his nearly 50 years at St Mary Magdalene\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Towards the end of his long and productive life, Willan was increasingly recognized for his influence and achievement: with commemorative concerts, radio and television broadcasts, and a second honorary doctorate to name but a few of the honors bestowed. But perhaps the most meaningful one to Willan himself was the invitation to compose an homage anthem for the 1953 coronation, \u201cO Lord our Governour.\u201d The very words selected by Healey Willan for the coronation are apt in describing his own life\u2019s works: \u201cBehold O God our defender, and look upon the face of thine anointed\u2026 O hold thou up his goings in thy paths, that his footsteps slip not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By 1911, Healey Willan was well-established in London. He was the Organist & Choirmaster at St John the Baptist, Kensington, and he had music proofreading work for Novello\u2019s. He often deputized at All Saints\u2019 Margaret St. for Evensong. He had a small number of private students and he conducted a number of choral societies as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":12498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"acf":{"subscribers_only":true},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anglicanway.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}