Healey Willan (1880-1968) Quem Pastores from Six Chorale Preludes, Set 1.

Healey Willan was born on 12 October 1880 in Balham, South London. He is usually claimed as an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. After choir school in Eastbourne and organ posts at Wanstead and Holland Park, in 1913 he emigrated to Canada where he spent the remainder of his life. He was an organist at St. Paul's, Bloor Street in Toronto and taught there at the University and Conservatory. His catalogue is vast with more than eight hundred pieces. His reputation rests on his liturgical and organ music. Willan’s best known work is the remarkable Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue for organ. This has been described as “one of the great organ works of our time.”

One commentator stated the Willan’s “music represents a unique and beautiful combination of styles: both an homage to the sacred music of five centuries ago and a reflection of the innovations of the Romantic/post-Romantic period in which he lived.” (''Tribute to Willan'' Archived 7 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine. St. Martins Chamber Choir website, Retrieved 11 October 2021.)

There were operas, symphonies, a piano concerto, chamber music and piano pieces.

Healy Willan died in Toronto on 16 February 1968.

F.R.C. Clarke in his masterly Healey Willan: Life and Music, University of Toronto Press, 1983) explains that beginning in 1950, Willam wrote more than one hundred chorale preludes and hymn tune preludes as well as several recital pieces.

The Six Chorale Preludes for organ, Set 1, was published by Concordia in 1950. A second set was issued in the following year. They cover a considerable range of mood with their melodies taken from a diverse source of originals: Lutheran Chorales, plainchant, George Wither’s Hymns, and the Victorian musician John Goss. The prelude on Quem Pastores is the first number.

The tune “Quem Pastores,” along with the original Latin text dates from the 14^th century, and was printed in the Hohenfurth Ms.,1410). It was first published in Valentin Triller’s Ein christlich Singebuch für Laien und Gelehrten, (A Christian singing book for lay people and scholars) in Breslau, 1555. A German text was provided beginning “Preis sei Gott im hochsten Throne.“ (Praise God in his Highest Throne).

Shepherds left their flocks a-straying,

God's command with joy obeying,

When they heard the angel saying:

"Christ is born in Bethlehem."

Wise Men came from far, and saw him

Knelt in homage to adore him;

Precious gifts they laid before him:

Gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Let us now in every nation

Sing his praise with exultation.

All the world shall find salvation

In the birth of Mary's Son.

Structurally, Willan’s chorale prelude, Quem Pastores follows the basic plan where “individual phrases of the hymn-tunes are presented unornamented and separated by interludes.” The hymn tune appears in the tenor part, played by the left hand. The accompanying counterpoint appears to develop from phrases of the tune. The prelude begins and ends in F major, with few accidentals. It is written in 3/4 time and is typically quiet in character. The tempo is Moderato quasi pastorale.

There is no doubt that this chorale prelude is most effective during a church service as opposed to a concert organ recital.

Peter Hardwick (British Organ Music of the Twentieth Century, Scarecrow Press, 2003, p.116) writes that Quem Pastores is characterised by “gentle rising and falling contrapuntal lines [that] may remind one of the flowing Tudor choral style, a new feature in [his] post-1949 organ works…It seems that he absorbed the Tudor vocal idiom through osmosis into his instrumental style as a result of writing for voices so much.”

Huw Williams can be heard on YouTube playing Willan’s Quem Pastores on the organ of St Pauls Cathedral, London.