Gordon Cameron: Organist and Composer (1900-89)

The Priory CD Organs of the Lake District (PRCD1177) has enabled listeners to discover the music of an organist and composer who had an important association with Glasgow and Scotland. His most prestigious appointment was between1944 and 1952 when he was Director of Music at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in the Great Western Road, Glasgow.

I asked Frikki Walker, current Director of Music at St Mary’s for some information about Cameron’s tenure at the Cathedral. He kindly passed on my request to the Choir Historian, Pam Barrowman.

The wartime situation at the Cathedral between the years 1939-45 has been described as ‘in the doldrums.’ The Vestry, at a meeting held on 4 December 1944, was therefore delighted to engage the highly-regarded and well-qualified Gordon Cameron to the post of ‘choirmaster’. The appointment was taken up on 28 January 1945. Cameron first appears in the ‘officials’ section of the Cathedral Magazine during March 1945. He made huge improvements to the choir and general music making at the Cathedral. Pam Barrowman told me that the vestry ‘was pleased to order and pay for 16 royal purple boys' cassocks to replace the old ones, and St Mary's was invited to send representatives to sing at the Albert Hall Service, celebrating the 1951 Festival of Britain. They were able to send their best eight boys, and to pay their expenses.’

In June 1952, St Mary’s Vestry received Gordon Cameron’s resignation, on personal and health grounds. Three months later he left to take up the post of organist at Town Kirk (Holy Trinity), in St Andrews. Between 1946 and 1969, Cameron was lecturer of Harmony, Counterpoint and Composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).

There is no ‘formal’ biography of [John] Gordon Cameron (1900-89) except for a few fugitive references here and there. Despite his Scottish-sounding name, Cameron was born in Cardiff in 1900. He studied at Ellesmere College, Christ’s College Cambridge and Edinburgh University. Whilst at Cambridge, he was one of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s last pupils. Before his appointment to St Mary’s, he was organist at St John’s Episcopal Church in Dumfries (1937-44).  Gordon Cameron died in 1989.

Gordon Cameron published two sets of hymn-tune preludes. The first was Six Preludes on hymn-tunes for organ (Novello, 1942) including ‘Rockingham’, ‘Tune by Orlando Gibbons’ [Song 13], ‘Windsor’, ‘Martyrdom’, ‘Cape Town’ and ‘Bristol’, followed by Four Preludes on Hymn Tunes (Novello, 1948): ‘St Columba’, ‘Strathcaro’, ‘Franconia’ and ‘Quam dilecta.’

Ian Hare has performed Gordon Cameron’s Fantasia on St Denis (‘Immortal, Invisible’) which was published by Novello in 1945. The CD liner notes point out that this Fantasia was dedicated to Lieut. Colonel George Dixon (1870-1950) – possibly of the Border Regiment (1914) - who had considerable influence on the design of the organ at St Bees Priory and several other Cumberland instruments. 

The Fantasia is an accomplished work that explores the tune of ‘St Deniol’, with considerable subtlety. The tune, somewhat varied, is usually heard on a reed stop although it is often subsumed by the complex figuration of the accompaniment. This is a piece that would make an ideal recessional at a wedding or ‘big service.’ 

The Fantasia is played on the fine three-manual organ in St Peter’s (Roman Catholic) Cathedral in Lancaster. This instrument, commissioned in 1889, was originally by Henry Ainscough of Preston. After additional work by Ainscough in 1956 and some modernisation and a new console by Pendelbury of Cleveleys in 1976, it was rebuilt by Willis during 2008-9.

Other instruments used on this CD include St. Patrick’s Patterdale, Crosthwaite Church, Keswick and St. Oswald's Church, Grasmere as well as Lancaster Cathedral. Music includes works by Handel, J H Reginald Dixon, Dr F W Wadely, Adrian Self, Arthur Somervell, Ian Hare and the complete Six Sketches by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs.

With grateful thanks to Frikki Walker and Pam Barrowman at St Mary’s Cathedral and Stuart A. Harris-Logan, Archives Officer at the The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for their valuable assistance.  

With thanks to the Glasgow Society of Organists Journal where this essay was first published in 2017.