It was through Tony that I was introduced first to the music of Peter Warlock, Ivor Gurney, Gerald Finzi, W Denis Browne, Ralph Vaughan Williams and countless others, always illustrated
with personal recollections and anecdotes, and through whom I developed a deep love for art song and English songs in particular.
Tony's compositions were mostly song settings of English poets - Herrick, Housman, Wilfred Owen, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Tennyson, Ursula Vaughan Williams and others - with occasional forays into biblical texts (including, notably, passages from the Song of Solomon), but he
also wrote with great understanding for the organ (he was a trained organ builder and also a formidable organist, having in his student days spent much time accompanying silent films and radio plays on the Compton organs at the BBC), and these organ works go across the board from the simplest of chorale
preludes (often with repeated ostinato motifs in one hand) to larger scale Toccatas and Fugues, including one written for a Dutch organist whose fugue (the subject of which was set as a composition exercise by Finzi) sings ardently from beginning to end. Many of his songs were also set for string groups, and there
are several pieces for small chamber string quartets and groups, sometimes with piano.
His music can be described as challenging, and often painful, to listen to; at its best, it touches nerves and emotions which few other composers of his or any other era were able to. The Dylan Thomas song cycle is a splendid example of his deep understanding for poems which have seldom been done justice musically. It is a tragedy that his two forays into publishing were
beset with such financial difficulty that he preferred to keep all his music locked away in a cupboard; with his son Richard, I shall be spending the next couple of years cataloguing his output and organising performances, recordings and publications.
Two organ pieces are featured on the CD "The Organ of Romsey Abbey", available on the Recordings page.