English Organ Sonatas 8

The organ sonatas of Walter Battison Haynes and Hugh Blair demonstrate a notable peak in the development of the English organ sonata as a work that is musically cohesive. As discussed in “The Genesis and Development of an English Organ Sonata” (2017), the portfolio approach towards compositions under one title, a sonata, that included sometimes significantly contrasting movements of varying technical difficulty was common during the second half of the nineteenth century not least as a published example of the compositional skill of composers.

Whereas these two sonatas join the tradition of works that could be convincingly played on both medium and large instruments and allow for creativity in registration they are also cohesive pieces that could serve in a concert programme. These works join the legacy of English organ sonatas that had an important pedagogical role jointly inherited from Mendelssohn’s very practical and popular approach to the instrument and the continued European legacy of the lesson-sonata tradition whereby in learning a piece you also learned the instrument and vice versa. They are both idiomatically written and musically rewarding pieces that are imbued with the undeniably English harmonic language of the era that was to remain popular for several decades to come.