Fantasie Choral No.1 in D flat major

Whitlock wrote two Fantasie Chorals which were published in 1936 by the Oxford University Press. They were written during the summer of 1931 when he had been newly appointed at St. Stephen’s Church Bournemouth. They represent a significant part of the renaissance of British organ composition which had its beginnings in the works of Stanford, Parry, Bairstow and Elgar.
The second of the two Chorals, in F sharp minor, appeared first and was dedicated to Edward Norman Greenwood, a fellow student at the Royal College of Music. While still in manuscript form, this was performed by Whitlock to the Organ Music Society in 1932 at Holy Trinity Church. Sloane Square, London.
The first Choral in D flat major was dedicated to Philip Dore who was organ scholar at Queen’s College Cambridge and City Organist of Portsmouth and Borough Organist of Bournemouth. He would occasionally ask Whitlock to deputise for him at the Bournemouth Pavilion where Whitlock would eventually take over his post. Dore played the first Choral in a broadcast to mark the dedication of a new Compton organ in the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland.
The Oxford University Press removed the two Chorals from their print lists in the late 1950s as sales were dwindling. Whitlock’s widow, Edna, obtained the copyrights of them in 1980 and in 1985, the Percy Whitlock Trust were able to fund a second edition, published by Basil Ramsey. A third edition by Banks Music Publications in association with the Trust includes several corrections and metronome markings.
John Scott made a benchmark recording of the first Choral on the organ of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2004 and Robert Gower recorded both Chorals at St. Stephen’s Church Bournemouth (Wealden WS 196, LP and Cassette).