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My husband's continuing professional activities have prompted the publication of this CD to commemorate his 80th birthday on October 2, 1997. The fact that the 70th birthday cassette found favour among so many has also been an encouragement.
The hymn East Acklam (sung by three generations), produced and recorded within the family, has given particular pleasure and we trust will do so for others: it was recorded in our village church accompanied on the American organ.
We are greatly indebted to Martin Monkman for his enthusiastic management of the project involving much research and recording.
Priscilla Jackson

Programme notes by Francis Jackson
Ten years after publishing a miscellaneous compilation cassette for my seventieth birthday, and technology having moved on a stage, a CD is produced for my four-score years. Again, it is a mixture of a similar sort relating to various aspects and periods of my life.
The earliest recordings are reissues of the 78 r.p.m. records contributed by the choir of York Minster to the anthology of English Church music for the British Council around 1950. What are these that glow from afar [2] the anthem composed by Alan Gray of Cambridge (who was born at York) is a vivid portrayal of Christina Rosetti's poem. Similarly Ernest Bullock's Give us the wings of faith [6] has a wide range of feeling in a short space, moments of drama and of tenderness. Bullock was Edward Bairstow's pupil in the early nineteen - hundreds, later becoming organist of Westminster Abbey.
One of Bairstow's best known and most inspired pieces, Let all mortal flesh keep silence [5] of 1906 was also included in the same series. A later recording, however, is presented here, its date 15 February 1974.
His Psalm 114 When Israel came out of Egypt (1929) [4] is a setting of high originality and contrast. His Lamentation of 1942 [3] is an imaginative and deeply felt work for the passiontide season. The refrain 'Jerusalem, return unto the Lord thy God' is heard three times, twice loudly and the third time in hushed tones. Bairstow has so captured the mood of the words that it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine their being set in any other way. Brave would be the composer who made the attempt.
This and Psalm 114 were recorded in the Choir of York Minster on Easter Day, 10th April 1966.
The actor, John-Stuart Anderson, commissioned music for his Daniel in Babylon [7] as part of the festivities attending the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962. This monodrama is a solo performance by Anderson, and the recording was made in Leeds Town Hall on 25 October 1988. Only the beginning and ending of the Belshazzar's Feast scene are presented here.
The two songs St. Mary's Bells (Masefield) [8] and Carillon [9] date from the late 1940s and were recorded on 20th February 1981 in the drawing room at 1, Minster Court (the Minster organist's residence) using the Bechstein grand piano which belonged to Bairstow. David Swale, author of Carillon was a chorister at the Minster, a pupil of Bairstow, and became organist of Adelaide Cathedral and Dean of the Music Faculty in the University.
Two organ pieces recall my earliest years as an emergent organist. The Eight Short Preludes and Fugues are the student's usual introduction to Bach's organ works (though their authenticity has been questioned): the Folk Tune [10] was my introduction to the music of Percy Whitlock. It was published in 1930, a copy of Five Short Pieces of which it is the second, coming into my possession on my seventeenth birthday four years later. After sixty years this simple piece, like its four companions, retains its place in one's affections, following the postwar period during which Whitlock's popularity waned somewhat. With the Bach short prelude and fugue, it is played on the two manual Harrison organ of fifteen stops on which I first played them during my seven years as organist of the Malton parish from 1933. They were recorded on 22 July 1997 in St. Michael's Church where the organ was placed immediately after the Second-World War.
From those same years dates my affection for the piano music of Billy Mayerl, as also for the dance bands of the time, Jack Payne, Henry Hall, Jack Jackson (no relation!) and others. Marigold [11] was recorded in the music room at East Acklam on the Welmar baby grand piano bought by my parents in 1929. Music of this lighter kind was at that time regarded by serious musicians as beyond the pale, so my association with it had to be kept well concealed, otherwise one would be considered to be going to the bad and to be unfit for a professional life in so-called 'classical' music. The situation has changed somewhat since then!
Also in the music room the little pipe organ of 1785/1905 with its ten stops and handsome mahogany case was pressed into service - on the same day as Marigold, 27 August 1997 - to play the unpublished piece of juvenilia by Bairstow, the Andante for Organ in F. [13] It is not a great piece and is included here to make really complete the CD entitled "Bairstow, the Complete Organ Works" [Amphion CD-PHI CD 143] which I recorded at York in 1990. It is a typically Victorian organ piece and in the same vein as many which found their way into print. The date of its composition is not known, but it is likely that Bairstow was little, if anything, older than sixteen or so.
The pieces played on the organ of York Minster were recorded on the three intensive evenings in the early nineteen-eighties which eventually produced pieces for my seventieth birthday cassette. The Saint Anne prelude [1] is here complementary to the fugue in E flat which appears on the earlier compilation.
The two French pieces, by Vierne and Franck [14 & 15] have an enduring quality which a lifetime's use has not staled. The presence of the first Franck Choral complements that of the third one on the same cassette.
To Brendan Hearne who made these recordings as well as that of the two songs sung by Gordon Pullin, my warmest thanks are due for his generosity and willingness to put them at my disposal; likewise to John Roden and David Rogers for their contributions.
Special gratitude is also expressed to Martin Monkman for a great deal of trouble spent on the many details attendant on a project of this nature, as well as for his recording of tracks 10-13. Also thanks to William, my son, for the recording in the church of East Acklam. [16] The idea of the hymn tune, which takes its name from the village, being sung in the church by twelve members of the composer's family, accompanied by him on the harmonium, recorded and photographed by his son was a chance too good to miss. Done informally, without rehearsal, and inevitably less than perfect technically, such an event will have, it is hoped, interest, not least to Fred Pratt Green who wrote the words of the hymn For the fruits of his creation to fit the tune. The second verse is sung by all the grandchildren, three of whom (of one family) are members of the Minster choirs at York.
Francis Jackson, September 1997