FAULKES – Evensong – FOUR CELLOS

Other Identification:
EVENSONG – No.2 of 2 Short sketches (composed c.1904) William FAULKES
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William Faulkes (1863-1933) was a wonderful English organist and composer who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Liverpool, England, and spent most of his career working in his native city, in particular highlighting his 46-year tenure (starting in 1886) as organist and music director at the church of St Margaret’s, Anfield, and activity as an orchestral conductor. Such was his reputation that before and after the Great War Faulkes was invited several times to Germany to record for the Welte Company.
William Faulkes was a near contemporary of Elgar, and was undoubtedly one of the leading figures in a generation of organist-composers whose style of writing so sadly went out of fashion after World War I. His music was melodious, spirited, uplifting – a manifest example of the then national confidence at the beginning of the 20th century. His claim to justified renewed glory in the 21st century is obvious; Faulkes was comfortably England’s most prolific organ composer of ALL time. His over five hundred published organ works will probably never be surpassed!
However, he wrote in many other genres including choral music, songs, orchestral works (highlighting a violin concerto, and a piano concerto) and solid chamber music (for example, a string quintet, and a string octet) and recital pieces. Cellists might like to learn that he wrote two cello sonatas and about a dozen other smaller individual pieces for cello and piano. The great shame is that several hundred of these works (specifically the non-organ ones) remained in manuscript.
He was acclaimed as an arranger too; still in print are some of his arrangements of Chopin, Elgar, Henselt, Kjerulf, Kullak, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Rubinstein.
His style was unfailingly harmonically solid, and etched with exquisite craftmanship. The present ‘Evensong’ is a clear example of this, produced when the composer had attained the heights of his profession.