English Organ Sonatas 2

The two organ sonatas of Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley (1825-1889) have not been readily available in print since their initial publication in the late nineteenth century. Aside from the importance of Ouseley in the music world of nineteenth-century Britain, most especially in his work towards the furtherance of church music, the sonatas represent a critical moment in the transition of the English organ sonata tradition that began between 1858 and 1862 with the sonatas written by the concert organists W. T. Best and William Spark.

As discussed in The Genesis and Development of an English Organ Sonata (2017), the English sonatas had an important pedagogical role jointly inherited from Mendelssohn’s very practical and popular approach to the instrument but also the continuing European legacy of the lesson-sonata tradition whereby in learning a piece you also learned the instrument and vice versa.