The Foremost Victorian Organ Builder
The Exhibition organ led to the contract for St George's Hall, Liverpool, where the virtuosic playing of W T Best drew large crowds, and also spread the fame of Willis as a builder still further. In a long career stretching to the end of the Nineteenth Century, Willis subsequently built the organs at the Alexandra Palace, the Albert Hall, and St Paul's Cathedral. Of the approximately 1,000 organs he built or re-built, were the cathedral instruments at Truro, Salisbury, Carlisle, Exeter, Canterbury, Lincoln, Durham, Glasgow, Wells, Gloucester, and Hereford. In addition there were a large number of concert and parish church organs of note, including the organ at Windsor Castle. The last major instrument which he personally supervised was at St Bees Priory in 1899, which he voiced himself, although approaching his 80th year.
Read more about this topic: Henry Willis
Famous quotes containing the words foremost, victorian, organ and/or builder:
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humoured, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.”
—C.E.M. (Cyril Edwin Mitchinson)
“Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn’t have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)