GREAT ORGANIST DIES

Southland Times, Issue 19254, 27 May 1924, Page 11

GREAT ORGANIST DIES

PLAYED AT TWO CORONATIONS. TOLLED BELL AT WELLINGTON’S FUNERAL. Fuller particulars of the death of Sir Frederick Bridge (who was for 43 years the organist of Westminster Abbey) come to hand with the English mail. The end came suddenly. Sir Frederick was at work, apparently in good health. He was taken ill and was operated on for appendicitis. Complications ensued, and he passed quietly away the following morning. He was talking about music only half an hour before he died. Sir Frederick was born at Oldbury, near Birmingham, 80 years ago. He was educated at the Cathedral School, Rochester, where his father was a vicar-choral, and began his musical career as a small boy by tolling the bell at Rochester for the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. His career as a great organist extended over half a century, for he was organist at Manchester Cathedral for six years before going to the same post at Westminster Abbey in 1875. He retired in 1918. “WESTMINSTER” BRIDGE. He presided at the Abbey organ at the State services in connection with the two Jubilees of Queen Victoria, the Coronations of King Edward VII. and King George V., and many other great functions. He said recently that he had played the “Dead March” over nearly every great man who had died in England during the last 50 years. Sir Frederick Bridge (writes the Daily Chronicle musical critic) was one of the most familiar figures in our musical world, his sound musicianship and genial personality making him very popular with his fellow-musicians. Beginning life as a choir-boy, the son of humble parents, he ended it with a knighthood, a university professorship (London), as Emeritus organist of Westminster Abbey (after being organist there for 43 years), and with many other honours. To distinguish him from his brother (Dr J. C. Bridge, of Chester Cathedral) he was nick-named “Westminster” Bridge soon after his appointment to the Abbey. After retiring from the Abbey and the R.C.S., Sir Frederick continued a busy musical life, and only recently, in his 80th year, he told his friends that he was a “budding young operatic composer,” referring to the fact that he was engaged upon a resetting of a Dickens libretto. This is to be performed - during the coming season at Trinity College of Music. CAUSTIC WIT. He had a rather caustic wit, which figures in many anecdotes about him. So irritated did he become by rings at his doorbell before King Edward’s Coronation, that he posted up the notice: "Sir Frederick Bridge has no tickets, no time, and no temper.” While conducting a rehearsal by the Royal. Choral Society of “The Dream of Gerontius,” the orchestra joined vocally in the Demon Chorus, a practice Sir Frederick Bridge disliked intensely. When they burst out with “Ha, Haa,” in a nasal tone, he exclaimed, “Don’t do that. If you must join in, do it in the way most natural to you—“He-haw.’ ”