Harris, William H. (1973): Prelude for organ in G major — Samuel Sleath

Composer: Sir William Henry Harris (28 March 1883 — 6 September 1973)
Performer: Samuel Thomas Sleath (born 9 January 2005)
Organ: Noel Mander (1985), Saints Peter and Paul, Bromley, London (virtual sampleset for Hauptwerk)

This short, easy, and peaceful 'Prelude' in G major is by Anglican church music composer William Harris and is available in 'A Second Easy Album for Organ' from Oxford University Press. It, one of the composer's last works, has achieved fame from it being played at the funeral of Princess Diana.
[After the uploading of this video, the piece has achieved even further renown by being played at the September 2022 funeral of the Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II.]
My friend, Samuel Sleath plays this piece on his sampleset of an organ by Noel Mander located at the Saints Peter and Paul church in Bromley, England.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER
William Henry Harris, a native of Fulham, started off his musical career at Holy Trinity in Tulse Hill.
At the age of 14, he took up a "flexible" position as assistant organist at St David's Cathedral in Wales under Herbert Morris, followed at 16 by a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. His teachers there were Sir Walter Parratt, Charles Wood, and Henry Walford Davies.
Harris was organist at St Augustine's Church, Edgbaston from 1911 to 1919 and concurrently assistant organist at Lichfield Cathedral. During this time he also taught at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in collaboration with Granville Bantock. A move to Oxford in 1919 saw him take up organist positions successively at New College and in 1929 Christ Church, Oxford. While at Oxford, he conducted the Oxford Bach Choir (1925-1933) and was instrumental in founding and conducting the Opera Club, which put on the pioneering production of Monteverdi's Orfeo staged by Jack Westrup in 1925. In 1933 he was appointed organist at St George's Chapel, Windsor in succession to Charles Hylton Stewart. There, he was at his most productive: composing for the Three Choirs Festival, conducting at both the 1937 and 1953 coronations, and producing two orchestral pieces premiered at The Proms: the overture Once Upon a Time (1940) and the Heroic Prelude (1942).
Bruce Nightingale, who became senior chorister at Windsor during the wartime years, describes "Doc H" as having "a fat, usually jolly face with a few wisps of hair across an otherwise bald head." Although choir practice was normally conducted in a "benign atmosphere," Nightingale recounts that Harris would occasionally complain of a "batey practise" and, on the rare occasions he considered a performance mediocre, would scold the choirboys in a loud stage whisper from the organ loft. Harris was involved in the musical education of the teenage Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, who spent the wartime period at Windsor Castle. Every Monday he would direct madrigal practice in the Red Drawing Room at Windsor, where the two Princesses sang alongside four of the senior choristers with the lower voices augmented by Etonians, Grenadier Guards and members of the Windsor and Eton Choral Society. Jars of Argentinian honey, sent to Windsor by overseas subjects, were donated by the Princesses to the Choir School as a treat for the choristers.
Between 1923 to 1953 Harris served as a professor of organ and harmony and the Royal College of Music. He was also president of the Royal College of Organists (1946–8), and director of musical studies at the Royal School of Church Music (1956–61). He was appointed KCVO in 1954. Harris married Kathleen Doris Carter in 1913 and they had two daughters. After retirement from St George's Windsor in 1961 the couple went to live in Petersfield, Hampshire. Kathleen had suffered from deafness since 1925, but in the early 1960s her hearing was partially restored. She died in 1968. Harris died at the age of 90 five years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henr...

ABOUT THE PERFORMER
Samuel "Sam" Sleath, an amateur organist and up-and-coming sampleset producer, was born in London.
Having been self-taught as an amateur composer and pianist, he started the organ at the age of 14 and now studies the instrument under Frank Roddy.
For his A-levels, Sleath studies Music and Music Tech and serves as Organ Scholar under William McVicker and chorister at Saints Peter and Paul Church in Bromley.
In the future, he hopes to study music at university. Most recently, he played in a masterclass with Colin Walsh. As a sampleset producer, he sampled the organs of the churches in Downe, Cudham, and Bromley.
   / @samuelsleath  

One can find more information about the sampleset and download it for free here.
https://www.samsleath.com/noel-mander-cham...