Three Early English Organ Pieces by Gibbons, Redford and Croft

Voluntary in A minor, Orlando Gibbons. Orlando Gibbons (bapt. 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical family dynasty, by the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his sudden death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons's oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but he made considerable contributions to many genres of his time. He is often seen as a transitional figure from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods.

Hymnus 'Eterne reum conditor' ( Eternal maker of all) John Redford. John Redford (c. 1500 - died October or November 1547) was a major English composer, organist, and dramatist of the Tudor period. From about 1525 he was organist at St Paul's Cathedral (succeeding Thomas Hickman). He was choirmaster there from 1531 until his death in 1547. Many of his works are represented in the Mulliner Book. Redford is notable as one of the earliest composers, rather than improvisers, of organ music, having notated a significant quantity of keyboard music, all of it liturgical in function, based on plainchant melodies; a few vocal works by him also survive.

Voluntary in D minor . William Croft . William Croft (baptised 30 December 1678 – 14 August 1727) was an English composer and organist.
Croft was born at the Manor House, Nether Ettington, Warwickshire. He was educated at the Chapel Royal under the instruction of John Blow, and remained there until 1698. Two years after this departure, he became organist of St. Anne's Church, Soho and he became an organist and 'Gentleman extraordinary' at the Chapel Royal. He shared that post with his friend Jeremiah Clarke.

In 1700, Croft, in collaboration with "an Italian Master", probably Gottfried Finger, published six sonatas for violin, flute, harpsichord and viol, in the newly fashionable Italian style.

In 1707, he took over the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal post, which had been left vacant by the suicide of Jeremiah Clarke. The following year, Croft succeeded Blow (who had lately died) as organist of Westminster Abbey. He composed works for the funeral of Queen Anne (1714) and for the coronation of King George I (1715).

In 1724, Croft published Musica Sacra, a collection of church music, the first such collection to be printed in the form of a score. It contains a Burial Service, which may have been written for Queen Anne or for the Duke of Marlborough. Shortly afterwards his health deteriorated, and he died while visiting Bath aged 48.
St Anne
One of Croft's most enduring pieces is the hymn tune "St Anne" written to the poem Our God, Our Help in Ages Past by Isaac Watts. Other composers subsequently incorporated the tune in their own works. Handel used it, for instance, in an anthem entitled O Praise the Lord and also Hubert Parry in his 1911 Coronation Te Deum. Bach's Fugue in E-flat major, BWV 552, is often called the "St. Anne", due to the similarity (coincidental in this case) of its subject to the hymn melody's first phrase.

Played on Hauptwerk sample set of Giubiasco, Switzerland.