The organist and composer Francis Jackson, who has died aged 104, began his career as a chorister under the distinguished organist of York Minster Edward Bairstow. Jackson was still active as both performer and composer 90 years later, having been organist himself at the minster for three and a half decades (1946–82). A virtuoso executant and prolific composer, he bestrode the world of English church music as a powerful if traditional force throughout the second half of the 20th century.
His large output of Anglican sacred music included the frequently used Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G (“Me in G” as he liked to refer to the setting), hymn-tunes such as East Acklam, sung to the words of For the Fruits of His Creation at harvest time, and anthems. The six organ sonatas are the most substantial of his works in that genre, though there were many other pieces that both reflected his heritage of Bairstow, Herbert Howells and Edward Elgar, as well as his love of Ravel and admiration for Paul Hindemith and Max Reger. In addition to the church music he wrote a symphony, an organ concerto, chamber music, songs and a pair of monodramas with narrator. His compositional style was generally a conservative one, more modernistic neoclassical traits held in counterpoise with Romantic tendencies.
Not the least of his claims to fame was the bringing to worldwide prominence of the final Toccata of Widor’s Fifth Organ Symphony, which he recommended to the Duke and Duchess of Kent (then Katharine Worsley) as the outgoing music for their wedding at York Minster in 1961. This was on the basis that it was genuine organ music rather than a hackneyed arrangement of a piece written for a secular purpose. With that recommendation of a movement bristling with bravura fingerwork he was to set a challenge for generations of church organists to come.
Among his many pupils was the Hollywood composer John Barry, creator of the scores for James Bond films. This was not his only connection to lighter music, however. During the second world war, as a member of the 9th Lancers armoured regiment serving in north Africa and Italy, he took up the saxophone, and became known for his “Jive with Jackson” and “Francis Jackson plays Boogie and Bach” sessions. For many years, his enthusiasm for dance bands remained a secret pleasure, for fear that it would be deemed incompatible with a career in church music. In later life, as a devotee of the BBC’s Big Band Special, he was inseparable from his radio on Monday nights.
Born in Malton, north Yorkshire, he was the son of William Jackson, the local borough engineer and sanitary inspector, and Eveline May (nee Suddaby), a talented pianist. Both parents sang in the local church choir, as did Francis and his brother, Paul. Having auditioned for Bairstow at the minster, he was admitted to the full choir, serving only three weeks as a probationer. He was organist of Malton parish church from 1933 to 1940, continuing to study with Bairstow until the end pf that period.
His war service was undistinguished: “I tried my best, but it wasn’t really what I was cut out for,” he recalled, “each side trying to blow the other to bits – and to what purpose?” It did, however, provide an opportunity for the broadening of his cultural horizons, his fellow troopers introducing him to the writings of Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden.
Returning to the minster after the war, he was appointed assistant organist, and on the death of Bairstow in 1946, took over as organist. In 1956 he gave his first recital on the new organ in the Royal Festival Hall, London, beginning with Bach’s D major Prelude and Fugue, BWV 532, which starts with a rapid D major scale played on the pedals alone. To open with this “dicey solo pedal scale” was a “brave (or foolhardy)” decision, he later noted. In 1957 he played Poulenc’s Organ Concerto under Basil Cameron at the Royal Albert Hall Proms, making further appearances in 1960 and 1964.
He wrote a biography of his mentor, Blessed City, The Life and Works of Edward C Bairstow (1996), and recorded his complete organ works, an act of homage that may or may not have been appreciated by Bairstow, for whom the gramophone was anathema. Jackson also made four CDs of his own organ music. His Leeds-based peer Simon Lindley praised the “magical colouring, depth of expression and technical control” of his playing.
In his later decades he was much in demand as a consultant on church organ design. For the instrument he advised on in Blackburn Cathedral he wrote his first organ sonata, playing it at one of the inaugural concerts.
He remained active as both performer and composer after his retirement from the minster in 1982, when he was named organist emeritus.
In the garden of the house in the Ryedale hamlet of Acklam that he shared with his wife, Priscilla (nee Procter), whom he married in 1950, stood an outhouse furnished with a grand piano, an antique horn gramophone and, taking pride of place, a splendid two-manual chamber organ with gleaming pipes relocated from a church in Derbyshire. For Lindley, the “bold lines, surprising corners and sense of wonder” that characterise Jackson’s liturgical music reflected features of his “glorious Acklam garden”. His love of French impressionist art, especially that of Corot, was similarly congruent with his life-long enthusiasm for Ravel and Debussy, and his espousal of the French school (notably César Franck, Widor, Louis Vierne and Marcel Dupré) in his recitals.
His autobiography, Music for a Long While, was published in 2013.
Priscilla died that year. He is survived by their children, Alice, William and Edward.
• Francis Alan Jackson, born 2 October 1917; died 10 January 2022
