MONTH LY LETTER

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The following appreciative tribute by a brother musician to our distinguished
fellow-member and Past-President, Dr. Healey Willan, follows close
upon the celebration of his 70th birthday*
HEALET WILLAN
For over forty years now the name Healey Willan on a piece
of music has meant that something significant and personal
will be found therein. It has meant that it will "lie well"
and that it will "come off", whatever the medium employed.
For a long time a teacher and executive at the Conservatory
and a Professor in the Faculty of Music, he nevertheless
has maintained a steady flow of composition. All his life
he has been a servant of the church, and he has demonstrated
over and over that a few voices of ordinary capacity
can become an exbraordinaxy instrument for the worship of
God. For them, he has written many exquisite motets, and
with them he has performed also a magnificent repertoire of
the great things of the past. I have sat in St. Mary ! s, on
occasion and reflected that people as far apart as Sir
Walter Raleigh and Pius the Fourth, could they be present,
would enjoy and recognize most of the music and ritual.
Dr. Willan is a fine teacher and sometimes an irascible one,
as hundreds of us can testify. He hates alike, both pedantry
and half-baked "modernism" and he is a good hearty
hater. Furthermore, he is a staunch friend and has done us
all innumerable kindnesses. He is now freed from the labour
of teaching but remains the acknowledged arbiter of
taste, and he is enjoying a Renaissance and writing more
music than ever. I cannot undertake here an enumeration of
his many works in all fields, nor is it necessary; suffice
it to say that they will live when we are all gone, and
largely forgotten.
Charles Peaker
P E R S O N A L S
Charles Comfort, R.C.A., acted as one of the judges in a photographic
slide competition recently held under the auspices of the Color Photographic
Association of Canada. R. York Wilson, O.S.A., A.R.C.A., is acting similarly
for an exhibition to be held in March by the same society.
Herman Voaden is travelling in Europe and will not be back in Toronto
until September Stan Cooper has been ordered by his doctor to take a
month 1 s rest. We wish him a speedy and complete convalescence.*...