Simon Preston

Simon John Preston (4 August 1938 – 13 May 2022) was an English organist, conductor and composer who was regarded as one of the most important English church musicians of his generation.

Background Simon John Preston was born in Bournemouth, Dorset, England on 4 August 1938, to John Preston, an architectural draughtsman, and Doreen Lane. He was introduced to music at an early age. His uncle played the organ at the church that his family attended, and he was inspired to take up the instrument at the age of 5 after hearing a recording of George Thalben-Ball. He later studied under Caleb Henry Trevor at the Royal Academy of Music before returning to King's College as organ scholar under David Willcocks. He first came to attention when he accompanied the college choir at the service of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve in 1958.

Career and legacy Westminster Abbey in London, where Preston served as sub-organist in the 1960s and organist in the 1980s. Preston was sub-organist of Westminster Abbey from 1962 to 1967 and, after a brief period covering for Peter Hurford at St Albans Cathedral in 1968, became organist of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1970, where he also lectured.

Compositions and recordings From the 1960s onwards, Preston composed a number of works for the organ, the best-known of which is probably his Alleluyas, written in 1965 in the style of Olivier Messiaen. Recordings of his organ works originally made in the 1960s on the Argo label were re-issued by Eloquence in November 2017.

In 1965, for the Edington Music Festival, he commissioned a setting of verses 73–104 of Psalm 119, and in 1966 he composed a set of five anthems. The following year he wrote a Missa Brevis (short mass service) for the Edington Music Festival, and in 1968 he wrote a Magnificat and a Nunc Dimittis for the same festival.

Preston made over 100 recordings, beginning in the early 1960s.