Kenneth Shenton writes:
SIMON LINDLEY was a musician of formidable intellect, imagination, and insight. He set an unforgettable example to all who were privileged to have been associated with him, and his influence permeated all aspects of the subject. He was an organist, lecturer, scholar, writer, composer, recording artist, teacher, editor, accompanist, undoubted enthusiast, and one of the defining choral conductors of his generation.
Born on 10 October 1948, Simon Geoffrey Lindley was the son of the Revd Geoffrey Lindley and his wife, Jeanne. His maternal grandfather was the distinguished Belgian poet and art critic Professor Emile Cammaerts, whose mother Marie Brema, was a friend and colleague of Sir Edward Elgar, who sang the role of the angel in the première of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at the 1900 Birmingham Festival. Lindley spent his formative years in Oxford, where his father was Vicar of St Margaret’s, and he became the organist for two years, while a pupil at Magdalen College School.
Lindley was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in July 1968, and continued his studies at the Royal College of Music that year. His teachers included Philip Wilkinson and John Birch; it was the latter who instilled in him the academic rigour that brought him the Geoffrey Tankard Organ Prize and characterised his later career.
While at the RCM, he was organist of several London churches, including St Anne and St Agnes and St Olave, Hart Street, was organ tutor at the Royal School of Church Music, then at Addington Palace, Croydon, and accompanied the choir of Westmister Cathedral. For five years, from 1970 onwards, he became Peter Hurford’s first full-time permanent assistant at St Albans Cathedral. He was Director of Music at St Albans School, and accompanied the BBC Chorus.
In April 1975, he succeeded Donald Hunt as Organist of Leeds Parish Church (now Leeds Minster). Over the next 41 years, he maintained a consistent, committed, and extremely loyal choral foundation, whose resources he came to use with much imagination and skill. He expected and obtained the highest standards. His approach also found favour with larger ensembles including Leeds College of Music Choral Society, the Halifax Choral Society, Leeds Philharmonic Society, Sheffield Bach Society, and Doncaster Choral Society. No less impressive was his stewardship of the St Peter’s Singers, a chamber choir that he founded in 1977.
Lindley’s organ-playing was colourful and virtuosic. After his solo recital debut at Westminster Cathedral in 1969, he performed at the Royal Festival Hall and in the 1975 season of Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. The same year, he also became Leeds City Organist. In a further post, as Senior Assistant Music Officer for Leeds City Council’s Learning and Leisure Department, he helped to develop the Leeds International Concert Seasons. He was also Artistic Adviser to the Leeds Summer Heritage events.
Lindley made his recording debut accompanying the choir of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street. Other recordings range across tchoral and solo organ — including Handel organ concertos and Khachaturian’s Organ Symphony, the chamber music of Josef Rheinberger, and some CDs with cornet virtuoso Philip McCann in the series “The World’s Most Beautiful Melodies”.
Lindley’s feel for the liturgy allowed him to write well for voices. Among the anthems, two in particular stand out, the beguiling “Ave Maria” and his setting of words from Psalms 108 and 109, “O God, My Heart is Ready”. Occupying a far more challenging canvas is the first of his many carols, “Come, Sing and Dance”. Composed for unaccompanied SATB with divisions, it remains a most inspirational evocation of seasonal splendour.
As a director of the English Hymnal Company, he was one of the musical editors of the 2006 volume, New English Praise. Here, Lindley contributes a stirring last-verse setting of T. Tertius Noble’s Ora Labora. For The Revised English Hymnal of 2024, alongside his popular arrangement of “Noël Nouvelet” are two new tunes, Crux Christe and Bless the Lord.
Other posts held by Lindley included Senior Lecturer of Leeds Polytechnic (from which he was awarded an honorary doctorate); member and President of the Council of the Royal College of Organists; President of the Incorporated Association of Organists; Secretary of the Church Music Society; a Special Commissioner of the Royal School of Church Music; Trustee of the Sir George Thalben Ball Trust; President of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir; Chairman of the Friends of Musicians’ Chapel, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate; an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; and adviser to Yorkshire Television’s Religious and Educational Programme Department. He also made brief cameo appearances on Heartbeat and Emmerdale.
Simon Lindley died on 25 February, aged 76.