Organ Sonata (Elgar)

The genesis of the work was a request to Elgar to write an organ voluntary for a convention of American organists in the English city of Worcester in 1895.

Biographer Jerrold Moore notes that Elgar depended, in order to complete a work, on the stimulation of an imminent deadline.

[2] In the 1940s, following Elgar's death in 1934, the publishers decided that an orchestration of the sonata should be commissioned, and having consulted the composer's daughter and the conductor Sir Adrian Boult, they entrusted the job to Gordon Jacob.

The Organ Sonata in its original form has been recorded by, among others, Jennifer Bate, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Carlo Curley, Harold Darke, Gareth Green, Christopher Herrick, Donald Hunt,[notes 1] Nicolas Kynaston, James Lancelot, Thomas Murray, Simon Preston, Wolfgang Rübsam, Arturo Sacchetti, John Scott, Herbert Sumsion, Robert Quinney and Thomas Trotter.

A sonata for organ was arranged by Ivor Atkins from Elgar's Severn Suite, written as a test piece for a 1930 brass band competition.