The English composer Benjamin Britten was asked to write the Prelude and Fugue for St Matthew's Church, Northampton.

[6] Both sections of the piece are based on a theme from a motet, Ecce sacerdos magnus ("Behold a great priest"), by the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (or "Vittoria", 1548–1611).

Gradually, the piece dies away to two parts and ppp (pianississimo, "very, very quietly") as the left and right hands play the fugue theme a bar apart from each other, in canon.

"[7] Although the theme is "not the stuff of which great music is made", Noss remarked on the "exciting" pedal flourish at the opening of the piece, the attractive use of melody and harmony, and "grand crescendos and lingering diminuendos" to keep the listener interested.

[7] Another early reviewer described it as "spacious", with a "by no means academic" fugue and a style that "suggests a modern romantic composer's appreciation of the more austere aspects of the classical organ school.

"[9] It was included in a concert at St Clement Danes, London, in November 1963 that honoured Britten's fiftieth birthday with performances of some of his lesser-known works.

"[1] The organist Alan Harverson describes it as "excellent" and notes its "orthodox layout and textures", in comparison to the organ writing of Rejoice in the Lamb and the Festival Te Deum (1944).

[2] The musicologist and Britten expert Philip Brett describes the piece (without naming it) in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as a "slight organ work".