Patrick Wedd
Organist and composer who was hailed for his liturgical works
PATRICK WEDD, who has died aged 71, was a Canadian organist and choir director who spent more than 20 years at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, establishing a serious music programme for services and concerts that encompassed works ranging from the Renaissance to the present day; he was also a prolific composer of anthems, psalms, canticles, masses and hymn arrangements, many of which feature in Common Praise, the official hymnal of the Anglican Church in Canada.
Like his Anglican counterparts in Britain, Wedd faced an eclectic range of musical tastes in the Church, but little troubled him. “I was doing ‘soft-rock’ music in Vancouver Cathedral in the 1970s and 1980s before I came to Montreal,” he told Vox Humana magazine. “It’s not a brand-new phenomenon, and Anglicans have always prided themselves on offering a wide variety of liturgical styles.”
Wedd’s own experience extended beyond the church, and in 1974 he was the founding director of Quorum, an ensemble of six vocalists specialising in modern music with whom he gave the first Canadian performance of Stockhausen’s Stimmung.
In Montreal his cathedral work involved services in French and English, making Sundays particularly busy. He would be preparing music from 8am, followed by choir practice an hour later, Mass at 10am, another rehearsal for the 12.45pm French Mass and then Evensong, again preceded by choir practice, which was often broadcast live. “It’s a long and pretty active day,” he said enthusiastically.
Patrick Laurence Perry Wedd was born at Simcoe, Ontario, on January 4 1948, and from an early age was fascinated with the church and its liturgy. He began organ studies at the age of 11 and within a year was organist-choirmaster at St Paul’s church, near the Niagara Falls. By 1966 he was sub-organist at St James’s Cathedral, Toronto, and three years later won a young organists’ competition.
After studying music at the University of Toronto he moved to British Columbia,
where he took a master’s and was organist at St Mary’s Church, Vancouver, before transferring to the city’s cathedral in 1975. There he was musical director for the opening of the sixth world congress of the World Council of Churches, which took place in the city in 1983.
In 1986 he became artistic director of the Tudor Singers in Montreal and music director of the Church of St Andrew and St Paul in the city. He took part in annual performances of Handel’s Messiah and Christmas broadcasts for CBC radio and television, for whom he was a frequent guest on music shows, delighting listeners with his infectious enthusiasm and ability to explain complex musical concepts in a clear manner.
Five years later he became music director of St John the Evangelist, Montreal, and in 1996 he joined Christ Church Cathedral, spending more than two decades at the console of its Karl Wilhelm organ, which he said responds “really well to a variety of musical styles”.
Outside the church he enjoyed playing the Grand Wurlitzer organ at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, on which he recorded a collection of showpieces under the title Strike Up the Band! In 1992 he founded Musica Orbium, a 60-strong semiprofessional choir with whom he performed works such as Bach’s Mass in B minor, Monteverdi’s Vespers and Tallis’s Spem in Alium.
He retired from the cathedral last year with a weekend celebration that featured concert and liturgical performances of Stravinsky’s Mass, a work that was also heard at his funeral, and a choral Evensong that included music by Britten, Howells and Wedd himself.
Patrick Wedd is survived by his husband, Robert Wells.