Healey Willan: Life and Music

'Clarke's excellent book provides a stimulus for a wider appreciation of his music.'

Choice Magazine

'A warm and sympathetic portrait of the most prolific composer this country has ever known. ... Above all, it is a book which celebrates the attitudes of Willan as a teacher, composer and performer. Every choirmaster should read it, if only for one of the most trenchant pieces of advice any of them could ever have: "Sing words, sing words – any fool can sing notes - it takes brains to sing words."'

Arnold Edinborough, Canadian Churchman

'Willan's contribution to Canadian music, even though he remained essentially an Englishman in manner and temperament, is enormous and far-reaching. A cursory list of his students (Louis Applebaum, John Beckwith, Robert Fleming, George Maybee, John Weinzweig – and of course F.R.C. Clarke) reads like a Who's Who in Canadian music.'

David Barber, Kingston Whig-Standard

'A fine, generous, balanced, not uncritical, important and wise book about a man whose contributions to music in Toronto from his arrival in 1913 until his death in 1968 were, and remain, legendary.'

William Metcalfe, The American Review of Canadian Studies

'An exceptionally well-organized book for serious students and concert-goers'

John Kraglund, The Globe and Mail