Feel, skill and audacity are fundamental to real artistic achievement, and the greatest of these is feel. Good feel inheres in sensibility, sensuousness and responsibility. Of these elements are built the riches and dignity of mankind.
Francis Greenway
Early Life
- Born Sans Souci in Sydney, 3rd June, 1941
- Raised and schooled at Young, a richly-endowed town in mid-west New South Wales
- Trained in Sydney in English and French schools under Kenneth Long and Norman Johnston
- Played the Poulenc Concerto in Sydney Town Hall on National TV
- Qualified in civil and traffic engineering and erected the signs on Australia’s first rural expressway (Hawkesbury to Mt White)
Years in Europe
- Moved to Switzerland in 1967, the only Germanic society not shattered by world wars
- Studied for five years at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis under Edward Müller
- Experimented with “paired fingerings” in early manner
- Created a recital series, “Organ Landscapes of the Seventeenth Century”
- Lived in Oxford and London (after a period in Canberra) and saved fine organs in England and Wales
- Researched keyboard fingering for three years in the British Library
- Worked as Traffic Management Supervisor for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
- Worked as chauffeur-guide for the London Tourist Board and lecturer in keyboard skills at King’s College, London
Later Years
- Returned to Sydney in 1977 to consolidate discoveries in early performance practice
- Established with Greg Young the N.S.W. Heritage Council Pipe Organ Advisory Committee
- Published J.S. Bach editions in facsimile and presented two cycles of Bach’s organ works
- Promoted contemporary organ music through commissions and the anthology “Organ Australis”
- Recreated with David Evans the gold-strung medieval clavicytherium
- Identified the nature of the first string-keyboard, the 14th-century chekker (Galpin Society Journal, July 1998)
- Established the taxonomy of early keyboard compass (Galpin Society Journal, May 2001)
- Launched the label organ.o in 2001