About
Quentin Stuart Morvaren Maclean (born May 14, 1896 in London, † July 9, 1962 in Toronto) was an English-Canadian organist, composer and music educator.
The son of the conductor Alexander Maclean and grandson of the organist Charles Donald Maclean had the first organ lessons as a child with his father. Between 1904 and 1907 he was a student of Harold Osmund in England, F. G. Shuttleworth and Richard Terry, from 1907 he studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Rudolf Dittrich and Hermann Graedener. In 1908 he moved to the Leipzig Conservatory, where Max Reger (composition), Stephan Krehl (music theory) and Karl Straube (organ) were his teachers. In the chamber music class of Karl Wendling he worked as a piano accompanist. At the end of his studies his repertoire already included the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Charles Marie Widor, Max Reger and Julius Reubke.
The outbreak of the First World War prevented a planned career as a concert organist in Germany. Until the war Maclean was interned as an enemy alien in the camp Ruhleben. After the war he returned to England and 1919 assistant organist of Richard Terry at Westminster Cathedral. In 1920 he became a theater organist at the Grand Theater in Fulham, London. From 1921 he worked with the organ builder Hill, Norman & Beard on the installation of an organ in the Regent Cinema in Brighton, where he worked until 1923. In April 1923 he moved to the movie theater Shepherd's Bush Pavilion as a cinema organist, where he replaced shortly thereafter George Thomas Pattmann as a concert organist. During this time, his first recordings were made on the label Columbia Records.
From 1928 to 1930 he was organist at the multiplex organ of the newly opened Regal Cinema Marble Arch in London. Here he participated in various recordings of the BBC. In 1930 he played the solo part at the English premiere of Paul Hindemith's Organ Concerto, in 1931 he was soloist in the Bournemouth Pavilion of his own organ concert under the direction of Dan Godfrey. In 1930 he was organist at the time the largest Wurlitzer organ in the movie theater Trocadero Elephant & Castle in London's New Kent Road. Here he played u. a. Bach's organ works, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's great F minor Fantasia, Charles Marie Widor's organ symphonies and transcriptions of Edward Grieg's piano concertos, Felix Mendelssohn's wedding march by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Richard Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries and George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
During a trip with his wife to Canada in 1939, World War II broke out in Europe, and Maclean decided to stay in Canada. Healey Willan hired him for the opening of the University Concerts at the University of Toronto. He gave a concert series in October 1939 at the Royal York Hotel and played from the end of 1939 two weekly live broadcasts at the CBC, with whom he worked until his death.
From 1940 Maclean was an organist at the Holy Rosary Church in Toronto, at the end of the year he was appointed organ professor by St. Michael's Cathedral choir school, and from 1942 to 1950 he was a theater organist at Shea's Theater in Toronto. He also taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, St. Michael's College and the University of Toronto. In addition, he appeared as a concert organist on the largest organs in Canada. In 1948, the organ builder Casavant Frères built a new organ for the Holy Rosary Church according to his designs. In the early 1960s, the former Governor of Ontario, Ray Lawson, had set up in his residence a Wurlitzer organ according to Mclean guidelines. September 1961 Recordings Two Months of LP production are the last recordings of Mclean's collapse two months later during Holy Rosary Church organ play and died in July 1962 of a heart attack.
In addition to two organ concerts Mclean composed a harpsichord, a piano, a harp and a violin concerto, two concerts for electronic organ, orchestral pieces (including Babbling, Parade of the Sunbeams, Rondelet, Algonquin Legend) a Stabat Mater, ten masses, one cantata and choral pieces, about fifty songs, piano and organ pieces, a string quartet, three trios and a duo for violin and piano.