Ad Fontes, perhaps the first record label spawned by a monastery, has produced some gems since its inception in 2019, even if distribution has been stilted. Artists have included the choirs of Westminster Cathedral and Royal Holloway as well as the musicians of the Benedictine Buckfast Abbey’s own rebooted music department, itself built on foundations laid by the now-retired Dom Sebastian Wolff OSB.

Wolff (b1929) was organist at Buckfast during my time as a chorister there, 1989-94, after which the boys’ choir and school were closed. He seemed like an elder statesman even then but was a character nonetheless, even if the joke was occasionally on him. Trevor Jarvis, Master of Choristers until 1994, who writes an amusing tribute in the booklet, would warn us to ‘listen out for Father Sebastian’ – acknowledging that his tempos were moveable feasts.

It takes a release such as this to be reminded what a distinguished and distinctive musician Wolff is – an organist working Haydn-like in the monastery he joined in 1948 and upon whose shoulders all the initial musical responsibilities fell. He studied with Lionel Dakers at Exeter Cathedral and produced a wealth of music for the new vernacular Catholic liturgy. But his organ works, like his extraordinary playing and improvising, stand out. Under the fingers and feet of sometime Buckfast organist Richard Lea, the new Ruffatti organ is brighter and more French-sounding than its Ralph Downes predecessor and speaks from a different position at the west end (though there are divisions above the choir stalls). The Abbey acoustic remains recognisable in an instant. Much of this music was tailored to it.

The contrapuntal nous in Wolff’s many chorale prelude-style works is strikingly impressive, best heard in his Chorale Partita on Unto us is born a Son with its distinctive Wolff parallel-fourth harmonies, and in the supremely agile trio on At the Lamb’s high feast. The Chorale Prelude on O sacred head refracts Bach’s techniques (ornamentation included) for a 20th-century idiom, albeit a conservative one.

Highlights include an imposing Fantasia and Fugue – the Fantasia in the French style, the fugue more Germanic (every one of Wolff’s fugues is perfectly piloted towards a beautiful landing). The pièce de résistance for devotees of the French school is the Vierne-inspired Carillon written for the installation of Abbot David Charlesworth in 1992. I remember being thrilled by its bold modulations when it rang out at the end of that epic service.

The Nocturne dedicated to Jarvis (who once recorded it himself) is perhaps the most personal and individual piece of all. The Introduction, Chorale and Fugue on Let all mortal flesh salutes Bach but is dedicated to the late Father James Courtney OSB, who was always more keen on Puccini. The music is arranged according to the church’s year – appropriate for a musician who, like Bach, ordered his life’s work according to set cycles of worship. Lea plays them all with deep reverence and care, and his own booklet note picks out Wolff hallmarks. One disc would probably have been sufficient and there is little here that’s strikingly original. But as a record of a character unmatched and largely unknown on the UK’s church music scene, it’s priceless.