Building on topics discussed in previous films, Jeremiah Stephenson moves from discussing works conceived with organ accompaniment, to choral works with orchestral accompaniment which have to be played from piano transcriptions.

Jeremiah Stephenson explores the art of choral accompaniment in depth with the aim of providing a framework for you to make your own judgements, and a stimulus to explore fully the possibilities that each organ provides for imaginative accompaniment.

Jeremiah Stephenson discusses and illustrates ways in which the piano accompaniments in the vocal scores of Viennese Mass settings by composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Schubert can be adapted in order to make them effective and practical when played on the organ.

The RCO Cinema streaming service is a partnership between the RCO and film-maker Fugue State Films, designed to make high quality films about the organ and its music available to the widest possible audience around the world.  

In this fourth film in a series of short films on improvisation, Stéphane Mottoul, Organist at the Church of St Leodegar, Lucerne, Switzerland, improvises six contrasting movements of a Classical French Suite, and discusses the characteristics of the French Baroque language in contrast with the German style of the time.

This film looks at the early life and training of Charles-Marie Widor, and examines his development as a composer in the context of the composers who immediately preceded him.

Historian Christoph Wolff and American organist George Ritchie discuss Bach’s Art of Fugue. They consider how it came to be written, and some of the issues around a performance of the piece.

A film by Fugue State Films exploring the life of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the greatest organ builder of the 19th century and also probably the most famous of all organ builders. Creator of such instruments as those in St Sulpice, Paris, and St Ouen, Rouen, he devised a new way of building organs that led directly to the development of the French Romantic school of organ composition.

This documentary by Fugue State Films charts the development of organ-building in the Netherlands through the 500-year organ history of the Laurenskerk in Alkmaar, a church that includes both an organ from 1511 by Jan van Covelens as well as the world-famous 1646 van Hagerbeer instrument, updated in 1723 by Frans Caspar Schnitger.