In this paper from the RCO Journal of 2011, Desmond Hunter reviews possible meanings of the grace signs in the sources of English keyboard music from around 1530 to the middle of the seventeenth century.   His argument concludes that the embellishment of this music requires an imaginative approach, rather than reliance on a particular formula. […]

For musicians and composers who could afford to travel in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Leipzig became a focus of pilgrimage.  As a leading centre for enlightened music publishing, with its association with Bach and Mendelssohn, not to mention having one of the finest opera houses in Germany, it attracted composers in search of […]

William Whitehead examines the question of Mendelssohn’s articulation markings in his organ music, and discusses what these markings might imply for performance.  This article originally appeared in the RCO Journal of 2012. RCO Journal 2012_Whitehead  

Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) was arguably the most distinguished member of a Nuremberg family, and  among the first of a succession of German musicians to further their studies and stylistic development in Italy. Christopher Kent describes his life and times, with analysis of his organ works, and discussion of registration based on the possible stop […]

Stephen Farr discusses Helga Schauerte-Maubouet’s edition of Jehan Alain’s organ works for Barenreiter, and asks to what extent it represents an advance on previous published versions of the scores, and whether it resolves the fundamental problems of the source material for Alain’s music.   RCO Journal 2012_Farr  

Andrew McCrea interviews the eminent Dutch organist and composer Piet Kee, to mark Kee’s 85th birthday.  Kee’s influence as a performer, improviser, composer and teacher has been far-reaching, and the RCO conferred Honorary Fellowship on him in 1988. A select bibliography can be found at the end of the article, which first appeared in the […]

The organists and choir-trainers who founded the College of Organists created a new kind of singing voice, which has had a tremendous influence right up to the present day.  Just before the Second World War, music critics from around Europe remarked that the outstanding contribution of England to the music of the world was the […]

The interest in church music in mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain was considerable, with the musical press regularly carrying correspondence on a wide range of topics – the training of clergy and musicians, repertoire, organ music and the ordering of churches.   A glance at any modern British hymnal reveals our indebtedness to the authors, translators, editors, […]

Nicholas Thistlethwaite provides a fascinating window into the musical controversies of the early 1860s, around the time when the College of Organists was founded.  He notes  a climate in which correspondents and editors of musical publications had a freedom of expression which today appears remarkable.  Protected by anonymity, the personal animosities of the Victorian musical […]