Peter Bassett wanted to find out whether his own personal experience of learning as an adult student of the organ was unique or, if not, whether other adult students struggled with the same sorts of challenges; and whether, in the light of research findings, some of the challenges could be addressed better, and how any […]

The ‘essence’ of the cathedral choir said one authority in 1952 is ‘the boy’s voice’, and its men are ‘at their best when they blend with that clean white tone’. If asked to give an example of a choir which exemplified this ideal in 1952 many music-lovers and many cathedral musicians too would have unhesitatingly […]

Attitudes towards the use of organs to accompany the congregational singing of hymns and metrical psalms varied dramatically across the centuries and from place to place. Religious zealots denounced them as vainglorious ornaments, whilst musical reformers advocated their use to impose order on undisciplined singing. This makes an account of the subject problematic since almost […]

Kauffmann’s Harmonische Seelenlust was published in instalments through subscription from 1733 until 1740. It contains 98 preludes on 63 chorales, and 66 figured chorales, which are embellished with interludes and flourishes between phrases; six preludes have an obbligato part for oboe. Kauffmann gives detailed directions for registration, tempi, phrasing, articulation, and expressive ‘affect’ to a […]

For many decades interpreters of Vierne’s organ music have had little choice other than to play from scores which have been quite difficult to read; differentiating between sharps and naturals has often been a problem, for example. Publishers have frequently resorted to photocopying old printed editions for a new print run, with an inevitable loss […]

Dame Gillian Weir, in conversation with Andrew McCrea, reflects on Messiaen and the performance of his organ music. This discussion originally appeared as an article in the RCO Journal of 2008. RCO Journal 2008_Weir    

Where do we as ‘classical’ musicians stand, be we performers, teachers, examiners, promoters, listeners, or any combination of the above? Do we accept the status quo and acknowledge that we are just another niche interest in a crowded market place? Do we stand firm and hope that the integrity of our art will carry us […]

Paul Spicer discusses the music he has spent a lifetime espousing – the choral music by the composers who reinvented the musical wheel in this country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; a genre which, in the right hands, could stand up and be counted, holding its own in any company, given a […]

This is an edited transcription of a lecture given at St George’s Hanover Square, London in April 2003 as part of that year’s London Handel Festival. Organised in collaboration with the Royal College of Organists and the Handel House Museum, the event to which this lecture was an introduction was entitled ‘Emerging from the Organ […]