THE ENGLISH ORGAN is a series of films and recordings made by Fugue State Films, telling the story of the English organ and its music, over five hundred years.  In these three final films Daniel Moult takes the discussion from the nineteenth into the twentieth century, with performances of Stanford, Whitlock, and Patrick Gowers on historic organs.

THE ENGLISH ORGAN is a series of films and recordings made by Fugue State Films, telling the story of the English organ and its music. In these three films, Daniel Moult looks at the beginnings of English organ building, playing Byrd, Purcell and Handel on three historic organs.

In a series of special films Daniel Moult discusses the history of organ-building in England, and demonstrates the diversity of organ types, with appropriate music.  This first film takes an overview of the development of the English organ, from Tudor beginnings to the present day.

There are over 150 surviving In Nomines: a plainchant used by some fifty-eight composers from Taverner to Purcell as a basis for keyboard and consort music. Jane Flynn investigates this fascinating compositional phenomenon and explores the interwoven theological and political context in which the In Nomine flourished.

The 2019 edition of the College’s annual research publication, The Journal of the Royal College of Organists, can be downloaded here as a complete edition.

William Reynolds’s thought-provoking, well-documented introduction to early organs and their use in Wales and the Welsh borders is a major contribution to national organ history, opening up a range of organological and musical perspectives about local practices.

The recent Couperin anniversary (2018) and the appearance of a new edition of Couperin’s Pièces d’orgue from the Stavanger-based Cantando Press was an opportune moment for David Ponsford to reflect not only on the edition, but also on the state of Couperin organ studies at this time.

Only one inanimate object has been habitually described as having lungs or as being capable of a kind of mechanical breathing. That the organ lends itself to imagery and metaphor has not gone unnoticed: Francis O’Gorman takes this subject on by investigating a range of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century poetry.

In a review of Timothy Day’s I Saw Eternity the Other Night, about the evolution in modern times of an English singing style, David Wright gets inside the multiple frameworks—economic, social, cultural—which help to invent and regulate traditions.