One of the more pleasurable of New Year resolutions is to decide to expand our repertoire and learn new pieces, and there’s help here on iRCO, with no fewer than ten short videos on organ repertoire, presented by experts in their field. Each one provides inspiration on a different century, or a different musical culture, with advice on appropriate registration, style and performance.

Martin How gives a masterclass in hymn accompaniment, recorded on the organ of Croydon Minster. In this video he discusses the choice of hymn speed and registration, use of breathing and pauses, and how to respond as a player to both the tune and the words.

Writing in 1784–5 in his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Carl Friedrich Daniel Schubart(1739–91) stated, with reference to the Sechs Trio für die Orgel mit dem obligaten Pedale: ‘Playing these [sonatas] … is the preserve of great masters; they are so difficult that there are scarcely two or three people living in Germany who […]

Jonathan Davies regards achieving the ARCO qualification as his greatest personal achievement, though it was a long road from just wanting to play flashy pieces on the organ to acquiring the musicianship needed to qualify. He describes some of the techniques which led to final success, for the benefit of anyone else contemplating this examination.

The 2019 East of England Organ Day celebrates the world of film in May, with concerts of cinematic repertoire for the organ, and improvisations, featuring the majestic 1933 Grand Organ in the Chapel of the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook, in Suffolk. School organist David Pickthall will create live, spontaneous soundtracks at the piano to two short Harold Lloyd films – here he explains the techniques that both pianists and organists can use to improvise to live films.

Go with organist colleagues to an organ recital at the Royal Festival Hall, and sooner or later someone will strike up a nostalgic lament for Wednesdays at 5.55. Harry Hoyle has just published a history of this extraordinary series of weekly organ recitals on the RFH organ, which lasted for 34 years. His engaging account will interest both organists and anyone fascinated by the social history of classical music performance in the second half of the twentieth century.

The sound of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has become fixed in the public consciousness as the quintessence of English cathedral singing: epitomised by The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols each December. However the assumption that this singing style continues a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages could hardly be further from the truth. It took a revolution in social and musical attitudes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for the “terrible roughness” of cathedral singing up to then to be transformed, as Timothy Day shows in his book I Saw Eternity the Other Night – King’s College Cambridge and an English Singing Style, just published by Allen Lane.

If your New Year resolutions are likely to include improving your conducting or choral training skills, then book now for a workshop coming up in early February. Conductors with wide experience or with none are invited to spend a day with David Hill, Musical Director of The Bach Choir and former Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers, at an RCO choir training workshop on Saturday 2nd February 2019.

Composer and organist Matthew Martin presents a film on the requirements of improvisation for the FRCO examination, with a discussion of how to approach the four possible options: cantus firmus, romantic prelude, variations and récit en taille.