Annelies Focquart has investigated some new sources which cast a brighter light on the ten years Belgian organist Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens spent in Britain, as organist, concert performer and teacher, before his return to Belgium in the late 1870s.

Graham Barber makes an appraisal of the origins and characteristics of Henry Smart’s (1812-79) compositional style, and identifies his most compelling works, in this article from the RCO Journal of 2013. It includes an annotated catalogue of Smart’s organ output, from the generally difficult concert pieces to easier works designed for divine service or pedagogic […]

William Russell gained high regard both as a musician and a man, as his obituary of 1813 shows, but his music has since been relegated to inconsequentiality, with the exception of some of his Anglican chants and organ voluntaries.  Gillian Ward Russell examines William Russell’s life and times, and discusses his organ music. Written at […]

Peter Williams makes an interdisciplinary study of how we have the organ – in particular how we have it in church, in this article from the RCO Journal of 2011.  In a review of five publications relating to early Christianity and music, he discusses the interaction between Mediterranean technology, church authority, church practice, and function […]

Jehan Alain took a fluid view of his music, and very few of his organ works reached the stage of a definitive version in his lifetime.  This confusion has been compounded by discrepancies in published editions of Alain’s work throughout the twentieth century.  Stephen Farr discusses the available sources for selected organ works of Alain, […]

Charles Holt (d. 1978) was an organ enthusiast who made a point of listing several hundreds of performance timings of Vierne’s music – in particular his 24 Pieces en Style Libre.  Hugh Benham analyses Holt’s listings in this article from the RCO Journal of 2011, which reveal interesting differences between individual performers and Vierne’s own […]

Edward Higginbottom discusses aspects of performance that can bring to life the repertory of French organists composed between c1650 and c1750 – the ‘French Classical School’ – in the light of the aesthetic theory of the time.  In particular he discusses how the job of the organist of the time was to express the omitted […]

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 […]