Marking the 450th anniversary of Thomas Tomkins’s birth, John Caldwell investigates this ‘honest quiet peaceable man’ as one contemporaneous document characterised him. The focus of Caldwell’s study is the keyboard music, and not least how Tomkins reacted to the idioms and techniques he discovered in an important English sixteenth-century manuscript which came into his possession.

Terence Charlston looks at recent editions from the newly founded publisher Lyrebird Music.  In this review article he not only reacts to the editorial mission and accomplishment but also stimulates our engagement as keyboard players with the interpretative challenges of the virginalist repertoire.

A gallery of pictures from the College’s annual Conferment Ceremony at Southwark Cathedral on Saturday 4 March, at which RCO President David Hill presented successful examination candidates with their awards and diplomas, and presented four RCO Medals.

There’s a powerful astrological theme to Martin Baker’s organ recital at St Michael’s Cornhill on Monday 13 March, as he gives the world premiere of Jonathan Hagger’s Great Conjunction Triptych: Seven Vignettes for Organ.

Applications are invited from organists aged 18-26 for the Musicians’ Company Award for Organists (formerly the W T Best Scholarship).

Stéphane Mottoul, Organist at the Hofkirche, Lucerne, explains how to improvise a partita in Baroque style based on a hymn tune. He begins by discussing the harmonisation of the hymn melody, and then explains how to construct three variations using the hymn tune as a basis: a ricercar, a trio chorale, and a chorale with figurations. 

Find resources here for Woman Composer Sunday, which takes place on March 5 this year. It’s an international platform for music written for organ by women composers, and a new recommended repertoire list created by the Society of Women Organists along with the American Guild of Organists is now available to download.

The RCO was delighted to present Professor Suzuki Masaaki with the RCO Medal at a masterclass for Royal Academy of Music organ students in London this January.

Copies of the College’s magazine for members from April 2007 to January 2020 can be downloaded here as pdfs.