Nicholas Cleobury gives an introduction to preparing one of Bach’s best known cantatas, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, for performance with an orchestra.

Drew Cantrill Fenwick presents a film discussing the variety of skills needed to get the best out of singers in a choir, from warm-up exercises, help with note learning and interval recognition, and conducting techniques. 

A major investment in school singing by the Hamish Ogston Foundation is allowing Catholic Dioceses around the country to revive singing in schools and foster the next generation of church choristers: we look at how the Diocese of Middlesbrough has become part of this project.

Simon Mercer explains how to approach the rewarding activity of accompanying a choir, on both the piano and the organ. He discusses mental preparation, rehearsal skills and registration, using anthems by Wesley and Bainton as examples.

David Baker describes how music at Halifax Parish Church had been in decline until twenty-seven-year-old John Varley Roberts was appointed in late 1868, and transformed the choir at Halifax from a small, mixed group of voices up in the west gallery with an outmoded organ to a choral establishment of some seventy robed male singers in the chancel, accompanied by a four-manual instrument.

A full listing, with links, of the Learning during Lockdown series, which ran as a series of 16 bulletins throughout 2020.

The art of accompanying a choir, and conducting (or ‘waving’) at the same time, is explored by Simon Williams, a Director of the RCO, and also Director of Music of Harrow Choral Society.

A benefit of our new reciprocal membership arrangement with the American Guild of Organists is free access to their journal The American Organist. We look at the magazine in more detail, and also preview a new addition to our choral and conducting resources on iRCO: two films on working with orchestras from conductor Nicholas Cleobury. 

Conductor Nicholas Cleobury looks at the differences between conducting a capella, and working with orchestras.  In two films he discusses conducting skills, and how to prepare a score for performance, using Haydn’s Little Organ Mass as an example.