How did Olivier Messiaen combine the creative life with the conventions and strictures of his role as organist? And how can that help us understand and perform his music? In this year’s RCO Organ Forum at the Royal Academy of Music, Artistic Director Robert Sholl brought together academic and performance experts to answer these questions, in a celebration of Messiaen’s work held in this, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the composers’ death.

With the formal winding up of the Percy Whitlock Trust in 2017 due to the lapsing of copyright, Robert Gower gives a summary of the aims and achievements of the Trust during its existence, and discusses Whitlock’s musical legacy.

Christopher Kent examines the life and times of William Sterndale Bennett: his contribution as organist, composer and conductor to nineteenth century musical life, and his contribution to the growing nineteenth-century appreciation of J S Bach.

Philip Moore’s new Requiem will be given its world premiere on Friday 18 November 2016 at 2pm at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge in a concert to be given by the BBC Singers, conducted by David Hill. The concert will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Dedicated to the memory of his Mother and Father, Philip Moore’s Requiem is written for soprano solo, mixed voices and organ.

Judith Bingham’s contribution to the solo organ repertoire spans some forty years, and organ writing has been a constant feature of Bingham’s compositional activity. This survey from Stephen Farr examines this important oeuvre from several performance related perspectives.

Richard Moore provides a catalogue of Peter Racine Fricker’s organ works, and discusses why he fell out of favour in the 1970s, in spite of writing prolifically until his death in 1990.

Christopher Anderson discusses perceptions of Max Reger as an organist rather than composer, and the layers of assumptions which grew around the composer during his lifetime as to his status as organ virtuoso.

Famously prickly, irascible, caring and encouraging, Dr Bernard Rose was a one-off, and for over five decades a living legend in the UK’s choirmaster world.

Composers of the French organ school of the Classical period were meticulous in writing out types of registration. Alexei Panov discusses evidence for the exact composition of Grand Jeu and Plein Jeu registrations, in the light of writings of the time.