Stéphane Mottoul improvises two pieces in the Early Romantic style and discusses the typical structure and harmonic progressions for this music, and comments on how to create a suitable registration scheme.

Sietze de Vries explores Bach’s Orgelbuchlein on instruments of Bach’s time in a new CD/DVD boxset from Fugue State Films, filling in some of the missing pages in a masterclass of improvisation in the style of Bach.

The St Albans International Organ Festival is celebrating 60 years this summer since its founding in 1963 by Peter Hurford, who set out distinct aims for the Festival as its first Artistic Director.

In this second film in a series of short films on improvisation, Stéphane Mottoul, Organist at the Hofkirche, Lucerne, continues work on improvising a partita in Baroque style based on a hymn tune.

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. 

Jeremiah Stephenson shares ideas on how to practise improvisation and develop the keyboard harmony reflexes to improvise on hymn tunes. 

Andrew Cantrill-Fenwick draws on eight different periods and styles of music to suggest ways to build up an idiomatic improvisation.  The techniques he suggests are in a range of of difficulty, from possible hymn extensions to improvisation for the FRCO diploma examination.

The aim of interNational Organ Day in April 2021 was to restore the organ in the public’s consciousness to its former position central to music making across the world. The celebrations went online with the onset of lockdown, and they can still be enjoyed via YouTube. Here’s how The Organ Show was born, with links to some notable highlights.

We are recording our current series of live webinars on harmony for the RCO examination written papers, so they can be viewed on iRCO.  This month’s Learning during Lockdown suggests how you could use these, and other resources, to start or continue your studies of harmony, depending on your existing knowledge.   We also introduce live looping, an improvisatory technique from the world of electronic music, which can be creatively applied to the organ.