The copy used for this digital edition comes from the RCO Library, and is part of the RCO’s on-going project to digitise and publish online its collection of rare eighteenth and early nineteenth century music. You can read more on the edition used, and also a little more on Theophania Cecil’s life and music, below, in an article by Andrew McCrea and RCO Librarian Frances Pond.

The Conferment of Diplomas is the public centrepiece of the Royal College of Organists’ year. In 2013 it was held in Southwark Cathedral, London.

The Conferment of Diplomas is the public centrepiece of the Royal College of Organists’ year. In 2014 it was held in Southwark Cathedral, London.

The College’s library is as old as the College. From modest beginnings it has grown over the years into a library of great distinction, whose comprehensive specialist holdings of organ and choral music and books are known across the world.

By studying Western classical music at mission schools and at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Fela Sowande developed a keen interest in composing for the organ. Godwin Sadoh discusses the European, African-American and Nigerian/African influences on ten of Sowande’s most popular organ works.

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 […]

Andrew McCrea interviews the eminent Dutch organist and composer Piet Kee, to mark Kee’s 85th birthday.  Kee’s influence as a performer, improviser, composer and teacher has been far-reaching, and the RCO conferred Honorary Fellowship on him in 1988. A select bibliography can be found at the end of the article, which first appeared in the […]

By 1887 the College of Organists had already begun to make its mark – its membership increasing in relation to the great burst of church building that took place between 1850 and 1900.  Peter Horton compares the careers of four organists of this time – S S Wesley, Hopkins, Smart and Monk.  As he says […]