Film 11 in Anne Marsden Thomas’s Teach the Organ series offers a method for teaching registration and organ management, especially to beginner and elementary students.

Simon Williams gives a short guide to the basics of organ registration for both early-stage organists and lovers of organ music.

Writing in 1784–5 in his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Carl Friedrich Daniel Schubart(1739–91) stated, with reference to the Sechs Trio für die Orgel mit dem obligaten Pedale: ‘Playing these [sonatas] … is the preserve of great masters; they are so difficult that there are scarcely two or three people living in Germany who […]

Ralph Downes was strongly influenced by his experience at the London Oratory and time spent in Holland and France, when it came to designing the revolutionary Royal Festival Hall organ. Jonathan Ambrosino suggests that the seven years Downes spent in the United States could also have influenced his ideas – in particular his friendship with G Donald Harrison of Aeolian-Skinner.

This video, written and presented by Andrew Cantrill, is an introduction to the pipe organ for those less familiar with the instrument.  Andrew demonstrates the sounds of the organ, how the instrument is constructed, and how it is played.  You can learn more by downloading the reading list.

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.

In this video Daniel Moult explains the basics of hymn playing, from learning the notes, touch, registration, articulation, through to building up to performance. 

Edward Higginbottom discusses aspects of performance that can bring to life the repertory of French organists composed between c1650 and c1750 – the ‘French Classical School’ – in the light of the aesthetic theory of the time.  In particular he discusses how the job of the organist of the time was to express the omitted […]

Margaret Phillips describes how she approached a truly unique recital challenge – performing the complete organ works of Bach in recital, not once but twice, and on two instruments of very different size and style.