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.

Director of Oundle for Organists, Ann Elise Smoot, explains how the Organ Voluntary developed as a new form of organ music, in the context of the new liturgy of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century England.

RCO Chief Examiner, Stephen Farr, discusses the significance of Urtext Editions for the practical performer, and comments on the issues surrounding them.

Meantone, Werckmeister, and ‘the wolf’: Cathy Lamb compares temperament systems and explains how they came about. 

Gerard Brooks gives a brief survey of the organ works of Camille Saint-Saens, and describes what made him different from other organist-composers of his time.

In Q is for Quiet, Andrew Cantrill-Fenwick discusses the use of silence in music, and how composers from Monteverdi and Bruns to Franck and Messiaen have used space within music to give meaning.

Sir Andrew Parmley, Chief Executive of the RCO, describes how Richard Limpus’ vision in 1860 of a college to raise the professional standing of the organist has been fulfilled today, in ways that he never could have imagined. 

John Scott Whiteley discusses the playing of ornaments in Bach, with a performance of Erbarm dich mein, O Herr Gott, BWV 721, on the organ of the Wenzelskirche, Naumburg.

What are organ pistons for?  Anne Marsden Thomas explains their operation, how to set them up, and how a memory system and stepper can be used on a modern organ.