In the third of three films from RCO Organ Forum: The Organist Entertains, Richard Hills and Simon Gledhill reveal how the sound world of the theatre organ is created.

The San Francisco-based musician, Michael Hendron, travels the world, seeking out harmoniums and reed organs in dusty corners of French cathedrals and village churches, recording interesting repertoire. He has made videos at Sainte-Clotilde and La Madeleine in Paris, on harmoniums dating from the time of Franck, Fauré and Saint-Saëns. Michael joined David Aprahamian Liddle last November at St Barnabas, Pimlico, where David is the proud owner of a 2-manual harmonium built in 1868 by Philip J Trayser of Stuttgart.

The RCO throws off its cassock and surplice, and slips into something a little more glamorous, for the 2017 RCO Organ Forum: a toe-tapping day of light organ music with the Cinema Organ Society on Saturday 7 January – the first time the respective worlds of the classical and theatre organ have come together for study and discussion.

OrganFest, the annual weekend celebration of the organ, moves north this year. After two years in the Midlands, it will be held in Edinburgh from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th October, and showcase organs by Willis, Ahrend, and Reiger.

In just six nights of bombing during the Second World War, the City of London lost 26 organs. Seventy years later, David S. Knight surveyed what was lost, and charted the heroic efforts to bring music back to shattered churches.

This compilation of material begins with an article by Terence Charlston examining the Theewes claviorgan in detail, and how an instrument of this type might inform our view of the solo repertoire of the time and change our understanding of keyboard instruments in ensemble performance.

It also includes an inventory of surviving claviorgans and a series of short recordings of the Goetze & Gwynn reconstruction of the Theewes’s organ part combined with a Flemish-style harpsichord by David Evans.

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.

Tempted by a fine redundant organ? Steve Mansfield was: by a recently overhauled Lloyd of Notttingham organ from the late 1800s in his home town in Derbyshire – and he bought it for £750. “And how much room is this going to take up?” was his wife’s first question.

A dairy door in a 17th-century house in Wetheringsett, Suffolk, and a piece of decaying timber found behind old pews and lumber in the churchyard shed at Wingfield, Suffolk, have transformed our knowledge and understanding of the pre-Reformation English organ.

This article and free download includes detailed descriptions and specifications of the Wetheringsett and Wingfield Organs, along with a look at the culture of the English church before the Reformation, including the use of the organ and its music within the liturgy.