Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i Choir & Organ

I often wonder what it is about English choral music that first captivated my imagination as a child. Growing up in Herefordshire, perhaps it was the knowledge that Elgar, largely self-taught, would enter into nature to find his inspiration – much of the same nature that I grew up in and around. I attended state schools in the county until the age of 16. My secondary school had a fantastic school choir and chamber choir, where we performed Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, Elgar Partsongs and Welsh folksong. Even though it struggled in other areas of the curriculum, I owe so much to my state school’s commitment to music. One of the greatest joys of this year has therefore been establishing a media partnership with the Three Choirs Festival, and…

St John’s College has announced a significant new organ project that will see the installation of a historic ‘Father’ Willis instrument in its chapel by May 2026. The organ, originally built in 1889 and previously housed at St Peter’s Church, Brighton, will be restored and relocated by Harrison & Harrison Ltd. The project, the largest of its kind at the chapel in a generation, will involve the careful removal of the existing Mander organ, which has served the college since 1994, and its transfer to St John the Divine in Kennington, London. Director of Music at St John’s, Christopher Gray, highlighted the instrument’s importance: ‘The Willis organ has an authentic voice for English repertoire and is the perfect instrument for accompanying the choir, with a vast palette of colours that…

Organist, harpsichordist, musicologist, editor and beloved pedagogue, Edoardo Bellotti died peacefully on February 27, 2025 in his home town of Pavia, Italy, of an aggressive glioblastoma. Born in Pavia in 1957, his early musical studies were with Giuseppe Tamburelli, who inspired his interest in historical instruments and their repertoire, followed by further studies with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Colin Tilney and Harald Vogel. A virtuoso performer on the organ and harpsichord, as well as a renowned improviser, he taught organ and harpsichord performance and the theory and practice of improvisation in several European institutions, including the conservatories of Milan, Trento, Udine and Pavia (Italy), Trossingen and Bremen (Germany). He served as Artistic Director of the Smarano International Organ and Clavichord Academy from 2001 to 2016, and again from 2021, and was…

‘In a certain sense I am well known,’ wrote the composer Ethel Smyth in 1936, reflecting on her life as she approached her 80th birthday. It was an uncharacteristically modest understatement – Smyth was by this point a DBE (the first woman in Britain to be made a Dame for composition), holder of three honorary doctorates in music, and she had seen all six of her operas performed. Her name regularly graced the society papers, and she was friends with some of the most famous figures in Britain, including writer Virginia Woolf and suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Yet Smyth’s muted tone was appropriate for, as she pointed out, most of her fame came from her celebrated personality rather than her music. She desperately wanted to be recognised primarily as a composer,…

Laughter is never far away when you are in the delightful company of composer Joanna Marsh, but when the conversation turns to the craft of composition her natural ebullience gives way to an engaging seriousness. This is no mere occupation. ‘You enter a place where you are entirely on your own; it is so all-encompassing, it uses so much of you, intellectually and emotionally. What might seem a small thing, such as finding just the right way to start a piece, is a huge moment worthy of celebration, because everything flows from that point on.’ That intensely personal, intellectual approach to composition has brought her widespread acclaim, several awards and commissions from prestigious institutions and ensembles, a continuing success marked in May by the release of a new recording from…

ORGAN CDS William Byrd: Complete Fantasias for Organ Jangoo Chapkhana, the St Teilo organ (2010) Brilliant Classics 97558 The title is slightly misleading as Byrd rarely specified a specific keyboard instrument for his music. One can only speculate whether he may have intended these fantasias to be heard on the organ. The real springboard for this recording is the St Teilo organ – a reconstruction of what an English Tudor organ may have sounded like. This organ is based on the Wetheringsett organ made for the English Organ Project. Here, the organ is recorded in the University of Birmingham in a very dry room, giving us a sense of this music being heard in a domestic setting – indeed, Henry VIII allegedly owned more than a dozen small residence organs,…

Where did your choral journey begin? My choral journey began at school in Northumberland. Our headmaster’s wife ran a four-part choir in the evenings after school. It was the pride and joy of the school and everyone wanted to be in it, so getting the call-up was a massive deal. I came back to school one Easter term (and wouldn’t it be the Easter term; bleak, cold and the only term that has no carrot at the end of it) to find that the headmaster’s wife had upped and gone – she’d had enough of the headmaster (I think we all had). So my parents took me to Edinburgh to audition for the choir at St Mary’s Cathedral. I became a chorister there and the journey moved up a few…

PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of Luke Fitzgerald as its new Director of Music. Fitzgerald will succeed Anna Lapwood, who has served in the role since 2016 and will be stepping down at the end of this academic year to focus on her career as a concert organist. Fitzgerald joins Pembroke from Coventry Cathedral, where he currently serves as Acting Director of Music. He began his tenure at Coventry Cathedral as Assistant Director of Music in 2021, working closely with Director of Music Rachel Mahon during a vibrant period that included Coventry’s designation as City of Culture and the Cathedral’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Prior to his time in Coventry, Fitzgerald held organ posts at several Cambridge colleges, including Gonville and Caius, Trinity, and Jesus Colleges. He completed both…

On February 25, 2025 we lost one of the foremost church musicians of a generation, Dr Simon Lindley. Born in London in 1948 to an Anglican clergyman and a mother of Belgian heritage, Lindley was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford, and the Royal College of Music. He held organist’s positions at various London churches before becoming the first full-time assistant to Peter Hurford at St Albans Cathedral in 1970, also directing music at St Albans School. In 1975, he performed Elgar’s Organ Sonata at the BBC Proms alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Adrian Boult. Lindley will be best remembered for his long tenure as organist and master of music at Leeds Parish Church (now Leeds Minster) from 1975 to 2016, and as Leeds City Organist from 1976…

‘How will this piece sound if I register it like that?’ ‘What does this ‘Hcombination of stops sound like on this organ?’ These questions illustrate part of the fascination in playing the King of Instruments and the reason why local organists’ associations arrange ‘organ crawls’. Play the Organ Year is about turning them in an outward facing direction and sharing our curiosity with those who have not yet had the privilege of playing an organ. A Play the Organ workshop is a great way to do this. First, who is the target audience? Primary schools usually find it easier than secondary schools to take groups of children to events during school time, though secondary schools may welcome a presentation during curriculum time for their GCSE or A level music groups.…

I recently asked a group of young musicians to point to the part of their body which contains the soul. Quite a few pointed to their torso, some to their head and others didn’t point at all, either because they didn’t know, or because they didn’t believe they had one. This is an interesting and revealing exercise for you to do now, as you read this column. Do you believe you have a soul – and, if so, where does it reside? Until the middle of the 18th century, such a question would have met with a fairly unanimous response. Christianity lived quite comfortably alongside science and philosophy, and there was a general acceptance that human beings were equipped with two creative engines – the mind and the soul. The…

There is a small proportion of recordings providing some semi-liturgical structure, even if only by interleaving the sections of the Ordinary with other polyphonic material. Most performers and labels opt for the safely commercial ‘suite’ format. Before turning to two outstanding recent releases here’s a lucky dip of past recordings. The Gabrieli Consort and Players set the bar high in terms of semi-liturgical presentations for Christmas in Rome – Missa Hodie Christus natus with assorted motets and Propers, as it might have been sung in Santa Maria Maggiore c1620 – evocative and appreciative of the numinous, as is also The Choir of Westminster Cathedral under James O’Donnell, the Missa Ecce ego Johannes for example, with no Propers but a glorious devotional propulsion and a burnished, faith-filled vocal quality. Treating the…

One of Great Britain’s oldest established firms, Bishop & Son was founded by James Chapman Bishop in 1795. J C Bishop made a name for himself first by making high quality ‘finger and barrel’ organs, often with pedals, and frequently for wealthy customers’ homes. His sons followed him into the business, assuming control on their father’s death in 1854, with Charles Augustus taking the lead. Charles’s son, Charles Kenwick, proved a particularly adept and popular member of the firm, in due course improving many mechanisms and work practices. A significant member of his team was Edward H Suggate, who took over at the helm when the still young Charles K found himself too unwell to continue. On Charles’s death Suggate assumed control and oversaw the firm’s progress and prosperity towards…

Rebecca Tavener rounds up the latest releases To begin: three releases epitomising some of the vastly contrasted vocal performance practices currently in vogue. If your preference is for full-throated conviction and energy Timor Mortis (Evidence Classics EVCD110) finds the eight gentlemen of the Ensemble Gilles Binchois on fine form with French pronunciation and bright vocal resonance adding sonic lustre to the premiere recording of Charles D’Argentil’s Missa pro Defunctis and Jehan Barra’s Salve Regina. Their grainy singing, captured with impressive immediacy and depth, is fabulously legato and also graces a powerful performance of the Lamentations by Claudin de Sermisy. Spirituality is not in doubt, but the listener is aware of the flesh and blood supporting the singers’ art. If you prefer a corporately angelic approach, try the premiere recording of…

Matthew Best, conductor and founder of the Corydon Singers, has been awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). The award was given ‘in acknowledgement of his remarkable career at the highest international level’ – one that has spanned nearly five decades. Fugue State Films is raising money to create its next documentary – The Organ in America – which will explore the story of organs built by immigrants in English and German styles, and how American builders emerged to create instruments in their own distinct styles. You can find out how to support the project by visiting: fuguestatefilms.co.uk Quires and Places Founder Tim Popple has announced the publication of a new book. Entitled ‘Evensong – Notes from the choir’ the book is a comical reflection on…

Herbert John La French Norman, who preferred to be called John, was born in Hornsey, North London, on January 15, 1932, and became a leading authority on organs, as consultant and author. The only child of Herbert and Hilda Norman, he attended Tollington Grammar School, moving to Norwich School from 1942 to 1945 to escape the bombing of London. Aged 15, he started learning the organ, giving this up when he went to Imperial College, London, where he took a BSc in Physics (specialising in acoustics), met Jill Sharp in 1951 and graduated in 1953. Married in 1956, they lived first in East Barnet and, from 1964, in Whetstone, where Norman remained. Jill fell ill in 2001, was looked after at home by Norman for many years, and died in…

In the previous issue, we considered whether HIP (Historically Informed Performance) is less relevant than in recent decades (or even dead). In terms of organ performance, the picture is complicated still further by a reawakening of interest in Romantic HIP, and in Romantic and symphonic instruments as vehicles for J S Bach and other earlier repertoires. But can our minds and emotions be opened to new performance possibilities beyond recreating specific points in time? I believe that hands-on experience of old instruments offers one pathway – in combination with using our ears. Follow the wind I mentioned previously that the north German organs (typified by Arp Schnitger), known to J S Bach during his younger days, or the central German organs (such as those of Gottfried Silbermann, Trost and Wagner),…

Many English music devotees will be familiar with that iconic photo of Edward Elgar, probably among the last of him ever taken, outside Hereford Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival (TCF) in 1933. There he is, sat centrally, surrounded by the directors of music of each of the Three Counties: Ivor Atkins, Percy Hull and Herbert Sumsion. It was this photo that first captured my imagination of Elgar, English music and his contemporaries – looking at an icon, surrounded by church music legends of the future. So much of the English choral music we love has roots in the West Midlands and South West, but how does the festival still speak to people today, and what are its plans for thriving long into the future? At last year’s 2024 Festival…

Rupert Gough looks across newly-published liturgical settings for choirs My selection of scores for the summer are particularly focused on the liturgy. Buckfast Abbey has recently started a publishing house of Catholic choral and organ music, particularly that which can be heard on recordings from their own Ad Fontes record label. Martin Baker’s new Missa O sacrum convivium! (SATB & org; Ad Fontes) was written for the Buckfast Abbey Choir and is a terrific addition to the accompanied Latin mass genre. This dramatic work draws largely on two chants, O sacrum convivium!, the Magnificat antiphon for the feast, and the Alleluia proper of the day: Caro mea. Their ‘major key’ modality lends brightness and joy to the whole setting, evident in the lightness of the Kyrie set in E major.…