BBC Programme Index

This site contains the BBC’s listings information from 1922 to the present day. The information is derived from three sources: The data that informs BBC iPlayer and BBC sounds pages (referred to as “PIPs”) and data from BBC Genome (taken from scans of the BBC’s former listings magazine, Radio Times) and information derived from contemporary newspapers and BBC documentation, for the period in 1922-3 when Radio Times had not started publication, and the 11 weeks between the 1920s and 1980s when Radio Times, for various reasons, was not published. There are 11,906,654 individual programmes and 350,132 playable programmes.

British Library catalogues

In October 2023 the British Library was hacked and only now are catalogue services coming back on-line. I make heavy use of the ETHOS theses database. This is a federated search application across a wide range of regional and local university archives, cataloguing 650,000 theses

British Newspaper Archives

This amazing archive has over 30 million pages from newspapers across the country. The pricing structure has recently been changed. The really good news is that it is now possible to search the entire archive rather than focus on individual local newspapers. A recent search for ‘Harold Darke’ to check some details for the biography that I am writing came back with over 7000 articles starting in 1905.

Concert Programmes

This is a federated database of collections of concert programmes held in European libraries, archives and museums. The institutional coverage in the UK is extensive and includes the British Library, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the national libraries of Scotland and Ireland, as well as repositories in Aldeburgh, Birmingham, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester.

Grove Music Online

This database contains over 51,000 articles on all aspects of music, with 5,500 on some aspect of organs. If you want to get a sense of the coverage browse through the recent additions and revisions to the database. An annual subscription costs £215, or three months for £56, both of which are of great value if you are working on a specific topic.

JStore

I use JStore to access Musical Times and its predecessor The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular which together cover the period from 1844 -2024. This service has also changed its pricing policy recently.

NPOR

The National Pipe Organ Register has been piloting some enhancements to the search facility. BIOS has been awarded a £10,000 grant from the Julia Rausing Trust over a five-year period to continue the development of this critically important database.

In tracking down this information I came across the Anglican Chant Index which lists just under 12,000 chants, including a number based on Beethoven’s compositions.

This chant has started me thinking about the extent to which organists play transcriptions, editions, arrangements, adaptations and versions. It’s not that we are short of music to play! The app version of John Henderson’s Directory of Composers for the Organ lists music from 24,000 composers. There is no figure I can find for the number of compositions but it must be well over 100,000. That’s a lot of Sunday services.

Transcriptions formed the core of the repertoire for W.T. Best, Edwin Lemare and other 19^th and early 20^th century concert organists, bringing classical music to audiences who would otherwise be unaware of the music of composers from Bach onwards. At Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham in the early 1930s Director of Music C.S. Lang and his pupil Ivor Keys played transcriptions of classical music as organ duets after the Sunday service, sightreading their way through piano duet scores to an appreciative audience of 800 pupils. More recently David Briggs in particular has undertaken the massive task of preparing organ scores of many orchestral works, including a number of Mahler’s Symphonies.

There is also Mysheetmusictranscriptions which can take an audio or video file and convert it to an organ score. Beware of copyright issues!

I am in awe of organists who set about transcribing improvisations. I’m thinking of Duruflé’s transcriptions of improvisations by Vierne and Tournemire, and of course Briggs, Filsell and others transcribing Cochereau’s very complex improvisations.

Orchestral music often features in the list of music requested for weddings, funerals and memorial services. I have a book of piano versions of The Water Music Suite’ as I find I can readily adapt them to the capabilities of an organ that I perhaps do not play on a regular basis.

Just tracking down the scores can be a challenge. Recently a retiring member of clergy asked if I could play the March from the music Arthur Bliss wrote for the film ‘Things to Come’’ at his final service. This took a quite a lot of effort and practice to adapt the piano score, which itself was unplayable on a piano – clearly a careless adaptation of the full score. I have to say that the quality of transcriptions in my Essential Book of Wedding Music (Kevin Mayhew 2001) is very variable. Faure’s ‘Pavane’ is just awful. The constant challenge is the extent to which mid-sized organs and amateur organists can create a credible orchestral tone spectrum.

I should also mention what might be regarded as ‘reverse transcriptions’. I’m thinking of the arrangements of Bach’s organ music by Andrew Davis, Leopold Stokowski, Edward Elgar and others.

Finding a playable edition can also be a challenge. For years I struggled with the Durand edition of Vierne’s music and then Carus-Verlag and Barenreiter both published superb editions in the wake of the original copyright expiry. The Lyrebird editions are also superb.

The challenge for us as organists is to remember we are also musicians, and so our priority must be to convey the musical intentions of the composer even if we cannot emulate the orchestral sounds of the original composition. If you want possibly the supreme example then listen to, and play, Bach’s transcriptions of Vivaldi’s Opus 3 concertos.

Last week my Google profile highlighted a thesis by Matthew Reed Dion with the rather extended but highly informative title of

“Organ Study at the National Institute of the Blind, Paris: The Influence and Impact on Organ Pedagogy Through the Pedagogical Work of Louis Vierne and Jean Langlais”

This 101pp thesis was released a couple of months ago and can be downloaded from the University of Houston web site. At the heart of the thesis is a consideration of the work of the school for blind organists that was established in 1843 as the ‘Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles’, located in Paris. Among alumni are Boulay, Langlais, Leguay, Litaize, Mahaut, Marchal, Marty and Vierne. Louis Braille, the inventor of the Braille system, attended the school and later taught there. His name forms the basis of the URL for the school.

There is a good summary of the work of the school on Vox Humana by Marie-Louis Langlais, the wife of Jean Langlais and an advisor to Matthew Dion in his work on the thesis. The involvement of Marie-Louis Langlais in this thesis marks this out as a very important thesis.

There are three sections to the thesis. Section 1 outlines the development of the National Institute, Section 2 considers the pedagogical Influences of Louis Vierne and his ‘Methode d’Orgue’. Section 3 considers the pedagogical influences of Jean Langlais and his ‘Memoir L’Orgue’. Included in this section are excerpts from ‘L’Orgue, l’Improvisation et la Composition musicale’ which Langlais wrote but has never been published. This contains some detailed exercises that enable blind organists to manage multiple keyboards and to manage the development of a registration scheme. What strikes me about the advice given in this manuscript is how relevant it is to sighted organists.

It reminds me of my professional experience developing user interfaces for enterprise (i.e. internal) web systems. Adopting the principles of the Web Content Accessibility Rules always ended up with an excellent interface for all employees.

Here in the UK David Aprahamian Liddle was the blind organist at St. Barnabas, Pimlico for more than 40 years. The Willis organ had 45 stops over three manuals and pedals. I can still remember a recital he gave at St. Peter’s Church, Brighton many years ago.

David Liddle died in May 2026. His web site is a memorial to the way in which he became an acclaimed organist and composer. In particular read his observations on the challenges of being a blind organist in a parish church (rather than a concert recital) environment. There is also an inspiring video of Liddle playing some of his own compositions, and his YouTube channel remains accessible.

I wrote a profile of Marchal in 2023

Bests’ fame as an organist has somewhat overshadowed his achievements as an editor, transcriber and composer. The extent of these achievements was not widely appreciated until the University of York released a three-volume PhD thesis by Roger Tebbit in 1992. Tebbit was organist at Selby Abbey from 1994 until his retirement in 2020. The scale of this thesis is quite amazing. Volume 1 runs to 502 pages and provides an overview of Best’s life and achievements. Volume 2 (339 pages) lists out all the sources Tebbit used in his research and Volume 3 (259 pages) provides a comprehensive list of compositions, transcriptions and editions.

Tebbit summarised his research in Chapter 17 of the Organ Club’s book A Century of Organs and Organists. This chapter has 28 pages but curiously Tebbit does not cite his own PhD thesis in the bibliography. I assume it was just an oversight but many readers will not appreciate the scale of research and analysis that Tebbit brought to the chapter.

In this chapter Tebbit highlights the similarities between Best and Franz Liszt (1811-1886).

“W.T. Best’s historical position as an organ virtuoso can be compared to that of Franz Liszt as a pianist. Both players developed great technical prowess, which they were able to exploit on their instrument, which was itself at a point where new technological developments were being incorporated into its design and construction, which radically changed its nature. In addition to revolutionising the playing of their respective instruments, both musicians, partly through the transcription of orchestral music for the keyboard, were able to expand the horizons in writing for the instrument. …Best’s legacy as a player was that he became the prototype for all subsequent virtuoso concert organists.”

These organists included Edwin Lemare (1865-1934), Alfred Hollins (1865-1952), William Wolstenholme (1865-1931), Harry Goss-Custard (1871-1964), Reginald Goss-Custard (1874-1956) and George Cunningham (1878-1948) all of whom inspired George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987) and the next generation of concert organists.

There is a profile of Best in Wikipedia but although this was updated by the (anonymous) author in May 2026 three of the four references date back to the first decade of the 20^th century. If you want to get a contemporary view of W. T. then there is a 1901 column in the American ‘Etude’ magazine but the link does also open up some annoying advertisements. Take care!

I would also recommend a 23pp research paper by the distinguished German organist Johannes Geffert which is published (in English) in a Polish organ music periodical. Entitled William Thomas Best: The Town Hall Tradition and the Art of Organ Transcription this is a very readable assessment of W.T. Best but although it cites two articles by Tebbit there is no reference to his PhD thesis. The best way to track this down is to search for the title in Google Scholar.

W. T. Best was renowned for his orchestral transcriptions. In the first few decades of the last century these transcriptions often featured in organ recital programmes. I am currently working on a biography of Dr. Harold Darke, and it is interesting to track his recital programmes (all of which are held by the Royal College of Music) and the gradual disappearance of these transcriptions. There is one notable exception and that is a transcription of the overture to the oratorio Athalia by G.F. Handel. Darke seems to have played this quite late into his career as both a dramatic opening item and an encore. The score is published by Bardon Music.

Best also prepared an edition of J.S. Bach’s organ music and this is reviewed by Tom Bell in the March 2020 issue of Organists’ Review.

The Musician’s Company offers the Award for Organists. This was established at the W.T. Best Award in 1956 and was endowed by John Mewburn Levien (Court Member 1933-1934) in memory of the organist. Quite why the name of the composer is no longer associated with the award is not immediately apparent. The 2026 Award winner is Joshua Simões.

Details about the composition of the anthem can be found in H.Balfour Gardiner, a Biography by Stephen Lloyd published by Cambridge University Press in 1984. (This is now out of print.) In September 1907 Gardiner joined the music staff at Winchester College on an ad hoc basis and just for a term. He lived at 56 Kingsgate Street, a short walk to both the College and the Cathedral. Dr E.T Sweeting was Head of Music, having previously been Director of Music at St. John’s College Cambridge from 1897-1901.

Setting the text of Te Lucis Ante Terminum had been on the composer’s mind since 1900 but perhaps the sound of the choir of Winchester Cathedral under William Prendergast inspired him to complete it. It was published by Novello in 1908 and was dedicated to Sweeting. Gardiner contributed both the Latin and English texts. The score has gone missing.

In 1977 the anthem was orchestrated by David Owen Norris (Southampton University) for a Gardiner Centenary Concert on 6 November 1977 at St. John’s Smith Square. The performance was given by the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra directed by John Eliot Gardiner who is the great nephew of Balfour Gardiner and maintains an archive of Balfour Gardiner’s scores.

There are many recordings of this anthem but my current first choice is by The Sixteen conducted by Harry Christophers. There is a clarity and balance of the voices, and the voices against the organ, which is very well controlled. The CD (A New Heaven) seems to have been discontinued. Frustratingly there are no details of the organ or the organist on the video, but the score is scrolled. My best guess is the organ in St. John’s Church, Upper Norwood.

The musical structure of the anthem is full of interesting details. The first 23 bars are sung over a low pedal D. Then at bar 24 the four-part harmony suddenly becomes seven-part, led by the tenors in thirds, to give a rich close to the first verse over a gradual resolution from and back to the pedal D.

The second verse is in B minor and should be sung a capella. Only towards the end of this verse does the close harmony go beyond an octave in range, giving the verse a rather mysterious sound world.

The Amen is very adroitly composed, with the basses initially singing the line of the Amen notes at a slower pace than the other parts. It is also interesting to note that each of the final four entries begins with a short rest from the preceding bars which thereby highlights their entry and also gives each voice line the chance to take a very deep breath.

Not only is this a challenging anthem for the choir but also for the organist who needs to provide seamless crescendos and diminuendos and match the tonal quality of the voice parts. I’ve heard several performances (including Kings College on CD) that introduce a high-pressure reed at bar 81 even though a) there is no indication in the score and b) this is totally out of character with the style of the composer.

Somewhere on a ridge in the North Dorset Downs is an oak tree that marks the spot where his ashes were buried. This anthem is surely a lasting tribute to a man who in many ways ensured the future of English music.

PS Since writing this post I have discovered a video practice and performance directed by Ralph Allwood with the Old Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir.

The Latin phrase came to me when reading an enthusiastic review in the August 2026 issue of Gramophone magazine of a new boxed set from Fugue State Films. Entitled ‘Lighten our darkness’ it offers two DVDs of recordings of Evensong services made at cathedrals (Salisbury, Winchester, Truro, St Patrick’s, Dublin, Guildford, Chester and Blackburn); colleges and schools (New College, Oxford, Trinity and St John’s Cambridge, Birmingham University, Rugby School, Methodist College Belfast), and also establishments in Grantham, Bath, Sheffield, Lincoln, Bolton Abbey and elsewhere. The price is £38.50.

In passing I would note that the use of grey text on a black background makes information about the DVDs on the Fugue State Films website almost completely illegible!

The BBC has been broadcasting Choral Evensong every week since the first broadcast on the 2LO station on Thursday 7 October 1926. The standard is always of the very highest quality,

Above is the programme listing from the Radio Times for the service from Westminster Abbey. No details are provided.

As a worshipper, chorister or organist, there is something indefinable, almost transcendent, in the atmosphere of the service. The Choral Evensong web site not only explains the structure of the service but provides links to a wide range of articles that have been written about the experience of being at Evensong. I would also recommend “Lighten Our Darkness. Discovering and celebrating Choral Evensong” by Simon Reynolds, published by Darton, Longman & Todd in 2021.

The Choral Evensong site lists links to live-streamed services in cathedrals and college chapels in the current week. The Cathedral Music Trust also provides a very good summary of the elements of the Evensong service.

I always enjoy listening to Evensong from Winchester Cathedral (having played the organ there from time to time) and also the services from Trinity College Cambridge under Stephen Layton and now Steven Grahl. The Trinity College recordings date back to 2012 as audio recordings and from 2019 as video recordings. The College also provides a searchable index of the music sung at the services.

It is easy to regard Evensong as something rather English. However, singing Evensong in the Netherlands is also popular, even though it may often be on a monthly basis, and of course in English, not Dutch. “Pilgrimages to English Cathedrals: The popular practice of visiting choirs from the Netherlands singing choral evensong in England” is a fascinating paper by Hanna Rijken based on a presentation she gave to a Cathedral Music Trust event in 2024.

Many of her insights apply to the UK and you may see Evensong with a different perspective after reading the paper.

Te lucis ante terminum – Part 2 will be published on 4 August.

Over the years the organ has been used extensively for teaching, recording and recitals. Not only is the acoustic excellent for recording but there is no traffic adjacent to the church. Somewhat surprisingly, there is no information about the organ on the church website, though there is an excellent booklet on sale in the church which gives a detailed history of the instrument.

My second visit was to Norwich Cathedral which has a stunning organ case on a pulpitum bridge between the choir and the nave. It is impossible to miss the organ as you walk around the cathedral but there is no reference to the organ in the booklet given to visitors. The pedal pipes are up in the triforium on either side of the organ case.

The organ was quite extensively rebuilt in 2023 by Harrison & Harrison, full details of which can be found on the H&H web site. With 101 stops it is one of the largest cathedral organs in the country. It must be a challenge for the organists, and for recording engineers, to achieve the best possible balance of a widely distributed organ and the choir some thirty feet below. Sitting by the huge copper font in the nave (originally in a local chocolate factory!) it was quite difficult to hear the choir even with the organ at half-power.

At the time I was there the choir were rehearsing for a recording of a BBC Choral Evensong which was broadcast on 15 July. I was struck both by the sheer power of the organ and the skill with which Graham Thorpe (the Sub-Organist) was able to go seamlessly from fff to pp in a few bars, a requirement of both the setting by Bairstow of the Evening Canticles in D major and the anthem For lo, I raise up by Sir Charles Stanford. This dramatic anthem was composed in 1914 but was not published until 1939, fifteen years after his death.

You may be wondering why so far there are no photographs of the two organs.

By a happy coincidence there is a 15-minute video guided tour of both organs by James McVinnie and also of the George Pike England organ in St Agnes, Cawston. James was an Artist in Residence at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2026.

I should end by noting that there is a Norwich Organists’ Association. There are some photographs of the cathedral organ on the Association web site.

In summary, Wood studied at the Royal College of Music (RCM) from 1883 under Charles Stanford and Frederick Bridge. He went on to teach at both Selwyn College and Gonville and Caius College and also at the RCM. Among his pupils were Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Frank Bridge, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, Arthur Bliss and Arthur Benjamin. On the death of Stanford Wood was appointed Professor of Music at Cambridge University in 1924. He died two years later.

In this post I am going to highlight some of the ways in which the contributions that Wood made to British music are being recognised this year.

Charles Wood Festival, Armagh

Founded in Armagh in 1994, the Charles Wood Festival and Summer School was established to celebrate the life, music and enduring influence of Charles Wood. It has become one of Ireland’s leading choral festivals. The 2026 Festival runs from 16-23 August and includes the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition.

The Life and Music of Charles Wood – Jeremy Dibble

The first major biography of Charles Wood was entitled The Music of Charles Wood: A Critical Study by Ian Copley. This was published in 1978 and is no longer in print. In May this year a biography of Wood by Professor Jeremy Dibble, professor of musicology at Durham University was published by Boydell and Brewer. The Life and Music of Charles Wood runs to 418 pages. Professor Dibble is also the author of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford – Man and Musician, published in 2024 and so is able to consider in detail the somewhat complex relationship between Wood and Stanford.

​The Charles Wood Conference, Cambridge, 31 October 2026

Professor Dibble will be the keynote speaker at this conference which is being hosted by Gonville and Caius College. Among other talks, Dr Nicholas Thistlethwaite will give a lecture on the evolution of chapel choirs in Cambridge in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The programme will end with Choral Evensong, sung by the Gonville and Caius chapel choir, including items of Wood’s church music. The conference fee is just £40 and that will also entitle you to a discount on Professor Dibble’s book. The printed edition is £115.

BBC Choral Evensong Radio 3 8 July 2026

This service was sung by the choir of Gonville and Caius College and included O though sweetest source, the setting of the canticles in A flat, Expectans Expectavi, God omnipotent reigneth and Oculi Omnium. One of the psalm chants was written by the Organ Scholar based on some of the harmonies from Wood’s anthems. Note that this may only be on the BBC website for a month from now.

St. Mark Passion

I suspect that most of us know Wood only through his anthem and canticle settings. It is well worth spending 50 minutes to listen to Wood’s The Passion of Our Lord According to St. Mark, published in 1920 and now seemingly forgotten. The text was written by Eric Milner-White, at that time Dean of King’s College, Cambridge. Indeed, it was Milner-White that invited Wood to write a passion setting as he could find nothing worthy of Kings College written in the previous century.

There is an excellent recording of the work by the choir of Jesus College under the direction of Daniel Hyde. The performance is now on You Tube together with the organ score. It is an interesting blend of a highly chromatic texture and (especially towards the end) the composer adopts a more modal style.

By the time Wood wrote the Passion he was already seriously ill with asthma. On the score of Gerontius Elgar wrote “This is the best of me”. Wood might well have felt the same way about this composition but it would have been totally out of character for him to say so.

The 2014 Harrison & Harrison organ in the Priory Church

The Festival takes me back to 1959 and my days as a chorister at St. James, Southbroom, Devizes. Devizes is in the Diocese of Salisbury, a diocese that stretches from Marlborough College in the north to Weymouth (and on to the Channel Islands) in the south. The diocese was brought together each year through the Salisbury Diocesan Choirs’ Festivals. Although the largest of the Festivals was held in Salisbury Cathedral there were usually six or seven regional festivals using the same service books at Marlborough College, Sherborne Abbey, Wimborne Minster and some larger parish churches. The service book was initially used for a number of local rehearsals and I can still vividly remember both the awe with which I entered the Priory Church and the immense skill and enthusiasm of Christopher Dearnley (at Salisbury Cathedral from 1954-1968) in encouraging (with much good humour) a rather motley group of choristers to make glorious music.

I no longer have the 1959 service book but in 1963 we sang Britten’s Jubilate Deo and Stanford’s B flat Te Deum, and then in 1964 sang Dyson’s F Major Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, Gibbons’ anthem Almighty and Everlasting God and Byrd’s Teach me O Lord. Challenging music for small parish church choirs but what fun we had exploring it.

The mix of music sung at the Edington Festival is always quite amazing in its diversity. This year Mattins and Compline will be sung to plainsong by the Scola Cantorum, directed by Peter Stevens. Then each day there is a Solemn Eucharist and Choral Evensong. You can hear a recording of Choral Evensong for 26 August on BBC Radio 3. These services are sung by a Nave Choir (directed by Alexander Pott) and a Consort (directed by Jeremy Summerly). Members of the choirs come from a range of cathedral and collegiate choirs. Alexander Hamilton, His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Hampton Court, is the Festival Director.

The organ in the Priory was installed by Harrison & Harrison in 2014 to replace an aging Henry Jones instrument. The cost of the project was £437,000, and the working group set themselves three years in which to meet the target. In fact it was met in only two, an indication of the strong support for the organ from around the UK. The Henry Jones instrument was acquired by the Gustav Adolf School in Tallinn, Estonia.

Two organ recitals were scheduled for this year but sadly one was to have been given by Harrison Cole, who died a few weeks ago.

There are no tickets for the services and seats cannot be reserved. Many of the congregation will have long ago arranged lodging and car parking in Edington (population around 700) and in surrounding villages.

[There will be no post on 8 July]

Hendrie was born in 1935 and has had quite an amazing career, which is well detailed in his Wikipedia profile. To summarise, he studied at the Royal College of Music, became organ scholar at Selwyn College Cambridge from 1954-1961 (gaining a MusB and a PhD), was a Lecturer at the University of Manchester from 1963-1967, subsequently became Founding Professor of Music at the Open University from 1969-1985 and then Director of Studies in Music at St. John’s College, Cambridge from 1980-1983. He is a rare combination of a performer, musicologist and composer. His contribution to music education through his work at the Open University was ground-breaking in taking into account the remote study model that formed the basis of the OU.

Much of his research effort has been focused on Orlando Gibbons and Handel and their contemporaries, with an intriguing byway into a definitive edition of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Iolanthe.

Hendrie started composing in the early 1960s, and now has a catalogue of piano, organ and liturgical compositions which are listed out on Wikipedia.

Time to move on to Lyrebird Music, founded by Jonathan Baxendale a decade or so ago with the ambition to publish definitive performing editions of (primarily) keyboard music. The firm ran into some legal issues a few years ago so I am delighted to see that it is now well established with a range of almost 50 publications.

A feature of all Lyrebird projects is the care that is taken over the editorial basis for the music married to excellent case-bound and digital publications that are a delight to place onto the music desk of a piano, harpsicord or organ. Prices are very reasonable given the quality of the scores, typically around £35 - £45. A few weeks ago David Ponsford gave a lecture recital of his new Lyrebird edition of Couperin’s music at the AGM of the British Institute of Organ Studies. Lyrebird also publishes the complete works of César Franck (edited by Richard Brasier) and a volume of transcriptions for organ of some of Elgar’s orchestral music by Andrew Dewar.

To move forward several centuries Lyrebird has now published the complete organ works of Gerald Hendrie in four volumes, also available in a single volume.

As an introduction to Hendrie’s musical style listen to Tom Winpenny playing Two Sketches on the Name BACH from Le Tombeau de Marcel Dupré on the organ of St. Alban’s Abbey. These are dedicated to the late John Scott and require a very high level of virtuosity. The music is quite ‘tuneful’ to the ear but as you watch the score unfold listening to the recording you quickly become aware of the artistry and musicianship of the composer. To me (and I am most certainly a novice at this) his music has elements of not just Dupré but also Demessieux and Falcinelli.

There is also a useful overview of Hendrie’s style and organ works (and a photograph of the composer) in a review of one of Tom Winpenney’s recordings by the British Music Society.

Just one caveat – the Lyrebird web site is slow to respond, and the navigation could be more intuitive

C.H. Trevor (known as CH to colleagues) was born on 12 March 1885 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. His parents, Henry and Lillian, ran a grocery shop in the town though later Henry went to Lampeter Theological College and became a priest. Trevor seems to have educated himself as an organist, probably with support from the organist at Holy Trinity Church which had a good Gray and Davison organ. He gained an M.A. from Oxford University and then enrolled in the Royal Garrison Artillery during WW1 where he was commissioned as a Lieutenant.

In May 1921 he sailed to Calcutta to take up the position as organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which had a IIIP41 Willis. He returned in May 1922 so this may have been a one-year appointment. He then held posts at Sherborne School and Wells Cathedral (1926-1927) before moving to London, where in 1930 he married Joan Fremantle, the daughter of the owner of a very successful insurance company.

A year before he had given the first of many recitals that were broadcast by the BBC, using a range of organs which included St. Mary-le-Bow. All Saints Margaret Street, the Queens’ Hall and St. Peter’s, Eaton Square. His recital programmes were quite broad. A 1933 recital from the BBC Concert Hall included Bach (the Dorian Toccata and Fugue), Bossi, Camidge, Arne, Blow and Karg-Elert. Indeed Trevor often included English, French German and Italian Baroque music, much of which was virtually unknown at that time. A recital in 1932 included music by Banchieri, Zipoli and Frescobaldi. At the same recital Trevor played the chorale theme in BWV635 with a 8’ and 2⅔’ stops – quite revolutionary for 1932!

Perhaps his major achievement as a broadcast recitalist was a series of five recitals from 14-18 October 1935 which were dedicated to the organ music of Max Reger. Achieving broadcast quality over five hours of performance could only have been achieved with a formidable technique and diligent practice. The Radio Times for that week carried a full-page article by the distinguished music critic Edwin Evans that provided information about Reger and his music. No details of the organs are given but it is likely that they were played on the IVP69 organ at St. Peter’s Eaton Square.

Around that time Trevor was appointed as organist at St. Peter’s and as a Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy. He held both posts until he retired in 1964. Trevor was highly regarded as a teacher, and among his pupils were Simon Preston, Martindale Sidwell, Barry Rose and the composer Kenneth Alwyn.

From 1947 to 1974 Trevor edited a series of compilations of organ compositions, initially for Elkin & Co. and later Oxford University Press. Many of these pieces were by composers that were largely unknown at the time, and Trevor edited them with considerable insight. His five volumes of Old English Music for Manuals and five volumes of Organ Music for Manuals remain in print from OUP.

OUP was also the publisher in 1971 of Trevor’s Oxford Organ Method, a much-needed replacement of John Stainer’s The Organ: A Manual Of The True Principles Of Organ Playing For Beginners which dated from 1886! It is somewhat ironic that a self-taught organist wrote this outstanding publication. A revised edition was published in 2020 but makes only a passing reference to the pioneering work of Trevor. It was also in 1971 that the Royal College of Organists conferred on Trevor an honorary membership and at the same time awarded him the College’s Fellowship diploma honoris causa.

In closing, it is of note that the quartet of Guy Weitz (1883-1970), Harold Darke (1888-1976), C.H. Trevor (1895-1976) and George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987) were all born in the 19th century, developed as outstanding organists in the first half of the 20th century and subsequently continued to inspire and teach a new generation of organists.

Although there is great concern at present about the number of organs being taken out of service there is also a substantial business of renovation and enlargement of organs in the UK, and of course many new organs. There are 32 organ builders in the UK accredited by the Institute of British Organ Building, along with a number of specialist suppliers. Each has a note of the type of work for which the firm or individual has accreditation.

The Institute has just published Volume 25 of Organ Building, an annual review running to almost 100pp of descriptions of a selection of organ building projects over the last year. The first article is by Tom Bell, who describes a wide range of organ projects, many of them smaller instruments. All too often it is only the major cathedral organ projects that make the headlines but at a local parish church level the impact of a ‘new’ organ will be just as substantial and long-lived.

Then there are articles about St. Michael and All Angels in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, the Crypt organ in Blackburn Cathedral, an elegant two-manual practice organ and the large scale renovation of the IVP94 Harrison & Harrison in the Bristol Beacon (formerly the Colston Hall) which includes an A2 fold-out of the architectural drawings for the divisions of the organ. Fascinating!

Given the very obvious professionalism of the various builders and suppliers involved in all these projects I was very honoured to be asked by Matthew Hynes (the Editor) to write an article entitled The Science of Organ Console Design, based on a presentation I gave at a conference in 2024. The design of consoles was of great interest to the late John Norman, but I approached the topic as an information scientist and the design of user interfaces for all sorts of screens and devices.

In the article I cover topics that include the colour temperature and intensity of organ desk lights, the usability of combination pistons and the inappropriate use of capital letters on stop knobs and tabs. Fundamentally it is all about ‘working memory’.

Volume 25 can be ordered from the IBO web site for £21.50 plus delivery https://www.ibo.co.uk/publications/organBuilding.php .

The IBO site also lists the contents of most of the editions of Organ Building dating back to 2003. A very valuable archive.

When I was starting out on my organ journey the ABRSM organ grades started at Grade 5. Now they start at Grade 1 and that gives absolute beginners of all ages a valuable metric of skills progression. I also note that the ABRSM sets out a minimum specification for the organ to be used in the examinations.

However, there is an absence of advice on how to find an organ teacher.

The most common starting point to search for an organ teacher would be to search on Google. I’ve picked four of the top links just as illustrations.

Organ Lessons - UK Music Teachers lists two teachers of the organ, one of whom is an accordion teacher

Organ Profiles offers a list of 69 teachers most of whom have prepared useful profiles of themselves, their location and their teaching availability.

Musicteachers has profiles of 15 teachers in the UK

Independent Society of Musicians has profiles of 21 organ teachers within 50 miles of where I live and helpfully shows the mileage between each of them and my house.

The RCO lists two categories of teacher. There are 28 Accredited Teachers who work to a set of teaching criteria and whose performance is continually assessed. The profiles on the RCO web site are very informative and include information about where the teaching will be given and the fee rate per hour.

There are also around a further 120 Registered Teachers who are all members of the RCO but are not subject to the accreditation regime. However, these Registered Teachers write very inconsistent profiles often with a focus on their professional qualifications than their success as a teacher and provide only vague information about their location. Few match the quality of those on the Organ Profiles site.

A unique challenge in organ tuition is assessing any potential mis-match between the location and organ on which they teach and the location and organ where you practice, with the latter potentially being on your home organ. For a period I was having lessons on the five-manual Chapel organ at Christ’s Hospital but then practicing on a two manual Allen with mid-1990s technology. This was frustrating for both my teacher and me!

Some teachers may be willing to travel to teach on the organ where you play but that will inevitably incur travel costs. It will also limit their income because they can give fewer lessons each day.

I have no instant solutions to this situation but I am concerned that the momentum generated by the Play the Organ Year and other initiatives will not have long-term benefits if potential organists cannot find a teacher that matches their objectives (not everyone wants to be ARCO!) and the organ on which they play and/or practice.

In the 1850s there was a gradual recognition in independent schools of the value of music in the curriculum of the school. However, music tuition was very limited in these schools and rarely were there staff with specific responsibility for music.

In 1864 a Public Schools Commission reviewed the curricula and standards of teaching the leading independent schools. The Commission noted that music was not seen to be important and was positioned as an extra subject that pupils could take in their spare time. In reality, periods of spare time were invariably focused on sports. Over the next decade, and led by Uppingham and Oundle schools, significant investment was made in musical education.

Many new independent schools (e.g. Marlborough, Lancing,, Hurstpierpoint, Ardingly and Cranleigh) were being founded to meet the emerging requirement for wealthy middle-class families who wished their sons to take advantage of the career opportunities that were emerging from the economic growth of the British Empire. From the outset of their foundation these schools recognised the value of music in education and students were able to experience choral singing en mass in chapel and in smaller groups of singers.

In the late 1890s there were around 230,000 clerical workers in London, 20% of them women. Both public and private sector organisation were beginning to recognise the importance of retaining skilled staff. These organisations often had managers who had been educated at independent schools and who were imbued with a respect for the value of choral singing. The organisations were keen to support initiatives to form what are now described as ‘work-place’ choirs. These gave employees to meet others that otherwise they would never have spoken to as well as the personal well-being they would experience in a choir.

Examples in London included the Civil Service Vocal Union, The Stock Exchange Orchestral and Choral Society and the Bar Musical Society. In addition, female-voice choirs were also established, but there seems to be little documentation about their activities.

In November 1924 a group of small work-place choirs assembled in the Royal Exchange to sing a concert on Armistice Day under the direction of Harold Darke, organist at the nearby St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill. This seemed to have been a successful event, leading to the formation of the City of London Choral Union. Rehearsals were held weekly in lunch periods in St. Michael’s and the 160 members were asked to pay an annual subscription of 7/6d.

The inaugural concert was held at the Bishopsgate Institute on 1 April 1925. The concert programme included Songs of the Fleet by Stanford, Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens and Darke’s The Kingdom. In 1926 the choir gave a performance of Handel’s Sampson.

By 1927 the Choral Union had become sufficiently able to give a performance of The Dream of Gerontius and Stanfords’ Stabat Mater in the Central Hall, Westminster. The organist was W.J. Tubbs – quite a feat of skill and endurance.

These choral initiatives came to an end as organizational priorities changed with the imminence of war. However, in 1941 a small group of Board of Trade civil servants started meeting at lunchtimes to sing madrigals. By 1943 the group had grown large, and permanent, enough for its founder, Vivienne Constantinides, to decide to form it into a regular Choir – the Board of Trade Choir. This choir - since renamed Whitehall Choir – has gone from strength to strength, and what started as a lunchtime diversion has turned into a regular participant in the London musical scene.

Maybe as an outcome of the work of Gareth Malone, over the last decade many work-place choirs have been established, such as the Metropolitan Police Choir. The Workplace Choir Company provides resources and encouragement for work-place choirs. We have come full-circle.

Looking at the console I was immediately struck by the number of pedal pistons (not the best of photographs) and two ‘swell’ pedals. Looking at the specification on NPOR (The NPOR | Survey V01003) whilst in the church I discovered that the pedal on the right was a crescendo pedal. Crescendo pedals in the UK are rare. St. Mary’s Southampton, Chester Cathedral and the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling come to mind. I am sure there are others but not that many.

Crescendo pedals are much more common in the USA and for many years I played an Allen digital organ with a crescendo pedal. Indeed, the American Guild of Organists offers video tuition on their use. As the organ also had enclosed Great and Swell divisions it was all too easy to put my foot on the wrong pedal, with very audible outcomes.

The technology dates back to 1857 and Patent 376 filed by Henry Willis I for a crescendo pedal that adds stops successively. Technology has moved on, but the fundamental principles have not. The Rollschweller drum on a German organ is fundamental to the performance of Romantic organ music of the period.

Take for example the Opus 65 Chorale Prelude ‘From Heaven above, behold I come’ by Sigfrid Kart-Elert. The composer specifies a crescendo pedal in the score to manage the smooth transition from f to fff in something around seven seconds or so.

Replicating this in a performance on a British (or French) organ using combination pistons is never going to provide a smooth increase in sonority and intensity. See this attempt! Not what Karg-Elert had in mind.

The photo below is a screen grab from the duplex recital that I reviewed last week

Take a look at it in action at 1hr 11mins and 1hr 26 mins into the recital where small-scale Bach pieces are transformed into full ‘orchestral’ transcriptions.

A primary requirement of a crescendo pedal is the availability of 16’, 8’ and 4’ ranks on the organ. The Sauer organ in St. Thomas has 28 8’ ranks, 6 16’ and 9 4’ ranks! The Sidmouth organ has 12 ranks at 8’ (including some solo ranks), 5 at 4’ and 2 at 16’. There is a very interesting article in Diapason magazine in which the author (unnamed!) adapts (or rather tries to adapt) the multiple ranks of the Fisk organ in the Jacob’s School of Music, Indiana, instrument in an attempt to replicate the impact of a crescendo pedal in a performance of Max Reger’s Phantasie and Fugue on BACH Opus 46. The Fisk has 12 ranks at 8’ and 6 at 4’.

Moving the roller towards the performer to create this crescendo is sensible as there is no need to extend the foot at an uncomfortable angle. In setting up the crescendo pedal it is important to not only add but remove ranks to maintain the clarity of the texture, and also to support diminuendos which may be more dramatic and end in a different place from where the crescendo started.

At the time of my visit to Sidmouth I did not have an opportunity to play the organ. I’m looking forward to a return visit and taking some Reger and Karg-Elert with me!

I was reminded of this performance a few days ago (7 May) when watching a programme of Bach’s music being played in a ‘duplex’ recital by Johannes Lang, Organist at Saint-Thomas in Leipzig and Karol Mossakowski, titular organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris. The players alternated between the venues on a high-quality streaming channel with excellent (most of the time) sound quality. It is now available on YouTube.

Watching the recital illustrates the very different console layouts between the three-manual Sauer organ in Saint-Thomas and the five-manual Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sulpice. Both have terraced stop-jambs but arranged in a straight line (Saint-Thomas) and curved (Saint-Sulpice). Most notable is the Walze (roller) or Rollschweller device on the Sauer organ. The Saint-Sulpice organ dates from the 1860s and the St, Thomas organ from 1908 so they are broadly contemporary with each other and the date of publication of the music editions being used. There is a more recent four-manual organ in Saint Thomas built by Woehl with a focus on Baroque performance.

I’ve described the programme as being of Bach’s music because not all of it was written for the organ. Examples include the Guilmant transcription of the Sinfonia of Cantata 29 (much closer to the orchestral score than the Dupré transcription) from Paris and the Reger transcription of the Prelude and Fugue in D major from Book Two of the Well-Tempered Clavier from Germany.

Then there are performances of the Fantasia in G minor edited by Straub (1913) and by Charles-Marie Widor (actually co-edited with Albert Schweitzer) from 1912, and much more. The recital concludes with a performance from Saint-Sulpice of the Toccata (as performed by Widor) and the Fugue (from St Thomas) in D minor (BWV565).

It was a pity that there was not room for the quite astonishing transcription by Max Reger of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue . No one has played it with more elan than the late Nicolas Kynaston.

This recital, which lasts just over two hours, is not only a showcase for the two organs but also for the musicianship and keyboard management of the two organists, and of course for the music of Bach. This is how Bach would have sounded in the early 20th century in France and Germany - in effect you are enjoying the benefits of a time-machine. You never feel Bach’s genius is being diminished by performances which are not in line with current performance practice by many British organists.

Technically the video is superb but from time to time there is some breakup of the sound signal during fortissimo passages. BTW, when you watch the video you should note that the recital starts 15 minutes after the start of the recording, and it is best listened to with headphones unless you have seriously good desk-top speakers.

The impact of Gareth Malone’s choirs shows how vital singing is to our mental health and the country-wide furor over the plans to disband the BBC Singers caught the BBC by complete surprise. The focus of the book is the history of the singers and conductors who over the years have contributed to the immensely strong tradition of both liturgical and secular choral singing we have in the UK.

The scope is very broad, encompassing monastery, cathedral and parish church choirs and at the same time giving due attention to mixed voice amateur and semi-professional choirs.

The 450pp book is divided into eight sections

• The medieval choir

• From Reformation to the Civil War

• From the Restoration to Georgian Enlightenment

• The Musical Festival and Choral Society in the Nineteen Century

• Church and Cathedral Choirs in the Nineteenth Century

• World War to World War , 1914-1945

• Into the Second Elizabethan Era

• Enter the New Millennium.

Although it is the choirs that are the primary focus of the book, their existence, growth and decay are all presented within the context of social and musical history. There are also some interesting stories about personalities along the way – the development of the King’s College Choir from A.H. Mann to Sir David Willcocks is just one example!

Throughout the text there are extensive reference to sources, with seventy pages of notes and a thirty-page bibliography as you would expect from a professional librarian. There is also an excellent index, with over 50 entries for Westminster Abbey alone as well as one to Anna Lapwood. As a source book for academic research it is an invaluable resource. However, such is the elegance of the style of writing that anyone with an interest in choral music as a choir member, conductor or listener can (and indeed should) read the book from cover to cover and on every page gain insights presented by an author who was also a musical historian and a choral conductor

The final sentences in the book reads

“Whatever the vicissitudes may face the choral community somehow the desire for people to preserve Britain’s immensely diverse singing culture will win through in the end. That, at least, must be our hope.”

The book is published by Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer, and is available in both hardback (£115.00) and paperback (£32.99) and also in EPUB and PDF formats. If you need additional justification in making the purchase decision, Jeremy Dibble’s review in Gramophone may be the clincher!

To give just one example, the organ of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, London has some ranks from an organ installed in 1684 by Renatus Harris. The organ was renovated and enlarged in 1788, 1859, 1868, 1886, 1907, 1914, 1916, 1926, 1961, 1975 and 2010. There have been seventeen organists, including Dr. Harold Darke from 1916-1966.

Harold Darke at the console of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, London

The pioneer in rigorously examining the historical development of both organs and organ cases was Revd. Andrew Freeman (1876-1947).

It is of course purely by coincidence that this year we note the birth of Revd. Andrew Freeman in 1876 and the birth of the British Institute of Organ Studies in 1976. Freeman was born in Newbury, the son of a tobacconist. He had three younger sisters, Blanche, Sarah and Margaret. He was educated at Cambridge University, graduating in 1895 and taking his BMus in 1903. In 1901 he married Ethel Mary Male whose family lived in Cambridge. In 1911 he is recorded as living in Streatham as an organist (at Immanuel Church) and music teacher. In 1915 he was ordained and served at a number of London churches before finally moving to Standish-cum-Hardwicke, Gloucestershire in 1924.

Freeman was a pioneer in recording the history of organs, organ cases and organ builders, allied to becoming a highly skilled photographer creating a collection of around 1600 photographic negatives. Undertaking this research through working through physical archives was very challenging. Typical of his work is a 1921 profile in Musical Times of John Howe, an organ builder in the early 16^th century, noting that perhaps he was the most considerable builder of his day. He wrote extensively for Musical Times, sometimes over a pseudonym. His collection of glass-plate negatives were given to the British Organ Archive by his family.

in the USA the Organ Historical Society had already emerged from a meeting of organists in New York in 1956. In the UK in the early 1970s little attention had yet to be paid to the archival history of the organ. A number of books by (amongst others) W.L Sumner, Cecil Clutton, Austin Niland and Laurence Elvin were beginning to document the technical evolution of the organ and in their book The British Organ Clutton and Niland paid particular attention to the design of organ cases.

In 1975 a group of organ historians that included Bernard Edmonds, Michael Gillingham, Nicholas Plumley, Michael Sayer and Nicholas Thistlethwaite established a foundation committee which, in 1976, formed the British Institute of Organ Studies.

Bernard Edmonds was a significant figure in the documentation of history of organ building in Britain. His contributions include the compilation of the Freeman-Edmonds Directory of British Organ Builders, which lists every organ builder who ever worked in the British Isles from the earliest times to the middle of the twentieth century.

BIOS now has over 500 members and the scale of its activities can be judged by the breadth of expertise and roles of the members of the Council. The Council oversees subcommittees focused on Publications and the Historic Organ Listing Scheme. The annual BIOS Review and the quarterly BIOS Reporter are well worth the membership fee of £37 as well as feeling that you are supporting the diverse and very important work of BIOS.

Additionally, Council members collaborate in Joint Committees with the University of Birmingham for the British Organ Archive and with The Royal College of Organists for the National Pipe Organ Register.

Details of BIOS Conferences and announcements of new publications can be found on the BIOS web site, but the News and Events page is not visible on the main drop-down menu.

The story of Samuel Sebastian Wesley’s life and achievements are now well documented, though this was certainly not the case in 1968 when the distinguished musicologist Eric Routley wrote his book The Musical Wesleys 1703-1876. In the Preface to the book Routley writes “The amount of ‘hard’ information is tantalizingly small”. However, he seems to have overlooked a biography by Gerald Spink published in 1937, though finding a copy of it is very challenging!

The Wikipedia profile on Samuel Sebastian is well curated and a good starting point.

It was not until 2004 that a comprehensive biography was published. Entitled Samuel Sebastian Wesley: A life, it was written by Peter Horton based on his DPhil thesis and it runs to 416 pages. Ten years earlier the author had given the Millenium Lecture of the Church Music Society on the subject of the church music of Samuel Sebastian, which is a very readable summary of his life. Peter Horton had already written The Unknown Wesley: The Early Instrumental and Secular Vocal Music of Samuel Sebastian Wesley in 1999 and in 2021 wrote a profile of Samuel Sebastian at Leeds Parish Church.

Samuel Sebastian is noted for writing A Few Words on Cathedral Music in 1849 whilst at Leeds Parish Church. The ‘few words’ runs to over 40 pages and has been reprinted and republished by Hinrichsen.

There are some valuable deep dives into a number of aspects of Wesley’s music. R.J Stove provides a very detailed account of Wesley as an organist (including a very informative analysis of the Choral Song and Fugue) based on a lecture he gave in October 2016 at the Musicological Society of Australia’s Victorian Chapter symposium.

Andrew Huish discusses both the text/music structure of Ascribe unto the Lord in his 2022 DMA thesis at Texas Tech University and also how it is best conducted. Arlis John Heibert considers all of Wesley’s anthems and services in his landmark 1965 thesis. Only the first chapter can be read online but this does provide a very comprehensive list of Wesley’s compositions and lists out contemporary accounts of his music.

Finally in this reading list is Samuel Sebastian Wesley--His Life and Music in Relation to the Nineteenth Century, a thesis by Jean Logue dating from 1977.

All the items referred to in this post are open access on the web with the exceptions of the books by Routley and Horton, and the thesis by Heibert.

Finally, a ‘strange but true’. In the current edition of Ancient and Modern the composer of ‘Hereford’ is given as Samuel Wesley 1766-1837.

Update on 18 April - It has been pointed out to me by a subscriber that I had omitted Music and The Wesleys, a multi-author book edited by Nicholas Temperley and published by the University of Illinois Press in 2010. Somehow it fell through an editorial gap between the initial draft and the creation of the Substack post.

[There will be no post published on 22 April.]

As I write I have two books on my desk that are both excellent examples of the role of a compendium editor. To my left is the IAO Millennium Book published by the Incorporated Association of Organists in 2000, edited by Paul Hale, a distinguished organist and organ consultant. On my right is A Century of Organs & Organists, also edited by Paul Hale and published this month by the Royal School of Church Music to mark the centenary of the Organ Club.

The Organ Club compendium has thirteen chapters organised into four sections. The sections cover the formation and activities of the Club (with a valuable biographies of both Henry Willis I and Henry Willis III), the technological development of the organ (including a fascinating account of a century of organ recording in the UK), three chapters on the evolution of church music and five chapters on organ performance and teaching. There is something for everyone, but perhaps it would have been interesting to have had an overview of recital programmes at Organ Club events to track the evolution of repertoire.

The quality of each chapter is of the very highest in authority and readability. Just checking on topics where I have a personal interest, I was disappointed to see no reference to the BBC broadcasts of the Monday organ recitals by Harold Darke from St. Michael’s Cornhill, which started on 19 October 1925 and in due course were transmitted to the BBC over a specially-installed telephone line to 2LO.

The chapters cover topics that have long needed authoritative documentation, notably on the development of digital organs from 1932 forward, the scope of organ recordings in the UK, the extent of BBC interest in organs and organ recitals and a stimulating chapter on teaching the organ today. The book also reminds us of the role of Henry Willis III in catalyzing the creation of the Organ Club and the contribution of the Willis firm to the technical development of organs. There is a fascinating chapter on the history of the Willis III organ in Liverpool Cathedral which burst into life in October 1926 – another important centenary.

The production of the 319pp book is to the very highest standard, though with a weight of over 1kg it is not comfortable bedtime reading! Each chapter is a voyage of exploration into topics that all members of the organ community should have an interest in. My only disappointment is the lack of an index. Given the title of the book an alphabetical list of organists and organs mentioned in the chapters would have been very helpful.

The Organ Club, the RSCM and above all Paul Hale are to be congratulated on their respective roles in creating such a superb and important book. It is available from the RSCM Shop at a price of £22.00 - significantly less than your next fee for a wedding.

See also my post for 1 April about the composition that the Organ Club has commissioned from Denis Bédard to mark the Club’s centenary.

In closing I should note that the IAO Millennium Book is no longer in print but copies are still available from many second-hand book services. It will sit nicely on your bookshelf alongside The Organ Club’s book.