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The 2017 series was recorded at the lovely medieval church of St Mary’s Chalgrove. I chose this church partly because it is close to our base in Bicester but also because it is of a fairly typical size of the parish church in which we install our organs and especially as it has some of…
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In the last weeks before Christmas I have been listening to the previews of Hymn of the Month and the Regent Classic Tutorial videos. To speed up the process of review the files are sometimes ‘compressed’ by the various delivery systems in differing ways and I have been conscious for the first time of how…
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An Organ Recital given by Francis Rumsey will take place on Saturday 28th January 2017 at 7pm in aid of the St Mary’s roof restoration fund. Francis Rumsey is the organist at St Mary Witney. As well as an accomplished player Francis is an audio engineer and former professor who will illustrate the programme with interesting information about…
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The first tune of this year’s Hymn of the Month series is the famous hymn “We Three Kings”. It is also commonly known as “We Three Kings of Orient Are” or “The Quest of the Magi”, and is a Christmas carol written by John Henry Hopkins Jr. (1820 – 1891). Hopkins wrote the words and…
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With our organ audio management recently extended to be able to spread the stops over 28 independent audio channels plus bass we have extraordinary flexibility to manage sound delivery in your church or concert hall and so we have invested in developing speaker cabinets acoustically tuned to optimise the sound for individual stop families. As…
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As ever, we do enjoy a challenge and generally it comes in the direction of SOS organ hires. We received a call from James Thomas the Director of Music at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He was up against it and at very short notice needed to hire an organ for an event in the choir school which…
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This post is part of a series where I share some of my world travels, which my love for organs has taken me. I help friends, associates and fellow organ lovers with projects that mean I get to see new and old organs in gorgeous settings and really experiment with this instrument. Those of you…
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Trying to compile a list of the greatest composers of organ music, is a little like putting ones head in the lion’s mouth. Given the influence of personal taste, period, and style, perhaps the question is almost a silly one to pose? Even so, I think there will be universally agreed ‘giants’ of the instrument…
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Since the instrument was first invented, the organ has fascinated players and audiences for its construction and size and its musical tone. I doubt there is any other musical instrument that has evolved so greatly, incorporating new technologies as they become available, and where sheer size has been a driving ambition of many builders. Years…
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Our final tune in this year’s series is befittingly the old English traditional Christmas carol “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”. The composer is unknown but there are records of it being sung within the Christian Church since the 15th century. The hymn was first put into print in 1760 but made available to a wider…
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Towards the end of September we were making another DVD in Selby Abbey and staying near York so it was too good an opportunity to pass by visiting some of the very fine churches in the city. Also never having played York Minster it seemed an ideal time to see if we could have some…
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The hymn tune Thaxted is taken from the middle section of “Jupiter”, one of the seven movements in the orchestral suite “The Planets” by Gustav Theodore Holst (1874 –1934). Holst adapted the theme from Jupiter to suit the patriotic poem “I Vow to Thee, my Country”, by Cecil Spring-Rice (1859–1918), which honours the soldiers who…
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I had great fun playing the newly restored Willis organ at St Mary & St Giles in Stony Stratford in September this year. The organ has just had a £250,000 major overhaul by F H Browne & Sons which included adding 4 stops that had been prepared for, but never made, and also replacing a…
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Darwall’s 148th or simply Darwall as it is sometimes known is the tune featured this month. The is an especially confident and optimistic tune with the resounding ascent of the final line, was composed by Reverend John Darwall (1731–1789). It was first published as a setting for Psalm 148 in Aaron William’s New Universal Psalmodist…
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Recently, while I was setting up a blog post on the Regent Classic web site to promote the 6 recitals that Joseph Nolan will play for us this year, I remembered that I must get them listed on www.organrecitals.com and this got me thinking. Management of web sites as they grow gets ever more time consuming and complex….
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The RCO Academy are running courses from Friday 28 Oct to Sunday 30 October 2016 (in the Autumn half term) for young organists and pianists. These are generously supported by The GMC Trust, The Williams Church Music Trust and The William Haddon Charitable Foundation. There are two courses to choose from: “Find your feet” This is for early steps…
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Our tune this month is Golden Sheaves, composed by the very popular man of his time (and ours) Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900). Sullivan was a Member of the Victorian Order (MVO) and an English composer. William Chatterton Dix (1837 – 1898) wrote the words to “To thee, O…
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On a magnificent summer day in late July the RCO had invited a group of supporters to join them at a lunchtime reception in Trinity College to observe part of the ‘Organ Scholar Experience’ course taking place over 5 days at various colleges and also nearby Ely Cathedral. We gathered near midday in ‘the old…
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When choosing the hymn tunes for this first series of ‘Hymn of the Month’ I was determined that we should have at least a couple of ‘Welsh’ ones and Bleanwern is as good an example as you can find. Composed by William Penfro Rowlands (1860–1937), during the Welsh revival of 1904–1905. William is pictured here…
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Those of you who are regular Facebook browsers may well have seen the request go out for a suitable instrument for this recent outdoor service to commemorate the opening of the new Aldington War Memorial. There was no immediate local response so we decided to help out organist Andrew Butler, and arrange for our…
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Now that our quiz is over and the winner announced I can reveal the location where much of the recording was done. Our near top secret visit to St John’s Harpenden took place later than planned on November 6th last year. The original date we reserved during the half term weekend was double booked with…
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In 2016 we ran an extensive three month competition to introduce more people to the sound of digital church organs. We developed a Quiz that tested the players as to whether they could identify specific clips of music as a pipe organ or a digital organ. We had a phenomenal result in terms of the…
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This tune is possibly one of the best known from its inclusion in almost all hymnals and it is a fitting accompaniment for the words ‘Now thank we all our God’ Both words and music originate in Germany in the early 1600’s. The tune written by Cruger who was simultaneously a teacher at the school Zum Grauen…
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Finally the restoration of the famous Hill Organ at Selby Abbey is complete! And to celebrate – we are joining Selby Abbey in one big grand celebration concert to mark this milestone. Shortly after installing our instrument in 2014 we recorded DVD’s of John Scott Whiteley and D’Arcy Trinkwon playing our instrument while their Hill organ was being restored….
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