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Better late than never, thanks to a pandemic that some of you may have heard of, we bring you Viscount’s organ performance tutorials for 2021. This series concentrates on recent works by composers associated with the Viscount showroom’s local area of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. You will get tips about playing each of the pieces from…
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As we near the end of 2020, a year of virus-related restrictions, it seems ironic and possibly even a little cruel to have chosen late in 2019 to feature wedding and memorial music in this year’s tutorials. It has been a year in which those important events in human experience have sometimes been limited in…
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The fifth piece in the 2020 organ tutorial series is Pachelbel’s famous (some might say infamous) Canon in D. For reasons that probably have a lot to do with Classic FM, movies, and wedding websites, it has become a firm favourite for the bridal procession at weddings. It was the hilarious topic of a sketch…
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The fourth piece in this year’s organ performance tutorial series is Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, written by England’s arguably greatest German import, George Frederick Handel. Jonathan Kingston and Francis Rumsey discuss what one might do with it on the organ, as it’s often asked for at weddings. The Queen of Sheba herself is…
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For the second piece in this year’s series Francis and Jonathan discuss the Solemn Melody by Sir Henry Walford Davies. Rather like Nimrod that they did in the first tutorial of 2020, this could be a useful piece for the end of a funeral. The work was originally scored for cello, strings and organ, so…
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For our first piece in this year’s series of organ performance tutorials, Jonathan Kingston and Francis Rumsey take a look at “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar. It’s a useful, solemn piece for the beginning or end of a funeral, or perhaps for Remembrance Day, which needs careful management of dynamics. < Enigma…
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For our fifth tutorial in the organ registration tutorials series, Francis discusses the registration of hymn accompaniments with Jonathan Kingston. Accompanying hymns is many organists’ primary role, and feedback suggests that a number of you would like to hear a bit more about this. We’ve chosen three hymns —“Praise my soul the king of heaven”,…
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As many organists will no doubt be aware, Buckfast Abbey in Devon has recently benefited from the installation of a remarkable new pipe organ by Fratelli Ruffatti. This dramatic new instrument sports two beautiful consoles and a gallery organ, the whole thing playable from either end of the church. As part of the completion of…
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For our second tutorial in the Organ Registration Tutorial Series Jonathan and Francis take a look at Buxtehude’s big G minor Praeludium, as a way in to discussing how to register baroque music of the North German school. This piece is a great example of the so-called stylus phantasticus, and a precursor to Bach’s preludes or…
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I (Francis Rumsey) found myself in Dublin in late August, invited by Viscount’s Irish dealer David Jeffers to voice two rather different Physis-based organs that they had recently installed. The experience brought into sharp focus the differences between voicing a smallish organ in a modest church with limited reverberation, and a large one in a…
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