The UK's leading Digital Church Organ specialist
Our second release for 2018 Choral Accompaniment series is Noble’s Magnificat in B minor. Here the organ has a relatively simple accompaniment with little opportunity for independent flair, but there is the chance for a wide range of registration variation as discussed below. For our 2018 tutorial series we’re concentrating on the organ as a…
[Read More]
Welcome to the first release in the 2018 Choral Accompaniment series. In this first tutorial we’ve chosen the rousing favourite, “O Thou the Central Orb” by Charles Wood. For our 2018 tutorial series we’re concentrating on the organ as a means of choral accompaniment. Church choral music was chosen to illustrate the accompaniment of various…
[Read More]
Decembers hymn is the much-loved Christmas carol “ O Come, O Come, Emmanuel ”. The words were originally written in Latin text and combined from various antiphons by an unknown author, possibly in the 12th Century. The Latin text was translated into English by John Mason Neale in 1851. It is believed that the melody…
[Read More]
For the month of November we have selected the hymn “O God our help in ages past”, written by Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748) and accompanied by the tune “St. Anne”. This tune is written by the English composer and Organist, William Croft (1677 – 1727). The hymn is often sung as part of Armistice…
[Read More]
Hymn of the Month for October is “Jerusalem the Golden” which is a Christian hymn by John Mason Neale (1818-1866). The text is a translation of a section of Bernard of Cluny’s (12th century) Latin verse satire De Contemptu Mundi. The hymn is accompanied by the tune Ewing by the Scottish born composer Alexander Ewing…
[Read More]
The Hymn of the Month this time is “Let us with a gladsome mind” which is a text written in 1623 by John Milton (1608-1674), the famous poet and author of Paradise Lost. This is set to the hymn tune Monkland, by John Antes (1740-1811), a Moravian minister and composer. Monkland’s melodic contour is a…
[Read More]
This time our Hymn of the Month is the song, “Faithful Shepherd, feed me” accompanied by the beautiful tune “Pastor Pastorum” by Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860). The words, by Thomas Benson Pollock (1836-1896), are appropriate for Communion. Faithful Shepherd is a gentle, serene hymn and Silcher’s simple yet elegant hymn tune Pastor Pastorum provides a perfect…
[Read More]
In this “Hymn of the Month” we present you with the hymn song “Praise to the Holiest in the height” by John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890). This is accompanied by the hymn tune “Gerontius” by the English musician and clergyman John Bacchus Dykes (1823 – 1876). John B. Dykes was born in Hull, England,…
[Read More]
In this “Hymn of the Month” we present you with the hymn song “ 0 Thou who at Thy Eucharist didst pray ” by William Harry Turton (1856 -1938). This is accompanied by the hymn tune “Song 1” from the outstanding English composer and organist Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). Orlando Gibbons was one of the greatest…
[Read More]
This month we present the hymn “Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise”, by the great hymn writer Charles Wesley (1707 – 1788). This hymn is usually sung to the Welsh tune LLANFAIR, attributed to Robert Williams (1782 – 1821), even though some historians have certain doubts about his authorship. This hymn was written for…
[Read More]
For this month’s hymn we have appropriately selected the Christian Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today”. The author is unknown but early manuscripts suggest that the hymn was written in Germany in the 14th century. The hymn is most frequently set to the hymn tune “Easter Hymn” which was composed in the Lyra Davidica…
[Read More]
The hymn tune of the month this time is “Passion Chorale” which was originally composed by Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612). The most common text associated to this hymn tune is “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” which is a Christian Passion hymn based on a Latin text written during the Middle Ages. Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) originally…
[Read More]
This month’s hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul”, is a Christian hymn paraphrasing the Magnificat written by Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926 – ) in 1962. In the early days this hymn was paired to a tune by Michael Baughen but it was later paired and greatly enhanced by the sweeping music of Walter Greatorex’s (1877 – 1949)…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
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…
[Read More]
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, ( 1848 – 1918) was a fine composer, teacher and historian of music. As a composer he is no doubt best known for the choral song Jerusalem which sets the words of William Blake. And recently he came to notice again when his coronation anthem I was Glad was part of…
[Read More]
For our 2016 series of You Tube videos we have changed to present a Hymn of the Month. This is in response to customers requesting recordings of how our instruments would support church worship. The tutorial series has moved to a new channel dedicated to our custom built Regent Classic instruments. These videos can now be…
[Read More]
Our tune this month is written by a most remarkable American William Howard Doane Doane was born in Connecticut in 1832 to prosperous parents. His father was the head of Doane and Treat, cotton manufacturers. Doane showed impressive musical talent and by early adolescence he was playing the flute, violin and double bass fiddle. Doane attended…
[Read More]
Stay up to date with Viscount on Facebook and Twitter
