FelixLowe
New member
Recently, I spotted a pretty elucidating organ method textbook from a piano shop, written by a British organist named Anne Marsden Thomas. After reading through a quarter of it, I've discovered many of the issues raised by some bloggers in this thread earlier are answered, particularly about registering music from various national schools. And after comparing the book with the others available from our Central library, I found that Thomas' work is the only practice guide that has taken the care to instruct at great length on registration matters in succint style while giving short musical extracts on each point she's making. The other books so far I've come across explain copiously on fingering and pedalling, but not registration matters to the same length. And her explication on the English music section makes me wonder if the old English organ pre-1850 still exists. Yes, it does. But it is now championed by Rodgers. In 2007, I visited the Rodgers website, where they featured one or two new models, that had fanciful voices, that resembled nothing like a Classical organ, either German or English. I can't say they sounded like theatre organs, but they were so fanciful sounding, that they were rather undefined. However, there is a series of Youtube music videos from a place called FCP Congregation in the US, that features what I believe is a better and better-installed Rodgers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57-_FW5NFas. It is better because it is the traditional English Baroque style of pre-1850 -- more precisely the style championed by organists between Queen Anne and the latter days of the Industrial Revolution. After 1850, the style experienced a period of shift to Romanticism, during which many Waldflote 4', Waldhorn 8' and Cornopean 8', etc, were added. While many high-pitched stops were removed from 1890 to WWII, they were placed back in the English organ during the Organ Reform Movement post-WWII. But the English organ has continued to stick with those three stops I mentioned. The resultant style is now called English Cathedral. The old style, which I earlier termed British Chapel supposedly lived through the reign of the King Georges.
Regarding the hymn and tune on Youtube I've just affixed, there is a Memoir concerning that song used in 1953 during QE II's visit to Tonga, as featured in this website: http://www.kellner.eclipse.co.uk/genuki/NTH/Clipston/ The text there is as follows:
It was St Swithin's Day, the 15th of July 1880, a beautiful summer morning. As they busied themselves about their daily tasks, the villagers of Clipston had no idea of the calamity that was about to befall them. Halfway through the morning, the weather began to change. The wind increased from a breeze to a gale, the sky darkened and distant thunder rolled ever nearer. Then down came the rain in torrents. Hour after hour it rained, and the mown hay which lay in the fields was swept into the dykes and drains, completely blocking them. The brook could not contain the sudden increase in the flow of the water and before long, a swiftly rising tide was rushing along the village street.
A row of mud-walled dwellings were swept away by the swelling tide. The occupants had already fled their homes and no lives were lost. From the comparative safety of brick-built cottages, neighbours watched in terror from their bedroom windows, as doors were burst open and belongings were swept away by the surging water. Late in the day there was an abatement, and eventually the flood began to recede. The devastation revealed was heart-breaking, and the drying-out and mopping-up was a long and laborious process. Small wonder that this story was handed down from parent to child over many years.
In thinking of famous 'sons' of the village, mention must be made of Thomas Jarman (1776-1861), a composer of sacred music. His hymn tune, Lyngham, sometimes known as Nativity, has literally gone round the world. After her coronation in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II toured the Commonwealth. Turning on the radio to listen to a service she attended in Tonga, what a thrill it was to hear, O for a thousand tongues to sing, sung to Lyngham, Thomas Jarman's tune, composed in the village.
(The above extract from 'The Northamptonshire Village Book', compiled by the Northamptonshire Federation of Women's Institutes, is reproduced by kind permission of the publishers, Countryside Books, Newbury, Berkshire)
Regarding the hymn and tune on Youtube I've just affixed, there is a Memoir concerning that song used in 1953 during QE II's visit to Tonga, as featured in this website: http://www.kellner.eclipse.co.uk/genuki/NTH/Clipston/ The text there is as follows:
It was St Swithin's Day, the 15th of July 1880, a beautiful summer morning. As they busied themselves about their daily tasks, the villagers of Clipston had no idea of the calamity that was about to befall them. Halfway through the morning, the weather began to change. The wind increased from a breeze to a gale, the sky darkened and distant thunder rolled ever nearer. Then down came the rain in torrents. Hour after hour it rained, and the mown hay which lay in the fields was swept into the dykes and drains, completely blocking them. The brook could not contain the sudden increase in the flow of the water and before long, a swiftly rising tide was rushing along the village street.
A row of mud-walled dwellings were swept away by the swelling tide. The occupants had already fled their homes and no lives were lost. From the comparative safety of brick-built cottages, neighbours watched in terror from their bedroom windows, as doors were burst open and belongings were swept away by the surging water. Late in the day there was an abatement, and eventually the flood began to recede. The devastation revealed was heart-breaking, and the drying-out and mopping-up was a long and laborious process. Small wonder that this story was handed down from parent to child over many years.
In thinking of famous 'sons' of the village, mention must be made of Thomas Jarman (1776-1861), a composer of sacred music. His hymn tune, Lyngham, sometimes known as Nativity, has literally gone round the world. After her coronation in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II toured the Commonwealth. Turning on the radio to listen to a service she attended in Tonga, what a thrill it was to hear, O for a thousand tongues to sing, sung to Lyngham, Thomas Jarman's tune, composed in the village.
(The above extract from 'The Northamptonshire Village Book', compiled by the Northamptonshire Federation of Women's Institutes, is reproduced by kind permission of the publishers, Countryside Books, Newbury, Berkshire)
Last edited: