July / August 2020 Number 79 Derby & District Organists' Association Registered Charity No. 510567 Newsletter DDOA Events 2020 Tuesday 7th July: Talk by Richard Brice. St Peter’s Belper. POSTPONED to 2021 Monday 28th September: Seminar: ‘Practice Makes Perfect?’ led by Dr Tom Corfield. St Matthew’s, Darley Abbey. Yes, practice makes perfect, but how do we practise? How can we use what time and opportunities we have to maximum advantage? These are vital questions for all of us who are players, but unfortunately there are no easy answers. There are no methods that can be universally applied; there are no routines that will fit every situation. Practice is essentially problem-solving and that will vary from one piece to the next, from one occasion to the next, and of course from one person to another. Perhaps though there are some underlying principles which can help us and perhaps there are certain specific techniques that people might find Early History of the Organ in Britain useful. The meeting offers a chance to explore the topic together and to - Shameful or Glorious? pool ideas. I hope that we will all come away with some thoughts about how we Readers may recall that the in our own lifetime the experience is can practise more effectively. previous issue of the Newsletter unprecedented. featured a report on our visit to Saturday 17th October: Association Pondering on the history of the organs at Repton, Newton Solney Lunch, Horsley Lodge. development of organs and its and Winshill in the Trent Valley. associated culture in Britain, one soon Monday 16th November: AGM and This was a memorable visit for the discovers disruptions that have Chairman’s Evening. quality and variety of the caused organ building to stare in the instruments we heard and played. face of extinction more than once. IAO Midlands Organ Day planned for In retrospect it must be even more Whereas the existence of organs has September has been postponed to 2021. memorable for the fact that being been known since the Roman era, scheduled just two days before the physical evidence in Britain does not national health emergency and exist before Tudor times and the consequent ‘lockdown’, it earliest surviving playable instrument represented a ‘normality’ for organ only dates back to 1704 (St visits that we had totally taken for Botolph’s, Aldgate). Reflecting on our granted; on that day we had no visit to St Wystan’s Parish Church, concept of a culture of ‘social Repton we learned that the new case distancing’ which has prevailed for the rebuilt organ in 1998 “was ever since. We constantly hear inspired by the oldest known in that the ‘normality’ that we have Britain, the c.1540 case at Old been used to will not return for a Radnor in Wales” (photo). Organist, long while yet, and the ‘new Terry Bennett, laments that funds at normal’ will be very different from the time did not allow the protruding the old, but those differences have towers to be imitated, but is yet to be defined. We find nevertheless highly gratified that ourselves living through an historic such a handsome case was achieved, disruption to local, national and even to the point of including four Above: The 1998 Peter Collins Organ at St international life. Such events are embossed pipes imitating its Wystan’s Parish Church, Repton not uncommon in history, the precursor. Comparing the images of Derbyshire village of Eyam is Main photo: c.1540 organ case at St Stephen’s, Repton and Old Radnor, the famous for its social isolation as a Old Radnor, Wales, considered to be the oldest inspiration is clear to see. organ case in Britain. means of fighting the Plague, but might be occasional solo organ items. For the congregation the Catholic mass was conducted ‘on their behalf’ and excluded direct participation. The significance of these factors was that the organ of the period was never a large instrument. When the Reformation came along, aimed at shedding the Catholic past, organs were banished, or perhaps considered to be too small to be worth saving. The suppression of monasteries intensified the destruction of many cultural artefacts. Thus for organs there was a great disruption and break from the past. Development of its technology and culture came to an abrupt end and no organs were made in Britain between 1560 and 1590. This was in tragic contrast with the vibrant and innovative organ building culture on the continent which developed to fulfil the increasing status of the Thomas Dallam’s organ, commissioned by The Wetheringsett Organ (Goetze & Gwynn, 2001) organ as a symbol of wealth Elizabeth I as a gift to Sultan Mehmet III, was amongst competing cities and ruling essentially a clockwork driven barrel organ, Recently, on revisiting The English dynasties. When eventually organs equipped with a keyboard, a clock and Organ (TEO) DVDs, I was reminded came back into favour, the most miscellaneous mechanical animations. that the Old Radnor case (in Wales) Standing sixteen feet high, the oak case is successful builder was Thomas carved, painted and gilded. The organ can is where Daniel Moult begins his Dallam who, amongst several be played manually and the clockwork can odyssey in search of the origins of prestigious commissions, built play five songs. The 24 hour clock shows the the ‘English’ organ. The origin of organs for Kings College Cambridge, Sun’s position and the phases of the Moon. the case is unclear, but scholars are Worcester Cathedral, Tewkesbury On the hour the instrument would give a performance as follows: confident that it dates from the Abbey and most famously an organ Trumpeters play - Queen Elizabeth raises her reign of Henry VIII. What is certain for Sultan Mehmet III in 1599. The sceptre - Planets revolve around the Queen - is that it was sensitively restored in latter was a gift from Elizabeth I to Bells play a four part melody - Birds sing and 1872 under the supervision of Revd. the new ruler of the Turkish flutter in a holly bush - A talking head tells the Frederick Sutton, an ardent Ottoman Empire, presumably oiling time. advocate of gothic organ design, the wheels towards a new trade and a brand new organ by deal for spices. and down the country during and J.W.Walker installed within. We can after the Civil War (1649-60). It transpired that Thomas Dallam only guess about the original Puritans regarded organs as headed a dynasty of organ builders contents of the case but the idolatorus; unaccompanied singing with son Robert and grandson discoveries of the remains of a 16th of metrical psalms was the only Thomas II, but catastrophe struck century soundboard at music allowed during Cromwell’s the organ business again when Wetherinsett, Suffolk in 1977 have rule. The Dallam’s response was Oliver Cromwell’s troops got to work given vital clues about a Tudor to flee to Brittany where there was smashing organs in churches up organ: 46 notes and 7 stops. On plenty of money still to be made the basis of this fragmentary building organs. Come the physical evidence, Goetze and Restoration of the Monarchy and Gwynn have built a modern the reign of Charles II, Robert reconstruction, the Wetheringsett returned to England and took full Organ, and recordings on this by advantage of the national mood to Moult feature in the TEO DVD set. get back to 1642, as if the interim The modest size of this organ, had never happened. Charles II, thought to be typical of instruments having spent time during exile at in the period, reflects its limited role Versailles, brought back a Baroque in the liturgy of the time. In huge influence to popular fashion. contrast to what we have become Unsurprisingly, the organs that familiar in modern usage in parish Robert Dallam built on his return churches and cathedrals, the organ contained the sounds of French was rarely an accompanying reeds and mutations. Thus the instrument. Nicholas Thistlethwaite momentum for building organs was has described the musical demands re-established paving the way to of pre-reformation services in which the prolific era of the 18th century The ‘Milton’ organ at Tewkesbury Abbey, built by the role of the organ was to with builders Renatus Harris (a Thomas Dallam in 1631 originally for Magdalen alternate with singers rather than to College Oxford. Having been much altered down grandson of Thomas Dallam), accompany verses of psalms. There the ages, only the case is Dallam’s. ‘Father Smith’ and others in great 2 demand, and the outpouring of those music, pioneered by Samuel Wesley, glorious cornet voluntaries by amplified by Mendelssohn’s visits to Stanley et al. As well as fulfilling the Britain and promoted through the needs of churches, organs were ventures of Gauntlet and Hill. (See frequently installed in music rooms, Bach in England, Newsletter 75 theatres and pleasure gardens that November 2019). The Bach sprang up in this period. As music awakening, had a profound effect on making found a wider audience, it the course of organ building, laying became a major cultural and social the foundations of the form of activity, attracting musicians and instruments we inherit today. The composers from all over Europe, development of organs in the most notably Handel and J.C.Bach. Victorian era and beyond into the The 18th century became a golden 20th century deserves more than age for music in England. one further article. In the meantime I strongly recommend investing in Returning to the starting point of The English Organ DVD set in which our story, it is sad that the loss of Daniel Moult tells the complete story historical instruments wrought by the with ample demonstrations on turbulence of the Reformation and historic and contemporary Civil War has deprived us of physical instruments.