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By Martin Cooke · Posted
Has anyone caught wind yet of what the plan is at St Paul's in terms of the top organists/s posts? William Fox was originally appointed Sub-Organist under Andrew Carwood and Simon Johnson, and then, upon the latter's departure for Westminster Cathedral, he was appointed Acting Organist and Assistant Director of Music. Now he is moving to St Albans as DoM that leaves two vacancies - Organist and Assistant DoM + Sub Organist. I realise that they are not short of organists at St Paul's, at least, not at the moment. In addition to two top level 'outreach/education' people who replaced Tom Daggett, Martin Ford has been playing there as Acting Sub-Organist and there is an FRCO Organ Scholar. I haven't seen any announcements or advertisements and it's some while now since WF's appointment to St Albans was announced. Elsewhere... Presumably Claudia Grinnell's post at Winchester will be re-filled. Are there other significant vacancies or posts to fill? -
From Google April 21st is: World Curlew Day · National Tea Day · World Creativity and Innovation Day · National Yellow Bat Day · National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day Is it any surprise the media don’t necessarily pick all these up? International organ day is a pretty new concept. And an attempt by RCO to promote itself. Time will tell whether it takes off. -
Alas, even my Alexa, which tells me about all kind of international days hadn't a clue that it was International Organ Day. Ah well... there's always next year. -
By Colin Pykett · Posted
I shouldn't imagine the BBC has anything against the organ per se. Rather, it probably has more to do with meeting the interests of the majority of listeners. The BBC quite likely thinks that there wouldn't be much point wasting even more hundreds of kilowatt-hours of RF energy by broadcasting to an R3 audience which is already tiny enough as it is. The organ just isn't up there at all when it comes to matters like this. Example - how many people actually knew it was International Organ Day yesterday? It's not just the BBC as I listened to a good few hours of Classic FM on and off throughout the day and it never figured at all. Then there's its repertoire - although large, much of it is regarded as absolute rubbish by an educated musical public, and they have a point. The majority of people I meet deride things like Franck's L'Organiste even if they've come across it, Elgar's Vesper Voluntaries, S S Wesley's later output consisting of endless Andantes etc, and so on. Even some of the latter's finest pieces such as the Larghetto in F sharp minor or the Andante in F are in the 'slow and funereal' category which typifies much organ music in the mind of many, and bores them to death. And, of course, a definite downside is that you have to go to church more often than not to hear live performances. And so it goes on. At the time I thought the BBC did us a favour by broadcasting a homage to the organ, lamenting the way it is vanishing, at Christmas 2022. What a bitter taste arises now that we know more about the man who presented it, himself an organist, though the blame for that can hardly be laid at the door of the BBC. But from time to time, programmes like this show that they do at least try. I'm not saying that I hold or support these views myself, but I can understand to some extent those who do. As I've said before on here more than once, until the organ world starts to comprehend the mindset of the 'customer' for the organ in its broadest sense, things are unlikely to get better, and they might even get worse.
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