Malcolm Kemp

William is teaching at Trinity College of Music and doing lots of freelance work all over the world. He felt he could no longer devote enough time and energy to the church (and that one in particular has lots of sung services). His final services there was on 11th January. Over the last few years I have found him to be a very fine teacher. The job was advertised in October although I was told of his pending departure as long ago as August. Malcolm

This piece is in 6/8 time yet the metromone marking is (undotted) crotchet equals 100. I tend to feel that dotted crotchet equals 100 goes better with the marking of Allegro Moderato yet I like the slower tempo (equating roughly to dotted crotchet equals approx 67. Probably I am happiest with a midway compromise. I know it is easy to follow what others do on recordings and I know you should take into account the building and the instrument but I whould be interested to hear what other Board members think. Is there a misprint? Thanks Malcolm

Per their church website today, Dr David Trendell is to be Director of Music at St Mary's Bourne Street from the end of April. Currently D-of-M at St Bartholmoew the Great, Smithfield, as well lecturer and chapel choir director at King's College London he seems to have something of a high-profile reputation as a choral director. Born in 1964, he was a chorister at Norwich, organ scholar and, later, lecturer at Oxford. Until his arrival, Richard Hills, the very able assistant (in practice the organist) is holding the fort at Bourne street as Acting D-of-M. Malcolm

See postings under topic of Tewkesbury Abbey for further, if limited, details. Malcolm

Does anyone have a set of copies of the string parts for the Pergolesi Stabat Mater that they could lend me for the period up to and including Palm Sunday. The singers are used to using the Novello (rather than the OUP, a semitone lower) vocal score but that is not an insurmountable problem. Thanks Malcolm

Relevant to, but not answering, this question, I have become increasingly dis-satisfied with the Sanger book (the one for people who already play the piano) as a tutor for new students. I am tempted to try the OUP book "Organ Technique, Modern and Early" by Ritchie and Stauffer for my next new student(s) as it is not so exclusively pre-Romantic. Do any members have experience of using this book or wish to recommend any others? I hasten to add that I don't just stick to a book; I use it alongside what I devise for the needs of each individual. Malcolm

I also regret Nigel's leaving this Board. Before I joined he was, a couple of years ago, very helpful in trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to locate for me copies of the books that accompany his Cds on improvisation. Obviously we have a wide range of knowledge, expertise, abilities and iterests on this forum and Nigel is widely acknowledged as someone with a lot of professional knowledge and expertise which he is happy to share with others. We don't know why he is leaving and it is none of our business. However, I am mindful of previous postings on other topics referring to other members who have found it necessary to leave or change their identities. This is sad but, I suspect, inevitable in the age of the www. Malcolm,

Interesting to hear about organs in the Torquay area. I went to the Sunday morning Mass at St John's about 40 years ago when visiting relations in Torquay on my way home from an IAO Congress in Cardiff. I was allowed to sit next to the console and I recall quite a decent instrument and an all-male choir. I think that many yeas before then they had an organist called Francis Crute who went there from St Andrew's Worthing and later committed suicide. Shortly after my visit to St John's I had, for a year or so, a very nice, and musically able, young bass in my church choir in Brighton whose home church was All Saints' Babacombe and he spoke highly of the music there. I think it is a Butterfield church, rather in the style of Margaret Street. Malcolm

Yes - I am in the Meridian area for ITV and yes I did see David's choir and wife on Meridian news just now. It is good to hear a church music success story as a contrast to the sadder ones we often read on this Board. I hope boys' and girls' choirs prosper. Malcolm Riley's book suggests that Whitlock had a pretty miserable time at the neighbouring church. Malcolm

If you go to Musicroom.com and search for "Fleury variations" the first two items that come up may contain what you are after. The current on-line catalogue of UMP does not help nor does that of Allegro. Malcolm

Members of this Board may not be aware that one of our regular contributors, Ron Bayfield, has developped an interest in braille in recent years and has transcribed a lot of music into braille for David Liddle. Any money he is given for providing this service for blind people goes to charity. Malcolm

In the new Organists' Review there is a review by John Henderson of a book by Quentin Faulkner entitled "The Registration of J S Bach's Organ Works". Has anyone got and read this book and is it worth getting? This must be a very contentious subject and one hopes that anyone using the book will not forget also to use their ears! I can well imagine that Pierre will have something to say about it but I would welcome comments from others as well. £54 seems a lot to be paying for 123 pages. Malcolm

Clergy and organists/directors of music, by the nature of their jobs, come and go whereas, by and large, the core congregation stays where it is in perpetuity. Human nature being what it is, people form themselves into cliques. Organisations such as uniformed youth, choir, servers, Mothers' Union &c., all start out with the best of intentions but can - and often do - gradually develop into odious cliques which, some may argue, hinder the work of preaching the Gospel. Then, worst of all, those with a liking for power and authority form themselves into the greatest curse presently afflicting the Anglican Church, namely committees, and they get very upset when they don't get their own way. Some churches delight in putting their clergy and musicians on pedestals so that they can promptly knock them off (their pedestals) again. There are even people around who want all worship to be exactly as it was 50 or 60 years ago. What planet are they living on? In reality the church is no different in this respect from many other organisations and I speak as one who spent almost 40 years in the Civil Service. We asre dealing with people. Perhaps we are there to meet people where they are (however difficult they may seem) and gently lead them to where they need to be. If only it were that simple......... In the back streets of Brighton is a small, very extreme Anglo Catholic church; many Brighton residents probably don't even know it's there. It has a very densely populated parish, previously of ordinary, working people without any pretentions and now mainly young professionals who can easily walk to the station. From the early 1950s they had a marvellous Vicar who stayed for over 25 years and ran it rather like an Irish RC mission church. The congregation were totally united, faithful and loyal to their church. The first thing he did on arrival was to abolish all organisations so that everyone would work as one team. Having aid all that, choirs can be a wonderful aid to worship, bringing people to their knees and to the numinous in worship which is on a different level to the banal and informal. I suspect that this is more likely to be achieved in churches with semi-professional or fully professional choirs or where membership of an (unpaid) choir is seen as a privilege and not as a right just because the person concerned happens to believe in God. I sympathise greatly with Holz Gedact's friend but, as other posts have shown, his situation is by no means unique. End of rant. Malcolm

Does any member have a copy of the Organ Sonata No 3 by Percy Buck that they would be willing to loan to me for a short while, please? It has long been out of print and I gather that the master-copy (Breitkopf) was destroyed in bombing during WW2. Per a websearch there are only two libraries with copies and they are both on the other side of the world in the southern hemisphere. Malcolm

For the older members of the Board (especially in the Midlands), perhaps in order to get the work done, they may be looking for a Willis Grant? Malcolm

Having played on Saturday morning for a crematorium service where the second "hymn" (for a Scottish lady) was "O my love is like a red, red rose" I suggest that Patrick tomorrow could sing "We'll keep a welcome in the hillside" for the alfresco service he is taking. It will take his mind off the Arctic conditions! Malcolm

You are lucky it's rapidly getting considerably worse in Brighton and even the crematorium has shut down. Malcolm

As Patrick has already suggested, I think I would have taken into account all the surrounding facts. If I had not known the person concerned my initial reaction would have been to insist on a fee, especially if I had been asked to do it free of charge, but there may have been mitigating circumstances. Utimately, every case on its own merits but you can't be seen to favour some people and not others. Macolm

I have a general rule that I always provide music free of charge at weddings and funerals involving past or present choristers of mine. For example, had it not been postponed because of heavy snow, I was going to play free of charge this morning for the cremation of the father-in-law of one of my long-serving choristers. For anyone else I would need to consider the matter very seriously (but not inflexibly) and certainly would not give my services free of charge if I was asked to do so. The offer would have to come from me (and occasionally has done so). So far as rehearsals are concerned, I have never had a problem. The local crematoria (where I do a lot of playing) make an additional charge (for them and the organist) if a soloist needs a rehearsal there. I think Patrick summarises the situation well. Malcolm

I am sure others will agree that even the simpler pieces by Whitlock are not as easy as they first appear and they need a lot of care working out the fingering and phrasing. (See also the current thread about shape and architecture in pieces and the excellent comments there by Cynic.) I wonder how many people actually get the cross-phrasing in, for example, the opening bars of the Folk Tune in accordance with Whitlock's own meticulous phrasing marks. A lot of Whitlock's music is very difficult to bring off really convincingly and well, but in most instances it is well worth the effort. Malcolm

I have studied with a number of very eminent teachers over the past 45 yeas or so and I must say that Cynic summarises the situation absolutely suberbly, and succinctly, above (and PS does he want the music I offered him by e-mail about ten days or so ago when he was away?). Very well said. One point from Cynic that I would stress as being very helpful is about recording yourself. William Whitehead has greatly encouraged me to do this; it is so helpful and not a little painful and humbling at times. When I commented to him that my performances that I record never sound as I thought they did and that I notice all sorts of things that I had missed when playing *live" his reply was that everybody finds exactly this. So yes, invest in some sort of recording device - I often use a mini-disc recorder when practicing - but don't let that become a substitute for real listening. Malcolm

You notice, for example, that all the members of the laity who read seem to be sitting in the same seat and, for the length of the service, it seems to go from very light outside to black night-time very quickly and suddenly. But, if it makes lots of money for them, why not? Maintaining the chapel and its music foundation cannot be cheap even if it is a comparatively wealthy college. Are the cameras remote controlled (some always seem to be located in very awkward places) or are they operated by camera-men in situ? Malcolm

The Barry Rose/St Paul's recording "Music for a great cathedral" LP has now been issued as a CD. Very sadly, many years later, one of the solo boys on that recording, Robert Eaton, (who came from Brighton and whose family still live here) was in one of the Twin Towers in New York on the wrong day and at the wrong time. Malcolm

I have always understood that Libra is basically the boys' choir of St Philip's Norbury where Bob Prizeman has been D-of-M for many years. Malcolm

Many people in my area, including me, don't like Hyfrydol. (Sorry, Patrick, nothing personal about Wales but it always seems to be raining when I'm in Wales!) I think the best tune for "Alleluia, sing to Jesus" is "Hillingdon" which Walter Vale wrote for All Saints' Margaret Street when he was D-of-M there is the first half of the last century. They still use it and I introduced it at a Brighton church a few years ago. Very singable (slightly reminiscent of Sullivan's Lux Eoi) but the only place I have ever found it is the old Mirfield Mission Hymn Book which, for its time, was quite progressive. I expect it was one of the first books - if not the first - to have Nicholson's tune "Crucifer" to Lift high the Cross. Malcolm