David Drinkell

The Andriessen Sinfonia is on IMSLP, although since it's still in copyright, one shouldn't do more than check it out.

I concur with pcnd. The Guildford organ has had some not-too-nice things said about it over the years, but I think it's a fine achievement, possibly thwarted by the notoriously dead acoustic. The position is indeed unfortunate, although not unique - Chester is the same. I sometimes think that the cathedral with the best placed organ, allowing that the choir is in the chancel, is Kirkwall, where it sits behind a screen like a reredos and speaks directly down the main axis of the building.

Yes, indeed! It looked like a nice job when advertised through the Cathedral Organists' Association, and Bury is a lovely place, the cathedral is gorgeous, new Harrison 4 manual and very nice folk to work wth.

If it's not presumptuous to mention it, after thirteen years at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John's, Newfoundland, I have been appointed to Christchurch Cathedral, Fredericton, New Brunswick. It's a fine, cruciform church, partly by Butterfield, modelled on Snettisham Church, Norfolk, and has a very nice four-manual Casavant.

Seriously, though, I used to wonder, back in the days of prepared pianos and such-like, why no avant-garde composer had got round to writing for voice or wind instruments after a lungful of nitrogen..... Or did they? (Later edit: I meant helium! I am an idiot when it comes to science).

I remember playing for him in a couple of seminars on extemporisation at Bristol University in 1977. He was very perceptive and helpful, and those sessions helped to set the path which I followed. RIP.

I think the wearing of gloves is quite common in the trade these days. With regard to cone tuning, I know of a modern small two manual by a Belgian firm in a Roman Catholic church which was originally coned, but later fitted with slides (and converted to Equal Temperament). The tuner (from the reputable British firm in charge) said that, in order to minimize damage through cone-tuning, the pipe tops should be thinner and therefore more pliable than the rest. This had not been done and, in a short time, the mouths had started to collapse. Forumites will know that, once this has happened, the metal is weakened and will collapse again. It was a nice enough little organ, but apart from the aforesaid problems with the mouths, I thought the tracker action was on the flimsy side - they had to get the tuner in to correct ciphers on the day of my recital. I couldn't help thinking that a home-grown product - such as our hosts produce, or someone like Neil Richerby (whose organ at Haddington near Edinburgh had me enthralled) - would have been more up to the job.

I play 'Farewell to Stromness' on the organ too. The picture on the cover shows Stevie Mowat's ferry leaving the harbour for Hoy, which is in the background. The view is roughly what I had from the music room in Stromness Academy when I started teaching.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has died, aged 81, after a life of 'maniacal productivity' (Daily Telegraph). His works covered an enormous range, from the early chamber pieces to his amazing handling of a big romantic orchestra. When I moved to Orkney, my first experience was the rehearsals for his 'Kirkwall Shopping Songs', one of the earliest of many Orkney school works he wrote - often with a first performance directed by the brilliant Glenys Hughes, who was for many years a music teacher there. As with subsequent pieces, I was struck by his uncanny instinct for knowing his performers' capabilities and writing up, rather than down, to them. I subsequently used the Shopping Songs with classes of many ages and they worked at all sorts of levels. As a music teacher in the county and Organist of St. Magnus Cathedral, I was involved in a number of first performances, whether as player ('Three Voluntaries'), singer ('Lullaby for Lucy', and an onstage role dressed as a monk schlepping round the stage at the old Kirkwall Arts Theatre singing some sort of Maxian plainsong - I can't remember the name of the piece), accompanist, listener or general dogsbody. The role of Widow Grumble in 'Cinderella' was written for my wife (as is) Elspeth, who was then a pupil at Kirkwall Grammar School. One of the other soloists, Paul Rendall, went on to be a professional tenor singer. Max was one of those people who had enormous erudition and seemed to know about the most unlikely things. Beneath the gentle exterior lurked a needle-sharp intellect and very definite opinions which were always lucidly propounded. His period of office as Master of the Queen's Musick was very productive and varied. As so often happens, a radical non-establishment figure enriched the establishment and was enriched by it. May he rest in peace and rise in glory - the musical world will not be the same without him.

He was Vicar of Nayland on the Suffolk border. The organ there was acquired in his time from Canterbury Cathedral when Samuel Greene installed a new instrument there and still has a lot of old pipe-work. William Jones was a noted theologian and writer.

May he rest in peace. His firm had some fine work to its credit and he himself had vision and skill which resulted in a number of worthy memorials to him.

Wot, not "Vivats"? lol A fine, rousing performance, but just imagine what a sound those boys could have made if they'd been trained by a Britiish choirmaster. Wonderful clouds of smoke at the beginning! I couldn't help but notice, in the procession, how the laity with banners carried them with some dignity, then came the clergy, all grins, then the bishops chatting to one another. The new Archbishop has a fine singing voice.

The Vaughan Williams 'Toccata St. David's Day' isn't, perhaps, his finest organ piece but it's worth playing if it can be presented with a degree of panache. I'm very fond of "Dafydd y Careg Wen" ("The White Rock") by George Towers. I think it's a better piece than RVW's on the same melody. It was published by Oecumuse and can now be had from Fagus Music in the collection 'Preludes and Interludes on Welsh Folk Songs'. Towers was an interesting person - a graphic artist by profession, he had a lot to do with the illustrations in the Ladybird Books (Googling "George Towers"+organist will bring up an interesting biography).

Not French, but resident in Paris and an associate of Guillou's, Yanka Hekimova is a stunning organist - she gave a couple of concerts in Belfast Cathedral when I was there (courtesy of Paul Vaughan's management).

The last rebuild - not that long ago - was pretty drastic. Interesting, but those who knew it reckoned it was not that easy to handle, the louder effects in particular being unwieldy.

That's true. I find "Songs of Praise Discussed" and the aforementioned "Handbook to Church Hymnary Third Edition" very helpful, as well as one or two other such books, and Erik Routley's writings are always erudite, forthright and entertaining.

Healey Willan claimed to have composed most of his Passacaglia in A flat minor, one variation at a time, on the train between Toronto and his holiday home at Lake Simcoe, some sixty miles to the north.

Sherwin's 1725 work was, I think, intended for domestic use and not as an hymnal for use in church. The text would not have been sung in church at such an early date. Erik Routley was very clear on making the distinction between domestic and public devotion and underlines the fact that congregational singing of anything except metrical psalms was not common practice until the time of Isaac Watts (and in Anglican churches, much later).

Quote from Handbook to the Church Hymnary Third Edition: ​ " Donald Ford (Daily Telegraph 5 April, 1950) says that the tune was written on a scrap of paper in a quarter of an hour after Ireland received a request from Geoffrey Shaw for a tune for these words. It first appeared in The Public School Hymn Book, 1919, and Songs of Praise, 1925." The same source says that the first appearance of the text as a hymn was in The Anglican Hymn Book, 1868, so it wasn't one of Dearmer's innovations after all.

Regarding Dave Harries' Exeter posting, a new edition of Brewer in D has just appeared on CPDL.

One of Percy Dearmer's innovations was to introduce items of Christan lyric poetry which had not hitherto been conceived or used as hymns. Thus, from about the same period we have George Herbert, John Donne, Robert Herrick, Henry Vaughan and Edmund Spenser, as well as Samuel Crossman, who wrote "My song is love unknown". Some items caught on, others didn't. The story about the tune - and I have no reason to suspect that it's not true - is that Dearmer took John Ireland out for lunch and showed him the text, saying he wanted a tune for it, and Ireland wrote one there and then on the menu.

I'm a bit out of it on this side of the pond because different items have risen to (or fallen from) popularity. The theological students at Queen's College here in St. John's laughed out loud when I demonstrated "Camberwell" and had difficulty believing that it, rather than "King's Weston", was popularly sung to "At the Name of Jesus". Do people still sing "Lord of the Dance"? I haven't played it for years, and never over here. How about Patrick Appleford's "Living Lord" or some of the John Bell/Iona hymns, such as "Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?" (to the tune "Kelvingrove"). There are a couple of RC ditties which are leeching into Anglican worship here, particularly at funerals where the congregation is largely not made up of regular church-goers - "Be not afraid" and "Eagle's Wings". "How great thou art" and "Amazing Grace" have similarly filtered in as funeral staples - not new, of course, but new to Anglicanism.

Theo Saunders, until recently Organist and Master of the Choristers at Armagh Cathedral, died recently after a long period of ill health. Theo was previously at St. James the Great, Leicester, and had been at Armagh since 2002. A fine person and a skilled musician. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Yes - very useful, thank-you. I shall look forward to playing a lot of the examples which are new to me.

Brewer in a D is a fun setting - very Elgarian - and the Mendelssohn is likewise a good sing and a good listen. Bristol is only up the road - you should go!