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How about the Saint-Saens "Priere" for 'cello and organ? Transposed upwards, it might just work...

Sometimes it helps if one can "get into the groove" with such music - you might also find it worth playing through some Stanley Voluntaries (or similar pieces by Handel contemporaries) in which many of the same snares crop up. And, should you find yourself faced with the marking "Organ ad lib." in Handel's concerti, one of the easiest ways to get around having to improvise / compose a movement in the style of Handel is to insert a Stanley Voluntary...

Interesting arrangement at my place: we have the same fee for weddings and funerals (currently £70.00) which of course is doubled if videoed. One can feel underpaid for the former (unless it's videoed) and overpaid for the latter. (Certainly it's embarrassing to try and ask anyone to dep for me at a wedding for £70.00 unless it's my own Assistant who lives nearby the Church and is retired from his former day job...) Anyone else experienced that?

I've played it a few times, always in "lollipop" recitals and sometimes even as an encore. (It's perfect when used as such!) If you have an instrument with enough resources, you can go to town on this arrangement: Martin Neary played it at my 2004 recital series in Clifton College using Solo 16' Bassoon (with Tremulant, octave coupler and unison off) and Choir 8' Flute plus 1&1/3', accompanied by Swell Open Diapason and Pedal Open Wood. "Let's see if we can find any funny sounds," he said! Inspired by that approach, I've used various different mutations for the solo lines according to availability on the organs to which I've brought it. The accompaniment can also be subjected to whimsical treatment - a well-placed Vox Humana with or without tremulant can elicit giggles from the audience; the various off-beat motifs can likewise benefit from a squeaky enclosed Trompette or Oboe plus double reed if available. Probably the "ne plus ultra" of my experiments was at Bath in 2008, when I took advantage of the newly-installed Glockenspiel amongst other things. Of course, if playing the piece for an examination it might be better to behave oneself and stick to plainer colours.......!

Peter King has had a lot of mileage out of "Rubrics," as recital material, service music, degree ceremony repertoire, teaching repertoire... It seems the only thing he hasn't done is recorded it at Bath! If memory serves, it's written using an additive technique, whereby the first piece is founded on just a handful of notes and each subsequent piece adds a further note to the mix until the last piece incorporates a complete note-row as its basis. Should you be lucky enough to have a Cymbelstern, it will come into its own - at least one of the movements calls for one!

I had the privilege of meeting Dr Wicks, at the Gala Concert in Bath Abbey to mark Peter King's 20th anniversary there in 2006. The Rector invited several key figures from PK's past to participate: Gillian Weir and Nicolas Kynaston played and gave speeches including their own anecdotes about him, and Allan Wicks gave a speech remembering him as a chorister and organ pupil. (Originally he was to have performed too; I believe he declined to play on the grounds that he was "past all that," and a later attempt to get him a walk-on part guest conducting the Abbey Choirs in Parry's "I was glad" also failed.) From his tale of trying to persuade the young PK to learn a piece of Bach and meeting with reluctance, he gave us all the impression that he had been a tolerant and patient teacher, winning the respect of all those who studied with him. It seems clear from the testimony of others (writing in Church Music Quarterly on the occasion of his 80th birthday) that he was equally patient and amiable as Cathedral Organist, helping many choristers to realise their full potential. (Perhaps one or more of his former choristers might be able to confirm that on here?) So, yet another 20th century Cathedral Music figure has passed away. The "old fraternity" is indeed shrinking; Francis Jackson and Stanley Vann are presumably now the last of that generation?

Indeed, the resemblance is truly striking. I daresay Sanger's is more versatile than ours ... What's most interesting is that neither organ is indigenous to its current location, having been relocated to perform a specific purpose (choir accompaniment in our case, teaching and occasional recitals in Sanger's).

Aha! My ex-boss has a lot to say on this perplexing and at times bewildering matter. His thoughts found their way into a recent article for OR, in fact, but you can read his original text - a lecture given for an IAO Organ Day in Wells nearly three years ago - on his website: http://www.peterking.org/14.html At the risk of seeming biased, it's a superb essay and quite an absorbing read. I commend it to you all if you haven't already seen it in one form or the other! "father-willis" - you'll find that Dr King is very much on your wavelength! And Pierre, in light of your comments about continental variants and different builder's interpretations, you too may find yourself nodding in agreement with the article in places.

We reckon 1885, although it could be anything up to 5 years older than that... NPOR recently paid us a visit to update their records, so you'll find some more about the Bevington here: http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=K00841

I believe PK has a recording in the can (Gary Cole's at Regent Records, to be exact) using the Reger transcription. "Liszt in Bath" (not my title) will also include BACH, Ad nos, Weinen Klagen, Evocation a la Chappelle Sixtine, St Francis preaching to the Birds (arr. Saint-Saens) and various smaller pieces. You'll be hard pressed to find a better organ or building for Liszt than the Klais of Bath Abbey!

I find our Bevington organ at Kendal ideal for Wesley: it has a Swell Cornopean and Great Claribel that come into their own for the pre-duet passage in "Blessed be the God and Father" and a Great Dulciana that works well (alone, with the Claribel or coupled to one or both of the Swell 8' flues) as an accompaniment to most choral passages. And when the Open Diapason, Principal and Mixture are whipped out, plus Swell Cornopean, there's a Full Organ that I'm sure would have met with Wesley's approval. Having said that, the Cornopean (even with box shut) isn't really the right sort of thing to grab for "Wash me throughly" unless you want to give everyone ear cancer. One of the Swell 8s is a Gamba; in combination with 4' (Harmonic) Flute it can make quite a convincing Oboe substitute. (On some other organs I've met, Salicional plus 4' Flute plus Nasard if available can do the same trick; add a Tremulant and it can even become a fake Vox Humana!)

I spent many a fruitless year trying to track down the "Resurrection Dances" (my only clue being a tip-off from David Rogers in sunny Doncaster that for some reason or other the work had once been published as "Two Organ Pieces!") before finally obtaining an authorised reprint from The Music Vault. I think they might have been a division of Warner/Chappell Music... Might be worth dropping them a line: The Music Vault - Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, Griffin House, 161 Hammersmith Road, London W6 8BS If I may add: the "Resurrection Dances" are, for want of a better word, "hard." Well, certainly the third one takes quite some doing! You're not going to survive unscathed if you're not prepared to do some serious taking-apart-and-putting-back-together-slowly kind of practice.....

Indeed, I did much the same at Bath Abbey when we installed a new Vicar Theologian. Such services there invariably bring together the disparate congregations (including the 6.30 student music-group led crowd) so we had what the Boy and Girl Choristers alike described as "a dodgy hymn" - "All I once held dear" if you're wondering. I had just got my FRCO, so Peter King approached me with a copy of the thing and asked me (in so many words) if I wouldn't mind putting my paperwork skills to good use by re-writing the whole thing so that all parallel fifths & fourths and other such grammatical horrors were eliminated. This was easily done, and the result was far more effective as a result. (Unfortunately, I could never play my reharmonisation again after that, for on every subsequent occasion it came up, that hymn was accompanied by the music group using the original uncorrected copies...) Incidentally, mention of "Love Divine" above reminds me of the index to a hymnal I saw somewhere which included Purcell's tune "Fairest Isle" as an alternative to "Love Divine" or "Blaenwern." With it was an editorial footnote stating that the words had been written expressly for Purcell's music. Anyone else on here seen that? (And does anyone else think it might be true? I'm not all that sure myself!)

I've always thought as much ... particularly as it lends weight to the argument that a carol is not just for Christmas ("This joyful Eastertide," anyone?) and also allows me to up the tempo for so many of the congregational items every year - too often have I experienced "Hark the herald," "O come all ye faithful" and "God rest you merry" at speeds that would make a funeral dirge seem quick! One thing I noticed reading through the O/S from King's Cambridge: they seem to define "carol" as being exclusively for Choir alone, with the congregation joining in for each "hymn." Hmm....

Exactly the same happened to me at Clifton one year - I used the last verse arrangements in the School Hymnal (for a change) but members of the congregation below pitched in with Willcocks (never mind that I was playing in A flat so the high notes would have given them something to think about in any case) and I was later sniped at for "not playing the descant." (As if it were the only one ever written! Hmph!) Ironically, now I'm at Kendal the opposite happens - I play the descants (familiar or otherwise) and no-one joins in, not even the Boys whom I've taken through the stuff. (Clearly I have to stand in front of them beating time with one hand and waving a copy at them with the other before they'll realise they're meant to be singing something other than the "chune...")

Hear hear! As someone once wrote in an RSCM article some years back, "your carol service does not have to be like Kings College Cambridge." Even the best endowed of choirs and most patient of congregations would struggle to match their typical offering of (by this year's reckoning) 20 musical items of which 15 are sung by the Choir alone - a result of putting an average of 2 carols between each of the 9 Lessons. With a total running time of about 2 hours, I don't know how those young choristers cope... I have a number of Choir parents who would almost certainly remove their sons from my choir if I made them work for anything like that length of time! (I didn't hear that history of the carol service programme on the radio, but I'd be interested to know if it pointed out that before the Truro format was popularised in the early C20th, most churches and cathedrals simply sang a bunch of carols in place of the anthem or sermon at Choral Evensong on Christmas Eve - I'm sure there are some places that still do such a thing, although they are surely few and far between.) At Bath Abbey, we used to have 7 Lessons separated by 1 or 2 carols, and I remember Peter King saying that it seemed about the limit of the Boys' endurance. (He also expressed his awe of Stephen Cleobury for having to make it through the "whole hog!") Amongst the many schools using Bath Abbey for its annual carol services, there would be frequent variations on the number of lessons and carols - Beechen Cliff School had something of a "world record" each year with 10 Lessons! Fortunately not every item between them was choral. (I should add that both choral and ensemble standards were quite high for an ordinary comprehensive school!) At the other extreme, when I was Organist at Clifton College, the Upper School Carol Service had a mere 5 Lessons with no more than 1 carol between. They had a few traditions of their own, most notably "The Dorset Carol," sung at maximum volume and at a tempo that made any funeral dirge seem sprightly by comparison... I think finding a balance between choir-only and congregational items is the trick when planning a Carol Service. Last year at Kendal, our congregational feedback included an observation that they might have liked to join in with a few more things. We'd had 14 musical items, of which 7 were choral and 7 were congregational. This year our forces are somewhat limited (in fact, due to the snow I had even fewer than anticipated: 6 Boys, 0 altos, 3 tenors and 3 basses) so I upped the number of congregational items to 8, leaving 6 for the Choir plus two verses of "Wancin Woyal" and half a verse of "Away in a manger" for dramatic effect. Whilst I'm here: I do agree with all that's been said about Willcocks' descants - some of them, anyway! His "God rest you merry" beats all others hands down, and his last verse for "O come all ye" (for Christmas Day only) is always a thrill to play or hear. However, I find myself weary of others, especially "Wancin Woyal" for which there are plenty of good alternatives out there - indeed, this year at Kendal we did the James O'Donnell version and it went down very well indeed. It's in the Novello album "Noel" for anyone who's interested...

The original site is now used as a Chapel; it could be possible to return it to the Chancel area (where it was between original position and present position) although the Chancel itself could need some major building work in consequence. We'd also have to bid farewell to the Bevington Chancel organ, although that would then be available to anyone who wants it - and they'd be getting a decent little machine! I agree that it could do with more foundation tone, perhaps even a digital 32'? Let's see what can be done in the years ahead...

Our main organ at the West End of Kendal Parish Church is not very well-placed - accompanying on it is a nightmare, despite CCTV, as it tends to bathe the audience/congregation in more sound than a Choir at the East can produce. (There's a set of West Choir stalls in retro-choir formation, but these are placed underneath the casework so that the accompaniment is barely audible to any singers there.) Furthermore, in its present position it is susceptible to plaster and water damage, both of which have already occured to the extent that tuners (etc.) are recommending a major clean and overhaul soon. Of course, any work they did would be easily undone within months by our local climate ... it would be better to have a rebuild in a new position. Either way, it would all come down to money... C'est la vie!

I was still at Bath when it was installed, and remember PK's notice explaining how it worked (either on the Solo from tenor C or on the Pedals over the whole compass at 4' pitch, via Solo to Pedal coupler) and instructing users not to play it until after the service of Evensong at which the stop was duly "consecrated." He used it for the ostinato pedal figure in Bach "In dir ist Freude;" it also appears (as mentioned) on the more recent recordings from Bath: "Organ Lollipops" including the Morandi "Bell-Rondo" and "Homage to Handel" including Karg-Elert's eponymous work. It came in handy in all sorts of things: I used it in Bach Fugues (for instance, at the last statement of the subject in BWV 542) as well as in Bob Chilcott's "Sun Dance" and even in Messiaen's "Banquet Celeste." Marcus Sealy tried using it, very effectively, in Vierne's "Carillon de Westminster." James Scott (one of the Vergers and now Deputy Organist of Bath Abbey) used it for the second subject in Lefebure-Wely's Sortie in E flat - brought the house down! - and David Briggs made some use of it in the Bath Bach Festival whilst improvising a four movement symphony on themes by Bach. I never got to use it at Christmas, having departed for Kendal by then, but I'm sure it comes in handy thenabouts...

Have you come across the intriguing "Vox Humana" series of international organ music from Barenreiter? Volume 3 (BA8233) is devoted to Spain, and has a number of rewarding items: a Tiento sobre el Pange Lingua Espanol by Diego de Alvarado (good for pre-service or Communion), a "Gaitilla" by Sebastian Duron (reminiscent of the Basses de Cromorne by Couperin, Clerambault et al, only much 'flashier' - your left hand will get a good work-out!), and a Tiento de Primo Tono by Andres do Sola (similar but in this one it's the right hand that shows off) and there's also a Sonata for Clarines (definitely for postlude or recital use) by probably the most familiar Spanish keyboard composer, Antonio Soler. Hope that's helpful...

We're experimenting with "Congregational Evensong" once a month here in Kendal - at least to see whether or not it will up the numbers in the long run - using the following scheme: Responses: Ferial Psalm: Whatever (Choir only) Canticles: to Anglican chant, or to Plainsong, or as metrical versions Anthem: Whatever (Choir only) plus our usual three hymns (Introit, Office and Final) and two organ voluntaries (Middle and Final). I've already tried this a couple of times; the congregation didn't seem to know what to make of it, however, because they didn't join in the canticles despite them being the metrical versions with which everyone is familiar (Tell out my soul / Faithful vigil ended). I reckon we may simply end up with two "crowds" - one that expects Choral Evensong to be just that, and another that likes plenty of participation but that will only get it once a month (or else we'll lose the Choir who will feel redundant if they have to water things down more frequently) - in which case, we may have to abandon the plan. It's a separate issue entirely, but always an interesting one. John Bell (of Iona Abbey fame) has stated that there is perhaps too much of a "performance culture" in Western Churches, with congregations expected to listen mostly and hence not participate as fully as they could; nonetheless, there is also the expectation that a Choir (especially if well-trained and certainly if professional) should do the lion's share of singing at what is after all a Choral service. Over to other members ... what might you do to make Evensong more "congregation friendly" if desired?

Yes it is, and proves yet again that Barnard is perhaps the most natural modern composer of "traditional" hymn tunes!

You could try the vocal score from Peters (ed. Temperley) - if memory serves, that has a straightforward yet effective keyboard adaption which I've played on several occasions.

For the record: I used W. T. Best in the end. Very playable, if certain bits of "padding" are ignored!

Good luck with learning this - it's a fine piece, and an excellent transcription. I've had a lot of mileage out of it in the last twelve months, in recitals and in services where a touch of Pomp was needed. There are a few fiddly bits, certainly, but it's not as hard as the transcribed Elgar Marches, whose style it very much evokes. (Indeed, you'll find the "big tune" bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Elgar's - but I'm not saying which here!)