Richard Fairhurst
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Posts posted by Richard Fairhurst
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That looks enjoyable. Antony Baldwin's choral arrangement of the Huron carol is very effective - published by OUP.
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I don't know what part Monk played in adapting Kocher's tune but I wonder if the altered harmonies were written by Nicholson at the same time as he wrote the descant in, for example, AMNS.
I'm pretty sure these harmonies are in the 1912 A&M "Varied Harmonies for Organ Accompaniment" volume, and if so there'll be an authorship credit there - I'll check. I've got a copy in the music cupboard at church - will try and remember to look (though it's my week off this Sunday). To me, the harmonies give the hymn a much more complete structure. But to each their own!
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It was up but seems to have fallen over again. There are a few PDFs still available by Googling.
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A spot-on review - I really can’t add much to that, other to say that I got a copy a week ago and am generally impressed.
The Christmas section is particularly good, with Willcocks descants/last verses for several... though I’m disappointed that the Holst accompaniment isn’t used for Personent Hodie (it was at least footnoted in CP). Rather exasperatingly ‘Unto us a boy is born’ is replaced by ‘Jesus Christ the Lord is born’, and ‘Of the Father’s love begotten’ becomes ‘Of the Father’s heart begotten’ (to the NEH/CP arrangement which, to my mind, is inferior to the AMR one). But I was delighted to see Cranbrook as an alternative tune for ‘While shepherds watched’!
Quick and ready reckoner: it passes the ‘Dix test’ - different harmonies for lines 3/4 to 1/2 - which Common Praise, surprisingly, doesn’t. Treats from CP are retained such as ‘I bind unto myself today’ to St Patrick and Gartan, and ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ to Corvedale, and of course Coe Fen. There are several rather good Peter Nardone hymns which I’d not seen before - ‘Sing we of the Kingdom’ is particularly effective - though ‘Cry Freedom’ I think still goes best to ‘God rest you merry...’. I’d heard a rumour that Salve Festa Dies had gone AWOL and am pleased that it hasn’t. I miss ‘Glory, love and praise and honour’ (to Benifold) which has been dropped, but there’s a rather nice ‘Glory, honour, endless praises’ to the Sicilian Mariners Hymn.
(And to bring this back to organ music... I’ve long thought that the Sicilian Mariners Hymn, which is one of the tunes played by the carillon at St Mary’s, Hinckley, must have been the tune that kept Vierne awake all night. There’s a very strong resemblance between the hymn tune and the theme of Les Cloches de Hinckley... or am I imagining it?)
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9.45am: Healey Willan prelude on Vulpius before, Naji Hakim variations on ‘O filii’ afterwards. Thank you, OUP Lent & Easter book!
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Clearly the book is finding an audience - I went into Blackwells Music this afternoon and they'd already sold out. There were none on the shelves at the OUP bookshop, either, but the checkout staff found a copy hidden round the back somewhere...
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There's a Leo Sowerby organ reduction of 'The Snow Lay on the Ground' - I have it somewhere on the shelf, but suspect I won't be able to learn it before the snow melts...
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The preface, as reproduced on the website, suggests that it's essentially a cut-down version of CP plus most of the Sing Praise supplement (worship songs etc.). In other words, a similar approach to A&M New Standard, which was a cut-down AMR plus the two supplements (Hundred Hymns for Today and More Hymns for Today).
"Around 100 hymns have been dropped from Common Praise (and only five from Sing Praise)... there are fifty items in this book that were not in Common Praise nor Sing Praise, and they have been drawn from a wide range of contemporary sources and traditions, to some extent continuing the inclusive approach tentatively begun in Common Praise and pursued enthusiastically in Sing Praise."
There are rather a lot of hymn books aiming for the middle ground at the moment: this, John Bell's Church Hymnary 4 (rebranded south of the border as Hymns of Glory, Songs of Praise), and of course HON in its infinite variations. Nothing wrong with that (and I'm quite fond of CH4) but it would perhaps be nice to have a more musical volume, too - an English Hymnal for the 21st century. We live in hope...
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There's also an enjoyable
in the Oxford Book of Christmas Organ Music. Might be a bit of a stretch on that organ but probably just about doable... -
Hoooee, there's a question.What about using the Oxford Book of Funeral Music for a CD/digital download of funeral music mandated to be used at all civic crematoria in the UK. With no payment to the OUP or the editors?
Firstly, that might very well fall foul of compilation copyright and/or EU 'sui generis' database right. Making a selection of items (e.g. choosing the 15 most suitable funeral pieces) can be a copyrightable act in itself. For example, if I were to type up the entire hymn list of Common Praise here, I'd have infringed the rights in the complilation, even if I didn't include any of the music or the words apart from the first line.
And the rights in the music itself? Difficult to tell. Two words you'll see repeatedly in copyright cases are "substantial" and "original". I suspect that a CD which contained just two, fairly generic arrangements would very possibly not infringe any rights. One that contains several more, and where the arrangements are a bit more specialist... well, that's the Hyperion case, and that was (eventually) judged to infringe. But the sheer amount of argument about it shows you how unclear this all is.
One further wrinkle - the UK is more generous as to what merits copyright than most jurisdictions. We are what's sometimes called a "sweat-of-the-brow" jurisdiction. In the US, the required level of originality is much higher.
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I wouldn't get too diverted by the Sawkins case: it hinged on whether the significant amounts of effort that Sawkins had put into his work were copyrightable. I'm sure everyone here would agree that, for example, Sir David Willcocks deserves copyright protection for his superlative carol descants, even though they could be described as "arrangements" in the widest sense. The Sawkins case was part of the same spectrum - even if many of us would want to draw the line somewhere else along it.
That level of effort and originality is unlikely to be the case with the Oxford Book of Wedding Music (with all due respect to its editors!). Moreover, as books like that are essentially sold as performance editions for occasions where videos are commonly filmed, the editor or publisher would be committing commercial suicide as soon as they reached for the lawyer.
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Neatly bringing two threads together, I've been asked to play Alain's Litanies for a wedding this summer. First time for everything but very happy to oblige!
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A normal (but shortened) Communion at 9am, then a Jubilee Service at 11am including I Vow To Thee My Country (ugh), the National Anthem - with Gordon Jacob Fanfare courtesy of pcnd5584, thank you again! - and then Crown Imperial to finish.
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The Tournemire 'Sortie' for the out voluntary. Starts on full organ, ends on full organ.
Anthem was Andrew Carter's 'Joy is Come' (to Personent Hodie). And we (just about) managed to accommodate the congregation despite the church catching fire a couple of months ago and putting the chancel out of bounds... -
Quintaton... Suite du premier ton...
(sorry)
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The founts of all knowledge on this topic, particularly as it applies to church musicians, are Barry Williams and Robert Leach.
Barry posts to the ABRSM organ forum and may be worth tapping up there.
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Indeed.
I'm told it's going here.
"At present, the excellent quality of our church music is sadly not matched by the quality of our (digital) organ. We believe that the best and most economical solution would be to acquire a used or redundant English church organ."
and
"We have attracted an outstanding church musician, Martin Kondziella, as our organist and Regens chori, of the Schola and Choir. Every Sunday the Schola sings the ordinary and propers. On Solemnities the Palestrina Ensemble sings a piece by its namesake or similar masters. Within a few years, St Afra’s church music has become a byword for quality in Berlin, and, among interested parties, it is known far beyond."
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I'm told that the Hill in Trinity Methodist Church, Burton, has been sold to "a church in Berlin" following the closure of the church.
Interesting instrument: see report here, and this page suggests "some of the [original Johann Snetzler] pipes are believed to be in Trinity Methodist Church".
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Even Rutter has written a couple of organ pieces - Toccata in Seven and the Easter duet piece.
Plus a rather enjoyable Prelude on God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - it's in the OUP book of Christmas organ music.
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If your church likes a fair amount of modern songs thrown in amongst the traditional hymns, neither of these will really satisfy all your demands. HON (in its various editions) is unfortunately the only hymnal I know of which has the wide coverage to do this
There's also 'Hymns of Glory, Songs of Praise' for this - aka 'Church Hymnary 4' with a less Scottish name! Musically much better than HON though I suspect you'd still find yourself turning to an Ancient & Modern for a couple of the arrangements.
'Sing Praise' is a new worship song/modern hymn supplement to 'Common Praise'. I wasn't bowled over when briefly flicking through it in Blackwells the other week but that might not be a fair hearing.
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Langlais' 'Pasticcio' (from the Organ Book) always goes down surprisingly well with our congregation - never imagined that Langlais would be a crowd-pleaser.
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Disregarding the worship song "favourites", 'Teach me my God and King' to Sandys is the one that causes me to break out in a rash. Yes, I know the words are Proper Poetry, but I always have to stifle a snort at "makes drudgery divine", and the quavers on "makes that AND THE action fine" just sound trite. I'll probably burn in hell for this. Sorry.
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Anthem was Andrew Carter's 'Joy is Come' (to Personent Hodie). And we (just about) managed to accommodate the congregation despite the church catching fire a couple of months ago and putting the chancel out of bounds...
Screwing up the last verse.
in General discussion
Posted
Curiously, the last time I played 'I am a new creation' (again, piano, not organ), I did exactly the same - up from C major halfway through the chorus to Eb major, though returning to C major for the final note. My rationale is that this is pretty much what 'Birdhouse in my Soul' does and 'I am a new creation' has always reminded me of that. Though in this case I greatly prefer the pop song to the worship song...