Richard Fairhurst

http://cathythinks.blogspot.com/ is worth reading as an explosion of righteous indignation about NEH's supposed bowdlerisation of various hymn words. I would be fascinated to see what happened if the author were introduced to Hymns Old & New.

Well, now that the thread has gone thoroughly offtopic... yes, CP is generally excellent, but I do wish they hadn't followed EH/Songs of Praise practice by using the ABABCD harmonies for 'Dix'. The ABCDEF in AMR/AMNS is IMHO far more interesting.

Audacity is always worth trying - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ .

I was delighted to learn from 'Strengthen for Service', the volume of essays published to mark 100 years of the English Hymnal, that Songs of Praise (1933 expanded edition) is still in print, largely due to demand from public schools: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subj...i=9780192312075 But though it's full of wonders for an organist to dig out, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for general congregational use! Having spoken warmly of Common Praise earlier in this thread, I should say that the Church of Scotland's Church Hymnary 4 (like SFS, a Christmas present!) has impressed me greatly as a single-volume solution for the typical Anglican church, even if it's not going to displace NEH or the A&M family from the more traditional church. I can foresee our church adopting it in a few years' time as a replacement for AMNS and the dreaded Songs of Fellowship.

I've asked for the Durufle biography (mentioned here, passim)...

Common Praise, without a doubt. Best of all is a combination of this and Common Ground (St Andrew Press), a John Bell-edited book "for all the [scottish] churches" which provides a contemporary slant without ever becoming trite. We recently purchased Common Ground for our choir as a supplement to our existing books (AMNS and, dare I say it, Songs of Fellowship) and it has been received especially well. Agreed with Barry about Hymns Old & New in all its many guises - too much gratuitous mucking around with both arrangements and words, and the production values (binding, typography etc.) are disappointing. It may seem appealing if judged simply on its range, but fares less well on close scrutiny. Laudate (a Catholic hymnal) does indeed have a great deal of merit... but again, at 1000+ hymns, it is rather large! I'm slowly building up a repertoire of decent rearrangements of ubiquitous worship songs. New English Praise has an excellent reworking of 'Be still', Common Praise has a decent 'Make me a channel of your peace'. One day someone will combine these in a volume entitled 'If you really have to...'.

This chap appears to have located quite a bit (arrangements and otherwise): http://www.geocities.com/emile_meuffels/en...gemeen/cds.html My personal favourite is RVW's last-verse arrangement of All People that on Earth do Dwell (with a stern injunction that trumpet stops "must NOT be used if no trumpet is available"), but I doubt that's what you're looking for!

Oh, I've done that. Fortunately our digital keyboards (a decent enough Roland digital piano, and a not-very-great Viscount portable organ) don't have salsa beats. But they do have the Blue Danube available at the hit of a "demo" button...

I just wear socks, but then I really don't have any pedal technique, and I'm slowly trying to wean myself onto shoes with heels so that I might develop some. This morning it was socks. The convention in our church is that the organist is the first (aside from the ministers, obviously) to receive communion, not least because our back-to-front ordering means that the organ is right next to the altar. Unfortunately, the retired priest forgot, so I had to take my turn about tenth in line. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that my rather discoloured socks were hence presented to the entire congregation, rather than simply facing the organ. Ah well. (I'm still smarting from being told by a nine year old that wandering around the church without shoes is "disrespectful to Our Lord".)

I did once start writing an alternative set of words to the Angel Carol that started "Have you heard this sound / Fifty times beforehand / Does it sound the same...", but thought it a little cruel. I rather like his organ prelude on God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and then there's the (once almost ubiquitous) Communion Service. And the carols have their uses: there's a tacit understanding that if I indulge our choir with one of their favourite Rutters at Christmas, they'll let me foist something slightly more adventurous on them. (Hmmm - wonder if I can get away with Antony Baldwin's fabulous "Twas in the Moon of Wintertime" again this year?)

Canals are my job - I'm editor of Waterways World magazine, owner of a modern narrowboat and a share in a 1930s butty - and though I'm not really one for steam engines, I do enjoy poking around old railways, as suggested by this ongoing cartographic project... Certainly, one stereotype of a canal enthusiast is Arran sweaters, real ale and bell-ringing (Lichfield Diocese even had a portable bell-tower at the recent National Waterways Festival, which I thought was rather sweet). I suppose organs are not too far a push from that...

http://www.boydell.co.uk/80462278.HTM "Maurice Duruflé: The Man and His Music is a new biography of the great French organist and composer (1902-86), and the most comprehensive in any language. James E. Frazier traces Duruflé's musical training, his studies with Tournemire and Vierne, and his career as an organist, church musician, composer, recitalist, Conservatoire professor, and orchestral musician. Frazier also examines the career and contributions of Duruflé's wife, the formidable organist Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier." Looks very interesting (and maybe not cheap at £35, but a whole load more affordable than Rollin Smith's Vierne biography). Has anyone here seen it?

That's a splendid comparison for 'All I Once Held Dear'. Though it always reminds me more of Abba, or maybe Alan Partridge - because 'Knowing you, Jesus...' simply has to be followed by 'AHA!'. 'Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart' sounds awfully like 'Go West', and 'I Am A New Creation' has more than a touch of 'Birdhouse In My Soul' about it...

Which, I guess, illustrates how different people can take different things from a piece of music - although obviously I'd agree with you on the "profoundly beautiful". It was the texture and circling organ figure in the opening bars that brought the comparison to mind. I'm not referring to the drm-tish-drm-tish that hammers out of car windows on a Saturday night - more to what's occasionally described as "progressive", which in its better manifestations can and does reach back to parts of the 20th century classical tradition. But this is seriously off-topic for this discussion, and indeed board.

But, Tony, I believe you too may be falling into the trap of describing "worship music" as contemporary. The outer reaches of Spring Harvest etc. may be, but most of what is sung in the CofE is excruciatingly dated. As has been observed in this thread, it has more in common with the Seekers than with anything that "young people today" (among whom I still count myself, just) are listening to. (Apologies if I've misunderstood you.) For what it's worth, the first time I ever heard Durufle's Requiem I was astonished how much the opening bars sound like contemporary electronic dance music.

10-59 - unexpected content of sermon/notices makes planned voluntary completely inappropriate (usually big celebratory piece ruined by unexpected death of dearly beloved member of congregation) 10-60 - impromptu rearranging of service order by minister 10-61 - congregation stands up/sits down at inappropriate time 10-62 - eighth page of voluntary suddenly found to be upside down/missing entirely 10-63 - urgent necessity to thump out melody fff on realisation that the hymn "which everyone knows" is unfamiliar to 99.9% of congregation 10-64 - (usually within weddings) order of service reproduces words last sung several centuries ago, in subtly different metre to that in the hymn book (yes, 'Be Thou My Vision', I'm looking at you) 10-64a - and in particular, "Praise Him, Praise Him" instead of "Alleluia" in "Praise my soul the king of heaven", thereby utterly confounding sopranos when it comes to the descant

A jazz pianist. Same name, same age, roughly the same part of the world (Leicester - I grew up in Leicestershire/Rutland). When I worked at Keyboard Review, Roland (digital piano/keyboard manufacturers) once phoned up to ask if I was the person they'd given a free digital piano to. (Sadly not.) But better was when my old school set up an alumnus website, and asked everyone to input what they'd been up to. On logging in, I found some kindly master had already populated my entry with a list of all the jazz prizes I'd won, concerts I'd given, and best of all, the fact I was now teaching jazz piano at said school. I suspect the school is still under the delusion that they have appointed an old boy as their jazz piano teacher.

Hymns for Today's Church, I think - we did it a fortnight ago.

Ahlborn have offered this for many years. Such "sound modules" have, of course, been standard practice in the wider world of digital keyboards since the late 1980s - I've got a stack of four rigged up here. Although, perhaps, I should say "were standard practice". Nowadays, most people use virtual synths on their PCs or Macs. If the digital organ market follows the rest of the electronic keyboard market, Hauptwerk and the like will have cleaned up within a few years' time. It may still say Rodgers (or whoever) on the box, but it'll essentially be a PC on the inside. Richard (who about 12 years ago was deputy editor, Keyboard Review...)

And there seem to be some quirks in French copyright law that might delay it even further... If you're not too worried about the legalities, there's a chap on eBay who sells reasonably priced CD-ROMs with PDFs of various French organ music, including the Berceuse: here is one of his listings.

Indeed. When we got married we specifically requested "no photographs during the service" on the order of service. Even this didn't stop one guest recording it with a camcorder supposedly for our benefit - why, I have no idea; we don't even have a TV to watch it on, let alone a VCR. I honestly can't see how a recording fee would be charged in such circumstances.

My recessional last week was the Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music - after all, about 100 yards down the hill, the road was closed due to flooding sweeping half the bridge away. I've played a heavily disguised 'Raindrops are falling on my head' while waiting for a bride to arrive in torrential weather before, but clearly too heavily disguised, as no-one noticed.

Ooooooh. Never heard it performed but have almost worn out my cheapy Naxos recording of that. As for busking and remortgaging the dog, why not combine the two, and all in a very fitting location?

Have you unexpectedly switched into one of the non-standard views? Invision Power Board does that occasionally. To check, click 'Options' near the top right of the page, then under 'Display Modes', make sure 'Standard' is highlighted.

Could download services such as iTunes provide a way past point 1, at least?