How did it all start?

[Martin Cooke]

Picking up on a theme from another thread, and bearing in mind that one of our number specifically mentioned reminiscing, it would be really interesting to hear how, in our different ways, we became interested in, and took up, the organ. I can't go first as I need to take my car to be serviced but I'll join in later...

[Andrew Butler]

My late father was a Unitarian minister in Gateacre, Liverpool.  From a very early age I was fascinated by the organ in Gateacre Chapel (it's on NPOR) and this fascination grew as I got older.  On moving to Wilmslow in Cheshire, I began piano lessons at age 7, and having access to organs in dad's churches I started to teach myself!  I started proper lessons at 10 (when I played my first service)  On moving to Bristol, lessons continued - although I squandered the opportunities offered.  I took up music full time in 1987, having been made redundant from a managerial post in business, holding a succession of paid church posts and supplementing my income with private teaching.  I now live in France in semi-retirement, doing some online teaching and also I am a registered celebrant for weddings and funerals, as well as playing in various local churches in the Charente region.  (For which payment even of expenses is non-existant!  Another topic brewing there!!)

[handsoff]

My interest started when I went to Grammar school which was attached to the town's Guild Chapel with its 2M + P Nicholson. The two first forms were asked to buy a Schott recorder which the school would supply at a discount. During the first music lesson (in part of the older school complete with the teacher's border collie Timmy in his basket and swirls of tobacco smoke from his pipe (the teacher's!) it turned out that I was the only one of 30ish 11 years olds who could read music and also played the piano to, if I recall correctly Grade 3 or 4.  Q. "Do you want to have a go on the organ?"  A. "Yes Sir, please sir." I'd been a fairly reluctant chorister at the village church for a few years so knew what an organ sounded like and that it had stops that made different sounds but not much more than that.

We went to the chapel at lunchtime and after a brief rundown of the basics; stop pitch, which stop made what sound etc, I played over a couple of hymns sans pedals about which Mr Smerden made positive comments. He asked if I'd like to take it further and learn more. I did and fortunately my piano teacher was also an organist (ARCO qualified as I later found out) so it was simple to switch disciplines and it was arranged that I could have lessons in the Guild Chapel.

I was playing the 1955 version of the organ which, in about 1969, suffered mightily after the chapel tower roof leaked. The whole Great Organ was out of action leaving just the 3 quiet Swell Organ stops and some notes of the pedal Bourdon. This wasn't fixed for years and after I had left the school. How I wish that the current Principal Pipe Organs instrument had been there in my day.

I soon picked up some of the requirements and from the following year became one of the two school organists and began to deputise at the village church instead of singing in the choir. I took on my first church at another village some 5 miles away when 16 which helped persuade my mother than I really really really needed a motorbike...

 

[S_L]

I blame my Grandmother or my late wife – in equal quantities!!

I was born in the East Riding of Yorkshire but, on the death of my father, moved to live on the Scottish Island of Eigg with my grandparents. Gran came from Yorkshire and, I think, had been quite a player in her day. She was a Primitive Methodist who, as a girl, had accompanied the local preachers around the East Riding playing the harmonium in the chapels on a Sunday. Certainly they thought enough of her playing to ask her to play the Hull City Hall organ for the big Methodist revival meetings they held in the 1930's. And she occasionally deputized at Holy Trinity - a Methodist and a woman!!!  How she and my grandfather found themselves on Eigg I’m not sure. There were no organs on the island but we had a piano and, from a very early age my grandmother taught me to play hymn tunes – of the Primitive Methodist/Methodist variety! Even today I love a good strong hymn tune. I had two years of school on Eigg and, when I was six or seven we came back to England and I went to school in East Yorkshire. One day Peter Fletcher, the organist of Beverley Minster, came into the classroom and asked who would like to play the ‘cello. I didn’t know what one was, but I was the kind of annoying child who would put his hand up for everything. And so it started. I also used to go to chapel on Sunday, often twice. The Chapel in question had a large two manual organ built by Hopkins of York. It was played by a man called Geoff Lightfoot who encouraged me to play and would let me stay in the chapel after morning service, making horrendous noises, as long as I locked the door when I left! I’ve never been much of a keyboard player but it, very slowly, got better.

But my ‘cello playing improved by leaps and bounds encouraged by wonderful teachers. I joined a little orchestra and, eventually the local Youth orchestra and did my grade VIII when I was 12. I got a distinction (142!). I did ARCM (Performers), at 16, went to the National Youth orchestra, played string quartets, and was constantly told how I was going to go to the Royal College of Music which, eventually, I did. I remembered the book ‘How to bluff your way in music’. It said, ‘Organists are a strange race!!!’ – and I kept away from them! After two years I went up to Cambridge and the rest, sort of, is history. I read one degree and then another, played concerti in concert halls all over Europe including the Shostakovitch concerto (there was only one in those days) in the presence of the composer. Eventually I decided enough was enough, noticed a few problems with my hands and settled down to a quiet life in academia. I wrote a Ph.D.

So, why blame my late wife? We met at Cambridge. By this time I had veered away from Methodism and, largely due to my time in London, had become a High-Church Anglican of the 'smells and bells' variety. My late wife was a Roman Catholic and I seceded to Rome which, at first, was a huge disappointment. We married and, on Sunday morning, I found myself in the pews at Mass. I, frequently, came out more angry than I went in, usually complaining about the ‘idiot on the keys’ or ‘that damned choir’. Eventually, herself got totally fed up and said, “if you think you can do any better, do it yourself!!!” By complete coincidence a job came up at a local Catholic Abbey church and I was appointed – I don’t think there were any other candidates! My organ playing improved dramatically and the choir expanded and were great fun. We sang in our tiny little abbey, and were well known in all the local pubs, and we visited all over the place. We were frequent visitors to the ‘Met’ in Liverpool and to both Cathedrals in Birmingham. We had singing tours abroad – to Paris - twice (St Etienne du Mont, a Sorbonne chapel and Notre Dame) and to Rome (St. Paul outside the walls, San Clemente, St. Peter’s and the Cathedral in Palestrina where we sang a Palestrina Mass) It was great fun while it lasted.

Herself was sick for eleven years, I retired to nurse her but she died and I came to retire to France. I don’t play the ‘cello anymore but, rather frighteningly, I am known in the area as an organist and play at a large monastery in the Dordogne, usually once or twice a month and on Great Days.

'Andrew Butler' and I live about 50 miles from each other, but we have never met. I’m happy, in the light of his post, to tell him that this organist (?) in the Dordogne does get paid!! And. like 'Handsoff' I still have a motorbike and the leathers to go with it!!!

[timothyguntrip]

I had little interest in the organ until being taken to a recital in Menorca as a youngster whilst on holiday (the Kyburz instrument at Santa Maria, Mahon). A chance visit soon afterwards to St George's Beckenham where I found the organ tuners at work further kindled my interest - being given a quick tour of the instrument and then a chance to play whilst they had a break - until I was chased away from the church by an official...it did little to put me off though!

Soon afterwards we moved to Malta where my father managed to secure me a practice slot on a Tamburini instrument in a cavernous church every Saturday morning, a shortly afterwards I was given a key to the Anglican Cathedral in Valletta where I would spend many a Saturday afternoon entertaining (or annoying) the many visitors and tourists!

 

[handsoff]

I'm sorry to disappoint S_L but I no longer have a motorbike. My various Triumph mounts served me well for the commute to church for several years but after starting work I became fed up with having to change clothing for the office every day, getting cold and wet in inclement weather and not having more comfortable and acceptable transport for various young ladies at different times.

I still keep a Morris Minor in good condition for dry days and holidays so maintain a link to the days of more basic motoring.

[peter ellis]

Grew up Baptist and learned the violin. The church organist used to let me sit up at the organ during services but at the time I was learning electronic home organ and not pipe. He died when I was 11 and from that point onwards I became the church organist. Got some lessons and it replaced the violin as my first love. Turned Anglican before I went to University - dropped violin entirely after my first year of BMus - majored on conducting instead and have maintained pipe organ as my main instrument as a player. No longer have the time for an organists post but enjoy depping where needed. 

[Colin Pykett]

I must now disappoint some former posters on this thread: a former biker, I'm afraid I lapsed many years ago.  My first was a 98 cc James Comet, now a classic machine, but then it provoked howls of mirth from my circle of macho acquaintances in the 6th form (none of whom had a bike at all I might add).  'Get off and milk it' was one of their more polite jibes.  However, fear not, the story is relevant to the forum because I bought it with an interest-free loan from my father (£60) which I repaid quarterly with the stipend from my first organist/choirtrainer's post, and without the bike I would not have been able to take it up.  Not long afterwards I passed the driving test and replaced it with a gorgeous Matchless 350 (umpteenth hand but still a snip at £35).  My mother nearly had a fit ...  However that trusty steed patiently took me thousands of miles up and down motorways to uni and lots of other places until I too, like 'handsoff', grew tired of getting cold and wet all the time, and eventually replaced it with four wheels halfway through uni years.  It was fun though because there was no speed limit on motorways at that time (and next to no traffic either by today's standards), and I coaxed the thing to nearly a 'ton' on one well-remembered occasion, going downhill and with a following wind.  Even in ordinary conditions I was only overtaken by Jags and the like - domestic runabouts like Ford Anglias were pedestrian by comparison.  That bike, too, took me to sundry places with organs on innumerable occasions that I would not have been able to visit otherwise.

A typical solitary organ crawl of the sort I used to do was when visiting the remote country churches dotted up and down the Lincolnshire coast.  Often the buildings were more interesting than the organs, though.  Some were (and are) quite breathtakingly beautiful, such as St Nicholas at Addlethorpe (known as 'the cathedral of the marshes').  At the time it only housed a Mustel harmonium, but because of its authentic 'French' tone and the resonant acoustic it could have passed as a Cavaille-Coll instrument in some of its moods.  I now see that they have a pipe organ, but hope that they've managed to control the bat-guano problem which defaced everything in the church when I visited all those years ago.

As Betjeman said:

"Biking in high-banked lanes from tower to tower on sunny, antiquarian afternoons"

Just so, although in the flat Lincolnshire fens the lanes aren't high-banked at all, so you can spot the next tower from miles away and seldom need maps to get there either.  He was on a push bike in Cornwall.

And all thanks to being a biker!

[Phoneuma]

Before I pen any biographical titbits may I firstly thank Martin for giving us all a shove on the forum. It seems to have worked well and it would be a shame to lose this valuable resource.

I can't exactly pinpoint where it all started but it began when our next-door-neighbour asked my father if he'd like their Kastner Pianola. Dad played a little, having learnt from tonic sol-fa years before and he could get around the piano reasonably well (mostly popular songs from the 30s and 40s). He had a good ear and asked us if anyone would like to learn the piano, I volunteered. Derby was an interesting and quite musical city then (recently, Melvyn Bragg described it as a cultural dessert which is not far off really). I was eleven at the time.

About two or three years later I expressed an interest in learning the organ and we attended the local Baptist Church, Broadway Baptist, which had a very decent three manual Atkins rebuilt from the old church into a brand new building in 1939. It had fine acoustics and the instrument could make a very grand sound in there. I'll name my very first teacher, partly because he will be unknown and mostly because I still regard him as the greatest start I could ever wish for. Norman Hendley was a fine organist, he himself would say he was no recitalist but he could trot out the Boellmann Suite with panache and accuracy. He was also the kindest and most patient man and we went through Stainer's Organ Primer methodically but at some speed.

After a while Norman recommended that I might change teacher as he thought I needed to go to the next level. Now that, to me, was a very humble admission but he said that he couldn't really go much further, such humility. I moved on, to the then Head of Music at the Grammar School I attended in Derby. Another good move, David Johnson knew his stuff and was very fine musician.

I also had the good fortune to meet and maintain contact with the madly eccentric Wallace Ross from Derby Cathedral. A fine musician with an impeccable pedigree, I'd see him regularly after I'd been to college as we conveniently shared the same local, the Victoria Hotel in Derby.

 

Having realised I might even be able to go on to higher things I applied to some universities via UCAS. I'd also received some sound advice that I might also try for some other places. Birmingham School of Music – didn't get in there......But Huddersfield seemed attractive so I went and failed my interview there as well. However, I managed to persuade them to give me another try after scraping some rather better A Levels than I perhaps deserved. Donald Webster interviewed me and I got in. This was 1976. Huddersfield in the 70s was really rather good with an excellent if rather eccentric roster of lecturers and instrumental teachers including Harold Truscott and Arthur Butterworth.

On arrival I was asked if I'd like to do percussion second study instead of piano so I gave that a go, which was another very good move as I had the good fortune to be taught by the enormous bear-like Eric Wooliscroft from the Halle. I'm afraid that my enthusiasm for the organ then began to wane rapidly. I won't name my first organ teacher there but he was terribly pedantic, pompous and de-motivating (and bore a real grudge when I asked to be transferred to Keith Jarvis instead). KJ was far more interesting and we shifted a fair amount of repertoire. However, I was enjoying ensemble music so much I eventually ditched the organ, moved to percussion first study and then piano second study, another good move! Huddersfield then was remarkably flexible and they really did want students to be happy in their studies and select / elect their strongest suits.

Some years later (I'd left in 1979 and the recession hit hard although I managed to always be in some sort of work), I did my PGCE and spent the next 24 years teaching in selective boys grammar schools firstly in Gloucester and then in Skipton. The organ then featured quite prominently for Founders' Day services and the like. I eventually quit playing regularly around seven years ago, it's always been very love / hate!

Innate of this forum will recognise some of this as he also hails from Derby. We've crossed paths a couple of times since (once in Oxford and once in Gloucester when he was a member of Piano Circus).

[John Robinson]

My first interest in the organ began one day when our junior school class was sitting in the local church prior to beginning a practice for the oncoming Christmas service, when our class teacher explained to us that "the organ cannot play quite as quickly as the piano, so we must try to slow down a little".

Somehow, I wasn't entirely convinced that this impressive instrument (only a typical 3-manual job) couldn't be played very quickly.  I now suspect that the truth was that Mr Feather was no organist and was not used to playing the instrument.  I have been interested in organs ever since.

Although I took piano lessons when a little older, I have never ventured to dare to try to learn the organ, doubting my abilities - no doubt correctly!
I have, however continued a life-long interest in the organ in respect of how it works and how it is built and, of course, in its sounds and its music.  I enjoy, as an amateur, designing organs structurally and in specifications.

Yes, I wish now that I had made an effort to join an organ building firm and learnt how to do it properly!

[Keitha]

Aged 9 - Confirmation - organist played the Widor Toccata at the end (on a Miller 'English' organ analogue electric!) - was immediately hooked. Visited Ely Cathedral  that summer - saw my first pipe organ, which left a lasting impression (aurally and visually) and wrote about it with a drawing at school. Told our school head (a seemingly rather forbidding nun but with a heart of pure gold) that I wanted to learn to play the organ - she said I was too small to reach the pedals, but I would soon grow! I was encouraged to play hymns on the piano at school assembly that year and she asked me to play for Sunday Benediction the following year when the organist was ill. I'm still at it - over 50 years later. Thank you Mr Harrison and Sister Columba. May you both rest in peace.

[S_L]

23 hours ago, handsoff said:

I'm sorry to disappoint S_L but I no longer have a motorbike.

I still keep a Morris Minor in good condition for dry days and holidays so maintain a link to the days of more basic motoring.

I don't use my bike often - it has to be a really nice day! It amuses the Nuns when I arrive, in jeans and leather jacket (I change!), to play the organ for the morning Mass. 

I also have a 20 year old MGF as well as a more sensible four wheeled mode of transport!!!

Some of us just never grow up!!!

[Peter Allison]

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned... I have not learnt to play the organ, despite my father taking me to his organ practiced since I was a toddler. I got the interest from him at a tender age, sang in the local PC choir he was in charge of etc . Went to my 1st recital when 16, when Simon Preston played our humble village church organ when he came up for a few days holiday and going to St Michaels, Far Headingley as a 17 year old butchery student at a Leeds College. Always had an interest, but being a typical teenage boy, with a rebellious streak, I never wanted to take lessons from a parent, there were far more interesting things to do

[Martin Cooke]

There were many influences for me. I grew up in a country rectory in Cornwall but was shipped off to be a chorister at St Paul's aged 8. Obviously, we had to go to church on a Sunday but I kicked up a fuss one morning, aged about 6, and my father suggested I came and 'sat with Denis.' Denis Osborne was O&C at St Columb Major and became a lifelong friend. I learned a great deal from sitting with him over the years and he used the splendid St Columb Bryceson very creatively. He was no mean player - he took his FTCL in organ performance - but he craved a third manual. Heles prepared a scheme for electrifying the organ and adding a choir with a detached console opposite, in the Lady Chapel. Thank goodness it never even remotely went ahead, but Denis's craving continued and the 'new' 3-manual Nicholson at St Michael's, Newquay proved too much of a pull in the end. But, of course, St Paul's was a massive influence and it wasn't long before I paid my first visit to the old 'peep hole' organ loft in the company of senior pupil, James Lancelot, to see John Dykes Bower play the voluntary and to be allowed to press the General Cancel. The 5-manual console had 128 stops in those days and was set in a small loft that I can only describe as magical. By contrast, the St Columb organ was a tracker instrument with just 2 manuals and just 24 stops, none of which were labelled 'Tuba', or 'Contra Posaune' or even 'Fern Flute.' No, the St Paul's organ 'did for' the St Columb organ in the mind of this 8-year old and it genuinely caused me to think that mechanical action, small organs were dull. This was 60 years ago! Dykes-Bower took a kindly interest in me - he knew and loved Cornwall, of course, and, arriving early for choir practice in the choir school each morning, he would happily talk to me about organs I should try to visit. I remember him mentioning Lanhydrock, (FHW) which my father subsequently took me to play, but that has since found its way to a church elsewhere in the county. Harry Gabb was also a big figure and he always played on a Saturday when one could count on a decent voluntary. He usually brought a student to turn, but even so, two choristers were always welcome in the loft. WHG used 'more' of the organ it always seemed, than the slightly more reserved DB. You weren't always fully aware of them aurally, aged 10 and standing in the organ loft, but one could often see Dome Tubas, large Dome pedal reeds and the full Dome Diapason Chorus coupled through to the Great (Tuba to Great and Pedal was the stop knob) at the end of the big pieces. When Richard Popplewell (No 3) left, his place was taken, fresh from Oxford, by Christopher Herrick. He was a great breath of fresh air and we had, amongst many other treats, our first taste of Messiaen. He recorded an LP in about 69/70 which I still treasure, and many will know - Transports de joie, Litanies, Bridge Adagio in E, Mathias Processional etc. Wow!

Of all the St Paul's musicians, it was probably Christopher Dearnley whose influence was greatest. His use of the organ was quite idiosyncratic and interesting. He seemed to enjoy every stop and his recordings reflected this. He also, tantalisingly, opened up one of the larger peep-holes when he was playing so that he could watch one of the Vicars Choral 'beat' downstairs - invariably, Maurice Bevan. This means that a keen-eyed chorister could see much of the RH stop jamb. Until CHD's time, we were not accustomed to hearing organ sound coming solely from the dome, but he would introduce hymns on Dome Tubas or on the Dome Diapason Chorus, and these departments featured in voluntaries. The greatest moment was when he arranged for a friend and me to have an hour on the organ one Saturday before Matins (yes, with one 't' at St Paul's). What a noise we must have made. One of the virgers told me that 'Joey', a tramp, I think, who used to come and sit in the cathedral in the 60's asked him who was playing. The virger said he didn't know... "Sounds like the choristers to me!" said Joey. 

When I reached Senior School, the organ (a Willis III of mised heritage) was in the middle of remodelling by Percy Daniel. It wasn't a very inspiring instrument, tbh, and then I moved on to Bishop Otter College where there was a large Walker extension organ in a rather beautiful modern chapel. For what it was, this was a splendid instrument though it lacked profundity. While I was there, Willis cleaned it and added a bottom octave to the 16,8,4 Trumpet rank which was helpful. At the cathedral, the Allen reigned supreme with Ian Fox and John Birch getting the absolute best from it. It was this experience that enabled me to respect digital instruments and acknowledging that they have a part to play. And they were, afterall, endorsed by Thalben Ball.

I'll leave it there!

[Rowland Wateridge]

A complex subject, but like most others it seems, I was ‘hooked’ at an early age, probably around seven years, when my father took me to a service at Winchester Cathedral.  As young as that, I was enchanted by the variety of sound and especially what I now know to be swell reeds - ‘full swell’, in fact, as recounted by Gordon Reynolds in his book of the same name.  This was so long ago (late 1940s) as to be in the reign of Dr Harold Rhodes as Cathedral organist - I suppose in those austere post-war years he might have been playing; assistants were very short on the ground and organ scholars, I think, unknown then in places like Winchester.  My grandmother’s house in Winchester was literally next door to an organbuilder’s workshop: Bishops of Winchester and Bournemouth, prominently signed on the entrance doors (they are still there, now converted into a private house).  This was a local firm, no connection with the nationally-known London one.  A Bishop family member was still active in organbuilding locally until recently.  The sound of organs being tuned and worked on permeated my grandmother’s house and one day I encountered the workshop foreman who generously invited a small boy to come inside.  I suppose this would be organbuilding at its most basic, but it was a veritable Aladdin’s cave.  Next, back in Surrey where we then lived, I was shown the 1861 Walker in our parish church, then still in much 1850/1854 original state with just an electric motor to operate the bellows: the bellows handle continued to operate at the same time!  Shortly after this came the first opportunity to play the organ, and this became almost daily for a group of boys from our C of E primary school during the lunch hour under the eye of a teacher who also used the time to rehearse music for his Sunday services in an RC church elsewhere!

A move to an Anglo-Catholic parish introduced me to a lovely 1922 Nicholson which in my teens I was allowed to play after Evensong when everyone had left the church.   Then a very long hiatus with no playing at all other than the piano at home.  Marriage had brought me back to Winchester and my wife casually mentioned to the local organists’ association secretary that I was an organ fanatic.  I was rapidly pressed into membership and joining the ‘deputy rota’. My very first service included a Communion setting and some decidedly (to me) avant-garde music for which I was totally unprepared.  But these years as the male equivalent of Organists’ Review’s ‘Corno Dolce’ proved to be very rewarding, and my experiences in country churches were quite the equal of Corno Dolce’s: sometimes intractable instruments (one of them is included in the thread “The worst organ in the World” although I don’t agree with that opinion), eccentric clerics, including a retired Irish bishop, and wardens, insects and birds flying overhead - a different scenario from our urban brethren’s experiences.  I had a lesson from the association secretary who had press-ganged me, but sadly he was killed in a road accident shortly afterwards.  This led to a series of unexpected developments: succeeding him as secretary and eventually president of the association.  

So I found myself playing services (sometimes in three different churches on Sunday in the early years), still struggling with Communion settings, whilst Matins and Evensong became second nature and, for me, the most rewarding experiences personally.   I played for services in some 32 different churches over the years.  These included St George’s Cathedral Jerusalem and a parish church in Pennsylvania.   Many other organs played on visits elsewhere (at least 15, I think) including Exeter and Winchester Cathedrals, the latter two very badly I have to confess.  The pattern changed and service playing became more regular and some long term.  Finally, before ‘retirement’ in 2020 it was just one service of Matins and one Evensong in two tiny and incredibly beautiful ancient churches.

[sbarber49]

I started playing the organ to copy my older brother (8 years older) who was by then an FRCO. I was lucky to have a very encouraging church organist who, after I stopped singing treble, got me sitting on the organ bench beside him. He would say "you play this one" just before a hymn and, later, liked to instruct me what key to modulate into during last verses. (I cheated and had a go at all the hymns in advance!) He was a very fine musician and organist, though he never practised and voluntaries were sometimes a bit approximate. I am very grateful to him. I played for my first service when he forgot to turn up one Sunday. My father was the vicar so I was able to practise whenever I wanted - a great luxury.

Sadly I never practised the piano properly and so my organ playing  is not as good as it should be. Nor is my sight-reading up to much. Still, I've played in churches for about 55 years and have played for services in, I think, 38 cathedrals in England and Ireland over the years.