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CHOIR & ORGAN DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS NOW AVAILABLE
23 June 2011
Choir & Organ is now available as a digital subscription and as an app for the iPad and iPhone.
Digital subscriptions cost £20.99 for 6 issues and are available through distributor PocketMags here.
The Choir & Organ app for iPhone and iPad can be downloaded for £1.99 here, and comes with one free issue of the purchaser's choice: further single issues or subscriptions may be purchased within the app.
Digital back issues are also available for download at the PocketMags site, costing £3.99 each, £10.00 for three.
C&O digital subscriptions and back issues at PocketMags
PIPING UP AT THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
22 September 2010
RFH CEO Alan Bishop presents the vision of the completed organMaggie Hamilton
London’s Southbank Centre (SBC) has launched a major campaign – Pull Out All The Stops – to raise funds for the completion of the restoration and installation of the organ in the Royal Festival Hall. With £950,000 already committed from the Heritage Lottery Fund, a further £1.35m is needed for the reinstatement of the remaining two-thirds of the instrument, which have been in store since the hall closed for refurbishment in July 2005.
Harrison & Harrison, who built the instrument in 1954 in collaboration with Ralph Downes, will start work the Grade I listed organ’s 5,000 pipes in February 2011, involving the repair and cleaning of 5,000 pipes, building a new wooden frame, renovating the bellows and wind system, and completely overhauling the electrics. Installation will be piecemeal during the summer recesses of 2012 and 2013, with a re-inauguration concert in 2014 as part of a festival to celebrate the instrument’s 60th anniversary.
Members of the public are invited to sponsor one or more pipes, ranging in price from £30–£10,000.
Presenting the plans at the press launch on 20 September, CEO Alan Bishop laid out a stall of exciting new projects associated with the campaign. These will include monthly free concerts over a ten-year period; apprenticeships and organ scholarships; and commissions. A major programme of learning and participation, due to start early in 2012, will include a public call for memories or the organ; a schools project for children in Lambeth and Durham, documenting the restoration; an interactive exhibition; and an international symposium.
Wesley Kerr, chairman of the HLF committee that approved the grant, stressed the importance having organs in secular venues as well as in churches, being not only a solo instrument for works from the time of Purcell, Bach and Handel to today, but also being perfect for accompanying other instruments. Kerr, who had been a schoolfriend of Stephen Bicknell, described the RFH organ as ‘euphonious, melodious, thundering, imposing – but also incomplete’; earlier this year he and HLF colleagues had been ‘impressed’ by a tour of the instrument given by organ curator William McVicker.
SBC artistic director Jude Kelly announced ‘a new age for SBC of commissioning works for organ’, saying that they had already held conversations with leading composers. She then outlined a programme of detailed work based around the organ with a group of around 150 children in the London area, twinning with children in Durham (home of Harrison & Harrison), who will all become organ advocates: ‘The organ has to take on a secular role in the society we now live in; we have to put the organ back into people’s psyche.’
McVicker – praised by Kelly for being ‘stoic and emphatically dogged’ – explained that the third of the organ currently in place in the hall is about the size of a parish church organ, lacking stops at both ends of the dynamic spectrum: ‘It doesn’t have its softest stops. And when the organ is put into a very large orchestral ensemble it needs gravitas and weight at the bottom, and brilliance over the piccolos and flutes at the top end. The organ glues together the jigsaw of sound in works like Belshazzar’s Feast. This organ is special because during the difficult economic times of the 1920s and 30s organ builders needed to take short cuts. What Ralph Downes did was to reach for the sounds of musical instruments that had been lost, the timbres that belonged to the classical period. It’s the only organ in London on which you can play classical French repertoire with authenticity. When it was built, critics thought it sounded like broken glass. But when you play it, it’s like sitting in a Bentley Turbo R, with amazing power at your fingertips.’
Asked if the organ would go back exactly as it was, McVicker said the organ had originally been ‘beautifully thought out’. The extreme LH and RH sides of the instrument have been carefully redesigned for it to fit into the new chamber at the back of the stage. There will be a difference in how we hear the organ now, due to the hall’s improved acoustics following the refurbishment – ‘it’s fuller, brighter, richer’.
Choir & Organ is a Southbank Centre media partner for the organ campaign. We will be supporting the appeal in a number of ways, including regular updates on progress in the magazine and through e-bulletins. Choir & Organ has already sponsored a pipe: c’’ on the Swell 4ft Clarion. C&O readers can sponsor a pipe for anything from £30 to £10,000 direct from the C&O website: www.choirandorgan.com
Gerre Edward Hancock (1934-2012)
26 January 2012
Gerre Edward Hancock (1934-2012)
Gerre Hancock, one of America’s most highly acclaimed concert organists and choral directors, passed away peacefully on January 21st, surrounded by his family, in Austin, Texas. The cause was coronary artery disease. A gifted artist, teacher and composer, he was considered by many to be a giant figure in twentieth to twenty-first century American sacred music. He was known not only for his artistry, but also for his energy, optimism and love of the people he taught and for whom he performed.
At the time of his death, Dr. Hancock was Professor of Organ and Sacred Music at The University of Texas at Austin, where he taught along with his wife of fifty years, Dr. Judith Hancock. Prior to this appointment in 2004, he held the position of Organist and Master of the Choristers at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City, where for over thirty years he set a new standard for church music in America. Previous to his time at Saint Thomas, he held positions as Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati, where he also served on the Artist Faculty of the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, and as Assistant Organist at St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York City.
The full obituary features in the March/April issue of Choir & Organ, available to purchase from 1 March 2012.
British Composer awards announced
12 December 2011
Michael Zev Gordon has won the Choral section of the 2011 British Composer awards for Allele, a 40-part unaccompanied work set to a text by Ruth Padel in which singers performed parts derived directly from their own genetic code. Julian Anderson scooped both the orchestral award for his Fantasias, and the Liturgical award for his ‘Bell’ Mass, commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey to mark the 450th anniversary of the Abbey's Collegiate Charter.
Full list of winners:
Instrumental Solo or Duo
William Sweeney - Sonata for Cello & Piano
Chamber
Anthony Payne - String Quartet No. 2
Vocal
Huw Watkins - Five Larkin Songs
Choral
Michael Zev Gordon - Allele
Wind Band or Brass Band
Lucy Pankhurst - In Pitch Black
Orchestral
Julian Anderson - Fantasias
Stage Works
Orlando Gough - A Ring A Lamp A Thing
Liturgical
Julian Anderson - Bell Mass
Contemporary Jazz Composition
Tommy Evans - The Green Seagull
Community or Educational Project
John Barber - Consider the Lilies
Making Music Award
Richard Bullen - I can’t find brumm…
International Award
Bent Sørensen - La Mattina
Outreach
Graham Fitkin - PK
£1.5m rescue bid for Chapel Royal Choir
12 December 2011
A new Choral Foundation has been set up to secure the musical future of the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. The Choir to date has been largely self-funded through donations from the congregation but due to growing expenses, funding is now insufficient to sustain it. The Foundation’s launch event followed a special Evensong to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and was attended by over 200 supporters; guests included descendants of the composers John Blow and Henry Purcell, who were Children and Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal and both performed and composed as part of the musical establishment at Hampton Court Palace.
A spokeswoman told C&O: ‘The Choral Foundation will raise money to fund the musical training of the choir boys, to establish scholarships with local schools for boys who would otherwise not be able to enter the Choir and attend these schools, to undertake major repairs on the historic organ to bring it back to world class standard, and to fund professional Gentlemen singers so they can practise and perform regularly with the Chapel Royal Choir.’
The Chapel Royal has been called ‘the cradle of English church music’. From the 16th century, renowned composers and musicians performed for Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queen Mary I, Queen Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, William III and Mary II, and Queen Anne. These composers included William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Morley, Henry Purcell, Pelham Humfrey and John Blow. The musicians and composers of the Chapel Royal inspired and were copied by cathedrals, churches and chapels throughout the country. The tradition of musical excellence continues today: the choir regularly performs works by living British composers such as Sir Nicolas Jackson, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, James McMillan and Jonathan Dove.
Canon Denis Mulliner, Chaplain of the Chapel Royal, said: ‘The Chapel Royal is a hidden treasure, a living, vibrant church with an outstanding choir at the centre of an historic royal palace. We would like to share this with as many visitors as possible.’ Worshippers do not pay the Palace entrance fee to attend services.
