October 2005
The Charles Wood Summer School	Show Menu

Report by Randal Henly

Charles Wood, renowned musician and composer, was born at 11 Vicars Hill, Armagh in 1866 and received his early education as a chorister opposite his house. He later studied at the Royal College of Music, becoming a professor there, and then succeeding Stanford as Professor of Music at Cambridge. When Wood died in 1926, he left a legacy of about 250 sacred works as well as a large number of hymn tunes.

Carlo Curley giving advice to a young player at the organ of St Patrick’s (CofI) Cathedral

This year, the twelfth Charles Wood Summer School took place in Armagh from 22 to 28 August. The course caters for organists and other church musicians, music teachers and singers. The opening event was a concert in the Anglican Cathedral, given by Carlo Curley and the Charles Wood singers. The latter is a choir that comes together once each year, to sing at various times during the week of the Summer School. It consists of about 60 singers (mainly students), is conducted by David Hill (Director of Music, St John’s College, Cambridge), and the sound they make is superb. In that opening concert, they sang several ‘big’ works, including Parry’s ‘I was Glad’, accompanied by Carlo Curley playing (as he told us later) on nearly full organ without drowning them.

In the Organ Masterclass on the following day with Carlo Curley, several people played and received suggestions and advice from the maestro, who demonstrated lots of interesting things. He also played various works to illustrate (all from memory! ) and was quite entertaining as he told anecdotes and stories of people, performances and venues.

There was a ‘Bach at Twilight’ recital in St Malachy’s Church that evening — six organists offering us a selection of works of JSB and his contemporaries.

Wednesday was Choir Trainers’ Day, with David Hill and others, and dealt with all aspects of choral direction, voice production and warm-ups. For me, possibly the most useful part of the day was seeing Ben Parry direct a choir of about 25 boys who had only met two days previously. The day finished with Choral Evensong in the Cathedral sung by the Charles Wood Singers, and recorded by the BBC for broadcasting the following week.

Thursday saw a group of us on an Organ Crawl around the area. Armagh has two cathedrals, both dedicated to St Patrick, and both with giant organs. The Church of Ireland instrument has a 3-manual Walker organ, rebuilt by Wells-Kennedy in 1996. It was 56 speaking stops, including a high-pressure tuba (which has its own dedicated blower). The tuba makes a magnificent sound, and needs practically full organ to accompany it adequately! As well as having access to playing the organ, we had a tour through its insides also.

St Patrick’s RC Cathedral is an enormous building, and contains a four-manual Hill instrument, with 57 speaking stops. The organist there is the famous Georges Minne, who is now 81 years young. He welcomed us to the organ gallery and demonstrated the organ, playing the Bach Vivaldi concerto (from memory). He is a real character and regaled us with various stories of music, priests and bishops! Leaving some of the group to play the organ, he brought the rest of us up (very high) into the tower to see, hear and play the carillon. This was a first for me. While we were at the carillon, the tower clock struck four. He gave the bell an extra ‘boing’ — just to confuse the locals he said!

Georges Minne at the organ in St Patrick’s R.C. Cathedral, Armagh, talking to Theo Saunders

The organ in St Aidan’s Kilmore (about six miles out of the city) was built by William Hill and is a very large two-manual instrument — twelve Great stops and ten Swell, including five reeds and both 3 and 4-rank mixtures. You don’t expect to find such an instrument in a small country church.

On the Thursday evening there was a ‘Meet, Eat & Sing’ in St Mark’s Church. About 60 of us were introduced to a variety of choral music. There were a lot of young voices present, and I found out afterwards that many were on a choir outing from a Belfast church.

Effective Organ Accompaniment, on the Friday, for me was the most useful session of the week. Nigel McClintock, who gave the session, aimed the work at the amateur organist and he suggested all sorts of practical advice and tips on the effective use of the organ.

There were several sessions that I couldn’t manage to get to and as well there was a parallel course essentially for singers. All in all, there’ was something for everyone. Armagh is a small city, and all locations are close to each other. As always, at these sort of courses, you gain a lot by just talking to other organists and musicians. I did see Ken Glass (Holy Trinity Rathmines) at the Curley Masterclass but didn’t bump into him again.

<<Previous | Next >>