January 2003
Letters to the Editor (Soundboard January 2003)	Show Menu

Congregation appreciation of organ music

Dear Editor

I think in one of your early issues you raising the difficulty of heightening congregational appreciation of the organist and the music played by him/her.

Might I suggest that one of the ways might be that for one or two morning services a year , two organists “guest” in each other parishes (assuming they are comfortable in this.) This would a give the priest an opportunity to announce the “guest” appearance and tacitly persuade the congregation to perhaps stay and listen to the voluntary. The organist would perhaps receive more appreciative comment as a “guest” than as a resident. Maybe the organists concerned would work on a special piece for the occasion. The organist may also get some benefit/satisfaction from playing a different organ and accompanying a different choir/congregation and some words of congregational encouragement.

Regards,

Mervyn Cooper.

“Naughty” tips article

Dear Editor,

Following on from Adrian Somerfield’s naughty’ article in issue #3 of Soundboard and in particular his section on “pitch”, Adrian referred to a book “Hymns Ancient and Modern Transposed”. May I suggest a similarly useful publication which contains 193 hymns (some with two transpositions) most of which appear in the current hymnal. The title is “Down a Tone” and is published by Kevin Mayhew, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. It is also obtainable from Opus 2, South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2.

Cheers.

Graham Walsh

Another solution to too-high music

Dear Editor,

Congratulations on another excellent edition. I thought Derek Verso’s article was most thought- provoking, as was that by Adrian Somerfield.

Regarding his solution to Chants & Psalms, I solved it by buying a cheap (under £60 sterling) computer programme for writing scores not one of these all singing dancing ones at £500 plus.
With this, having put the chant onto the score, I can then repeat for as many verses as are necessary, and then insert the words between the staves, moving bar lines to accommodate the number of words on any one chord. Only drawback is if they decide to change the psalm on the day of the service, but eventually I will have built up enough psalms to draw on them at will.

Regards,

Mervyn Cooper

Hymn 207

Dear Editor

Here is a snippet in which readers of Soundboard might be interested. It is a ploy of Joseph Groocock’s that we use at St Thomas’s. During the season of Lent, most churches will use Hymn 207 — Forty days and forty nights, and the tune normally used is Heinlein. If one reads the words (!), it is clear that the mood of the first four verses is quite different from that of the last two, and it is effective to change the mood of the tune too, as Dr Groocock suggested, at the end of verse 4 (due warning having been given, of course) and sing the last two verses to Buckland (Hymn 655). At least it will make the congregation aware of the words!

Adrian Somerfield

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