December 2001
A Rural Organ	Show Menu

John Godden

I worship in the little church in Laragh, hard by Glendalough in County Wicklow, that is dedicated to St John (which of the two by that title no one knows!). It would be crammed full with a hundred worshippers (I wish!), but at present it is most uplifting to count twenty. It was dedicated in 1867 as a Chapel of Ease for the parish of Derralossary, but the old parish church is now a preserved ruin, and St. John’s has therefore come up in the world a little. Rathdrum and Derralossary is now one parish, and grouped with Glenealy.

I am listed as a Church Musician. I am proud of that, but I am very much aware that I come way down the scale of skill. I play a lovely small organ in this country church with a congregation who for the most part sing rather diffidently. No offence. They would admit fully to my description! I heavily depend on the few exceptions who have volume turned up! Oh, for a choir!

I have always been a very indifferent pianist, so grateful for the wealth of playable hymn tunes in the Protestant tradition. The transition to ‘organist’ in my context is a simple one, with the well-known care for fingering and respect for the values of notes and rests! It was a help also that harmoniums and American organs figured in the furnishings of various drawing rooms of the older generation when I was growing up. I made the transition, first, because I enjoy the sounds that I can make (those 16 ft pipes sound mighty!), and second, (and this a more pressing reason) because there is no one else in our little congregation who will admit to being able to play, since George, who faithfully played for all of fifty five years (Wowee!), has passed away. Personal Anno Domine decrees that I will never break that record! The common alternative would be to introduce recorded music to the church, which could be called an admission of defeat and an insult to a fine instrument left silent when there is the remotest possibility of its voice being heard. Not that that option is wholly bad, as the presence of a choir in the recordings lends body and encourages the faint-hearted! But I have always thought of the accompanying instrument as a live thing and part of good worship.

I said that ‘mine’ was a small organ. It is — the Sports Model. Two manuals (Great and Choir). Great has Piccolo (2 ft), Harmonic flute (4 ft), Open Diapason ( 8ft), Viol de Gamba (8ft), Vienna Flute (8 ft). Choir has Gadact Flute (4 ft). Dulciana (8 ft). Pedals (parallel, not radial — is this a clue to its date?) haVe Bourdon (16 ft). There are the usual couplers, Choir to Great, and Choir to Pedals. A swell operates on both manuals. An electric blower was added in 1968, replacing Jack, who had done the pumping since 1933. He is still to the good and our People’s Church- warden. It is small but it is a true pipe organ, and don’t let anybody insult my organ by calling it otherwise! It sits four-square on the floor filling what might be called a mini-North transept, except that there is no South one! From the back it is a mass of assorted pipes that I wouldn’t begin to make track of. I sit with my right side to the master/mistress of ceremonies, and my back and left to the congregation of mainly sotto voce singers.

I have been trying to discover the origin of the organ. I have had great enjoyment doing research in the RCB library helped particularly by Heather Smith. 11 certainly had been an addition to the church furniture, as it replaced a harmonium reported in the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette (forerunner to the Church of Ireland Gazette) of Jdnuary 1st 1879 as having been bought, one each for the Parish church and the Chapel of Ease which is now Si John’s. But that doesn’t account for the organ. It is labelled Telford & Telford, Dublin, a firm no longer existing. It is undoubtedly very old, the ivories being notice~hly worn and stained where they get most use. I haven’t given up yet!

I have rambled, but I would like to focus on a point. There are many country churches in which the instrument is idle because ‘there is no organist’. I want to encourage their resurrection in the hands of that hidden talent that J am sure must be there in at least some cases. I think that our little congregation appreciate me, warts and all. Yours would too. I play very few wrong notes, Deo Gratias, but it is an effort that distraction like even thinking of using my feet on the pedals can make bits oil I might manage the Amens, but, did you notice that they are completely left out of the new hymn-book? Thry seemed to have gone out of fashion well before that, with some few prayerful exceptions. I mostly succeed in pulling out the Piccolo stop for the last verse to lend some variety, and if I haven’t done that, the most nervous of the congregation. my better half, knows that I am about to throw in an extra verse for good measure, having lost count of the verses.
Talent, show thyself, latent and all as you might be! How I would love a stand-in. I fear that when I am absent and worship is conducted without music there is a certain satisfaction that the service is measurably shorter, but I hope I am wrong. I am not a jealous organist. Anyone may take my place and savour the enhanced joy of Worship in Glendalough. 9.15 each Sunday morning (except most fifth Sundays), and what better way to start a spiritually therapeutic visit to the Monastic City and a walk in the Wicklow Hills? You might like to see my organ anyway and hazard a guess as to its provenance. And do get up and have a play at the organ in your own church that has been silent. I’m sure you would be most welcome. Nerves are conquerable! And a tip that you will find most useful when it comes to playing voluntaries: choose something that is bound to be unknown to your hearers, and remember that even if it is marked ‘prestissimo’ the composer may have been misguided somehow and it will still sound beautiful, or even better, played ‘largo’!

One way or another you have under your hands and feet the capacity to make the psalmist’s ‘Joyful Noise unto the Lord’! Psalm 150 sums it all up nicely and inclusively and I fear sets a better specification than my Sports Model is up to. ‘Praise him with trumpet, lute, harp, timbrel, dance, strings, pipe, sounding cymbals, clashing cymbals’. And for your congregation, ‘everything that liath breath’. All to be mustered as best can be done to Praise the Lord! You can only do your best! Up and at ‘em!

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