June 2004
Simple Organ Music	Show Menu

Randal Henly

There have been frequent requests for information about simple organ music and some helpful suggestions have already appeared in previous issues of SOUNDBOARD. The music of Caleb Simper may be another answer for those looking for such material.

A prolific composer of Victorian church music, Caleb Simper was a humble musician whose works sold in vast quantities, rightly deserving the publisher's accolade as being 'sung throughout the civilised world'. Born in Barford St Martin, Wiltshire in 1857, Simper was largely self-taught. He attempted a number of professions, including piano tuning, before finding his vocation as an organist, and it appears that his first opportunity in this field came in 1881, when he was appointed organist of St Mary Magdalen's, Worcester. He was also briefly manager of a music shop next door but one to the Elgar family business. Ten years later he moved to Barnstable, and there he remained, occupying a number of posts as organist and choirmaster until shortly before his death in 1942.

Acutely aware of the limitations of many church organists of the period, and that churches and chapels had, in many instances, only access to a harmonium or American organ, he set about composing voluntaries for two staves only. Now in the 21st century, many churches find themselves using a competent pianist as organist, and the ability to provide the congregation with a voluntary without needing the ability to 'pedal' is again to the fore. However, the bottom notes of most Simper pieces can be pedalled with effect, and the tune of many pieces can be played as a solo, again with effect.

Simper’s Voluntaries have been described as a help in times of trouble — most can be sight read with little or no effort, and can often save the day when an organist has nothing prepared for a Sunday morning! Published by Stainer & Bell, there are twelve books, each containing seventeen voluntaries, made up of pastorals, communion pieces, postludes, matches, meditations, melodies and so on.

While some of the pieces lack substance, there are many items well worth having in a voluntaries repertoire. S & B report that the Simper albums are a steady seller, and are constantly being reprinted.

Simper also produced much choral music; there are 162 anthems under his own name and others under the pseudonym Edwyn A Clare. His anthems, noticeably influenced by the style of S.S. Wesley, are simple and offer singable and practical music for church choirs of limited technical ability for the main festivals of the Christian year.

William Lloyd Webber, although never as famous as his two sons Andrew and Julian have become, also produced some volumes of simple organ music. Stainer & Bell have two volumes entitled Chapel in the Valley written on two staves, each containing six voluntaries. Keith Wakefield of Stainer & Bell in a recent note to the Editor wrote: A fascinating programme about William on Radio 4 this Tuesday, reminded me of just how good an organist he was, and, indeed, an excellent composer in the romantic school. I used to go to hear him at the Central Hall, Westminster.

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