LIGHT NOT SLIGHT

One of the two Radio City Music Hall Consoles

Within the Radio City Music Hall in New York is an organ installed by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company. Designed to play a wide range of music, it is unusual in having two consoles – one either side of the vast stage.

Whilst such instruments have introduced audiences to the light classics as well as popular melodies of the day over many decades, parish church organists have, by and large, avoided such music. However, an increasing number of organists are discovering that their organ can be almost as versatile and are adding ‘light’ music to their repertoire. And as the BBC has demonstrated through several radio programmes over the past couple of years, ‘light’ music does not mean ‘slight’ music.

An organist that has made a career of playing ‘light music’ on classical organs is Nigel Ogden. Nigel has been presenter of the BBC Radio programme ‘The Organist Entertains’ for many years and it is the longest running specialist music programme on the network.

Nigel is as much at home on a mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ as he is on a classical organ housed in a cathedral or a modest Methodist chapel and has composed a number of works that can be played on both types of instrument.

One of his most popular compositions is ‘Penguins’ Playtime’, published by Stainer & Bell (Ref H320 £4.00). The attached video demonstrates one interpretation of the work on a classical organ. And as one person has commented ‘This tune makes me laugh’. – And so it should.

Other works by Nigel include ‘An Art-Deco Three Piece Suite’ (Ref H358 £6.00), ‘Scherzo for the White Rabbit’ (Ref H348 £4.25) and ‘Saints of a Spree’ (Ref H461 £4.25) – a delightful piece based on the spiritual ‘When the saints come marching in’ but with a number of unexpected twists. Listen for yourself with this video recorded at a church in Finland.

In 2012 Nigel’s contribution to music was recognised by the British Academy of Songwriters and Authors in association with the Performing Right Society who presented him with the much coveted Gold Badge Award in the form of a tuning fork.

http://www.stainer.co.uk/ogden.html#h348

LOVE IT OR LOATHE IT Caleb Simper

When Stainer & Bell (by a circuitous route) acquired the catalogue of A. Weekes and Co. Ltd, it greatly increased its selection of church anthems, due, in the main, to one man – Caleb Simper.

To many, Victorian composers of church music are no longer in vogue, and Simper does not feature in the famous ‘Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians’. However, the original publishers proudly printed on copies of his anthems ‘Sung throughout the civilised world’ – as indeed they were. By 1892, about 2.5 million copies of his anthems had been sold. This increased to around 3.25 million by 1895 and surpassing 5 million by 1920. Halcyon days for a publisher!

Although loved by church and chapel choirs who had little musical knowledge and who found the simplicity of the works within their limited abilities, the anthems were derided by others. Ralph Vaughan Williams said about Simper and Maunder (composer of Olivet to Calvary) ‘Composers with ridiculous names: their names are about the one thing these composers couldn’t help; other aspects of their activities are less innocent.’ And when all things Victorian were out of favour and structures such as the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park and St Pancras Midland Hotel were scheduled for demolition and church choir cupboards cleared, Erik Routley, in his book ‘A Short History of English Music’, wrote: ‘From the Crucifixion you go downwards to the underworld of Michael Costa, Caleb Simper and J. H. Maunder’.

One advocate of Simper’s anthems in recent years was the late Christopher Turner, who, in 1995, persuaded us to publish a volume entitled Five Anthems for the Liturgical Year (Ref D85 £6.00) which has sold surprisingly well. Simper’s organ works, unlike his anthems, have never been out of print, and all twelve books Seventeen Voluntaries (Refs 16010 – 16021 £5.75 per volume) are themselves sold in quantity to the ‘civilised world’. Written on two staves, the voluntaries are tuneful and provide the backbone to many church services.

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. He was briefly manager of a music shop next door but one to the Elgar family business. Ten years later he moved to Barnstaple, and there he remained, occupying a number of posts as organist and choirmaster until shortly before his death in 1942.

So, like the yeast extract ‘Marmite’, who promote their product on a ‘love it or hate it’ basis, the choice is yours. Fortunately enough organists fall into the former category to force us to reprint the Voluntaries on a regular basis.

http://www.stainer.co.uk/acatalog/organ_composers_l_to_z.html

Tubby the Tuba

Anyone fortunate enough to have lived through the age of ‘steam radio’, Uncle Mac and Children’s Favourites, the mellifluous voice of Danny Kaye telling the story of ‘Tubby the Tuba’, accompanied by Victor Young and his concert orchestra, will be a cherished memory. If you are unfamiliar with the tale, Tubby becomes disillusioned with only playing ‘Oompah’ in the orchestra. Then a frog teaches him a melody within the compass of the instrument. Tubby finally gets the opportunity to show the range of the tuba and the orchestra joins in with great enthusiasm.

The American composers Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger were inspired to write the story when, having thanked the musicians following a performance of one of their compositions, the tuba player said ‘You know, tubas can sing too’. That night, in December 1941, Paul and George put pen to paper and Tubby was born. However, it wasn’t until after the war that their creation was shared with the world via a 78rpm recording. Since then, ‘Tubby the Tuba’ has been translated into more than 30 languages and [played by many of the world’s orchestras.

In the organ world, tubas have fared a little better than inn many orchestral scores. Three ‘Tuba Tunes’ for the ‘king of instruments’ come to mind. One by C. S. Lang is published by Chester, but perhaps the most famous is that by Norman Cocker.

 Whilst Tripp and Kleinsinger took inspiration from the brass orchestral instrument, Cocker, as organist of Manchester Cathedral, had at his disposal the ‘Tuba Magna’ – a rank of pipes played at high pressure. Unfortunately these pipes were not included in the organ’s rebuild of 1979. The enclosed ‘Orchestral Tuba’ remains, but to quote one critic, ‘is not nearly vulgar enough!’. Cocker’s reputation as a versatile organist lives on. He was often to be seen rushing from the cinema, where he was also organist, to the Cathedral and back again wearing carpet slippers. In his Tuba Tune (Ref MO4 £5.75), Cocker combines the grandeur of the church organ with the showmanship of the cinema organ. Cocker’s Tuba Tune is performed here on the Harrison an Harrison organ at the Temple Church, London by James Vivien in a short film produced, engineered and edited by David Hinitt.

An organist in the same mould as Norman Cocker was Reginald Porter-Brown. His Tuba Tune (Ref H395 £6.00), of only medium difficulty, was a firm favourite in concerts for many years before being published by Stainer & Bell in 1998 – some sixteen years after his death. Born in 1910 in the village of Worsbrough Dale near Barnsley, Porter-Brown became organist at Manchester’s Piccadilly Theatre at the age of twenty-one. In 1935 he opened his first BBC broadcast with the tune that was to become his musical ‘signature’, ‘Oh Mr Porter’.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley

Writing in 1875, Samuel Sebastian Wesley could look back on a period of over forty years as a cathedral organist:

I left London when very young for Hereford, intending to compose chiefly for the Church but . . . there is not only no reward for this but, far worse, such efforts bring an artist of eminence into conflicts with the insufficient means for performing music at Cathedrals: this state of things is the natural result of such an anomaly as that of one professional calling being wholly supervised by another – viz., Musicians by Clergymen, with no other laws for order than those of Henry the Eighth’s time and the common law which treats organists as the servants of the Clergy so that no recognition of the Musician as an Artist and gentleman has any place in a Court of Law.

Despite achieving fame as a performer, respect as a composer and a degree of notoriety for his views on the reform of cathedral music, Wesley never enjoyed the recognition or the position in English musical life he felt he deserved. His final years, spent in Gloucester (where he wrote, there was ‘no great demand for any peculiarly experienced musical ability’), were clouded by feelings of bitterness and regret that he had neither escaped from the artistic isolation of a provincial cathedral, nor succeeded in his lifelong battle to raise the standard of cathedral music and the status of musicians.

S. S. Wesley was born in London in 1810. His father, Samuel Wesley (son of the hymn writer and co-founder of Methodism, Charles Wesley), was one of the foremost organists of his day. Through his influence, his son gained admission to the choir of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, in 1817, where Samuel Sebastian received a general, but rudimentary, musical education.

After leaving the Chapel Royal in 1826, Wesley held several organists’ posts, and, by the end of the decade, was beginning to make his mark, not only as an organist but also as a composer. The celebrated Musica Britannica series has now devoted three volumes to his anthems, which demonstrates how prolific he was in this field. The latest volume is, like its predecessors, edited by Peter Horton (Ref MB89 £90.00). Volumes I and II are still available (Ref MB57 £96.00 and Ref MB63 £86.00). All three volumes contain extremely informative notes. Samuel Sebastian died in Gloucester on 19th April 1876.

Although (one hears!) differences of opinion can still exist between organists and clergy, Nigel Ogden has some encouraging words for organists in the notes contained in At Your Service — Fifteen Practical Voluntaries for Church Organists (Ref H456 £5.75). Church organists are among the most versatile of musicians. They create the musical glue that holds together our worship, and because each occasion of prayer and than ksgiving is a real event and not a formula, so that anything can happen and quite often does, they must also have the instincts of a musical stage manager. At a moment’s notice they may be required to create or change the mood of a service, or indeed be ready to paper over the cracks!