We practise our hymn extensions on the Walker 1963 organ at St John the Evangelist, Islington, North London

Nothing gets church organists going much more than a discussion of hymn playing – a cue for despairing anecdotes about unmusical congregations, and even more unmusical clergy.  Simon Williams kept us (reasonably) on track this morning on a Church Music workshop, taking us through hymn registration, length and style of playovers, and general leading of the congregation.   He shared with us the Daniel Moult Patent Hymn Extension Method – perfect for organists nervous of improvisation, but needing to supply a minute or two of extra something at the end of the hymn.  It goes like this:

If the hymn has finished (but the service business hasn’t quite)  find an interesting inner part of a line of the hymn (tenor or alto) and play it alone, or in octaves

Play it again, adding the third above

Play the whole line in four part harmony

Find another interesting inner part

Repeat

Finish the hymn in four part harmony, playing the final cadence at a ceremonial half speed

As you get your confidence, you can vary the technique, perhaps adding a few passing notes, or modulating a bit.

We’re all grateful to Dan for this wizzo idea.  (Dan is also teaching on the course, and I’m off to hear him talk about Sweelinck and Scheidermann next.  More about Simon and Dan below.)

We were playing on the 1963 Walker organ at St John the Evangelist, Duncan Terrace, in North London.  From its looks and its bright, beefy sound, you might think it was a mechanical action organ of the 60s neo-baroque school, but in fact it’s one of the last electro-pneumatic organs made.

Peter Stevens of Westminster Cathedral will be giving a recital on this organ on 28th September 2013, at 7.30pm, as part of the Anniversary Series celebrating 50 years since its opening.

The Walker 1963 organ at St John the Evangelist, Islington, North London

Five questions for…Simon Williams

The art of concentration with Daniel Moult

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The urgent work of converting Heathens occupies many of the hymn books from the late 19th to early 20th century:

The Heathen perish day by day
Thousands and thousands pass away!
O Christians to their rescue fly
Preach Jesus to them ere they die
(J Montgomery)

When not bowing down to idols of wood and stone, Heathens are assumed to be weeping copiously over the state of their unsaved souls:

Hark! What accents of despair
Tis the heathen’s dying pray’r

The inhabitants of Africa and India seem to be the main focus of this missionary concern, though the conversion of the Jews is another urgent cause, and poor Greenland’s icy mountains seem to need attention too, though I think this is more for geographical symmetry than anything else.

Children are expected to contribute from an early age to this essential work:

Hear the pennies dropping
Listen while they fall
Ev’ry one for Jesus
He shall have them all

Child mortality was still high in the late 19th century, so warning:

I’m not too young to sin, I’m not to young to die

was probably quite pertinent, and of course, Sunday School couldn’t slip by without asking Jesus to:

Teach me to do as I am told
And help me to be good as gold
From Little Me (William Canton)

Quite a few children’s hymns wallow in whimsy:

Where did you come from baby dear?
Out of the ev’rywhere into here
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through
(George Macdonald)

though things get more robust as they get older, with hymns for Boys’ Meetings (not for Girls’ I notice) which exhort to Dare to be a Daniel! or:

Yield not to temptation
….dark passions subdue
Look ever to Jesus,
He’ll carry you through
(HRP)

The missionary work was not only needed overseas, as:

The streets of the city are full
Of poor little perishing souls
Who wander away from the light
In places that Satan controls!

All this urging of parents and teachers to reap, sow, and gather in the sheep and lambs to the fold (amongst other agricultural metaphors) leaves you quite exhausted.

We want the young for Jesus…
For e’en the tiniest jewel
Shall shine in Jesus’ crown…

Though a tone of exasperation occasionally sets in:

Convert our children, Lord!
Their evil hearts subdue
And by Thy grace and Spirits’s pow’r
Create them all anew.
(J K Starling)

This charming scene probably only ever existed in a hopeful Edwardian editor’s imagination. (First published 1908)

Much of this burning ardour is surely wishful thinking on behalf of the writers and editors, rather than the reality on the ground.  But it’s easy to scoff at the naive aspirations (not to mention tedious racism) presented in these hundred year old books – how comical may aspects of our own contemporary hymn books seem in a hundred years’ time?  The  clunky earnestness of some 70s and 80s hymns is already showing its age, and the careful rewriting of older hymns to suit modern, inclusive sensibilities has emasculated some of the poetry.  Playing hymns, though, is still one of the pleasures of being an organist for me – there’s something about their sturdy musical predictability which is very reassuring, even while I wonder at the words.

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