Five questions for…Anne Marsden Thomas

Anne Marsden Thomas

Anne Marsden Thomas is the Head of the RCO Academy Organ School, co-ordinating the activities of a team of teachers and the studies of around 300 organ students.   In 1990 she was responsible for the National Learn the Organ Year, which attracted over 2,000 applicants – a huge number of organists looking for good teaching.  Anne established the St Giles International Organ School, based at St Giles Cripplegate Church in the City of London, to respond to this need, and this has just been taken under the stewardship of the Royal College of Organists to form the RCO Academy Organ School.   Anne directs the splendid Summer Course at St Giles, which attracts over 70 students each year from around the world.   More on the Summer Course here.    Anne is Director of Music at St Giles Cripplegate, and her concert and teaching work has taken her to Japan and the US, as well as all over Europe and the UK.  She has made several recordings, including the organ music of Henry Smart on the St Giles organ.

Here are Anne’s answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
Since I stopped giving recitals I mainly learn pieces that my students need or that will suit my church services.  For example,  I decided that my summer church organ voluntaries would be the lively movements from the Bach concerto transcriptions so that’s one book in my music case at the moment.

What has been your best experience as an organist?
Playing the last movement of Whitlock’s Sonata at St. Giles at 4 a.m. during our fundraising 6-day marathon several years ago.  I love the piece and it felt magical to play such passionate music in the middle of the night.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Turning up to play a recital at a venue which will remain nameless, only to find that the organ was in a terrible state: missing notes, inconsistent speech, several cyphers.   Ugh!  (There was nearly a happy ending to this experience.  I turned the organ off to go out for a breath of air and sanity, and when I returned the organ refused to turn on again.  The relief!  Unfortunately the resident organist showed up and got the organ started, so I had to limp through the recital anyway.)

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?  (and who was it?)
‘Listen!’  Dame Gillian Weir.  Actually, she didn’t exactly say that, but that was always the effect of her teaching: to make one listen to what the music was really saying.
 
What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Play your best and don’t worry about others judging you.

Anne has drawn on her long experience of teaching and playing to compile and edit the repertoire for the Oxford Service Music for Organ graded anthologies; one set (3 volumes) for manuals only, the second set (3 volumes) for manuals and pedals. Within each book the pieces are grouped according to service needs into Preludes, Interludes, Processionals, and Postludes. The repertoire spans the 16th to the 21st century, with some new pieces written especially for the collection, and a number of pieces from the books are now on the ABRSM organ syllabus.  Oxford Service Music for Organ: Manuals and Pedals, Book 1 was winner of the Music Industries Association’s Best Classical Publication 2011.  They are published by OUP.