A member of the congregation who knows a bit about organ playing came up to me a few weeks ago saying ‘Your improvisation is really coming on!’

I accepted this compliment gracefully, discreetly stuffing my ‘improvisation’ into my organ bag. You see, for those of us who are not born improvisers, books of preludes and postludes based on everyday hymn tunes are an absolute godsend, and my thoughtful reflection that morning on Make me a channel of your peace had come straight from Volume 9 of OUP’s Oxford Hymn Settings for Organists (and had been written by Amy Summers. Thank you Amy!)

The recent publication of this final volume of Oxford Hymn Settings for Organists marks the end of a long project for OUP, culminating in a box set of nine books of compositions by contemporary composers based on familiar hymn tunes, with the initial volumes loosely based around the church year, and the final two volumes being settings of general hymns, from Abbot’s Leigh to Woodlands. (Volume 9 also includes includes a useful cumulative index to the whole series by hymn tune.)

The original vision for this series was set by David Blackwell when Head of Music Publishing at OUP, the first two volumes (Advent and Christmas, and Epiphany) being published in 2014 – the project being steered over the years by himself as editor, along with Rebecca Groom te Velde, David Bednall and Alan Bullard. And looking at the contents pages over the years, you can spot how the number of women composers contributing to the project increased as the series developed.

The (generally short) independent pieces all have pedal parts and are aimed at the intermediate organist, though within this they range from relatively easy, to being quite demanding of the player. Composers have enjoyed playing with forms and styles: Sarah Macdonald writes a set of variations on Kingsfold, and Sarah Quartel turns Blaenwern into a dance. Other familiar hymn tunes are transformed into a lament, a carillon, a toccata, fanfare, flourish, cantilena…..

Katherine Dienes-Williams tells you to play her Invention on Oriel ‘with a smile’, and I leave it to you (and musically-informed members of your congregation) to discover why Christa Rakich’s witty chorale prelude on Faithfulness (Volume 8) is described as a ‘homage to Gounod’.