Author: Matt Dixon

The losses of historic organs in London due to bomb damage during the Second World War is a subject that has recently been covered in BIOS meetings. The seemingly random nature of this destruction is all the more striking when one considers how instruments carefully preserved over several centuries were destroyed, in some cases, in…

It has been my good fortune on a few occasions recently to come across books, music or artefacts where previous owners have left their mark in various ways. Perhaps the most striking for me personally was to discover that my copy of the 1769 edition of William Herschel’s Sei Sonate per il Cembalo was one…

The introduction of barrel organs into churches during the latter half of the eighteenth century is often seen as an ingenious solution to a practical problem, namely, a shortage of people able or prepared to play the required accompaniments to congregational worship. An obvious limitation to barrel organs was the number of hymn tunes and…

The chapel of Cranleigh School has recently been graced with a brand-new Mander organ built to a very high specification, both tonally and technologically. It was against the backdrop of this fine instrument, during a recent IBO meeting, that I was given the somewhat daunting task of extending some thoughts on the provision of organs…

The cover picture is of an organ that no longer exists. Furthermore the loss of this organ in Durham Street Methodist Church during the earthquake that struck Christchurch New Zealand recently was accompanied by a tragic loss of life. Two employees of the South Island Organ Company along with a helper from the church were…

This first issue of the second decade of the twenty-first century includes news of a significant development in the work of BIOS – the reIocation of the British Organ Archive (BOA) to its new home at the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham. The Archive is now housed in state-of-the-art facilities with a…

Memories are short and the selective retention of recollections of the good times seems to one of our favourite pastimes: don’t we all remember those long hot summers of our childhood? However, I suspect that if we were to read the summer weather forecasts of yore they would bear a striking resemblance to those of…

Sir Francis Bacon, the great Elizabethan political survivor and polymath, is often credited with the aphorism ‘Knowledge is Power’ but he may have been paraphrasing a much earlier author who said ‘A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength’ (Proverbs 24:5, King James Bible). Either way, the message is clear, someone…

In a recent editorial I encouraged BIOS members to (literally) dig up ancient organs. In my enthusiasm for this noble pursuit I neglected to mention that other treasures such as long-lost or forgotten music are still to be found and that they can also give us valuable information on organs that may have disappeared a…

It is good to report once more that it has been a very active year for BIOS. We have again seen important progress in our efforts to fulfill our aims. We started the year with the successful one-day research conference in Birmingham. This was followed by the third residential conference in Oxford, specialising in the…