Category: BIOS Reporter

Most of us would assume that the path taken by youngsters aspiring to be organists includes some kind of association with the Church. Young people may well have been worshippers at a local church and have been exposed to the organ as a musical instrument in the course of a service and possibly at recitals…

Imagine the following situation: you have been asked to give a recital at a local church and in some Kafkaesque twists of fate, the programme has been dictated to you – all you have to do is play it. Most is staple fare with the exception that several items are usually heard played on a…

As we contemplate the year 2000, it is an instructive and perhaps cautionary exercise to try to place oneself in the position of organists and organ-builders of the 1890s and to try to imagine their thoughts and expectations as the year 1900 drew closer. In particular, one wonders what sort of view they took of…

For the editors, the January edition of this journal is a preoccupation at the time of year which reminds one that the significance of Henry John Gauntlett (1805-1876) is twofold. His tune for Mrs. Alexander’s ‘Once in royal David’s city’ seems to underline that what is most durable is not necessarily what is most elaborate…

Organologists have a tendency to confine themselves to the instrument, its makers and its repertoire, and only rarely do they focus their attention on organists themselves. Generally speaking, organists of former times do not seem to be of much organological interest unless they played a part either in designing particular instruments or in the evolution…

The Scottish Federation of Organists have kindly sent us a copy of this year’s edition of their journal, The Scottish Organist. It is always pleasant to receive the journals of other organological bodies, and we take this opportunity to record our thanks. It is especially pleasant when such journals seem to echo our own characteristic…

The idea of having some kind of national pipe organ museum is put forward from time to time; it is now under consideration once again, and we hope to be able to include in some future edition a note of the outcome of the discussion that took place in London on 20 March, between the…

One response to Sound Advice, the guidelines on conservation launched at last year’s Annual General Meeting, was a query as to whether the retention of a non-standard pedalboard is invariably correct. Since the query came from within the membership, it may be as well, in this first editorial of 1995, to say a few words…

The Family Law Reform Act 1969 reduced the age of majority to eighteen, so that the summer of 1994 may be said to have witnessed the passage of BIOS into adulthood, its first official meetings having taken place in July 1976, in Cambridge. It was a passage celebrated neither officially nor, so far as we…

Questions continue to be asked about the organ in Worcester Cathedral, and in particular about the Gilbert Scott case which houses the section in the south transept. Along with the two 32-foot flues, it is substantially all that remains of the Hill organ donated to the cathedral by the Earl of Dudley, in 1874 –…