Category: BIOS Reporter

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…

It has been a summer of small organs for me (notwithstanding the new Worcester Quire organ – experienced in all its glory during a recent IBO meeting). Moreover, many of the organs that I encountered have been in various states of neglect. During a summer holiday in north Devon we revisited a chapel that was…

One of Handel’s organ concertos (Op. 4 No. 4) is part of the Handel Coronation Anthems programme of the Choral Pilgrimage of The Sixteen. Just like Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s epic Bach pilgrimage of 2000, Harry Christophers’ group decided to take a small organ with them rather than using whatever instrument happened to be at…

In Andrew Freeman’s English Organ Cases (1921) there is a brief mention (p. 40) of a nineteenth-century account of the remains of an early organ at Wingfield church in Suffolk. Along with other historical glimpses of ancient organs, this appeared to be all that would ever be known about this fifteenth-century organ. And yet, here…

If one searches NPOR using the terms ‘school’ or ‘college’ there are a large number of ‘hits’. At one level this is not surprising as many organists and organ scholars received their early training and exposure to organs at school. Long may this continue – but most of these schools are in the private sector.…

Over the past few months a number of organ-related newspaper articles, spanning over 200 years, have come across my desk. Newspapers are a rich source of information about organs, and recent Research Notes have shown how much can be gleaned on organs, builders and organists from London papers. From 1700 onwards, newspapers flourished in Britain,…

Apologies for the late distribution of this edition of the Reporter. Despite timely submissions by contributors, your editor fell foul of some software glitches that led to a considerable delay in getting the file to the printers. This edition of the Reporter includes the first of an occasional series of guest editorials. The author is…