I feel very lucky to have been Assistant Organist and Tutor to the Choristers at Magdalen College for nearly eight years, especially for the chance to see a significant new organ in Oxford take shape. I arrived in January 2017, at the same time as a new Informator Choristarum (the Latin title of the Director of Music), Mark Williams.

Have you ever worried because someone has said that “to play Bach on the organ you should be using toes only and no thumbs”? A lot of guilt surrounds this question. It’s a bit like New Years’ resolutions: you’re determined to start doing the ‘right’ thing but today isn’t really a convenient day to start, so we’ll do it tomorrow. Or next year. But is this statement actually true?

The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has a long-standing reputation for producing organists of the highest calibre, and a rich history of organ culture. But for years there was one major problem: suitable instruments – or, rather, a lack of them. There was always an aspiration that the quality of the teaching would be matched with responsive and inspiring organs.

In 1923, just two years before his death, Eugène Gigout celebrated sixty years as organist at the church of Saint-Augustin in Paris. As part of the celebrations, his closest friend Gabriel Faurédelivered an effusive and public hommage testifying to Gigout’s many musical achievements.

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent celebrated his eightieth birthday in January. He has forged a career as an organist and composer, distinctively combining church, synagogue and teaching roles, and particularly championing contemporary music.

Théodore Dubois is known to most organists primarily through no more than a handful of works, notably the famous Toccata. Yet these are but a fraction of the total of just over 100 works for organ.

The Organ Reform Movement stems from the musical experience, thinking and writing of Albert Schweitzer – scholar in both music and theology, and organist.

Greetings from Greece, a country where organs are as scarce as hen’s teeth… The ancestor of the organ was the hydraulis (hydravlis – or ὕδραυλις in Greek), an invention of the great engineer and inventor Ktesibius (3rd century BC) from Alexandria.

The epitaph, placed by his son, to Sir Christopher Wren in his masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice, does more than record his name and the results of his prodigious endeavours.

James O’Donnell is known around the world as a distinguished organist and award-winning choral conductor. Following positions at Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, he moved to Yale University as Professor in the Practice of Organ and Sacred Music at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of Music in 2023.

Matthew Martin is a composer, organist and choral conductor, and is currently Precentor and Director of Music at Gonville & Caius College Cambridge. He has been commissioned by, amongst others, the choirs of Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral, The Tallis Scholars, The Gabrieli Consort, and The Sixteen, and won the Liturgical category in the 2013 British Composer Awards. Matthew spoke to Huw Morgan, OR’s Deputy Editor, before Christmas.

Howard Skempton is recognised as one of the UK’s most renowned and respected living composers. Born in Chester in 1947, he has also had a career as an academic (he currently lectures in composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire), as an accordionist, and as a pianist. He has also worked as a music publisher.

A seven-year-old asks Anna Lapwood for advice on playing the organ. Anna Lapwood MBE is an international concert organist and Director of Music at Pembroke College Cambridge. Arwen is a Year 3 pupil at school in Bristol, where she sings in several choirs and is learning the violin.

OR is delighted that organist Jonathan Scott and his pianist brother, Tom, have shared some musical insights and highlights from a season in their international performing career.

On 18th June 1944 a flying bomb struck The Royal Military Chapel (The Guards’ Chapel) in Westminster during the Sunday morning service. The roof collapsed onto the congregation below, killing over 120 people, including members of the Band of the Coldstream Guards and their Director of Music.