The wandering organist

Found some Easter joy at Holy Spirit, Southsea. Stanford in C and Walford Davies' O Sons and Daughters, followed by Preston's Alleluyas, resurrected after some years' neglect. Thank you Philip Drew for letting me play. A picture from Easter Day, 2014.

Where's Easter gone? Even the normal fourth Sunday (trad. lang., Martin Shaw) got displaced for a Family Service this morning. The 8:30 said service over-ran by 15 minutes, the 9:30 started 10 minutes late, I didn't know the hymns til the board was put up two minutes before the service started, the Gloria was sung to the Thorne setting but the words in the service book were the "Peruvian" Gloria, and the Agnus Dei was sung (metrically) to Repton. About the only thing we didn't have was "If I was [were! Conditional!] a wriggly worm". The Clergy are throwing away the Church's traditional music without noticing or caring. There were five hymns in all, three were generic "alleluia" type, so where were The Day of Resurrection, Jesus Lives, Love's Redeeming Work is Done, The Strife is O'er, Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem, to name only a few? (Quite pleased Hail Thee, Festival Day didn't make it.) All classics, and unless we introduce th

It's not often I feel so dispirited I have no wish to play, but after Sunday's service I couldn't face even a run-through of some choral accompaniments coming up all too soon. I will leave the church unidentified. The Director of Music was off sick and the choir had been cancelled as no rehearsal could take place during the week. Two children and adults turned up. The person taking the service had a strong foreign accent, was wearing the microphone either some distance from his mouth or under some thick clothing, and the acoustics prevented me from understanding more than one word in 10. At zero notice it was suggested I play something during communion - fortunately I had brought a piece which I had prepared, in case - and the full music, harmonised edition of the service setting was only found for me on the day, not one which I knew. And the voluntary: it went ok until my great, flat, left foot plonked itself on bottom e on the last chord. The piece was, of course, dear

Some weekends, there's time to be leisurely, do some practice, read a little, cook something. Others just turn into mayhem. But even in the mayhem, there can be little oases. Yesterday was one such. As I rushed round and tried to get everything done the day before yesterday, I looked forward to an afternoon where I could just chat about organs and everything or nothing with one of my oldest friends. And so it turned out. From about 4pm yesterday til he had to depart to play for the Marian devotion which was replacing Evening Prayer (Mothering Sunday), we talked organs, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again , the editing of the organ part by the previous organist to play Blow in F (coming up at Low Sunday on the new Harrison organ in St Edmundsbury Cathedral) from that particular copy and, ooh, all sorts. It seemed longer than a couple of hours, and made me so grateful that I could stop for a while. One of the things I was asked to do over the weekend was to transpose the Iri