Love hearing you play, John! Thanks for playing the fugue too--a joyous beginning to a service of resurrection.

Good morning everyone. Welcome to our first prerecorded production. We hope you enjoy it. - Mtr Michelle

This piece is one of the grandest organ pieces from the French Classic (17th-18th centuries) by Louis Marchand. Marchand was a "super-star" organist of his time. The "dialogue" refers in particular to the second section of the piece, where the louder Trumpet stop plays a solo role in the higher range, in dialogue with solo passages in the lower range. (You can see my hands trading places as this happens. The Trumpet is on the Great (lower keyboard). Several other combinations of stops are used for later sections of the piece, all characteristic of the French Classic organ. The final section is another rousing dialogue with the trumpet and other loud stops. This will be the prelude for streamed service June 28, but here you can see what is involved in closer detail.

This piece was written by Frank Bridge (1879-1941). He was primarily a composer, though also active as a violinist and conductor. The Adagio in E is from a set of Three Pieces for Organ, written and published in 1905. At the beginning, I am using soft, strong-minded stops, the Keraulophone on the Swell (upper keyboard), later adding the Dulciana on the Great (lower keyboard), then gradually building up to full organ, then working back down to softer stops. At the end, you hear a flute solo (the Melodia on the Great). In the accompaniment, I use the Keraulophone, but with that, I draw the Stopped Diapason (a somewhat dark-skinned flute), but only partially drawing the latter, so that it speaks slightly flat intentionally for a richer, orchestral effect.

This hymn is included by request from Charlie Bugiani, and of course, it is familiar to all! Hymn 287 is For All the Saints. The tune (named "Sine nomine") was written by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams for The English Hymnal of 1906. Clergyman Percy Dearmer and composer Ralph Vaughan Williams were editors of that very important hymnal, which was published by Oxford University Press.

Part of my purpose in sharing these videos is to help people from the church "feel at home" with their beloved Steer & Turner organ, and the way I use this lovely organ in our services. This is Hymn #314, Humbly I Adore Thee, a Eucharistic hymn. The tune is a French plainchant, published in "Processionale" in 1697. Here I play it as I would in a service, with some slight variations in the harmonizations in later stanzas. (Feel free to sing along if so inclined.) I then launch into an improvisation on the hymn tune, just as I do during Communion after the hymn is finished. The first two stops you hear in the improvisation are the Wald Flute (a beautifully orchestral flute sound) and a short time later, the Chimney Flute. (Both terms refer to the way the pipes are made.)

This is "La Réjouissance," from Royal Fireworks Music by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) The arrangement for organ is my own (not actually written down), so this is very much Public Domain This was one of Charlie Bugiani's (a friend who is a faithful member of Saint Paul's) favorites of my organ postludes.