Music
The choir in its present form (12 professional singers - 4 sopranos, 2 altos, 3 tenors and 3 basses) was established in time for the re-dedication service in 1957, and has remained more or less in this format ever since. The choir sings at two services each Sunday throughout the year (reducing to 8 singers during August) and also for numerous special services. The Director of Music is Robert Jones, and the Assistant Director of Music is Matthew Morley.
The organ is built by the John Compton Organ Company, and arguably their finest work, the organ was ready for the Rededication of the Church in November 1957. It has recently been completely overhauled and cleaned by Keith Bance, who has carried out some modest tonal updating. This included remodelling the Positive division, adding new Mixture stops to the Great and Pedal divisions and the provision of a new Vox Humana for the Solo division. These changes have further increased the resources of an already versatile instrument. The organ has four manuals, 98 speaking stops, close to 4000 pipes, a multi-level capture system and the wind is provided by four blowing installations.
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets—we remember only.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)