A musical tour of Westminster Abbey

[Music] westminster abbey the setting of every coronation since the norman conquest in 1066 and the pageantry of 16 royal weddings james o'donnell the organist and master of the foresters at westminster abbey himself the past president of the college has agreed to give us his insights into the rich musical history of this internationally famous world heritage site welcome to westminster abbey i'm looking forward to giving you this very short glimpse of the organs of the abbey and saying something about the music and history of the place music's always been a really important part of the abbey's life dating back to the monastic era and here we are in the west cloister of the abbey and we are standing actually as it happens near the memorials of some of my predecessors as organists and master of the choruses here we have sir frederick bridge we have sir william makai and various other notable figures from the abbey's past music's a very important part of the life of the abbey in the benedictine era when the monks were here they would have sung seven or eight times a day all to gregorian chant the abbey choir of today grew up from the lady chapel of the abbey when boys began to sing polyphony with the men and we now enjoy a wonderful musical establishment here with music every day or in normal times we would do this of course needs rehearsal so i'm going to take you first into our rehearsal room which we call the song school where we have a wonderful practice organ by william drake so this room is called the song school this is the main rehearsal room for the abbey choir you can see the desks for the boys to sit in and every day we rehearse here so we have a residential choir school in westminster abbey all our boys are choristers so we have a very small school of about 30 at the most and they have daily rehearsals and a full curriculum and with the um levickers of the choir who are who are 12 professional men we sing about eight services a week not including any special occasions or concerts or recordings or anything like that so all the behind the scenes work and rehearsal and organization is done here the music library is here and um this is the headquarters basically of the abbey choir we're lucky enough to have a second rehearsal room here and this contains a practice organ by william drake so we're going to go and have a look at that now so we're here in our second rehearsal room which is called the partridge room in memory of peter partridge who was a long time ago assistant organist here he sadly died a couple of years ago but before he did he gave us this organ which is a wonderful two manual practice organ by william drake and you can imagine that mushroom surabi is an extremely busy place and it's quite difficult to find time sometimes on the organs so this has been a great boon to the organists here we use this room for smaller rehearsals so rehearsals of the youngest boys or maybe a small solo group or just piano practice or organ practice so it's a marvelous thing to have the second rehearsal room i'm going to play a piece by orlando gibbons who is organist of westminster abbey from 1623 to 1625 when he died he also was organized at the chapel royal and was one of the finest composers in british musical history and in his lifetime he was regarded as the leading composer in the land he didn't write all that much but his work is of huge quality and consistent quality and i'm going to play an extract of the fantasia for four [Music] parts [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] we're in the lady chapel of westminster abbey now which is often called the henry vii chapel after the king who commissioned the chapel it's a second chapel dedicated to the blessed virgin mary on this site and this chapel was made about 500 years ago or finished about 500 years ago there's a fantastic example of the english perpendicular style that you can see in king's college cambridge and in the chapel at eaton college for example and this is a very important chapel for the musicians of the abbey because it's here in this chapel that the music of the abbey that we know today began its life really in the 14th and 15th centuries the more complicated polyphonic music began to be sung in the separate services here in this chapel the services dedicated to the blessed virgin mary as opposed to the plain chant the simple monastic music that was sung in the main abbey church on the whole so it's a very important thing for us musically the organ behind me is the so-called queen's organ which was given by the city of london corporation and the lord mayor of london in 2013 to the queen to celebrate her 60th anniversary of her coronation which of course was in westminster abbey and it it is here by her gracious permission she has lent it to westminster abbey i'm going to play a piece by henry purcell who's the most famous of the abbey organists he was organised here from 1679 until 1695 when he died a very young man tragically he was a prolific composer of dramatic music and his music generally is an extraordinary amalgam of french and italian fashionable musical influences but with a quintessentially english basis and i think he's the most extraordinary composer and the most extraordinary figure he was famously the pupil of john blow who was the previous ordnance of westminster abbey for 10 years and he then gave his post up in favor of henry purcell who's a very young man at the time the personal then died in office some years later and will come to purcell a little bit later in this film i'm going to play voluntary for double organ by personal one of his most celebrated organ pieces he wrote very few organ pieces probably because in those days most of the organ music and services would have been improvised by the organists and purcell was surely an adept and probably rather flamboyant improviser judging by the style of this music [Music] we're here in the south transept of westminster abbey now and this is an area which is often called poet's corner because it's full of memorials and indeed graves of some of the greatest literary figures in our history and the reason they're all here is because of geoffrey chaucer whose grave is just there behind me against the wall and over the centuries many literary figures have wanted to be remembered here in association with him and with that tradition so this is why this has happened in this area of the abbey but it's not limited just to writers and to figures in literature there are also others in the arts generally there are some actors here and people who have been involved with ballet and also over here of great interest to musicians is the memorial to george frederick handel up here on the wall you can see the memorial which is a very famous sculpture by rubiliak is dug into the wall here so it's in quite deep 3d relief and the composer is there with his finger pointing to heaven with an r from messiah in his hand i know that my redeemer liver the handle didn't work in westminster abbey but he was associated very much with the abbey particularly with the coronation of king george ii in 1727 for which he wrote a set of four very famous now coronation anthems including zadok the priest which has been sung and played at every coronation since fat and handel is buried here [Applause] [Music] we're now in the north quire isle of westminster abbey which a bit like the south transept has acquired over the years a nickname this is often called musicians aisle and i think the reason for that is because we are very near the site of the organ in purcell's time it was here just above the choir stalls we're behind the crosstals now and in the middle arch of the north side of the choir and so this accounts for the fact that purcell's memorial and that of many uh other organists of the abbey are situated here all close to each other and very much as the literary figures were placed near the grave of chaucer near each other so musicians over the centuries have been placed here near purcell and blow and the other abbey organists many of them organists but many other musicians as well so if we just walk over here you'll see on my right the memorials to blow and to croft and behind me where the organ was the um famous memorial to purcell here also a bust of orlando gibbons who is one of purcell's predecessors and here is purcell's grave on the floor well we're here in the organ loft now of the abbey which is in the center of the church so it divides the nave to the west from the choir the transepts the sanctuary and the lady chapel to the east quite a lot of the church actually is to the east of us the neighbours not the largest space in the abbey which is unusual and this organ was put in in the mid-1930s by harrison and harrison replaced an instrument previous instrument by hill and it was originally built for the coronation of king edward the eighth which of course didn't take place so it was used for the coronation of george vi and uh it's a wonderful instrument it's been expanded a number of times since it was put in and like many of these large cathedral type organs it contains bits of previous instruments so it certainly contains some of the the hill work from the previous instrument but also by rumor contains some of the pipes that percel had in his instrument in the late 17th century this instrument is a quite a large instrument now having been expanded it's five manuals it has about 110 stops and three enclosed divisions in addition to the swell organ and the solo which are the normal enclosed divisions there's also an enclosed upper choir division which is down here on the screen the swell and the solar above us in the triforium quite high up so it's possible to use the choir organ and the swell organ in parallel and that sort of brings the sound down to earth and makes it a little clearer for the quieter here and generally increases the range of possibilities you never run out of possibilities here there's a great power in the bombard reeds and a fantastic tuba mirabilis and also two other tubers wonderful pedal reads and also a fantastic array array of softer stops strings on the solo beautiful strings on the swell flute celestes on the choir organ and a lovely solo clarinet on the solo beautiful vox humana on the swell organ so there's a huge amount of lyrical and poetic sounds that can be used and i'd like to play a piece by herbert howells who was a great um lover of westminster abbey used to come quite a lot in his in his later years and he's buried not far from where we are his ashes are buried here in the abbey and it's master talis's testament which is houses homage to the earlier school of english organ composers [Music] [Music] me [Music] westminster abbey has inspired musicians and composers over many centuries today it continues to be a monument of awe and wonder to musicians and music lovers across the world it excites and delights the tens of thousands of visitors who come here each year to be amazed by one of the planet's most iconic world heritage sites [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Royal College of Organists

Views: 109,256

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Id: rIi_wlRNzeo

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021