Spare a thought this Christmas for church organists. December is a mad steeplechase of carol services, Christingles and secular seasonal singalongs. To us organists, the Yuletide period is ‘the Christmas outrage’.
The C of E has given up observing Advent’s penitential restraint. Every church and chapel, primary school and pub is on the blower, seeking an organist for ‘our lovely carols’.
Our nearby Herefordshire villages of Mordiford, Woolhope, Sollers Hope, Brockhampton and How Caple come first for me – and the diary is soon a scribble of ink. Organists become like plumbers: turn up, fiddle with the pipes, dash to the next job. I look after ten churches; some of my friends do more.
Those of us who can pedal (ie play with hands and feet) spend December on the road swerving potholes.
My Christmas begins with a primary- school nativity. The headmaster has a weakness for drippy ‘worship songs’ – but at least I get to play on an 1894 Nicholson organ. Its trumpet stop is good for the finale of Bach’s ‘In Dulce Jubilo’.
Sometimes there is no keyboard – so I lug a Viscount Cantorum portable organ into my battered Vauxhall, and throw in a spool of electrical wire, a portable spotlight, a miner’s headlamp (some lofts are dark) and music. The Vauxhall becomes a white van.
Outdoor services: will it rain (danger of electric shocks from the Viscount’s plugs) or blow a gale (pages of ‘Silent Night’ taking ghostly flight across the churchyard)? Noel Rawsthorne’s ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ provides easy preludes, and I often finish with the Bach and a not-terribly-dignified ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ as the punters stampede for the mulled wine. I always mean to learn more Christmas music – ‘It’s not as if you don’t know it’s coming,’ says one of my daughters.
The Crown Inn, by Woolhope Church, has outdoor carols. From the skallenge (lych gate), I drape a cable across the graveyard and the pub car park to an indoor socket. The curate’s wife holds my pages flat against driving rain/over- refreshed locals. Pub-goers blast through eight carols. Andrew the builder brings his trumpet. I get paid in pints.
At nursing-home services, one learns not to underestimate the oldies. A kindly gent thanked me for playing. As his nurse wheeled him away, she told me, ‘He invented the MRI scanner.’
Throw in choir practices (of varying tonality) and charity fayres, plus all the normal Sunday services.
Some organ lofts stink of bats which fly round my head as I play, as in Dracula.
Each service demands preparation, yet some church treasurers think £15 is handsome reward. Not with travelling time, petrol, music costs, organ lessons and practice time, it ain’t. Pedal-friendly organ shoes can cost £120, since you ask.
On the Sunday before Christmas Day, we have our own village service of nine lessons and carols at How Caple’s beautiful church. The oak reredos, the barley-twisted pillars of the Grinling Gibbons rood screen ... at such times, with 100 souls in the pews and the smell of hot wax, an organist’s lot is bearable.
The Church prospers when it gives punters what they want: a youngster singing the first verse of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’; the King James Bible read by farmers; descants; two anthems from my 20-strong village choir. And no sermon. Hallelujah!
The last push begins at 8.30pm on Christmas Eve at St Martin’s, Hereford, on a fine Henry Jones organ. The church has a connection with the SAS. As young wives – husbandless – push prams to the communion rail, it overwhelms me. Something more otherworldly than mere pipe reverberation trembles in the air.
‘And is it true? ... The Maker of the stars and sea, become a Child on earth for me?’
Then midnight service at Woolhope, packed with revellers (hic) and the Rev Moore’s five sons singing tenor and bass harmonies. At last, I can legitimately play ‘Yea Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning’. Home for a nightcap and to read Facebook messages from other organists – like me all too revved up (so to speak) to sleep.
On the day itself, I’ll be back on the organ stool for 9.30am matins at How Caple – congregation c 80 – and then a dash to the 11am at Woolhope. I will have now played perhaps 100 verses of ‘Hark the Herald’ in three weeks.
We are sometimes offered payment in booze, chocolates or orchids. People wouldn’t dream of trying that with an electrician. We put up with it because we love the organ and – sometimes – our congregations. But organists cannot on communion wafer alone survive. Justin Welby could have remembered that before offering to pay billions in slavery reparations – and before his resignation.
I have yet to meet a retired organist. They do not exist. In 1937, maestro Louis Vierne died at his console. Near the end of a recital, he pitched forward, stone dead. His foot became stuck on a pedal, and a low E sounded through Notre- Dame as his soul rose to heaven – where St Peter no doubt said, ‘Ah, Louis! Great! I don’t suppose you can play for us tonight, can you?’
