‘Peter has got an A!’ said his wife Pat at the last choir practice before Christmas.  As Peter is a retired gentleman, I assumed he’d been going in for a bit of extra education, as a lot of us third-agers do.  But then I saw what he was holding up for us all to inspect: a most professional letter ‘A’, just the same size as the hymn board numbers, and looking as if made out of the same white-on-black plastic.

We’ve had a lot of new happenings in the parish in 2009, among them our new priest, new timing of the Christmas Mass (10pm instead of midnight), and – new hymnbooks.  We switched to Decani Music’s Laudate with the arrival of the present PP in June.  It’s far better than Mayhew’s Hymns Old and New, which we’ve had for donkey’s ages, especially for the organist (I don’t think I ever used the HON accompaniments; busking produced a much better result).  But no hymnal is perfect, and Laudate has its problems.  For one thing, the organ copy is in two heavy volumes, which means that split-second timing has to be more carefully planned, and a physically strong organist is required.  Then we discovered when we got our Christmas music together that ‘O come all ye faithful’ is no. 159 and ‘Adeste fideles’ is no. 159a.

I do wish hymnbook compilers wouldn’t do this (and it isn’t only Laudate).  Why can’t they simply give it the next number?  Our hymn board is three digits wide, and our numbers, with plenty of spares, run from 0 to 9.  We’ve had it for decades, it looks good and has served us well.  This requirement for a solitary extra ‘a’ was a real nuisance. No doubt hymn boards have moved on, and we are now expected to think that this is the moment to ‘upgrade’ to some fancy and costly version which has numbers going into the thousands, or includes alphabets, or caters for hexadecimal numbering of hymns.

Not us.  The immediate problem has now been solved by Peter, who has used his DIY expertise to produce this really creditable ‘A’, thin enough to fit into the margin of the hymn board and yet easily readable.   A small victory for individual human ingenuity, I thought to myself as ‘Adeste’ rang through the rafters on Christmas Eve.

Thank you, Peter, and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Christmas is usually quite a tense time for organists.  Not for us the relaxed anticipation of carol services and Midnight Masses.  We have to organise all that jolly music, and at this very moment of writing a heavy snowfall is giving rise to the question:  do we or don’t we have that choir practice, and if we don’t, do we have all the phone numbers to put people off?

Things have changed since I first played at Midnight Mass some 35 years ago.  The licensing laws, for one thing.  I can’t remember what closing time was in the seventies, but the emptying of the Star and Garter down the road always seemed to coincide with the start of our Christmas Eve carol service.  An influx of merry wassailers at this point was a known hazard, and parish bouncers were on hand to make sure the merriment was contained. In particular, for a variety of reasons, health and safety not being the least, they had to be kept away from the organ gallery.  This didn’t always succeed; on one Christmas Eve I remember looking round to find my choir being conducted from the top of the gallery stairs by a complete stranger.

Children can also provide the odd surreal experience.  On one occasion a children’s choir responded to my two-line introduction to ‘Once in royal David’s city’ by singing ‘Away in a manger’ in the same key and in perfect time.   Sometimes in the dim and distant past I would be asked by the local primary school to play the piano for the various classes’ Nativity plays.  The younger the children, the less inhibited they were about acting before an audience. ‘You shall have a son and call him Jesus!’ bawls the Angel Gabriel to Mary, whose face is about three inches away, and who is trying not to fall over.

Pre-school Nativity plays can be even more hilarious.  When our three-year-old came home from playgroup to tell us that he had been chosen to be ‘Jofuss’, we blinked, then realised that he meant ‘Joseph’ and that this was a great honour.  The play was essentially simple, with no spoken lines, and Joseph’s part was perhaps the easiest of all.  After leading Mary into the stable, he had nothing to do but wait while the tableau built up of Mary, baby, shepherds, wise men and angels, during which all the children sang carols and Christmas songs.  Mary played her part beautifully, gazing thoughtfully down at the crib, while all the others carefully moved into their correct places.

Not Jofuss, however.  Bored with waiting, he had decided to relax.  Reclining in the hay at the back of the stable, he was obviously completely at ease and enjoying the show, waving his arms and snapping his fingers as the company sang ‘one, two, three little angels’.  The other parents were most amused.

Happy Christmas, everyone!  Enjoy playing the merry organ, and may your choir sing sweetly.

Following the cliffhanger at the end of the previous post, I’ve had one or two Monty Python-like emails shouting ‘Get on with it!’, so here goes.

The hotel room had chairs arranged facing forward, with an aisle in the middle, while the minister stood at the front, where a table had been placed. The keyboard was at the back, facing up the aisle, so I had a good view of the bridal procession as I played them in, and of what happened next.

It wasn’t a large room, and it was incredibly hot. That was fine for bride and bridesmaids with their bare backs and shoulders. The males of the bridal party, however, were wearing thick fancy jackets, and in the middle of his vows, the bridegroom passed out.

The resulting hubbub was dominated by two women with camcorders shrieking that they had ‘got it for Beadle’. I was seriously alarmed and wondered whether I should go to hotel reception (if I could find it) for a first aid person. Nobody else seemed bothered, but perhaps they knew more than I did about the stag party. However, the poor man quickly came to and managed to sit up.

The question now was, as a professional organist, should I play while the bridegroom was helped to his feet and made to sit in a chair with a glass of water and some brow-mopping, or would that appear too callous? The decision was taken for me by the bride’s father, who said ‘Gaun, play something, hen’.

Suggestions for suitable organ pieces for this moment would be very welcome (you never know when it might happen again), but in the event I improvised, so that I could keep on watching the action. Bride and revived groom were finally led to chairs in front of the minister’s table, while the minister himself came down to me and said quietly, ‘Skip the hymns and the rest of the music. Let’s just get them married.”

So we cut to the chase and, seated, they duly married each other for better or worse. Whether they were fit to be played out I can’t remember, and I never did get round to watching the Jeremy Beadle You’ve been framed! TV programme.

Groom: It isn’t a church wedding, it’s in a hotel.  We’ve got a minister.

Me: (thinks: wow!  This is something new).  Does the hotel have an organ?

Groom: No.  Don’t you have your own organ?

Me: (What does he think organists are? Strolling minstrels who carry their instruments on their back?)
No, I don’t. Do you know anyone with a really good keyboard?

Groom: I’ve a friend who plays keyboard in a pop group.  I’ll ask him.

Me: Sounds OK.

[Change of scene to hotel the day before the wedding.  I inspect the keyboard, which its owner has set up on its stand.  It’s complicated, but I can find the sounds I want.  I note down settings, then pause]

Me: Where’s the music rest?

Pop group player:    The what?

Me: You know, the shelf to stand the music on while you’re playing.

Pop group player: Music?!! We don’t use music!

Me: (Feeling a bit silly – whenever did you see a pop group reading music?) No, of course you don’t.  I’ll bring along a music stand.

This particular wedding went on to become quite dramatic.  To be continued …