Organ music

The last meeting of the Recorded Music Society, which took place on 16 March, was a further break from tradition as there was – and there is no other way to put this – no recorded music.  Instead we had local keyboard player David Davies (photo) play organ pieces and he called his talk Brought down from the attic: rarely heard organ works played live on the piano.

David played a wide range of pieces from composers stretching back to Tallis in the sixteenth century and a piece from the Robertsbridge Codex which is from the fourteenth.  He explained something of the history of the organ noting that the pedal was a late arrival to these shores, in fact not until something like 1840 did any appear.  All organs were destroyed by Cromwell is another interesting fact.

Among the pieces was one of Mozart’s ‘epistle sonatas’ which may have contributed to his dismissal from Salzburg because, famously, it was too long.  Other pieces included Walton’s music for Richard III and an Air by Samuel Wesley who was the first to spot how important the music of Bach was.  A really interesting programme – and we didn’t miss the CDs.

The list of music played: