TUTOR BOOK FOR VOLUNTEER ORGANISTS
A beginner's tutor book is now available for sale from Church Organ World £10.25,
The Book Depository £11.48 with free worldwide delivery! Also on Amazon at £10.25 (+pp)
This book contains sections on: posture - pedals - key touch - using the stops - using the
swell pedal - playing hymns - how the organ works - simple improvisation - shoes - repertoire.
The book began life as handouts to volunteer organists attending courses and has benefited
from suggestions from participants over the past 10 years.
EXERCISES FOR DEVELOPING ORGANISTS
Fifty exercises, the majority of which have been written by Robert Fielding include exercises
for pedal alone, left- hand/pedal, right-hand/pedal, many trios and three study chorale preludes
and a set of variations. Also includes advice on finding a teacher and attending courses in the UK.
There are notes at the back of the book for each exercise suggesting help with stops to use,
style and tempi etc. This tutor book is a supplement to the Tutor Book for Volunteer Organists.
If you have read and used the first book, you will have reached a stage where you are exploring
new repertoire and developing your technique in different styles of playing and registration.
This is the book for you! £12.50 with free delivery from Amazon UK.
HENRY SMART'S FIFTY PRELUDES & INTERLUDES FOR THE ORGAN
These useful vignettes are now available from Amazon. I have edited these and produced them in a three-stave organ score format.
They are charming miniatures designed for filling in those liturgical gaps and come in a range of easy keys and styles.
Also very useful for transposition and sight reading exercises. £7.50
FIVE PIECES FOR ORGAN BY HERBERT HOWELLS
Arranged by Robert Fielding from Howells' Clavichord.
Howells' Clavichord provides two sets of miniatures for Clavichord with dedications to friends and colleagues.
These five arrangements transfer well to the organ and provide the opportunity for enjoying the intimacy of Howells'
personal and timeless style of writing. This set of five pieces may be ordered from AMAZON. £8.58
CD recordings by Robert Fielding
To buy, click on the titles to go to the EditHouse page (disc on demand company based in London).
Louis Vierne's Third Symphonie for organ recorded via Hauptwerk software using the digitally mastered set by Sonus paradisi
of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in St Etienne, Caen, France by Robert Fielding. Now available from EditHouse.
Olivier Messiaen - La Nativité
Messiaen's set of nine meditations for organ recorded again via Hauptwerk software using the digitally mastered set by Sonus paradisi of the
Cavaillé-Coll organ in St Etienne, Caen. Makes a great Christmas present for amis de l'orgue! Now available from EditHouse.
Charles Tournemire - L'Orgue Mystique
Suites 7 - L’Épiphanie and 50 - Dominica XXII post Pentecosten
Suites 15 - Laetare and 51 - Dominica XXIII post Pentecosten
Suites 23 - In Ascensione Domine and 27 - In Festo Corporis Christi
Suites 26 - In Festo Ss. Trinitatis and 28 - Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu
A huge range of contemporary choral and organ music.
A range of choral works by Robert Fielding are available on the CMP website.
Settings of texts by Donne, Hopkins, Pratt Green, Mary Coleridge and Smart including Christmas Carols and anthems.
Latest choral addition is a setting of 'Pied Beauty', text by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
You can listen to a synthesised aural file of this by pressing HERE which gives a rough idea how the piece sounds.
A new transcription for organ by Robert Fielding of the Scherzo (Allegro & Trio), from Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor op.34
is now available on the CMP website.
History Books
Two titles, written by Robert Fielding, are available on Amazon UK. When Robert was working at Romsey Abbey and St. Martin's
Church, Salisbury, he delved into the history of the organists who had played in these buildings and the organs that they played.
A new organ was built in 1858 by the London firm J.W. Walker & Sons for the 12th century Norman Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, UK.
This was a substantial instrument and yet no images of how it looked in the North Transept gallery exist apart from a tantalising view of
a pedal tower in both a newspaper article print and a photograph. For 30 years the organ sounded out from this favoured spot until it was unceremoniously crammed into an Aisle Arch and Triforium, separating it into two parts and creating the need for actions that still to this day cause problems for player and those responsible for maintenance. This project uses contemporary letters between the organ builders and the clergy and churchwardens at Romsey Abbey. Many interesting personalities come forward in the quest for where the Organ Committee
should place the organ in the building. In gathering information from correspondence, historical records and other sources, Robert Fielding,
Organist & Master of the Choristers at Romsey Abbey 2004-2015, pieces together as close a visual description of what this remarkable instrument looked like when first built. Along the way, interesting insights into Victorian society and the challenges of providing an expensive
and mechanically challenging organ for the parish come to light.
Organs and Organists of St. Martin's Church, Salisbury
Covering a period from 1657 to the present, Robert Fielding has collected together information about the organs and organists of the 11th century parish church of Sarum St. Martin in Salisbury. The central source of information is taken from the book Notes on St Martin's Church
and Parish compiled by Thomas H. Baker which was published in Salisbury in 1906. Baker had unearthed several valuable sources from
which he drew his ‘notes’. Churchwardens’ Accounts, Vestry Books and other documents had been discovered in the ‘Parish Chests’. Other sources included Hatcher’s History of Salisbury, St Martin’s Parish Magazine, the Gentleman’s Magazine and help given by Rev. C. N. Wyld, who was Rector at the period of the last restoration, the Rev. Canon Myers and Mr. W.C. Pearce, then the Parish Clerk, who apparently communicated details ‘known to no one else’. With similar aims to Thomas Baker, Robert Fielding has aimed to provide a booklet for those interested in what has been taking part in St Martin’s with regard to the people that have spent time there as musicians and the instruments
that have appeared and disappeared in a procession that brings us to the present inherited 1869 William Hill organ, a fine example of this builder’s work and one that remains remarkably close to its original conception. This third and final edition includes extra material on organists
of the past and information about dear Stephen Cooke, organist at St. Martin's up until his untimely death in 2020.
