A spirited musical celebration that includes world premieres by two internationally acclaimed musicians will mark the debut of a £500,000 pipe organ being inaugurated at a Scottish school next month.
On the morning of June 10th the dedication service for the new pipe organ in the chapel at Glenalmond College in Perthshire will include an anthem written for the occasion and directed by one of the UK’s most active composers and choral conductors, Bob Chilcott. Bishop Martin Shaw, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, and a former pupil of Glenalmond will dedicate the organ.
Afterwards, at 3pm, there will be the world première recital of The Glenalmond Suite, composed and performed by Dr Naji Hakim, one of the world’s leading composer-organist-improvisers and organist of L’eglise de la Trinité, Paris. The Glenalmond Suite is based on the Glenalmond carillon and is suitable both for recital and as a collection of four items of graded teaching material, gradually increasing in technical demands until the virtuoso finale, in which jazz influences abound.
The anthem is a setting of Walter de la Mare’s poem "When music sounds, gone is the world I know”. This has added poignancy as a calligraphy of these words was found amongst the belongings of Philippa Gower, daughter of the College’s Director of Music, who died of cancer in 2002 before she was able to take her place as organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford.
The new 26 stop tracker action pipe organ was made by Harrison & Harrison of Durham, whose large-scale organs can be found in King's College Cambridge, Westminster Abbey, and the Royal Festival Hall. The new organ fuses the best of tradition and technology: the case reflects the spirit of an earlier design by Sir Basil Spence (who sketched a drawing for the remodelling of the Chapel gallery which was undertaken in 1963), and while the instrument’s key actions are mechanical, the drawstop actions are electric. The manual compass is 61 notes, the pedal 30 notes. The organ, which replaces an instrument of 1880 damaged by water, cost more than £500,000. Most of this sum was donated by former pupils and current parents and friends of the college who recognize the Chapel’s pivotal role as the spiritual and physical heart of the school, and the inspiration it provides to successive generations of pupils who have shaped the College’s extraordinarily successful musical tradition.
The College’s Headmaster Gordon Woods, known at Glenalmond as the Warden, said: ‘To have two of the world’s best known musicians join us as we usher in a new era in the College’s musical tradition is both an honour and a huge privilege. This magnificent new organ will become the beating heart of the Chapel, just as the Chapel provides the College with a spiritual beat that helps us all - pupils, staff, OGs and visitors - to balance our increasingly busy, technology-driven lives.’
The Glenalmond Suite will also be performed by Dr Hakim on Saturday 16 June in St Peter’s, St Albans, and on 19th June in Denmark after which it will be published by United Music Publishers (Paris) with a picture of the College on the front for international distribution to organists around the world. In April 2008, a recording of the suite and the opening recital will be issued on the Signum label.
