A church service at Christmas without music would be like a Christmas tree without lights, and the church organist has at his or her fingertips the keys for keeping congregations singing together in perfect harmony.
David Hutchings
Organist David Hutchings graduated in Musicology from Cardiff University in 2009 and has since remained a citizen of the capital, serving in several parishes in and around the city as an itinerant organist.
With the extra services as church attendances traditionally swell at Christmas, he’ll be doing the usual dash between parishes as church-goers take time out from all the pressures of preparing for the big day by coming together to worship in prayer and song.
When worshippers turn up for mass, the candles are lit, the choir is already in place, and a calming piece of music floats gently over the pews. It’s as if the organist and choristers actually live there and have somehow simply popped out from behind the panelling and started playing. Well, not so of course, and David regularly travels between St Dochdwy’s in Llandough, St Peter’s in Roath and St Margaret’s in Penylan, among others, for services and to rehearse.
This year, once he has fulfilled his carol service obligations in Cardiff, he will be returning to his home in East Sussex to spend Christmas with his family. But there won’t be a crotchet’s rest for him till he’s played the organ at the Christmas Eve vigil and then the Christmas Day morning service at the church of St Thomas More in Brighton.
Image: Ria Chatterjee
“The organ is like an orchestra at your fingertips,” says David as he explains its amazing range of timbres from shrill flute and piercing piccolo through the mellow clarinet range and on to the raspy growls of the bass pipes operated by foot.
“Before a service I try to improvise on a theme or motet from one of the hymns and settle the congregation with something gentle and reflective. This can also serve to remind people of a particular hymn melody if perhaps it’s one which is not so familiar to them.”
At the end of a service David feels it’s important to uplift the spirits with something rousing, and at Christmas an improvisation on Hark, the Herald Angels Sing fits the bill perfectly.
It’s not all plain sailing though, as David recalls a particularly unfortunate moment when a dreaded “cipher” occurred during the middle of a hymn. In the organ world, a cipher is when an air valve on a pipe gets stuck in the open position, usually due to a speck of dirt or other foreign object.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was on a pipe in the key of the current passage of music,” explains David, “but no, it was like a bagpipe banshee wailing out from the rafters.”
The standard way to solve the problem is to identify which pipe is stuck open and then repeatedly press the corresponding key until the blockage is cleared. “So while my right hand repeatedly screeched out a note like a siren, all the time I had to keep the hymn going with my feet and left hand.”
The choristers understood what was happening but, says David, “I could feel the glares of astonishment on the back of my neck from the congregation, whom thankfully I couldn’t see at the time.”
All part of the job. Good luck David with keeping everyone singing from the same hymn sheet this Christmas.
