Like a Moth to a Flame!

Like a Moth to a Flame!

As a moth is attracted to a flame, so I am drawn to the magnificent sound of a church organ. I always want to hurry to the place it is coming from before the organist stops playing! This dates back to a Sunday morning long ago, when I was just four years old.  At the end of the church service my father lifted me up to see how the organ, with its two manuals and many pull-out stops, was different from our piano at home. 


The splendid organist (who taught at the RSAM, now known as the Glasgow Conservatoire) sat me up beside himself and gave us a wonderful “mini-recital”, showing me how the stops could produce sounds varying from quiet flutes to powerful trumpets and resonant double basses.  Although I loved playing the piano, I never forgot that day, and fancied learning to play the organ – but I had to wait until I reached retirement age before I finally had my first lessons!


These took place here, in St Columba’s Church, Ayr (formerly Trinity Church), on the lovely three-manual organ.  

Although by then I was a member of a church in Prestwick, I had very happy memories of this instrument, because my parents had chosen to attend Trinity Church after we moved from Glasgow to Ayr.  Then aged eight, I joined the junior choir, discovering the great pleasure of singing in a group.  But how extra pleased I was each year when, as Christmas approached, we moved from the church hall into the church to practise our carols, with our choir mistress at the organ!  (“Yes!!”)


Just after my twentieth birthday I set off to France, where I was to spend a year as an English language assistant.  On the evening of my departure, just hours before I caught the midnight train for London, my mother and I came to the quiet evening service.  The beautifully calm organ voluntary soothed my nerves as we entered, and the resonant tones of the final hymn Now thank we all our God filled me with courage at this, the beginning of a new chapter in my life.


Four years later, on a golden June evening, Bob and I sat side by side on a front pew in the otherwise empty church, while Leslie, the organist, played us his favourite suggestions for our forthcoming wedding.  We decided that the ceremony would end with Widor’s exhilarating Toccata from his fifth Organ Symphony.  We were thrilled to hear the triumphant power with which Leslie imbued it - all the more so because he was a small, rather fragile man, with only partial vision because of a childhood attack of measles. But when he played the organ he seemed like a giant.  On our wedding day we moved back down the aisle at a very slow pace so that we could hear as much as possible of the Widor, before going outside to have our photos taken!


Two other precious memories of family occasions enhanced by Leslie’s organ playing are of our first baby’s baptism and my sister Freda’s wedding.


This week there is to be another family gathering so, ‘for old time’s sake’ I began the week by attending the Sunday morning service at St Columba’s, once again revelling in the sound of the magnificent organ – and in all my memories associated with it.  Because Leslie’s successor, Matthew, was on holiday, it is a supply organist in the photo I took (just visible 
behind the flowers!)


I myself occasionally play the more modest organ at my Prestwick church (Kingcase) if Paul, our organist, is on holiday.  Here is the view I have from the organ! (The rather unusual cross above the altar represents John the Baptist’s description of Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God”.) 

I love playing the organ accompaniment for the congregation, especially when they are singing one of my own favourites, such as Martin Rinkart's one, which brought me strength and encouragement on that September evening sixty years ago…


‘Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices; who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.


‘Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever-joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us, and keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills in this world and the next.’

Amen

Deo gratias