Over the past few years I have been spending more timing thinking and reading about the prophets of ancient Israel such as Ezekiel, Elijah, Jonah, Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah among others. Joining the GP brotherhood [more…]
But for Barker’s invention (plagiarising?) of the pneumatic lever that Cavaillé-Coll had made such use of in St. Sulpice, such vast organs, using such high wind-pressures, would not have been practicable – no organist would [more…]
Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast; Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity [more…]
The first of the Good Friday Collects Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the [more…]
By about 1850, not only had large numbers of Cathedral Organs been re-built, incorporating the latest mechanical contrivances, and improvements in terms of type and range of sounds, but many Parish Churches, too, had had [more…]
There might seem some disjunction between this discourse’s subject, and Passion Sunday, if so, I apologise. In 1956, the existence of the Neutrino was affirmed in the journal Science, although it had been postulated [more…]
Not, you might think, a very likely headline these days, but, go back a few centuries, and that’s how the Kentish Guardian & Canterbury Recorder might have put it… [from oure Ultra-montane Scribe in [more…]
Pascal’s ‘Wager’ Psalm: My Text today: I Kings 19: 11 -13 I was reflecting a while ago on Pascal’s ‘Wager’ Argument. You know, the one that runs, roughly, ‘If you were asked whether you would [more…]
As a nipper, I was brought up in what was a fairly typical, English family. Mum, Dad, siblings and normal sorts of stuff. We were what I call typical Church of England. We all went [more…]
Surmising how anxiously-awaited must be this further instalment in my gripping serial, I was moved, unprepared and disorganised as I am, to put finger to key, and initiate another chapter in this saga. You will, [more…]
Wind The accompanying image is taken from Dom Bedos’ ‘ l’art du Facteur d’ Orgues’ (1776), and shows, among other things, a single organ-blower, operating one of three ‘feeders’ – or possibly, pumping two of the [more…]
The Maestà, or Maestà of Duccio is an altarpiece composed of many individual paintings commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. The front panels make up a large [more…]
Well its 4.30 am on a December Tuesday morning and latent musings on the most profound questions of all have flooded my little grey cells into sudden wakefulness, and the ever-lasting wrestling match between the [more…]
The Mystical Nativity is a painting of circa 1500–1501 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, in the National Gallery in London. Botticelli built up the image using oil on canvas. It is his only [more…]
For a time as a young boy I flirted with Evangelical Christianity. I was born into a family that had close ties to the Salvation Army but although I liked listening to the band as [more…]
The Silent Night Chapel (Stille-Nacht-Kapelle) is located in the town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg in the Austrian province of Salzburg, and is a monument to the Christmas carol Silent Night and its librettist, Joseph Mohr [more…]
And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green? I cannot be alone in thinking that they did not do so to deny justice or to deny their Christian heritage. Nor did [more…]
This scene shows Mary kneeling in adoration before a newly-born Christ who is laid on her cloak. Five angels sing welcoming his birth – two of them play lutes. Beside them a donkey appears to [more…]
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