Ysenda Maxtone Graham

A hymn to the organist

Ten reasons why I love them

Some people swoon over film stars. I swoon over organists. Good organists, that is, not bad organists. Bad organists I refer to as ‘dominant males’, because the only two chords they play are the tonic and the dominant. Good organists are upholders of some of the highest musical expertise in the land. When you hear the stops being pulled out for the voluntary on Easter Sunday (will it be Bach? Will it be Widor?), spot the organist, and see if you experience a frisson. Here are ten reasons for my partiality.

The muscle at the far edge of the palm of each hand. (The one giving strength to the little finger.) It’s amazingly strong. I’m much more interested in this muscle in a man than in his abdominals or, worse still, his biceps. This palm-muscle is a sign of decades of chord-playing. Not just semi-breves, but breves, and not just triads but massive multi-noted chords with double-sharps in them, dreamed up by some composer in a church in Paris in 1922, who was improvising at the time and possibly blind.

The letters after his name. (Or her name. I admit that my swoons tend to be brought on by the males of the breed, but female organists are just as swoon-worthy if you happen to be that way inclined. There are fewer females than males because the organ attracts obsessive, train-spotting, Munro-climbing types.) ARCO (Associate of the Royal College of Organists; half a swoon). FRCO (Fellow; total swoon). To be an FRCO you need to be an unbelievably good musician. You can be given any piece to play and transpose the whole thing up or down a semitone. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue BWV 532 is your best friend; you can play Frank Martin’s Passacaille in D Sharp Minor before breakfast with your eyes closed.

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