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Organ Recital Programme, Monday 30 June 2025, 1.05pm

by Linzi James 30 Jun 2025

The Master Scrivener, Paul Williams, has sponsored an Organ Recital to be given at St Mary-le-Bow Church on Cheapside by Thomas Allery, Organist and Director of Music at St Mary-le-Bow. The full programme is here:

The Worshipful Company of Scriveners

 

 

Organ Recital

 

sponsored by the Master Scrivener, Paul Williams

 

and given by Thomas Allery, Organist and Director of Music 

 

St Mary-le-Bow

Cheapside, London EC2V 6AU

 

Monday 30 June 2025 at 1.05pm

 

 

Thomas Allery is director of music at St Mary-le-Bow. He enjoys a varied career as a director, organist and early keyboard player, dividing his time between performing, teaching, and research. Having originally trained at the University of Oxford, Thomas subsequently studied organ and harpsichord at the Royal College of Music before pursuing an Artist Diploma in harpsichord at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His teachers have included Margaret Phillips, Terence Charlston, Carole Cerasi and James Johnstone. Generous sponsorship from the Eric Thompson Trust enabled him to pursue specialist tuition in early organ techniques with Erwin Wiersinga at the Martinikerk in Groningen.

 

Collaboration plays an important part in Thomas' work. He is in demand as a continuo player with a range of leading ensembles in the field of historical performance and opera. Thomas regularly performs with the orchestra of The Sixteen, and is a founding member of the award-winning period group Ensemble Hesperi, with whom he has toured, recorded and broadcast widely. Hesperi has gained a reputation for its innovative research-led programming, for its pioneering work promoting rarely-heard Scottish eighteenth-century music, and for its dynamic collaborations with guest artists including actors, singers, and dancers.

 

Thomas was appointed professor of Basso continuo at the Royal College of Music in 2024. Here he works with continuo students, helping them to develop fluency in keyboard harmony, stylistic awareness, and chamber music skills, equipping them for a wide variety of roles within the music profession. In his teaching, Thomas draws upon current research in historical music pedagogy, and his own work in this field seeks to shed light on pedagogical approaches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reshaping these into teaching materials for students today.

 

In 2023, Thomas released a film on the organ of St Mary-le-Bow entitled ‘Sounds of the Square Mile’ (view on www.youtube.com), featuring works by composers from the City. Last year, Thomas was appointed Director of Music at Temple Church, where he directs the choirs and leads an education and outreach programme for young musicians aged 7 to 21, working to widen access to the English choral tradition.

–—

Programme

 

Lesson in A 

Overture – Allegro – Variations

Samuel Long (1725-64). Samuel Long was organist at St Peter le Poer in the City of London. The church was established in the 12th Century, on the west side of Broad Street, and survived until the beginning of the 20th Century.

 

Sketch no III in G for organ

Edmund Chipp (1823-1886). He studied organ under George Cooper, organist at St Paul’s Cathedral, and for a time was organist at St Mary-at Hill, in the Ward of Billingsgate. He eventually became the organist at Ely Cathedral. He became well-known for his excellent performances of compositions by Mendelssohn.

 

Introduction and Fugue in D

Ann Mounsey Bartholomew (1811 – 91). In addition to her career as an organist, she was a very accomplished pianist. She was organist at St Vedast’s church in Foster Lane for a period of 50 years. She made a name for herself at the time as an accompanist for Hear my Prayer by Mendelssohn.

 

A Fantasy

Harold Darke (1888-1976). He was organist at St Michael’s Cornhill for many years. In 1916, he began to give organ recitals on Mondays at lunchtime, a tradition which has continued to this day. His best-known work is probably a setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter”, many people’s favourite Christmas carol. HD has had a great influence on music in the City and beyond.

 

Adagio and Cornet voluntary

Peter Prelleur  (1705 - 41). He was organist at St Alban Wood Street (damaged in in 1940 and not rebuilt), and Christ Church, Spitalfields.

 

Prelude on Jesu Dulcis Memoria

Henry Walford Davies (1869 – 1941).  Walford Davies had a considerable reputation in music. He was a prominent academic, Director of Music of the RAF, and a recognised presenter for the BBC. Before appointments as organist at St George’s chapel, Windsor, and Master of the King’s Musick, he was organist at the Temple Church.

 

Elegy

George Thalben- Ball (1896-1987). After a time as deputy to Walford Davies at the Temple Church, GTB became organist at the Temple Church, a position which he held for nearly 60 years. Thomas Allery is the current Director of Music there. The present Master Scrivener was a chorister at Temple under GTB’s direction. The Elegy is his most frequently-performed composition, and was played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.

 

Two short voluntaries: Andante Sostenuto in E flat, Andante in C

Kate Westrop (fl. 1880s).  Relatively little is known about her life, other her compositions. She was organist at St Edmund, Lombard Street, where her father Henry had also been organist.

 

Postludium Festivium

CW Pearce (1858-1928). He served as organist of St Clement’s Eastcheap. Mr Pearce is the author of a book entitled “Notes on Old London City churches”, in which he describes the organs, composers, and aspects of the musical history of every church in the City of London.

 

–—

St Mary-le-Bow was built c.1080, probably by Lanfranc, William the Conqueror’s Archbishop of Canterbury who accompanied him from Caen in Normandy. The Norman was part of a policy of dominating London and was constructed out of the same stone as William’s Tower of London imported from Caen; perhaps by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester and architect. The new St Mary-le-Bow may well have been cheerfully disliked by the citizens of Cheapside as an object of oppression.

 Before the great fire there were three significant building projects on this site, Lanfranc’s church of c.1080, heavily damaged in a tornado of 1091, a substantially new church built after a fire in 1196, which may well have replicated what had been destroyed, and the reconstruction of the tower (on the south-west corner) after its collapse into the street in 1271; not completed until 1512.

 St Mary-le-Bow was thrown into great prominence because it possessed the principal curfew bell, rung at 9pm each day from at least 1363 and because it was the Archbishop’s principal ‘peculiar’ (i.e. although in the middle of London it was in fact in the diocese of Canterbury and remained so until 1850) – and hence the Court of Arches. The sound of Bow bell is that which distinguishes an area in which ‘Cockneys’ are said to be born.

 

After the Great Fire an attempt was made to shore up the old tower, which must have been well loved, but Sir Christopher Wren had the ambition for his second (after St Paul’s) tallest structure by moving the tower to the street and, it seems recalling the old royal box on Cheapside with a balcony high up on the north façade.  Wren had little interest in the crypt – which he seems to have thought was Roman – and simply encouraged its use as a burial chamber. The only access was by a trapdoor and ladder until George Gwilt built the present staircase. A fragment of the medieval staircase – perhaps into the first tower – can be seen in the north west corner of the crypt.

 

Wren’s design for the upper church took into account the need for a preaching room, rather than a place for Catholic ritual. It was almost completely destroyed by enemy action in May 1941 and not rebuilt (the fourth church) until 1964 by Laurence King, in good part as the London home of the Liturgical Movement.

 

  

We would be delighted for your support of

The Scriveners’ Company Sexcentenary Charity (Reg number 1188020)

Sort code: 40-52-40     Account: 00012022

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