Organo CD's

Take, eat, this is my body
An allegory of the Holy Communion
The first Australian organ, St Matthew's, Windsor (1840)

Masterpieces of the Augustan Age
Jeremiah Clarke: The Prince of Denmark's March
William Croft: Voluntaries II, III, IV and XI
George Frederick Handel: Fugues I and III, Voluntaries IV and VIII
Thomas Roseingrave: Fugue X, Double Fugue V, Voluntary IV
Maurice Greene: Voluntary VIII
William Boyce: Voluntary I
John Stanley: Opus 5, no. I and V; op. 6, I and V; op. 7, II and IX
Running time 74:40
designer: Mark Venice
cover booklet: twenty-four full-colour pages
second, revised edition

Ancestral Spirit echoes the founding culture of Australia, the youngest major offshoot of Europe. The world-view of the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century created such energy in Georgian England that it came to be called the Augustan age for emulating the glories of rule of Caesar Augustus. As a nation Australia carries the birthmark of the Enlightenment. It is tolerant, egalitarian and rationalist enough to serve as a mirror to other societies.

The first Australian organ
Australians are the only nationals who can enjoy their first organ. It was built in Sydney in 1840 for a church forty miles away at Windsor, the "bread basket" of the young settlement. St Matthew's church was the colony's finest edifice, built in 1822 by the celebrated architect Francis Greenway under governor Lachlan Macquarie. (Greenway had been transported from England to New South Wales after being convicted of fraud.) The British government constructed St Matthew's before it decided to disestablish the Church of England in New South Wales and accommodate an ecclesiastical multiculture.

The project was led by a 28 year-old organist and piano-tuner from London, William Johnson. The instrument was designed and executed by a 45-year-old Scottish craftsman from Dublin, John Kinloch. The metal pipes seem to have been made from lead sheets that lined packing cases. They can be so fragile as to deform in the hand. Economic stagnation of Windsor, however, save these pipes from being replaced and the organ from being much modernised.

Just as the organ was completed, the colony of New South Wales fell into economic depression. No further organs of quality would be built for some thirty years by which time an extraordinary revolution in organ style had occurred around the Protestant world, reflecting the impact of bourgeois prosperity, fanciful Romanticism and muscular Bach. Scarcely an instrument survives anywhere to serve the Augustan repertoire with its need of long compass, sensitive touch, quick speech, vocal tone and equanimity of balance. These features were reinstated at Windsor in a controversial restoration project lasting from 1981 to 1986. Financed by church funds, public subscription and the NSW Heritage Council, the job was led by David Kinsela and carried out by Knud Smenge of Melbourne who had worked on eighteenth-century organs in Denmark and Holland including the iconic instrument of St Bavo, Harlem.

The Augustan Age
Georgian Britain achieved a spirit of poise, alertness and modesty that was truly Zen-like. "The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind". Overall, it was the finest manifestation of Europe's eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Led by such spirits as Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope and John Nash, this was an epoch of major developments for human well-being in science and technology, in exploration and colonisation, and in literature and architecture. The Georgian terrace has been called the ideal city house and would be imitated in Victorian suburbs around the world. The landscape garden respected nature at the same time as perfecting it. The Georgian colony was so well-managed that it provided foundations for such democracies as the United States, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Augustan organ music was at once charming and meditative, eloquent and heartfelt, perky and profound. Its breadth of appeal across classes reflected the democratic spirit of English society. However, in the twentieth century it would be dismissed as mannered and pretentious, having been quite overshadowed by the organ art of Germany which holistically incorporated the performer's lower body through pedalling.

The organ at Windsor as heard on Ancestral Spirit comes as close to Augustan style as any today. All the pieces in the program could have been heard by Australia's four national founding fathers, King George III, Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks and Governor Arthur Philip. Here, in part, speaks the ancestral spirit of democracy.

Below:
COMMENT
PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHOICE OF READINGS

COMMENT
The Organ (UK) Without doubt this is a landmark CD. Kinsela has drawn together some of the finest examples of the English Voluntary and related each one to a section of text taken from the Service of Holy Communion. Playing of consistently high standard is assisted by the fine, clear tone and beautifully balanced character of the organ. It is a disc that not only possesses musical merit but also adds a vital dimension to our understanding of historic Australia.
The American Organist (USA) As a repository for works not available elsewhere, this recording is a find.
Sydney Organ Journal (NSW) Much warmth and passionate rhetoric... exquisite expressiveness... a musical landmark of the colonial organ. (Spring, 1998)
Organ Music Society of Adelaide (South Australia) The pieces are chosen to form a meditation on the Communion Service, reflecting a variety of moods. The playing is sensitive to these varied moods and styles.
Hunter Valley Organ Journal (NSW) Excellent performance... pleasing variety of registrations... booklet packed full of scholarly information.
Organ Voice (Brisbane, Queensland) A most enjoyable CD featuring Kinsela at his best... his usual impeccable playing and unique style.
Early Music News (Sydney)
This excellent recording... celebrates the first organ to be built in Australia... The many-wedding-ed 'Prince of Denmark's March', by Clarke, opens the disk: a fresh, tantalizing rendition featuring the 8ft trumpet (added in 1986, but in character, appropriately aged). (April 2004)

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Caldwell, J.: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 1973)
Kinsela, D.: "Knud Smenge, a New Voice in Australian Organ Building", Victorian Organ Journal, October 1985
Kinsela, D.: "The Restoration of the Organ at St Matthew's, Windsor, NSW", OHTA News XI/3 1987
Kinsela, D.: "The William Johnson Organ in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney", Sydney Organ Journal, April 1992
Kinsela, D.: "Kinloch and Johnson, the first Australian Organ-Builders", Sydney Organ Journal, Winter 1996
Rushworth, G.D.: Historic Organs of New South Wales, the Instruments, their Makers and Players, 1791-1940 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger with the Heritage Council of NSW 1988)
Sumner, W.L.: "George Frederick Handel and the Organ, Part Two", The Organ 153, July 1959
Thistlethwaite, N.: The Making of the Victorian Organ (Cambridge 1990)

CHOICE OF READINGS
The establishment in 1788 of a technologically-advanced civilisation at Sydney Cove was marked by a formal ceremony on Saturday, 26 January. This date is celebrated each year as Australia Day, and by descendants of the previous inhabitants also as Invasion Day.

The Collect, Epistle and Gospel printed in the cover booklet of Ancestral Spirit are those for the day following the founding ceremony which, according to the Western liturgical calendar, was the Third Sunday after the Epiphany.

One week later, on Sunday 3 February, the first sermon in Australia was preached to all colonists by the Rev. Richard Johnson, Chaplain for New South Wales. This service of worship and thanksgiving was held in open air at the location in Hunter Street, Sydney now marked by an obelisk. Chaplain Johnson took his text from Psalm 116: "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me".

The first service of Holy Communion in Australia was held another two weeks later on 17 February 1788, the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany.