Music at St Nicholas

The Director of Music is Richard Bower GRSM ARCM.  The church has a fine organ, which is played for all of the main services. There is also a chamber organ that is used for services in the Chancel, particularly in the Winter months.  There is a Celebrity Organ Recital close to September 15th each year, the date of the opening recital in 1995.

At the moment the church choir is very small and from time to time it is augmented by singers from other churches for special services.

The music group plays at the family service each third Sunday of the month. The instruments are mainly woodwind and strings plus piano and drums (and occasionally organ).

We are always pleased to welcome singers to join the choir and instrumentalists to join the music group.

The main organ is a comprehensive 30 stop three manual instrument with mechanical action to the manuals and direct electric to the pedal stops. Parts of the organ proudly date back to the organ built by Father Smith for Rougham Hall circa 1690 and which was erected in a west gallery at Dereham in 1785.

Each subsequent rebuilding has enhanced the character of the organ: firstly that by Joseph Hart in1827; then that by William Hill & Son in 1875 when the organ was moved to the south side of the central tower; finally that by Bower & Company in 1995 when the organ was moved into the North transept and the chair organ added to contain the Father Smith pipework.

The specification of the organ is as follows:

“Let Us With a Gladsome Mind” is the title of the CD recording of the organ, made by the director of music in 2005 copies are still available at £10 each.

The Chamber organ in the Chancel is a single manual instrument dating from the early 1800’s. It has a keyboard that slides into the case when not in use and it has presently five stops (open diapason, stopped diapason principal , fifteenth and nineteenth). The single pedal operates a “shifting movement”, a genuine Georgian device for cancelling the brighter stops when depressed and so allowing echo effects without moving stop knobs or breaking the flow of the music.