The Parish Church Organist: 500 Years of Weddings, Hymns, Brides and People Who Can’t Clap in Time

There are few jobs in Britain more peculiar than that of the parish church organist. For several hundred years, this mysterious individual has sat largely unnoticed behind a wooden console somewhere near the back of a church, surrounded by pipes, hymn books, pencils, ancient service sheets and at least one mug of tea which was made during the reign of Edward Heath.

And yet, at weddings, the organist has traditionally wielded extraordinary power. The bride may have spent eighteen months choosing flowers. The groom may have spent almost as long pretending to be interested in them. There may be a photographer with £20,000 worth of cameras, a florist constructing something which resembles the Hanging Gardens of Babylon around the font, and a vicar desperately trying to remember which bridesmaid is called Sophie.

But when those church doors open, there is one person who determines whether the bride enters like royalty or like someone arriving for an appointment at the council offices.

The organist.

For generations, church organists were an indispensable part of the British wedding. Today, things are rather different. And having spent a substantial portion of my own life sitting at church organs, accompanying choirs, playing for services and observing weddings from what amounts to the ecclesiastical equivalent of the commentary box, I think the history of the wedding organist deserves some examination.

Because it is magnificent.

And completely ridiculous.

Before Spotify, There Was Bernard

To understand the importance of the parish organist, you have to imagine a world before recorded music. This is difficult. Today, if you want music you simply pick up your phone and announce that you would like to hear Elton John. Seconds later, Elton John appears. Not physically, obviously. That would be alarming. But his music does.

For most of human history this was impossible. If you wanted music, somebody had to make it there and then. This meant that churches were enormously important musical institutions. By the late Middle Ages, organs were becoming increasingly established in major churches and cathedrals, although the relationship between organs, worship and British history was about to become somewhat complicated.

The Reformation arrived. Then came various religious upheavals. Then the Puritans arrived and decided that enjoyment was probably suspicious. Church organs suffered particularly badly during the English Civil War and Commonwealth. Instruments were damaged, dismantled or destroyed because elaborate church music was associated with practices the Puritans regarded with deep suspicion.

This is perhaps the first recorded example of somebody complaining that the organ was too loud.

Fortunately, the Restoration eventually arrived, organs returned, and Britain gradually developed an extraordinary tradition of church music. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, organs were increasingly common in parish churches. And where there was an organ, there needed to be an organist.

This was not always the glamorous cathedral virtuoso one might imagine. In many villages, the organist was simply the person who could play. Sometimes this was the schoolmaster. Sometimes the choirmaster. Sometimes a local music teacher. Sometimes a gentleman who had discovered three chords in 1897 and had somehow retained the position ever since.

But whoever it was, the parish organist became part of the machinery of village life: baptisms, funerals, Sunday services, Christmas, Harvest Festival and weddings.

Especially weddings.

The Victorian Wedding Machine

The nineteenth century was particularly important for the wedding music we still recognise today. The Victorians were very good at inventing traditions and then behaving as though Moses had brought them down from Mount Sinai.

White wedding dresses became fashionable after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. Large formal weddings became aspirational. And particular pieces of music gradually became associated with the wedding ceremony.

Two pieces became especially dominant. Wagner’s Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin — the tune most people know as “Here Comes the Bride” — became associated with the bridal entrance. Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, from his incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, became enormously popular as an exit piece after it was used at the 1858 wedding of Victoria, the Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.

Suddenly every parish organist had something to do. The bride came in: Wagner. The couple signed the register: possibly something gentle. The newly married couple left: Mendelssohn.

Job done.

For approximately the next century, this became so firmly established that many people assumed it was some sort of legal requirement. You could probably have removed the roof, sold the font and replaced the vicar with a Labrador and nobody would have noticed. But if the bride didn’t enter to Wagner, questions would have been asked.

The Organist Becomes Part of the Furniture

By the twentieth century, the parish organist had become a British institution. Every church seemed to have one. Usually male. Frequently wearing a jacket of indeterminate age. Occasionally terrifying. And almost always in possession of a pencil.

The pencil is important. Church organists have traditionally carried pencils in the same way surgeons carry scalpels.

Hymn too long? Pencil.

Verse omitted? Pencil.

Bride wants a pause before the final chord? Pencil.

Vicar has changed the order of service without telling anybody? Very angry pencil.

The organist was also one of those people everyone in the parish knew without necessarily knowing anything about him. “This is Mr Perkins. He plays the organ.” And that was apparently sufficient biography for an entire lifetime.

What did Mr Perkins do on Tuesdays? Nobody knew. Did Mr Perkins have a family? Possibly. Had Mr Perkins been sitting behind the organ since 1954? Almost certainly.

And every Saturday between April and September, Mr Perkins would arrive at church and provide music for weddings.

The Wedding Organist’s Greatest Skill: Filling Time

People imagine that playing for a wedding involves learning some music and then playing it.

It doesn’t.

The most important skill is filling time.

A church wedding timetable might say: “Bride arrives: 2pm.”

This is adorable.

At 1.55pm, the organist begins playing some pleasant music while the guests assemble. At 2pm, there is no bride. At 2.05pm, still no bride. At 2.10pm, the vicar walks down the aisle and looks outside. This achieves nothing. At 2.15pm, somebody announces that the bridal car has left the hotel. Nobody knows where the hotel is.

The organist continues. And continues. And continues.

Eventually, having played Bach, Handel, Elgar and most of the Oxford Book of Wedding Music, the organist begins considering increasingly desperate repertoire. At 2.27pm, the bride finally arrives.

And now, suddenly, everyone expects perfection.

The organist has spent thirty-two minutes effectively providing live hold music and must instantly transform into the Berlin Philharmonic. The doors open. Everyone stands.

And off we go.

Hymns: Where Confidence Goes to Die

Then come the hymns.

Wedding couples traditionally choose hymns according to one of two criteria. Either, “We absolutely love this hymn,” or, “I think we sang this at school.”

The second is dangerous.

Because remembering the first line of Lord of All Hopefulness from an assembly in 1989 does not necessarily mean you can remember verses two, three and four. This becomes apparent approximately seven seconds after the organ starts.

The first verse is magnificent. Everyone sings. The second verse is quieter. By the third, half the congregation is moving its mouth hopefully while waiting for someone nearby to produce the correct words.

This is where the organist performs another vital function.

Volume.

A sufficiently powerful organ can give the impression that 120 people are singing enthusiastically even when only fourteen actually are. The organist therefore becomes less accompanist and more musical crowd-control officer. If the congregation slows down, you push them onwards. If they race ahead, you rein them in. If nobody sings at all, you open another stop and simply obliterate the evidence.

This is one of the great advantages of a pipe organ.

It has no concept of mercy.

The Register Signing: An Eternity in Four Minutes

Then comes the signing of the register.

Historically this created another challenge because nobody really knew how long it would take. Four minutes? Seven? Twelve? It depended on paperwork, photographers and whether Auntie Margaret had somehow become involved.

So the organist needed adaptable music. You could not simply stop halfway through something because the photographs were finished. Nor could you finish after ninety seconds and sit there silently while everyone wondered whether you had died.

A good wedding organist therefore developed the ability to expand and contract music like an accordion. Repeat something. Add a verse. Take a repeat. Improvise. Modulate. Play something else. Look through the mirror. Is the photographer finished?

No.

Another verse.

Look again.

Still photographs.

Good Lord.

Another piece.

This was live music in its most practical form. Nobody was following a backing track. Nobody was pressing play. The musician watched the ceremony and adapted to what was actually happening.

It is, incidentally, still one of the reasons I remain such an advocate of live music at weddings today. Real weddings do not happen to a click track.

The Great Organist Personality Lottery

Of course, not all church organists were the same.

Some were magnificent: warm, welcoming musicians who would happily discuss repertoire with the couple, practise special requests and make the ceremony feel wonderfully personal.

Others behaved as though the bride had requested permission to borrow the Crown Jewels.

“Could we possibly have Can’t Help Falling in Love?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Not suitable.”

“Could you play an arrangement?”

“No.”

“What can we have?”

“Wagner.”

This sort of organist still occasionally exists. They are guardians of an ancient musical kingdom and you are merely visiting. Requests must be submitted in writing, preferably in Latin, before Candlemas. Anything written after 1923 is regarded as dangerously modern. Coldplay is presumably the work of Satan. And Taylor Swift has not yet been discussed by the Parochial Church Council.

To be fair, organists have also had to endure extraordinary requests. Playing a pop song convincingly on an 1880s tracker-action organ is not always straightforward. A piece which sounds gorgeous on a recording with drums, bass guitar, synthesizers and twelve layers of production may sound slightly different when performed on an instrument whose available sounds are essentially: flute, trumpet, very loud trumpet and Apocalypse.

The Organ Loft: Britain’s First CCTV System

The organist also traditionally enjoyed an unusual view of the proceedings. Many organs are positioned at the west end of churches, sometimes on a gallery. This means the organist can see everything.

Absolutely everything.

The late guest creeping in. The bridesmaid whose shoe has come off. The usher who has forgotten where he put the order of service. The photographer crawling behind a pillar. The small child dismantling a pew. The gentleman in row six checking the football score.

The organ loft is essentially surveillance.

And because the organist is concentrating on the service while being largely ignored by everyone else, he becomes the keeper of enormous quantities of completely useless information. Organists know which weddings started late. Which vicars forgot names. Which best men lost rings. Which couples argued outside. Which photographers knocked things over. And which brides processed down the aisle so quickly that Wagner effectively became a ringtone.

They know everything.

Fortunately, most are discreet.

Mostly.

Then Came Recorded Music

During the later twentieth century, the organist’s monopoly began to weaken. Recorded music became easier. Churches installed sound systems. Couples became more adventurous. Popular music entered ceremonies. String quartets appeared. Singers appeared. Harps appeared. And eventually people began arriving with Bluetooth speakers.

For the traditional parish organist, this must occasionally have felt like watching the Roman Empire collapse. A profession which had spent centuries providing the soundtrack to weddings suddenly found itself competing with an iPhone.

And the iPhone does not charge an organist’s fee.

It also does not complain about Ed Sheeran.

But something was lost. Because an organ — a good organ, in a good building, played by a good musician — is extraordinary. There is nothing quite like the physical sensation of a full pipe organ filling a large church.

The sound does not merely come from a speaker. It comes from the building. It surrounds you. The bass can be felt as much as heard. And for certain wedding music, it remains unbeatable.

A grand processional on a fine pipe organ can give even a modest village wedding the atmosphere of a state occasion. For three minutes, everyone becomes important.

The Modern Wedding

Today, wedding music is vastly more personal. Couples choose music from films, musicals, pop songs, classical repertoire, video games and television.

And this is, in my view, a good thing.

Music should mean something.

I have spent enough years playing church organs to have enormous affection for the traditional repertoire, but I have never understood the argument that weddings must all sound the same simply because previous generations did them that way.

If Wagner means something to you, use Wagner. If Taylor Swift means something to you, use Taylor Swift. If the Jurassic Park theme somehow tells the story of your relationship, then frankly I want to hear the explanation, but you should absolutely have it.

The principle, however, remains exactly the same as it was for the parish organist a century ago. The musician must watch, listen and adapt.

The bride does not walk at precisely the speed predicted during rehearsal. The signing does not take precisely four minutes and twenty seconds. The aisle is never precisely what somebody imagined. Live musicians can react.

That is something the old parish organists understood instinctively.

So Let Us Raise a Glass to the Parish Organist

The traditional parish church organist may no longer dominate British weddings in the way he once did. Many churches struggle to find regular organists at all. Others increasingly use visiting musicians or recorded music. Wedding repertoire has changed beyond recognition.

But the organist deserves a surprisingly important place in the history of the British wedding.

For generations, these musicians provided the soundtrack to one of the biggest moments in people’s lives. They played while guests arrived. They accompanied hymns. They filled unexpected silences. They stretched music while registers were signed. They improvised when things went wrong. And, at exactly the right moment, they produced the musical explosion which announced that two people who had entered the building separately were now leaving together.

Not bad for somebody sitting behind a wooden box wearing old shoes.

And perhaps the greatest tribute to the traditional wedding organist is that when they did the job properly, nobody particularly noticed them.

The bride arrived. The music somehow fitted. The hymns somehow worked. The signing somehow lasted exactly as long as the music. And the Wedding March began at precisely the moment the couple turned towards the aisle.

Everyone simply assumed that was what happened.

It wasn’t.

Somewhere behind them was an organist watching the entire circus through a tiny mirror, one hand hovering over the keys, the other reaching for a stop marked “Trumpet”, wondering why the photographer was still standing in the aisle.

And probably thinking:

“For heaven’s sake. Move.”