Music at St Mary's
Music in St Mary's has for many years been an important part of the Dorchester and wider District scene. The excellence of the acoustic and the beauty of the architecture, itself a late example of the arts and crafts movement, are a good starting point. The welcoming attitude of the church to all musical groups has helped to make St Mary's the premier choice for large and smaller scale performances.
The Dorset Chamber Orchestra performs regularly encouraging outstanding young players to be their soloists, performing a children's concert each year, generously compered by Martin Clunes. We have hosted several European groups and soloists.
The Dorset County & Youth Orchestras have performed on occasion. We further host a visit each year from the Orchestra of Imperial College, London, who together with the Hardye School Choir performs major works. The Bournemouth Sinfonietta Choir gives regular concerts as do the Dorchester Choral Society who perform major works in the choral repertoire to capacity audiences. The Occasional & the Farrant Singers, Salisbury Cathedral Choir, the Casterbridge Male Voice Choir perform regularly and this year we welcomed a visiting choir from Russia and an orchestra from Germany.
The Dorset Musical Instrument Trust's Steinway Grand Piano is lodged at St Mary's and occasional professional recitals are given; among them John Lill, Valerie Tryon, and Fiona Dalzell.
Over the years we have hosted concerts by Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars and a Brass Ensemble from the Glasgow Academy of Music in association with the Dorset Summer Music Society. The church continues to welcome creative musical events for the benefit of the wider community.
The Director of Music is Kris Emmett.
St Mary's choir
St Mary's has a long and valued standard of music, both choral and instrumental. A small choir maintains performance levels throughout the Choral Eucharist at 9-45 each Sunday, with a suitable anthem sung during Communion. Various Mass settings are used. The Congregation is encouraged to join with them for the Kyrie, Gloria, Psalm, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, together with hymns. Organ voluntaries are played before & after each service, as appropriate.
St Mary's also possesses a fine organ, built by Peter Collins.
The Organ at St Mary the Virgin
The organ was built by Peter Collins one of the leading organ builders in Britain and with a truly international reputation for building mechanical action organs throughout the world, where the player is in direct connection with the pipes.
The specification of the organ follows the principles of modern European Organ building best practice, this instrument was built in 1974.
Several Recitals have been given, including visits by Hans Fagius (Sweden) Margaret Phillips (Professor RCM), David Titterington (Professor RAM ), Martin Baker, (Westminster Cathedral), James McVinnie, (Assistant Organist,Westminster Abbey) David Briggs, (International recitalist) Daniel Cooke (assistant Salisbury cathedral, now at Westminster Abbey) Matthew Owens, (Wells cathedral) Several other European and North American organists. This short list demonstrates both the design and quality of the instrument, one of two built in the County Town, a third has recently moved to a new home of a young professional organist in the North of England.
In 2010 we renewed the electronic registration mechanism with a Pipe Net system, similar to that fitted in St Paul's & Worcester Cathedrals, which allows the whole organ to be controlled at the press of a button. The system has 200 levels and we are able to allocate 10 pistons to each student. In the future we hope to add a reader for either removable memory cards or sticks so that students may have their own registrations for pistons and recall at anytime. It is possible, with the necessary electrical contacts to fit a recording device into the console, enabling a student to replay their performance and experiment with registration. We follow closely developments in the computer world such as free music from the Internet which can be viewed on an iPad or other device. Organ Music is expensive and a small library of core organ music is being catalogued at the moment for use. In this way the instrument serves and expands the interest, knowledge and enjoyment of the local community.