I Love composing organ music and have recently composed a Prelude and Fugue on the hymn 'Guide me O thou great redeemer (or Jehova).

If I was performing a lunchtime Organ recital or even an evening recital, is it Ok to play some of your own works. Not many organ recitals I have been to include the performers own works apart from a recital by David Briggs where he played some Improvisations in the style of various composers and it went down a storm!!

I guess not many people are into composing then?

Does anybody here compose for the organ or other instruments?

Yeh, go for it!

Members of the audience at my monthly recitals often ask me if I'll perform any of my own compositions. I don't let on that I don't compose!

But make sure that it is up to the same standard as the other pieces you're playing.....

Exactly. A few notches above the Kevin Mayhew-school of organ composition would be preferable (Noel Rawsthorne excepted)....

Do the rest of us get too see this composition? Maybe we have a great unheralded composer in our midst?

Lots of people always ask me to play one of my pieces at recitals. Some only come if I include one!

David

Is that Great Aunt Gertrude you are talking about?

That was rather unkind! The most humorous award has been and gone you know. His music is very playable and would make an interesting addition to any recital, not just for the organ.

Surprisingly no family member apart from parents has ever chosen to support me in any musical performance since I left school.

EDIT: Great Aunt Gertrude died in 1961

Definately, go for it!

Sureley it must be a real treat for the audience to hear a completely new work.

I've nearly finished a Suite for Soprano sax and piano, and am going to 'premiere' it in a charity recital in a few weeks. I'll just be interested to see what sort of reception/comments it gets, all very helpful for the future.

Best of luck!

''Do the rest of us get to see this composition'' - erm well not yet lol. If people say go for it then I will.

I have to play a piece during my first week of the music course I am going to be studying at University (a sort of chance to get to hear the other first years perform). I will probably play it then.

In principle, a good idea, though one will suffice the first time out. Someone who write to me to give a recital at my previous church played several of his own charming but uninspired pieces and the lack of originality shone through the lot of them. He might have got away with it with just the one.

Other recitals I've been to where the player has played his own music are pretty few. Naji Hakim is an exception, he regularly plays his own stuff, but this is quality music, whether he plays it or someone else. I've played my own transcriptions, but never anything 'original'.

It was clearly a bit of light teasing, so don't take offence on someone else's behalf. Playable music does not necessarily make good recital material, but I'm sure dcmbarton's oeuvre is honest, well-crafted and finely-wrought.