Lifting the veil of the Temple Church, London: making music for 900 years

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/17/temple-church-london-festival

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The Temple is an oasis of calm in central London, between Fleet Street and the Thames. It is here that, nearly 900 years ago, the Knights Templar built two halls, a cloister and, around 1160, a spectacular round church. The Templars were a monastic order originally established to protect pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land and Jerusalem's circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Christ's death, burial and rising. In the Temple's Round the Templars were recreating the shape and so the sanctity of the Holy Sepulchre itself. To be in the round was, to the medieval mind, to be in Jerusalem; it remains today a beautiful, numinous place.

By the late 17th century the whole Temple and its church had been entrusted by the crown to Inner and Middle Temple, two of London's four ancient legal societies ("Inns of Court"). They promptly divided the church's freehold between them, straight down the central aisle – well, what else would you expect from lawyers? In return for the land, the Inns promised to maintain the church and "the Reverent and Valiant Master of the Temple" for ever. They promised to give the master a mansion to live in and a salary of £17 per year – although thankfully there has been an adjustment for inflation.

Music has always been at the heart of the church. John Playford, Purcell's publisher, had his shop in the church porch selling both music and some highly implausible potions. In the 1680s, the Inns employed Christopher Wren, who had been married here, to refurbish the church in classical style. On a new screen he installed an organ, but choosing the organ-builder was complex. Inner and Middle Temples favoured different candidates; each was required to show off his skills by building a mini organ in the church. There was sculduggery: before important demonstrations, pipes would be stolen and bellows punctured: guards were mounted, 24/7. At last Judge Jeffries, from Inner Temple, chose Middle's candidate; a more gracious judgment than those he is chiefly famous for at the Bloody Assizes.

In 1723, the Inns appointed the blind prodigy John Stanley as their organist; he stayed for 52 years. When he was at the console, 40-50 organists including his close friend George Frideric Handel would gather to hear him play. His joyous Trumpet Tune still brings a good many brides up the aisle here; and this week's festival ends with the Messiah, famously promoted by Stanley after Handel's death.

In the 1920s, young George Thalben-Ball arrived to take charge of the church's music. HMV had just built a van for recordings outside the studio; and in 1927 Thalben-Ball and the boy-treble Ernest Lough recorded Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer and O, for the Wings of a Dove. It became one of the most famous recordings ever made – so much so that the original master wore out and a second recording had to be made in 1928. For the next two years, the Inns had to issue tickets for admission to Mattins. (Those were the days!)

All the church's centuries of history came close to destruction in 1941, on the worst night of the Blitz. If you come this week to the church, you will see the ancient walls and ceiling, but new columns, new woodwork – and a new organ – the 17th-century one, built by Bernhard Smith, was destroyed by the German bombs.

This new organ was not built specially, but instead was a gift from Lord Glentanar of Glen Tanar House, Ayrshire, who had a majestic but little-used instrument in his ballroom and offered it to Thalben-Ball. In 1954, the Glen Tanar organ was installed in the Temple Church; it's recently been completely refurbished and revoiced to match the building's scale and acoustics and sounds better now than ever before.

George Thalben-Ball was at the church for 59 years. And the music has continued to grow from strength to strength ever since. John Tavener's all-night musical vigil The Veil of the Temple was commissioned for the choir and the church in 2003. Those of us at the premiere who, weary but exalted, followed the choir out of the church into the dawn, have known all along what has been acknowledged on every side since Tavener's death: that The Veil is his masterpiece, an icon of all that he sought through all his life to achieve.

This year's Temple Winter festival sees music from Bach to Pärt, Schubert to Schütz. Join us for a wonderful week of music, surrounded by 800 years of musical and legal history.

• Robin Griffith-Jones is Master of the Temple. The Temple Winter festival runs from 16 to 20 December. All concerts are live on Radio 3 and available on iPlayer for a week afterwards.

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