Have you ever stopped to think what life must be like for someone who has lost one of his five senses? For you and me, we take it all very much for granted and I can’t even begin to think how I would cope if an accident deprived me of something which is so everyday and ordinary.
For a couple of weeks in November my music, both before and after the service, featured the compositions of Alfred Hollins. Who? I hear you asking. Sadly, today, apart perhaps for a few elderly people, he is largely forgotten, so I thought I would tell you something of this life and work.
Alfred Hollins was born in the English port city of Hull (Yorkshire) on 11 September 1865, significant date 136 years later. From birth he suffered from total blindness and was taught by relatives as best they could, until the age of nine, when he went to the Wilberforce Institution for the Blind in York (later known as the King’s Manor). He remained there for three years, studying under the eldest brother of Sir Joseph Barnby (who wrote many fine and well known hymn tunes). In January 1878 he moved south to enter the Royal Normal College for the Blind in Upper Norwood (South London), where the piano was his principal study. He was soon promoted to learn the organ with another well known musician of his day – Dr E J Hopkins, and it is remarkable that throughout his career he maintained his skill equally on both instruments. He was still only a boy when he played Beethoven’s E Flat Concerto at London’s Crystal Palace and only sixteen when he played to Queen Victoria at Windsor.
Leaving the college he went to Berlin to study with Hans van Bülow and derived such benefit from that inspiring teacher, that he played before the King and Queen of the Belgians in Brussels and the Empress Frederick in Berlin.
On his return to Britain he was appointed organist to St John’s Church in Redhill, Surrey in 1884. In the Music and Inventions Exhibition of the following year he appeared with great success as an organist and in 1886 was taken, along with three other blind performers, on a tour of the USA by the Principal of his old college. A second (solo) visit was made to the States in 1888.
In that year he became the first organist of the “People’s Palace” as well as organist to St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Upper Norwood. During his tenure of this post be became a professor of piano and organ at the Royal Normal College.
His career can really be said to commence in 1897, when he was appointed organist of West St George’s Free Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he not only designed the organ, but was its first organist. He soon decided to embark on an international recital career and in August and September 1904 he gave a number of recitals in Australia where he was much admired for his remarkable skill. Other tours followed to the USA (again) and twice to South Africa. On his first tour here he played at what were then many of the virtually brand new organs gracing our various city halls and on his second tour in the middle of World War 1, he gave recitals far and wide. One of these was at the Mowbray Presbyterian Church, which was still remembered by some of our dear departed friends we had in the Frienship Club back in the 90s. Another recital was given in Johannesburg for the opening concert of their brand new organ at the city hall, which Hollins had designed and which to this day remains the largest pipe organ in South Africa.
Hollins’ style of organ playing was said to be both entertaining and colourful. He usually talked about the music and demonstrated the tunes before performing them. He learnt the music by having his wife play each part in turn through to him whereupon after the third time he had committed the whole piece to memory. Remarkable as this may seem, an even more astounding accomplishment was how he rapidly adapted himself to each instrument. A blind person playing a piano is an achievement, but bear in mind that there are no two organs anywhere in the world that are exactly alike. They are different in size and number of keyboards and the stops vary enormously both in their sounds and whether they are pulled out or flicked down by the finger. In 1936 Hollins published his autoboography entitled “A Blind Musician looks back”, a compelling and absorbing read. In it he relates how on one of his recital topurs of the USA he was expected to perform on a new instrument which had, at the time, all the layest gizmos and gadgets. One of these was illuminated stops, which didn’t move – one just touched them lightly with a finger whereupon a light would come on behind the stop head to indicate that it was “ON”. Another touch extinguished the light when the stop would go “OFF”. Fine for a sighted musician, but how was Hollins expected to cope with this problem. He solved it by remembering where each stop was and then running the back of his hand in front of the stops where he could feel the heat from each globe and by so doing, knew which stops were “ON” or :OFF” – quite remarkable.
Hollins was not only an incrediable performer but an accomplished improviser and would always finish his performance by asking his audinces for theme tunes. Having chosen one, he would happily carry on for 20 minutes or more, making the whole performance up as he went along and usually making the organ “talk” with just about each and every stop brought Into the piece somewhere along the line, thereby keeping his audinece absolutely entralled.
Strange then that very few of his 55 pieces he wrote for the organ are derived from improvisations. They have a sense of feeling and vitaliy and display a simple pleasure from writing tuneful and appealing music. A lot of them are simple in structure but the vast majority are not easy to perform, although they might sound easy. His concert and recital works in particular are impossibly difficult and only the performer with nerves of steel is likely to try to attempt these. In addition to his organ pieces he wrote a number of songs and church anthems, pieces for violin and piana and piana solos.
Remaining as organist of St Geroge’s Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh to the last, he died in the Scottish capital in 1942. Truly an exceptional man.
Richard Moth
Church Organist
