OBITUARY
THE REVEREND B.B. EDMONDS,
1910 ˜ 2003
NICHOLAS THISTLETHWAITE
The death of Bernard Edmonds ('BBE' to his many friends and correspondents) deprives BIOS of someone who was in many respects its founding father, and who played an influential rôle in the society's early development. He was present at the meeting in Cambridge which eventually led to the foundation of BIOS and served on the Council for ten years. For twenty-five years (1976-2001) he contributed his inimitable 'Notes and Queries' column to the Reporter, and several numbers of the Journal include scrupulously-researched articles on topics that interested him (Elliot and Snetzler, Yorkshire organ-builders and lost organ cases). Until advancing age obliged him to give up his car, he was a regular attender at, and contributor to, BIOS conferences, and always went away with a list of queries which (characteristically) he had undertaken to investigate for other people.
The objectives which BIOS set itself in its earliest years coincided with those that BBE had been pursuing for many years. From Andrew Freeman — another parson with an interest in organs — he inherited an enthusiasm for the accurate recording of organ specifications. (To my knowledge, no one has ever found a mistake in one of Bernard's stoplists.) Like Freeman, he was an expert photographer. Both men, in their time, cycled round country churches, carrying the heavy photographic equipment of those days, to investigate rumours of organ cases. Sometimes, their quarry turned out to be a 'pipe rack' (did Bernard coin this term?). But on other occasions they discovered little-known cases of artistic merit or historical interest which gradually became more widely known through their publications, the reproduction of their photographs, or their inclusion in gazetteers such as that in the first (1963) edition of Clutton & Niland's The British Organ. Photography remained a consuming passion until almost the end of BBE's life. One of his last photographs was of the Comper case at Lound, where in order to avoid an intrusive roof beam, he balanced himself and his tripod precariously on the back of a pew; he was then in his ninetieth year.
Bernard's photographs, organ papers and notebooks now reside in the British Organ Archive, and many of the specifications have been entered into the National Pipe Organ Register. Freeman's collection is there, too: Bernard had become its custodian, and with the family's agreement arranged for it to be given to BIOS. The BOA is greatly enriched by these two important collections which are to the twentieth century what Leffler and Sperling are to the nineteenth (with the additional advantage of photography).
In many ways, Bernard was too generous. His readiness to help others with their researches diverted him from the task of writing up his own. A proposed book on the Snetzler-Elliot-Hill-Norman & Beard connection, completed in draft during the 1960s, never reached publication and was overtaken by events. But in the meticulously researched articles that did reach publication, he set a standard of intelligent enquiry and stylistic excellence that could act as an inspiration for others. Nor was he afraid to make his writing entertaining. He quietly deplored the shoddy, the meretricious, and the plain boring, and liked to spice his own articles with that gentle, rather old-fashioned humour that also characterised his lectures (and sermons!).
BBE's own liking was for organs of the mid-nineteenth century and earlier. Hill and Holdich were particular favourites, but he also admired a number of provincial Victorian organ-builders whose work was in marked contrast to the bombast and self-advertisement of some of the metropolitan builders of those years. As a youngster, he practised on an instrument by Forster & Andrews, and observed the capacity of registers on low wind pressures to blend. He detected similar qualities in the old Hill organ in Birmingham Town Hall, and at Lichfield Cathedral, where he came to understand the importance of mixtures.
As a diocesan organ adviser (to St Albans, and later Ely) he exercised his mind over multum in parvo schemes for country churches. He was not interested in doctrinaire solutions, but in what worked (as he would have put it); as an experienced priest who had organised church choirs and attempted to encourage congregations to be more adventurous musically, he had much practical wisdom on this subject.
He had a long association with the Organ Club, serving as President (1948-9) and later as Vice-President.
Bernard Bruce Edmonds was born in Birmingham on 13 May 1910. His father was an engineer, who was also an accomplished musician and sang in the Choir of Harborne Wesleyan Church; later, he was employed as Director of Music at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Bernard attended King Edward's School, and then went up to Cambridge, to Christ's College, where he read Classics and Geography (1929-32). After teaching briefly, he trained for the priesthood at St Stephen's House, Oxford, and was ordained deacon in 1937 to a title at St Mary's, Kenton. In 1948, following his marriage to Frances, he moved to St Matthew's, Oxhey, and then in 1961 to Caxton in Cambridgeshire. He retired in 1974, but enjoyed a long and fulfilling retirement ministry, especially at Marston St Lawrence (Northamptonshire) and Clare (Suffolk).
He will long be remembered by his friends for his irrepressible generosity, his humour, his modesty and his phenomenal memory. Former parishioners will remember him as a conscientious and devoted parish priest, in whom a proper concern for 'the beauty of holiness' was complemented by a broad-mindedness imbibed in his Wesleyan youth.
Bernard Edmonds died on Monday 16 June 2003. May he rest in peace.
JOSÉ HOPKINS
A lovely summer afternoon in the Essex countryside, a small gathering of friends and family, ancient Church ritual and a dignified send-off from the spacious churchyard were the hallmarks of the Requiem Mass celebrated on Tuesday, 24 June at the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Black Notley near Braintree, for Bernard Bruce Edmonds, priest, organ historian, photographer, and railway enthusiast. Nicholas Thistlethwaite spoke in his address of the quality of 'divine humility' as described by Archbishop Michael Ramsey to be found in Bernard Edmonds, and also of his sense of humour which helped to avoid any hint of solemnity. He told of his rôle as a founder member of BIOS and of his love of church music and liturgy. Geoffrey Morgan played the organ for the service, including two hymn tunes written by Bernard himself and a piece written for him by Relf Clark.
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