Frederick Stocken

Events

  • Teaching Young Organists: Essential Skills
    808 Howell St
    July 6, 2022 @ 10:00 am
    When a young student arrives for their first organ lesson there is no way of predicting their musical future.  We cannot tell whether the student will become an international recitalist, a music teacher, a church organist, a leisure organist, or any combination of these.  The list of areas which ideally needs to be taught in order to support these different outcomes can seem both long and daunting:  technique, registration, interpretation, practice strategies, sight-reading, liturgical skills, and keyboard musicianship. This first workshop aims to offer advice on each of these aspects with helpful strategies based on the presenters’ wide experience and many years of teaching. 
  • Teaching Young Organists: How to Find Time for Everything
    808 Howell St
    July 7, 2022 @ 10:00 am
    Having established the areas to cover when teaching the young organist, this second workshop concentrates on time management and related strategies and resources.  The successful teacher will be systematic, promote independent learning, work collaboratively with the student, agree on realistic goals, choose appropriate pieces, and find time to include sight-reading and keyboard skills. Everything must contribute to creating the best environment for motivating students.   The presenters will show you that there really is time for everything.

Frederick Stocken
About

Dr. Frederick Stocken is the Organist of St George’s Metropolitan Cathedral in London and a widely commissioned composer. He teaches at the Royal Academy of Music and for the Royal College of Organists.

He was an Organ Scholar of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge where he studied with Peter Hurford and Peter le Huray. He won five prizes at ARCO and three at FRCO. He has given many organ recitals in leading venues, for example in the series at St John’s Smith Square in London in 2020.

As a composer, he first came to wide attention with his Lament for Bosnia and this led to works including Missa Pacis, commissioned for the Brompton Oratory, London; the ballet Alice, commissioned for the State Theatre in Giessen, Germany; his First Symphony, commissioned for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra;  a Violin Concerto and his Second Symphony.  Other commissioners include Chichester Cathedral and the Worshipful Company of Musicians. 

Frederick has wide experience as both an organ and academic teacher. His Ph.D. from Manchester University on nineteenth-century harmonic theory informs his teaching of harmony and counterpoint and his written work examining for Royal College of Organists. In 2020 Frederick began a series of webinars on academic topics examined by the RCO, the first of the College’s expanding programme of online teaching. 

Frederick’s Scale Shapes, using the Stocken Method, published by Chester Music, is in its 3rd revised edition. He collaborated with Anne Marsden Thomas on Graded Keyboard Musicianship (2 vols, 2017) and The New Oxford Organ Method (2020).