John Norman
John Norman (1932-2025) was born into the organ building Norman family, working for Hill, Norman & Beard until 1974. He designed many organs for HNB, specialising in modernising actions, consoles, tonal schemes and visual appearance, significantly influenced by the organ reform movement. The 1971 organ at Gloucester cathedral formed the pinnacle of this work. In addition to the Gloucester organ and a sizeable number of new small instruments, John would have considered as his most significant projects the rebuilds in St Mary at Hill, Bath Abbey, Lichfield Cathedral and St Mary Stafford.
Having moved to work for IBM, at Michael Gillingham’s invitation John joined the London DAC in the 1970s and remained an organ adviser for them until his sudden death in January 2025, having just past his 93rd birthday.
John Norman shared with his architect-trained father a passion for church architecture and good organ case design. He enjoyed writing. In 1966 he co-authored with his father his first book, The Organ Today, bringing out a revised second edition in 1980. He began writing his column – Soundboard – in Organists’ Review in January 1980 and maintained it until his death. From 1983 until 2000 he was founding editor of The Organbuilder (the journal of the Institute of British Organ Building) and in 1984 he published The Organs of Britain – a substantial ‘Appreciation and Gazetteer’ of British organs, illustrated, as so many of his writings were, with many fine line drawings by his father. His final books, notable for their attractive design and appearance, were The Box of Whistles (2007, about organ cases over the ages) and Organ Works (2020, subtitled ‘What is an organ and how does it work?’).
A founder-member of the AIOA, John acted as consultant for numerous significant organs over the last thirty years of his life. The most exquisite of these was for the Undercroft of the Palace of Westminster (1999), the largest was for Worcester Cathedral (2008) and the final one was a new instrument for St James’ Piccadilly, not yet built at the time of his death.