WORTH ABBEY - inspirational setting for organ music

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

The other night I went to Worth Abbey in Sussex for an organ recital. The organist was excellent and the experience of the audience earned him a standing ovation. The chapel is extraordinary - it's circular with good reverberant acoustics damped by a thin carpeted floor - and really rather inspirational.

In its scope the instrument, which on account of its effect within the building I'd like to be able to put into the "inspirational" category, caused me during the recital to have thoughts which I discovered to be not unique when chatting with others after the recital.

Firstly - is it a musical instrument and capable of doing justice to the repertoire? The answer is most clearly yes. But it's not a pipe organ and my supercritical comments below are not intended as criticism but pointing out areas which were they to receive attention could bring the instrument into a first class rating rather than that of "good, adventurous, courageous in scope, but not a pipe organ"!

The siting of the speakers is fun. They are invisible. One hears sound from different directions and I found myself distracted puzzling where the sound was coming from. (I suspect that the organist has the best aurally sited seat in the house . . . ) As part of the congregation, I was unable to witness the sound on axis with the arrangement of the chapel but sat at 45 degrees around the circle. Taking a clockface, the altar is at the centre with a slightly belled concrete pipe above, a lantern, probably 20ft in diameter puncturing the conical dome of the ceiling and providing a lighthouse of windows above giving light to the chapel, in the spirit perhaps of Baltimore Cathedral. The organist sits at 1 o'clock and one enters the chapel at 6. I sat somewhere between 20 and 25 past.

From this position I was aware of part of the organ being on my right and another part possibly opposite me on the other side of the chapel or possible on my left, perhaps an antiphon division at 6 o'clock. But then as the recital progressed, odd parts of the instrument gave a holographic projection of sound somewhere forward towards the ceiling. This was very disconcerting. I realised it was from the bell-shape cylinder above the altar focussing sound directly upon me. So I gave apologies to the chap sitting on the pew telling him that I was going to move and that no insult was intended . . .

I moved around to an empty block of pews near to 3 o'clock. The sound from here was satisfying. Very much so and during parts of the Liszt Ad Nos and the Durruflé I was transported momentarily to heaven, as from the standing ovation I'd infer many others were.

The chapel has two side chapels within the body of the chapel at the end of the hour hand at between 11 and 1 o'clock, possibly nearer 10 and 2. The speakers are in the roof of these. This explains the odd directional reflections and their associated holographic sonic images.

Having something so precise as a holosonic organ projected into the brain, I came away from the sound to that level of critical analysis, disappointed. Whilst listening, to no stop other than the pedals could I actually picture in my mind's eye any particular pipe. After all, this was not an acoustic giving a colourwash of sound as at St Paul's Cathedral in which individual detail is lost: this is an instrument that sonically plants itself between the eyes and one expects that level of detail from each pipe. But there it lacked. The creators of this wondrous beast have left it in the hands of speakers whose designers have heard of woofers and of tweeters and no doubt an expertly tamed flat frequency response between the two. But there it stops and does not represent how any pipe worked. This is especially important to the 8ft and 4ft flues, to smooth oboes and trumpets not relying on the tweeters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vii521NGSos gives a demonstration of the effect of neglect of the dip in that critical gap between woofers and tweeters. The 8ft flues solo left me with a desire to pull non-existant cotton wool out of my ears.

This was sad as overall on full organ, unlike many electronics, the instrument did not disappoint, although I was not the only one to notice what we thought might be distortion on some stops on full organ.

The instrument has bite. When required musically it has incision. But it's the incision of mixtures and the power of tweeters, not the incisiveness of pipes.

Stops using the tweeters are excellent, not just mixtures but the Voix Celestes, Vox Humana and others, but the oboes and trumpets were simply too polite. The bass was there shaking in profusion, possibly in the tradition of an Open Wood of 1920s Harrison proportions and even 32ft, I'm sure. But this gave reinforcement to the woofer tweeter experience rather than one of a whole organ. Whilst I like quietly fiery French reeds, for instance at St Maximin, in which a crescendo can be built of excitement rather than only in raw decibels, and in contrast I like the excitment of high pressure Harrison reeds in all their splendour, the reeds of the Worth instrument were neither one or the other, being merely politely bland. There wasn't in sonic evidence a wonderful 16ft Ophicleide to rattle us at any level nor a Tuba to lift raise the lid of the chapel. It was simply woofers and tweeters possibly put together or approved of as an organ more by people who had listened to organs through their hifi systems than to pipes in real evidence. An instrument on the most spectacularly attainable level of hifi has resulted.

Of the core 8ft stops, I was particular aware of three, a diapason of scale seemed to be unrelated in perspective to other departmental sounds and the precision in which they were holosonically received, a syrupy Hohl Flute or the like and a singular Bourdon or Stopped Diapason at 8ft pitch which said "listen to us pipes" Peep Peep "we can do chiff too . . ." Peep Peep rather as Thomas the Tank from the branch line would speak to Gordon on the express route.

The French 18th century instruments that I have experienced put the chiffy rank at 4ft. This is common to Isnard at St Maximin, 1775, and the 1790s Grinda instruments at Villefranche Sur Mer, L'Escarene, and the 1715 instrument at Entrevaux. This 4ft pitched chiff gives just the right percussion to the sound to provide incision to the instrument and is a voicing refinement which can significantly help any instrument.

In making these comments I might appear to be putting a negative complexion on what is an admirably audacious, worth while (forgive the pun), and admirable effort and installation. But the instrument has many refinements such as detuning certain pipes, inharmonic harmonics and turbulent air we hear in pipes from time to time, that with attention to the matters above, the experience of organ music here could be transformed from excellent to truly first class.

The bottom line of this is the need with which organs, such as the fruits of any belief in God, can result in inspiration. Were I to have taken my eldest son to hear this instrument, he'd have come away tolerating his daddy's obsession having got an idea that it might be great. But I took him in the summer to hear Pierre Bardon at St Maximin on one of the 5 o'clock Sunday recitals. Much of the recital was pleasant and I was transported to that heavenly state of semi conscious somlinance, and I think he was also. But Bardon finished with the Bach Prelude or Toccata and Fugue in F that builds and builds and builds . . . and my son said to me afterwards that he had had a truly spiritual experience. "It sounded," he said, "as though ten thousand voices were singing at once".

Those voices were singing, not tweeters screaming inducing tinnitus and painful possible intermodulation products of which electronic instruments must be self-conscious.

In order to survive, organs have to be inspirational. Truly inspirational. I hope that all builders of all organs of whatever types can succeed in doing just that.

Best wishes,

David P