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Worst Organ played

Started by Barrie Davis, June 29, 2015, 02:20:29 PM

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Barrie Davis

Hi,

Just for a little fun would members like to tell about the worst organ they have ever played. Mine is St Philips Smethwick which is a 2 manual Bevington reduced to Swell only due to water damage, there are no pedal stops, but you can couple the Swell to Pedat.

Best wishes,
Barrie

pcnd5584

Quote from: Barrie Davis on June 29, 2015, 02:20:29 PM
Hi,

Just for a little fun would members like to tell about the worst organ they have ever played. Mine is St Philips Smethwick which is a 2 manual Bevington reduced to Swell only due to water damage, there are no pedal stops, but you can couple the Swell to Pedat.

Best wishes,
Barrie

Mine would be the orgue du chœur at Chartres Cathedral. This is, without doubt, the worst organ I have ever encountered. For a start, the pipes appear to be stored in what look like coal bins (painted roughly stone colour), on the north side of the Quire. Then the console is a bit of a wreck; but the sound - I can barely describe it....

Several years ago, I had to play a concert on this instrument (including a series of improvised variations as an organ solo) and the entire experience was, well, interesting.
Pierre Cochereau rocked, man

Gwas_Bach


Barrie Davis

One that springs to mind is St Peter Stoke Upon Tern in Shropshire, a 3 manual Brindley and Foster, an amateur had messed around with it, the Choir was unplayable as were certain parts of the rest of the whole organ, it was a nightmare to play. I do understand that some remedial work has been carried out on it now.


David Drinkell

Quote from: Gwas_Bach on June 29, 2015, 10:20:44 PM
This organ (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=H00084) in its current state.

That's a shame.  I remember playing it years ago, before it was pepped up, and it wasn't a bad old beast in those days.

pcnd5584

Actually, I would have nominated the Conacher at Saint Mary's Church, Calne, Wiltshire as the worst organ which I have ever played; but for one thing the instrument at Chartres is even worse - and for another thing, I know that David Drinkell will rush to its defence....!

So I shall not even mention it.
Pierre Cochereau rocked, man

Barrie Davis

I wondered when Calne would be mentioned!!!!! I have heard from several people how poor it is

David Drinkell

#7
I, too, was surprised that pcnd hadn't mentioned Calne, which seems to haunt his bad dreams!  Being that way last September (nostalgia trip to Bristol), I made a diversion via Calne, but the church was locked.  Frustration made more acute by the fact that someone was in there playing the organ.  It sounded decent enough to me, but possibly audition through the key-hole of an oak door would make a fluty rendition of a quiet Bach chorale prelude sound ok on any organ.  It's nearly forty years since I played there as a student, so I might think differently now, but at the time I thought it was a fine enough example of Conachers' work of the period.  The three manual at Holy Trinity, Windsor, has a similar character.  Not up there with the Willis IIIs and Harrisons (no Manders in those days), or even the best of Rushworth, but still impressive.  I don't think this impression was totally down to the train-spotting-like habit of notching up another four-manual....

I will try to get on it again one day.  I find pcnd's judgement on organs to be reliable and knowledgeable, even if (thank God) we don't agree all the time!

Gwas_Bach

Quote from: Gwas_Bach on June 29, 2015, 10:20:44 PM
This organ (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=H00084) in its current state.

It's really not working well now!  Several stops are silent, with tape over the corresponding stopheads.  The console has to be from the last restoration: it doesn't give one much faith to see the screws holding the console together looking quite so prominent...

pcnd5584

Quote from: David Drinkell on July 02, 2015, 04:47:09 PM
I, too, was surprised that pcnd hadn't mentioned Calne, which seems to haunt his bad dreams!  Being that way last September (nostalgia trip to Bristol), I made a diversion via Calne, but the church was locked.  Frustration made more acute by the fact that someone was in there playing the organ.  It sounded decent enough to me, but possibly audition through the key-hole of an oak door would make a fluty rendition of a quiet Bach chorale prelude sound ok on any organ.  It's nearly forty years since I played there as a student, so I might think differently now, but at the time I thought it was a fine enough example of Conachers' work of the period.  The three manual at Holy Trinity, Windsor, has a similar character.  Not up there with the Willis IIIs and Harrisons (no Manders in those days), or even the best of Rushworth, but still impressive.  I don't think this impression was totally down to the train-spotting-like habit of notching up another four-manual....

I will try to get on it again one day.  I find pcdn's judgement on organs to be reliable and knowledgeable, even if (thank God) we don't agree all the time!

Thank you, David.

I think that you would indeed find that this instrument had deteriorated over the last forty years. When I last played it, there were a few stops which were not quite working, so it seemed - for example the Pedal 32ft., which would have been useful; I believe that it was either silent, or largely so (water in the chest, at some point?). In addition, the Swell so-called Sharp Mixture was anything but - it was in fact virtually inaudible - unless one chose to combine it with the strings only. The combination pistons, in addition to being somewhat sparse, were so slow as to be useless. I do hope that you are successful in playing it in the near future, David - I also value your sound judgement - even if (as you say, thank God), we do not agree all of the time.
Pierre Cochereau rocked, man

Gwas_Bach

This organ (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D02032) seems to have been "restored" on the cheap.  It has a poor quality console from the last few decades, with drawstops too thin for the holes in the stop jambs.  The key and pedal actions are loose and heavy at the same time.  You can't depress the swell pedal fully without banging your knees on the console, and the music desk is only a couple of inches above the Swell manual and hides the back half of the keys from the player's view.  The Great Open Diapason basses in the front are collapsing.  To top it all off, the "plinth" on which the console rests stops immediately behind the pedalboard, which means that the stool is teetering on the edge, supported by the back of the choir stalls.  Playing it is not an enjoyable experience at all.

David Drinkell

#11
Not in itself a bad organ, I think, but completely banjaxed by its position.  The church has nave, aisles and chancel and the organ is built in a chamber behind a false 'east' wall, complete with stained glass windows (illuminated electrically).  The console is in the 'west' gallery with the choir.  Conachers' built some fine organs around this period (1964), of which there are or were a number in Belfast (the firm was the major builder in Ireland), and according to Wells-Kennedy, who tuned it, there was nothing wrong with this one as such.  But you just COULD NOT get any guts out of it in the church!  Even the heavy pressure Tromba unit at 16-8-4 sounded weedy.  The church had a really good choir, which saved the situation.

The "worst organ" epithet is not mine, however, but that of a much more distinguished player, indeed one of the world's leading recitalists, who gave the opening concert.  His mood was not improved by the fact that he left his organ shoes by the console while he went out for a bite to eat and the verger, thinking they belonged to some tramp, threw them out.  Returning, he nevertheless prest on (sic) with the concert, but afterwards pronounced it to be the worst organ he had ever played.  The story was part of Belfast organ lore and I heard it from several people.  http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01431

Some extension organs are spoiled by having a loud diapason rank unenclosed and the rest of the pipework in a swell-box and thus too soft to be used in combination. Also, they tend to take all the Swell upper work from the flute, the string being too feeble to do the job.  Compton did not make this mistake, but other builders did.  One of the worst (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01379), not only had these defects, but also a perfectly horrible tierce mixture extended from the salicional and a 16' bass to the flute (the pipes a nicely-made metal Quintaton) which was far too feeble to support anything on the manual.

The above are sad, because they are not bad instruments in themselves, but incapable of doing the job for which they were built.  I find that much worse than an old wreck which is just managing to keep creaking along because it needs doing up.


pcnd5584

Although it is perhaps not quite deserving of the epithet 'worst organ ever played', nevertheless the instrument in Launceston Methodist Church was (before the work by Lance Foy) both a little odd and not particularly good. This organ has no survey listed on the NPOR. However, I do recall that It was rebuilt by the John Compton Organ Co. around the 1930s and had an example of a 32ft. polyphone on the Pedal Organ. It received a further rebuild by 'a builder from Plymouth', at some point during the late 1970s, which included some 'straight' upper-work to the G.O. on a new chest (which subsequently leaked) and a home-made detached console. The organ was restored by Lance Foy, of Truro, in the late 1990s. In addition to a new action and sorting-out the problems with the 1970s G.O. chest, the console received the type of serious cosmetic attention which was lavished upon Joan Collins a few decades ago. That is, apart from the breast implants.
Pierre Cochereau rocked, man

David Drinkell

#13
Launceston Methodist was quite important in its original form as an early Compton (just coming out of his initial Hope-Jones phase) and was not without its admirers for what it was - I guess a big noisy battle-wagon well-suited to leading massed Methodist hymn-singing.  There was an article about in "The Organ" some years ago, I think by Arthur Arnold.  I can imagine it must have been a gruesome thing before Lance Foy got hold of it.

For some perverse reason, I am led to the thought that the en chamade "English Tuba" added in the west gallery at Ottawa Anglican Cathedral (the rest of the organ being a moderately pleasant three-manual Casavant in the chancel) had the same effect aurally as breast implants visually.....