Organ matters - Organs matter!

Hi!


The world of organs should be one inhabited by gentle people . . . but who have the guts to pull out the Tuba or Grand Jeu when required. However sometimes one gets a cypher and an Ophicleide makes a rude noise when not required.


As Forum Admin, I felt that the thread carrying the good news of the excellent Lyme Regis course, which we hope will be supported well, http://www.organmatters.co.uk/index.php?topic=423.0 contained information which I felt to be irrelevant, inappropriate within the discussion, insupportable and offensive and I have deleted the sections concerned.


We neither want nor like to make any editorial changes to contributions to this forum, but should anyone notice any posts which fall into a category which justify editorial intervention for any reason, please can you report them to Administrators without delay.


Posts are the responsibility of the writers and not of the Administrators, who do not monitor every posting made to the forum. However, where posts are drawn to our attentions we would like to take appropriate action where appropriate as soon as is practicable.


Best wishes,


Forum Admin


POSTSCRIPT Anyone tempted to make derogatory comments may find http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,819.0.html of interest.

Hi!


I hope everyone has a good 2011 and that between us we might be able to raise appreciation for the King Of Instruments more in this year to come. It would be great if the year is not one in which we see organs in skips or destroyed by bulldozers.


We frequently see "Guests" logged in as browsing the forum: it would be great if we knew a bit more why guests browsing don't join up . . . ? Or contribute . . . . ? Or merely ask questions? There's enough categories to provide for all areas of interest aren't there? Suggestions are always welcome . . . !


It would be really great to start the year with 100 members . . . can we see just two more people joing during the day?


Best wishes


ForumAdmin

Hi!


The server that hosts this forum is one of a pair of servers. The other server has problems and as a result access to this site may be flakey over the coming couple of weeks or so. Please don't be alarmed by this.


Does anyone know any server experts: we are going to be looking for a new server provider for some 50 sites or so. Any suggestions?


Best wishes


ForumAdmin

Willis - UK - http://www.willis-organs.com Excellent site with details of current projects, concerts and a guide to the factory including the Erection Room.  :o  Should be enough to excite any teenager.

This topic has been moved to Organ Builders.

http://www.organmatters.co.uk/index.php?topic=286.0

Further details on
http://www.organrecitals.com/1/recitals0.php?venue=htw

Hi!


It's rare to see gravestones or memorial plaques in memory of lost pipe organs. The one here is particularly poignant . . .

Does anyone know of any others? Please can you post photos here?


Here is the pipe display referred to:



The historic pipe instrument was replaced by a (then) top rate 3 manual analogue Johannus, which was inspirational enough for the top manual never to be used to the extent that its keys are stuck, for lack of use, and is now being replaced by a piano.


Pipe organs are so much more inspiratonal!


Best wishes


ForumAdmin

Hi!


If you are promoting a concert or know of a concert somewhere, you can post it for the date in the Calendar facility of this forum - in the menu options above - Home Help Search Profile My Messages CALENDAR


So for instance I have entered the concert on 7th November for that date - details on
http://www.organmatters.co.uk/index.php?topic=238.0


Best wishes


ForumAdmin

Hi!


http://www.rwgiangiulio.com/math/ gives a brilliantly cogent simple description of the mathematical criteria for pipe organ building.


http://www.rwgiangiulio.com . . .
Whether a link should go to this site as an inspirational instrument, a home organ, or an organ builder might be a moot point. Can anyone decide?


Best wishes


ForumAdmin

Hi!


Many of the 20th century revival instruments - de Blaise, Sperrhake immediately coming to mind were built with leather plectra. Not to be confused with the duller peau de beouf, these sharply cut stiff leather plectra were long lasting but eventually after decades become brittle and need replacing.


The normal approach is to drill a slot at the top of the leather and insert delrin plectra, most people not having experience of leather. But to my delight the other day I discovered Durand in Surrey - http://www.musicroomworkshop.co.uk who trained with Dolmetsch and therefore are experienced in replacing leather plectra . . .


So harpsichords with leather quilling can now sing again!


Best wishes


Forum Admin

Ebay item http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320580018260 - not sold for the second time - phone 07872470989 for details - http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N11817 Robert Spurden Rutt 1896

Ebay item http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360292706324 - not sold and going for £300 to a scrap merchant if not bought - Devon

Ebay item http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180553865520 Liverpool Rushworth & Draper 2 manual pedal pipe organ,  cased in light oak and built in 1949.

Quote New items – keyboards, console & organ seat, with existing and second hand materials – tin, lead and wood pipes, pedals and electro pneumatic magnets were used.

Organ Specification                                                                                                           

Swell Organincludes  Oboe,  Cornopean, Fifteenth, Gemshorn , Salicional, Open Diapason , Octave & Suboctave

Great Organ  includes  Trumpet, Mixture, Principal, Flute, Dulciana,  Open Diapason

Pedal Organ includes Bass Flute, Bourdon, Open DiapasonSwell to GreatSwell to Pedal

Pneumatic apparatus includes rubber & metal tubing, various skins, felts & valves.

Hi!

Villefranche and L'Escarene are worth visits if you are staying near Nice in the South of France

If you go to the Tourist Office at L'Escarene you'll be able to buy a CD of Cludine Grisi playing a very enjoyable programme at Villefranche Sur Mer from My Lady Careys Dompe to Messiaen and at L''Escarene there are concerts  - this weekend by Olivier Verner http://www.escarene.fr/index.php?id=947 . These instruments were built by Grinda in 1790 and 1791, an interesting builder who worked for the King of Sardinia, and show what is possible from a small specification on a single manual and pedalboard with a divided manual and a comparitively modest specification - in an unequal temperament which is mild enough to be used in all keys but to give a distinct key flavour as intended.

Certainly worthy of investigation as inspiration for new pipe organs.

The voicing of the reeds is such that even with only the Trumpet, Clairon and Cornet, a good Grand Jeu is produced but, of course, these are Huit Pieds instruments without the gravitas of the Seize Pieds of St Maximin.

Best wishes,

Forum Admin

This topic has been moved to EOCS - Electronic Organ Constructors Society.

http://www.organmatters.co.uk/index.php?topic=165.0

Hi!

I have just seen that YouTube is making stats publicly available and they are fascinating.

On my YouTube videos it looks as though my programme to try to excite the upcoming generation about an important area of culture which will otherwise be lost is succeeding . . .

If you click on the box at the bottom right of videos with the number of views a whole new pane appears with lots of stats . . . including the age range of the audience.

On http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=E8m2ok1Hlh0 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_eJ60PmtM it appears that we are reaching 13 to 17 year olds - which is a really good start, but only males.

Can anyone think how to get the organ to appeal to females other than wrapping them in pink and telling them that the organ will turn them into princesses? Is this sex bias inherent in interest in the organ or is it on account of Disneyfication of the female species?

It would be very interesting if in perusing YouTube others might see if there are any trends with regard to organs and programme preferences of different age groups.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

The seminal text on temperament in the modern age derived from an article in the BIOS magazine which was expanded into a book by Charles A. Padgham called The Well Tempered Organ.

The BIOS website has said "temporarily out of print" on rather a permanent basis for quite a time. It gives tuning instructions for a wide variety of temperaments as well as reports on experiments by Padgam, G K Parker and Peter Collins which, from memory, had been reported in the BIOS magazine.

In view of the continued unavailability of the book, in due course I will start to paraphrase condensed details about various temperaments detailed by Padgham and if anyone else with the book would like to help to do this it would be appreciated.

A few quotations appear relevant without further ado -

In 1879 Dr William Pole, a distinguished scientist and organist says of equal temperament "Under Handel's system an organ was a charming sweet harmonious instrument that it was a pleasure to listen to. Now, no matter how much skill and pains are bestowed on the voicing, the temperament converts it into an offensive harsh cacophony that drives peopole away." (Mackenzie 1979 (a))

The one problem with temperaments is that it's one thing to read about them, quite another to hear them and so I really encourage anyone with the facilities to tune an instrument or to switch a function on some electronic simulation to try them.

William Blood wrote in 1979 that the expression "wohltemperirtes Clavier" had been used for a quarter of a century before Bach's use of the phrase meaning a Well Tempered Calvier and that it meant a good temperament "whose circle of fifths was closed (wolf free) and thus playable though all the keys,and whose major and minor intervals (thords and sixths) varied in size systematically: in order to favour the more common scales and triads, the most heavily tempered of these intervals were placed in jeys with the greatest number of sharps or flats, and teh purest in those with the least. The effect of this irregular construction is quite striking; it enlivens the harmony and emphasises modulation by contrasting key qualities."

Padgham goes on to mention a few candidates to satisfy these criteria: Barnes 1979, Werkmeister III, Kirnbirger proposed by Herbert Kelletat in 1960, Herbert Kellner and Mark Lindley 1981 suggested as candidates Vallotti, Werckmeister III, Neidhardt I and 18th century French Tempérement Ordinaire.

I don't want to be distracted by the modern suggestions of Bradley Lehman, about which there has been ample controversy elsewhere, and quite rightly so as the temperament does not obey the criteria for  a "wohltemperirtes Clavier".

Best wishes

Forum Admin

Hi!

The other day someone happened to exclaim that the Big Bang was nothing to do with God. I happened to disagree. . .

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god".

Rather than the image of a big daddy   sitting on a cloud in the sky I choose the definition of god as   something like the omnipotent, invisible and omnipresent.

As a physicist   we are very aware of more dimensions than we experience directly, our   dimensions being but shadows of further dimensional space.

Our   exploration into the godrealm is looking around the corners of our   shadows to glimpse around into those further dimensions that we just   can't quite see directly. These are part of our space, nevertheless, and   all matter and all space flowed out from the conversion of energy into   matter at the big bang via orderly or orderly disorderly laws, "the   word", with which, all matter and energy has to comply in order to   exist. Our religions teach us how to be in harmony with that space,   matter and laws included within which are relationships with other   beings of the animal and human world, all created from the same matter   and laws. So really the Big Bang is not at all unbiblical. Let there be   light!

Best wishes

Forum Admin

Hi!

I'm wondering if one can design a really exciting organ with minimum spec?

Recit
Salicional
Voix Celeste
Principal
Cornet V - in seperately registerable ranks
Trompette
Bombarde

Grande Orgue
Montre 8
Principal 4
Bourdon 8
Flute 4
Fifteenth 2
Sifflot 1
En Chamade trumpet 8

Positif
Quintadina 8Flute 8Flute 4Tierce Piccolo 1Cromorne 8

Pedal
Bourdon
Bombarde from Recit

Oh dear - that comes to over 20 ranks . . . £500k ? One might enclose Recit and Positif . . .

Temperament - Kellner or D'Alembert?

Best wishes

Forum Admin

Albi cathedral, north east of Toulouse, France
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/ass.christophe.moucherel/

Bouc Bel Air, near Aix-en-Provence, France
http://www.orgueboucbelair.com/

Rieti, north of Rome, Italy
http://www.organosandomenicorieti.it/
http://www.musica-classica.it/forum/index.php?showtopic=8623

St Mary's Metropolitan RC, Edinburgh
http://www.matthew-copley.co.uk/portfolio7.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esggNCB8LWw

St Maximin, capital of organdom and the middle of nowhere in Provence, France
http://www.orgue-saintmaximin.com/

Hi!

There's a pop group working at the moment who sampled a small chamber organ. The organ was in Meantone temperament and the sliders cause tuning problems between the ranks so some notes were beating offensively. They sampled every note with all four stops drawn, ensuring that there was out of tune-ness on each note! Two members of the group processed the samples in different ways - one kept the whole sample of every note and the result when played sounded like a recording of an organ. The other split off the pipe starting transients - wind and transient note, and without these transients, an pitch processed into equal temperament, the result sounded like a slightly skewed Hammond with Chorus generator.

Very effective imitation of a Hammond . . . so if a recording of a pipe organ can imitate a Hammond it shows how the Hammond can have been considered so very effective 70 years ago.

That's not to say that I like Hammonds that so very much . . .

Best wishes

Forum Admin

Hi!

The 50th anniversary of the EOCS went well in London at the weekend - but there   were no Hauptwerkians. It reallly would be nice to have operating system   based technology people included in the Society.

"Why bother?" -   seems to be the tacitly asked question. . .

There is a lot of expertise there - and expertise in a generation who won't be about in 20 years time . . . and if we don't capitalise on their knowledge, we will be accursed to reinventiung wheels. We heard from   a near founding member too aged to make it to the meeting. He told us   in a recording which he sent in about the first decade of the society -   the fact is that all the commercial producers of electronics organs were   members - the founders of Makin, Wyvern, Earnest Hart of Copeman Hart -   and so the society was and is on the cutting edge of electronic organ   technology.

We heard from two people programming PIC   processors to play notes - could we get Hauptwerk on a PIC or collection   of PICs? We heard from a member solving keying problems and converting a   keyboard for digital use, and this could be of interest to pipe organ technology also, and I demonstrated speakers.

I demonstrated my   "sonic animal" - which in fact was light enough to carry on one arm   through London whilst carrying two other speakers on the other arm pulling a suitcase   of equipment. I demonstrated a couple of tracks of 'cello and piano and   then violin and organ so that people could verify that they were hearing   performances rather than hi-fi reproductions of performances. Then I   demonstrated an en chamade trumpet at various pitches. Through the   very high quality sonic animal, with floor vibrating bass and no colouration, the   trumpet sounded plastic.

Then I demonstrated other approaches to speaker design spcifically for electronic organs . . . including one that I call the   "Chinese Dragon" which looks as though it should have teeth . . . and, as a trumpet should do within 5 metres of   line of fire of an en chamade,   it caused a lady to cover her ears. It was real enough and blazing in tonality . . . .

Later on,   I was asked to demonstrate the CD quality recording of the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usBggyS5Nk   soundtrack through the high quality "sonic animal" demonstrating the effect   that speakers can have in making a complete instrument.

We also enjoyed   an organ recital by one of our members on the pipe organ in the church   next door.

So Hauptwerkians would be welcome as Hauptwerk can be so helpful in electronic organ simulation and potentially in inspiration for the building of pipe organs. Others are working on PIC   processing of reverb also. It's a very dynamic atmosphere.

Best wishes

Forum Admin