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Messages - Contrabombarde

#21
I have to accept whatever comes when I wander into a veritable hornet's nest!

A few observations if I may. Firstly, when different religions make mutually, logically contradictory claims, they can't all be right. If Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), He can't also not be (Islam says that's impossible). If He was crucified (Bible), He can't also not have been (Qur'an says He categorically wasn't).

Secondly, one of the sins of our present age is relativism. "Everything is relative" we are told. Well, the person who said that by definition said something absolute since they said everything, EVERYTHING is relative. It's a fundamental and well-recognised contradiction within relativism. Most people swallow it though, and some apply secular values with a fundamentalist zeal that the most evangelical Christian fanatic would envy! Hence the banning of wearing a cross at work for instance in case if "offends people of other faiths" or the banning of any reference to religion that is somhow supposed to be compatible with the organisation's "equality and diversity policy". Jesus commanded His followers to go and make disciples of all nations; you cannot in one sentence tell me that I have the right to religious freedom and then forbid me from sharing my faith with others, since if you forbid me from sharing my faith, you are preventing me from practising something that my religious founder commanded me to do, and you are no longer respecting my freedom of religion. Indeed, you are imposing your beliefs about what I should believe, or what I should take out of my belief system.

I rather like the analogy of dfferent seekrs of religion being people searching on a mountain for the one true God who is actually at the top of the mountain looking down at them all. They can't see Him, but He can see them as they all struggle up the mountain side, oblivious to one another, in their search for universal truth. In fact I'm sure plenty of people people like that analogy and can identify with it. However, there is a sting in the tail. The only person who is actually at the top of the mountain looking down on everyone, is God, so if you like the metaphor you are unwittingly puttting yourself in the position of God, high above all the other seekers!

The Christian faith ultimately comes down to one thing: was it, or was it not, empty? Everything else stems from the historical question was the tomb empty on the first Easter Sunday. If it was, it forces us to ask searching questions about Jesus - if He has the authority to overcome even death, then who is He, if not who He says He is? And if we believe that He is risen from the dead, we have to deal with all the "baggage" surrounding his various claims - that He is the gate, the way and the truth and the life, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God.

As for the question, did Jesus actually ever claim to be God, well, yes, several times. Most notably John 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" - the context being a reference to the divine name of God in Exodus, when God tells Moses His name is I am; Jesus takes that same divine name and applies it to Himself and almost gets stoned for blasphemy. And Matthew 26:63-64, The high priest said to him, "I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." "Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." In this case Jesus applies to Himself the two divine titles Son of God and Son of Man (from Daniel 7:13-14 - In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.) It was that utterance that passed on him the death sentence from the High Priest.

Belief in a genteel big white-bearded grandfather in the sky, however much Richard Dawkins lampoons Christians, is precisely that: a straw man. Strictly optional in Christian belief! As for the original premise, I have no idea why organs in churchs whose vicars believe in the uniqueness of Christ should be any more at risk than organs in churches with dwindling congregations led by liberal clergy...In fact they quite possibly have a better chance in churches that believe in something!
#22
Interesting to see that the seller doesn't have great Ebay feedback - and a previous negative was the cancellation of the sale of an organ, for £100, two years ago.
#23
Quote from: MusingMuso on July 21, 2012, 01:01:48 AM
Quote from: Contrabombarde on July 12, 2012, 08:35:22 PM
..... The only world the Islamicists invading northern Mali (or the Taliban for that matter) consider worth living in is the world of 7th century Arabia during the life of Mohammed, a so-called "golden age of Islam". Everything must be lived according to how things worked in the 7th century.

Unfortunately modern archeological and historical scholarship has blown wide open the central claims of the historicity of this period, meaning that the golden age these people dream of recreating never actually existed in the first place.

I regret to suggest, taking this reply at face value, that it is the most ill-considered, absurd and prejudiced response I have ever read, but peace be with us and to the prophet as we seek a little enlightenment.

Let's start with a few facts concerning "the golden age of Islam," which was by no means restricted to 8th century Arabia, but in fact covers a period from around 750AD to maybe the 11th century AD, with considerable achievements right up to the 18th century.

Islam has as its roots the historic beliefs of ancient Judaism, and the Quran was the first religious document written in one hand, which sought to codify and present, (in the most beautiful, poetic language), all that was good and decent; notwithstanding the limitations in the sum of human knowledge in the 8th Century. Although I cannot verify or bring to mind the considerable amount of detail, Islam was born at a time when the trade routes crossed and re-crossed an area of the Islamic world we know as Syria and Damascus. Those trade routes exchanged learning and ideas from several continents....Europe, Arabia, India, China and Central Asia. I forget the exact reason why, but the Islamic world was pushed east, and then centred upon Baghdad, with Mecca still the focal point of believers.....

I suppose the onus is on me to defend my "ill-considered, absurd and prejudiced response", in which case I must appeal to historical records to see what evidence we can find for such a "golden era" around the time of Mohammed. By virtue of choosing to comment on the destruction of the literary material and culture of Mali I completely accept the later achievements of Islamic scholars, astronomers, doctors and scientists writing in what we would know as the early medieval period of Western history. I have walked the streets of Samarkand in Uzbekistan and observed the many glorious mosques, the astronomical observatory and in Tashkent I visited a library in order to view one of the earliest manuscripts of the Quran, written in the Kufic script which dates it to the mid-eighth century. The phrase "golden age of Islam" is surely appropriate to be used to describe this period.

However, I was not applying that phrase to the thugs of Mali; instead I was describing their aspiration for their own "golden age of Islam", stripped of modern distractions and as close a recreation of the world of Mohammed as can practically be copied nowadays. The Taliban have a similar zeal. The point of irony is that their "golden age of Islam" - certainly not to be confused with the world of the Samarkand scholars - is but a figment of their imagination and they are destroying valuable later Islamic culture and ways of life to create a society modelled on something that never existed.

Take Mecca and Mohammed for instance. The earliest non-Muslim reference to Mecca comes from a mid-eighth century document. The earliest account of Muhammed's life was that of Ibn Ishaq who lived more than a hundred years after Mohammed's death, and other biographers wrote later still (and are even less credible). The Hadith, or sayings of Mohammed, date from two centuries after his death. If Mecca was the centre of Middle Eastern trade, the Dubai of the ancient Orient, one would have expected rather more to have been written about it at the time than what survives. And despite the claim in the Quran that the direction of prayer for Muslims was focussed on Mecca from soon after the time of the Hijra (AD 624), it is uncertain why early mosques continued to point themeslves vaguely in the direction of Jerusalem for a further two centuries. The first reference we have to anyone called Mohammed dates from a coin struck in Damascus around 690AD, the year before the Dome of the Rock was built in Jerusalem.

It's certainly true that the Quran has its origins in Judaism and Christianity, but it's pushing it to conclude that it is written in but one hand. Textual criticism of the Quran is most revealing since it shows how a bizarre concoction of Jewish and Christian apocryphal writings (more so than Biblical writings), musings on war and peace in the context of Muhammed's followers, plus a bit of ancient Greek medicine has been thrown together and it is certainly not all written by a single hand. On the one hand we have stories about Jesus' childhood, but not those of the Gospels: instead, Jesus picks up lumps of clay, models them into birds and breathes life into them, whereupon they fly off (taken straight from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas); we read how the Queen of Sheba came to meet Solomon and on entering his court mistook the glass polished floor for a lake and pulled up her skirt so as not to get it wet (a story which first appeared in the second-century AD Jewish writings known as the Second Targum of Esther). And the stages of embryonic development taught by the second century Roman doctor Galen have also found their way into the Quran, which is perhaps not surprising given that Islamic tradition maintains that one of Mohammed's companions was a doctor who had studied medicine in present-day Iraq, where a century earlier the works of Galen were first translated from the original Greek.

The musings on war and peace follow a chronology too, though the Quran is not complied chronologically and it was later Muslims who determined the historical order in which events happen. Interestingly when Mohammed was first beginning his "ministry" and building alliances the messages are about peace and harmony; as he became stronger militarily and eventually conquered the lands around Mecca the Quranic verses become much more menacing towards non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews.

The legacy of his successors leaves much to be desired. Writings of terrified Christian and other historians from Syria and Palestine when invading Arab armies conquered those lands in the decades after Mohammed's death suggest that the "golden age of Islam" that the Mali militants seek to recreate was very much more "sword" than "ploughshare". But there is no historical evidence for the existence of a single entity, a book, written by one hand and called the Quran, during the period of the early Arab conquests. There is however a sea of apocryphal literature, much of it used and preserved by the various Jewish and Christian sects that lived in the Arabian peninsular in the seventh century, some of whom would have experienced persecution for their deviation from more orthodox beliefs. Thus there was no shortage of material from which to draw a narrative, a unifying book or history for a newly emergent group of conquering Arabs needing to forge a new cultural identity. From these early Muslims developed a whole mythology around Mecca as the greatest city on earth, the city Abraham visited, some would say a city Moses brought the Israelites during the wilderness years of the Exodus, and this period around Mohammed's life was the greatest period in human history. Alas, the reality is that Mecca was barely on the map until a hundred years after his death and far from any of the known trade routes, and far from being dictated in perfect Arabic, the immutable and inimical word of God, the Quran was merely a compilation of many local texts and manuscripts of dubious probity.

That is why I submit that the particular "golden age of Islam" that the Mali militants seek to impose on the people of Timbuktu, never actually existed to begin with as a model for their assault, and they are trying to impose something that never happened, so never worked then, and inevitably will not work now. And lest I stand accused of being judgemental or prejudiced, I can only say that I think the historical (lack of) evidence for their panacea speaks for itself rather more loudly than I can speak.

#24
Perhaps a good starting point to understand the Islamicists' fanatism would be to try to get inside the heads of the the Roundheads whose Puritan cultural vandalism in the mid-17th century swept through England's churches, destroying centuries of history including many organs, windows, statues to saints. Plus a fanatical belief that "my interpretation of the Qur'an is the only possible interpretation and it is my religious duty to kill anyone who disagrees with me because they and their ideas are evidently a stain on Allah's world so must be eradicated". The only world the Islamicists invading northern Mali (or the Taliban for that matter) consider worth living in is the world of 7th century Arabia during the life of Mohammed, a so-called "golden age of Islam". Everything must be lived according to how things worked in the 7th century.

Unfortunately modern archeological and historical scholarship has blown wide open the central claims of the historicity of this period, meaning that the golden age these people dream of recreating never actually existed in the first place.
#25
Here's a photo of the console (from the Exeter organist's assosiation website - looks like a four manual to me:
http://www.exeterorganists.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/Sidmouth_PC_March_2011/IMG_0625.jpg

and another from the local paper, naming the organist who perhaps you should contact:
http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/Organist-joins-string-players/story-16385888-detail/story.html

The church website describes it as having "one of the best four-manual organs in the South West".
http://www.sidvalley.org.uk/sidmouth-parish-church.html

In 1881 it was apparently a 28 stop 3 manual Hill (search for "Sidmouth" in the long article below:
http://archive.org/stream/dictionaryoforga00thoruoft/dictionaryoforga00thoruoft_djvu.txt

Do let us know what you find!

While you're in Sidmouth you might want to take a look at All Saints church too which has an elegant-looking Hele according to an old NPOR listing but a two-manual toaster according to the Allen organ website...
#26
Wow, nice donor console for a five manual Hauptwerk installation, come on you know you want to  ;D

(ducks for cover)

Hope you get it fixed soon, David!
#28
Who's going to be first to volunteer to tune those façade diapasons?
#29
I am trying hard to recall a double instrument somewhere on the Continent in the choir of the church in which the trackers went down into a tunnel under the chancel, across and up the other side. Can someone please put me out of my misery? That must count as pretty impressive engineering though you might end up with some broken fingers if you tried playing Widor V!

I appreciate the comments around simplicity, many moons ago I went on a local organ crawl in which the organ of the first church was introduced as having recently had a very sophisticated solid-state transmission system fitted. No special reason why, it was a small two manual with detached console. But after a few notes of the visit visitor a fuse blew and that was the end of that.

The second organ promised to be a disappointment too, an old tracker with a cacophany of ciphers as soon as the blower was turned on. But a few minutes of fiddling inside the case and all was well.

At this point I might take the liberty of recalling a story a few years ago when I was accompanying for a wedding. Having visited the church a few days before the wedding and established that the organ was in a rather perilous condition, I arranged a rehearsal for the choir on the morning of the wedding. Except there were no bass - I had to send him off to the nearest B&Q with a shopping list of emergency repair items, duct tape, superglue and the like. Before the wedding I crawled around the innards of the organ in my best suit patching various windleaks and taping and gluing bits and pieces together. A few minutes before the bride entered, the ivory fell off Great middle C. So I liberally coated the underside of the ivory with superglue, pressed hard - and superglue leaked out all around, including all over my fingers. At that precise moment came the fateful words, "Would the congregation please rise..."

I vowed never to play for another service there again but about five years later found myself doing just that, and indeed for a wedding as it happened. I got to the very last chord of Widor's Toccata when, you've guessed it, the ivory fell off Great middle C. So at least now you know how robust superglue is.

Back on topic, any organ beyond a certain size will have an inherent complexity that tilts the balance away from mechanical and towards electronic assistance for action, stop controls and combination systems. There are powerful arguments both ways in terms of whether to restore a large and complicated pneumatic action, or whether to strip out the links and electrify. Actually having more space by clearing away the pneumatics can allow pipes to speak better, and facilitate access to parts of the action that would otherwise only be mendable by dismantling the organ. And the Binns pneumatic adjustable memory combination system is so sophisticated that few if any builders today would wish to take on something like that, and only at very considerable cost. One might well ask, had solid state electrics been available at the end of the 19th century, would anyone have gone to the trouble of designing such complicated mechanical combination systems?

In fact one might ask the same of electric versus pneumatic actions in general. Barker (of lever fame) was actually experimenting with electric actions in the 1860s before the development of tubular pneumatic action, and had mid-Victorian electrics been more reliable we might well have bypassed the tubular pneumatic action phase altogether. In 1905 Audlesy in "The Art of Organ Building" countenanced against electric action organs saying that electrics was not yet sufficiently advanced as to allow for the necesary level of reliability. Maybe if he was writing today he would say the same about computer controls. Certainly there is a potential problem with the obselescence of modern electronic devices, and the more complex the organ, the greater the need for solid state relays, coupler actions, computer controls, combination actions etc which depend on printed circuit boards, microchips and other wizardry that may or may not still be around and repairable twenty years from now. On the other hand, the more modular the connection between keys and pipes, the easier it is to remove and swap with an upgrade if necessary.
#30
Organs in danger / Re: Waltham Abbey
June 13, 2012, 07:23:54 PM
THis link is rather old now but shows considerable progress made:

http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/Essex/Waltham-Abbey/EN9/Charity/Charities/118617-Heritage-Organ-Appeal

Frankly with that apology of a case and unimaginative specification on the Abbey website, I would imagine most organists would be only too pleased to "get rid of" such a mongrel if a genuinely fine redundant organ of appropriate scale for the building came along. Very best of luck with your appeal, and I hope you can make some additional money out of selling the existing organ for wanted ranks/scrap metal/Hauptwerk consoles/decorative pipe features in front of Hauptwerk speakers etc etc.
#31
Some interesting comments above.

If you are refering to the old Hope Jones at St Pauls Burton on Trent, the specification and case photos are on NPOR, it's definitely 30 pedals 61 manuals.
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N03183#PhotoSection

One of the cases now houses a large 2 manual Conacher/Compton. There is a 3 manual Wurlitzer in the town hall which is right next door to the church, small world!

I can't find any reference to what happened to the 4 manual HJ at Warwick Castle - I'm struggling to think of a room big enough to house it or where it could have been situated. There is (in poor condition) a 12 stop  manual in the chapel by a local builder dated 1860.

I smile at the comment about St Mary's Warwick, which si in reality two or three cases scattered around the church controlled by one console. One of the loudest organs I've ever played, really quite unnecessarily loud.



#32
Believers' Corner / Re: Energy is God
May 16, 2012, 08:45:02 PM
David, you're surely forgetting that in order to create light God had to first put in place Maxwell's laws of thermodynamics. For the benefit of his audience the scribe of Genesis wisely summarised them as

"And God said, 'Let there be light!' and there was light" (Genesis 1:3)

when he really meant to say,

"And God said, Let:



and there was light."
#33
I thought this same organ was discussed on this very forum quite recently.

Whilst off the immediate topic, I came across an interesting paper some years ago that develops the question you pose about the divergence of Christianity and Islam. Whilst Islam accepts the creation of Adam (Genesis 2), there is no equivalent for Genesis 3 and from that stems the divergence. In Genesis 3 we have a God who has given man free will to choose to accept or reject Him; we have a God who is in a loving relationship with man - "and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" - and we see a God who is prepared to stoop down into man's now sinful world in search of His lost creation and give him the chance to respond. The lack of recognition that God could or would do these things is I think a useful starting point for understanding why so often conversations between Christians and Muslims seem to go right past each other with neither understanding where the other is coming from or where they are heading.

http://debate.org.uk/new/debate-topics/theological/hermkey/
#34
It's very easy to imagine how you could start splashing out here and there with a new organ, a restoration of a valuable but neglected organ (viz Manchester Town Hall's Cavaillé-Coll). But beyond Lottery winnings of a certain amount (I mean, if I won £10,000 I'd be less worried about this), you have to build in some maintenance contingencies too. After all, there are town halls up and down the country who had huge organs installed in the 19th century as gifts from wealthy benefactors such as we are imagining ourselves to be. And what of those organs now - where are those benefactors' descendants to ask money from to keep the organs going now when the town halls are faced with massive budget cuts in social spending (not to mention legal costs brought by the people whose services are being cut). In short, is it any wonder that the councils don't see the preservation of municipal organs as a priority in the current climate? And why if you are going to be generous enough to buy and donate a huge organ, you need to consider whether the recipient is going to be in a position to keep maintaining it, not just for the first twenty years but for the next century or two. If they aren't, you need to commit additional money to a trust fund that will keep it going well into the next century or two or risk gifting a timebomb and a millstone around your recipient's neck.
#35
Quote from: David Drinkell on May 06, 2012, 01:56:17 AM
While side-tracked looking through the IBO List, I noticed the 1969 E.J. Johnson organ at Willingham, Bedfordshire.  I remember this as a decent little job when it was new.

http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/manResult.asp?manuals=two&Submit=View&index=4

Actually it looks like the IBO website keeps changing the organs listed as new ones get added and old ones removed, since the link tht I added a few posts above no longer points to a Harrison.

There are two Harrisons listed as of today (7 May 2012), but it might be better to search by their IBO number rather than rely upon the links below.

http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/manResult.asp?manuals=two&Submit=View&index=25
IBO reference 344 - a two manual Harrison with Italiante case, I think that would have been the one I previously pointed to.

However, what do you think of this fine specimen:
http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/manResult.asp?manuals=three&Submit=View&index=4
IBO reference 305 - a three manual Harrison (if the link changes, search under three manual instruments)

Can't imagine you could go wrong with either, bombproof Victorian organbuilding with Arthur Harrison quality sound...please can someone rescue these wonderful creatures?

Contrabombarde
#36
You didn't say where you are based...

In the UK the IBO website lists some most interesting and worthy endangered instruments (as well as a few that I wouldn't think would quite make it onto my list of most deserving, but someone might want them). How about a two manual untouched Arthur Harrison for instance?
http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/redundantMain.asp

In Ireland this company rehouses redundant instruments:
http://www.organ.dnet.co.uk/popco/

And in the US there are some gems, albeit a bit pricey (how about $22000 for a two stop Father Willis?) on
http://www.organclearinghouse.net/

A bit of Googling suggests that in Canada and Australia there might be similar companies or websites.
#37
Miscellaneous & Suggestions / Re: The Organ Magazine
February 29, 2012, 12:11:42 PM
I do hope the Spitalfields organ gets reinstated soon. It must be over a decade ago that it was taken out of the church to William Drakes for safekeeping until such time as funds became available for a historic restoration. I believe at the time it was built it was the biggest organ in the UK, and the plan is to restore it to its original specification:

http://www.christchurchspitalfields.org/v2/history/organ/restoration/stoplist.shtml

though I do wonder whether they will end up needing two organs (or even a digital) for services and most recitals since most of the repertoire will be unplayable on an organ with no pedalboard even if it does have three manuals.
#38
Restoring pipe organs / Re: Pedal Acoustic Bass 32
February 29, 2012, 12:04:55 PM
Quote from: David Pinnegar on December 07, 2011, 04:08:43 PM
Quote from: David Drinkell on December 07, 2011, 03:24:44 PM
Stephen Hamill, who builds Phoenix electronic instruments, has/had a big three manual example with a 64' reed on the pedal.  Big rumble!!

:-) The Hammerwood beast has a 128ft . . . ! Whilst this is purely electronic, I have been looking for the opportunity to work with a pipe organ builder making a 32ft or 64ft electronic derivation from an existing 16ft pipe rank.

I think it is used on one or two notes in Jeremy Filsell's playing on the YouTube video "Latrobian Dionysian Whirl" and, reading the comments about having measured 4Hz on the recording, by Ben Scott http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOyMKVM0tvA

It would be fun to do this sort of thing wih a pipe organ. St Mary's Edinburgh with 3 32ft ranks might be a candidate . . .

Best wishes

David P

If you have 16 feet of roofspace there is nothing to stop you from creating a resultant 64 foot from quinting a stopped 32 foot (ie 16 foot long) bourdon though I can't imagine it would be very effective.

As few organs have even one 32 flue let alone two I can't say I have been able to compare between a 32 open and a 32 stopped flue. My previous church's organ was originally specified for a 32 wood open, but the cost of the bottom twelve pipes was prohibitive. I'd have thought an octave of 16 foot long stopped pipes would be far cheaper (and there must be plenty of open 16 woods on the used market - could they be converted to a 32 foot rank by stopping them)?

As an earlier post said, no easy way round the cost - a digital 32 foot in a church requires such a huge and expensive amp and speaker that you might almost go for the real thing.  But if a 32 foot bourdon or a COmpton polyphone could do something similar for much less space and cost, why don't we use them more often?
#39
Having been recently to Paris for a week long holiday I was profoundly disappointed to discover that virtually the only time any of the fine organs there are played is for the main Sunday morning service, since I arrived Sunday afternoon and returned Saturday evening! Don't go expecting to hear any organ music any other time of the week. The two biggest "hits" seem to be Notre Dame and Saint Sulpice, and if you arrange in advance you can observe the whole service from the organ loft. I get the impression this may be easier (and more organ music to listen to) at S Sulpice.
#40
Did you say impossible to find a pipe organ within a budget of £6000? You will have to accept a second hand digital with a very inferior sound system for that price too unless you can persuade David Pinnegar to let slip his trade secret about speaker design, which I'm quite sure he wouldn't do in the context of a church that was getting an electronic organ rather than a pipe!

How about this - it belonged to a recently deceased internationally renowned concert organist who taught on it so I'd expect it to be in pristine condition.
http://www.cumbriachapel.com/
Yours for just £1500 (or less if you can negotiate!).

Or given your location, how about enquiring about the price for this Harrison with a very grand Italianate-looking case?
http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/manResult.asp?manuals=two&Submit=View&index=44

Contrabombarde