Organ matters - Organs matter!

Hi

Traditionally, a Sesquialtera would be 2 ranks, as you say, and normally would run through the compass as 12th & Tierce.  Sometimes on early English organs you'll find a Cornet from middle c upwards complemented by a Sesquialtera in the bass.

However, in the Victorian era, the nomenclature of mixtures becomes somewhat confused, and Sesquialtera was used for any Mixture containing a third-sounding rank (and later I would guess for any mixture if the builder wanted a "posh" name!)  Audsley's views ("The Art of Organ Building" vol 1 p.442-446) show just how far the stop had drifted from its origins by the early 1900's.

It just goes to show the limitations of stop lists!  Looking at an organ's spec might give you some idea of the sound, but it's no substitute for hearing it in context - stops don't always do what you'd expect them to.  One example is the Stopped Diapason treble on the chamber organ in my church - an absolutely gorgeous stop, but considerably quieter than you'd normally expect in an organ of that age (it's actually softer than the Dulciana).

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi David

Just being polite!

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

There have been a couple of similar rebuilds recently - in one case, a Walker Positive was reused as the Swell of a larger scheme.

My thoughts would be, in order of importance for leading congregational singing:-

1. an octave of 16ft Bourdons for the pedal
2. add a second manual with a string rank (at least 8 & 4) and another flute both enclosed in a swell box.  Alternatively, just add the string in place of the existing Diapason and add a swell box.  Have the Diapason rank on a new unenclosed sound board, or in a separate swell box.  (Many small extension organs are totally enclosed, and that actually reduces their flexibility greatly).
3. add an independent diapason chorus at 8.4.2 minimum.

Or, as you suggest, find a redundant organ that's better suited to the task.

Returning to the extension theme, you might take a look at http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N08479  This is one of the organs that I learned on.  It was quite adequate for purpose - except for the detached console which, in conjunction with the action, meant that it was easy to be playing semi-quavers a note ahead of what you were hearing!  This organ is why I'm no great fan of detached consoles!

It's also worth looking at the design of the Compton Miniatura range of small extension organs for ideas - although IMHO they fail by only having one swell box.  http://www.zyworld.com/IvorBuckingham/Miniatura.htm has the basic details.

Every Blessing

Tony

Quote from: David Pinnegar on September 20, 2010, 05:41:46 AM


Is the conscious error check and or reality check mechanism the same when we are awake as when we are dreaming?

Best wishes

David P

Hi

I can answer that one to some degree. I'm currently on strong pain killers (increasingly severe arthritis), and the side effects of one of them mean that I often have very strange dreams - usually a conflation of people and places from different times in my life, which seem to be real at the time.  The ones that I remember can later be dismissed as being impossible (i.e. people in buildings that no longer exist, impossible situtaions, people in the dream of the wrong age, etc.)  Normally, the brain would reject these things as impossible and look for a nother reason (look alike's, etc)  nut in dream mode the anomalies are readily accepted.

Interesting post David.  Look forward to reading more.

Every Blessing

Tony

Quote from: Barrie Davis on September 20, 2010, 12:03:51 AM
I was organist at Quinton Parish Church which had a 3 manual Compton Cinema Organ, when the church was reordered it was bought by some enthusiasts from Somerset and that was the last I heard of it. If you used it with caution it was fine for the litturgy and many a Bride has gone out to the ringing tubular bells!!!

Hi

Regardless of size, a typical theatre organ is not going to be authentic for much of the classical repertoire - the use of extension and the vastly different voicing - especially when compared to baroque or early English organs sees to that!  It doesn't mean that the result won't be musical and entertaining.  Many theatre organs that were moved to churches (and some other venues, e.g. the Rye Wurlitzer) had some or all of the traps and percussions removed (Rye, when installed, only had the Cathedral Chimes, and only the chests for the Flute, Diapason and Trumpet were overhauled).

I'm not saying that they can't do the job - but it does require some thought in registration, etc.  Before we moved to Essex in 1993 I regularly played the Rye Wurlitzer for the school's Carol Concert, using it with choirs, the school orchestra and wind band as required - along with a solo spot.

I would rather play a well designed church organ for most church services, and a theatre organ for lighter music (although that said, a TPO and some of the typical sounds can be effective in some of the Sankey & Moody style hymns, and a few of the more reflective "contemporary" worship songs - and the drums & cymbals can - if you're brave enough - be used for things like "Onward Christian Soldiers".

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Whilst theatre organs can make a credible sound in classical repertoire - especially with some lateral thinking in registration (e.g. using 4ft strings to substitute for the lack of mixtures, or flute + string for a different diapason sound), the result is never going to be "authentic".  In the same way, most church/classical organs can play theatre organ "repertoire" effectively (again with some lateral thinking in terms of registration) but will not sound totally authentic - even if the trems are somewhere near right for TPO style (Comptons, Hill, Norman & Beard and at least one Spurden-Rutt organ that I've played do have trems on the theatrical side, rather than the very gentle style of other builders).  I've even played the arrangement of "Autumn Leaves" from "The Organist Entertains" music book on the 1m 5 stop organ in my church - and it comes off surprisingly well.

With organs, it's horses for courses - the Theatre organ evolved from the "Town Hall" type of "orchestral" organ to suit the type of repertoire that it was needed to lay firstly in accompanying silent film and as part of te Cine-Variety shows of the era.  Later, some instruments were designed more for the short interludes between films.  Church organs developed to provide accompaniment to choirs and/or to lead large congregations in hymn singing.  Concert organs originally developed as orchestral substitutes.  These are all valid styles of organ, ideally suited to the repertoire for which they were designed, but all capable, to some degree, of playing other styles of music in an entertaining fashion, but not necessarily authentically.

The development of the Theatre Organ is a fascinating area - one that I hope at some future time to have time and resources to research.  The pre-unit-organ theatre instruments are often said to be no more than church organs installed in a theatre, but looking at the stop lists and builder's literature, that's not actually the case - like most organs, they were designed for the job.  In the UK, HNB built several organs for early cinemas before developing the Christie range of unit organs - the transitional instrument being the Regal, Marble Arch job IMHO.  Other firms - including small local builders, provided organs for cinemas before the "big 3" really got going and dominated the market.

All very interesting.  Incidentally, at Saltaire yesterday one of the items I played was "In a Monastery Garden" - a theatre organ standard.  I played it on the Mustel Harmonium/Celeste - and using the 2 beating stops in the treble (Celeste & Musette) for some passages, coupled to the celeste was extremely effective.  That Harmonium has no tremulant at all - but the piece still worked musically.

Another interesting type of pipe organ (and electronic reproduction) are the handful of dual-purpose organs - Guildhall, Southampton (Compton), The Dome, Brighton (HNB/Christie) and a Spurden-Rutt in East London - and, to an extent, the aforementioned Regal, Marble Arch organ.  I also know of a couple of home-built dual-purpose electronics. 

The bottom line is that, in the main, in concert the audience wants to hear a range of music, played well - and with some knowledge on the part of the performer of the authentic style that the composer had in mind.  The art of the organist is to take the resources of whatever instrument (s)he is playing and get as close as possible to the composer's/arrangers intentions whilst still allowing the music to communicate.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

It's an attitude that I've come across at times - and perhaps was justified in the past by the rather poor offerings of a few (but by no means all) Theatre organists - some tracks that I've heard on "The Organist entertains" say 10 years ago were pretty poor rhythmically.  (NB not all church organists' are perfect either - I've heard a few where the cringe factor has been 11 on a scale of 1-10!!!).  Many church musicians of the older generations dismiss theatre organ (and Hammonds, etc) as "those Jazz things".

The antipathy often works both ways as well -  a good many TPO fans see no merit in other forms of pipe organ.

Thankfully, some of the barriers are coming down - and some of us who have an interest in both styles of organ are trying to build bridges.  I was very encouraged earlier this year when the Cinema Organ Society, who were hoasting an event at Saltaire on the same weekend as the Bradford Organists' association's centenary recital with Carlo Curly offered their members an option of dancing to the Wurlitzer at Saltaire or attending our recital (we offered them a block booking discount).  A significant number took up the offer.  I'm also looking at ways in which the BOA & COS North might be able to work together - at the very least publicizing each others events.  I'm also pleased to see that David has included a theatre organ section on this forum (although why linked with fairground organs, which are a different kettle of fish entierly IMHO - the whole area of mechanical organs is yet another area and form of organ music.

It's interesting that some of the Theatre Organ "greats" of the past had a solid classical organ training, and could turn their hand to any style of music and instrument.  Sadly, very few players these days seem to even want to bridge the divide, let alone put in the work needed to understand the different styles of pipe organ that are out there.

Every Blessing

Tony
(who plays theatre organ whenever the opportunity arises - but not as often as I would like!)

Hi

Yes - any organ really needs to be voiced to suit its environment (pipe or electronic).  It's often said that the best stop on an organ is the room, and that's often true.  That said, a well designed extension organ can sound almost as good as a straight organ - but note the "well designed".  In his larger instruments, Compton went to great lengths to avoid adjacent octave extensions on the key ranks, so, for example, the Diapason Chorus would be drawn from at least 2 ranks, something like 16.4 from one and 8.2 from another, plus a rank or ranks for the non-unisons (because of the tuning issue).  However, straight is always best, because then the voicing of each rank can be optimized for its place in the tonal structure.

Turning to electronics, some of the old analogue jobs with independent oscillators rather than frequency dividers could sound pretty good in a reverberant environment.  However, even then the Tutti usually failed.  Aside from voicing and having a multiplicity of tonal sources (and I wonder just how random the phase relationships of computer/digitally generated sounds are) the other big issue is loudspeakers.  Speakers excite the air differently to pipes, and trying to add sounds electronically to feed one speaker does not give the same effect as feeding them through separate units and letting the sounds add acoustically.  Then there's the inherent distortion in moving coil speakers, which I guess will change the sound somewhat.  In the main, it's the speaker systems that let down digital organs - and that's an area where, to a large extent, there have been no major changes in the last 50 years, just relatively small tweaks and different materials to (hopefully) improve the sound.  Using multiple speakers, each fed from different stops or parts of stops is probably the way to go at present, but is a costly and space-consuming exercise, as David knows!  Also, it's often impractical in smaller rooms because of space limitations.  One partial solution that I've seen is to reflect the sound from organ speakers off a hard surface, which produces some diffusion, and takes some of the harshness of the tweeters out.  It's an idea worth investigating, especially when a lower than optimum number of speakers has to be used.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

A couple more organs worth visiting - both in Sussex this time:-

Arundel Roman Catholic Cathedral.  3m Hill in the proper place (West Gallery) of a very reverberant acoustic.  Recently restored, and a fabulous instrument
Chichester Cathedral  Another Hill, saved from "fashion chasing" by poverty (not helped by the tower collapsing around a century ago!)  Out of use until a few years ago when it was rebuilt by Mander.  A fascinating vintage English Cathedral organ of the pre Willis/Harrison era.

Both are well worth a visit.  Also in sussex, Hammerwood Park - the home of the moderator of this list - with a couple of pipe organs and a 5m electronic concert organ - very nice.  There are some pictures on his web site, and on my Facebook page.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

I hear that it's very good in its new home.  I last visited about 30 years ago - long before any thoughts of a move - and it was well worthwhile then.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

North Wales:-

St Asaph Cathedral (4m Hill recently restored by David Wood) (I played this whilst on holiday last week)
Bangor Cathedral (4m Hill/Compton/Wells)
Ruthin Collegiate Church (Wadsworth rest. Willis - a fascinating English Victorian concert organ based on French ideas - a totally unique instrument - not typically English, and certainly not French, but well worth a visit)

Lancashire:
Lancaster Cathedral (Ainsclough reb. Willis)

maybe more later!

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Jesus claimed to be God.  That, plus the presence of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father at Jesus' Baptism is one of the reasons for the Trinity.  Hence in this case, in one sense, worship of Jesus is OK (Hence the "Jesus is Lord" creed, which derives from His teaching and a mention in Acts).  However, strictly, Jesus points the way to the Father.  Once again, human comprehension fails to fully understand the mysteries of the Divine.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Some interesting thoughts.  Thanks.

The Trinity is no more than an attempt by human beings to try and undertand some aspects of God - something that in fact is beyond human comprehension!  A friend of mine was being interviewed for the Methodist Ministry, and was asked "Do you understand the doctrine of the Trinity?".  Not wishing to appear ignorant, he answered yes - and was greeted with the reply "Can you explain it to the rest of us!".  The three-in-one explains some aspects of the ways in which God works - but that's all.

I agree that the church needs to get back to Biblical teaching - and not the various accretions and traditions that have neem added over the years (and no denomination is exempt).  Maybe we should get back to what was probably the earliest Christian creed - "Jesus is Lord".  Simple, yet profound.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

First, remove the pipes and wrap them in newspaper and store them in boxes - preferably no more than 2 layers.  The basses may have to be kept seperate - but then they are stronger!  Be very careful not to bruise or dent the pipes, nor - and this is critical - distort any of the mouth components.  If you need to stand basses on end, then top down - NEVER on the feet (this will possibly close up the foot hole and alter the regulation).  Don't forget to label the boxes - the individual pipes will have a mark showing which rank they belong to and the note name - if this is missing/wrong/illegible, then add labels.

That done, take photos of the dismantling process!  Typically, the casework will need to be removed first, then disconnect the action (plenty of pictures - and sketches if needed - to help when you put it back together!)  The windchests usually then lift off (positioned on dowels - but not always the case - my chamber organ had these screwed down).  Number all the action parts - npo. 1 is the low C.  Then the reservoire/swell box etc should be obvious.LABEL EVERYTHING!!!!  Organ parts can be heavy, so a second pair of hands could be a great help - and if you can find someone who knows what (s)he is doing, that would be even better.  If you are on good terms with a local organ builder, they may well give you some advice.  Take plenty of ontainers for small partrs - keep all the screws, etc. - and label them.  And don't forget to let NPOR have the detail of the removal & new home, etc.!

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Organ builders who are serious about historic restoration/conservation do follow similar principles - one example that I know well is the chamber organ in my church, where Willis went to the extent of using a different type of wood where the case needed strengthening (internally).  Goetze & Gwynn in particular are propents of this sort of conservation.  There's a book on the subject which is well worth reading.  I'll try and remember to post the title when I can access my books later in the week.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Care of organs in redundant churches devolves to whichever organisation cares for/maintains (or otherwise) the building.  A few are properly maintained and used, others I guess are just left to moulder away.  There's just too many redundant churches/organs in all denominations, to the point that many perfectly useable/restorable organs are destroyed, or just sit mute and deteriorating.

There's a few in churches near hear, including one that is, at root, a very early Binns, and another that has evolved (as recent research has shown) from an early Bishop, and still contains some old pipework and parts of the case.  Very sad.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Pneumatic action even on small organs was very common in the late 19th Century through to c.1940 - and electric joined in later in that period.  Tracker was seen as old fashioned, heavy and difficult to play!!!  I guess in this case it would be a dis-incentive to anyone teking this organ on, except perhaps for parts.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

I agree David - please add a brief note of what links are about.  I don't always have a lot of time, and as a result tend not to bother with ,inks unless I know that the subject is of interest (not only on this forum!). 

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Pedal claivchords are rare (and the post seems a litle confused - is it a Clavichord or a Virginal - or some sort of hybrid?

I have seen one pedal clavichord - in the Early Music Shop a ew years ago (2mp) - if only I'd had money and space!

The book "Bach and the Pedal Clavichord" (see e.g. http://www.ohscatalog.org/jospbaandpec.html) is an interesting read - but somewhat expensive to buy.  I borrowed it via Essex Libraris soon after it was published (I've given up woth Bradford Libraries - they hardly seem to stock anything worthwhile, and charge a significant amount to borrow books from elsewhere - £7 when \I last asked).  I supose, that it coyld be a useful instrument for organ practice - especially if the book is right and Bach conceived many of his organ works on such an instrument - and also in its own right - althoug I'm not aware of any specific repertoire for this, or its cloes cousin, the pedal harpsichord.

Every Blessing

Tony

Hi

I'm playing some demonstration recitals on various reed organs at the museum in Saltaire as part of Saltaire Festival.  Sat 18th & Sun 19th September at 12:30 & 1:30 each day.  All being well, the 2 recitals on any one day will contain different pieces, but I'll repeat the programme on Sat & Sun.

Confirmed items so fare are 2 groups of pieces from Cesar Frank's "L'organiste" and arrangements of "War March of the Priests" and the "Hallelujah Chorus" - and probably a Karg-Elart piece (which will be repeated in each recital - I don't have time to learn another one!).  Hope I might see some forum members - admission is free (but donations very welcome!)

Every Blessing

Tony