Organ matters - Organs matter!

An odd thing about Camberwell.  It doesn't appear to have made it across the pond.  When I played it to the students at Queen's College (seminary) in St. John's, Newfoundland, they fell about laughing, and some of them aren't averse to a bit of armwaving (when I'm not around).

I've used Sibelius for twenty years.  It's wonderful!  So easy to use and top class results.  That's why most publishers use it.  But it's expensive, so it's worth investigating cheaper programmes, some of which are very good.

Very nice - thank-you!

I was interested to read Ernest Tomlinson's obituary in the Daily Telegraph online.  An interesting and very productive life, and his work in preserving scores of thousands of pieces of light music which would otherwise have been trashed earn him an honoured place in the field of musical resources.

I've ordered the George Shearing variations and I shall dig out the Nares (about which I'd completely forgotten!) for use in the near future.

A very wide front: 15+19=15 flats, typical of behind-the-pulpit jobs, but the organ itself probably only takes up a third of that width.  It would need a certain amount of recasting to the case for most situations.

That looks very clever and effective.  The fractional-length reed could work very well in such an instrument and I particularly like the idea of having a shutter to adjust its volume.  An example where I felt a fractional reed did not work was the Peter Collins organ at Addington Palace, and another was the otherwise rather fine Wells-Kennedy at St. Dorothea's, Gilnahirk, Belfast.  In both cases, there was nothing wrong with the reed, per se, but it was just too loud and bucolic for most purposes.  One can't play Renaissance dance music all the time in the Church of Ireland....

It's been done before.  A firm in the USA (I think it was Kimball) produced a range of very compact model organs in the 19th century with free reeds in the bottom octave.

A few small modern organs just about get away with short-length reeds for the Pedal, such as a Sordun, but more often they only sound right if one is playing Susato!

In the Old Kirk on the Island of Westray in Orkney, there is a very strange instrument, perpetrated by Solway Organs of Dalbeattie, Kirkudbrightshire.  It is termed a "Model B major" organ and looks like a large box made out of cheap wood with a console next to it.  Inside the box, there is a 16' octave of harmonium reeds, an octave or so of stopped pipes and a treble of open ones.  From this is derived a specification thus:

Viola 8, Principal 4, Block Flute 2 2/3, Octave 2, Contra Bass 16

The fraction on the Block Flute has been added by hand and the Contra Bass is marked "32"(!).  There is a lid on the box which is operated by a balanced swell pedal.

The above might have resulted in a decent little organ, suitable for the simple demands which would be made on it - but it didn't.  The whole thing is badly done and the tone barely exceeds dulciana power.  However, it was all (more or less) working when I visited it in 1987, despite having had no attention since it was put in (I know not when).

The Minister didn't know it was a pipe organ until I showed her.

Solway Organs did a number of other jobs with free reed basses.  It was a one-man outfit and the list of instruments on NPOR shows a distressing proportion which were broken up or replaced fairly shortly after he worked on them.  My colleagues from those parts told me that the proprietor sold the firm in order to enter the Episcopal Church ministry (Cowboy turned Gamekeeper?) and the new owner found he had inherited a huge debt on a rebuild (it might have been the Walcker at Hamilton) and promptly went bust.

YouTube sent me a recommendation yesterday for a video of the Australian organist Pastor de Lasala playing Theodore Dubois' Marche-Sortie from the Sept Petites Pieces.  A very decent short postlude and not hard to play. The Priere from the same collection is nice, too.  Both available on IMSLP.

Pastor de Lasala (the name conjures up a priest in a hat with corks on, and a voice like Crocodile Dundee - sorry!) has some really excellent YouTube videos, especially of French baroque music played on authentic instruments (like Houdan).  today, I turned up Louis Couperin's Symphonie in D minor (trio).  Music also available on IMSLP (from the Bauyn MS), together with LC's Chaconne in G minor, which I've been playing ever since I heard it at Weingarten over 40 years ago.

Do have a look at the above if you don't already play them.

Thanks, Nicola - I'll use that one.

I recently unearthed a piece which I'd forgotten but which I think is a gem: George Towers' Prelude on "Dafydd ap carreg wen", or "David of the White Rock".  It was originally published by Oecumuse, but was taken over by Fagus (www.fagus-music.com).  Something in the style of Whitlock's "Folk Tune" but a little easier to play.  The tune is gorgeous anyway, but the interludes are very well done and altogether, it's a lovely little piece.  I think it's better than Vaughan Williams' piece on the same melody, and that's the opinion of a full-blown RVW freak!

The composer was interesting.  George Towers was a graphic artist and was responsible, either personally or at a supervisory level for the illustrations in the Ladybird Books, which some of us will remember from our childhood (some of the Nature ones, like "The Countryside in Winter" were just terrific and the pictures make me think of home, even today, and the historical ones, such as that on Queen Elizabeth I, must have fired many a young imagination as they did mine).  In his spare time, Towers was a pillar of local music making in Loughborough and organist of the Baptist Church there.  I see from the Fagus catalogue that there are other pieces available.

That's good!  There is actually a specific market for classic Hammonds, especially among pop groups.  The Hammond sound is very distinctive and recreations by other means are not always convincing.  A friend of mine in Belfast, who was a pipe-organ builder by day and keyboard player in a top-rate Queen tribute band (as an ex-cathedral chorister, he was the only member who could read music), always said he would love to get hold of an old Hammond and do it up because nothing else sounded quite the same.

A piece of history - and they do seem to go on and on!  Your asking price might be a bit on the high side, but good luck with it.

That was the Welte system and the installation at Blenheim is an historic item in its own right.

The Leicester organ has since had a thorough going-over by Harrisons' so it's likely that the action has been changed.  HN&B, however, used the Ellen system quite a lot in their last years, so there are probably a lot of instruments around which retain it.  It may even be still available.  As far as I know, the Aberdeen organ still has it.

John was a consummate musician.  His psalm accompaniments were an inspiration, as was his vision and the scope of his skills. He was also a thoroughly nice person, who wore his talents lightly.  Our thoughts will be with his family.  May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

The Ellen Transmission System (I think developed by Len Ellen) allowed replay.  Hill, Norman & Beard used it a lot when Frank Fowler was in charge.  Leicester Cathedral had it (I remember walking round the building listening to myself playing before a concert there) and so did St. Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen - possibly also St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich.

Just discovered - Cat Suite by Denis Bedard.  Well-written, not too difficult (although the last movement is unbelievably fast) and tastefully humorous.

Not played enough - the Hindemith Sonatas.

I have quite a lot of Rheinberger, acquired over the years, but I don't play much except for the Introduction and Passacaglia and the D flat sonata (learned with Garth Benson back in the seventies when I was a student).  Any recommendations?

St. Cybi, the Church in Wales parish church in Holyhead, has a two-manual by Whiteley of Chester which was originally built for the Duke of Westminster at Eaton Hall.  It has an interesting case - not much more than a pipe-rack but with ornamented wood-work.

Amlwch has a typical old 2m Bevington - they're usually worth a visit.

William McVicker was the consultant for Harrisons' recent restoration of the organ at the Moot Hall, Colchester.  I gave the opening concerts, so I had a chance to see what events he had arranged.  It was all most impressive and interesting.  Any young organist who gets a chance to work with him would find it a most stimulating learning experience.

Thank you, Ian, for a fascinating post.  I wish you would go on all day!  The biggest gap in my organ education is that I have no first-hand experience of instruments in Holland or North Germany - although I conducted a concert in the Grote Kerk at Breda a few years ago, it didn't include the use of the organ.  One day, I hope to put that right.

One aspect of this thread that we haven't mentioned is the ability to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  An example which comes to mind is at the First Presbyterian Church in Dromore, Co. Down.  The organ was a completely predictable 1937 two manual by Evans & Barr of Belfast - Great to Fifteenth, Swell to 4' and two reeds, two extended woody pedal stops.  Honest and competent, but nothing exciting, even by E&B standards.  In 1998, Wells Kennedy restored and rebuilt it with new slider sound-boards, adding a Twelfth to the Great, a Mixture to the Swell and a couple of 4' stops to the Pedal.  Most importantly, though, they revoiced and rebalanced all the pipe-work. I was consultant on this job (not an onerous task, merely confirming that the proposals were sensible and that the firm would do a good job) and played at the re-opening.  The difference was incredible.  A tired old nonentity had become a beautiful and impressive musical instrument.  For its size and disposition, I can think of few others to match it.

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D05674

I have kept quiet about Coventry because I have neither played it nor heard it do more than accompany a week-day Evensong.  It seems to be universally admired, though, although Rupert Jeffcoat used to reckon that the positioning made for an amount of stereophony which had to be taken into account. The same, of course, applies to a number of instruments, one way or another.

Blackburn - I was interested to read pcnd's proviso about liking it before the enlargement of 2001/2002.  I think Blackburn is the only CofE cathedral that I've never visited, so I'm completely ignorant of the organ, the acoustic or anything else.  Looking at it, one would imagine that the additions would have increased its scope, particularly in accompaniment (this is not to criticize what was there already - some of those allegedly neo-classical jobs were a lot better at accompaniment and Romantic music than is often admitted).  Do the additions not chime in very well, or did they alter the original stuff to its disadvantage?

I've just remembered - I haven't been in Birmingham Cathedral, either.....

Readers of "The Organists' Review" will have noticed the article in the current edition about Martin Bussey's "Three Lowland Sketches", which are available as a free download from the composer.  I got them and used them in a recital.  Nothing too difficult here, but three interesting, unusual and attractive pieces.

I'm starting this thread to spread information about free downloadable sheet music.  Perhaps members would post to bring attention to anything useful and pleasant that they've found on IMSLP or other sites.

I use IMSLP quite a lot.  There are some valuable big downloads - the Montreal Organ Book is naturally interesting to me - but the other day I found a very charming piece by the Ontario composer David Cameron (Brits note, not THAT David Cameron).  It's called "Meditation on Cornish", the tune being that sung to "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day".  Very pleasant, gently uneven rhythms and an attractive harmonic style.  Would make a nice voluntary or a quiet recital piece.

http://imslp.org/wiki/A_Meditation_on_%27Cornish%27_(Cameron,_David)