Organ matters - Organs matter!

Hi!

I came in this afternoon to hear the tail end of this afternoon's BBC prom featuring the Albert Hall organ.

If anyone knows of any repeat broadcast of this concert it would be great to post details here . . .

Popular, fun . . . and just what the instrument needs.

Best wishes

David P

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Hi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU2r2X4-dpc is a possibly interesting demonstration of what a small four rank instrument can do . . . and the foot blowing gives a life to the sound . . .

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

On http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=YcDBP9cm_ro
has appeared the following comment:

QuoteThis is what happened to our Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball. It was dismantled with the understanding that it was to be reinstalled in the new Convention Center, but the organ builder ran out of funds and the organ "sits" partially installed in the Convention Center, but not playing. The city has no interest in getting it going again.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

Thanks to Martin Renshaw's assistance the 1856 Sprague instrument at Hammerwood Park is now in performing condition. Foot blown, it represents a challenge to modern players.

It can be heard performed by John Cooper of Ipswitch on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFErBGuB26o with Byrd, Buxtehude and Brahms.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

I've become so fed up of digital recordings evaporating on memory cards, and also of my second Zoom H2 recorder not behaving as my first, when the opportunity came to move to magnetic tape . . . it was natural to regress in that direction!

At first I only had access to 1200ft tapes and so in a concert, we missed an item which was then recorded without the audience after the concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chhA3z5NnOw might be interesting for its comparisons.

The Zoom H2 decided not to respond as my first and the microphones overloaded in circumstances my previous one had performed well with. So I turned sensitivity down and boosted the menu recording level - and the amplification is clearly digital with digitisation noise horribly audible from the original recording. Whether this will be apparent through YouTube processing will be interesting to discover. But for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9hAZP4zmY
I chose the digital backup rather than the re-recorded item as I thought that the performance in front of the audience had a quality not captured dead without the audience.

In another situation, however,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKOSVih7tls was with an audience and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT5Q6HooyA was without but on a superior instrument.

Do live performances always have something special?

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

Last weekend was shocking, not just for the fact that the bees that lived in the wall have died.

I heard the story about how someone's life was changed being taken to the front in a war between an Islamic country and its neighbour. The border was heavily mined. "We have our secret weapon" declared the generals working for the Islamist protagonists. Coach loads of young kids had been brought in by the busload to the front. The regime had commissioned thousands of little plastic keys to be stamped out and were given to the young lads, persuading them that these were the keys to heaven. "Just go, run over there, and this is your key to instant heaven." They did. The mines were cleared The regime won its way.

For whom? In worship and praise of the glorious ALLAH - breath in and out through your mouth and listen AAIAA - the breath of life - the god of life - AAHEY - YHWH?? No - not in the name of any God of Life, universal to all, but for a corrupt regime.

Then I heard the story of the soldiers who raped girls before they shot them the next day, and then turned up on the parent's doorstep the next week with their belongings. "Hello. These are the personal possessions of your daughter. I am your son in law. I was with her for just one night, the night before I shot her." A Fatwah had gone out ordering that virgins could not go to heaven, so soldiers were to do their duty to get them there to heaven.

Then I went to church. The incumbant had sent a friend to preach. The sermon was on the subject of the second reading from Acts which was of Peter's vision of the four legged lamb enlightening him to look among the gentiles to spread the good news, and not just among the Jews. This vision was just as much a Gnostic text as any thrown out of the Canonical texts by Iraneus in the 2nd century AD but it served Iraneaus' purposes for it, and the Book of Revelation to be included whilst other valuable texts at Nag Hammadi and elsewhere were excluded.

The preacher used the vision to urge us to embrace new things - an argument much espoused by people wanting to get rid of church pews - but to keep some tradition alive otherwise risking throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The first reading, from John, had been ignored by the preacher. It was of the incident when Jesus found the man sitting at the Lamb's Gate, who had been an invalid for 38 years and told him to pick up his bed and walk, and to sin no more. What magic this is seen to be, curing the lame and getting them to be able to walk. Those seeking Jesus as a SuperHero for what He can do for them are no more in tune with God than those followers of the Cargo Cult in Vanuatu waiting for John Frum to return. (Attenborough's documentary about the Cargo Cult is fascinating. ) This preacher, like many of the past 1970 years expects her superhero Jesus to return likewise. Instead, He will descend from the clouds in our minds, when we see face to face rather than through a glass darkly. So after the service I suggested to her that the Lamb's Gate reading was interesting. Just as Jesus had the courage to overturn the money-changers' tables, he had had the courage to tell the professional invalid that he could walk, that he shouldn't beg under false pretences - thus to sin no more - and that he could walk and needed to get a life. After all, if the God of Life is to be worshipped, then we need to use our lives - to make the most of our lives - to breathe life - AAYAAH. Would the bloke finding the end of life really not be in hell finding that he'd wasted his life sitting at a gate begging for the crumbs of other people's lives?

Of course the extent of the nature of the circumstances is a spectrum. Some people might need just that bit of encouragement to be positive that they really can achieve something without a prop - that they are able, that they reallly aren't dependant upon getting into that pool of healing water, that they don't need an excuse to justify them not getting up and walking.

The reaction from the preacher was instant. Without contemplation, "You're wrong. It says quite clearly that he had been an invalid for 38 years. It was a miracle."

Elsewhere in these postings I have written about the feeding of the 5000 as the miracle of getting human kind to cooperate together, to use their minds. This is a much larger miracle than any food that a magicsuperhero could superhumanly have magicked into existence out of thin air. Just by encouraging the people to bring out what they had hidden for themselves in fear of losing it, the people realised they had enough to eat having produced it from under their robes was a much simpler, but more challenging task - and Jesus did it.

The invalid at the Lamb's Gate is actually how we approach heaven. We are beggars at the gate of heaven thinking that heaven is on the other side of life, beyond death. We get titbits and crumbs of heaven as people walk through the gate but fear that we can't reach it without that plastic key, or being blessed by that pool of healing water. So-called Christian preachers tell us that we have to plead with Jesus to let us into Heaven, just as the invalid pleads at the gate. (The word "just" should be made illegal in any prayer. "We're good boys and girls really - just please let us in") The story is not about an invalid who was magically cured, nor a man who was told to get off his backside and get a life, but about us, about Christ descending from the clouds in our minds, about the holy spirit, not as a mysterious ectoplasm that only the weird can see and that we need to touch if we are to get to heaven, but about the idea of the God of Life that enables us to live, to have free minds and to achieve Heaven on Earth - an Earth fashioned in the nature of Heaven in our minds. We're just that step away from it and we have simply to pick up our bed, pack up our excuses, see as irrelevant the false god of the healing water or the ectoplasmic mist of the Idea of God . . . and walk . . . with our own legs of our own minds.

As the human race achieves saturation point on Planet Earth, it is for us to decide whether we are animal parasites on earth, or beings fashioned in the spirit of the creator, the process of creation that enables us to function in the image of the God of Life, the Creator, that process by which we are here on earth and can achieve heaven.

The places of organs, the houses of the God of Life, have a lot to bring to teach humanity, even including preachers who think we need cleansing in that pool of healing water.

As Christians in worship of the God of Life we have much to give Muslims in the worship of the God of Life and to the achievement of Heaven in life. My son pointed me to http://miriams-well.org/lectures/HeavenAs.html echoing the concept. In our Christian texts, it's not our text that's wrong but that some perspectives of its meaning are more helpful to humanity and relevant to how we live our lives than others. Likewise we can be assured that nothing in the Holy Quran is wrong but some perspectives of some interpretations are more helpful than others.

If we take this point of view, as Christians we can obey the injunction of the Quran to fight what is bad by what is better.

What is better is by definition better than what is less good, less helpful, less productive (parable of the talents) to the point that what is less good, less helpful, less productive is outshadowed by what is more helpful to the point at which the less helpful ceases to have any relevance at all. This is the natural law, the law of the matter of which the earth and everything is made, of lifeforms too. People have the choice to be like that also.

By opening our minds to the God of Life, we free ourselves of religious manipulation, brainwashing by those wanting to exert authority for their own ends, and give those lads sent to the minefield the Breath of Life. AAHAAH

Best wishes,

David P

Hi!

A young person has just leant me her GCSE Revision notes on "Beliefs and Values, Religion and Society"

It goes through a number of topics and outlines different religions' attitudes.

With respect to Genetic Engineering:
"Jesus was a healer so by using genetic engineering to heal others we ar following Jesus' example"

In relation to War:
"Christian attitudes to 'just war'

Most Christians would fight in a war if it is a "just war" that meets the following criteria
- the cause of the war is just (eg self defence)
- it is being fought by the authority of a government or the united nations
- it is being fought with the intention of restoring peace
- it is begun as a last resort (all non-violent methods of ending the dispute have been tried and failed)

Why Christians believe in 'just wars'
The reasons for Christians believing in 'just wars' are:
- St Paul taught that governments should be obeyed Jesus never condemned soldiers (said they were bad)
- Jesus praised the faith of a Roman Centurian (soldier)
- We need to protect the weak / innocent and protect against injustice
- Situation ethics - it may be the most loving thing (e.g. WW2 - stopping the Holocaust)
- All the main Churches teach that some wars can be 'just'
- The commandment not to kill only applies to murder, not killing in a just war
- There are lots of examples in the Bible of God helping the Jewish people to win wars"

Is it more useful to teach children what to think or how to think? Did Jesus really teach us what to think . . . or was he not trying to get us to think, and to teach us how to think?

Is this sort of education useful?

Best wishes

David P


"

Hi!

Next Monday evening I hear that BBC Radio 3 Live In Concert is putting Lincoln Cathedral Willis on the concert platform.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

A friend has given me the tip-off that the Willis firm is likely to be the source of the most wonderfully colourful stories of all organ builders. Episodes include eccentricity, authoritarianism and a heirarchical structure, all ingredients for the breeding ground of a good story.

One perception is that really it was the Lewis firm that took over Willis with Willis' firm's finances in a parlous state but it was Willis' name which endured. Apparently documents relating to a possible bankruptcy were pasted on the under-side of the soundboard of a major instrument.

These snippets are hints that people's recollections of the history would make good reading.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

After much searching through these columns I think there might be an answer to all belief.

The Jehovah's witnesses delivered a booklet the other day illustrating a rather amazing insect. "Evolved or designed?" it asked.

This goes to the assumption at the root of the modern misunderstandings of religion.

The bible talks not about the designer but the Creator. The God that Creates is different to a Designer.

Hawking and the modern atheists make the mistake of looking for a designer - not a creator.

The God Creator may not be a designer!

In fact the Creator may not be a noun. The Creator is something that creates, part of a verb.

It is a process.

St John chapter 1. Logos . . . .

In the beginning was the  . . . . logos.

I have seen this translated in numerous ways.

. . intelligence, reason, law, sound.

As a sound it is interesting. The breath of God. The breath that gives life, given by the creator God of Life.

yHwH is a sound that must not be pronounced. It is a breath through the mouth, in and out.

aIYa is the same - the LL of Mallorca being not pronounced.

So YHWH is ALLA too with a minor difference of the placement of the tongue whilst breathing.

Is death and destruction through war and argument the way to celebrate the understanding of the process of life? Of breathing?

Glory be to YHWH. ALLAH is great!

In the beginning was the law . . .

This is simple. Jesus tells us about it in the parable of the talents.

The law is simple. What is more useful by definition is more useful than what is less useful. What is less useful lasts less and becomes compost for the more useful to use.

At the level of fundamental particles, they either work together and make matter of which we know, or they don't. The particles that don't work together nor create matter of which we are aware are no part of our world.

We are made of matter that at every stage has chosen to be useful. But we forget that. Jesus was telling us that we have to be useful too in the grander scheme of creation.

Creation according to the law, the verb, of what works together with all other matter, all other creation.

Unfortunately Jesus was hijacked by a sect that mistook him for God. They forgot that he was the son of god, according to his definition in three of the gospels and in the Gospel of Thomas too, 99, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear my father's words and do them" - leading to the definition of the children of god, sons and daughters of God, as was Jesus Son of God. Our aim as Christians is to be and become more like Him, sons and daughters of God. But not to Be god. Jesus was not God. And priests drive people out of the churches and away from the glories of organ music because they are out of touch with Jesus' teachings.

Understanding creation in a process for which God is a good shorthand is perhaps something in which we can all share. It is a process which brings Jesus' teachings and many of the Old Testament stories to life. It makes sense of what Jesus was teaching. God is in the doing, not the being nor the saying. It is how it happens, not what. It is the why it happens, not the what. It is not an idol, lifeless. It moves, and has to move to have life. That is the secret of Bach!

So Love thy Creator (the process of Creation) with all thy heart and bring it into the human realm, said Jesus, by loving your . . . . (familiar words) . . . . and that is all there is too it, he said.

What room for argument is there? Or disbelief?

If you love the process of creation, and work for it, and work it, then you can like Jesus walk on the water of the Sea of Circumstances and calm the waves, and make that mountain of difficulty disappear. Just as Jesus said. We don't need to misinterpret Him as a magic man who can walk on water. He asks us to walk on that water too, circumstances that work as an invisible sea upon which we float as boats visibly there but invisibly carried in the process of creation. We don't need Jesus to invent matter to feed the five thousand - we just need the spirit of Jesus to get the crowd to bring out their sandwiches from under their cloaks. The biggest miracle is to get humanity to work together, to cooperate with each other, to work as part of the wider creation process and thereby to be sons and daughters of God.

This is a process that we see happening all around us. So we can believe in it and Jesus tells us how.

If there are interpretations that go against the process, then it's the interpretations which are wrong, not the teachings.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

An obituary in the newspapers today reports the passing of the Colombian harpsichordist Rafael Puyana. He commissioned a Pleyel with metal frame and pedals for rapid registration changes and was criticised by the "authentic" movement until he found an original 3 manual instrument of 1740 by Hieronymus Albrecht Hass equipped with 16, 8, 4 and 2ft pitches.

He gave up performing in 2005 and spent his further years editing recordings on the 3 manual instrument which are to be released on CD later this year.

Best wishes

David P

From the archives . . .

Hi!

Radio 3 Late Junction has just featured A Rainbow in Curved Air

I wonder the extent to which it might be possible, perhaps for two performers, to translate this onto pipe organ rather than electronic?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy3W-3HPMWg

Certainly some very traditional pipe organ registrations are coming through from the electronic compilation.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

I have just received the email below which may be of interest.

Best wishes

David P

Quote
If you buy my Reger CD (MOT 13801) during this month (February 2013), you will get my book "The Straube Code: Deciphering the Metronome Marks in Max Reger's Organ Music" FOR FREE!!!

Just visit http://www.henricostewen.com/ and hit the Buy Now button next to the picture of the CD cover, the first item in the shop.

Best wishes,
Henrico Stewen.

Hi!

A good two manual instrument by Conacher, tracker

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Peter-Conache-Co-Pipe-Organ-Fully-Working-With-Service-History-/321061862155

http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=G00796

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

The silence of this forum recently is testimony to the indifference and irrelevance perceived by people towards organs and the places that they inhabit.

I have been quiet recently in gestation of a book trying to excite people about the God of Life. For the number of people who turn up at funerals, and hope that they might not go to hell just because they think they have not been bad, it's apparent that God to most people is only a god of death and the afterlife that perhaps they are worried might even exist.

But God is not the god of death, nor an irrelevant god of nothing in a sphere we cannot see. John Chapter 1, and Islam itself, tells us that God is the God of Life.

I'm trying to bring the God of Life alive in the book possibly so that people can bring God alive in their lives.

If any forum members might be interested in seeing a draft, or drafts in the course of writing, I'd happily send them a copy on email.

Most people, I suspect, try to envisage God as a being. A being is a person, to them, and "Our Father _which_ art in heaven" has been forgotten and changed to "who". Whatever, which or who is an object. But the being who is "I am" is not "I" but "I am". This is a verb, a being that does something, a process. This may allow for other perspectives of god which may be more universal than our personification has permitted.

In the course of writing, a superb book has appeared on my desk - "The Gifts of the Jews - How a tribe of desert nomads changed the way everyone thinks and feels" and it is fascinating. Whilst I had concluded in the need to look for God as a process, which we see everywhere and universally happening, Thomas Cahill also makes the case for God as a verb, and in particular as a conjugation of the verb "to be". Yahweh, he points out, is misunderstood as Jahovah and is better considered as YHWH.

Perhaps as you read this, breathe in through your mouth. As you do so the passage of air might suck your tongue towards the roof of your mouth. Breathe out. Can you now hear EeaHey, YhWh? The breath of life.

This is so fascinating as Edmund Szekerley translating John in "The Peace of Jesus Christ" translates the first verses as "In the beginning was the sound" . . .

The sound of the breath of life.

All those people who are having their bodies deep frozen when they die . . . really how are any of them going to be reanimated. Does anyone really think that "scientists" can breathe into them the breath of life?

Perhaps imagine that life on earth is extinguished, perhaps as in Pompeii, and in 10000 years time visitors from another planet dig us up. Imagine the couple engaged in flagrante to be found as merely a confused conjunction of bones. We don't know what life forms from outer space will be digging us up in 10000 years time but they might not have bodies like ours, nor have any understanding of sex. How could they possibly imagine the bond of flesh that connects the lovers?

It's in this way that in not passing on to our children and grandchildren the idea of God nor, even if we do, the tradition and understanding of how to read a parable, that we are leaving to our future generations only the driest of bones from which they will find it difficult to imagine, let alone decode, the fullness of life.

Best wishes,

David P

Hi!

Sorry to have been so absent recently. Why is the organ world so apparently dead here? Very few posts. Is everyone lurking or have they turned to the ephemeries of Facebook?

Luckily the pipe organ lives to the extent that there's a recording studio in the US devoted purely to recording organs!

http://arafel.org/audio/

Hopefully perhaps he might join here and enthuse about the instruments and performers he's been recording?

Certainly his webpage is most interesting. I have inherited a Tascam 34B recorder and had been looking up the details of the DBX unit forgetting how noisy open reel recording seems to be. Is this merely 1/4 track or is 1/2 track significantly less noisy?

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

I have just heard with much pleasure The Music of the Spheres recorded at the 2010 proms, a piece not entirely on the scale of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony but, including organ in the orchestra, a piece wholly enchanting and intriguing.

The concert was written up online at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/7927866/RuedLanggaard-return-of-a-visionary-composer.html
and it's clear, the composer having been an organist that there are likely to be gems of repertoire in his ouevres.

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

Last weekend I went on tour tuning for a series of piano recitals.

For the piano, for the past decade I have not used equal temperament as usually adopted universally for pianos, but instead used a system with numerous perfect fifths, a variation of Werkmeister III but in which all keys can be played equally validly unlike meantone in which all keys are impossible and even WIII in which the key of Ab is painful.

For church use, the purity of the home keys suits very well most liturgical needs. Pedagogalogically, part of the attraction of learning an instrument is that of making a beautiful sound, which the purity of chords in home keys gives (leaving remote keys to be travelled to for special effect).

The proof is in the pudding. A lady from one of the venues last week end has written:

QuoteTonight I took my music and played in the chapel on the Chickering and enjoyed it! I don't have the real theoretical musical understanding of the harmonies, (my piano lessons stopped 30 years ago!) neither am I far from having perfect pitch, but some tones and cords on that piano are just balsam. I mainly played Bach.
Maybe after all I will take piano lessons again. It would be so nice to be able to play a little bit better and gracefully.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z3o0x4dKJI is a recording of a brand new Steinway Boston tuned in such a way and choosing repertoire deliberately in the remote keys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnYITP11UgQ is a recording live in concert of a Grotrian Steinweg which left the audience astounded in which notes singing like a soprano or violin shone through from the stilled rather than shimmering harmonic structure.

Technically, there is another advantage too. It's uncommon for all three strings of a note of a piano to all go out of tune. In equal temperament there are no landmarks of pitch - all is a fudge, and as such every string has to be refudged on each occasion the instrument is tuned. This means that instruments are kept in a state of suspended instability. In contrast, with the use of so many perfect 5ths, even without a computer or tuning aid, one can identify the one of three strings of each note that have the correct 5th relationship with the other notes of the scale and obviously these don't need to be retuned. Leaving them alone leaves them stable! As a result instruments tuned like this can become increasingly stable and capable therefore of being tuned less often.

Best wishes,

David P