Contrabombarde

I recently played the organ of St Philip's Cathedral which has a very elderly 32 foot electronic sub bass bottom octave. Overall I found it a quite lovely instrument, very easy to play and balance, but for the electronic 32 foot sub bass which has a dreadful racket coming from the speakers which are clearly defective. I did hear that repairs or restoration are due shortly which hopefully will attend to that; unfortunately there isn't space in the case for a proper 32 foot octave. How much floorspace would one or two pipes in that octave range take up compared to an industrial sized subwoofer, and would a polyphone have been possible I wonder? An equally unfortunate and mildly amusing disaster happened to another almost brand new organ I visited recently (I hasten to add I wasn't playing at the time!) The new Skrabl at Our Lady of Victories, which I must say I was thoroughly impressed by, has a 32 foot electronic Soubasse. At least, it did. It also has a very elegant semicircular amphitheatre, Cavaille-Coll inspired tiered console. That's fine, except that when swinging onto the organ bench one's knee passes perilously close to the protruding stop closest to the lowest keycheek. And not infrequently it gets clipped and the stopknob goes flying. On the positive for pipe purists, the stop that tends to go walkabouts just happens to be the organ's digital 32 foot bass stop, which one could potentially argue shouldn't have been there in the first place. Maybe not such a loss after all then, and it would have been easily remedied with a thin protective sheet of plywood under the stops! On a more serious note though, it does raise the important issue of console ergonomics. Even the finest organ builders sometimes seem to inadvertently make design flaws like putting drawstops in odd places, or pistons on the lowest keyboard that are prone to being smashed by one's knees. I suppose I can't grumble - when I built my four manual Hauptwerk console I must have measured the dimensions of around 20 different four manual consoles before I cut a piece of wood, and designed it to fit my relatively short arms and legs perfectly. The keyboards are slightly closer together in both height and depth than RCO standards, and just a quarter of an inch per keyboard makes reaching the Solo a no greater stretch than reaching the Swell on some three manuals that I play. I just wish I'd tried harder to ensure I could reach all the toe pistons, as I only realised I couldn't when I put it all together and sat at it for the first time!

You'd be unlikely to ever get a completely "fair" comparison. I doubt many pipe organs that have been sampled also have MIDI connections, and to have two identical recordings complete with same wrong notes etc, you would need to (1) record the pipes of the actual organ being played, whilst (2) simultaneously recording the notes being played via MIDI, then (3) a bit later, play back the MIDI recording (ie electronic equivalent of pianola paper roll) on the same registration but playing through software and speakers. You would have had to set up a properly decent set of speakers and amplifiers inside or beside the organ case, to listen to the virtual recording. And you'd have used the same type of microphone and in the same position for recording "organ" and "sample". Positioning of mics for sampling might need to be much closer to the pipes to avoid echos and other background noise than if recording an organ recital, so again unlikely to be an identical set-up. That way you could compare how the piece sounds if the sound was routed through pipes or software. As for Colin's point about synthesised sound versus sampled sound, I guess that's a matter of considerable argument between electronic organ manufacturers which shouldn't be a focus of a pipe organ forum. I would off a friendly challenge to Colin as to whether the flexibility of synthesis allows for enough random "defects" whether in tuning or in tone to maintain the listener's interest for very long. Regardless of how well regulated a builder tries to voice a rank of pipes, there will be one or two pipes that stand out very slightly, and increasingly so over time due to not keeping in tune as well, dirt, saggy feet, building resonances etc and that infinite pipe to pipe variation is one of the things that makes a real pipe organ (or sampled pipe organ where each pipe is sampled) so "real". Not sure how easy that is to replicate with synthesised tones and I haven't found the results as pleasing because they are too bland and even where I have been aware of that technology being used. I think that virtual pipe organ technology can be transformational for learning and practising - for example learning to play French baroque on a French baroque sample set forces you to play totally differently to if you were trying to learn the piece on an Arthur Harrison pipe organ. Furthermore, having access to an organ console with pedals at home is an affordable option for far more young people today than ever before and I think virtual pipe organs afford us an unprecedented opportunity to promote learning the organ to children who would never previously had access to an organ. But I really don't think they are especially suitable for public installations. In other words, they can have an important role but it needs to be in the right setting and context.

What a confusing omission - from that video above, when the nave console is played, the notes on the mechanical console move, but not the drawstops! I suppose if the electric assistance was at the soundboards it would have been relatively straightforward to convert the gallery console to electric action, but if the electric action pulls the Barker motors at console level, you'd have to completely redesign the action surely? What would be a likely course of action (pun intended!) from here - retain soundboard but fit solenoids and pneumatic motors to the pallets or go direct electric?

Apologies that this video is of a Hauptwerk simulation, though I was playing it on a rather lovely pipe organ before our Nine Lessons and Carols last week. Hoping to complete the other movements in time for the work's centenary in four year's time!

I'm beginning to wonder if someone has got me confused with someone else; that's a very generous description for someone who regard himself as a mere amateur musician (though I have recently gained an ARSM in organ performance) and who earns their living in a completely unrelated professional discipline. Never mind. When you consider that over 1000 genes have been identified in autism so I'd be astonished if there aren't at least a few that shape our musical appreciation. The mechanics of how different genes are expressed or "turned on" or "off" is well beyond a forum discussion here but there's plenty of evidence for the health benefits of listening to classical music. My two children haven't so far sought to learn to play the organ, but they can't yet reach the pedalboard and both are themselves musical (learning piano and flute). I'm not exactly sure when I determined that I wanted to learn to play the organ, but it must have been around 7 or 8, listening to the organ at church and certainly getting my first ever organ cassette tape (Michael Dudman at Sydney Opera House - also available as a CD, you can find it now on Youtube and remains one of my favourite recordings. A chance encounter with the assistant organist one day whilst visiting Chester Cathedral aged 10 led to me being allowed to get my hands on the keyboards of that organ for a few minutes, and that pretty much sealed things. A sincere thank you to whoever was the assistant organist back in 1983, if you are reading this now.

There is a wealth of insight and experience on this forum stretching back over many years and there was much rejoicing when, after changes to Mander the host organbuilders, the forum was reprieved after concern that it might be disbanded. I hope it is still here to stay. The discussion around digitals is perhaps less clear cut now than when the forum was established. Partly because exclusion of digital (and for that matter analogue) instruments excludes discussion of any merits there might be in hybrid instruments or instruments with a mixture of pipes and electronic sound generation. (Taking that to extremes, would we have been allowed to discuss the merits of a Compton cinema organ which came with include chimes, percussion and the electronic melotone?) I can think of a few restored pipe organs that have had at least a limited number of digital ranks, if only to support bass where space and cost did not permit pipes. As none have to my ears been particularly successful I'll have to reserve judgement on this as an approach. But I think the real elephant in the room to be explored is the virtual pipe organ, which offers virtually (pun intended) anyone the opportunity to acquire a practice instrument using off-the-shelf materials for a fraction of the cost of a conventional electronic practice organ. When I was a student, access to cold dark churches wasn't easy and only a handful of professional organists could afford the space and cost of their own electronic home practice organ, let alone a home pipe organ. Nowadays on the one hand access to practice in churches, especially hose with decent organs in good condition, is probably harder and more restricted than ever before due at least in part to insurance and safeguarding concerns. Partly in response to the dwindling numbers of organists, increasing numbers of churches are not using their organs, and the cost of maintenance becomes hard to justify on top of so many other expenses and in some cases contracting incomes and congregations. Music teaching in state schools is very limited, and the small number of schools with pipe organs is almost entirely made up of the wealthiest fee-paying schools in the country. If we aren't careful, the only children who will ever hear an organ soon let alone have the opportunity to play one will be those handful of pupils who attend our most elite private or public schools. Yet you can now put together a basic home console based on VPO at very low cost, playing high quality samples from some of the finest organs on the planet, and this has the potential to enable far more people to practice at home than ever before. I had a student (think state school in a socially disadvantaged area) who after one year of learning to play the organ with me gave up trying to get any practice time in local churches - and built his own three manual VPO practice organ in his bedroom for practically nothing. He ended up going to university to read music and continue organ studies. On the other hand, the peril of making it so easy to replicate the sound of a very fine pipe organ at such low cost, is that churches and concert halls might be tempted to follow suit, further imperilling the pipe organ building profession. So here's the irony - it's never been easier, or cheaper, for people to learn to play the organ on their own instrument at home. Have we even begun to explore how we can exploit this to inspire a new and much more numerous generation of young people to learn to play the organ, practising in the comfort of their own home? And in so doing, do we risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg?

Very sad if true - there seems to be a complete absence of information on the internet about the organ since its installation, other than that a CD that was made in around 2001, until 2020 when the Hauptwerk sample set was released. Presumably that must have been recorded before 2016 if the organ was destroyed then? If this instrument is no more, I wonder how many other world class instruments have fortuitously been sampled prior to unexpected destruction.

There's a gorgeous 2+P Nelson at St Helen's Bishop Auckland. Coffins completely restored it with mechanical action and prepared for tierce mixture 15 years ago. Lovely thing, I played it a few weeks ago.

There's a "coffee and cake" recital tomorrow morning by Dr. David Pitches at St Mary's Moseley, Birmingham B13 8HW. 10:30am for refreshments, 11:00am recital. Admission free with retiring collection. Come and here the fabulous Henry Jones organ of 1887, the largest surviving work of this fine Victorian builder. Allegro Maestoso - Edward Henry Thorne (1834-1916) Herzlich tut mich verlangen, BWV727 - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Herzlich tut mich verlangen - Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713-1780) Herzlich tut mich verlangen, F 8.2 - Johann Peter Kellner (1705-1772) Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Herzlich tut mich verlangen Op. 121 no. 10 -Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Herzlich tut mich verlangen, Op. 67 no. 14 - Max Reger (1873-1916) Toccata in B flat minor, Op 53 no. 6 - Louis Vierne (1870-1937)

That sounds rather lovely- how does one arrange such a thing? Though having heard the organ many years ago I remember it for being mostly silent. How much of it works currently?

Enquiring for someone who is a keen organist of diploma standard and has a significant birthday coming up. A few cathedrals seem to offer the opportunity for competent though not necessarily professional organists to play their instruments (for a fee obviously) outside of concerts, five minute slots on organ crawls or incumbent practice time. I've come across Llandaff, Liverpool, Chester, Wells and Lincoln (and one could add the Blackpool Tower Ballroom for a Wurlitzer). Do any other institutions with organs of this scale offer such an opportunity?

Very interesting tension between designing for reliability and longevity versus cost and (in)abiity to repair here. Reminds me of an organ crawl I once went on which included two organs, one of which had recently been rebuilt with solid state electric action, the other was a Victorian tracker. After playing the first few notes of the first organ there was silence. Something had gone badly wrong, and nothing would bring it back to life. We traipsed round to the second to find an unusable cypher on the Great. But a quick inspection behind the music desk identified the offending tracker and within a few minutes we had repaired it and enabled a successful visit to go ahead. A few days later the builder of the first instrument came round and identified a fuse had blown. So yes, there's something in there about being able to identify and fix mechanical problems if you have an idea of what you are doing. Building my own house organ (a four manual Hauptwerk) was an invaluable lesson in the interface between organs and electronics. Whilst there were no pipes at the "other end", there was more than enough to learn about console design complexities and a huge amount of soldering to do - and that was just for pistons and expression pedals. I actually found the piston rails to be the most complicated thing to build in the entire console. Colin raises a good point about the need to eliminate vibration in contacts and I wonder whether Hall effect or reed switches are an aceptable and underutilised solution? But the elephant in the room is that eventually every organ will need a thorough restoration, in which soundboards and reservoirs will probably need taking out for refurbishing or renewing and the way organs are designed nearly always makes that incredibly costly. With diminishing congregations it becomes increasingly difficult to impossible to find tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. Not every church will be able to win a sizeable grant to fund the restoration, and even grants often require matched funding which may be out the question. What then is the solution for preserving organs whose actions and other innards are dying where finances don't permit more than a tune and occasional maintenance?

A Google search of imslp gave me this link: In other words, loads. I've done this lovely Krebs a few times with a good trumpeter though if very brave AND talented you could play trumpet with one hand and organ with feet and other hand (someone's done it on Youtube). You missed off the massive Reger but a generation later came a three section partita by Hugo Distler who tragically killed himself aged 34 in 1942 to avoid Nazi conscription. Gustav Thomas looks fairly straightforward and effective. Alfred Glaus seemed to design his as a pedal exercise. Widor's Marche du Veilleur de nuit, no 4 in Bach's Memento is on Wachet Auf.

I expect many churches would be unlikely to be in a position to replace their existing instrument with a second one. Very few would have resources to have two four deckers at various points! I wonder what will replace the Eule (dives for cover)?

I think we're going to have to reappraise the work of these guys. You'll recall the story - a small and undistinguished church organ found itself unhappily moved and installed along the staircase and any other rooms it would fit in a terraced house in Bristol. Someone who appeared to not have a clue what they were embarking upon then bought it (the organ, at least) and decided to video themselves trying to dismantle it and re-erect it in a museum of mechanical oddities. The result of their labour is truly breathtaking and this video is one of the most gloriously bonkers, and ultimately glorious triumphs of the pipe organ I've ever seen. Huge kudos to them for their imagination, this project is beyond awesome. (For musical purists, I should mention that earlier in the clip he is playing some Bach on it too.)