Tony Newnham
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Posts posted by Tony Newnham
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9 hours ago, DaveHarries said:
As for the address in Longfield Road, St. Andrews it still stands but I can't imagine how she coped with no electricity.
Dave
My Great-Grandmother had no electricity in her house until she died (early to mid - 1960's). It was a typical fair sized Victorian terraced house. Gas lighting on the ground floor only (which was all that was used by that time). A gas stove in the kitchen, alongside a coal fire range (which I never saw in use). Outside toilet. If you needed to go upstairs in the dark you used a candle. No TV (obviously), but there was a radio - on a "Redifusion" system. Basically a cable relay system. There was a choice of BBC Light programme & home service. My sister & I would regularly go there for tea on Fridays. Granny Pete (Mrs Peters) was quite happy with what she had & never wanted anything more modern. I guess when you've lived your life without "modern" luxuries you don't see the point.
At least Granny Pete had running water - I remember Mum & Dad taking her to visit a friend who lived in a cottage in the country - their water supply was a spring across the road! (That would probably have been late 1950's) How times change!
Every Blessing
Tony
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10 hours ago, John Robinson said:
Pencils, weights, rubbers?
I believe that Keith Emerson often made use of a knife! 🤨
He did indeed. There's a synthesiser etc. museum in the States that has one of his organs (an Hammond L100) complete with daggers! I use a pencil if I need to set up a drone.
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
"As an aside, in the recent rather splendid film of Far from the Madding Crowd, I noticed that the church in Casterbridge was rather bigger than I remembered, looking rather similar to Sherston, and appeared to have a nice electric action organ over the west entrance. Impressive, as it was set in the late 1840s - early adopters, clearly ..."
Film & TV Drama makers often drop similar clangers, both in respect of churches, such as a Digital Piano sitting in the chancel in an episode of "Father Brown" - set in the 1950's. Railways are another area where they often get things wrong (BR locomotives in a Victorian era drama) and so on. I find such gaffes annoying and detract from the film/drama.
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Hi
I read somewhere that on average, people are bigger now than in previous generations, and hence, on average, have naturally lower-pitched voices. Add to that the fact that there's far less singing in society, and certainly music teaching in schools has deteriorated (witness the row made by many so-called school choirs consisting of kids bawling at the tops of their voices that often appear on TV news programmes before Christmas. Hence many are neither taught how to sing, and many just don't sing other than in church. I guess the 2 factors together are behind the lowering of pitch.
Given that many older organs also are sharp (I have a Harmonium that's a semi-tone sharp to A=440 for example) maybe that's another factor.
Not sure that there's any easy answers.
Every Blessing
Tony
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The important dimension is height of the lower manual above the pedals. There are several web pages with details of console dimensions, for example http://www.organworks.co.uk/brit_console_dimensions.pdf
Hope this helps.
Every Blessing
Tony
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Would thumbing down for one of the voices work? Or changing the octave? Just random thoughts - I've not seen the score.
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9 hours ago, Contrabombarde said:
What a wonderful way to receive a life-saving immunisation against this dreadful virus!
(and a certain fail for anyone who dares to suggest a particular set of variations by Sweelinck)?
I presume you mean the ones about a young man that I was once asked to play for the funeral of a 90+ year old man!
Every Blessing
Tony
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It definitely looks good, but like David I've not had a chance to read it yet - too many other books this Christmas!
Every Blessing
Tony
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May I echo the Christmas greetings from Rugby.
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I suspect there may have been a limited publication around 30 years ago. I certainly bought a copy that included Hark the Herald from my then local music shop. IIRC it was a set of 4 brass intros, copied from a fairly neat handwritten score. I no longer have it - I passed it on to one of my sons when he was involved in a brass band, and he now can't find it (I asked a couple of years ago if I could have it back). I wonder if it might be worth asking your local brass band or other places (schools etc) where there are brass players.
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Hi
No choir in our small church, so that's one less problem. Family service Sunday week (by invitation) plus a normal set of worship material (usually including hymns that I record & post on You Tube); following Sunday is our carol service (I think the main service will be by invitation, and probably a full-length video version on YT (I've trialled full length YT services over the past few weeks with a couple of full-length videos. Hopefully I won't have to do the whole thing, as I did for Advent Sunday. The video editing can get quite time-consuming! Also a service Christmas Day (nothing Christmas Eve - that would normally be the family service, but the Covid guidance from the denomination specifies a clear 72 hours between uses of the building. That also means I get the Sunday after Christmas off.
In addition to the stuff for church, I'm considering (if I can find time) recording a lessons & carols to go out on YT on Christmas Eve - but don't hold your breath, I have severe health issues & that's making things rather difficult at present.
Every Blessing
Tony
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20 hours ago, SomeChap said:
I'm dimly aware of OrganTeq but haven't got round to having a play with it yet. I gather it's promising, but early days, and needs a monster CPU?
Hi
Organteq may well need a fairly powerful processor, but it should run on a fairly modest modern computer as it requires very little disc space or RAM. There's no samples to store (it uses real-time synthesis).
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
There are even cheaper options for virtual organs than Hauptwerk - take a look at Grande Orgue - not as advanced as HW, but still pretty reasonable, and free!
Until 18 months ago when I got the Content to use at church I was running a similar, now discontinued, piece of freeware and a modest 2mp sample set at church, controlled from a Yamaha HS8 home organ that I picked up for about £50. Not ideal - spinet console layout with 2 4-octave manuals (Tenor-C Swell!!!), and an octave & a half of short stick pedals - but it did the job.
I'm in the process of setting up a basic 3mp system using Grande Orgue (digital piano as manual 1, & a Nord C2D for the other 2 manuals) Nord 27 note pedals - at least for now. I'm planning on running a theatre organ sample set, and if I can find one, an early English sample set to give me GG- compass for playing that repertoire. The Nord is basically a "clone" of a Hammond C-3, but it has some reasonable classical organ voices on board as well, the drawback being the need to use drawbars as stops. It also means I don't have to go out to my rather cold music room in the depths of winter if I don't have to!
Incidentally, membership of The Electronic Organ Constructors' Society (http://www.eocs.org.uk/) could be worthwhile if you go more than a couppole of steps down the DIY route - plenty of expertise among the members.
Good luck with sorting something out.
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
Small pipe organs do tend to be rather costly - which is why I don't have one. I recently purchased a 2mp digital portable to use at church - a Content 224 Compact. It's about the cheapest 2mp classical organ around - albeit modular in construction rather than in a full cabinet. I hadn't seen it at the time (and not yet heard one in the flesh) the Viscount Cantorum Duo is similar. Beware pricing in ads - they tend to just publish the price for the keyboard unit (this applies to both brands) and you then have to add on stand, pedalboard & bench. I got a very good deal on the Content from UK representatives Promenade Music - it's worth looking at their web site & talking to them (Dave or Steve- tell them I sent you). They deliver, and even set up the Content for me. Whilst not as good, sound-wise, as the real thing, it's not too bad.
2mp reed organs do come up at times, but will often be in need of restoration - an expensive business, and not many people/firms around doing that sort of work either. Other than that, there's always the second-hand market, but given the typical reliable life-span of electronics, that may or may not be a wise investment of funds.
If anyone would like to give me a (very) small pipe organ ......
Every Blessing
Tony
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13 hours ago, Contrabombarde said:
I think this might have been what you were referring to - left hand and pedals on the organ and right hand on the cornet! I love starting the Nine Lessons and Carols with this beautiful Krebs chorale prelude but fortunately have always been able to enlist a trumpeter. This is quite quite special:
That's the chap. There's a few other tracks on his YT channel of similar things, and a few other "odd" combinations of instruments.
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There are (were?) a few videos on You Tube of a Dutch organist playing cornet & organ - not seen anything of him recently, and the name escapes me.
I tried playing recorder & organ at the same time once - not really a success. It would have taken a lot of practice for just one item in a concert. I might give it a try again one day. I occasionally play organ & piano together for sections of some worship songs - it only works if you can get the keyboards close enough, or, as I've done recently with a few of the items I've been recording for church, I've got my Viscount Cantorum V set up above my digital piano - not ideal, but it works for the application.
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
After I'd left this site yesterday I thought I remembered a couple of Thiman volumes in my collection. I remembered wrong - they're Alec Rowley! However, I did discover a copy of Thiman's "A Tune for the Tuba" - Fullscap format, published by Novello, priced 1/6 - with a rubber stamp increasing that to 2s! Copyright 1947. In E major - but there look like some "interesting" chords especially towards the end.
I doubt that I'll ever play it now, so if anyone is inteerested .... (I let Paul know but haven't heard any more from him - yet)
Every Blessing
Tony
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Interesting. I've fancied having a go on a Carillon for quite a while - don't know what listeners would think though!
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10 hours ago, Nic DAVIDSON PORTER said:
One of my favourite LPs in my Dad's collection was the Vlach Quartet amd Miroslav Kampelsheimer on harmonium playing Dvorak's op. 47 Bagatelles, now on YouTube if you are curious. It sounds like an "American Organ", and I'm guessing they were written after his period in the USA.
Hi Nic
It's thought that the Dvorak Bagatelles are one of the very few pieces written by a significant composer for American Organ for the reason you suggest. I've not looked at the score - in performance terms there are differences between the 2 styles of reed organ, most notably the keyboard split point, which is e/f above middle c in the vast majority of Harmoniums & middle b/c in most American organs, which can cause problems transferring works written for one type of instrument to the other - depending on what use the composer has made of the split. I've heard recordings of the Dvorak using both types of instrument, so maybe he didn't make much use of the split keyboard facility - I don't know.
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
I avoided mention of the 2mp (& other similar) reed organs which, although using the same technology as the foot blown instruments, lack the expressiveness of such instruments. They have their place - and even more so in pre-electronic organ days where they were produced as home practice organs, and for use in smaller/impoverished churches. The market segment these days that's filled by digital organs. I've played quite a few such organs over the years. In general, a reed organ with an electric blower misses out on the big advantage of the instruments, but the larger pedal Harmoniums & the like are worth restoring (in general) for their historic interest - and they can still function well as practice instruments & the like - and they'll outlast any electronic organ!
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
I started off playing reed organs alongside pipe organs almost 6 decades ago, and I need to declare an interest as a member, and until recently, council member of the Reed Organ Society (https://www.reedsoc.org/). The true Harmonium - a pressure reed organ in the format patented by the Debain company in France in the middle of the 19th century is a very expressive and flexible instrument with repertoire from some of the well known organ composers of the day. The key feature that gives the instrument it's expressiveness is the stop marked "Expression", which when drawn cuts the wind reservoir out, so that wind pressure, and hence volume, is controlled solely by manipulating the blowing treadles - that takes a lot of practice to master. Here's an example played by me in concert on an early Debain - the organ has no swell mechanism, so crescendos etc. are all produced by the feet:-
The first thing to learn with any reed organ is not to operate the blowing treadles in time with the music - that always leads to a jerky sound. Later in the 19th Century, the French firm of Mustel developed the concept into what many regard as a the "Rolls-Royce" of Harmoniums, the "Art-Harmonium" or "Kunstharmonium" which is the instrument that many of Kerg-Elart's Harmonium pieces were written for.
Finding a Harmonium in good playing order isn't easy, and there are only a handful of people who restore these instruments (I've just had a small folding Harmonium restored, and my full-size one is away at the moment).
The other side of the reed organ coin are the "American Organs" (suction reed organs) which are more common - mainly due to mass production. There are some good examples around, originally in the higher price bracket!( and Liszt wrote for the suction reed organ.
Strictly speaking, "Harmonium" was a registered trade mark of the Debain company, but like "Hoover" has become a generic term for all similar instruments (including suction organs by those who don't know any better and in some European countries).
I'd better shut up now & go & practice the music for church tomorrow! Here's an example of a Mustel from another concert:-
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
Don't forget when comparing prices that the professional suppliers have to factor in the cost of installation, cables etc, plus any troubleshooting or hand-holding that may be required by users in the first few months. If you go down the DIY route you have to do all that yourself.
Any digital system will have a degree of latency - how much and if it will be a problem is down to the usage. I've not tried to set up a CCTV system to see a conductor since analogue days!
Every Blessing
Tony
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Hi
I have an older Kevin Mayhew book "64 Hymn Preludes". There's quite a mixture from hymns associated with high Anglicanism, etc., via the Evangelical wing & even a couple of preludes on worship songs. I've recorded a couple recently to go with the hymn/song recordings I've been doing for Wolston Baptist Church. A couple of examples are:
and
Apologies that the recordings aren't the best. I've not needed any of the more complex ones recently.
It might also be worth looking at https://www.martinmans.nl/bladmuziek. I came across his livestreams a while back, & recently bought some of the music. The couple of items I'm working on are I suppose moderate difficulty, in that they don't always go where you expect. All being well, I'll be recording one of them tomorrow or Thursday for the service on Sunday (& playing it live - first Sunday back in church)
Every Blessing
Tony
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1 hour ago, Damian Beasley-Suffolk said:
What is interesting is that, as far as I can see, it only has a single, mobile console, whereas many British concert organs, according to comments in these pages over the years, seem to make a point of having en fenêtre mechanical consoles which are rarely used.
Hi
Jonathon Scott used the tracker console at Bridgewater Hall for his You Tube recital there recently. It's perhaps also worth remembering that the tracker consoole will be useable if there's aan electronics failure in the detached console!
I have the CD of the Dordrecht organ, and listened to it recently. I certainly sounds a good instrument. (I'm in the process of listening to & listing my organ CD's - a long job, especially with so many good livestreams around at the moment.)
Every Blessing
Tony
JKS and other books
in Organ Music
Posted
Hi Dave
Another hymnbook collector - although mine are all English - oldest IIRC is a Methodist book from the late 1800's. Not sure how many I've got - I'll find out soon as I'm planning to relocate them so I can access them better.
Every Blessing
Tony