ptindall

I agree with innate. I know a few singers with pitch who have difficulties, but it's usually with transposing the written score, rather than the chosen or enforced A of the performance. None of the instrumentalists I have met, playing 392, 415, 431 ( LSO strings seemed less than keen!) or 466 seem to have had a problem, and a majority of the string players I know have pitch. One of them says that she didn't realise that everyone didn't until she was 24! I don't understand why Robert is so keen on this idea. It's clearly a pity not to be able to perform the Saint-Saens in the cathedral, but apart from that there's not much essential repertoire. I have also sung there (once, bizarrely, in an opera), and it's a difficult space for orchestral concerts. Flattening a large organ is incredibly expensive, as he says, and most organ builders I have met think that there are big problems with re-pitching. Since Peterborough is generally agreed to be a pretty good organ, would it not be better to leave well alone? Perhaps the money might be better put towards a proper concert venue, or a bigger choral foundation fund.

Oh good. So much for believing what you read in a newspaper.

Westminster Council has given permission for the demolition of the Odeon, Leicester Square, home of 'The Duchess,' one of the largest theatre organs. The Odeon is probably the last really big cinema in use as a cinema in England. Objections from English Heritage and the Ancient Monuments Society were ignored. Not a very good idea.

Volumina. Or is this urban myth? When St. Bartholomew's Armley was re-opened in 1956 a soundman dropped a plank into the organ just before the broadcast recital...Francis Jackson just got on with it.

Very good, Dr Drinkell! If only some people closer to home were so sensible. A friend of mine was charged £50 to play the famous organ at St Anne Limehouse recently.

about as common as a Norwegian-speaking dog. Don't all the dogs in Norway speak Norwegian? I know it's a small country. I believe they can also understand Swedish and Danish, though they don't spell things the same way.

Thomas Neal born c.1864 is in the 1881 census at Heath & Reach, organ builder, born there, nephew of a carpenter. I imagine he was working for Thomas Atterton. Heath and Reach is near Leighton Buzzard.

Well, the last time I saw it (about two years ago), it was in the Henry VII or Lady Chapel, where it has been for many years. The last time I heard it played was many years ago, and it sounded fine. But then Harry Bicket is a very good player. I have heard people grumble about its condition in recent times. It was given to the Abbey by the Vincent Novello Society in the 60s to replace a memorial window which was blown out in the war. It is, I believe, the guts of one Snetzler chamber organ, inserted into the (very splendid) case of another, found in Great Barr Catholic church near Birmingham.

And so what will happen to the Vincent Novello organ: the Russian-Doll Snetzler?

In the 1911 census James Taylor and Compton are both boarders at James Terrace, Bingham, near Nottingham. Compton is described as OB employer, Taylor OB worker.

"Incidentally, it is good to see the old Jesus College instrument find a very appreciative new home at Truro School" With new action.

"Modern, well engineered tracker action is now the preferred choice for new organs of modest size." Boxmoor? Perhaps we dug our own grave on this one, because so many mechanical actions made between 1950 and now (not by Mander's), have been so extraordinarily bad.

Plenty in the Newark Advertiser on line at the moment. Whether these are 'hard facts' or 'heresay' I am not qualified to judge.

Ha Ha Ha ha Haaaaagh!

Binns ich, Rabbi?

Well, the late S R-S was notoriously well-travelled, so I suppose he had played many more high profile organs than most of us. A certain present cathedral organist told me (when he was 20) that a certain German organ (in an unpromising building), was the best organ he had ever played. But certain German organs in the U.K. have had a more mixed press...

Could a five-letter word in German be involved?

We let the beast bed down for six months and we booked Thomas T a year in advance...everyone was happy. I have however been to plenty of New Organ Openings where someone had to whack something in the innards during the evening. This is not good for business. I think Im going to book Nigel next time, well in advance, and when I can afford the perfect Dom Bedos copy in perfect acoustics.

Alas the ceiling looks a bit less wonderful in real life, siince we or the Americans bombed it in 1944, and the copy is a bit stiff. I take your point though: no doubt you know Pisa and Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome , which are similar.

Ah. Very small scale. "The last thing you need is an organ" seems to me to be very good advice today, after listening to a guy playing Orgelbuchlein preludes on a really nasty overloud over-expensive organ by a very famous and successful builder. What was it that Peter Williams said? I think it was "now heavy, now glittery". Yep.

Anyone who doubts that most European organ builders have lost the plot about organ cases (RAM?, Basel? Jesus? Stuttgart?), should perhaps hightail it down to Trier, on the Belgisch/Lux/German border,where they are displaying the results of a competition for a new big organ in the Constantine Basilica, an enormous and beautiful Roman building (St Albans upon St Albans?), now used as Trier's principal protestant church. The winning entry is not unpleasant, but it has no character at all. The second place went to a world-famous British architectural practice (I'm ashamed to say). This design would have done serious harm to the building, and would have been worse than the worst designs of 1955. The third place went to an architectural practice named Merz....I,m not making this up. Yes, all the competitors had professional organ-builders on board. And all this a hundred yards away from one of my very favourite post-war organ cases in the Dom (Klais , designed by Joseph Schaefer, I think).

The church in question is listed because it is a rare surviving example of something which is historically important, not because it may or may not be thought to be beautiful and or useful at any particular time. No doubt parallels can be drawn.

HOCs now come in four flavours, and the one here is a Certificate of Recognition, that is it refers to to some material, rather than the organ as a whole. In this case I think it was the case and front pipes that were being flagged up as valuable.