ptindall
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Posts posted by ptindall
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And so what will happen to the Vincent Novello organ: the Russian-Doll Snetzler?
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JAMES ISAAC TAYLOR - COMPTON'S RIGHT HAND MAN
I've gleaned a little further background inforrmation on JIT. He was born in Radford, Notts in 1892, the only child of Henry Taylor (a church caretaker - very useful for a son who's interested in organs, I should imagine!) and Clara Ann Taylor. By 1911 JIT had moved away from his parents' home (he's not listed with them on the Census), though I haven't managed to locate him - yet.
JIT married Lilian D Skinner in Nottingham in 1919. Her brother, Roy Skinner, would later work for the John Compton Organ Co.
According to Leslie Barnard the Taylors had two sons: "one became a market gardener and the other rose to heights in the insurance world". I've traced a birth of James L[aurence] Taylor in Nottingham in 1926. Laurie Taylor once entertained Leslie Barnard to lunch at the Farmers' Club, Whitehall, so I suppose he was the market gardener!
After the above the trail has gone cold again!
...apart from a fascinating online reference to a wartime JIT patent concerning electric pre-selector gearboxes for motorcars.
Malcolm Riley
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.
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"Incidentally, it is good to see the old Jesus College instrument find a very appreciative new home at Truro School"
With new action.
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"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.
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Plenty in the Newark Advertiser on line at the moment.
Whether these are 'hard facts' or 'heresay' I am not qualified to judge.
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I do have the Walter & Thomas Lewis book entitled "Modern organ-building" which covers pneumatic-actions in some depth. I have a vague recollection that they were related to T C Lewis.
They weren't.
Frankly, I've never played a T C Lewis organ with pneumatic action, but I wonder if they were generally slow?
The 1891 Lewis at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne had trouble with the slowness of the action as early as c. 1916 when it was partly electrified. (The Organs and Organists of St. Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, 1991, p. 8)
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Someone told me recently that new teaching contracts at the RNCM are for life but include the option of zero hours and zero pay.
Ha Ha Ha ha Haaaaagh!
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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...
Binns ich, Rabbi?
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For a moment I entertained the notion that the topic hadn't strayed at all and we were still in the hearty English world of... well, pork pies, say, and other products from that locality. But I can't think of anything which would qualify as being good.
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...
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When the late Stephen Ridgley-Whitehouse was involved in the commissioning of a new organ for St Peter's, Eaton Square (after the fire), he told me that the best and worst organs that he'd tried were both by the same builder.
Go on - have fun trying to work out which two organs he was talking about. Remember that the trying-out was done in the early 1990s.
Ian
Could a five-letter word in German be involved?
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I really think that such occasions should only be booked and artists engaged after the organ is in, considered finished by the builders, and paid for. It is a frightening experience for the artist as s/he has a reputation to carry and the organ builders some standing in their world. I also (for an inaugural concert) suggest that the organ should be available for the artist to play before considering the programme. S/He wants to provide the best as do the builders. And when rather large sums of fee are involved it is imperative that all parties are happy. Maxim: Never book an opening concert until the organ is in and is being played for a good few months.
It should be part of the contract.
Playing to sponsors and devoted congregations knowing that the builders are holed-up in the vestry (or beneath the organ) clutching screw drivers and prayer books, does little for the inspiration but more for the perspiration and only lines the pockets of psychiatrists.
N
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.
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The ceiling looks wonderful.
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.
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No. This is.
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.
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I for one won't go for the jugular over compromise. I will go for it, however, when you infer that craftsmanship of a bygone age can only be replicated "at a price". Such craftsmanship can be replicated by finding a contractor for even the most humdrum tuning or cleaning work who is able to demonstrate a love affair with every part of an instrument in his care; that the action has been made the best it can possibly be, and so on. That has nothing to do with price, only ethics. I can think of some extremely bad expensive organs and extremely good cheap organs, probably nearly as many as the more obvious vice versa. Forget price - meet the head of the firm and establish for yourself whether you are dealing with a craftsman, a tradesman, or a contractor.
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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).
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I am not necessarily suggesting that this is the structural equivalent, but it has a Grade-II listing. I may be a philistine with regard to nineteenth century corrugated-iron churches, but it looks butt-ugly to me.
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.
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There is something quite remarkable how someone barely able to walk with a stick can do the most incredible gymnastics once seated on an organ bench. I remember hearing Ralph Downes perform on the RFH organ when he was in his eighties after seeing the trouble he had walking up to the console and thinking, is this the same man I just saw hobbling along?
Back to Ernie Warrell and indeed King's College. I have no idea how much better the acoustics would have been when its original vaulted ceiling was in place, but many years ago the chapel roof was removed, a flat ceiling put in place, and on top of that went the Anatomy lecture theatre and museum of morbid anatomy. One had to be judicious when practicing to keep the volume down otherwise the Biochemistry department (I think it was then) would complain, as part of the Swell was based there, and I remember many happy hours as a medical student in the anatomy lecture theatre thinking of far more interesting things when someone was practicing a few feet below us. Subsequently one of the rooms overlooking the chapel through the clerestory windows became the Islamic prayer room, further limiting the ability to practice effectively without provoking outrage. As for the organ itself, apart from the rather splendid painted front pipes, it always seemed to me to be rather dull and far too buried in whatever chambers it could find to inhabit, and the Willis III/Bishop specification bears little resemblance to the original Father Willis spec. Nevertheless it somehow managed to get awarded a Historic Organ Certificate.
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.
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I am indeed well pleas-ed. It's possibly my favourite Drake instrument, that one. I met Mr Warrell a couple of years ago and my goodness could he play.
My goodness he certainly could and did. Born in Camberwell: his first job was as office boy in the Sarson's pickle factory. A classic example of a person who was inspired by early teachers, in his case Dr Warriner of St Matthew's Denmark Hill, a man who must have been born well before 1860. He claimed to have taught 1100 ordinands to sing in tune. Ah, what a waste.
Odeon Leicester Square
in General discussion
Posted
Oh good. So much for believing what you read in a newspaper.