Malcolm Kemp

I gather the Musica Budapest edition is out of print and I've just been told a few minutes ago (literally) that the Uiniversal Edition is reprinting and may take some time! Malcolm

Someone at church has asked me whether I can trace a copy of this work for them. It seems Perruchet was French and lived from 1852-1930 and that other church music works by him are available on CD. Nothing in the likely on-line catalogues like UMP, British Library &c., Can anyone help, please? Thanks Malcolm

There is a magnificent incomplete Hunter organ in St Paul's church, West Street, Brighton. There is a four manual console with a strange selection of Solo manual drawstops in situ but there has never been any room for any of the pipework to be installed. Apart from that, speaking from memory, there is a 2 rank Sesquialtra and a 4' clarion missing from the Great and two or three pedal ranks missing. The bottom five (stopped) pipes of the pedal 32' have always been in situ but never connected up. What is there makes a superb sound - especially the magnificent full Swell. The problem is that openings were made in the bell tower to accommodate the organ, weakening the tower, and the sound tends to go up into the tower rather than out into the church. Various "prepared for" stops were added in the mid to late 1960s and the Pedal Trombone was added in the early 1970s when I was Director of Music there. We were fortunate (in this context!) of having a very musical Vicar who knew what he wanted and, being extreme Anglo Catholic, made jolly sure he got it. The action has seriously deteriorated over the years and is now somewhat unreliable. Over the past few months the organ has got flooded with rain water coming through the tower (a perennial problem) and there was a fire in the church just before Christmas which left a lot of smoke damage. Insurance money is enabling some work to be done as part of restoration work on the whole building. Another, complete, Hunter organ of a similar vintage but more romantic specification is the three manual in St Andrew's Worthing, which I sometimes play for funerals &c., That boasts two independent Tuba ranks on the choir and endless celeste stops. It was renovated, with new action, by Comptons, in the early 1960s. There again, it has a superb Full Swell, which is directly above the sedilla in the sanctuary and can cause either fright or headaches to the Sacred Ministers at High Mass. A friend of mine - himself a well known recitalist and CD artist - tells me that his father (long deceased) said that the only reeds he had ever heard which were better than those on the Worthing Hunter organ were those on the Vowles organ in the church where he was a choirboy and where our friend Patrick Coleman is now Vicar. There are other hunter organs in Lewes and Eastbourne. Malcolm

Anyone wanting to see/hear/try a Hauptwerk system in a private house in Brighton (mine) are welcome to PM me. Malcolm

My post immediately above was typed roughly at the same time as your reply, hence our both making the same point about charity money. I take your point entirely. I am personally unaware of any organ builders who are members although it is possible that some are; I am more aware of organ players who are members and several well known names - including the person whose funeral you mention - have been Grand Organist. In my Civil Service days I was involved with recruiting staff and that involved sifting job applications and interviewing candidates. It was one of the more enjoyable aspects of my job so far as I was concerned and certainy infinitely more enjoyable than chasing late Self Assessment payments! Of course relations and friends of colleagues applied for vacancies but we were duty bound to create a water-tight, auditable, trail showing that everything had been done fairly and that everyone had been given an equal chance. As much as anything this was to protect ourselves against complaints from unsuccessful candidates. One would hope that when churches and cathedrals get estimates for new or rebuilt organs they act likewise. In the present parlous economic state of the C-of-E, where paid curates are virtually a thing of the past in this diocese, it would be a foolish church or cathedral that did not take all reasonable precautions to ensure they got the best value for money. There will always, of course, be exceptions! I think you will agree with the point I am making but, whilst members are now encouraged to be more open about their membership than was the case at one time, it is up to individual organ builders to decide whether or not to reveal their membership and even if I did know of any it would be my place to reveal their identities. Malcolm

And, of course, they raise a vast mount of money for charity and most of this goes no non-masonic charities. Malcolm

For a number of years I was very involved with Freemasonry and I have been through the Chair in a number of Degrees - including two Christian degrees. Domestic circumstances - sick and elderly parents needing constant attention - from about 1997 precluded attendance and when those circumstances changed again I never went back, never particularly wanted to, and really couldn't afford to. About 10 or 11 years ago I resigned from it completely although several people, even quite recently, have asked me to go back because they need organists. My experience is that the sort of dark, underhand dealing implied here is extremely rare. Indeed, it is strongly discouraged within the organisation and those who have been guilty of such behaviour have been, at best, given a good telling off and, at worst, excluded from the organisation. If you are guilty of a crimial offence you are chucked out. Of course, some people give it a bad name but that applies to every organisation and group of people - notably including the church. I belonged to my school old boys' lodge. Here, there is a local church that has a lodge named after it but I have never been aware of any member of that church being a member of that lodge. Most people, frankly, belong to it for the social side of it - eating and drinking, including - so I'm told - visiting a fine and sympathetic hotel very near Heckelphone's church. Learning and taking part in the ritual has given a lot of very ordinary and humble people a confidence in themselves that they would never have acquired elsewhere. It is just good fun. Whatever justifiable criticisms may be aimed at it, deviousness, the underhand and the sinister are not, in my experience, among them. Malcolm

What about offering it to the music department of a public school for its students? I think that would be my own first course of action in similar circumstances. Malcolm

I just key in the piece I'm looking for in the search field in the top left hand part of the screen, press enter and I then get either a notification "nothing found" or a whole list of performances to select from. I've never had a problem with it. I imagine that a complete viewable catalogue of everything on Spotify would be impractically large. Malcolm

Duplicated post removed.

There are almost countless blogs &c., on-line where people discuss their liturgical &c., preferences and hates. Some of them get very heated and uncharitable and I wouldn't like to vouch for the sanity of everyone who contributes to them. The London church I attend on Sundays whenever possible has an excellent blog called "Ex-fide" (written by a very erudite young sacristan-cum-subdeacon-cum-server) and a popular one is called "Liturgical notes" written by Fr John Hunwicke who compiles a well known Ordo and used to teach Classics at Lancing. A large number of parishes have their own blogs. I have to say I have got rather fed-up with most of them, especially as it seems that the Ordinariate is the only thing most of them talk about at the moment. I'm not sure how useful these blogs are. I agree, though, that this is not an appropriate forum for such discussion unless it relates directly to organs. Malcolm

Which would display a singular ignorance of the purpose and nature of the church as an institution and worshipping community. Malcolm

To put this into some sort of context, I can confidently say that ANY Anglicn church in central Brighton would be overjoyed if it got a Sunday morning congregation approaching anywhere near 250 - most get less than half that number, some struggling to get even 50. There are, of course, many more churches in central Brighton, but that is another story. Malcolm

I must be being very thick today (more than usual, even). I assume pcnd's reference to a misogynist has something to do with a rather sulky former Prime Minister. Going back to St T's, I'm sure I've read recently (perhaps on another website) that Heckelphone has just made the action on the organ much lighter. There's a couple of 3 manual instruments in central Brighton that would benefit greatly from this treatment - St Mary's (Bevington) and St Martin's (Hill), especially the latter. Both have recently been given BIOS certificates. Malcolm

It is dedicated to a famous and much maligned virgin. I think there's a connection with someone called Oswald as well? M

Although I don't think I've ever actually heard the organ or attended a service there, I have been in the church a number of times (years ago I had a girlfriend who lived very nearby at Fisherton Island, not to mention many SCF's) and I've always got the impression that they took their musical tradition very seriously, with ambitious music lists and an organist who seemed to have been there a long time. I think he had initials GS or something like that. Fashions in liturgy and church music do change and, certainly in my recent experience, there seem to be encouraging signs of the start of a return to more traditional forms of both. I am sure the church and Mr Heckelphone should be encouraged to do what he is suggesting. If they still can maintain Choral Evensong, despite the competition from the bigger place down the road, they can't be doing too badly. Malcolm

I use Spotify quite a lot because it's a useful way of comparing different performances of the same piece. I have an annual subscription (recently renewed) and with that I can let up to about ten friends have free membership (presumably for a limited period). I think it's excellent and well worth the money. Malcolm

Quite by chance, yesterday evening I watched (again) episodes 1-3 from my DVD of the ITV series about life at Canterbury Cathedral. Lo, and behold, the choir of St Stephen's Canterbury and, if I remember correctly from 14 hours ago, Mr Barker himself. Well done! Malcolm

What is going on? I used to give my complete draft order of service (everything - not just the music) for the Nine Lessons & Carols to the Vicar at the beginning on November and get it back within about ten days, with any amendments made. Ditto the Advent service, but a month earlier. Malcolm

I agree - I thought the programme from Folkestone was the best for a very long time even if we did have to endure Ms Jenkins singing one item. The programme did not appear "contrived" like most of them do and it felt like a real church congregation with a real church choir in a real church. Let's have more of these - preferably presented by the lovely Hayley for a change! Malcolm

Or the very obvious "Adeste Fidelis" - in the only lingo that they understand in Heaven. Malcolm

I agree with Cynic that the Dykes Bower arrangement are as good as any (published by Novello). W T Best tended to expect players to have a techniaue as good as his own and Dupre sometimes over-edited things. Malcolm

This is the programme: 1. Promenade (from Pictures at an Exhibition) Modest Mussorgsky trans: Keith John 2. Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582 J.S.Bach 3. A Song of Sunshine Alfred Hollins 4. Chaconne Healey Willan 5. Footprints in the Snow Claude Debussy 6. Passacaglia (from Sonata No.8) Josef Rheinberger 7. Path in the Wood Alan Ridout 8. Ground in A minor Orlando Gibbons 9. Prelude to "They walk alone" Benjamin Britten 10. Canon Johann Pachelbel 11. Passacaglia Dimitri Schostakovitch 12. Marche des Rois Mages Theodore Dubois 13. Toccata and Fugue "The Wanderer" C.Hubert Parry Members can make up their own minds. It is certainly not a programme for which I am even slightly temped to pay out £20. Malcolm

The Canterbury programme looks very strange to me. Malcolm

A quick look at the NPOR has confirmed my thought that the organ in St Mary's Bourne Street, Pimlico (now presided over by Richard Hills of theatre organ fame) was originally going to have a chancel/celestial division and this was shown in earlier specifications as "prepared for". This is quite a small church and I can't imagine where exactly they inteneded locating it. Malcolm