mrbouffant

Well, I for one enjoyed it very much. Thank you Peter!

Deux Noels I think (catalogue: CH 24) - the other one is a whimsical take on the Noel Huron...

The Bédard Toccata sur Il est né Le Divin Enfant (pub. Cheldar) is firmly in the French style and goes down well at the end of 9 Lessons and Carols...

I still remember with no fondness the wedding at my regular gig where they brought a whole Welsh male voice quire with them (we are in Kent). Expecting them to sing one or two pieces during the signing of the register, the gentlemen gave us a full half hour concert. It was excellent entertainment but didn't do anything for my stress levels, as I had another wedding half an hour away...

This has been the case for some years now, I believe. A very useful resource indeed!

I often play at a civil venue (a rather wheezy 3M) and the brides are without fail always late - very frustrating for all concerned. One was an hour late! At least this venue has a bar below the organ loft!...

I'm interested in the idea of an organ scholar doing more than one year at different venues. What is the justification for this? Does it not take away opportunities from 'first timers' who would benefit from the appointment? Shouldn't an organ scholar who has 'had their turn' simply bite the bullet and get on with finding a proper job instead of cuckooing around the organ scholar system? This is a general observation rather than one relating to Rochester specifically...

Not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere, but.. CRIPES! Can't get the link to work directly, but search on ebay for item number 130222583452

Or, if you want _real_ value for money: "The Complete Bach Edition" 155 CDs for about 90 quid - including the complete organ works with Hans Fagius.

Gosh, he must really love that piece!

I'm all for a voice interface, personally. Then again, I'm the kind of guy who would forgo tabs/drawstops for flat-panel displays mounted on the jambs offering touch screen access... Web access.. Check these fora/the cricket scores/book a restaurant during the sermon.. ah, the possibilities are endless

Indeed. The pipe organ went up in smoke and was replaced with the synthentic variety. Nice village. Nice people no doubt. I drive past 6 times every weekend on the way to my current post...

what about the concept of making backups just in case of hardware failure? we all do that with our PCs/Macs - yes?

I think there was a case not so long ago of two eminent organists who were to give separate recitals (or separate parts of one recital) on a recently rebuilt organ in the UK. This had a floppy disk system. The system was such that all it could do was save the state of ALL the memories. So, recitalist one diligently set up their settings, saved them off. Recitalist two sets theirs on different channels, but didn't save them. Recitalist one came back, inserted said disk and overwrote everything., leaving recitalist two high and dry. What kind of daft system is that? That kind of technology does nobody any favours but I fear such an experience is just grist to the mill for the Luddites! As with everything in life there are good systems and *coughs* "not so good" systems...

I guess it all depends whether you consider a stepper level to be a single, instantaneous representation of the stop/coupler state (i.e. like a single general piston) or whether it acts as a memory level which can store settings against each piston. As you say though, memory is cheap! I'm grateful for the thoughts on how technology could detract from the composer's intentions. However, how far do we take such an approach in trying to represent the 'authentic' thoughts of the composer? An impossible task?

Out of (genuine) interest - how?

To be fair, I don't think criticism on the number of stepper levels is getting overly hung up on the gadgetry. You write as if technology and art are mutually exclusive. My argument is that by using widely available, low cost technology the organ builders can concentrate on spending most of the money on the main event, i.e. the rest of the instrument ! Wasn't it Notre Dame (I could be wrong - but it was certainly one of the major French instruments I think) which used to be "powered" by two IBM PS/2 computers not so long ago?... /edit: Ah yes, it was... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;pagewanted=all

You are right - 8 x 16-bit words for 128 stops/couplers = 2Kb.. More a VIC-20 than a ZX81 then - but without the colour screen, of course. In my view why should anybody spend a significant amount on a capture system and have to accept that organ builders are offering such poor specifications? No doubt if one wanted twice the capacity, one would have to pay a significant premium? How would that be justified? Organ builders have always innovated, using the knowledge of their period to improve the lot for the organist. In the present day that seems to have been lost, as far as console technology is concerned. I'm afraid I don't accept such complacency and poor value for money, I'm surprised others do.

Not really. My point was simply that storage technology is so cheap and commonplace these days, 128 levels is a nonsense. Every organ with a new capture system should have massive capacities in the current technological climate. Even my phone has 8Gb and that cost £30 - what price the same capacity capture system from an organ builder? Let's take an organ of 128 stops and couplers. The settings for this could be stored efficiently within 8 bytes of data. So, 128 levels of stepper would require 1Kb of storage. That is ZX81 capacity c.1981! Is the organ building fraternity really that far behind the curve?

Only 128 levels of general memory? Pathetic. Given that a 4GB memory card can be had for next to nothing, why do these kind of system have such a poor specification? One would have thought 65536 levels minimum would be the benchmark these days!

You tell me. Your original post was definite in its reference to the pain and the suffering - rather than any old pain and any old suffering. It was that specific language which I took to mean Christ's Passion, which of course you had referred to earlier in your post.

I am feeling pain now, when I read such an opinion. Are you saying that, begin an atheist, I should never perform this beautiful work? I think one can appreciate the artistic value of the piece without having to understand the 'back story'. Do you not think?

Slightly OT but do you think the same ratio applies to church organists?...

Topic Title says it all really. Whilst browsing thru the monumental "complete Bach" 155 CD set I picked up on Amazon for a paltry £70, I wondered why - unlike G.F.Handel - a Bach organ concerto does not survive in the 21st century. Is there any received wisdom on this subject?

I played a little village organ back in August and, given it had no NPOR entry, I dutifully noted it all down and sent it off for inclusion. Last week (i.e. 5 months later) I got an email saying 'thanks for the info - sorry for the delay, we have a big backlog' Anyone else had a similar experience? If NPOR are that pushed to actually process the information sent in, why don't they go for a wiki-style approach and allow anyone with a registered interest to update the records? I appreciate they want to be a 'golden source' but right now it seems they are struggling to keep pace with contributions...