Barry Oakley

I tend to agree with what has already been expressed, although it’s marginally better than it once was. Georgia Mann, for example, does her best. But how do you educate the listening public to know there’s more than the Widor Toccata which has been hackneyed to death. I now turn the sound off whenever it’s broadcast.

I'm most impressed by the young Ukrainian lady organist, Dariia Lytvishko who has been giving some lovely recitals here in the UK and elsewhere in the world for the people in her war-torn country.

I provided Colin Mitchell (MM) with some information for his Compton publication although unfortunately I seem to no longer have his email address. But I understand he also plays the organ at Oakworth Crematorium and is listed as a member of the Society of Crematorium Organists. Either of those two might be of help?

And the great Jane Parker-Smith went unrecognised.

What a joke!

It's time this feudal system was scrapped! When people in essence are recognised simply because they have vast wealth available for political parties, or it's who they know or it's the circles the move in, bears no comparison with the deserving who have given their lives to outstanding service to humanity and who go unrecognised.

Certainly! Certainly! Put up a spoof stoplist so that we can have a bit of fun this Christmas.

I think most people will miss Tony's postings and the fact that he's no longer around. I always detected a sense of humility in what he said and the way he said it. Rest eternal grant unto him.

I fully understand what you say.

When you have seen one you have seen them all.

Heard a rumour that Nicholson’s are developing three new stops for Gloucester. For the pedal division, a Double Glawster 16ft and an 8ft version, Single Glawster. The choir division is to have a mutation, Old Spot at 2.2/3 and described as a real "snorter."

We’re certainly, like others following this topic, on the same wave-length. Like you, Stephen, I don’t have an answer. But I certainly believe the decline in proper music education in state schools has a lot to answer for. Little wonder a large number of our younger organists are products of the public school system. Of the perhaps better-known schools, most of them have chapels containing lovely inspiring organs. Nicholson’s have fairly recently completed one such at Radley and I think they have another on their books yet to be built or rebuilt. There is much talk in Westminster’s corridors of “Levelling Up.” Unfortunately it’s currently all about a certain railway line. But the concept of levelling up certainly presents an opportunity for a potential government to raise the profile of music in state schools by insisting it’s on every curriculum in every comprehensive. That really would be levelling up! Maybe our cathedrals or larger parish churches, in terms of raising the organ’s profile amongst state school pupils, could lay on, say, regular quarterly recitals for school groups. It would give the organ exposure to young people at an impressionable age. Exposure to live classical music used to happen in Hull when I was at school. I go back to the era of the former Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra (YSO). These occasions would happen on an afternoon when the YSO was rehearsing for an evening concert. Selected parties from every city secondary sector, public, grammar and secondary-modern, girls and boys would be taken to the City Hall to listen and learn. This would invariably involve them being addressed by the orchestra’s conductor to explain certain aspects of a piece of music. It was something to look forward to.

Martin (Cooke) has raised an interesting if not worrying topic. I see the pipe organ and its music in this country in something of a cleft stick. Unfortunately the UK is now a nation where “we don’t do God,” borne out by official statistics. Unfortunately too, the pipe organ seems inextricably linked for all the wrong reasons with the church and therefore God. Dare I suggest that contributors to this forum all know this. But I often ask myself why it is that in continental Europe and particularly in its Catholic cathedral churches, people turn up, often in large numbers well before Mass to first listen to what in reality is an organ recital, an overture to the main event. I wonder too if UK formal education is a key factor affecting appreciation of the organ; music as a subject having largely (so I’m told), disappeared from state school curriculums, that’s unless it’s twang and bang time. If one is privileged to attend a fee-paying school, music and opportunities for instrumental tuition, often including the organ, are seen as educational essentials. Then perhaps there’s social media and the mainstream air-waves factor?

I understand that Compton utilised the fan Tuba in his Holy Trinity (Hull Minster) rebuild of 1939, revoicing them to form the Swell Trumpet. Apparently it formed an incomplete rank and a new, complete rank was then installed. Apart from the fan Tuba the Hull Minster organ is much as you see in the picture. The former Queens Hall Methodist church organ is now no longer. The Jubilee Church where it was transferred closed some years back and the building is now occupied by a sect who had no use for the organ. It was not destroyed and I believe all the pipework was saved. At present the Hull Minster organ still remains unplayable, awaiting the accumulation of much needed funds for a complete restoration.

Of course, Compton only had tungsten light available at the time and this, in the case of Holy Trinity (Hull Minster), because of console orientation, could prove a problem on bright, sunny days. The brightness of the illuminated stops needed to be subdued to a contrasting warm glow to give indication of on or off. This was achieved thanks to the diameter of the old imperial half-penny coin. It would form a perfect template for brown paper discs to be cut and placed behind the stop-face to achieve the warm glow. I understand that eventual renovation of the Compton console will see LED’s used.