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Clavecin

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Posts posted by Clavecin

  1. That brings back memories. I was brought up in Burnley and took up my first organist's appointment in the mid 60s at the age of 12, the organ, a Driver & Co. 2 manual 8/9/2 if I remember correctly, now long gone. A typical late Victorian work horse, I remember a couple of other Drivers in the Burnley area but most organs I came across were Laycock & Bannister and a few Conachers. There were very many nonconformist churches back then, some of them very large, but the rot was setting in with many closing by the mid 60s. 

    There was a 3m Driver in Haggate Baptist Church which I'm sure went abroad, I think it was Driver's largest instrument but would have dated from the turn of the century, not the 1920s. I never heard or played it but remember seeing the motorised feeders which provided the wind in the room beneath the organ. Could be the one!

    There was a West Yorkshire firm called Driver & Haigh who were active in the period between the wars, I think the Burnley firm would have been wound up then

  2. I would have thought that this list covers it, I've yet to visit the Nancy area so was not aware of this one.

    The A.C-C in Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste Perpignan has a remarkable acoustic 32' flue called Quintaton 32'. It has real drive, too loud under quite combinations but ok from say mf with manual doubles up to full organ. It's one of those effects which appears to grow in intensity as the general sound level increases, with the big reeds on you would swear that you could hear a 32' reed. I regret not asking the organist who looked after us to explain exactly what goes on with this stop.

    I'm sure that A.C-C was bound by lack of space in many of his most prestigious builds as he was obliged to retain the classical casework, usually retaining also a Positif de Dos, from instruments of the previous century or earlier. Instruments which were very much smaller usually with a pedal organ which would only feature Open Flutes and Trompettes at 8&4' pitches. Hence so few examples of genuine 32' registers.

  3. The 1880 Cavaillé-Coll in Cathédrale Sainte-Croix Orléans has an acoustic/resultant Contre-Bombarde 32'.

    The 32' drawstop also draws the Bombarde 16' drawstop, it actually plays an independent 10 2/3 Bombard rank throughout it's compass. The Cathedral is one of France's big ones with a very long reverberation time, the organ sounds absolutely fabulous, the 32' puts a decent growl under full organ but isn't a 'floor shaker' like the real thing at Basilique Saint-Sernin Toulouse. Speaking of which, the 1889 Cavaillé-Coll at St Sernin has a similar acoustic/resultant Principal-basse 32' which also draws the Contrebasse 16' and plays a Quint throughout it's compass - no use under celestes!

    True 32's flue and reed stops in A.C-C organs are surprisingly rare beasts.

    Played at Evreux several years ago, thought the 32' was the real thing at the time.

     

     

  4. I learned both Dupre Cortege et Litanie, and  Duruflé Veni Creator Variations on a 30 note pedalboard, in the Dupre I take the top g down an octave. I've never had regular access to an organ with a 32 note pedal, but the organ in the church were I've now been organist for several years does have a 32 note pedal. However, I still take the top g down an octave, as it's quite a tricky passage and having thoroughly learned the music one way my brain won't cope with doing it another way. In the Duruflé it's much easier to play the top f#s thus avoiding the awkward thumbing down in the 30 note version.

  5. Agreed, wouldn't go with this one.

    There are quite a few errors of accidental placement which I've marked in my copy where there is a discrepancy between identical right and left hand chords. 

    When I looked up your example I found yet another, the 3rd RH chord in the bar you refer to. She's obviously referring to this chord, not the 2nd.

    There are similar printing errors in Litanies

  6. I do the 'digital' version of photocopying, cutting and gluing.

    I scan the music as a .jpg (a picture) then copy/paste into Microsoft Publisher.

    Publisher is a paid-for programme, part of Microsoft's office suite, I think it's about £70 per year for a paid-up Microsoft account and it does give you access to various other things like 1Tb cloud storage and proper support. I use Publisher for various other aspects of my church work and find it very easy to use and very useful.

    So, I scan a page of music, then use the basic built-in editing functions on my laptop to 'cut out' the various music systems I want and paste them into a Publisher page, they can then be moved around and resized using the tags that appear in the corners of the various boxes containing the music. I often reduce the system size at this stage to fit more systems onto a page, doing this makes the page narrower in which case I trim the printed page down accordingly, this then allows you to fit more pages onto your music desk. There is very little loss of 'sharpness' and the end results can look very professional. 

    If I'm reducing the system size considerably I regard the final copy as a 'performing only' version and do all the learning from the original.

    Another way to do this would be to scan your music as a .pdf document, then use a PDF editor to do rest. However, full PDF editing software is much more expensive than Publisher.

  7. If you're looking for a toccata, there's Diversion for Mixtures which is a perpetuum mobile type piece. It's in Novello's The Colours of the Organ album. Not sure if it's in print but I bought one s/h recently for Lloyd Webber's lovely Benedictus. Diversion was on FJ's Great Cathedral series LP. I last heard it at York at an RCO service for FJ's 100th

  8. R&D also used metal 16ft bourdon basses in their extension organs. There's one near me in a 1960s church which has the bourdon and diapason basses in the facade, the bourdon mouths have the high cut up and curved upper lip, the scaling of the bourdon is very similar to the diapason. I used to play R&D and Walker extension organs quite a lot in my youth.

    As far as difference in sound quality is concerned, I think it is all down to scaling. I was the organist at a church in Merseyside with a Walker Positive for several years, it had a wooden bass to the bourdon which was pretty large scale and had a real oomph, certainly it would not make sense to make a stopped metal bass of anywhere near such scaling. 

    H,N&B also made modern extension organs from the 1960s, as a youth I played their Heptonstall organ often which has a wooden 16ft bourdon, again with plenty of oomph.

  9. The OBS software looks extremely comprehensive.

    There are a couple of churches where I occasionally play which set up a camera and projector but they've been doing this sort of thing for quite a while and use very basic equipment, which works perfectly well.

    I was aware that using wifi for any part of the process was likely to introduce latency, mind you, the action on our church organ is so slow that this would probably put the images and sound heard by the audience in perfect sync!

    There are very many people posting Youtube videos with 2 or 3 cameras running on their consoles, I'm sure they're not using expensive cameras.

  10. My church is about to install a projector and screen system, we are still in the planning stage.

    I give a monthly organ recital and would like to have a couple of cameras on the console to display an image on the screen, as many churches and cathedrals do for their organ recitals.

    The company we're going to use for the installation are quoting silly money for 2 cameras, interfaces to a laptop and the necessary software to provide a split-screen image. I had thought that 2 basis webcams would do the job and that a standard windows laptop would already have the necessary software onboard.

    I've been asked to look into this and am hoping that someone who has experience of this sort of thing at their church or cathedral can offer some advice.

    Thanks in anticipation.

    Clavecin

  11. I was very interested to see the photo of the organ as originally built, on Nicholson's website with the staircases at either side, I was unaware of this.

    It's well known that Alfred Waterhouse's design for the Great Hall left little room for a grand organ, the space is not really an organ chamber, more of an apse. In the original photo, the organ appears to be free standing, although I'm sure that the blower, reservoirs etc will be below stage level. 

    If you have a look at some of the details on the specification you will see that there is actually only one full 16 foot flue stop, the pedale Contrebasse, the Grande Orgue Principal 16 has stopped pipes for the lowest 5 notes which make the longest case pipe about 12 foot. It's a very long time since I played this organ (back in my teens in the early 70's) but I seem to recall that the bottom end of the Soubasse 32 was acoustic, as swalmsley commented about A-CC 32ft reeds, true 32ft flues, open or stopped, are also quite rare beasts.

    I'm certainly looking forward to this organ being restored, a 32ft reed would be magnificent, but I think the right decision has been made to return the organ to its 1893 state.

  12. I think Paul Derrett bought it first time it came up for sale. He also has the ex Tewkesbury console, if remember correctly, the Doncaster console was in much better condition, but only had 58 note keyboards.

     

  13. Just come across my David Patrick edition of this, it's published by Edwin Ashdown Ltd and a quick google shows that it is currently available. I went over to the Dupre version a few years ago when it was reissued at a more affordable price. As AJJ states, the Patrick edition is much more approachable, but like any arrangement of this piece, you can't get away from the constant semiquaver figuration in the RH some of which is a bit uncomfortable.

  14. As an organist who has been fortunate enough to have spent time over many summers in France and has been allowed generous access to very many organs, I've played about a dozen Kern reconstructions and new instruments. Many in the Alsace region as would be expected from a Strasbourg based firm, with other instruments in Toulouse, Nimes, Bourges, Nice, Tours, Aix-en-Provence, Rouen and Lyon. As Paul says, there are probably more reconstructed organs in France sporting a 'Kern' name plate than any other, closely followed by Formentelli.

     

    Kern's 'house style' is a 4 manual C18th 'classical' organ: full compass Positif de dos and Grand, with short compass Recit and Echo. However, unlike Formentelli who goes for the 'pedale francaise' with only 8 and 4ft stops, Kern goes for a German pedal board, usually 30 notes of standard dimensions and alignment. Kern's Pedal organ is also 16ft based with fully developed choruses of flues and reeds.

     

    His concept is the organs of Andreas Silbermann of which Ebersmunster and Marmoutier are fine but modestly sized examples. The principal choruses tend to be less fluty and with a brighter balance than more authentic classical instruments and the reed stops less assertive, also the 16ft pedal plays a completely different role to the 8ft classical pedal organ. Kern's organs play Bach and the North German repertoire very well indeed and of course the whole of the French classical repertoire.

     

    One has to bear in mind that these organs, although housed in their original C18th or earlier casework have been rebuilt and altered many times over 2 centuries, how much C18th pipework they now contain is debatable. A quick look inside cabinets often appears to indicate that much or all of the pipework is new. In a number of instruments such as Nimes he has retained a C19th Romantic Recit to create a more eclectic organ, whether this is a good thing or not is of course debatable, personally I didn't feel that the 2 aspects sat together comfortably.

     

    They are all very comfortable and easy to play having standard pedal boards, keys of reasonable length (at least on the Positif and Grand) and a predicitable touch, with a decent projection over the pedal board. Drawstop layout is very confusing for UK organists as they are arranged in solid banks on either side of the keyboards, usually principals on one side with flutes, mutations and reeds on the other. However, divisions are not separated but the stopknobs have subtly different coloured woods, with paper labels.

     

    Outstanding Kern's have been Strasbourg (as you would expect), St Gregoire Ribeaville, and a new organ at St-Jean-de-Malte Aix-en-Provence. As with many new and reconstructed organs (including Formentelli and Quoirin) which follow a certain 'style' with 'compromises', some can sound a bit bland. However, I would not be disappointed if one of the Kerns I've come across was the organ I had to play ever Sunday.

     

    You can find full write ups, specs with photos on www.musiqueorguequebec.ca

  15. Thanks for the advice gents.

    Just to clarify my intentions, I'm looking to be able to give my singers a CD with the accompaniment (or in the case of unaccompanied anthems a representation of the ensemble) together with their individual vocal part, so the ability to multitrack is essential to the task.

    When I was in secondary education I did this sort of thing regularly on a professional standard recording device (can't remember exactly which one it was) on which you could burn the finished results directly to CD. I also used the hand held Edirol recorder for run of the mill recordings.

    As sound recording per se is not something I really want to get into, I'm not wanting to purchase any expensive equipment which I'm not likely to use very much.

  16. I wish to make some learning cds for members of my choir. I've installed Audacity onto my laptop as I will be making multi track recordings - recording all the choral parts or accompaniment played on the piano then singing in the individual vocal parts required. I need a decent quality microphone that will plug directly into the 1/8th inch mic socket on the laptop, costing on the right side of £100. Has anyone any experience of this sort of thing and can make some suggestions.

  17. Martin,

     

    Firstly, many congratulations and welcome to the board!

     

    Sadly, Venice like Rome is a poor place for organs; most churches (and we visited most a couple of years ago) don't have an organ, some have rather decrepit-looking unrestored historic organs, a few have very nasty small early/mid C20th organs.

     

    The only 'proper' organs I came across were the new Ahrend organ in San Salvador, this is a Renaissance style instrument in an historic C16th case. The other the 1766 Callido organ in San Marco, restored by Zanin in 1995.

     

    Good luck and enjoy your visit.

     

     

  18. Collegiale Saint-Remy at Lautrec in the Tarn region of France.

     

    There is a painting of an organ on the west wall which was in place before Puget installed a modest 2m organ in 1893. The painted organ is wider than the Puget, so when viewed from the nave it looks as though the organ has pedal towers.

     

    The whole interior of the church is covered with Trompe l'oeil which is so realistic that you actually have to go and touch the mouldings to believe that they aren't real. It's all been restored recently and looks magnificent.

     

    The organ is very nice, having been restored in 1996.

     

    I couldn't get a hype-link to work, but if you google Lautrec orgue the first thing that comes up should be the church website which has a picture of the organ amongst other things.

  19.  

    None. Sorry about the appearance of that but it was unintentional.

     

     

    I believe that, in the case of the Tickell at Worcester Cathedral, the console was made in-house by one of K.T's staff. I seem to recall hearing that it was the first one the member of staff in question had made solo as well.

     

    Dave

     

     

    The Worcester keyboard/piston assemblies were by P&S who supply top quality keyboards for most UK builders, I'm fairly sure that the other console fitments (drawstops etc.) will be P&S.

  20. I was in St Paul's for a Sunday Evensong 2 or 3 of years ago, Simon played one of the Symphonic movements (either the first or third, can't remember which), it sounded wonderful. I think at the time Simon had only completed one of the movements.

     

    Daniel Roth has also done an arrangement of the Symphony which I heard him play in Saint Amans, Rodez (South of France) several years ago, it sounded better at St Paul's.

     

    Simon also played the Symphonic Interlude from Redemption on a BBC broadcast of Choral Evensong, possibly last year.

    I'll have to look up this CD!

  21. Regarding the Novello scores, which I also learned from and still use, the current 'brown' editions are a photo reduction of the originals as someone else has already mentioned, the problems with these are that the print appears blurred in places and some pages are so cramped that they are virtually impossible to read (the middle section of the St Anne Fugue for example).

     

    I've recently acquired original copies of books 7 and 8 (book 7 is 'as new') one of which dates from the 1930s and am finding them much easier to play from, it's worth trawling the various websites which offer second-hand music as there are plently of these scores around, albeit in a range of conditions!

     

    This gentleman in Liverpool is offering quite a few http://www.usedorganmusic.co.uk/orderform.htm

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