Alsa
-
Posts
71 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Alsa
-
-
There may, as you surmise, be more to it than meets the eye, but, on the face of it, it just looks as though the RCO was caught out by rising prices in the construction industry and in annual rentals. If that's what it is, then it's just poor business planning. It's well known that construction costs have been rising again for the last couple of years after a stagnant spell. It was foreseen that they would and I can't help feeling that this could and should have been anticipated in the RCO's business plan. But, like you, I'm only guessing.
You have a point about the RCO engaging in more outreach work. In recent years they have been doing much more along those lines, though there's still precious little within easy reach of me. I did, however, rather like the idea of bringing the British Organ Archive "in house" to sit alongside the RCO's own increasingly important library,so I do favour a fixed base; I like your idea of co-habiting with a university.
On the question of exams, can someone please tell me why on earth they revamped the FRCO score reading test to include three C clefs. To enable people to play from facsmilies of Baroque organ manuscripts? To play from antiquated editions of Renaissance choral music (in which case why not the baritone and mezzo soprano clefs as well)? What on earth is the practical point? An FRCO used to be the mark of good, all-round, practical musicianship. If they felt they had to make the test more complicated it would have been more use to include a transposing instrument.
I think that I can possibly shed some light on both things you mention. The first is that the Birmingham development as I understand it involved the college being in area where there were going to be all sorts of other developments in close proximity which would have been a supportive environment and provided passing trade. These other developments started to fall through and left the college a bit high and dry. When revamping the figures it became clear the college was going to fall heavily into debt - so it did the only sensible thing which was to get out of that development area too.
Regarding the C clef business - the syllabus with score reading in G treble, C alto and tenor and F bass clefs was just merely an exercise which had no practical equivalent, whereas three C clefs, soprano, alto and tenor plus an F bass clef is bog standard in published choral music well into the 19th century. So therefore you could expect to encounter these and need to be able to read them. Just try conducting a Mass by Mozart from full score, for example, and you'll see the point.
-
I am sure he is, although I have met him only once.
I did not for a moment accuse him of passing off Ivorine or Ivothene, etc as ivory - rather that H&H must have had a legal store of ivory left-over, from which they were able to supply the several new draw-stops for St. David's Cathedral.
It was well documented in articles about St David's organ that Paul Hale kindly donated some old spare HN&B drawstops from the old organ at Southwell, which matched the existing HN&B stops at St Davids.
If you have ever worked with H&H you would know that Mark V would never try to pull the wool. The H&H reputation, and his, is just not worth it - and anyway he is a man of the highest integrity. (As indeed is JPM ...)
-
I know exactly who you mean!
Yes - was just on ITV3 in the "An Audience with..." series
-
Would the combination of couplers (III + sub octave, III/I) mean that the sub octave of the third manual would also sound while you play on the first manual?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Friedrich
Yes, you would be very safe to assume that would be the case on a Hill organ of this period. That's the normal way English organ couplers work unless there are also intermanual octave couplers e.g. Swell Sub-octave to Great on, say, organs by Willis in the mid 20th century.
-
I thought it was one of MM's eastern European instruments.
No it's one of those great organs from up north!
-
====================
That's it, is it? 11,000,00 people and that's the best they can come up with covering 300 years?
Assuming that "Greater" Yorkshire has a similar number of people, I could quote the following, and will:-
Beverley Minster
St Mary, Beverley
Hull PC
Hull City Hall
Bridlington Priory
York Minster
Leeds PC
Leeds Town Hall
Selby Abbey
St Bart's, Armley
Doncaster PC
Wakefield Cathedral
Halifax PC
Halifax Civic Theatre
Huddersfield University
Huddersfield Town Hall
Ripon Cathedral
Harrogate PC
That's 18 organs with a total of 70 manuals and, I believe, 16 X 32ft reeds and two German masterpieces.
Of course, there's lots of historic instruments about and a large number of smaller new ones, romantic ones and older ones.
Nuff said
MM
PS: Why does everyone forget about the Merchant Taylor's Hall, London?
You die on your own sword, precisely because you haven't bothered to hear some of the better organs in London.
And guess what - all you seem to be able to come up with is a series of large organs - and yet you discounted the 6 largest in London, which includes the largest organ in the country!
Large isn't always best, it's what you do with it that counts - though up north they probably still turn the lights off first!
Merchant Taylors? Quite nice I suppose once you get past the chiff, but not perhaps NPM's finest hour.
To quote a famous recital organist: "Well done anyway!"
-
I hope not. It's certainly very easy to think there are no organs worth playing/listening to in London outside those 6 places - but when you stop and think about it, it's just not true!
-
=====================
I defy anyone to build an extension organ as good as St.Bride's to-day.
Generally speaking, "the London organ scene" is not too good if the big venues are eliminated.
The best organs are definitely "Ooooop North"
MM
Yes, you are quite right - because discounting six large organs - St Paul's, Westminster Abbey and Cathedral, Southwark Anglican, RAH, RFH there aren't any really significant organs inside Greater London ... except perhaps (and the list isn't exhaustive)
Historic (say pre 1880)
St Giles Camberwell
St Vedast Foster Lane
St James Clerkenwell
Greenwich Naval College
St Anne Limehouse
St Mary Rotherhithe
Christ Church Spitalfields (soon)
Buckingham Palace
H&H
The Temple Church
All Souls Langham Place
All Saints Margaret St
All SS Tooting Graveney
Hill
St Mary-at-Hill
St Mary Abbots Kensington
St Peter Cornhill
St John Hyde Park Crescent
Mander
St Matthew Westminster
St Giles Cripplegate
St Andrew Holborn
Lewis
St Mary Bourne St
+ another in south London - I can't quite remember where at the moment!
Walker
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St John the Evangelist Islington
Italian Church Hatton Garden
Sacred Heart Wimbledon
London Oratory
recent British-Irish
St Mary Paddington Green
St Mary Woodford
St Peter Eaton Square
St Margaret Lothbury
Ealing Abbey
The Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair
Modern imported (Europe/north America)
St John's Smith Square
St Lawrence Jewry
The Little Oratory
Marylebone PC
RAM concert hall
The Tower of London
QEH
Willis
St Dominic's Priory Hampstead
The Union Chapel
The Ally Pally
St Augustine Kilburn
Jesuit Church Farm Street
Compton
St Bride's Fleet St
St Luke Chelsea
St Mary Magdalene Paddington
-
Thanks for the suggestions. ...
...And yes, the music is for the Bride and Groom and their guests. But quite often, they know absolutely nothign about choral music so have no ideas at all - so I need to feed them with ideas from which they can make their choices. It was just as I was doing this, coming up with all the standard ideas, I was just wondering "isn't there something new which hasn't been done to death yet"
Although I might resurrect the Wesley "Love one another" bit from Blessed by the God, etc... I still like it, although it does have the potential to become rather nauseous if over used.
Sorry wasn't getting at you about brides and grooms etc, but I thought some of the other contributions were a bit stand-offish about wedding music.
One thing about the Wesley - kids love singing it, so rehearsing it is easy!
-
-
Yes, the concepts of rest eternal and marriage don't quite fit, do they?
It's so long ago since I had a choir that did weddings that I'm having difficulty dredging my memory. As far as I can recall we did mostly "safe" things like Wesley's Lead me Lord, which can work OK irrespective of how many or few turn up on the day. It's hardly very inspiring though. Attwood's Come Holy Ghost is slightly better, so long as your top line's alert at the beginning. Of better quality were the Elgar's and Mozart's Ave verum. Not altogether suitable for weddings, I know, but certainly no less appropriate than the Bach/Gounod or Penis angelicus.
There's a lot of common sense here.
The music at a wedding is not governed by, for example, the same constraints of season that one would have at a liturgical service such as a communion or evensong so to worry about the appropriateness of Elgar, Mozart, Bach /Gounod, Franck or even Schubert's classics is probably getting a bit too serious about it all.
At the point where anthems are sung, surely its all about rejoicing at being at a marriage service - this music therefore is what the bride and groom like and have chosen for their guests to enjoy. Think back to Royal weddings ...
I always enjoy Advent/Christmas season weddings, when you can sing carols - I find them refreshing and surprising in this context and somehow it makes the carols transcend the commercialisation of Christmas.
Familiar melodies are good and if you can get in a marriage theme or love all the better, but it isn't essential.
When I was a treble we also sang from the list above (including Jesu joy) but my favourite was the treble duet 'love one another' from SS Wesley's Blessed be the God and Father. It's as good as anything, and a nice tune too!
other ideas:
How Day by day (can be in 1 2 or 3 parts)
Vaughan Williams Come my way (The Call) - it's even in hymn books nowadays (e.g. Common Praise)
Then there are various offerings by Rutter or Archer. We might well turn our noses up at them, but the music at weddings isn't for us (musical cognoscenti) - it's for the couple and their guests to enjoy!
PS On the subject of the concepts of rest eternal and marriage not fitting, I once heard that a certain Prince's favourite music was the dies irae from Verdi's Requiem and he wanted it at his (first) wedding, but was pursuaded otherwise. How prophetic that would have been.
-
And almost string like when coupled to the pedals or as in the small CCs when the 8' stop is duplexed to the pedals.
AJJ
good point
-
As Roffensis has been so bold as to nail his colours to the mast, I must say, that whilst it would be an exageration to call it the worst organ in the world, I thought Sherborne Abbey was pretty foul when I accompanied the RSCM cathedral singers there last November. Trying to play Howells Coll. Reg sympathetically on this awful box of f*rts was no joke.
Good luck Worcester!
Well I thought that the old organ in Worcester was positively one of the very least attractive sounding cathedral organs I have ever played, and that's saying something!
Stringy Diapasons, honking reeds, bland flutes, thin strings, forced and shrieking upperwork, all far too loud at close quarters and in a very poor position for sounding throughout the building - almost all the worst aspects of English organ building thrown into one instrument (except the console) - and now all of these abominations are being copied by Schoenstein in America. Hurrah ... let's send them some of the real thing ... andgood riddance!
But then I don't have to/choose to play an electronic every week.
So it would be in my list for the Worst Cathedral Organ in Britain!
-
You haven't given Great as an option - I would have it there.
...
On the Great at 4' it is very useful in French repertoire (particularly) and (provided that you have a respectable example) it makes an excellent solo stop played down an octave. I used to have one once (at St.Alkmund's Whitchurch) at 8' on the Great. It was Harmonic from around Tenor G and the basses were rather narrow - mind you they'd have to be at 8' pitch on a conventional Great soundboard. The character changed as you went up the compass, but it was a first-rate stop - a real luxury to have that, two Opens and a traditional Stopped Diapason.
The best Harmonic Flutes have as few ordinary length basses as possible (pretty wide-scale ones, k.a. 'tubs' in the trade) and as much of the compass as possible with actual harmonic pipes.
That's interesting, because it's quite the opposite to the nineteenth century conventions of, say, Cavaille-Coll or Lewis or Hill or Wlllis who made theirs with quite narrow bases opening out to a very full, flutey and melodic treble. As a solo rank in the treble they are excellent, but also in music by Widor and Vierne where you will be asked to play with both hands on manual with the Flute Harmonique, the gradual change of tone across the registers means that the top part always shines through melodcially, the lower registers blending into an accompanimental role perhaps with other stops coupled from the Recit.
Just a thought, but I think musically a bit more useful.
-
While no doubt many a fine musician is possessed of such an ear there are those who cast doubt; particularly note-pushing players who hit right notes that never seem to amount to a musical sense and so perhaps they are not listening to what is coming out of the pipes for being overly absorbed in the mechanics of precision in playing mere notes and not music and thus the ear must not be at its finest musical moment.
Wot, no puntuation again?
-
Well, certainly in the form of a Sesquialtera - but surely not as chorus mixtures?
Actually, you might be rather surprised to find that on many old 'baroque' organs the Sequialteras are placed with the chorus stops rather than with the solo stops (flutes, mutations and reeds) e.g. at Haarlem they are on the same side of the console as the Principals and Mixtures. The implication is that they were considered as an element that could be drawn in the chorus, rather than exclusively as a solo stop.
-
-
-
i have seen it and stood next to it in atlantic city organ chamber
Is there a plaque?
-
That post reads as a leading question, if not a trap.
Perhaps the key to the answer is in the phrase Franck-style rather than suggesting a direct copy of Ste. Clothilde...
or maybe organ builders can no longer be artists in their own right - only copy older styles .
What an awful thought.
Rco
in General discussion
Posted
All I can say is that there are loads of scores you come across from Bach through to Rossini where you get C clefs times 3, and no matter what amount of time you'd take preparing (even transcribe Rossini's Stabat Mater if you wish) when standing on the rostrum and someone asks you a question then THAT's when you wish you could read the clef fluently.
But it's like all exams - it's there to test you, surely, not just see what you already know? It's about what you do when required to think on your feet... to push your boundaries, stretch your mind. (Except we don't do that anymore in modern education do we? Everyone passes, just some pass better than others. "All pigs are equal...")