David Drinkell

I know this one and I agree that it's good. In effect, a one-manual organ spread across two keyboards. As my friend Tony Percival (a Congregationalist) used to point out, the Church at Steeple Bumpstead doesn't have a steeple, but the chapel does! Conachers are quite rare in Essex, although the three-manual at South Weald comes as a bit of a surprise in what is not a very large church.

Looking for something else, I found a couple of articles featuring big South African organs (both mentioned earlier) in 'The Organ Quarterly', both by the Reverend A. Pierce-Jones, who served most of his ministry in that part of the world. Vol. XXII, No. 85, July 1942 describes the Rushworth in St. Mary's Cathedral, Johannesburg. The bottom note of the Double Open Wood is mentioned as scaling 14". Vol. XXVIII, No. 109, July 1948 describes the 4 manual Kimball in Pretoria City Hall, designed by John Connell, the City organist of Johannesburg, who was also Organist of Johannesburg Cathedral when the Rushworth was built. The Pretoria organ was presumably contemporary with the hall (1935) and had 101 speaking stops (plus Chimes, Xylophone and various untuned percussions) including floating Orchestral and Enclosed Great divisions, the latter playable on either Great or Choir. The 26 stop Pedal Organ included a 32' Contra Bourdon (as well as a Bourdon Quint 10 2/3) and a 32' Contra Bombarde.

I agree with GrossGeigen's summary. During my 14 years in Northern Ireland I played at least 40 Conachers, some of which I mentioned in my post on this thread a few years ago. The earlier ones are good, respectable tracker instruments, well built and voiced. A comparison might be made with the organs of Henry Jones, many of which may still be found on country churches (at least, in East Anglia, where I grew up), although some of the smaller, later Jones jobs are let down by gormless stop-lists (flutes, dulcianas and a big diapason). When one gets to the size where the Great runs to a Fifteenth, the comparison is more apt, and Conachers of these dimensions usually compare favourably with organs of similar size by such as Binns or Lewis. They tend (in my experience) to be better and more imaginative than those of Abbott & Smith, Wadsworth or Forster & Andrews. Often, an organ has to be over a certain size before it gets interesting. Binns could be deathly dull around 11 speaking stops (e.g. Stromness Church, Orkney http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N18251), but excellent at 17 (e.g. Trim Cathedral, Co. Meath. Great: Open, Gedact, Dolce, Octave, Flautino, Trumpet. Swell: Geigen Principal, Rohr Flute, Vox Angelica, Principal, Mixture 15.19.22, Cornopean, Oboe. Pedal Contra Bass, Bourdon, Flute. Couplers include Swell Octave and Sub and Swell to Great 16.8.4). Nine stops worth of Lewis, as at Woolverstone, Suffolk (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D05628) does not add up to a lot of fun, although better than the same amount of Lewis at Dundrum, Co. Down (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01459 - almost an octopod). A Father Willis "Model" (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D00537) or the same sort of thing by Arthur Harrison (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N05347) is a lot more versatile from our point of view, and some of the little Norman & Beard jobs to be found all over East Anglia (each one an individual) can be much more interesting than the stop-list would suggest. On a larger scale, one could feel that a more inspired selection of stops might have been provided for the number of slides, such as one finds at Holy Trinity, Windsor (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D00991). Quite a fine organ, but some other builders would have been more imaginative. On the other hand, Conachers' were recommended for the job by Sir Walter Parratt (a Huddersfield man), and he may have had a say in the stop-list. First Ballymacarrett Presbyterian, Belfast has nothing above 4' pitch, but is quite impressive in a "toujours rosbif" sort of way (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N06928). Long-established firms often changed hands in the course of time, and it appears that Conachers' was no exception. Leonard Bartram was their Irish manager at one time and later was in charge of the whole show (I don't know if he actually owned the firm as well). Some fine jobs were turned out during his time - quite up-to-date technologically with stop-key consoles, cancellors, adjustable pistons, extended reed units. It seems almost unkind to mention a real shocker - Cregagh Road Presbyterian, Belfast (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01431). It lurks behind a false "east" wall, complete with back-lit stained glass window, and the console is in the "west" gallery. No time-lag, but the sound simply doesn't get into the church. David McElderry of Wells-Kennedy, who maintained it, said that it was a decent enough organ inside the chamber, but it sounds unbelievably gormless in the church. Simon Preston opened it and is reputed to have said it was the worst organ he had ever played, although his opinion might have been coloured by his leaving his organ shoes by the console while he went out for a bite to eat, returning to find that the care-taker had found them, thought they belonged to a tramp and binned them. So said the Old Boys in Belfast, anyway.... These late Conachers could be a bit heavier in the diapasons, thicker in the chorus reeds and sometimes rather more acidic in the strings than was by then fashionable, but they were pretty good all the same. St. Columba's, Knock, Belfast is a nice example of a large two-manual (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01412) and I mentioned Belmont Presbyterian as an outstanding effort for its time, with a big Positive division and generally (not quite entirely) enlightened scheme. The firm was taken over by Willis, and later John Sinclair Willis acquired it from Henry 4 and ran it under the original name, from the old factory in Huddersfield. I would be interested to know if this is still the case. To conclude, I usually felt happy enough if I was going to play a Conacher, and there were some to which I would definitely look forward. As forumites will know, there are a lot of organs, even the generality of products by certain builders, about which one cannot say that.

There was a move, largely successful, by the Cathedral Organists Association some years ago, to bring organists' salaries into line with those paid to residentiary canons. I don't know if the same principle still applies. Of course, the two posts are not completely comparable, as clergy tend to have a lot of perks and expenses which organists don't, whereas organists may make a nice little extra sum from concerts and pupils. One cathedral, while raising the organist's salary to that of a residentiary canon, stopped paying him fees for weddings and funerals. However, the assistant did get paid for such of these services as he accompanied, so he ended up doing all of them....

Regarding "Concert" versus "recital, Carlo Curley (possibly following on from Virgil Fox) always said that the term "organ recital" would frighten off prospective audiences, apart from die-hard organ nuts, whereas "organ concert" would not. I think there's a lot of sense to that and I always use the term "concert".

I've been thinking of trying the same thing with the Choir Dulciana here.

If one is prepared to use one's ears and think outside the box registration-wise, the use of a clarion without a unison reed can help in forming useful combinations. Even with an octave coupler on. I am quite surprised to see how many quite large instruments are appearing without a 4' reed on the Pedal, and in some cases no way to obtain one by coupling

It's interesting to consider some of the other great Suffolk churches and their organs. Blythburgh had its little Holdich/Bishop rebuilt by Rodney Briscoe with a lovely new case about fifteen years ago. Stoke-by-Nayland (the finest of the lot, in my opinion, especially outside) had its old (originally 1834) Gray & Davison restored by John Budgen (Bishop & Son) in 1977, after years of extreme decrepitude and in 2006 it was clothed in a new case in Gothick style which is a vast improvement on the stacked up, bat-dropping-encrusted basses that enclosed it (after a fashion) up until then. Southwold's fine big three-manual Walker (designed by Ouseley) was rebuilt by Cedric Arnold, Williamson & Hyatt in 1966 (one of the excellent jobs they did around the time, others including Walsingham and St. Botolph, Colchester). You don't see much of it as it is in a chamber, but there's a rather strange case above the choir-stalls that used to contain the console. The nice Hunter/Bishop at Aldeburgh has what is not much more than a Victorian organ-builder's case, but the side facing down the aisle was painted and adorned with a horizontal trumpet in 2000. It looks rather jolly, but is not by its nature such a fine case as the Turner Sims organ. Lavenham replaced their Conacher/Cedric Arnold with a large three-manual which started out as a Father Willis in Holy Trinity, Bournemouth, where it was rebuilt in 1964 by Degens & Rippin, It moved to St. Swithin, Bournemouth when Holy Trinity closed in1974, and then in 1996 was set up at Lavenham by the vicar with help from Lance Foy and Bishop & Son (John Bailey). Since then it has grown to four manuals, with Tuba, 32' reed and flue and about 55 speaking stops. Now, I firmly believe that a church like Lavenham deserves a magnifical organ (adjective from Christopher Smart via Benjamin Britten), but it doesn't at present look particularly handsome, although no worse than the Conacher did. They may improve the look of it in the course of time and I'm certainly not criticising what has been done, but it increases the sense of disbelief that the diocese doesn't want a fine case like the Turner Sims to go in Orford Church. Framlingham has a justly-famed Thamar case and organ , restored in the west gallery by John Budgen in 1970, as well as a late-18th century chamber organ by William Allen. Neither Mildenhall and Stradbroke have particularly large organs, but the former has a Father Willis and the latter a Holdich, both worthy examples. Orford, which is the centre-piece of a beautiful little town and in an area where music-making is of a high standard and churches generally well-supported, surely deserves something special too.

In a lot of cases, I think that the presence of a Dulciana is an admission that the other 8' stops are too loud, although the Dulciana is useful to "warm up" the 8' flute (pcnd's Viole de Gambe probably does this even better. Lawrence Swinyard once likened Great gambas to "army cocoa", which I always thought was a beautiful description, although I never quite understood what he meant). There are some gorgeous unenclosed Dulcianas about - Arthur Harrison's are generally outstanding (in saying this, I guess I'm perilously close to agreeing with pcnd that his organs are generally too loud!), and I liked our host's provision of one on the (ruckpositif) Choir Organ at Cripplegate (which I first played just after it went in), despite Sam Clutton's opinion that it was about the most useless thing for those circumstances. Over here, the Choir Organ in older instruments is nearly always enclosed. On the organ at the Anglican Cathedral in St. John's, Newfoundland, which I played for thirteen years, some modest pepping up in the nineties involved scrapping the Dulciana, Viole, Wald Flute and (Hope-Jones) Quintadena in favour of Nazard, Tierce and appropriate flutes to carry them. The 8' flues in my time were Violin Diapason and Chimney Flute and I never had cause to regret not having anything else. (There was a full-length 16' Dulciana in the Choir box, as well as another one a few feet away from it in the case and played on the Pedal - money must have been no object in 1927 when Casavant rebuilt the organ!). There was a Gemshorn 8' on the Great, which was a Dulciana in all but shape and was useful in quiet combinations, especially as the Great had octave, sub and unison off couplers, but the Choir Dulciana was never missed. Here at Fredericton, I find little use for the enclosed Dulciana on the Choir Organ, although I use the Viole d'Orchestre quite a lot to inject "quiet ginger" (Norman Cocker's term) into various combinations. There's also a very quiet Aeoline on the Echo and a Dolcissimo on the Swell which is more of a wheeze than anything else....

Regarding Hill mixtures, I think one must consider which period (and, indeed, which Hill) is being cited. Old William Hill mixtures can be very fine, whether or not they contained tierces (Ulster Hall and the large 2m 1865 organ at Kilmore, Co. Armagh), but the 1875 Hill at St. Thomas, Belfast never impressed me, despite playing it rather a lot (it has to be said, regarding the latter, that the old boys in Belfast maintained that the upperwork had been toned down for a previous organist in the first half of last century and wasn't opened up again at the restoration in 1998). I always liked the 1914 Hill at Londonderry Guildhall, tierce mixtures and all, and in many ways preferred it to that at the Ulster Hall. Hill mixtures were extensively vilified by Colonel Dixon and Henry Willis III, although Willis admitted that his grandfather had, in his later instruments, shaded off the upperwork in response to general taste, Hope-Jones, etc. I'm not the best person to talk about Hill organs, because I've never been that keen on most of them (with certain very notable exceptions, such as the cathedrals of Chester and Cork and the aforementioned one at Kilmore).

I wonder if the Diocesan Advisory Committee would have passed Peter Collins's organ at St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. Different diocese.....

Absolutely! The Collins organ looks very well and is certainly not too large in appearance. The existing Bishop organ, while pleasant and adequate for choir accompaniment, and probably just about adequate to lead hymn-singing, is too small and in the wrong place for any of the more ambitious uses to which Orford Church might rightly aspire, both in liturgical terms and in the use of the building for extra-liturgical purposes (such as might occur due to its setting within the orbit of the many musical happenings around Aldeburgh). The Diocesan Advisory Committee has blundered very badly and I hope the PCC will persuade the Chancellor to reverse their short-sighted decision.

I think it's fair enough to use the term if someone does a lot of concert-playing in different parts of the world, whether he/she has a permanent position or not. Peter Hurford was an example. I have been so-described (I suppose it looks good on posters), but I would not describe myself as such. It's true that, over the last forty years or so I may have got about a bit, but concertising has always been a side-line to my main occupation as a church or cathedral organist. I might mention in concert programmes that I have played in various countries. As an illustration of the difference between the two species, I mentioned on other threads that I had been in the UK recently. Elspeth and I were sitting in the airport at Toronto waiting for a connection to Gatwick, when a voice said, "Hello, you two!" It was David Briggs. Ten minutes chat with him defines the sort of schedule an International Concert Organist follows!

I just came across Volume XXIII, No. 91, January 1944 of "The Organ", which contains Charles Myers' article on the Claines organ. He uses the spelling "Winfield" throughout, so now I'm more confused than ever....

Remembering the Forster and Andrews origin of several large Comptons (Hull Minster and City Hall, St.George's, Stockport) leads me to suggest that Compton's work in such cases could have been the making of the instruments. F&A organs are sometimes reticent to the point of being gormless, especially the larger ones.

Being over for my father-in-law's funeral (in Orkney), I'm also visiting family in East Anglia. I was in Orford today and the Collins organ looks very well in its new home - north-west corner of the nave, facing south. The church is almost square, the east end having been long-ruined and the two eastern-most bays of the nave converted to a ritual chancel with a Victorian rood screen (the Bishop organ lives in the south chancel aisle), so it's acoustically fairly favourable.

The specification in Sumner is odd - I cannot recall a Compton organ actually being built to a scheme like that. Ian Bell's fascinating Compton article a few years back in the BIOS Reporter diminishes, even perhaps demolishes the commonly-accepted idea that extended ranks need a lot of special treatment. He maintained that, provided the voicer was careful about the upper and lower octaves, nothing particularly out-of-the-ordinary was required. As he, and others point out, what lets down extension so often is the fact that it could be used by less-skilled practitioners to provide cheap, instruments using any old pipe-work that might be available and a standard of workmanship which might not stand the test of time. Compton's organs were well-made and the voicing (particularly, I've always thought, of the reeds) of high quality regardless of the use or otherwise of extension.

Regarding Clucas, he states in his autobiography that his Responses were composed for a competition arranged by David Willcocks (a previous one was for a Jubilate which I think was won by Simon Preston) and that as the deadline approached he was torn between finishing them and going punting. He says that Willcocks was both surprised and pleased at the result and arranged for Oxford to publish the set. Forgive the lack of precision in the above. I'm in Kirkwall right now - playing for my father-in-law's funeral in St. Magnus Cathedral tomorrow - and so not able to refer to the actual volume in question!

Roger Fisher's house organ (a remarkable iinstrument http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D08060 ) has a derived tierce, partly in order to give students an idea of how tierce combinations should sound. It works pretty well in solo combinations, particularly (as observed earlier) with the Tremulant. As an example of a really vile extended tierce in a chorus mixture, this one takes some beating http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D01379.

The Novello edition (I think by Walter Emery) feels right to me, but it's all a matter of preference.

I think I goofed in spelling - it should be "Whinfield". Not only the console, but also the specification points to Whinfield, so it seems to me that the whole instrument is the result of a rebuild in the early years of last century. Other examples of Whinfield/Nicholson organs can be found on NPOR, including Claines (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03776) and Malvern (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=J00212). The latter is still there and has an Historic Organs Certificate and pictures of the console. I can't imagine that the present Nicholson firm would have re-used an old Whinfield console. The complications would have been considerable. Four bob for practice would certainly have been a lot all those years ago, unless you spent the whole day there!

Charlie Smethurst, the Manchester organ-builder, used to tune his mixtures and mutations to the tempered scale on the grounds that they would then not fight with the other stops (he also stopped off some upper notes of the mixtures at Belfast Cathedral to save having to tune them). Smethurst did a lot of work in Northern Ireland, especially during the Troubles when a lot of firms were chary of going there. He liked the place and, in fact, retired to Dunmurry (a suburb of Belfast), where the parish church not only has one of his organs but a stained glass window in memoriam.

Colin Washtell built an organ which used to stand in Reach Church, Cambridgeshire, where he was churchwarden. It was an extension job with three ranks (http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D00202) and was replaced by another instrument installed by Peter Collins a little over twenty years ago. He also rebuilt the organ at Burwell and may have worked on other instruments in the area. At Swaffham Prior, next to Reach , there are two churches next to each other in the same churchyard. St. Mary's has a one-manual by Miller of Cambridge, but for some years an electronic organ designed and built by Colin Washtell was also in the church. I played it once and it was pretty good for its time - about the same sort of tone quality as a Compton Electrone. It may still be there. The Reach organ was interesting, with a somewhat neo-classical stop-list and an unusual console in which the stops were push-buttons which lit up. There was indeed a firm called Electrophonic Organs. They advertised in "The Organ".

From the specification and the picture of the console, it looks as though this one was rebuilt by Nicholson in the early years of the 20th century when Arthur Winfield owned the company. NPOR does not mention this, but the console is a give-away (as is the spec). Thus - not a representative scheme for Hewins, although interesting in itself (Winfield's organs ternded to sound a good deal more impressive than their specifications would suggest).

So it appears that most foundations had their own Use, or at least their own variant. The Dublin set would accord with that - presumably they are in Jebb (I've never looked), unless they post-date him and are by someone like Sir Robert Stewart (who taught Stanford). Jebb was a Prebendary of Limerick. I wonder if they had their own Use also. A lot of Irish cathedrals maintained a choral foundation of some sort until the Disestablishment in 1871. Upon reflection, it seems logical that there were settings peculiar to individual foundations, since the sharing of them would be difficult unless they were published in some collection like Boyce's or, indeed, Jebb's. I suppose a modern parallel is to be found in these computer-savvy days in the fact that most foundations have their own pointing for the psalms!