David Drinkell

My wife and I have quite often watched part of the Christmas Midnight Mass from St. Peter's after getting home from our own and were struck on numerous occasions by the fact that, after the choir had sung unaccompanied for a passage, the organ seemed to have gone sharp.....

Forumites might know that Alfred Hollins wrote an autobiography "A Blind Musician looks back". Trolling through the IMSLP website, I found that the book is available for free download (as well as lot of music). An interesting read, and very welcome on a day like today (New Brunswick experiencing very severe winter weather: the temperature having gone up from -23C to -3, right now we are having blizzards, freezing rain, the lot). Cancelled choir practice tonight, hope I can get mobile for organ concert tomorrow lunch-time.....

I prefer the slightly brighter effect that a sharp celeste gives when added to the in-tune rank. A flat celeste gives a more sombre effect, for which I don't care, although others may well have the opposite preference.

There was also a Compton in Wadham Street Baptist Church in Weston - a standard four-rank job, taken out when the church was closed - and I believe their job in the Odeon (complete with jelly-mould console) is still there and gets an airing from time to time. The Compton at Victoria Road Methodist Church was "rebuilt" by Roger Taylor (an experienced man as regards Comptons, who kept Downside in good fettle for many years) and there was a small residence organ by them which apparently went to a church in Bedminster, Bristol, but I don't know which one. Chelsea, I believe, still runs on a good deal of its original mechanism. The Shepherd brothers did some renovation to the Paddington job a couple of years ago. Less well known than Chelsea, it's a fine beast, and unusual in that it contains a number of straight ranks in Choir and Swell retained from the previous instrument. There's also a Casson Positive in the crypt with a gorgeous Comper case. I don't know the Stockport organ, but comments after Rushworths' rebuilt it and reduced it to three manuals tended to be to the effect that it hadn't been improved and was a good deal less interesting than it had been as Compton left it.

I've heard more than one experienced tuner say that quite often a little tickle with a feather round the mouth will bring a pipe back into tune, whereas the less adept might fiddle with the slide or (worse still) take the cone to a pipe as well as taking it out and blowing it. One sure sign of a good, well-built organ is that it holds its tuning well. Philip Prosser, who looked after the organ in Belfast Cathedral, recounted that when he was with HN&B they were contracted for a day's maintenance each month at Peterborough Cathedral and the problem was that it stayed in tune so well that there was very little to be done. At Belfast, the tuning was as solid as a rock, everything being of highest quality (Billy Jones reeds, Blossom strings, etc) and the very rare bad note was almost invariably due to a slide slipping or the weight coming off a reed. I don't remember even the Vox Humana giving trouble. At St. John's, Newfoundland, we had no end of trouble due to muck falling into the pipes from to ceiling above them. The Tuba was particularly prone to going off speech (it was in the Solo box but the box had shutters on top). There was a lot of slipping a five-dollar bill between reed and shallot to clean things up. North American organs tend not to have the reeds hooded, so any dirt gets funnelled straight down onto the reed. Life is easier at Fredericton in that respect - the organ is clean inside and there's no dust to mess up the regulation.

St. Mary Magdalen, Paddington and St. Luke's, Chelsea have that type of console. Downside, of course, was the original and is still there. Hull City Hall and St. George's, Stockport used to have illuminated stops but they were replaced by conventional drawstops in 1985 and 1981 respectively.

He also claimed to be able to tell from what material the girls' clothes were made by the sound they made when they walked. As to the alcohol, I can well believe that blowing into a reed pipe after consumption of West Country rough cider could have dire results. Maybe one reason that old French reeds sound the way they do is because of the consumption of vin ordinaire by the voicers and tuners......

I'm not sure that I can agree with Contrabombarde's hypothesis regarding the frequency of cathedral rebuilds. There have been some recent examples of relatively modern tracker organs needing major action work. On a smaller scale, I have experienced severe cyphering on modern tracker actions - two that come to mind are a British instrument in the music department of a school in Surrey and a Belgian one in an RC church in Essex. In the latter case, I think the whole thing was engineered on too light a scale to stand up to normal use. As the boss of the firm which maintained it observed, one wouldn't get trouble like that from a typical Henry Jones centenarian. The reason for multiple rebuilds is more likely to be that old components had been re-used, so that different parts of the instrument tended to wear out quicker than others. Then, of course, tastes change and the correct solution fifty years ago might not be the best today. With regard to electric action, it was dangerously easy for cheap builders to do a cheap job with a short life-expectation. In North America, where confidence in planning and building electric actions was arrived at much sooner than in the UK, it is quite usual to encounter 80 year old electric actions which are functioning well, given normal maintenance and the usual periodic overhaul. In the cases of both the Casavant cathedral organs over which I have presided (St. John's, Newfoundland 2003-20016, Fredericton, New Brunswick 2016 to date), the rare action problems which have presented themselves have hardly ever been due to the electrical side of things. Back home, there are a number of elderly Comptons which are still soldiering on with their original actions. No one is without prejudice, so I will confess (again) that my preference is for electric action with a full set of octave couplers so that the fullest advantage may be had from the pipe-work (North American organs were planned with the couplers as an integral part of the tonal scheme, but the principal holds true with British organs also). "Rushworths' could really do it when they wanted to", as the old boys used to say, and Malvern is a prime example. I haven't been there since the latest re-planning, but I thought it was gorgeous when I played it in the 1990s. Holy Rude, Stirling is another, possibly their finest (although I have some doubts about some minor tonal fiddling which took place over the years). And I've always preferred the Rushworth in the Chapel at Christ's Hospital to the Hill in the Great Hall (but, as forumites will know, I am in general a terrible heretic when it comes to most old Hills - I would probably have got on well with Colonel Dixon!). I hope all here had a fine Christmas (the cathedral choir here did a mighty fine Charpentier Messe de Minuit - I was proud of them), and that the New Year will be happy and prosperous.

Henry Willis 4 told a party of students visiting the Petersfield works in about 1977 that one shouldn't blow into reed pipes because the alcohol on one's breath corroded the brass.

I guess that one reason for the popularity of pneumatic action was that the wind was already there, whereas electricity was not easily available. Early electric actions relied on batteries, etc, which needed constant attention and renewal (it has been suggested that Hope-Jones actions often suffered from the problem of maintenance and from lack of knowledge, as well as from bad-mouthing from those who disapproved of him and what he stood for). Father Willis's 1886 electric action at Canterbury was still working well when the organ was rebuilt in the nineteen-forties (it was the pneumatics that failed), but generally, British builders had neither the confidence or the interest to develop electric action until John Compton did so and Henry Willis III copied Ernest Skinner's system. In North America, efficient electric actions were being built from the early years of the twentieth century.

A really lovely Lammermuir organ is at St. Mary's, Haddington, Lothian. It looks fantastic, sounds beautiful and is a delight to play (despite having to turn round to change the stops on the Chair Organ), including acquitting itself well in some schools of music for which one would imagine it would be unsuitable.

I remember hearing "La Nativité" played on this organ by Alistair Jones (then Director of Music at the cathedral school) when I was a student, c.1977, and the organ did indeed sound fab (and, perhaps surprisingly) very well suited to the music.

Walker pneumatics have a nice touch, but I believe are rather demanding in terms of maintenance, needing more frequent adjustment than some other types. It has been preferred practice over the last twenty years or so to restore, rather than replace, pneumatic actions, and our leading firms have a good deal of experience in this branch of the craft. I gave the re-opening concert at Colchester Town Hall a few years ago after Harrisons' restoration of Norman & Beard's pneumatics. The cathedral's website items refers to "antiquated technology" but does not say (in so many words) that it is proposed to replace the pneumatics, although it certainly infers as much. I wonder if the role of the organ in terms of usage time has changed that much, since Walkers' built it early last century (they would presumably have had daily Matins as well as Evensong in those days), but other factors such as modern heating may not have been kind to the action. Time will tell - as Bernard Edmonds said when our hosts rebuilt St. Paul's, "I too could have told them exactly what should have been done, but fortunately nobody asked me!". One thing is certain, tonally Bristol is one of our most beautiful cathedral organs and I'm sure no one will want to alter it in that respect.

In the list of organ-builders, we shouldn't forget that our hosts performed a restoration, 1989/90, retaining the pneumatic action and adding a second mixture to the Great (the organ was previously hard-pushed to support a big congregation in the nave, although it was and is of peerless beauty when accompanying in the Quire).

The celeste is tuned slightly sharp (about 3 beats a second) or flat to the other rank, producing a pleasant heterodyning when the two are drawn together. In some organs, the celeste is also pleasant used with other stops. The in-tune rank may not be exactly the same scale and voicing as the celeste, depending on the builder and the effect desired. I believe it is better to tune the celeste to the in-tune rank throughout the compass, rather than tuning the middle octave and doing the rest in octaves. With the latter practice, the upper notes can be unpleasantly quick in their beat.

It's been pointed out, not least by skilled organ-builders, that planting the undulating rank next to the in-tune rank causes the two to pull into tune with each other, thereby negating the celeste effect. Thus, it is common practice to put the undulant next to the Open Diapason, away from the salicional, gamba or what-have-you. This would spoil the effect of Open and Celeste called for, for example, in Whitlock's Folk Tune. However, Whitlock was a Compton fan and probably thinking in terms of his Compton at Bournemouth. In such an instrument, each rank might stand on its own soundboard and therefore it would be quite practicable to draw the celeste with the diapason and achieve the effect Whitlock specifies. On the subject of celestes, I (nearly) always find that a sharp celeste is a much nicer sound than a flat one. When the 1908 Walker at St. Leonard-at-the-Hythe, Colchester was ably restored by ex-Walker man Ken Canter in 1973, he tuned the celeste flat and I didn't like it. He said that Walker celestes were normally tuned flat, but sharpened it for me and the old effect returned. I still think it's one of the nicest celestes that I know. Can anyone tell us whether certain builders tuned celestes sharp or flat? I think I have previously mentioned on this forum the organ at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, where I went to hold keys in 1971 when John Budgen (Bishop & Son) called in to give it a check-over prior to the opening recital by Gordon Phillips. The church organist asked for the celeste to be tuned flat, but there wasn't enough length in the pipes, so it had to be left sharp. Afterwards, the organist said what a difference it made to have the celeste flat.....

So, as we can see, there were a number of touring organs and it's likely that several of them are now installed somewhere or other. Virgil Fox had at least one Allen touring organ (as well as the earlier "Black Beauty" by Rodgers). At least one of Carlo's was advertised for sale in "Musical Opinion". I remember playing the ex-Free Trade Hall Compton Electrone in its subsequent home in a house in St. John's Wood. An impressive beast for its period (it followed closely on the heels of the temporary Electrone which Compton made for the Festival Hall before the Harrison went in). Sorry, getting off-topic here......

I have an idea that the then-current Allen did spend some time at Pershore when Carlo was elsewhere. I know that one of them was in Harwich Church, Essex for a while (Carlo's friend Michael Woodward, the record producer was connected with the church), where it was much appreciated. The resident organ, an historic one by Flight which was reputed to have been sunk and salvaged on the way from London, was in an extreme state of decrepitude when I first played it, c.1969, and had apparently been so for many years. It was finally restored (by Peter Bumstead of Ipswich) in 1992. A touring organ was also stored in St. Mary, Southtown, Great Yarmouth, for a period, and last time Carlo played at Belfast Cathedral, what was billed as the touring organ was in fact the one from Beaconsfield Parish Church, Bucks, shipped over for the occasion.

I was on holiday in the area in 1970 (aged 14) and I went into Bridlington Priory and found an old gentleman playing the organ. He said he was in to play through the Mendelssohn Sonatas (which he did very well) and that it was a good organ but had too many mixtures ("I don't like mixtures!"). But he let me play (a fine job!) and also gave me a phone number for Mervyn Byers at Selby Abbey, so I had a session there too. I also sat next to Francis Jackson while he accompanied Evensong ("Me in G") at York and played afterwards - a formative experience! Such acts of kindness made a deep impression on me and I know other people in my generation will say the same.

When other essentials are fulfilled (which they seem to be in the context of this sort of organ), I could believe that an octave tierce would be quite a useful thing to have. There's one at Durham Cathedral, although that's big enough to have everything else and to spare....

Not so unusual for a Methodist "Central Hall" type complex - several had organs with a rather orchestral/theatre slant to them, a number being by Spurden Rutt. Southfields Central hall in Surrey was an example: http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N05504 Or, at the other end of the candle (liturgically speaking) Rutt's organ at St. Cyprian, Clarence Gate, London (aptly described as "ripe"): http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N17044

Thank-you. The Nicholson rebuild is now 36 years old, so I guess it may be due for another going-over, particularly if older material was re-used. Even some new tracker jobs of that age have needed work in that time.....

So what's happening at Newcastle? Are they having it done up again?

Fantasy on "O Canada", Cat Suite (very good and not at all serious!), Suite du deuxieme ton. There's lots more that I want to play, when I get round to learning them....

Garth Edmundson's Toccata-Prelude on Vom Himmel hoch? Hollywood meets J.S.Bach. Our mutual friends Ian Sadler introduced me to it - he said it was a favourite of Harry Gabb's at St. Paul's.