David Drinkell

Sir George Thalben Ball 1982, I suppose. There's Dame Gillian Weir, of course, but she doesn't come into the "cathedral organist (or one of similar standing)" category. Francis Jackson, in his autobiography 'Music for a Long While", says that he has never worried that a knighthood did not come his way - he certainly deserves one.

Yes, indeed - congratulations! Also, Brian Hunter from Northern Ireland has been awarded the MBE. Brian is a person through whom music flows naturally, as singer, organist and conductor and it was always a pleasure to work with him. A really nice guy, too. When I saw the thread title, I thought it was a reference to the saucepan-lid noise activated by a piston at Holy Rude, Stirling....

Yes, of course! I had forgotten about St. John, Beckenham. Willis was very pleased with this one and Sam Clutton (I think) waxed lyrical about it in "The Organ". If I remember rightly, he was particularly enthusiastic about the Cornet, which he said would do practically everything except make the tea. Stowmarket URC (1953), another small Willis III in a very good acoustic, has a Sylvestrina, but the undulating stop is called Voix Celeste and is (or was) prepared for only. this instrument had a good write-up from Andrew Hayden in "Choir and Organ" fairly recently.

I think it was T.H. Harrison who described zinc as "a cheap and spurious metal", as is at least inferred by a quote in Elvin's "The Harrison Story" p.67 - but Harrison could have borrowed his words from FHW (so could Elvin, for that matter). It is known that Willis III was constrained by funding at Southwark and didn't do as much to the organ as he would have liked. A lot of the work was aimed at overcoming what Willis perceived as the muffling effect of a very bad organ chamber - it is an awkwardly placed instrument - and I suppose raising the pressures and applying compensator-amplifiers were logical steps in that direction. The late Harry Coles, whose enthusiasm for Southwark and its organ was all-consuming, said that Willis wanted to put his new console on the south side, near the organ, but was not allowed, but he took the Choir Organ out of the chamber and put it on the north side of the Quire with the console next to it. One doesn't hear the main organ well from there and the time lag is horrendous. As to Harrisons' putting things back to their original sound, I would guess that they had enough experience of restoring Lewis's work to know what was needed, and enough knowledge of original Lewis reed-work to get it right. I wonder what Arthur Harrison would have made of it if he had restored the organ. Maybe Ripon Cathedral supplies some clues, but I've never heard it. There's a nice article in "Organists' Review" about the little-known big Willis III in Sheffield City Hall. I heard it once, at a university graduation, and the acoustics are - as Willis said - truly appalling. Here was a large organ, voiced in Willis's forthright style, sounding as if it was in the next room. The author refers to the Sylvestrina Celeste as being unique, but this is not so. There's another one at All Saints, Hockerill, Essex and another at Chirk Methodist (ex-Lon Pobty Chapel, Bangor) - therefore probably a few more about the place. It may have been unique when first installed. Willis got the idea for the Sylvestrina from Skinner's Erzahler, but I don't know how much was a copy and how much a development. They are nice stops and worth reviving. Canterbury had one on the (unenclosed) Choir Organ before the last rebuild.

Hmmm - Ouseley invented the Pyramidon, which seems to have been a similar sort of device. What should we call the examples above? Corollaphon? Toyotiana? Morgana?

Well, Convocation Week is over and the organ never got fixed. It was good practise in playing in the upper half of the pedal-board - much more than Boris Ord's advice, "you should aim to get up there at least once a week." I substituted BWV 565 for the F&F in G minor (and got an audible chuckle from the audience when it started), but otherwise played the music as printed in the programmes. Actually, tonally it wasn't bad for a cheap toaster. The Great Principal 8' with the 'box open' sounded just like a Walker Large Open and the build-up was very satisfactory. It also avoided the tendency to have more stops than its intended home needed. Draw-stop console, although the action was a bit chunky. Great: Bourdon 16, Principal 8, Gedeckt 8, Octave 4, Super Octave 2, Mixture III, Trumpet 8, Chimes Swell: Bourdon 8, Viole de Gambe 8, Viole Celeste 8, Chimney Flute 4, Nazard 2 2/3, Flautino 2, Cymbel III, Oboe 8, Tremulant Pedal: Sub Bass 16, Octave 8, Bourdon 8, Super Octave 4, Fagott 16 3 unison couplers But I wish I could have used the bottom half of the pedals......

Convocation Week this week at Memorial University, nine ceremonies held in the Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's, yours truly as Convocation Organist. The instrument (no names, no pack-drill, but the firm was once famous for juke-boxes and before that produced some splendid pipe organs with consoles that came up through the floor) is a smallish two-manual (there is a room back-stage full of parts from its predecessor - think Carlo). Arrived there on Monday afternoon and found that the bottom 16 Pedal notes weren't working. Mildly alarming, because the programmes were printed last week and the organ music includes Bach Passacaglia and Great G minor, Crown Imperial, Widor Toccata, Carillon Sortie, etc. Hammered through today as best I could: Susato La Mourisque and Vierne Carillon de Longport (not too many problems there) at the first ceremony, Purcell Trumpet Tune ("Cheer, boys cheer, me mother wants the mangle") and Bach Passacaglia at the second. Managed the Passacaglia somehow and fortunately didn't need to play the fugue. Local toaster repairer in there now scratching his head and wielding a screwdriver in a purposeful fashion. It's amazing what we do when we have to. Wish me luck for tomorrow!

By extension, anyone who has transported organ pipes on a roof rack will tell you that it is a good idea - to say the least - to arrange them so that the feet face backwards, so as to "avoid a symphony on the M4" as one person put it. Elsewhere, some pipes were being transported and met with an accident somewhere remote up in the hills. One got wedged by a gate-post and the place acquired a reputation for being haunted because of the unearthly sounds which could be heard when the wind blew. When thou from hence away art past Every night and all To whinny muir thou com'st at last And Christ receive thy soul. Lyke Wake Dirge (Poem of the Yorkshire Moors, as set by Benjamin Britten et al)

RIP. John was a fine gentleman, his erudition was modestly carried and he was always friendly and interesting to talk with.

In Northern Ireland, we used to say that the difference between a terrorist and an organist was that you could negotiate with a terrorist.

The authorities at Notre Dame put up a sign on the console with "Defence de fumer" written in very large letters. Vierne replaced it with an ash-tray.

I have one of those! I can't remember where I got it. It was on the console at St. Magnus Cathedral for a while, but I haven't exhibited it since.

Love it! Colin's description of how to start the blower at Battersea sounds very much like the drill for firing up a Hammond. I had to play for a wedding on one a few weeks ago....

Salisbury Cathedral tuner's book: "Tuba fails to go in on General Cancel (very dangerous!)." St. Botolph, Colchester tuner's book: "If you bang Great very hard, Choir notes squeak." (from tuner) "Don't bang it, then." Christ Church, Colchester tuner's book: "One of the front pipes has fallen out." As the tuner remarked, "I might not have noticed that."

Strewth - I see what you mean! Thank you. Very much the Victorian medievalist's guess about what a gothic organ should look like. Both organs are by Lewis, I notice.

He might just have managed the celeste with the Positif Bourdon and a half-draw on the Montre....

Redenhall is an amazing organ - certainly the best Holdich still in existence. Anyone who is near should try to get there! The church is easy to find - a whacking great tower sticking up through the trees - you can se it for miles.

I cant think of any proper organ case by Burges. I would imagine he would have gone for pipe racks, possibly with embellished ironwork, as the most medieval-looking solution, and possibly the new nave organ follows a similar idea. The main organ at Cork has for most of its life been in a pit on the north side - it was notorious for it! - so as to avoid spoiling the view. It sounded very well, though. As someone who isn't keen on old Hills, it was always one of the exceptions to my general lack of enthusiasm. There was no case, just panelling over which one could look down upon the pipes.

This makes it the biggest organ in Ireland by a long way (about 15 speaking stops).

Gooderstone in Norfolk had a Bryceson with two stops - Large Open Diapason and Flute 4. The diapason scaled 7" at bottom C. The Flute made little difference to it and was not much use on its own. Boggis moved it to Chedgrave and replaced the flute with a Dulciana, but in recent years it's been replaced by a toaster.

In old English organs, the Stopped Diapason often helped the rather leisurely speech of the Open, especially in the bass, as well as complementing its harmonic picture. I often feel that, quite apart from scaling and voicing, the simple presence of the Stopped Diapason acts as a binder and regulator to everything else in such instruments, possibly due to the "pull" that occurs between pipes planted close together. As Bicknell noted, in the British "Imperial" organ (as he classed it), individual registers were so voiced that they did not need help, either tonally or in quickness of speech. Thus, it is pointless, or even damaging to the sound, to draw the flute with the diapason. This applies particularly to the Large Open, which overshadows any other flue stop at that pitch, unless there's a really big flute like a tibia. Sometimes, the colour can be varied by drawing other stops with the small diapason - a Harrison Geigen can give a noticeable fizz and also blends nicely with the flute. Is it just me, or do others agree that, quite often, while the Large Open is big (of course!), the Small Open can be just a touch too small to support what goes on top and therefore needs a little bit of help? I've noticed this often, in instruments by all sorts and conditions of builders. At Henbury Church, Bristol, the No.1 was of much smaller scale than the No.2, the latter being old (possibly George England) and the difference was in the voicing. Either of the two would support the chorus, but they didn't blend with each other at all, and when you added the No.1 it was essential to put in the No.2 - at least, I thought so - not every one noticed....

Ah yes! I remember the chancel organ from many, many years ago when I was on holiday round those parts (I also made the acquaintance of the wonderful Yates at Kilkhampton). I remember going to ringing practice at Marldon and a few other towers round there - traditional Devon call-changes including raising and lowering the bells before and after each "peal". The G&G post-dates my visit by a long way!

Neil Richerby (Lammermuir Pipe Organs) has Chair Larigot and Great Quinte by half-draw from their respective mixtures on his organ at St. Mary's, Haddington, Lothian, about which I have raved before on this forum. One occasionally finds a soft pedal stop obtained by reduced wind to the Bourdon. Wells-Kennedy added one at Ballywalter Church, Co. Down, some time after the Walker rebuild (to Lord Dunleath's specification) of the Conacher organ there. There are two drawstops, though. I've mentioned this one before - the Walker at Wivenhoe Church, Essex, had an octopod Swell consisting of Open, Stopped, "Echo Gamba, Lieblich Bass", Voix Celeste and Oboe. In 1971, Cedric Arnold replaced the Gamba and Celeste with a Gemshorn 4' and Mixture II, to the instrument's great advantage (it sounded more like an old Walker than it did originally!). When I gave a concert to mark the organ's 125th birthday in 2010 (having played it a lot for weddings in my teens so the organist - he's still there - could play cricket), I found that an absolutely ravishing celeste could be obtained by half-drawing the Swell Open with the Stopped Diapason. It doesn't work everywhere, but it does here. Our hosts' organ at St. Andrew, Holborn, has an "Undulant" which works on the same principle, but done "scientific". I had to explain to the lady playing the hand-blown Bevington at Trinity Church, Newfoundland, that it was a bad idea to half draw the stops to make them softer. John Budgen related a similar story to me about an organist in East Anglia, also of the Essex church where they wanted a balanced swell pedal, despite that fact that there was no swell-box.

Yup, south aisle it is! The church only has one aisle, and that's on the side facing away from the road, so the exterior view from the churchyard is the more impressive one. George Thalben Ball had a story about cruising across the chancel at the helm of a well-oiled harmonium. Re proximity to the North Pole, this is actually the furthest south I've ever lived. It's just that you get the Gulf Stream going north and we get the Labrador Current coming south, and a lot of snow. In fact, the winter just past (I hope) was the mildest since I came here thirteen years ago. I didn't have to dig the car out once (although a couple of times I parked facing downhill so I could get out by hitting the gas and ploughing through it - two Christmasses ago, I went down the hill sideways because it was the only way to get to the Cathedral). There's no snow left now, but we could get another lot yet. Now Orkney is on the same level as the top end of Labrador, but that's a long way further north. Salvation cometh neither from the east nor from the west: nor yet from the south (Psalm 75) Binham, referred to by SL, is a wonderful remnant of a huge priory church. It had a very short-lived cowboy rebuild of a harmless little job by ex-N&B Middleton, but now has a rather splendid W.C. Mack (Great Yarmouth), possibly built for him by Fincham and installed here by David Miller, Ex-East Harling. Organs in Norfolk like to get about....

Norman and Beard built a lot of small two manuals like this throughout East Anglia over the years, having the capacity in their Norwich factory to turn them out quickly and a number of skilled workers who could voice and finish them on site. In this latter respect, they differed from Harrison & Harrison up north, where the final finishing by "Mr. Arthur" was almost a mystic rite, with silent acolytes acting on his orders. Where churches were particularly strapped for cash, the Norwich works store-keeper, Henry "Paddy" Benson (Archbishop Runcie was his grandson) assembled a number of competent instruments from parts of others. N&B's mass production - or very nearly - means that the instruments may appear to be much of a muchness, but in fact each one has its own particular character and they are nearly all nice little jobs. Langham is a fine church, much bigger than one would expect for the size of the village. It was heavily restored in the nineteenth century and is a plain, clean and bright interior with a couple of stunning Burne-Jones windows. The organ is in the north aisle towards the west end, speaking into the nave, and is therefore very well placed to do its job.