David Drinkell

I downloaded this and played it at the cathedral lunch-time concert yesterday. To be honest, there's not much there that an averagely competent player couldn't have extemporised and the harmonic scheme is very unimaginative, rarely going outside the three-chord trick for long periods (sort of organic Status Quo). Still, the punters liked it. In particular, my friend George, who sings tenor in the cathedral choir and has a particular liking for French organ music (especially if it's Marian), said he found it very enjoyable. I reckon it would make a good teaching piece - none of it is very difficult.

Thanks - no, I haven't played it. My West Country meanderings were mostly confined to within a moped range of Bristol when I was a student. It never seems to have gained much fame, or to come into the "Rushworth's could really do it when they wanted to" class, like Holy Rude, Stirling. All the same, it must have been one of the largest entirely new organs built in Britain in the twentieth century (the old one got blitzed less than a week after Heles' finished a rebuild and was never heard in public).

Attwood's Dirge on the Death of Nelson? Sowande's Joshua fit de Battle ob Jericho?

I'm intrigued - where is this Foghorn? I can hear foghorns from my console, but the organ, despite its Hope-Jones ancestry never had a diaphone...

Funny you should mention Gloucester, because I was just thinking that HN&B consoles round off the sharp corner where Casavants' caused me to cuss. I must be thinking of somewhere else, or maybe it's a different corner.

How is it that, having played the same instrument almost every day for the past eleven years, one still manages to bang one's knee on a sharp edge of the console when getting off the stool???

I don't think so - I get to see it because it gets mailed to Queen's College, where I am in charge of the chapel music.

To return to the topic - I've just seen the new Merton organ on the cover of 'The American Organist'. My word! it's a handsome looking beast! There's an interesting article inside, too (rare for TAO, which is not a patch on The Organists' Review) by the builder, describing the thoughts and planning behind the new instrument.

Hornpipe from The Water Music?

St. Martin's, Belfast commissioned a patronal hymn a few years back. I can't remember the author, but he was a prolific hymn-writer. The instigator was the then parish organist John Crothers, a great hymn enthusiast, who now lives in Paris. St. Leonard-at-the-Hythe, Colchester had a patronal hymn, "Blessed Leonard, Saint, confessor" written by the then Rector, Fr. Raymond Smith. He recycled it in his next parish by changing the name of the saint! His successor, Fr. James Hale, wrote a tune. It was not bad, although a little grammatically wanting, but people preferred the tune of "Who are these like stars appearing".

Listening to the webcasts of New College services, it sounds as if the organ does its job very well, and I thought the same on the few occasions I heard it live. I like the look of it, too, but I am something of a George Pace fan. Whatever one thinks of GD&B organs tonally (I usually like them, although my tastes tend not to be towards the neo-classical), they seem to be well-built and finished.

I think there was some confusion inherent in the nomenclature because the Compton staff referred to polyphones as 'pentaphones' and possibly to cubes as 'polyphones'. Ken Jones built a cube bass for one of his jobs with the mouth facing up. At the opening, a trumpeter used it to put his music on and when the pipe spoke itblew the whole lot over the edge of the gallery. The acoustic bass here, with independent quints in the bottom octave working with the Tibia Profunda (the original organ was a Hope Jones, although now it's a Casavant and they kept the terminology) works very well. The fourth below for the top five notes of the 32' octave works well at St. Magnus Cathedral although, as pcnd says, it shouldn't. I've rarely found a 10 2/3 Quint working all the way up that was any good above the bottom octave. Not enough resultant, too much Pink Panther.....

Yes, you should definitely have the organ insured as a separate item.

Like the Durufle Requiem, I found playing the Chichester Psalms to be very satisfying, but I wouldn't consider that the latter were well laid out for the organ. I find Britten's organ writing to be much more idiomatic. I had an unnerving experience the first time I played the Bernstein. It was in St. Magnus Cathedral. The choir was in the crossing and the organ is between the third and fourth bays of the quire, speaking west from behind a carved screen which might be mistaken for a reredos. In order to see the conductor, I had a closed circuit television, and in order to keep in time I had a set of headphones. There was no opportunity for a rehearsal with the percussionist - Greg Knowles of the Fires of London. Since Greg is a stunningly brilliant player, this was no problem, but on the first chord he whacked everything in sight, creating a sound like a bomb going off. The microphone took unkindly to this, went on the blink and I had to take off the headphones and play a little ahead of what I was hearing from the choir all the way through. Actually, I heard a few bombs go off after I moved to Belfast and Greg's opening cannonade was a good deal more impressive, although less structurally damaging.... It's more difficult to do the crescendo with a Positive Organ, but with a brightly voiced enclosed choir, one can get a good, long crescendo. It's maybe a matter of adding fullness rather than brightness to an extent, the brightness being there to start with but kept down by the swell boxes. I suppose a programmable crescendo pedal might be a help, but I don't trust ours. Did Britten write the Jubilate for the Rothwell or the Harrison at Windsor (if, indeed, he gave any consideration to what the organ was like)? Walford Davies used to enthuse about the wonderful crescendo obtainable with the Rothwell system of stop-keys, although I bet he wouldn't have liked the Britten Jubilate! There are places in Howells where a marked crescendo is impossible for anyone not possessing the limbs of a Hindu god. I presume he knew that the crescendo was inherent in the music (as it is in the vocal parts of the Britten). Gerontius, yes; Belshazzar's Feast, yes; but did either composer quite manage something like that again? Leaving aside the War Requiem (which I think is marvellous, although I know it's not universally admired), let's not forget Peter Grimes, which re-established English opera at a stroke and remains a major player in the repertoire. OK, I'm an East Anglian so I'm prejudiced. I can shut my eyes, listen to the Sea Interludes and imagine myself on Aldeburgh beach watching the sun glint on the grey expanse of the North Sea, listening to the wind in the rigging and the waves on the shingle, all under those broad East Anglian skies. (The opening of Vaughan Williams' Norfolk Rhapsody has a similar effect). I don't think either Elgar or Walton ever scored a bulls-eye quite like that, or that they set precedents which no one following could ignore. And Britten made music much more accessible to a wide swathe of folk. Youth music would not be what it is today without Noyes Fludde. I was involved in quite a few first performances of Peter Maxwell Davies works involving young people (the part of Widow Grumble in Cinderella was written for my wife, who was then a pupil at Kirkwall Grammar School), and I don't believe that such a repertoire would exit without the example which Britten set.

Each to his own - we've been here before - but I've always admired Britten's organ accompaniments, especially the Jubilate and Rejoice in the Lamb. There are some tricky patches in the Jubilate, but I find it more organ-friendly than, say Kelly in C Magnificat and no more hairy than the introduction to Stanford in A. The crescendo is difficult - what usually works for me is to start it as bright as one can get away with, let the choir do most of the crescendo (a lot of which is inherent in the music) and do what I can with the odd tap on the swell pedal and possibly a couple of pistons en route. It helps to have more than one enclosed department. I love Rejoice in the Lamb and particularly how well the organ illustrates the various movements. It's not hard to play (or sing), especially compared with something like the Chichester Psalms. Noyes Fludde is another example of the imaginative and effective use of the organ. I like playing Britten's accompaniments because I find them fun and a refreshing change from a good deal of the rest of the repertoire, much as I love it. We had a modest celebration of the Britten centenary last Sunday and did the Missa Brevis (first performance in Newfoundland, probably the first liturgical performance in Atlantic Canada). A wonderfully effective piece, in my opinion. It went down well, too. The Dean thought it was wonderful (Chorus: Yes! Yes! With all our faults we love our Dean) and there were a lot of nice comments from the congregation. We're doing the Jubilate this Sunday. I don't think it can be disputed that Britten's church music broke new ground and that no subsequent composer in the genre could ignore him. I have to say that I played the P&F on a Theme of Vittoria, but I still can't make much of it!

The Dutch composer Van Noordt left several pieces founded on Calvinist psalm melodies http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Noordt,_Anthoni_Van Peter Maxwell Davies' Three Voluntaries are all founded on psalm tunes. I gave the official premiere of these at a St. Magnus Festival way-back-when, but I never really took to them.... Purcell's (or possibly not) Voluntary on the Old Hundredth is worth a whirl. In its original version, it's a French basse de trompette, recit de cornet (there was a memorable recording of it at Adlington Hall, and I remember playing it on Couperin's organ at St-Gervais, Paris). The souped-up romantic arrangement a la Thalben Ball works well if you have that sort of instrument.

Interesting exercise - Design 5 manual Harrison Organ.... Violone 32, Gross Geigen 16, Double Claribel Flute 16, Open Diapason I, Open Diapason II, Geigen, Hohl Flute, Stopped Diapason, Quint 5 1/3, Octave, Geigen Principal, Wald Flute, Octave Quint, Super Octave, Harmonics 17.19.21.22, Mixture 15.19.22.26.29, Contra Tromba, Tromba, Trompette Harmonique, Octave Tromba.... etc....

Angels has a very clever and effective organ accompaniment. We used to do it at Belfast Cathedral, where the huge acoustic suited it perfectly. I believe that we introduced a number of Tavener pieces to Ireland, including Song for Athene, Funeral Ikos and Love bade me welcome.

Blimey! I didn't know that was on YouTube! I think the Chappell signature tune is a better piece than its successor, but that's just personal preference. It's certainly easier to play. I've found it to be popular as a wedding postlude for those who want something other than the usual suspects. It was an inspired idea to record both this and the present theme at New College, Oxford - a fine but very distinctive instrument.

I suppose that whoever wrote the original release may not have been particularly organ-minded, or Compton-minded. In any case, Downside was perhaps Compton's most famous organ and remains something of a mile-stone, and Southwark was one of the last brand-new Comptons of any size. Derby is less easy to explain, although I suppose a Cathedral organ will be perceived as being prestigious (I wonder what they were meaning to do at Portsmouth before the organ got blitzed in the Works). Hull, although big, wasn't new, and lot of it is 'straight'.

Howells apparently said that 'everyone' got knighthoods and was more proud of having been created Companion of Honour (CH). I've never seen it written that he was ever actually offered a knighthood.

It's possible that both Leighton and Mathias might have got knighthoods if they'd lived longer. Both died relatively young. Then again, a knighthood might have been declined if offered (e.g. Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells). But it may well be the case that musicians aren't fashionable candidates for such things any more. I believe S.S. Wesley turned down a knighthood and took a pension instead. That's a thought....

If I hadn't been sure before, on Sunday I had the misfortune to hear the strains of the device installed in a local United Church (in a tower which resembles an attempt at a moon rocket by the Teletubbies). My! it was dire!!!!

Pen-and-ink drawing by Martin Cottam (as seen in 'Organists' Review'). Quite brilliant, I think, as are his other works. http://www.martincottam.co.uk/viewgallery.php?gallery=pen_and_ink&start=2

You're right! I have a terrible habit of repeating myself....