David Drinkell

As an ex-organist of St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, my choir knows full well what I mean when I tell them to give it laldy! When I was in those parts, the previous edition (CH3) was in use - musically quite daring in places but not adventurous as regarding texts (it was just that bit too early for some writers). The purple book, which I encounter when back in Orkney on holiday, is rather self-consciously Scottish - all shortbread and tartan. I have great admiration for John Bell, but the new book has too much of him and the rather twee theology which a lot of Iona-based stuff puts out. And it has wrecked many hymns by textual change.

Lo! my son! What you need is electric action and pitman chests.....

Don't tell anyone, but I quite like 'Shine, Jesus, shine' once in a while. At least it's singable, unlike the crooners such as 'Be not afraid' and 'Eagle Swings' - or the stuff for the middle-aged rock-star wannabes like 'Days of Elijah'. I was interested to find, when I arrived here, that 'Twentieth Century Light Music Group' hymn-tunes were not known - remember that pink book? When I played the offerings for 'At the Name of Jesus' and 'O Jesus I have promised' as examples to the students at our local seminary, they cracked up with laughter (fortunately, 'King's Weston' and 'Wolvercote' are the expected tunes for those hymns here). On the British market, I reckon 'Common Praise' is a fine, well-edited and varied collection for anyone who doesn't need the liturgical bits of the English Hymnal (old or New), and it has a sensible attitude to old texts - basically, if written before 1900 leave it alone. So many hymnals these days are totally ruined by messed-up texts.

It failed to catch on in churches because by the time it came out, Dearmer had become so ecumenical that the theology of the book was super-light in order not to offend anyone. It was also rather gung-ho - muscular Christianity and all that. In schools, however, it was a tremendous success and was the standard work throughout the country. I only once saw a copy of the original (unenlarged) SofP, next to the harmonium at Saxtead Church in Suffolk over 40 years ago. I was in the church again last summer - the Songs of Praise had gone, but they had got themselves a proper organ!

c.1967 when i was 11:The organist was not feeling well in the morning - I went to see her in the afternoon and volunteered to play for Evensong. By the end, I had discovered how the beast worked and it's been downhill all the way from there......

There was an article in 'The Organ' many years ago by (I think) Bernard Edmonds which quoted letters from W.T. Best, one of which fulminated against Hope-Jones (the other was a diatribe about Father Willis, with whom he had a fall-out), hoping that he might hang himself in his own cables. If I can lay my hands on it, I will quote it. Was it 'A Sackful of Shakings' - or maybe 'For the Elephant's Children' (if that was indeed by BBE - it was written under a pseudonym)?

Reporting to a Cathedral Organists' Association conference about a meeting of the then recently-formed Assistant Organists' Association, Paul Trepte (I think) mentioned the date and said, 'that would have been the day you all put down Stanford in B flat and played yourselves'.

One definition of a cathedral organist is someone who could once play well enough to be an assistant. There are a number of cathedral organists now who were appointed on strengths other than organ playing - singers or choralists. There are also a number of places where there is a Director of Music and an Organist - there were a few previously (Liverpool, Manchester), but there seem to be slightly more these days. It appears very sensible, but in practical terms the traditional system seems to produce a better result, illogical though it is.

If i slid down the hill on my backside, I'd end up next door to the curry emporium you probably have in mind....

There's a charming little arrangement of an Irish folksong called 'Suantraidhe'. I can't remember the publisher, but it might be Banks.

Canada is a big place and the effects of winter vary greatly. In St. John's, because we're stuck out so far east into the Atlantic, it isn't as cold as in the prairies but it's a damp cold and feels worse than the temperature would suggest. Similarly, we get a lot of damp snow. Driving is ok if you have studded tyres, suicidal if you haven't. At least the climate means that they heat the churches properly..... I wish I liked marmalade, but i don't. I like Marmite......

Wow!!! A medieval miracle play brought into the twenty-first century! Fabulous! I have to go and lie down in a dark room for a while after hearing that organ.....

Does anyone know where one can get a copy of 'Nocturne for an Orange'? 'Sleigh Ride' - Bloody Hell! I have enough trouble with Tom Trotter's arrangement! I might play it at tomorrow's lunch-time concert. Living up to its reputation as the snowiest city in Canada (possibly the world), St. John's got a double whammy of snow and high winds today. Almost total white-out on the roads, hoar frost on the Vox Humana. (When I think that the day I left Belfast in 2003 there was an inch of snow so the dustbins didn't get emptied....). It's a particularly nasty sounding toaster, isn't it? I'd like to hear him play it on a Wurlitzer.

Good for him! And good for them! Best wishes to all.

That's interesting. I love the Isle of Man - we used to go there for breaks as it's only twenty minutes by plane from Belfast. I took the choristers there for a week one year and we sang all over the place, including the Cathedral. At the time, I don't think there was any musical tradition there - when I went to spy out the land some weeks before, there was no organist and Evensong was accompanied by a lady on a piano. St. German's has only been a cathedral for about thirty years. The old cathedral is a ruin and the bishop's seat was for centuries in his private chapel. Big diocesan events tended to take place in one of the churches in Douglas - I think it was St. Thomas's.

There was a fire in the church which didn't directly affect the organ but caused a lot of mess (smoke and water, I suppose). HN&B restored it unchanged. It must have been one of their last jobs before they ceased trading. C.W. Pearce's book 'Old London City Churches, their Organs, Organists and Musical Associations' (my copy is dated 1909) says that Jordan's organ was worked upon by Parsons (1825), Gray & Davison (1850-1) and Hill, 'entirely rebuilt' in 1879 by Brindley & Foster and slightly altered and enlarged (eg 32' Sub Bass) by Hill in 1891. The specification in 1906 is given and is very similar to the present one. It seems reasonable to deduce that Rutt added a new console and pneumatic action but left the tonal scheme largely intact, although he added a 16' Contra Geigen and a third open (not, it seems at the big end) to the Great. It is therefore quite untypical of Rutt's work, although 1924 is early and later characteristics (once described as 'ripe') may not have developed. Incidentally, James Boeringer, in 'Organa Britannica' Volume 2, states, on the basis of Sperling's drawing, that the case was much altered in the nineteenth century. I think that in this, as in a number of other examples, he attributed too much accuracy to a drawing which may have been worked up later from an earlier sketch.

I assume this is St. Magnus the Martyr in the City of London. The last big rebuild was by Rutt, but it's not at all Ruttish so I assume he didn't do much tonally (earlier specs confirm this). The impression is of a big but gentle sound, appropriate to the church which is not that large. None of it, to my ears, sounds 18th century, but it doesn't sound like Walker or Willis either. Neither is it like an old Hill. I think it's a one-off with a character of its own. It's certainly a very fine old beast - very musical, nothing overdone.

On the Yahoo Layclerks Group, the person who ran it, Ron Sherlock, said he was finding it too much as he advanced in years.

John Norman said that Bath was one of his favourites among the jobs HN&B did in his time. Marlborough College was another. As Stephen Bicknell pointed out, the use of too much old action, etc, proved the undoing of many famous jobs. The Milton Organ at Tewkesbury sounded very fine in the building, yet it was apparently cobbled together from all sorts of odds and bits.

Muso wrote: 'Another interesting Vista recording was that made by Garth Benson at St Mary, Redcliffe, on which can be heard mainly Parry, Bach and Herbert someone or other.' I was a pupil of Garth's when he made that recording. He was quite nervous about it, but pleased with the result. Garth could play brilliantly when he could be bothered, but that didn't always happen. He was then - this was the mid-seventies - very much 'old school' and my contemporaries tended to write him off, but for some reason he seemed to take to me, and lessons (and post-lesson yarning, which often took longer) were fun. Pupils weren't supposed to make a lot of noise, so one tended to keep to the Choir and Solo Organs (which, as most people will know, are miniature Great and Swell departments apart from the Tuba). If Garth thought you were doing well, he would say, 'Move onto the Great' and would start adding stops. This could be disconcerting if there was a tricky bit ahead. Sometimes, Garth would be called away at short notice to examine for the Associated Board. This resulted in a few funerals to play for, or arriving at Redcliffe to find a note on the console, 'Can't make it today. Do some practice. Don't worry about keeping it quiet all the time.' There was a Welsh verger there at the time called Clive, who used to complain (good-naturedly) if you played loudly. After Bristol, when I did my teacher training at Cambridge, my teaching-practice school choir sang Evensong at Ely (a hairy experience for me - RVW's Antiphon with the choir under the Octagon, not in the stalls). Practising beforehand, there came an irate Welsh voice from the Quire, 'You don't get any bloody quieter!' It was Clive. Garth offered me a lunch-time recital, then changed his mind and put me in the evening series which was otherwise quite prestigious. I have a photo somewhere of the poster outside the church. The other players were Francis Jackson, Dom Sebastian Wolff and George Thalben-Ball. I have rarely figured in such a pantheon since. Philip Rushforth - I took the senior Belfast Cathedral boys to Chester for a week once. Philip was at that time in his early-mid teens and was stunningly good even then. Apart from church music, his passions were Tony Hancock and the Titanic. Back in Belfast, I found a paperweight made from an off-cut of the dado rail in the grand saloon of the Titanic, with a discarded rivet for a handle (maybe that's why it sank) and sent it to him - 'Here is your very own piece of the Titanic'. Incidentally, my great-grandfather was a military policeman and stationed in Belfast in 1912. My grandmother and her sisters saw the Titanic being launched and described the scene (and the surrounding area) in great detail. Eighty years later, I was accompanist for the Harlandic Male Voice Choir, founded at the shipyard. If there was a particularly bum note at rehearsal, someone at the back would pipe up something along the lines of, 'No wonder that bloody ship sank!'. Gathering notes - I think George Guest must have been one of the last to use these. John Dallas, who ran a very good choir at Cregagh Presbyterian Church, Belfast (despite an organ described by Simon Preston as the worst he'd ever played), was a devout GG disciple and also used gathering notes. One had to remember that when playing for him.

I polish mine every Saturday night.

My apologies for mixing up the Woods. Is David Wood the successor to Wood, Wordsworth? Is he anything to do with the Wood of Huddersfield who had a wonderful shop which sold all kinds of Renaissance instruments (including off-the-peg pipe organs of varying sizes)? I bought a crumhorn there once and remember a line of contra-bass recorders standing in the window like something out of an oil refinery. I'm sure the state of the Bradford Anneessens was indeed as described - it sounds typical. Yes, Clerkenwell was one of theirs (well, it was Anneessens, but there was more than one firm of that name in Belgium at the same time as far as I can see - I think they were related, like the Ingrams of Hereford and Edinburgh). Compton did it up, then Walkers' produced their notable rebuild in the sixties. Binns, Fitton and Haley don't seem to have had much of a reputation, but when the firm went bust, hadn't it dropped the Fitton & Haley bit again? It is said that the organ of Lisburn Cathedral, Co. Antrim was in the works at the time and the organist hied himself off to Leeds with a van and brought it home with him before the creditors could get their hands on it. The 1958 Binns in St. Silas, Belfast was a very fine sounding job, although it had the advantage of a fine acoustic. The church was rebuilt after the Blitz, against the wishes of the Bishop, who said it would close within fifty years - he was right. Nearby, Holy Trinity, Belfast is a similar instrument (1956) in a nice case, but in a less advantageous position and acoustic.

Voix Mystique has corrected me - Klais did Auckland, not Wellington. Mea culpa!

Wot, no Tuba? Did Klais do Wellington Town Hall, New Zealand? That's supposed to be a very fine and stylistically cohesive enlargement. And I've never heard anything but good about Bath Abbey - I've never heard the organ either, although I played the old one....

Pardon the pedantry, but I think 'Ocarina' was not uncommon with Anneessens. Bridlington Priory has one. Or was the one at Bradford of special construction? The organ was certainly a very impressive-looking brute, to judge from the spec (and pic) in 'The Organ' years ago. Somewhat later, there was a scathing letter from a colonial visitor (James Boeringer? John Maidment?) complaining that it had been wantonly scrapped, followed by an equally indignant one from Wood's of Huddersfield explaining that it had been in such a state they had no choice. Stephen Bicknell wrote that Anneessens organs tended to look impressive but were cheaply built and not all they purported to be. Bangor PC, Co. Down, had one which didn't last long and was replaced by a Hunter in the 20s.