David Drinkell

Yes, there are a lot of zinc drain-pipes fronting AH organs - even at Redcliffe, about which the best that can be said is that they don't intrude. St. Aidan's, Leeds is indeed a fine piece of work, and if Binns made the case it would be a guarantee of fine workmanship. When I mentioned him in connection with St. John-the-Divine, I was thinking of Rochdale Town Hall, but I've no idea if Binns designed or built the cases or just put the organ behind them. They look pretty good in their particular situation, but those at St.JtD seem to me to be not up to the splendour of the building.

Ooh yeah! The French Horn could figure in one's dreams, too. And the rest of it is disturbingly gorgeous as well. The only thing that lets it down is the cases - J.J. Binns on a mediocre day.

I once wrote that I'd like to take the Solo Gambas at St. John-the-Divine to bed with me.....

What I've always admired about Comptons is the standard of craftsmanship and the high quality of voicing. When i was in Belfast, my own organ at the Cathedral had Billy Jones reeds, Blossom strings and the rest pretty much top-class Harrison. I used to play now and again at St. Mark's, Dundela, which is not perhaps the best Compton ever built, but the voicing compared well with that at the Cathedral, especially the Swell reeds. I also find that the Compton recipe for a Swell with harmonic flute, string and trumpet (perhaps with diapason and hautboy on bigger jobs) tends to yield amazingly fine results. The Dundela organ had a fine Swell flue chorus but was let down by the Great, where the mixture was of little effect. To be honest, the same could be said about the Great Mixture at the Cathedral, which was at least partly the old Harmonics recast and suffered from unsteady wind. Philip Prosser improved the latter somewhat by substituting a chord for the cable controlling the chopper valve and doing what he could with the mixture on the voicing machine. Philip also maintained the Compton at Mullingar for many years and said that it was a really fine organ, but just needed some proper mixtures. On the other hand, the early-ish Compton at All Souls, Belfast had quite an effective Great Mixture based (I think) on the Dulciana, which was big enough to do the job, while being also effective as a quite unison stop.

Thanks for posting the YouTube extracts for those of us who can't get the BBC recording. I felt that the problem with 'O come, all ye faithful' was not entirely that the arrangements were over-elaborate but that the speed at the beginning was too fast. It slowed down in the course of the hymn, but never entirely settled. The descant on 'Sing, choirs of angels' seemed to be enjoyed by the choristers (an important plus point!), but was hampered by the unsteady speed. Similarly, the fanfares for the last verse came over as more syncopated than may have been intended. Perhaps a steadier pace to start would have avoided all this? The organ, I thought, sounded very fine indeed, as did the choir. The mass setting deserves to be taken into repertoires elsewhere if it's not there already and the Rimski Lord's Prayer was far superior to the general run of post-VAT2 ditties (and seemed to be taken up by the congregation). I've only ever seen the outside of the cathedral when driving past it, but it looked very beautiful and impressive in the video. It was disturbing to see the comment from the DoM on the Hakim video that the organ was a heap and they needed a new one. It seems to be a first-class example of a Compton, and that's one fine organ. It would have been somewhat old-fashioned, I suppose, when it went in, and neither the church nor the organ has had any reputation until recently, but today a good Compton deserves to be appreciated. I'm sure Letourneau would do a great job with a new organ, but not at all convinced that they shouldn't keep the Compton. The first Midnight Mass in North America went well (we are stuck out so far into the Atlantic that we are half an hour ahead of the rest of the continent). Hassler's Missa super dixit Maria and sundry Christmassy stuff.....

As far as I know, the only piece of choral music known to have been written by Boris Ord is 'Adam lay ybounden'. I've never heard of any descants. I think it's just that they didn't go in for descants in such a big way in those days. David Willcocks is certainly on record as saying that he wrote his earlier ones as a way to add interest to the hymns. The whole service was a lot simpler than it later became, and perhaps this is typified in the music. Each generation, even each year, some little innovation was introduced, some of which became fixtures. I sometimes think that carol arrangements can get so complicated that they lose their original simple character. I've been listening to 'On Christmas Night', with Andrew Nethsingha and St. John's (the other St. John's, from my point of view!). A very fine disc indeed, both chorally and organ-wise (nice blast on the Kazoo at the end of Ledger's 'Sussex Carol'), but is Mack Wilberg's 'Ding dong merrily on high' really an improvement on the 'straight' version (the interludes between verses are nearly as long as the verses themselves, although they feature a nice bit of Tuba). Is Willcocks' ditto ditto? Donald Cashmore's elaboration of 'Es ist ein Ros' is an excelllent piece of work but, at least sometimes, perhaps plain old Praetorius would be at least as effective. No criticism here intended of St. John's and AN - it's one of the best Christmas discs I've heard for a long time - just a thought about carol arrangements. The soloist in 'In the bleak Darke' is Julian Gregory. Makes me feel old - I played for his parents' wedding....

I should imagine that the reason there's no descant to 'Sing choirs of angels' is that Boris hadn't encountered one. I remember one from boyhood, and there's another in A&M Revised, but if there had been one in traditional use at king's, David Willcocks would probably not have written his. I don't think collegiate and cathedral choirs bothered much with descants - or, indeed, hymns - in those days. 'While shepherds watched' has been around for a very long time, together with various descant and faburden versions. (I have just realised that I have probably shot down my own reasoning, in that Willcocks later wrote his own descant for 'While shepherds watched', but maybe that was aimed more at 'Carols for Choirs 2' than King's). Has anyone else not had their Carol Service yet? Ours in on Sunday evening (New Year's Day, so strictly speaking there's been no Carol Service at all in 2011, but there will be two in 2012!).

Meditating on Vox's post about choral conducting, I reckon that the standard shapes are not as important with choirs as they are with instrumental ensembles - provided that the tempo is clearly communicated. Humphrey Clucas wrote that, when Martin Baker took over at Westminster Abbey, if he thought the boys weren't watching, he would reduce the size of his beat so that they had to look harder. That's not a bad thing - and it worked for him! I was taught the techniques of conducting at Colchester Royal Grammar School and Bristol University, and had it instilled into me that it is of paramount importance to keep the beat. However, I don't like to flap like a petulant swan in front of a congregation, so I keep gestures to a minimum - for a lot of things, a beat with one finger is sufficient. One can flog oneself to death out there, when one should really have rehearsed the piece more thoroughly and made sure the singers were watching. George Guest had a studied nonchalence, looking over a boys shoulder and using sparing gestures - it was an art in itself. David Hill was much more flamboyant last time I was in that neck of the woods. Then there are those who manage to get wonderful results against all odds. There was a wizard in Belfast called Ronnie Lee. He was the first person to win the Sainsbury Competition twice with different choirs. No one knew how he did it, and he himself was never able to explain. The choir would pick up a piece and sing it through. There would be a pause, Ronnie would say, 'Ye-----s', they would sing it again, and it would be damn near perfect. He really had no conducting technique at all - but he did have big expressive pale eyes - maybe that was it. He apparently had his 'own' seat in the chapel at King's, and when he died John Rutter came over to Belfast for the funeral......

Hmmm - seems to me everyone likes the Cantique except me..... Judging by Quebec radio stations, 'O Holy Night' isn't improved in French. Watched a bit of the Pope's Mass from St. Peter's when we came in from Midnight Mass last night. Amazing how whenever the choir the sings unaccompanied, the organ goes sharp!

It was sad to learn this week of the death of Reg Lane, who for many years was rep for Hill, Norman & Beard, based in Essex. Reg was apprenticed to Henry Willis & Son, but spent most of his working life with HN&B. His round included jobs like St. John's College, Cambridge and Saffron Walden Parish Church. He was a skilled craftsman, an excellent tuner and very nice person, with a fund of good stories. May he rest in peace.

Over the course of the Board being moved, I had forgotten the whereabouts of this thread. Please excuse any meanderings in the attempt to follow up a number of points. I've never played the King's organ, but I've heard it in the flesh on many occasions (when home during term-time, I try to do the Cambridge Sprint - King's at 5:30, John's at 6:30). When appropriate, the organists don't hesitate to unleash a considerable amount of organ, even when just accompanying the Choir. The big noises are not there solely to drive congregational singing when the Chapel is full. Successive Directors of Music have mentioned that the acoustics favour subtle singing. Thus, although the King's Choir is by no means mealy-mouthed and produces a brilliant fortissimo, it is a controlled sound. I think the same applies to the organ. The best word to describe the Great chorus is 'silvery', and the rest is in proportion. The late Michael Howard pointed out how different a sound had to be made by, say, the Ely Choir in its enormous Norman building compared with the King's Choir in its Perpendicular hall. Ditto, again, the organ. Harrison Great reeds: they're not all the same! Those at Belfast Cathedral could be used fairly freely (and also, paradoxically, blended extremely well with the big fierce 1970s Positive). You couldn't do that at Redcliffe, but I think you can at King's, especially as the Great reeds are enclosed Similarly, the Pedal 16 and 32 reeds can be brought in earlier than one might think. It may be the position of the King's organ that makes it possible to use it with such freedom. It produces a sort of surround-sound, which at the same time manages to be precise and direct. I think this must be something at which the players have to work - I'm told that it is not the easiest beast to drive. PCND mentions Dixon - it's often difficult to determine how much influence he had on some instruments, but I get the impression that King's was more individually Arthur Harrison than some, having tactfully dissuaded Boris Ord from some rather hare-brained suggestions. Bernard Edmonds once told me that you had to persuade an organ-scholar to let you hear the mixtures - Boris never used them. Which brings us to Chester. George Guest wrote that in his time as assistant there, the mixtures were kept slightly out of tune so they couldn't be used. It's strange to imagine the sort of registration current in those days. The Rushworth rebuild was very well thought-of at the time. I got to know it quite well over the years and I think the decisions taken at the time were right. I wasn't so sure about some of the later tweaking (it never seemed to be the same twice in Roger Fisher's later years), but on occasional acquaintance, I was not really qualified to judged whether they were improvements. At a seminar at Bristol University in about 1977, a (non-organist) student asked Allan Wicks, 'What's the best organ in England?'. 'Chester Cathedral', he said, without hesitation. I can understand why. Cork Cathedral is another fine old Hill, despite being in a pit in the north transept, but in general I would never prefer a Hill over a Father Willis or an Arthur Harrison. I can never understand, for example, why people admire the Ulster Hall organ so much. I know it very well indeed and fail to be thrilled by the original choruses or the reeds. I used to say that it was a shame it hadn't had a damn good going-over by Henry Willis III in the 30s.....but that was just to tease. I did a lot of playing at St. Thomas, Belfast, over the years, another Hill over which some liked to rave (including the Heritage Lottery Commission). Dreadful mixtures, dull reeds, nothing much to write home about elsewhere, and not a nice feel to the actions (I'm sounding like Henry Willis III myself now, aren't I? ). Londonderry Guildhall, on the other hand, appealed to me very much - Hill with a nicely-managed updating by HNB - and is an organ which deserves to be better known. Bristol Cathedral - perhaps the same surround-sound effect as King's, but a much darker acoustic, favouring the bass end. It was standard practice to play an octave higher when accompanying congregational singing. The new Mander mixture added to the Great in 1989/90 was intended to correct this and did so, but when you do things like that, you really need another mixture on the Swell to balance (as at Chester) and so on. And the 'new' mixture gets used a great deal, rather than being a special effect for nave congregations, and therefore the original character of the organ is compromised. I don't mean to criticise - it was a sensible way to deal with a real need. What a fine organ, though - it was quite an experience to hear Clifford Harker acompanying the psalms around the middle of the month when there was a good modicum of smiting and tempests.....

I've got 'Chelsea Fayre' if you'd like a copy.

I think you're right on all counts. Although Rutter is so prolific that his works are in danger of getting too much exposure, and sometimes he seems to be recycling the same stuff (you could say that about other composers, too), it can't be denied that he has a real gift, his vocal lines are singable, his accompaniments well laid-out, and he has produced some real gems. His work as an editor is invaluable too - take his Faure Requiem and the collection European Sacred Music as just two examples. And his CDs inspired a whole generation of young musicians who now occupy distinguished places in the choral and organ scene. Think what an impact the Cambridge Singers made in showing that a mixed choir could sing the choral classics and sound right. We are having a Rutter-free Christmas this year - it wasn't planned so, it just worked out that way! Similarly, although Classic FM plays too many adagios, too much piano music, too much guitar music, too much this and too much that (and not enough Orlando Gibbons ), consider how it has opened up classical music to a vast audience which previously would never dream of tuning in to such stuff.

We haven't got a dog, but there are a lot of moose around here. Do you think that would work?

Dear me! I didn't know that. Is that a fairly recent development? It's worrying how much it takes to build and maintain a decent tradition of worship and how little it takes to mess it up.

Back home when I was a teenager, the Borough Organist used to do this. We used to refer to him as Left-Boot Lenny. Strangely enough, a lot of the stuff he used to play is coming back in fashion, and we now recognise the instrument itself as being an extraordinarily fine beast. http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=N08698

Leonard Lazell had the organ rebuilt by Wood Wordsworth (including his signature 32' pedal cornet and a new Positif division). Did you play it before or after the rebuild (c.1969), cos I reckon it was more WW than AG afterwards!

This is truly amazing - I don't think most of us could play it that well on the organ! I am always gobsmacked by the versatility of band players. Orchestral trumpeters would tell you it was impossible to keep one's lip for that long!

I believe Gern came to London to install the Cavaille-Coll organ (destroyed in the Blitz) at the Carmelite Church in Kensington. While he was there, the Franco-Prussian War broke out, making it inadvisable for him, as a German, to return to Paris. He set up on his own, and his early organs are very much in the French style. The later ones were more prosaically British. He built a fair number of residence organs as well as church instruments. There is one in St. John's, possibly the only Gern organ in Canada, across the road from our Cathedral in the Masonic Temple: Great: Open Diapason, Lieblich Gedact, Dulciana, Flauto Traverso 4 Swell: Open Diapason, Hohl Flote, Gamba, Gemshorn 4, Oboe, Tremulant Pedal: Bourdon, Bass Flute 3 unison couplers Bellows (drawstop) 2 composition pedals to each manual Reversible G/P Compass: 58/30 A completely ordinary small English organ, but the case is palatial (mahogany?) with French-mouthed tin front pipes. It looks like something Captain Nemo might have had installed on the Nautilus. The organ is divided, with the conole in the middle. It previously stood in at least two residences in St. John's, one of which is now an hotel. Unfortunately, it has Gern's rather unsatisfactory pneumatic action and is completely unplayable. One can get notes out of it, enough to assess the tone quality, but nothing as complicated as a tune or a chord. The pedal board has gone. The Order moved to smaller premises a few years ago and the building was leased by a dinner-theatre group. They would like to see the organ decently rehoused, but I know no details of its present state.

Although I'm a tremendous admirer of Aeolian-Skinner (both EMS and GDH), I don't think their work is an improvement on King's. It has all the qualities expected of a Harrison of its period, plus better inter-manual balance and some particularly nice mutations. People tend to home in on the open woods and trombas on Harrison organs and forget about the wealth of lesser effects. King's just chimes at you sometimes, and even when it's let out, it doesn't bully. I've rarely found much to like about old Hills (with some significant exceptions) - maybe I'm the reincarnation of Colonel Dixon......

It's also a superb organ, and one of the best matches of instrument and building ever achieved. It would be difficult to find an instrument that does its job better.

There's a nice shot in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, played by Grumpy FRCO (wonder who he's based on ?). The organ is less startling to look at than the one in the new Disney Concert Hall.

I've got the Michael Jacques - I must dig it out again. Our Casavant rep is called Michel Jacques, too! I don't know the Jongen Scherzetto. I played his Menuet-Scherzo for ARCM in about 1973 and never opened the copy again until a few weeks ago, when I took a look and decided it was quite nice and worth resurrection. I think I've got the Stanford somwhere.... I'm going to get some more of Nigel Ogden's pieces. I only have 'England's Glory' so far. I think the Lemare might be available for download - I'll investigate. I don't know Rawsthorne's Dance Suite, but I have Ridout's, which I've admired since hearing Allan Wicks play it. I have the Gounod - in Rollin Smith's Great Transcriptions, I think. Thanks for the other suggestions - I'd be interested to see 'Stars and Stripes' and I'll look out for the Bedard Cats.

I give a half-hour concert every Wednesday lunch-time here at the Cathedral in St. John's, Newfoundland. Since I arrived here in 2003, I've notched up over 400. It's very good for me, because it makes me practise - I've filled in a lot of gaps in my repertoire! Each week, I try to include something I haven't played before and I'm always on the look-out for something new. In particular, the audience likes a little lollipop in the form of something light and maybe amusing. Any suggestions? Over the years, I've played things like: Albinoni - Adagio Leroy Anderson - Sleighride Barber - Adagio Bedard - Fantasia on 'O Canada' Ronald Binge - Elizabethan Serenade (thank-you, David P, for the copy) Bizet - Entracte II (Carmen) Bodro - Polka Finale Bonnet - Romance sans Paroles and Songe d'Enfant Canteloube - Bailero Chuckerbutty - The Queen's Procession Scotson Clark - Marche aux Flambeaux Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man Corrette - Grand Jeu avec Tonnerre Couperin - Soeur Monique (arr. Farnam) Debussy - Le petit berger Delius - On hearing the first cuckoo in Spring and Two Aquarelles Dvorak - Largo (New World) Eddings - Newfoundland Sketch Edmundson - Fairest Lord Jesus (and Vom Himmel hoch) Elgar - Angels' Farewell, Dream Children 2 and Salut d'Amour Faure - Pavane Festing - Largo, Allegro, Aria and Two Variations (arr. GTB) Gaul - The Pipes of County Clare German - Morris Dance (from Henry VIII) Gigout - Scherzo Goss Custard - Chelsea Fayre Gossec - Tambourin Grofe - Mardi Gras Suite Hollins - Morning and Evening Holst - Second Suite for Band Hovhaness - Prayer of St. Gregory Jordan - Annie Laurie Langlais - Pasticcio and Musette Lefebure-Wely - the usual suspects McCunn - Land of the Mountain and the Flood MacDowell - To a Wild Rose et al Mascagni - Intermezzo Mawby - Scarborough Fair Mendelssohn - Nocturne (Midsummer Night's Dream) Monteverdi - Coronation March Mulliner Book - Four Dances Murschhauser – Variations on Lasst uns das Kindelein wiegen Musorgsky – The Great Gate of Kiev Nevin - Narcissus Praetorius - Ballet des Coqs and Springtanz Raff - Cavatina Saint-Saens - The Swan and The Elephant Satie - Gymnopodie I Sibelius - Finlandia Slogedal - Variations on O hvor salig Sousa - The Liberty Bell Strayhorn/Wyton - Lotus Sullivan - March of the Peers (Iolanthe), Is life a boon? (Yeoman) and Introduction to Act III of the Tempest Susato - La Mourisque and Pavane de Battaille Tambling - Shenandoah Vann - The Londonderry Air Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on Greensleeves, March-Past of the Kitchen Utensils Walton - Popular Song Watson - Happy Birthday, Herr Bach Wolstenholme – Die Frage und die Antwort Yon – Humoresque “l’organo primitivo”, Rimembranza and Il Natale in Sicilia I'm not wild about Rawsthorne's Hornpipe Humoresque or Ives's Variations on America Garth Benson: 'Why don't you play one of those vulgar pieces you play so nicely?'

I remember a seminar at Bristol University, c.1974, when Allan Wicks remarked, 'When I hear Francis Jackson play, it makes me feel like a peasant!' I was a great admirer of Allan, both as a person and as a musician (I have never heard a more wonderful 'L'Ascension'), and I thought this was a very modest thing for him to have said. But the thing about Francis's playing is that it always sounds so right. Other people may be technically correct, but Francis always manages to get the atmosphere spot on. Why on earth hasn't he been given a knighthood yet??