David Drinkell

I knew there was a Bristol Hele lurking about in the back of my mind. St. Mary's, Tyndall's Park, Clifton had a grand old three manual with everything the heart could desire for its period - Pedal reed, 32', Swell 16.8.4 reed chorus 9and Harmonics-type mixture), Vox, Tuba..... The church was closed in the mid seventies when I was a student, but I notice from NPOR that it's being used again by an 'Independent Evangelical Church'. I wonder what happened to the organ - it might even be there still. http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=N03802

There was a story that Willis rented a disused school near the Cathedral as a voicing shop. One day, when they had the big Tuba on the voicing machine, something went wrong and all 61 notes ciphered at the same time. They must have thought something big was coming up the Mersey....

I believe Dixon was a crack shot, but I'm not sure that he ever had much to do with big guns. He was certainly never in a battle. Lord Dunleath cheerfully admitted to deafness caused by heavy artillery on Salisbury Plain. It's recorded that when our hosts installed the Fanfare Trumpet in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, they sat him in the middle of the gallery and fired it off, whereupon he jumped about six inches in his seat, said something like, 'Gad! I think we have something here!', and wrote the cheque there and then.

I know it's often said that Arthur Harrison schemes were standardised, and it's easy to accept this by looking at the stop-lists, but I'm not convinced that the effect was so in practice, any more than it might have been with Walker or Father Willis. For example, the Trombas at Belfast Cathedral and St. Mary Redcliffe - buildings of similar cubic capacity - are very different. Not all AH Great mixtures were Harmonics - quite often the standard English 'Sesquialtera' 17.19.22 was provided. Not all Great and Swell reed choruses are heavily contrasted (again, Belfast is an example - there's enough difference to know which set you're using), and I think that Clutton's jibe about loud Orchestral Oboes was typical Clutton hyperbole at a time when he had gone off Harrison organs and gone racing on to other enthusiasms. I would agree that the development of a broad Violoncello as at Salisbury is generally more useful, although possibly the Harrison type has more potential in combination and/or with the octave couplers. Clutton's (or was it Niland's?) claim that 'if [Choir Organs] were omitted from any of his organs it is doubtful if anyone but the player would have been any the wiser', was challenged in a review (I think) of the re-issue of 'The British Organ', when it was pointed out that the use of such departments in an accompanimental capacity is invaluable because the Great ensembles are generally too big for work with choirs. And here, as you point out, is the crux - AH Great Organs are big, and it is difficult to get a balancing chorus elsewhere. But if AH erred in this respect, he was following ample precedent. Coming off the Grande Orgue on a Cavaille-Coll is like falling into a hole. The same is true on a Father Willis (on late Father Willises in particular, the Swell is just a quieter version of the Great, and I suppose one cannot blame Harrison - or Dixon, or Casson - for trying to avoid this). By the early twentieth century, the same could be said of the builders. For an example, in Colchester the churches of St. Leonard-at-the-Hythe and St. Andrew, Greenstead stand on opposite sides of the River, close enough that opposing sides were able to take pot-shots at each other during the Civil War. Both have two-manual Walkers of virtually identical specification (the St. Andrew's job was originally in All Saints, in the town centre, but that doesn't make any difference in this case). At St. Andrew's, which was built in 1884 (when a very young T. Tertius Noble was organist) the Swell flue chorus is almost as bold as the Great, but at St. Leonard's, built in 1908, it's way behind. Post-Cavaille-Coll, organs were crescendo machines, designed to be played with the inter-manual couplers on most of the time. Cluton and Niland say that, on three-manual organs, the Choir Organ was treated 'in the Ouseley tradition'. What the heck did that mean? When I think of an Ouseley Choir Organ, I think of something like Romsey, or possibly Tenbury, not of a Solo Organ on the bottom manual. They also refer to Harrison Open Woods as 'heavily winded'. That's not true either - 'copiously winded' would be accurate, but the pressures were not necessarily high. An I right in thinking that Clutton and Niland, in the first edition, said that the Harrison conception 'failed' because of the 'almost complete lack of balance between the manuals and the over-emphasis of contrast between them', but modified this in the second edition to say that 'its shortcoming lay in the almost complete lack....'? I gave away my first edition when the second edition came out..... This thing about balanced manual choruses - how important is it? When Clutton and Niland were writing in the sixties, one was supposed to have two balanced principal choruses to play Bach. Since then, that view has been challenged, especially by Peter Williams, who points out that there are very few places in Bach where two manuals are essential. I myself, although I have no claims to know much about it, have never been happy about most of the manual changes in the preludes and fugees. It's easy enough to get off the Great, but usually the devil's own job to get back on it without a good deal of contriving. Did Bach have an organ with contrasting principal choruses? Probably not, so at least CC, HW and AH were erring in good company.

Now that you mention it, your 'non-directional' comment is perceptive. It does sound rather that way from the console, but I had never attached any significance to it - possibly because with that pipe-less case, it doesn't strike one as the sort of organ that would chime at you like, say, King's does. I think that, in the church, it doesn't sound any less focussed than most other transept organs. I once sat near the back of the nave on a Sunday morning with a full congregation and it sounded very impressive. With regard to the plena, they struck me as more transparent than one would expect from other builders of the period. The mixture provision was, of course, had no parallel except perhaps Weingarten, and it's noticeable there that the mixtures are not particularly sharp sounding but the whole ensemble is incredibly rich - it's 'there', all around you. Downside has something of the same feel because of the huge number of pitches sounding, but it doesn't achieve the massiveness of, say, Liverpool because there simply aren't that number of pipes singing at the same time. Some of the mixtures are very grave - but not all of them. The plus side of an extension organ the size of Downside is that you have a heck of a lot of registers to play about with, but the minus side is that a lot of combinations may not add up to quite what you expected. In the last analysis, Downside is different - different from its contemporaries and even to some extent from other Comptons. I think it works. My first acquaintance came about when I was a student at Bristol University in 1977. One of my tutors, Kenneth Mobbs, offered to see if he could get me access to the Downside organ because the Director of Music at the School, Roger Bevan, was an old friend. Roger said that the organist was 'a monk' (this was Dom Gregory Murray), who hardly ever played the Compton himself (using instead the little electrone in the Monk's Quire) but wouldn't let anyone else near it either. He therefore arranged with the Abbot to send the organist off to Bath on an errand for the day so that I could have the freedom of the organ. The church and the instrument were a revelation to me, and I am forever grateful to Roger Bevan for his kindness.

I notice comments about Harrison Violes being 'acidic'. I would not agree entirely with this. They are certainly quite sharp in tone, but because they're Harrisons' they're extremely well regulated and don't go at you like a dentist's drill, as similar stops by a lesser builder might. My experience (based mainly on close acquaintance with Redcliffe as a student, and fourteen years as organist at Belfast Cathedral) is that they are very versatile, but need careful consideration in terms of combination with other stops, use of the Solo box, octave couples and tuning of the celeste (if any). Kept a little in the background, they can be wonderful as a means of colouring other combinations ("Helpful Hints on How your Harrison can sound French"), and they can help in cooking up little full swell effects when the real thing isn't quite right (what Norman Cocker called 'quiet ginger'). Combining with a warm-toned 8' flute takes the edge off considerably, which is why Harrison Solo Organs (or Choir Organs on three-manual instruments) work very well in choral accompaniment.

Reading Ian Bell's account of Compton in the BIOS journal some years back, one gets the impression that Downside was exceptionally fine (which I think it is), but later new jobs failed to match it. I don't know - I think St. Luke's, Chelsea is an excellent and confident statement of Compton principles (although a former organist, Charles Cleall, once described it to me as 'almost a monster'). Would it, I wonder, be considered as superior to, the equal of or inferior to St. Mary Magdalen, Paddington, which contained quite a lot of earlier pipe-work? I was always mightily impressed by the early (1927) Compton at All Souls Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Belfast, which managed an incredible amount with only six or seven ranks. The big one on the other side of the city, St. Mark's, Dundela, was less convincing, partly because someone later donated a four-manual console and the existing pipe-work was stretched to provide a rather nondescript Choir Organ, but mostly because the Great and Bombarde mixtures lacked punch. The Swell Cymbale, from the Viola rank, was excellent, though, and the Trumpet rank outstanding. I find Compton three-rank Swells (Harmonic Flute, Viola, Trumpet) can be remarkably good, and the firm's voicing is always impeccable. I never got round to the other big Comptons in Ireland, but I'm told that Mullingar was very fine but needed some real mixtures to perfect it. I was surprised that Walkers' got the job of restoring it - no offence to them, but it didn't seem up their street at all at the time. I believe the 2-rank Miniatura+Fagotto sanctuary division was replaced by an electronic equivalent at the same time. A student friend said Tuam RC Cathedral was pretty good (by comparison, when I played at the CofI Cathedral in Tuam in 1992, it had been neglected for so long that the lock on the console door had seized up). The confidence, quality and artistry of Compton's conceptions added up to a very worthy entity. No one else seemed to manage it so well. There is a Spurden Rutt of similar size to All Souls, Belfast in St. Peter's, Colchester and it simply doesn't cut the mustard - a real shocker! I wonder how the Rushworth for South Norwood Methodist Church (now at Holy Spirit, Southsea) would compare with the similarly schemed Compton at St. Osmund's, Parkstone? I've been acquainted with some very nice Miniaturas over the years. Very versatile, very musical, and some of them were running on their original electrics after fifty years and only just beginning to show the need for serious attention. The Fairfield Hall electrone, which followed the one in the RFH, was acquired by a buyer in St. John's Wood, where I tried it some thirty years ago. It was, for its age, a fine piece of work. I think at the time, a lot of organ builders were considering whether a convincing electronic organ could be made. Guess who wrote this in 1947: "....as and when we can produce an electronic instrument as good as a pipe organ we will do so, but at the moment it woud cost some 5,000 pounds to develop a successful prototype and I cannot afford it." I think the only other builder to produce his own electronic organ was Davies of Northampton - using a system originally evolved by Maurice Forsyth Grant! One Compton man who set up on his own was Grinstead of Kilkenny. His magnum opus was the over-ambitious 4-manual organ at Limerick (Church of Ireland) Cathedral. Local pressure was to have the biggest organ in Ireland - it is also the only one with three swell-boxes. It has a number of Compton features but is really too big, both as an instrument for that building and as a task for Grinstead (if he had had the know-how of the Compton staff behind him, the result might have been different), and has been a burden for a long time. Grinstead's rebuild at Killaloe Cathedral was a nice little job - Compton-style detached console by the Dean's stall so the Dean at the time could act as his own organist. St. George's, Stockport was not improved, IMHO, by being rebuilt and de-Comptonised. Like Hull City Hall, the original organ was a Forster and Andrews, and I reckon that, generally, their workmanship was excellent but their tone unexciting. An idle thought - Compton theatre organs had more imaginative schemes than Wurlitzers, but the latter had a sexier sound. If you substitute a wooden Tibia for the usual metal Compton one, would you then have the best of both worlds?

Some forumites may remember the name of Harry Croft Jackson. By one of those strange coincidences, Harry was organist of St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall during the last War, and afterwards moved to Colchester, where he was organist at St. Leonard-at-the-Hythe, and years later I was organist of St. Leonard-at-the-Hythe, Colchester and then of St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. From Colchester, Harry commuted to London, where he had a senior position in the music department at the BBC. I only got to know him in his retirement, when he moved back to Orkney, but once you got him talking in the Queen's Hotel, he seemed to have known practically every composer and performer of the last fifty years. One of his most memorable quotes (in braad Lancastrian): 'Ben Britten were a right sh***!' I don't think Harry was the only person who found him awkward. When it comes down to it, I wonder which other of the great composers could be similarly described.

I can't think why it didn't cross my mind at the time, but Britten's Missa Brevis is a great piece (possibly the finest boys' voice Mass ever), and has a very effective and playable organ part, typically remarkable for its effect in proportion to the economy of its means. It only gets frustrating if you have a stop-action of uncertain speed (remember the pistons at the RCO?), which makes the additions in the Sanctus difficult to do cleanly.

In my first year at Bristol University (1975-6), I lived in Halls along the road from this church and I used to practice on the organ. It was a fine old job and a worthy representative of the firm's work. I remember being in the church after the rebuild (I think it must have been a little earlier than 1979) but I don't think I played. I hope it gets put to rights very soon.

Yes, that would be impressive - Fourth Symphony in miniature.

I don't know about that one, but this is somewhat similar: Great: Double Diapason 16A, Open Diapason 8, Chimney Flute 8A, Principal 4, Block Flute 2, Mixture 15.19.22,Trumpet 8B Swell: Spitz Flute 8, Principal 4, Stopped Flute 4, Gemshorn 2, Larigot 1 1/3, Sharp Mixture 22.26.29, Krummhorn 16 Choir: Stopped Diapason 8, Open Flute 4, Fifteenth 2, Sesquialtera 12.17, Sifflet 1 Pedal Open Bass 16C, Sub Bass 16A, Principal 8C, Bass Flute 8A, Fifteenth 4C, Chimney Flute 2A, Mixture 19.22C, Bass Trumpet 16B, Trumpet 8B, Clarion 4B Swell Tremulant S/G, C/G S/C G/P, S/P, C/P 1968 rebuild by Cedric Arnold, Williamson & Hyatt of a Walker organ at St. Botolph's, Colchester. Tracker action (traditional style with wood trackers) to manuals except for the three stops taken from the pedal units. Those who know A,W&H's organ at Walsingham will have an idea of what to expect, but this is one hell of an effective organ and can make a good job of the most unexpected parts of the repertoire.

Each to his own. I find the War Requiem electrifying. And, as you've probably gathered, I think the Jubilate in C is a masterful piece. OK, it may be a sea shanty with words from the Psalms, but the way he gets such an effective piece out of two or three phrases is marvellous. Lesser composers would have turned out something three times as difficult and less than half as interesting. The vocal parts are easy unless the singers are lazy and the organ part, although it has its moments, is not nearly as difficult as Rubbra in A flat, the Tippett St. John's Service and many others. The Festival Te Deum is indeed a fine piece, but much more difficult to bring off. A New Year Carol is lovely, too, and so is A Boy was born in Bethlehem - and, of course, A Hymn to the Virgin. When it comes to God save the Queen, I would back the Gordon Jacob arrangement, but it would depend on the circumstances. Not much has come up about the Prelude and Fugue, so perhaps I was right and it doesn't get played very much. I have been trying various things with it and I think I may have it worked out. I'm aiming to play it at a lunch-time concert on Wednesday week (not next week, because it's Healey Willan's birthday - not to mention Vaughan Williams' - and I'm trying to brush up the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue, a piece which always scares the Bejaysus out of me). Does anyone manage to make sense of the Prelude and Fugue in C minor by Vaughan Williams??

I think it's cheating to include the Cloister Albums. They include some perfectly respectable and quite imaginative selections among the candy! The Dregstown Amen appears at the back of many hymnals, especially nonconformist ones, to say nothing of turning up quite a lot in Stanford in B flat. Ronald Binge's Elizabethan Serenade was a big hit last Wednesday lunch-time. Thanks, David Patrick, for the copy!

I play his Toccata, which is fairly vulgar and not particularly difficult. There are several like that in the dover book of Toccatas, Carillons and Scherzos, edited by Rollin Smith, including one by Percy Fletcher that used to be quite popular. While I am at it, I suppose I'd better confess to playing Scotson Clark's Marche aux Flambeaux from time to time.....

'By him the crowds drop fatness'? Sounds interesting. Should it be 'clouds'? Sidney Nicholson set these words, entirely respectably but nicely. I'm rather partial to a bit of Stainer from time to time. 'I saw the Lord', of course, but also 'O Zion that bringest good tidings', 'What are these?' and the Mag and Nunc in B flat. 'How beautiful upon the mountains' is a gem, worthy of any choir, but it comes from a larger work, 'Awake, put on thy strength, O Zion', bits of which are vulgar enough for anyone's taste and which contains the line 'Arise and sit down, O Jerusalem'. Guilty as charged with regard to the Sortie in E flat. The Andante in F for Vox and twittering flute goes down a bomb with the old ladies, too. Sibelius Music has a free downloadable version of the March of the Peers from 'Iolanthe' by Sullivan, which is a lot of fun. The long-serving DoM of the Church Lads Brigade Band died last week. At the end of the funeral, the band played 'Our Conductor' (a good march) and I played 'Liberty Bell'. There are some things - like 'Bringing in the sheaves' - that sound wonderful when played by a Salvation Army Band, but dreadfully vulgar under other circumstances. Everyone, I guess, plays Saint-Saens' 'The Swan', but the Elephants' Waltz can be a hit, tune played on the pedal (32' reed if available). I played both before the Blessing of the Animals Service last Saturday (but it's so noisy at that service that you can play anything. I think bits of 'How much is that doggy in the window', 'The Pink Panther' and 'Tiger Rag' may have crept in. I have worked out what combinations make the dogs howl ). Isn't it strange how you can spend ages learning one of the masterpieces of the repertoire, but if you include it in a programme which also contains Lemare's Andantino in D flat, Handel's Largo or Dvorak's Largo from the New World, those are the pieces which everyone thinks were wonderful?

'Hele Huggers'! I love it! I don't have too much experience of Hele organs. There weren't many in my neck of the woods (maybe a couple each in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk), but I encountered a few while a student in Bristol. In particular, I used to practice on the three-manual at Stoke Bishop Parish Church, which I thought was quite a fine beast (it was rebuilt and slightly pepped-up by Percy Daniel just after I left). In general, they seem to have been well-built and quite resourceful. In my limited experience, I would rate them better than, say, Forster & Andrews, among provincial builders.

The Hele console at Buckfast was illustrated in 'The Organ' with a modestly approving write-up of the instrument. Ralph Downes's critique after the first of his make-overs prompted an irate letter in the correspondence column. Plymouth City Hall had Hele stop tablets for the Solo Organ. In such cases, as in the one here, they seem to have been a handy way of adding a manual without having to completely rebuild the console. I think St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, had them - possibly the largest example of their use, but a new console arrived with the Rushworth rebuild. Lookswise, both this system and the Rothwell look well enough with 'all off', but eccentric if some stops on.

So quite rare. Nifty devices, although they look rather untidy when in use. The Rothwell version was neater. There are very few of those left - I believe the fiddly nature of the mechanism was partly responsible for them being replaced. It's a pity St. Paul's, Clifton, Bristol was rebuilt when it was. Another few years and it might have been conservatively restored as a fine example of a rare breed. I wonder if the Rothwell stop-key influenced the shape of the Walker pattern.... The Norman & Beard 'disc and button' system was another oddity. I think there is more than a handful of those still around, although I've only played on one - Lythe in Yorkshire.

Dunno about the horses - I've just had a look and it frightens me! Looks as though it might be impressive in performance, though. http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/...LP71096-nielsen

I see from the pictures it has the patent Hele stop-keys above the manual for the Choir Organ. I've never seen one of these in real life - how common/uncommon are they?

I'm quite convinced that church music is much, much richer for the contributions from those who, for want of a better phrase, were not blessed with the gift of conventional belief, although they may have had an intensely spiritual nature. Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Herbert Sumsion, David Willcocks, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Rutter, etc...... (Handel, Haydn and Schubert?). Such people often breath fresh life into the genre, and perhaps they have the advantage of a certain detachment. Of course, there's a whole lot of really awful music written by believers, too.

This inspires in me a bowel-chilling train of thought: Wasn't the Britten Jubilate written for St. George's Chapel, Windsor? Pre-Harrison? Therefore the Rothwell? http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/PSearch.cgi...D02818&no=1 Ooer!!!

Thanks, Blackadder, for the information about Britten and St. John's, Lowestoft. I know the organ. It was headed for the RC Cathedral in Norwich but was never installed there. I also remember the old organ at Gorleston - a very mediocre machine by Fitton & Haley. I hadn't heard that Britten ever played at Aldeburgh, but Peter Maxwell Davies used to play the harmonium in the Hoy Kirk on a regular basis! pcnd: Thank-you for your input. Each one of us is different! I've always marvelled at how well the organ parts of Rejoice in the Lamb and the Jubilate fall under the hands, and I regard it as a sign of Britten's genius that he could get such marvellous effects from such simple material. I agree that the passage to which you refer in the Jubilate is tricky, but I find that Britten allows the player just enough time to tap the Swell pedal in between pedal notes. A lesser composer might have demanded the impossible, but I think Britten knew what was possible. (I wouldn't like to try it with a trigger swell, though!). Again, the vocal effect of these two works, and so much else of Britten's is (to me) far greater than the degree of difficulty. Lesser composers would have written much more complicated lines with no more effect. I remember, when I took over at St. Magnus Cathedral, inheriting a commission from a young Scottish composer. He claimed to have modelled the difficulty on Maxwell Davies's 'Solstice of Light', which had been premiered by the choir a few years previously, but Max was clever in that the vocal parts were relatively straightforward while the organ part was played by a very accomplished organist (the late Richard Hughes). The piece I had to bring off was shockingly difficult as far as the vocal parts were concerned (the choir was an amateur one. They were well-disposed to new music, but it made no sense in any way to spend so much time on something so complex which would be no use in the future). The next time a St. Magnus Festival Commission came up, I insisted on a 'proper' composer, and we got William Mathias's 'Thus saith God the Lord', which was challenging but approachable for the choir and showed excellent understanding of what could reasonably be expected of them. The premiere was broadcast on Radio 4 and Mathias was kind enough to send me a nice letter saying how much he'd enjoyed it, (which is more than the other guy did!). I'm inclined to think that the harmonies to which you refer were a deliberate effect, possibly with a certain instrument in mind, and require care. You may well have been right to adjust them. 'St. Nicholas' is not my favourite Britten work, but the organ part in 'Noyes Fludde' is tremendously effective, despite some unlikely looking passages. When is comes to the harp, Ossian Ellis is on record as saying that he once suggested to Britten that certain passages in a new work were not idiomatic for the instrument. Britten said, 'Try them', and Ellis was astonished to find that they worked. I think that's generally true of most of Britten's output. I regard the Durufle Requiem as the hairiest piece of accompaniment I've ever had to tackle. BUT, it's also among the most rewarding. You feel that every note is just right and couldn't be anything other than it is. I don't mind sweating blood over something like that, but I get annoyed when I have to do the same for something that is unnecessarily difficult. Thus, I admire music which is as difficult as it needs to be, and I think the works of truly great composers bear this out. I still get scared by the opening of Stanford in A......