David Drinkell

I came across this thread while looking for something else, so this is a reawakening of one that slept. St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, has a high organ loft with a sturdy but not solid rail. Part of the approach is via a free-standing spiral staircase which can be off-putting. Christ Church isn't so high but is smaller and considered quite hairy - somewhat like Chester. However, the scariest experience I've ever had was a bell-ringing one. It wasn't Pershore, although that's pretty terrifying (for the benefit of non-ringers, Gilbert Scott removed the ringers' floor to expose a fine ceiling and replaced it with a cage supported by beams. It's not possible to fall out of it, but it has put off a lot of ringers. The approach, along one of the said beams, is even worse). St. Augustine & St. John, Dublin, between Christ Church and the Guiness Brewery, is one of the very few RC churches with a ring of bells. The tower is integral with the west wall and to get to the ringing room, one ascends to the west gallery, goes through the organ and is then faced with a long iron spiral stairway with minimal railings. Guaranteed to make all your bowels move, as the Scottish Paraphrases say, especially as it creaks and wobbles. My wife found page-turning at St. Paul's quite unnerving. St. Matthew, Shankhill Road, Belfast, has a west gallery organ with a detached console on a platform. I can't remember if the platform is actually higher than the gallery rail, but it's not far off. I heard a few years ago that they'd changed tuners and the new one declined to tune it because he considered the console position was unsafe. The CN Tower in Toronto - until recently, and possibly still, the world's tallest building - also has a glass-floored portion in the main 'pod'. I didn't have the nerve to walk on it. When I took Belfast Cathedral Choir to New York in July 2001, I didn't have time to go up the World Trade Centre, although everyone else did. We gave our tickets to friends of my wife's, who were due to visit in September. On September 9th, they missed the bus to the World Trade Centre and had to take a later one. If they hadn't been late, they would have been in the WTC, using our tickets, when the terrorist attacks happened. It still chills my blood to think about it....

Wow! That's masterly! Thanks very much. There is/was something of a tradition at King's for a second organist to put in the fanfares in the introduction to 'I was glad'. I'm going to listen to the YouTube video again, now.....

The Temple Church also has the Great reeds enclosed (in the Solo box) and there are one or two places where there are big enclosed reeds on the Solo (Hereford, Bridlington). It adds a new dimension to registration, since these reeds are not solely for capping full organ. Harry Gabb used the enclosed Solo as a super-Full Swell at St. Pauls before the Mander rebuild. Query: Full Swell at St. Paul's is legendary, but is it, in itself, so outstanding, or is it just a stage in the build-up? Was the reputation originally founded on the Swell alone, or on back-up from the enclosed Solo? Full Swell on its own is a fine sound, but not outstandingly commanding, even in the Quire (ditto Durham). Every time I've played at St. Paul's, I've noticed that the octave coupler comes on for pistons giving Full Swell effects. I think, however, that the characteristic crescendo effect of Willis voicing may enhance the build-up, even when adding stops on the Great. I use the enclosed Tuba (and Violes) here for back-up full swell effects regularly. It helps to have lots of couplers and 68 note soundboards. There is a tendency to use the Great, like a Cavaille-Coll, as a coupler manual. Oddly enough, throughout ny student days, you really couldn't do that at Redcliffe because there either wasn't an action cut-out or it didn't work, so quiet stuff on the Great was out because of the noise of the Great pallets. Actually, I would go a long way to hear an organ recital at King's, although I agree with the remark that it is a first-class accompanying organ (but not the easiest to play due to balance and timing issues).

Pendlebury unit organs tended to be rather horrid. There were a couple around the Belfast area. Some decent pipe-work but it didn't hang together very well. I reckon a Walker or Compton is a better bet.

[quote name='Vox_Angelica' date='Jul 25 2011, 10:24 AM' post='60272' I remember watching a documentary on Youtube filmed at Notre Dame in the 1980s, and one shot shows one of the resident organists, cigarette in hand in the loft. In Vierne's time, one of the priests at Notre Dame put up a huge 'Defense de fumer' sign in the organ loft, which by next day had been removed and replaced with a large ash-tray. When I went to Ulm Cathedral with the Organ Club, we were conducted up to the loft by the organ's designer, Walter Supper, puffing on his pipe. He sat down at the keys, put his pipe in an ash tray, and said, 'There is a service taking place at the other end of the building,. This is Full Organ with the chamades'. Willis's tuner, John Dunbar, used to smoke in the organ. In the last days of the Willis at St. Giles, Edinburgh, it was considered necessary for him to stay inside the beast at important services in case anything went wrong. I often wondered if occupants of the Royal pew, which was in front of the organ, ever sniffed anything unusual. One of the many stories told about Guillaume Ormond at Truro was that he occasionally slipped off for a pint during sermons. One day, he had a visitor in the loft and asked him to play the last hymn if he wasn't back in time. The sermon ended, the visitor was cranking up his courage when the Lady Chapel organ started to play. The penultimate verse was unaccompanied, save for a pounding on the organ loft stairs, and the last verse was the Willis full-out.

Tim Hortons (www.timhortons.com) is a defining aspect of life in Canada. I quite often have a Timmie's tea on the bass jamb when I'm practising, and on Sundays I pick up an extra large tea and frosted cinnamon roll before going to play for the 9:15. I eat the cinnamon roll in the Song Room and take the tea up to the service. Most of it gets drunk during the sermon. Sometimes I have a little over to drink during choir practice before the 11:00. I might call at Timmie's on the way to Evensong too. To illustrate how sacred Tim Horton's is, one of my former layclerks from Belfast phoned to say that a local store had started carrying a small range. 'The place is full of bloody Canadians', he said, 'all clutching their double-doubles with tears in their eyes!'. On the other hand, I hate to see bottled water being consumed in the choir-stalls. A surreptitious mint is one thing, but swigging from a plastic bottle is not on at all. Last time I played Roger Fisher's organ, I had a big glass of a rather nice sauvignon blanc next to me. Clarion Doublette is right - it's a lovely instrument. I once had an organ scholar who kept a bottle of sherry behind the music desk. Doesn't the Rieger at Ratzeburg Cathedral have a stop marked 'Rauschwerk' that causes a drinks tray to slide out when drawn?

Is this what you were looking for? http://icking-music-archive.org/scores/bac...o_BWV1043_2.pdf

I believe that the last of Walkers' stock were acquired by Hill, Norman & Beard for the rebuild of the organ at Lion Walk Congregational Church, Colchester. That's not to say that someone else might not have some, or that they might be available from a trade supplier. If you're looking for specifications, there was quite a full article on these organs in 'The Organ' back in the sixties. I could look it up for you.

NPOR has surely left out a 4' Principal on the Great? The scheme might be partly straight, or all extended. It could be a very nice organ. I remember being tremendously impressed with the 3 rank+tierce Mander organ which had started off in Coventry Cathedral Choir School and then stood in St Anne & St Agnes, Gresham Street, City of London (since gone to Bruern Abbey School, and then with the school to Chesterton Lodge, Oxfordshire). Good workmanship and voicing make a good unit organ - it's the cheap and nasty ones that give the breed a bad name. There is/was a very nice Mander 'Denham' in Buxhall Church, Suffolk. Two ranks, well-finished, lovely little case - what more could one ask? (I don't see it in the recent pictures on www.suffolkchurches.co.uk but it could be hiding out of sight, obscured by the pillars of the chancel arch - it's a slim-line job).

There was a useful little dodge which modern setter systems won't do. Pistons set by switchboard had an 'neutral' option - if was out it stayed out, if it was in it stayed in. So if you had Swell 3 set to give you chorus up to mixture and the oboe on neutral, you could vary the build-up/cut-down by a bit of slick piston-pushing. If the oboe was out and you wanted chorus to mixture, you could do a quick 2/3, or if the oboe was set on a higher piston and you wanted chorus + oboe, you could flick another couple. I used to find this very useful at St. Magnus Cathedral, but these days it has a setter piston and similar dodges don't work. The old switchboards slid out from the sides of the console and you could actually change the settings while playing. I know it sounds complicated, but just occasionally it was handy.....

I dunno about her, but Carol Williams makes me go weak at the knees.....

W&T Lewis seem to have been a respectable, but unspectacular local firm, although their association with Scovell in Edinburgh is somewhat odd for a firm based in Bristol. Their 'show organ' was St. Ambrose, East Bristol, a big church with good acoustics. The organ sounds very fine, although this may owe something to a slight amount of pepping-up over the years (Fifteenth on Swell, Mixture on Great, Swell Oboe to 16'). Scovell & Lewis rebuilt Henbury PC, Bristol in 1907. This is of interest to me because I was organist there as a student 1976-78. By then it had been rebuilt and enlarged by Percy Daniel. NPOR says the Clevedon Organ Group has added two stops - does anyone know what they are? The W&T Lewis book had more influence than the actual organs. The Swell Rohr Flute at Colchester Moot Hall apparently follows the recipe they gave (T.C Lewis was working for Norman & Beard when this organ was built, and one can see features which might reflect his influence, but the Rohr Flute is after W&T Lewis. It gets confusing, because they mention T.C. Lewis too!). Any debate on Lewis seems incomplete without the late Eduard Robbins, who collected a vast amount of information, was famously crusty about disseminating it and had a prose style verging on the Rococo. If Harry Coles were still alive, he would have had a great deal to say, too.

Thanks - I knew I should have taken the trouble to check.....

I have a vague idea that Browne's of Canterbury advertised the installation of a new unit organ at Ivychurch in the Organists' Review some years ago - or was it one of the other Marsh churches? I hope to be over there next month and if I get a chance to satisfy my enthusiasm for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, I'll go and have a look. The only organ on the Marsh that I know personally is the Father Willis at Lydd - unless the Harrison at Hythe counts. Old Romney church had a French reed organ which Tim Robbins (I think) restored. Does anyone know what is in New Romney Church these days?

I can certainly see the attraction for a reed organ with a conventional layout of two manuals and pedals for practice. Not everyone has easy access to a pipe organ. When I was learning, I had to go and get the church key - assuming that the keyholder was at home. As a student, my church was several miles away and I still had to get in. It's not always easy to get practice time on local instruments, as I'm sure everyone will know. Therefore, something with a bit of character - and wind - would be well worthwhile, especially if it cost under two thousand pounds. How much would it cost to build a reliable pipe organ with one stop on each department, perhaps with coupled pedals? No frills, just the basics. Or maybe one rank of pipes as a unit? Is the Dr. Dukes who many years ago wrote an article in 'The Organ' called 'Two Manuals, Pedals, and a budget' the same as our fellow forumite here?

It was indeed, and a very striking looking beast, too. I have always assumed that most reed organs sucked (as it were), apart from French ones and some German ones in the same sort of style. There was a relatively modern 2m and pedal suction reed instrument by Jacot in Holm Church, Orkney, but it wasn't particularly robust. Were Holts and Apollos suck or blow?

Little Waldingfield Church, Suffolk used to have a 3m and pedal harmonium - an ornate North American job with fake pipes on the top. It was replaced in the early seventies (?) by a Philicorda (remember them?), which looked a good deal more incongruous. However, in 1990 Peter Bumstead installed the organ from St. Mary's, Thetford, the basis of which is by Hart of Redgrave (1809), enlarged by the Normans. It's a very fine example of a Victorian organ, and fits its allotted space as though it were made for it, but I wish I knew what happened to that monster harmonium. East Mersea Church, Essex, had a fairly big 2m and pedal harmonium, which was replaced by a neat little 3 rank unit organ by Arnold, Williamson & Hyatt in 1971. There is/was a rather fine sounding reed organ - 2m, no pedals - in St. John's, Upper Norwood, Surrey. I wonder if it's still there (it's a long time since I was farmed out there one Sunday as part of an RSCM Young Organists' Course in 1970).

Thank-you to quentinbellamy for much wisdom - 'informally formal' is a good thing. With regard to late brides, it seems not to be the custom in Newfoundland that the bride is late, so it happens very rarely. I used to have various ploys to keep myself amused. I learned the Boellmann Gothic Suite while waiting for a bride at Cregagh Presbyterian Church, Belfast (described by Simon Preston as the worst organ he'd ever played). One bride at St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, wanted to enter to 'Chariots of Fire', but also hired a Model T Ford to bring her to the ceremony. Due to a malfunction, the vehicle lived up to the title of the entrance music and the bride was very late, by which time I had played all the film themes I could think of and a fair whack of Gilbert & Sullivan. Most often, I would play 'Why are we waiting?' or 'Get me to the Church on time', the degree of subtlety varying in inverse proportion to the amount of lateness (5 minutes: heavily disguised on the Pedal, 20 minutes: French toccata). At Belfast Cathedral, it was interesting to see the choristers' faces in the mirror as they realised what was going on. 'Seven minutes in this time, sir - you were late!' In practical terms, at Henbury Church, Bristol, we had a lot of weddings and if they all ran late the last one would be running perilously close to being outside the legal hours for solemnising matrimony. The Vicar took to telling brides, 'If you're late, the organist will play "Why are we waiting?"', and that did the trick in most cases. They don't know about singing 'Why are we waiting?' to Adeste fideles here, so the effect would be lost....

All the same, Innate is right. The Church of England is bound by law to baptise, marry and bury any residents of a parish who wish it. In Lutheran countries, the state church has similar obligations, and pays its organists a full-time salary to be available for such services.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt! (illegible and ungrammatical MS copy in a key way above the capapilitiews of the vocalist). The scary thing is that no-one seems to notice if it's any good or not, and if they do they're likely to blame the organist!

Yup! The remark about the Great Open was a good example of a Budgenism, although I note Porthead's assessment of it. Both Bath and Marlborough were particular favourites of John Norman, I believe. I've never been in Marlborough College, but I thought the last HNB Bath rebuild came out rather well. (That's not to say that it didn't need doing again by the time Klais came on the scene). I've just remembered that the first organ LP I ever bought was Dudley Holroyd at Bath, made before the last HNB rebuild. I think it included the Finale of Vierne I and Daquin's Noel X (probably BWV 565 too). Something had to go when I moved here, and it was my LP collection, so I can't be sure.

Without voicing an opinion about the nave organ, I feel inclined to pose a question about the 'Hill'. Is it? HNB restored it in 1930 and moved some of the departments. They rebuilt it in 1950 with a new console. There have been sundry but major peppings-up since. It's a long, long time since I played it - in Mervyn Byers' time as organist - but I well remember that the reeds, at least, did not sound much like 1909 Hill. In general, it felt like a mid-twentieth century Hill, Norman & Beard organ. No criticism intended - they turned out some fine stuff (Holbrook School, Suffolk, for example) - but quite different from vintage Hill. If it is restored, it will be interesting to see what stage of its existence is taken as the basis.

I played the main theme the other week, in the 'Darth Widor' episode mentioned elsewhere. I might have worked in the Baddie's March if the bride had been late, but that isn't a tradition here and they usually turn up on time. I noticed a copy of said march on the organ at St. Mary's, down the road, when doing a funeral there a while ago, but never found out why it was there.

The rumpus in the church will happen if the officiating minister lets it. The organist has two options - to carry on playing or to stop. Neither is satisfactory. The officiant should outline the rules at the beginning of the service - even if it's only 'turn off your cell-phones and don't take pictures until the Signing of the Register'. With regard to choice of music, I try to be as flexible as possible. I can rely on the Dean to support any decisions I make, but my basic rule is that I will play anything that isn't anti-Christian and that I can make sound right on a pipe organ, and that singers must perform without microphone. If I haven't got the music, the couple must provide legal copies. The anti-Christian caveat came about a few years ago, when a singer sang 'Imagine'. He sang very well and accompanied himself skilfully on the guitar, but afterwards I decided that it had been a step too far. I'm happy enough with soloists and ensembles, including guitars, at weddings, if the music is appropriate. I might suggest that a certain piece is more appropriate for the reception. I have the odd run-in with soloists who want to use mikes. The argument I present to them is that the cathedral has good acoustics, the organ cannot be miked, and if the singer uses a mike the balance will be wrong in every part of the building - which seems self-evident to me. This can cause consternation with RC cantors, or RC wedding singers. The answer to this is to point out how awful the music is in RC churches here, but I dress it up tactfully - Anglican tradition and so on..... I will bend if I think it's for the best - a very gentle mike for a soloist who really isn't up to doing without (but not for professional cabaret singers), transcribing a song from YouTube and cooking it up to sound right, and so on. The latter happens only very occasionally - if it became I regular thing I would rethink. But I don't allow electronic keyboards as a substitute for the organ. In the worst scenario, one does one's best, checks that the fee is right, and goes home for a G&T.

Fair enough, but when you think about it, how many such beasts are there? When I was at Belfast Cathedral, I couldn't think of many other cathedral organs which were pure Harrison. Down Cathedral was probably as much of a mish-mash as could be found, yet Arthur Harrison made it outstanding and his successors enhanced it. There are three four-manual Casavants in this city, one of which is considered one of the finest of its period. But the Cathedral organ is much more versatile, possibly because not all the pipes are Casavant of 1928 (there's some Hope-Jones of 1904, some Norman & Beard of 1915 and a little bit of 1998 Casavant). I would agree about single malts when it comes to whisky (at Kirkwall Cathedral, I was within sniffing distance of Highland Park and the manager sang in the choir), but when it comes to organs I'm not sure that mongrels aren't more fun.