David Drinkell

Reading through the thread - forgetting about Lewis for a moment - I wonder if the principal object of dislike about Rieger organs in particular and imported ones in general is the chorus reeds. I don't know CCC Oxford except from YouTube (which seems to bear out my suspicions), but I knew Clifton well of old, and St. Giles, Edinburgh pretty well from shortly after it went in. (At different stages in my life, I was warmly welcomed by Herrick Bunney, first to the Willis - which I liked - and much later to the Rieger, which I also liked). At Clifton, the reeds fit in with the German neo-classicism of the whole scheme. At St. Giles, which is in other ways gorgeously equipped for choral accompaniment and Romantic music, I have been struck several times by what seemed to be an incongruity in the chorus reeds. Apart from that, I can't fault the job tonally, it looks fabulous, and the workmanship appears to be second to none. I think Josef von Glatter-Gotz will go down in history as one of the great organ builders - and a nice guy. How about the other imports? I wasn't terribly impressed with Tonbridge School. The Marcussen at the Borgundkyrke, Alesund, Norway is one of the most beautful modern instruments I have met, but it's not an essay in a style which may have seemed novel to the builders. What's Bath Abbey like? I only knew the HN&B organ. An organ builder friend of mine, who now lives and works in Wiltshire, said that the Klais Great Open was like No.1 of about four voiced by Herbert Norman. He reckoned all the German builders had a secret craving to voice a really big diapason. That's just an anecdote - what are the reeds like? General opinion seems to be that they got it right . And what's Marlborough College like? Getting back to Lewis pneumatics - I believe that St. John's, Upper Norwood, was built with an electric action whch was later changed to pneumatic and proved a disaster - far too much distance in the tubes - until Henry Willis III electrified it in the thirties. A very fine organ indeed - and all credit to our hosts for getting it going again after the War, when others had condemned it.

There are plenty of organs around which are a mixture of Harrison and Willis - some of them are reckoned to be pretty damn good. And if David Wells is doing the job, I would feel confident that it's going to be worth while.

Yes, it looks quite suitable to me. My only doubt with this sort of scheme is that a church with a choral tradition needs the big organ near the choir, not at the back where it will only be useful for hymns and voluntaries. You would think there would be a tierce somewhere (other than, presumably, in the mixtures). How are they going to get 'Duchy of Lancaster Grand Trumpet' on the stopknob? When the present Makin instrument was installed, an article by Alasdair Pow appeared in 'The Organ', describing it and the restoration by Nicholson of the organ at Ludlow Parish Church. He compared costs, attendance at opening recitals and the sound of the respective instruments. Ludlow came off rather well, Lancaster not so well.

Who else is old enough to remember the fad in the seventies for 'Whiter shade of pale' as the bride came in? Then there was 'Annie's Song' and 'Chariots of Fire'. I remember a Vicar telling me he had had a great deal of trouble persuading a bride (and her mother) that 'Crown Imperial' wasn't a good choice for a wedding where the groom came from India.

They look interesting. Can anyone on here translate the titles?

Thomas Coats Memorial Baptist Church, Paisley, is no ordinary Baptist Church. It's a big cruciform building with a crown steeple. The four manual 1890 Hill is very fine indeed (that's another Hill that I like!). It also has the only Saxhorn stop I've ever met. Paisley Abbey, of course - the best of the Downes organs known to me - a very cohesive and exciting job. Apart from the Downes connection, of course, one cannot think of this organ without George McPhee, who was organist at the time of the rebuild and is still there now. A fine musician and a splendid companion for a few drams.

I am a disgrace to my profession.... The Dean's elder son got married a couple of weeks ago. Both he and his beloved are avid sci-fi fans. They wanted a certain French toccata as they went out, but asked if I could play the main theme from Star Wars as well. I managed to do the toccata on the manuals and Star Wars on the pedals. I'm thinking of calling it Darth Widor....

It's at Lavenham, one of the finest of the East Anglian 'wool' churches, where it replaced a slightly pepped-up two manual Conacher. The instigator of the move was the Vicar and the work is being carried out by amateurs but with help from Bishop & Son. I was interested to note that some of the extreme neo-classical stops on the Choir are being replaced by Victorian pipework originally in All Saint's, Shrub End, Colchester. this was a one manual supplied by Godball of Ipswich (he had a music shop on the Cornmarket and supplied organs which he got from a tame organ-builder). I remember this one because I was born and brought up about a mile from it. It was a decent little job but constricted in a chancel chamber, and was replaced by a second-hand extension organ from elsewhere in Essex. The latter was a fairly terrible thing. I gave a recital on it because of family connections (as it happened - I'll play anywhere!), but it really wasn't very nice and has itself been replaced by a toaster. There are plans at Lavenham to add a solo division - dunno whether it will be on a fourth manual or share the lowest one. The church is big enough to take it. Another one to go see next time I'm home....

There was quite a fashion for fixed-term contracts a while back, but I don't think it caught on. I know of at least one organist of a major cathedral who is well into the third decade of a ten-year fixed-term contract. I had a 'retire at 65' clause in my contract at Belfast, but I think that was because my predecessor-but-three stayed on until he was 88. They had a dinner to celebrate his seventieth birthday and another for his 50th anniversary in the post, both hoping he would take the hint and retire, but he expressed himself so moved by the tokens of appreciation that he had decided to stay on.

Yes - another of Rushworths' best, and very well matched to the building. I haven't heard it since it was restored and re-ordered, but I understand it's even better than it was.

There was a row there a little while back because the music establishment was to be cut back for financial reasons. Maybe that had a bearing on the parting of the ways (although I am in no way qualified to suggest this).

St. Mary's, Southampton is on my wish list. One of my favourite Willis III jobs is St. Thomas a Becket, Wandsworth, which was the putting into practice of an ideal scheme for a moderate-sized organ cooked up by Willis and an organist friend (I never worked out who it was). At 38 speaking stops, I would call it quite big,though.... I found All Saint's, Hove, disappointing, although it is undeniably an aristocrat. I have thisaffliction that most old Hills don't do much for me (in the same week, that in Big School at Christ's Hospital left me cold, although I was pleased to renew acquaintance with the Rushworth in the Chapel). Also, I came to Hove having just played at St. Peter's, Brighton, which is a Father Willis and much more my cup of tea. (Actually, in between the two a friend and myself skived off and had a look in St. Bartholomew's, Brighton - you can hardly miss it - and played what I imagine is quite a good Walker in a building in which anything would sound pretty damn fine). 'You play an organ and you think it's great, you play another and think it's superb, then you come face to face with a Father Willis and everything else pales into insignificance.' I can't remember who said that.... Just to be contrary, I thought All Hallows, Gospel Oak was very fine indeed. I guess I am totally lacking in consistency. While I am at it, I think the Hill/HNB in Londonderry Guildhall is extremely fine and much under-rated. I prefer it to that in the Ulster Hall, Belfast. A one-off, and a tribute to Arthur Harrison and his successors: Down Cathedral. A really lovely organ. For an assault of Schulzian proportions, the Brindley at Kilmore Cathedral, Co. Cavan takes some beating. Slightly less terrifying, the Conacher at Kildare Cathedral, and Trim Cathedral, Co. Meath, has one of the nicest medium-sized Binns organs I have met. For an absolutely superb Binns, the Old Independent Church, Haverhill, Suffolk - a pity they altered it slightly a while back. You have me intrigued with your remarks about Kingswinford RC. I can't find it on NPOR. Is it one of those flimsy little European efforts?

Ooh yes! St. Bee's is superb! Just like a vintage Bentley. Whether one could call it a 'Great Church', I'm not sure. It's not very big and only the nave and transepts are in use. Boston, likewise, is a fine job. Slightly post-Arthur Harrison and maybe a little brighter. Don't know Farnborough. Is it really as amazing as people say? I'm quite prepared to accept that it is - I just wondered. I'm not sure that 'thoroughbred' is the right word, although it infers the right quality. At St. Bee's, the Willis was completed and enlarged by Harrisons'. Although this was done in a reverend way, it involved changes to specification, scaling and wind pressures. Boston is a typical mish-mash of various bits, melded into a cohesive entity by Harrisons'. Farnborough is probably not a Cavaille-Coll, except insofar as it was made by the company long after his death. Mongrels are often more efficient, more fun and easier to live with!

Yeah - that's even more of a lag than Southwark Cathedral.....

I may have misread Porthead, but I took his post to mean that he did not care for the instruments mentioned. Wymondham is one of the instruments that I've never got round to playing, despite being a native of that part of the country. It looks to be a very complete and effective instrument, but I have no idea what it sounds like. Appearances are so deceptive. The RCO organ at Kensington Gore looked an almost perfect scheme for its size, but in practice one couldn't take anything for granted, registration-wise and it took a lot of scheming to make a lot of music make sense (I played the Harwood Sonata for FRCO - as did Ralph Vaughan Williams about ninety years earlier. It was tricky to register, but it was possible). Warwick looked too clever to be true and it does generally seem to be regarded as too loud. Again, I don't know Crediton, but I have had a fair amount of experience with Arthur Harrisons. One is often told that one shouldn't try to make an organ do something it can't. I think it's more accurate to say that one should try and make it do things its own way, and then any good instrument will deliver more than might be expected. Those who know more about such things than I do (e.g. Harry Bramma) have suggested recently that the Harmonics is not merely, or principally, a step on the way to the Trombas, although it was probably not intended to come on until at least some of the Swell reeds were drawn. When one sees the sort of thing that Trost provided and of which Bach approved, one wonders if pure quint mixtures really are the only way. (Hill provided some filthy tierce mixtures, others did rather better). As for the Trombas themselves, one could argue that they were normally not intended to be added to a big principal ensemble, but formed the basis of an ensemble of their own. Colonel Dixon certainly thought that way. A lot of them are really tubas anyway and best used that way. The Redcliffe Trombas are certainly tuba-power for any other organ, but the ones at Belfast Cathedral were quite moderate and, despite being smooth as butter, went extremely well with the 1967 Positif - a very strange phenomenon! I would not call the Crediton Choir Organ a Solo Organ, although many three-manual Harrisons were treated that way. It's more like the Choir Organ on a four manual Harrison, i.e. a miniature Great, and very handy for choral accompaniment or colouring other departments. I wondered to myself how wide we were casting the net for this thread - what counted as a 'Great Church' - otherwise Armley would certainly have come to mind. Leeds PC, too - it really has no right to sound as good as it does! How about Great Yarmouth Priory? Ex-St. Mary-the-Boltons 3m Hill (Hmmm!) installed by Compton (Good!) with a Westminster Abbey lookalike case by Dykes Bower. Another on my wish list..... Any takers for Buckfast? I've never heard it.

I think he may have indeed have been unaware, due to being dead.

Since the King James Bible often starts sentences with 'and', it must be OK. I would suggest that the danger lies in inappropriate use or over-use. Regarding 'Teach me, my God and King', it's a thing of its time and needs to be respected as such. When I was at school, the headmaster (a noted English scholar) thought it a particularly fine piece of work. Criticising poetry in hymns is a tricky business. A good poem does not always make a good hymn, and some undeniably effective hymns are mere doggerel in poetic terms. Scottish metrical psalms are a case in point - tremendously effective but often poor in pure poetic terms. In terms of language, anyone who has worked with a choir of men and boys will know that an eight-year old boy will very quickly learn to find his way about (and to quote from) the Book of Common Prayer, so I don't think dumbing down is to be commended.

Roger Taylor, a local organ man, used to look after Downside very nicely. I don't know how things are these days, but some Comptons went for a very long time on their original components I guess that, like all organs, you have to approach Arthur Harrisons for what they are, and not everyone is going to like what they find. I found them more flexible than some would have me believe, but it someties took a bit of time to work outhow to do things, because what worked on a Walker or a Father Willis might not work on an AH. The trombas need care - one can't throw them about like chorus trumpets, and some of them are simply tubas. It's a dangerous path when people start altering them - as another post here referring to St. Peter's Bournemouth reveals. Integrity should be respected, even if it's not too popular with everyone (I don't much like old Hills, with some notable exceptions). Stirling - the Tenor Solo coupler was always there, as was the Gong. The builders were in the fortunate position of having a good site and no shortage of funds and when they had put in everything they wanted there was a bit of cash left over. The organist, Dr. Baird Ross decided he wanted a Burmese Temple Gong - Lord knows why! It sounds like a saucepan lid being hit with a ladle. I confess to having used it in a recital (in a piece by Scheidt). The alterations to the original, like the splitting off of certain Choir stops and calling them 'Positive' were, I think, unfortunate, although carried out with the best of intentions. There is a strong case for restoring its original integrity. Overall, it is an instrument of impressively high quality. I've heard more than one person say, 'Rushworth's could really do it when they wanted to', and the Stirling organ is ample proof. Another is St. James, Antrim Road, Belfast, a moderate-sized three-manual (in a redundant church), and I believe that Reid Memorial, Edinburgh is similarly fine.

The Compton at Downside Abbey is a mightily impressive beast, especially for its period. The HN&B at Selby Abbey (but possibly the finest is the one at Holbrook School, whch may not count in this thread). The Harrison at the Temple Church. The Harrisons at Redcliffe and King's. The Rushworth at Holy Rude, Stirling.

We're back to how the beast is played - there's nothing lugubrious about Redcliffe in the right hands. The Cathedral lost its Vox Humana in about 1971 in favour of a Sifflet, but it's back again now so we can both be happy.

Mine is in the box and fires at the harbour rather than the congregation, so it's not much good at putting the fear of God into people (unless they're in the sacristy). You have to do crafty things with couplers to get a proper tuba effect. On the other hand, it's very good as a reserve super-Full Swell (like the old solo reeds at St. Paul's) and it comes in handy when Percy Whitlock asks for a Horn. A couple of blocks away, Cochrane Street United Church has a really superb Tuba, quite up to the standard of anything I've heard in the UK. The 1957 Casavant replaced a large three-manual Arthur Harrison (apparently North American heating had played hell with the slider chests and pneumatic action). Everyone, including Casavants' and the organist who was instrumental in getting it installed, assures me that none of the old organ was recycled in the new one, but when David Wells was here on a visit a couple of years ago I took him to Cochrane Street and he said he was sure it was a Harrison Tuba - and he should know. I've never been inside to check. The RC Basilica also has a four manual 50s Casavant and the Tuba is perfectly respectable, but not in the same league as Cochrane Sreet.

I've never been in Blackburn Cathedral and I've never heard Bradford or Wakefield (and I like Comptons). I played the Allen at Chichester but I've never heard the pipe organ. Or St. David's or Llandaff, Birmingham, Oxford or Lichfield. I've never heard Coventry really put through its paces. And there are a good few cathedral organs that aren't the same now as they were when I played them. I have a rather pointless claim to fame in that I am the only person to have given recitals in all 31 cathedrals of the Church of Ireland, and likely to remain so given that Achonry Cathedral is no longer in use. A few of those have had a change of organ since then, too, including replacement of toasters at Waterford and Raphoe (the latter a particularly nasty Hammond). When visiting Liverpool, I think it's wise to experience the RC cathedral organ first, because one would then think it magnificent. The Anglican cathedral organ is totally amazing and I don't think there's anything like it, although St. John the Divine, New York City (a much smaller instrument) gave me a similar thrill. No one (I think) has mentioned Westminster Cathedral yet. Am I a total Philistine in not rating it very highly? It's not the organ so much as the acoustic. Close to, I find it bluff verging on coarse (not untypical of Henry III) and at a distance, blurred and indistinct. It sounds pretty fine in the galleries at the side of the nave, but one doesn't normally hear it from there. I feel guilty about feeling this way and one day maybe I shall learn better. I agree about York. I had a salutary experience at Norwich a few years ago. I had thought it prone to be rather unsubtle, but in the course of directing a visiting choir for a week, we sang one Evensong with David Dunnett at the organ (our accompanist had to make a flying visit back to Canada to receive an honorary FRCCO) and it sounded fabulous. I suppose the effect of a lot of organs depends on the player to some extent. I knew Clifton Cathedral organ quite well as a student, but didn't hear it again until more than twenty years later, when it sounded a good deal more mellow than I remembered it. Has Time laid her gentle hand on it, has it been revoiced, or was I getting old?

Yes, but if it does it in a good-humoured way, there's no harm and we might learn a few things we didn't know before.

They say that you don't need to play a Father Willis organ, it plays itself, which is much the same as you are saying about Salisbury. Truro is much the same - perhaps its size makes it a little harder to handle, although it's amazing that it gets so much out of so little. I like Canterbury a lot, although it's a shame it was pruned so much - but what could one do withn a site like that? I played Peterborough for a wedding about 35 years ago and the chief thing I remember about it was the (then) amazing range of unison tone on the Great - 32, three 16s, Phonon, three Opens, Geigen, big flute, little flute, dulciana. Most excessive, I suppose, but fun when it was there. I'm not, in a general way, a great Hill fan, but I think Chester is extremely fine, and so is Cork. Allan Wicks, at a seminar at Bristol University, was asked (by a non-organist) what he thought was the finest organ in the country and said, 'Chester Cathedral'. At the time, it probably came very close to what one expected of a cathedral organ, and I think it's still exceptional in its way. I knew Bristol quite well as a student in the seventies. A real aristocrat when it came to accompaniment - a dark, rich pleno and some beautiful soft stuff. Clifford Harker used to say that it was a proper church organ, while Redcliffe was more of a recital instrument, and I think he had a point. The Cathedral was perfect for seamless accompaniments, whereas Redcliffe needed a lot more care. Armagh CofI Cathedral, heard in the nave, was rather similar to Bristol and hasn't lost any of its old character in the very successful pepping up done by Wells-Kennedy some years back. Choral Evensong at Bristol around the middle of the month when there was plenty of smiting in the psalms was well worth the trot down the hill.

Yes - there's a special circle in Hell reserved for the perpetrators of these. Fortunately, we use the 1938 book, which has its faults (too many mawkish ditties) but is at least textually acceptable. We're supposed to use the new book for diocesan services but we don't. If challeneged, I would say that to print texts from the new book would be a breach of copyright.....