David Drinkell
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Posts posted by David Drinkell
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When the British organist arrives at an organ, the first stop he pulls out is Swell to Great, followed by Swell to Pedal... It's a natural, subliminal instinct we have. We then usually press a couple of divisionals (Sw 3, Gt 2) and off we go... with our right foot on the swell pedal, of course.
The Great and Pedal Combinations combined stop is left out all the time - this stop is unique in that it doesn't normally cancel when General Cancel is pressed. The British Organist always assumes this stop has been left out and will only notice it's been pushed in after some terrible accident has befallen him with the Great Pistons (although he will normally assume there has been a malfunction in the combination system first before investigating this stop, such is the mindset here). If it has been pushed in, the British Organist is immediately wary a foreign organist may have played the organ - there is no other reason he can comprehend. Things are rather insular here, being an island and all. This is a good warning that he should check the divisional pistons haven't been tampered with. We simply cannot understand how American organists can live without this stop.
:lol: When you think about it, the habit of always drawing Swell to Great was probably caught from the French via Father Willis. A Cavaille-Coll is one great big crescendo machine, and British organs from the mid-nineteenth century worked the same way. I feel that a lot of bad registration, and less than optimum sounds, may be put down to ignoring this basic rule. Writers like Sumner and Clutton (a long time ago now!) used to wax eloquent about using single stops and leaving off the couplers, but I think they disregarded how such tonal schemes were conceived to work. There was, and is, a lot of over-registration and thoughtless registration, but the other extreme resulted in what Gordon Reynolds called 'dehydrated Schnitger'.
In many cases, and particularly in North America, the octave couplers are also part of the tonal scheme.
If one accepts this, it follows that an insistence on tracker action is going to act against realising the full potential of the instrument. Ideally, these jobs need to observe the rules of good layout as much as a tracker instrument, and the action needs to be the best that can be made. Bad location and cheap electrics are the bane of organs.
North American organs rarely have Gt & Ped combs. The only one I can think of here is the Casavant at the Basilica, which has a couple of buttons in the Great key-cheek to couple or uncouple Great and Pedal combinations. But they do have separate adjustable thumb pistons for the Pedal stops. It's a very elegant system when you get used to it, but it means that the inter-departmental reversibles get pushed to the right of the department pistons, where they are practically useless.
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I was hooked on Sibelius after attending a demonstration and I've never used any other programme. At first, it was certainly expensive because it needed an Acorn computer to run it, but it was definitely worth it. From opening the box, assembling the computer and loading the programme, to actually using it took about twenty minutes. I'm not a compter buff but it was that easy. I felt at home with it immediately.
I'm not a born composer, either, but Sibelius made it so very much easier to produce something original if the need arose. The manufacturers claim that it acts as an amanuensis without holding up the creative flow, and they're right.
Most of the work I do with Sibelius is setting up public domain choral scores, and there's no doubt it has paid for itself many times over.
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If it's a full-length concert - say an hour and a half including interval - I like to talk to the audience. It breaks the ice and I think people like to see more of the player than just the top of his head or the back of his jacket. If it's a short concert - I play a half-hour programme every Wednesday lunch-time at the Cathedral here in St. John's - I think it's better just to play. There's not time to talk as well, but I make sure I'm at the door to welcome folk coming in and chat on the way out.
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There are a lot of organs in London and one would hope that RAM students would try to experience a good number of them (although Andrew Benson-Wilson was in print a while ago bemoaning the fact that, despite an invitation to the conservatoires, students had shown no interest in the then-new organ at the Grosvenor Chapel).
But if it's not totally irrelevent, I used to think the RCO was twisting the dagger with some of the instruments it used for examinations. OK, to be an FRCO, one should be able to cope with a variety of beasts, but a combination of some of the set pieces and Marylebone Parish Church seemed a recipe for failure. The HN&B at Kensington Gore may have been a trifle unforgiving, but at least it felt familiar in handling and one could concentrate on making the music sound as good as possible in the limited practice time available. An organ like that proposed for the RAM might be a total alien to a lot of players - but then again, it could be a great advantage.
It used to be said that there were certain recitalist/advisors around who simply would not advise employing a British firm. I don't know if that's still true, but by now there are enough large imported organs around for it to be argued that a big British concert organ ought to be built somewhere. It's a shame to have to go all the way to New York City to hear a job like St. Ignatius Loyola.
The case does look rather Euro-standard - you see them all over the world....
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I imagine he was chosen as much to represent Scotland as anything else (though I appreciate he was born in England). The Irish and Welsh have due acknowledgement in the programme.
I worked with Max quite a bit when I was Organist of St. Magnus Cathedral, but I don't remember him ever being selected to represent Scotland as a composer. He has written a number of pieces with a Scottish flavour, but to actually class him as a 'Scottish' composer would stir up a great deal of resentment among those who really are Scottish. Any input he might have at the Royal Wedding would be because he is the Master of the Queen's Musick.
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There are still very many of these fine little jobs going strong and, thankfully, unaltered.
DW
Churches with a Father Willis 'Model' are lucky. I've played a handfulof them - St. Paul's 'Willis-on-Wheels', Foxearth and Great Horkesley (Essex), Groton and Dennington (Suffolk - the latter from a college in Tottenham - John Budgen said he 'chickened out of picking it up from Petersfield under Henry's nose'), St. Mary's, Edinburgh, Song School.
These instruments have been in my mind recently: our Cathedral here in St. John's, Newfoundland, was completed in 1884 (to the design of Gilbert Scott), but burnt out in 1892. The organ in the restored building was by Hope-Jones and Ingram (some pipework survives in the present Casavant), but no one has yet discovered what there was in the pre-Fire cathedral. An article by Stobie in 'The Organ' in the early seventies mentions that St. Thomas's Church considered getting an organ from Willis, 'the builders of the cathedral organ', but Stobie's enquiries to the firm elicited the reply that they had no record of sending an organ to Newfoundland. There are a few old pictures which show an organ lurking in the shadows, but a few months ago another came to light which gives a better view. The organ in this one looks very like a Willis 'Model'. Maybe the Cathedral obtained such an organ through a dealer acting as middleman. This was not uncommon in the colonies - for example, St. Paul's, Harbour Grace, has an organ bearing the label of Chappell, the London music dealer (it was probably built by Prosser of Westminster, an ex-Bevington man, I think). Or perhaps it came from elsewhere, or Willis's record of it were lost, or Stobie was barking up entirely the wrong tree (his article is rather full of inaccuracies). Maybe in the summer, I will get down to looking up Vestry minutes and see if we really had a Willis at one time.
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I am totally zonked out after Easter Day! Simple Sung Eucharist with the choir at 6:00am (I am not a morning person!) - Merbecke, 'This joyful Eastertide' and the Widor Toccata. Big breakfast at the home of two of the choir members. 9:15am Sung Eucharist, congregational with simple setting (Malcolm Archer) of the 'modern' liturgy, Choveaux's Introduction and Toccata on 'Lasst uns erfreuen'. 11:00am Choral Eucharist (with baptism), Haydn's Little Organ Mass, Hallelujah Chorus, Easter Anthems, Willan's 'Rise up, my love' and Gigout's Grand Choeur Dialogue. Choral Evensong at 6:30 - Responses Me in C, Caustun's Service, Batten's 'O sing joyfully', Mulet Carillon Sortie.
It was fun, but that early start is a killer!
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You may have Widor, Franck, Vierne, Tournemire, Dupre, Couperin, Clerembault, Messaien (et al), and we may have to make the best of what we can with Howells, but at least our food doesn't hop onto the table!
MM
Toad in the Hole?
I suppose that, if we're mentioning Couperin and Clerambault, the English equivalent would be John Stanley et al. I have to admit that, with me, a little of that goes a long way, but there are some gems there, and not all on a small scale. (I like Camidge's Concerto in G minor, too). In the same way, I used to get mighty fed up with what I felt was an overdose of Couperin, de Grigny, Clerambault and so on - there seemed to be a glut of it around when I was a student in the seventies. The cure came when I went to France with the Organ Club in about 1975 and heard it played on authentic instruments like Houdan (and modern ones - everyone was binning the Cavaille-Colls in those days). I was also inspired by a 7" recording of Guilain's Suite on the Second Tone played by Peter Hurford at the RCO (and also a performance, laced with a certain degree of cursing, by Sam Clutton on his Mander house organ at Blackheath). Neat, tuneful and memorable, I found the Guilain much more audience-friendly than yards of Couperin. I think that the secret is capturing the right ambience, sound-wise, and this applies to Stanley as much as to Clerambault. I can do it on my slightly pepped-up 1927 Casavant, and with a bit more contriving it worked on the Harrison at Belfast Cathedral.
There was an excellent article by Peter King in The Organists' Review a while ago about registering French music - a lot of good sense.
Again in OR, Daniel Moult (I think) had an article which asked, in effect, 'If the works of X, Y and Z didn't exist, would we be any worse off?". He applied the chop to quite a few well-known composers, sometimes with a few exceptional individual pieces, and I think he spoke good sense. I think there is a lot of the French symphonic school which I wouldn't miss if it weren't there, but I would add the caveat that a sympathetic performance on an appropriate instrument could make a lot of difference.
There are a number of English pieces which deserve more airings than they are afforded. The Harwood Sonata in C# minor is a very fine work, IMHO, as is the Alcock Passacaglia (I used to think the latter was a good deal better than Rheinberger's, but my opinion of the Rheinberger has gone up a lot recently). I was tickled to read that Vaughan Williams played the Harwood for his FRCO - I did too.
Spreading the net wider, I think it's a shame that the Hindemith Sonatas aren't more widely heard, rather than yet another Widor or Vierne symphony, and I have a feeling that there's more in that style that most of us don't know about. Probably pure personal prejudice, and I must admit that I've learned a lot more French music in the past year or so and enjoyed it.
And yes, Howells probably wrote too much, but I would hate to be without much of his music, organ and choral.
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Very true. My own opinion on organs of 10 ranks or less is largely in agreement with the full complement of couplers such as with the Casavant you have cited. However, I would be inclined to make the Great intra-manual couplers function as "radio buttons" so as to provide an octave transposer; which is to say one coupler at-a-time. There is a tendency around here for full registrations with every stop and coupler active (including celestes) that needs to be addressed!
Best,
- Nathan
Hmm - occupational hazard. I used to notice a similar problem on the Binns, Fitton and Haley at St. Mary Magdalen, Colchester, in my teens. I was organist of the parish next door and we occasionally had joint services. Invariably, the organist would sit down with his leather-bound volume of One Thousand Melodious Voluntaries (or something like that) by Caleb Simper before the service, and by the end of the first hymn all the octave couplers would be on and would stay that way thereafter. Octave couplers on Binns organs tend to be by drawstop above the top manual, so 'all on' looks much like 'all off'. Being wicked and in the back row of the choir-stalls, I once reached over and pushed them all in while the organist was at communion, and they didn't come out again for the rest of the service.
I am very alarmed at the non-selective registration which seems so prevalent. My old friend back home in Colchester was a dear soul who made no claims to anything more than competence, but I see PhD performance students who sit down at my organ, draw Great Diapason I Diapason II, Doppel Flute, Hohl Flute, Gemshorn, Octave, Flute Harmonique, Twelfth, Fifteenth and Mixture and then play Bach. It's enough to make you weep.....
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Good Evening.
I have with great interest been following the various discussions here concerning small instruments. I believe that as the nature of the "average" American suburban and rural parish has changed from the organ-building "boom" era, these sorts of specifications should be considered again. Around the turn of the 20th century, nearly every first and second-tier builder in the US produced vast quantities of instruments with a specification identical to or closely adapted from the following:
Great Organ
8' Open Diapason
8' Melodia
8' Dulciana
Swell Organ
8' Stopped Diapason
8' Salicional
4' Harmonic Flute
8' Oboe (often of the flue-gamba variety)
Pedal Organ
16' Bourdon
For my part, I consider the above specification to be the ideal "core" specification for an American Church organ; at least a point of departure towards specializing the instrument to suit the liturgy and literature that it will be called to serve. We have always had lots of wood-and-plaster buildings with dead acoustics, and I believe the organ-builders of the previous century understood this. What has changed is that today, average attendance here for a suburban or rural parish is about 70 (120 is considered the practical cut-off for acquiring or sustaining any sort of pipe organ).
I have always loved octopods, and I play one of 8 ranks every Sunday which is nearly all-duplexed save for the Great Diapason and Swell Trumpet. However, I also know that octopods are decidedly not popular in my particular corner of the country.
- Nathan
The spec only gives half the story, though, because on these jobs the octave couplers are an integral part of the tonal scheme and you usually get extra notes at the top (68 or 73 note soundboards). Casavant Op.1441 (1931) at Bay Bulls RC Church, Newfoundland, about twenty minute's drive out of St. John's, is a slightly larger example. It's divided in a west gallery, the church has good acoustics and the organ sounds amazing.
Great: Open, Melodia, Dulciana, Principal, Lieblich Flute
Swell Open, Stopped, Viola da Gamba, Voix Celeste, Harmonic Flute 4, Oboe, Tremulant
Pedal Bourdon
Great to Great 16/4
Swell to Swell 16/4
Swell to Great 16/8/4
Great to Pedal 8/4
Swell to Pedal 8/4
2 pistons to Great
3 pistons to Swell
Reversible G/P
General Crescendo
Compass: 61/32
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I may be able to offer a litle sound advice here:-
First of all, take the copies and remove all staples.
Secondly, fold each page inwards four times.
Thirdly, take a jug and fill it with holy water.
Pour the holy water into a food-blender, and feed each of the folded page into it.
Now bring the blender slowly up to maximum speed, standing well back to avoid possible contamination by "the Anglican disease." (Not to be confused with the "English disease"....something quite different).
Leave to blend for a whole week and then pour the resultant smoothy down the drain, wearing rubber gloves and a nuclear protection overall with breathing apparatus.
MM
You heretic!
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Our Hill organ (OT, sorry ...) is a splendid example how 7 stop can be enough, specs quite like the above.
I bet it's lovely. I was in Breda about three years ago. I conducted the Cathedral Singers of Ontario in a concert at the Groot Kerk. They wouldn't let us use the organ, despite having one of Canada's leading recitalists with us (not me), who had given a recital on it previously. I had a look in the Catholic church during the day and saw your little Hill.
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And then finally to Terrington St Clement, an extraordinary building on the Fens. Again, anyone ever played here?
Yes - it's a Rest Cartwright with some Hope-Jonesish stop names. Pretty dull, as they tend to be (unless it's been pepped up since I was there), and of course the building could take something much more enterprising, but it can sound imposing in an octopodish sort of way. Terrington St. John, another fine church although not as spectacular as St. Clement, has a nice vintage Holdich in a Gothicky case.
St. Nicholas, Lynn, is a fine Willis and the case is by Oldrid Scott.
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And then finally to Terrington St Clement, an extraordinary building on the Fens. Again, anyone ever played here?
Yes - it's a Rest Cartwright with some Hope-Jonesish stop names. Pretty dull, as they tend to be (unless it's been pepped up since I was there), and of course the building could take something much more enterprising, but it can sound imposing in an octopodish sort of way. Terrington St. John, another fine church although not as specatcular as St. Clement, has a nice vintage Holdich in a Gothicky case.
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Beauty is in the ear of the beholder. An Arthur Harrison Large Open is a wonderful thing yes possibly, but a beautiful thing, no. A solo stop, yes possibly, but a beautiful solo stop, again, no. You can solo with anything, but it's not by mistake that very few orchestral pieces have been written with a tuba solo and fewer still, ones that take it seriously.
AJS
My ear must be different from your ear - I know quite a few Arthur Harrison Large Opens that I would consider to be things of beauty.
I'm not sure that the analogy with an orchestra is valid either - there aren't that many bass solos of any kind in orchestral music, and the tuba's chances are further reduced because only the most generous scoring calls for the instrument at all.
I've often felt uncomfortable, though, when listening to brass ensembles (even Philip Jones over thirty years ago when I was a student) because the broad tone of the tuba never seemed a good mix with the brighter trumpet and trombone timbres.
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Sorry I just have no interest in narrow gauge railways, although I did spend many years working on the Festiniog in the very cold winters, and I do have an affection for the RH&DR.
Colin Richell
Ah - well, then I guess the North Norfolk is the one for you then!
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The Mid Norfolk Railway is approx 10 miles in length (they actually own 17 miles of trackbed) and operates between Dereham and Wymondham where they have a connection with Network Rail to Norwich.and there is a nice church there.
Facilities are very good but from memory they do not operate steam locomotives although I might be wrong.Dereham is a lovely town and you can see the unused track bed to County School.
The North Norfolk railway is situated at Sheringham where the level crossing has been reinstated to connect with Network railway. Plenty of steam locos but line only about 7 miles in length. Facilities are reasonable and the town is interesting witha fairly decent beach.
Sorry cannot recall another raileay in Norfolk unless you are talking about the Mid Suffolk which is only 1 mile in length.
Hope that helps, the railways do have a web site.
Colin Richell.
I think I would go for the Bure Valley Railway, which runs for 9 miles between Aylsham and Wroxham. It's 15" gauge but, like the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch, you do get the impression of speed, and the locomotives work quite hard. There are some nice shops in Coltishall if your wife needs persuading - probably in Aylsham too.
The Wells and Walsingham is basic but fun, and has the only British Garrett in steam.
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It's not as neat as the other thing I saw, when a Brindley Great Bourdon was re-voiced as a Quintaton, using only pieces of three-ply board glued and pinned to the upper lip. It was brilliantly effective, and sounds quite wonderful afer 56 years.
I wonder if it's possible to have multiple cards to do different things? A Bourdon one minute: a Quintaton the next?
A string turning into a Dulciana? Perhaps multiple resonators on a revolving wheel....Tuba, Posaune and Fanfare Trumpet at the flick of a switch.
John Compton would have done it, I bet.
MM
I bet we can all think of Pedal Bourdons where each note sounds different, a bourdon on one note and a quintaton on the next.
Haven't Allen's done the card thing already?
Monk and Gunther (I think) took out a patent for getting more than one tone colour out of a reed pipe. There was an organ in Enfield which had such pipes, but I don't think they lasted long.
I remember, more than thirty years ago, Dennis Thurlow talking to the Bristol Organists' Association and demonstrating how to get several different tones out of a Wurlitzer trumpet pipe.
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At the risk of going seriously off topic, here's a video I did at the RHDR a year or so ago.....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvd_vBYERiM
Lovely! Quite the best Romney video I've seen. Apart from the excellent photography, it captures the Romney sound to perfection - the clicketty-clack over the rail joins, the sound of the steam at rest and at work, and particularly the sound of the chime whistles over the Marsh (they were the first in Britain - Jack Howey heard them in Canada and had some brought over, which Nigel Gresley heard and ordered some for the LNER).
I've never seen both the 4-8-2s on steam on the same day. Glad to see my favourite - 'Hurricane' - did she slip ever so slightly on starting?
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I'm trying to track down Cecil Clutton's article on the Willis organ at Manor Methodist Church, Bermondsey in The Organ. Does anybody have it and would they be willing to share it with me? I'm not sure which volume it's in. Any offers of help would be appreciated gratefully.
P.S. A quick search on NPOR tells me it is in vol. 59 of The Organ. This is the organ: http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=N16112
I have it. Isn't that the organ which formed the basis of the Shepherd Brothers' organ at St. Alphege, Burnt Oak?
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The ex-RSCM H&H is here:
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=R01719
Nice to see it settled - it seemed rather sad at Cleveland Lodge. It looks very well from the picture in NPOR - wonder what it sounds like in that acoustic.
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OK. If it's sound after inspection, shoot it and leave as is. So long as the church have no plans to cook it, it should be fine.
AJS
Here in Newfoundland seal-flipper pie is very popular. Churches even have flipper suppers. I tried it once - don't think I'll try it again....
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It seems to me that any electronic reader will have one grave disadvantage when it comes to sticking it up on the desk and playing from it - how are you going to put in fingering, registration, arcane signs and whatever else?
Shades of the Essex Girl with Tip-Ex all over the monitor....
:lol: 
The recitalist speaks
in General discussion
Posted
I forgot to say - I always provide programme notes, so it's not vital to speak between pieces.
I have occasionally had to remedy minor faults during a concert, but the beast here behaves itself remarkably well considering it's well overdue for an overhaul. If I have to go inside, I will tell the audience what's wrong and what I'm going to do.