Martin Cooke
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Posts posted by Martin Cooke
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This little demo film of the Christ Church Rieger is worth watching but what is the piece played on the fonds at 6.30?
Many thanks!
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6 hours ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
This organ was discussed on a previous thread “Henry Willis Junior Development Organ” in 2019 - scroll down to the two final comments:
https://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/topic/4460-henry-willis-junior-development-organ/
At that time NPOR R01764 listed the organ with a photograph of the closed console and no specification. Those details have since been helpfully provided: ‘DMM’ 2021. Sadly, there is no information about the fate of the former Father Willis organ (NPOR D02221) which, on paper at least, looks to have been rather fine.
I may be wrong, but I think the Junior Development organs were the brainchild of Henry Willis 4, rather than his father.
Ah yes - thanks Rowland - I even contributed to it. And, you're correct, of course - Henry IV. As I said in the previous thread, he tried to sell me one of these.
Would still be interested in knowing what became of the original organ.
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An article in Country Life this week with a photo of St Martin's church by Lutyens caused me to look things up on NPOR. A 3-manual Father Willis house organ was installed in 1947 but this was replaced in the 60s by one of those Christmas tree, spiralling instruments of HWIII. It's hard to imagine this was an improvement, musically. Does anybody on here happen to know anything behind this and what happened to the FW.
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15 hours ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
Doubtless you intended to say Christ Church, Oxford. Here’s a link to the job advertisement:
https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/vacancies/organist-and-official-student
So, two new instruments in the offing - one to replace the Nelson and another one by William Drake for the Chapter House.
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On 16/02/2024 at 14:13, David Cynan Jones said:
Announcement of William Fox as new Organist and Master of Music at St Albans
https://www.stalbanscathedral.org/news/william-fox-announced-as-new-director-of-music
It will be interesting to see what happens now at St Paul's as William was acting Assistant DoM (principal Organist) (since Simon Johnson went to Westminster Cathedral) and now they need a new Assistant DoM AND a Sub Organist - William's original role at St Paul's. I notice too that Canon James Milne, the Precentor, is moving to York Minster.
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Many thanks, Stephen, for this and your earlier suggestion.
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On 01/02/2024 at 14:34, Damian Beasley-Suffolk said:
However it seems that you may be able to pay for and download individual pieces, e.g. the Passacaglia und Fuge über Kol nidre by Siegfried Würzburger is available singly for $4.95, although I have not explored it further.
Thanks Damian - I'm not going to buy that volume. I've recently spent a lot of money on organ music and one must draw the line somewhere especially as OUP have some new volumes on the horizon.
But...how did you discover that single pieces are available separately? (Edit - please don't feel the need to reply, Damian - that was a lazy response of mine. I can see what to do!!) (Edit 2 - I have taken a punt on the Beyer piece on Synagogue melodies.)
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6 hours ago, AndrewG said:
A former Kings organ scholar said he transposes the BWV 572 up a semitone into A flat purely to allow that one note. (Not sure if he was joking!)
Yes, well... eek!! It This reminds me of an article I happened to read in the Exeter and District Organists' Association newsletter of, I think, January 2021. James Lancelot recalls his Organ Scholar interview...
I found myself in the organ loft at King’s itself under the eye of David Willcocks, who put us through a series of keyboard tests (amongst them, improvising with a right-hand solo on Nazard, transposing down a twelfth; sight-reading Brahms’ Schmücke dich with the treble part played on the pedals on a 4’ reed, playing the final verse of a hymn and continuing an improvisation while David mimicked the motions of an old-fashioned television cameraman under one’s nose).
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Alkan - Cripes! re those pedal studies of yours, Damien! 😧 Passing on those in favour of a Prière that is eminently playable (even if it requires a bottom B beyond the pedal board), and also looking at your "J'étais endormie" suggestion that might work well on the organ.
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Many thanks Colin and Damien. I shall look up Alkan, and I know there are some organ pieces by him on IMSLP. Williamson - gosh! What an amazing project by Tom Winpenny. He clearly likes a challenge. I remember singing his 'Dignus est Agnus' as a boy and also the 'Procession of Palms' which were both a bit on the Light Programme spectrum harmonically. Imagine my shock when I confidently placed an order for some of his organ music including the JFK piece and found them to be from a totally different sonic landscape - all completely beyond my ability, too, I think. Frustratingly, I can't find any of my copies of his music and fear that they must have gone, long ago, into my 'reserve stock (attic), as opposed to 'reserve stock (other bookshelf).' It called for State Trumpets 16, 8 and 4, I remember. When I next need to tackle a wasps nest up yonder I shall look them out.
Meanwhile, what I have discovered is that there is very little indigenous Australian organ music from earlier times of any quality, in print.
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I feel very ignorant asking about this, and it's too late for this year now, anyway... but can anyone offer some pointers towards some Jewish organ music that would be suitable to play on this day next year, or close to it? I have been doing a little bit of 'looking online' but not really found something yet - well, nothing that is either free on IMSLP or is not in a rather expensive album.
And then I find In will be playing for a service on ANZAC memorial day and I haven't found 'la pièce juste' to play at this. I'm very grateful to Martin Setchell who has scanned me a copy of the ANZAC day hymn, but I would like to find a nice Adagio written by a composer from that part of the world to play as a solo item at this service. If there are any suggestions, I'd be grateful. In the meantime, I am going to raid my Kevin Mayhew albums for music by Rosalie Bonighton and June Nixon, some of which would undoubtedly do. I suppose I can always play the Thalben-Ball Elegy and/or the William McKie Romance.
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A good choice, Richard, thanks for that. Shortly after that, the school where I worked invested in a large Wyvern/Phoenix with the cabinetry for speakers and console all undertaken by Renatus. I played it again for the first time in 6 years or so at Christmas and it was sounding splendid, though I would have wanted a few little bits of revoicing done now, I think - Tubas not quite right and too shrill a mixture on the choir - (though I loved it at the time, I suppose... unless something has gone awry with it). Some truly lovely sounds on it. One doesn't hear anything of Phoenix these days.
There's a smallish 2-manual Viscount with some external speakers newly installed in our local church and it sounds really good. I miss the 4ft flute on the Swell that a larger organ might have - (as at church - WIllis III, and here at home - Viscount 3-manual) - but one can go on and on adding stops, and you can download more or less anything you want from the onboard library, although it's not easy to achieve this during a service because the clicking of buttons is too noisy!
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And 'welcome' from me, too, Jaco. Very good to have you with us.
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How odd! I had it on very good authority!
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7 hours ago, bam said:
Fully agree - it sounded 'just right' to complement the Willcocks arrangement. I hope it gets published. When he took over, Daniel Hyde had a rather annoying habit of clipping the final chord of a verse or piece, but he seems to have dropped that now - mostly. Also good to hear Bach's In dulci jubilo played after the radio service in a clear and measured way.
The other thing about this, is that they took O come, all ye faithful in A flat major so that the 32ft reed could go down properly for WORD of the father.
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14 minutes ago, Colin Pykett said:
but digital technology provides the springboard to escape from it.
Quite right, Colin, and I wholeheartedly applaud the initiatives that Viscount have taken, working in some cases with Tom Daggett (now at Sheffield Cathedral), to get instruments into state schools. I suspect that it is a drop in the ocean so far, but haven't I seen a statement by some organisation somewhere saying that it is their ambition to get a digital instrument into every state school? Perhaps I'm making that up, but that would be a great ambition for a musical philanthropist, though the instrument still needs to be taught and pupils will still need to be able to practise on it. I'm not sure how accessible an organ in a school hall elsewhere could or would be during a busy school day.
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3 hours ago, P DeVile said:
Anna Lapwood has been seriously important in raising the organ/choral game to the general public. She has done more to get young people interested - particularly women.
Peter
There is no doubt that AL is a very compelling force for good amongst young people and music, and I admire her musicality very much. There remains, though, the nightmare of how difficult it is to learn the organ. Quite apart from the need to develop skill on the piano first - a traditional stance, I realise, which no doubt people, these days, call into question - there is the whole business of access to a suitable instrument upon which to learn and practise. Practising in a large, dark, cold church for an hour or two a day was part of life growing up, as was the ready availability of a school chapel. But 93% of children don't attend a school with a chapel - (even assuming that ALL independent schools have chapels or organs, which they don't) - and the wholesale change in safeguarding means that children and young people simply can't be left alone to practise in church even if someone grants them permission. Chorally, things are much easier to access, from what I can tell, but the organ is still pretty inaccessible in my view. Perhaps we must just be preparered to play the long game.
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18 minutes ago, S_L said:
So they can go around calling themselves Dr. when, in fact, they have no evidence of study at Doctoral level!! No, Martin, it won't do!!!!
Yes, I do understand people who've worked hard over many years for their doctorates objecting to that, but the award of an honorary degree is a time-honoured way of marking achievement - though I appreciate that it is no less controversial than the Honours system. Not only is it a tangled web, but also a can o' worms!
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It's a tangled web, for sure. What about those superlative church musicians who have run the music and played solo roles as organists at Westminster Abbey and St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in the last 18 months or so - the two biggest funerals of modern time + the Coronation itself - and no recognition at all. I know, I know... it can't be 'all must have prizes'... but if the Archbishop can be advanced to the top-most rank of the Royal Victorian Order in one move and the Dean to the one just below that, surely, other people who actually played a key role on the day of the Coronation and in all the rehearsing before hand might be considered for an LVO or CVO. To add insult to injury, one or two HAVE been singled out... just not the people I would have chosen, and I guess that's the nub of it! It would be nice to think that (their) universities/conservatoires might step in to fill the gap.
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Hello Richard - in August 2006, in this thread you wrote that the Makin organ at St Mary, Charlbury might be replaced. Did this ever happen and what replaced the Makin?
Gosh - there are some names from the past in that thread - whatever happened to you all??!!
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... anything from the two new OUP albums - Christmas 2 and Women Composers? I used a couple of items from the former - the Farrington piece, the two Chrétien items and also the Florence Price Adoration... though I didn't need the OUP album for this as it's been on IMSLP for ages.
As an aside, I enjoyed playing Alan Bullard's Christmas Fantasia a couple of times in different places. It works very well without being difficult.
If you're looking for interesting pieces for Candlemas, there's the Charles Wood Nunc Dimittis, but also a lovely new piece by Philip Moore in his Nativitas sequence for Advent & Christmas, published by Encore. It's based on Stanford's G major Nunc, though, of course, a transcription of this for solo organ also works well. Anybody got any other suggestions? I feel this is a day in the church which is crying out for a beautiful, atmospheric new organ piece.
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Anyone have any feedback from things they've watched or listened to over Christmas?
The thing that caught my ear was the little bit that Daniel Hyde had done for the refrain in the final verse of 'O come, all ye faithful.' It was only used in the Radio service - not the televised service. I see it as a very worthwhile enhancement of the Willocks v7 organ arrangement - splendid both in terms of descant finale and organ harmonisation, complementing the Willocks very well. Worth a listen or a few minutes' transcription if you missed it!
York and Truro remain my 'go to' places to keep up with - a shame that Trinity, Cambridge only functions in term time.
Oh... and... I've seen tweets about King's commenting on Once in Royal being in G flat major, and Hark! the herald being in F major - this being a universally 'good thing' it seems. I must admit, when having to sing it in recent years I have found the top E's a strain, so would welcome this if I were singing it again.
And, I must admit to loathing versions of the readings at a traditional 9L&C other than King James. As I may have said before, I don't really feel the CofE has gained anything at all by shunning this is favour or the garbled versions commonly in use in church which seem to me no more intelligible.
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9 hours ago, James Atherton said:
Thank you, Martin.
The Pedal Aliquot is in fact a compound stop, and gives the effect of a soft 32' reed when drawn with fairly full registrations. We have used this trick at Radley and the effect is incredible. It is inspired by Compton's Bass Cornets or Harmonics of 32' (he used several different names) So that meant the Bombardon can really 'roar' in the bass! Hope that's helpful?
Hello James - thank you very much for that and, indeed, even more of a 'thank you' for your patience and preparedness to engage with members of this and other forums.
Yes, I've no experience at all of such a stop personally but I should have realised that that's what it was there for. I suppose I always think of the Gloria of Psalm 150 with the Stanford chant as the acid test for a soft 32' reed, underpinning a closed full swell at 'As it was...'
What a wonderful project this is! Shamefully, Gloucester has never really been on a convenient or obvious axis for me in terms of visiting, but with some friends earlier this year, we came on a 'stained glass holiday' for a few days to see glass by Tom Denny, and of course, we called at Gloucester to see the Finzi and Gurney windows. I could look at those every day and not grow tired of them. I suspect the new organ will cast a similar spell, and, if I'm spared, I shall want to come and hear it.
James - I have no idea at all about the 'business angle' of this suggestion, but if you and your colleagues at N&Co thought it appropriate, perhaps you might look to a new DVD project for Gloucester to include some of the (organ) building work as well as the finished article. The splendid Priory Records series is now completely out of date for several of their instruments but they brought, and continue to bring, great pleasure. Just a thought... and thank you, again.
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58 minutes ago, innate said:
Lovely playing, Colin! It’s a funny one because, to my mind, the two chorale melodies should be absolutely equal in prominence but because the rh one is, by necessity, on the same stops as at least some of the triplet figuration parts (one you tube version has the left hand on a different manual) it’s harder to hear the rh melody if the pedal registration balances the manuals.
Yes, bravo, Colin. You have restored my faith in 1 fts. Indeed, this piece was written for such a stop and I love the tremulant. Again, 50+ years ago, who would have used a tremulant?!
What's this piece?
in Organ Music
Posted
Brilliant. Thank you so much, SlowOrg. Truly scrumptious - and I really should have known it.