Martin Cooke
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Posts posted by Martin Cooke
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5 minutes ago, Martin Cooke said:
I don't suppose you recognise the music at the beginning of the service do you? Is that another Locklair piece, possibly?
How boring is it, if I keep answering my own questions?! I've discovered now, having been put on the right track by SlowOrg, that it is indeed another movement from Rubrics - Silence may be kept. Sorry to have wasted everyone's time!
18 hours ago, Keitha said:'Super hanc Petram' is (to be) published by Bardon Music (http://www.bardon-music.com). It's currently shown as being 'in preparation'.
Yes, I saw that, but have managed to get hold of a second hand copy online. I wish I could resist buying all this music!
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14 hours ago, SlowOrg said:
No, it’s the first one – "Hallelujah", has been restored. [Score (first page)]
The whole suite was recorded by Marilyn Keiser and is available on Spotify (along with other organ pieces by Dan Locklair).
Ah, goodness, I should have known that, SlowOrg - thanks very much indeed. I don't suppose you recognise the music at the beginning of the service do you? Is that another Locklair piece, possibly? "Hallalujah" has been restored would make a great voluntary for a first Sunday back in church with choir and singing!
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45 minutes ago, Martin Cooke said:
Aaaaarrrrrgh! No you're not, S_L! Sorry!!
Here's the link - played by Claudia Grinnell at Winchester Cathedral.
I am bound to say that I am also interested in the music she plays before and after this service, too!
Ah - well the first piece is 'Super hanc Petram' by Clarence Lucas. I could read 'Petram' and then a search on that and 'organ music' produced it. Not sure yet if it's in print.
Can anyone help with the second service, before and after?
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Aaaaarrrrrgh! No you're not, S_L! Sorry!!
Here's the link - played by Claudia Grinnell at Winchester Cathedral.
I am bound to say that I am also interested in the musicshe plays before and after this service, too!
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Can anyone identify the voluntary at the beginning of this service, please? Frustratingly, I can't quite read the title.
Many thanks.
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8 hours ago, bam said:
After Monday's announcement, are there any opinions as to whether a risk assessment is necessary or advisable before restarting congregational singing, and if so, is anyone aware of a template that is available?
Well, originally, there was a risk assessment template available on the RSCM website - I haven't looked to see if it has been undated or taken down. The full rubric for a re-start will eventually come from the Church of England people led by the Bishop of London but I don't think that has appeared yet.
Here's the RSCM stuff but it's not up to date - https://www.rscm.org.uk/covid-19-resources-for-churches/
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1 hour ago, DariusB said:
I feel very fortunate that while some civic organists and their supporters have to deal with local authorities who are indifferent or even hostile, Leeds City Council has such a strong record in supporting music. (I also hugely appreciate Simon Lindley's role in this). They're one of the few councils still to have a dedicated music department and as well as the organ recitals they run free chamber concerts, brass band concerts etc all over the area as well as the International Concert Season.
And this is because people like you and Simon Lindley have fought the good fight and inspired members of the Council to believe in you, the organ and music generally. It's great to see.
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On 10/07/2021 at 15:26, DariusB said:
Perhaps we should draw a distinction between 'could' be improved and 'should' be improved. I might be custodian of, say a Father Willis, and feel that a certain stop should be louder, but if I had the opportunity to change it I wouldn't even consider doing so, as the unaltered instrument has integrity and should be left alone. But an organ that has already been altered and 'improved' many times over the years is different, even if you take the view that the alterations are part of the instrument's history and should be respected.
I agree with you, and I have a great admiration for these instruments - the iconic ones should be left alone. But for every Coventry Cathedral, Brompton Oratory, St Alban's etc that are successful examples of that aesthetic, there are ten badly executed imitations that we all know only too well. That unfairly gives the whole period a bad name.
Yes, I think it is a matter of drawing a distinction between iconic or 'special' instruments and others - the majority? - that are more ordinary and were probably built to a fairly low budget. I struggle to agree with the notion that EVERY mechanical action pipe organ must be preserved at all costs without tonal or other changes, especially when they are still needed to do a job in church or elsewhere. Sure, these days, I would be very reluctant to see such an instrument given electric action - that ship has sailed, long ago - but where there is a rank of pipes sitting on an expensive slide on a very expensive soundboard, that is, tbh, dull or unpleasant, I don't have too much problem with 'trading it in' for something more useful that will genuinely help the organ to do a better job of leading the congregation. And no, I'm not saying that I want to rid a Great of its Dulciana, especially if the 8ft flute is too loud to accompany the swell Oboe, but I might be tempted to swap it for a smaller diapason, or perhaps a 2ft stop if there weren't one.
I think I have said before, that I really do think there are places where a digital organ is going to serve best, largely because of restrictions in space, or because the only place for a pipe organ makes it too remote from the singers. And are pipe organs, per se, really threatened by digital organs? Try typing 'Bristol' or 'Sheffield' or 'Wiltshire' into the address box in NPOR. Hundreds of instruments appear. There are thousands and thousands of pipe organs in existence. The threat to them, surely is from their own complexity and the cost of maintaining them over a long period of time, the lack of people to play them, despite lots of effort, and the fact that fewer and fewer people are attending church.. or, at least, the sort of church where a conventional pipe organ is used.
Moving on... One thing I would be interested to know is how far one can go in improving a heritage instrument. Near me, there is a beautifully toned one manual William Hill instrument. It has a short compass pedal with a permanently coupled Bourdon and the pedal board appears to have been extended by four notes. Anyway, the pedals are not easy to use in a conventional way. So, would an organ builder be allowed to reconstruct this instrument with a pedal board that COULD be used and is as close to a modern accepted norm as might be imagined? This would, at a stroke, broaden the scope of this instrument and make it much more versatile without changing a solitary stop or pipe. But presumably, a purist would nail themselves to the pedalboard to prevent that from happening! Or would they?
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2 hours ago, John Robinson said:
I hope that Darius doesn't mind me pre-empting him, but I have just found a post on Facebook detailing the rebuild of the Leeds Town Hall organ by Nicholson's. Their information is here:
http://www.nicholsonorgans.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-06-07-LTH-website-spec.pdf
I must say that I'm impressed with the scale and scope of this rebuild. It is much more expansive than I had imagined and all who are involved should, in my opinion, be congratulated for their forward thinking.
Darius, if I have posted out of turn, please say so and I shall delete this.
JohnWell, it looks like a fabulous scheme.
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If you don't already read the very entertaining British Pipe Organs site on Facebook, there is a really interesting discussion going on at the moment: - https://www.facebook.com/groups/355269498442029/?fref=mentions.
It's all about the merits and de-merits of altering organs when they come to be rebuilt, and generally fiddling with them. Truro is seen, by all of us, I am sure, as a great unchanged cathedral organ (bar the moving of the console, subsequent renewal of the console in the Mander style - [which to my mind was a shame] - and the bringing forward of the Tuba) at the one end of the scale, and then there is, say, Blackburn with its added manual and its digital pedal stops, and the 70's rebuild of Ely, at the other. In the middle of this are instruments like York and Canterbury which had been changed almost endlessly since their incarnation, but both of which seem to have found a happy and harmonious new and glorious state consequent upon their very recent rebuilds. I am bound to say that having followed the work on these two instruments from afar and not knowing either from a playing point of view, H&H and the cathedral teams and advisers have done astoundingly well. But, in 25/30 years' time, when these instruments are no longer 'new' will the incumbent organists still want to fiddle when they are rebuilt? (Some of us will never know!) And is it reasonable that they might? Anyway, I do not seek to detract from the discussion on the other site - it, and other discussions there, are always lively and interesting.
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1 hour ago, S_L said:
Of the 36 Cathedral DoM's I was able to quickly look up 17 went to Cambridge, 8 went to Oxford and 11 went to 'other places' - which were mostly London Conservatoires.
I'll come back to the reason I have quoted from S_L's point in the moment.
The other relevant point here, I would have thought, is experience as a chorister at a high level. In terms of the food chain, as it were, 'cathedral etc' choristers are good candidates for music scholarships at senior independent schools and bring with them masses of experience and skill. For the individual chorister, they have been steeped in the world of fine things - music, architecture, and beauty - including the sound of, in most cases, wonderful organs. Many independent schools boast at least one good organ, and Bob quickly becomes your uncle as they wend their happy ways back toward the cathedrals and other top choral places whence they came, when the time comes. I wonder what the percentage of DoMs and ADoMs is that served as choristers?
S_L's point above... something that has changed fairly recently is for DoMs and ADoMs to have been at one university for their first degree (possibly as an Organ Scholar) but then move on to the RCM, RAM or other conservatoire to do an MMus. The old pattern for many, right up to the John Scott/James Lancelot era, was to follow the BA with the Oxbridge BMus/MusB - and thus become MA, BMus, FRCO. The BMus at Oxford and Cambridge seems to be in some sort of abeyance - (we have covered this ground before and mourned the consequent loss of two beautiful hoods) - and the alternative seems to be an MPhil or a Master of Studies. I am not fully up to speed on this and would welcome correction or updates! Later, upon retirement, many DoMs became MA, DMus, FRCO, courtesy of Lambeth, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside now... as, of course, has the ADCM for 'FRCO (CHM) only' candidates. Roy Massey has one of these, as did, to my knowledge, Gerald Knight and I remember observing Dudley Holroyd's blue velvet (lined white) hood hanging at the bottom of the organ stairs in Bath Abbey back in his day.
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I saw a tweet yesterday announcing Imogen Morgan as the new Assistant DoM at St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh. She is presently Organ Scholar at Peterborough Cathedral having been ORgan Scholar at Durham University and Durham Cathedral.
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42 minutes ago, OwenTurner said:
Are Harrison’s getting all the big jobs these days? It seems that way. Does anyone know any large projects going elsewhere? Great that Harrison’s are successful but monopolies are generally dangerous. Do we know who got the Leeds Town Hall contract yet? Smaller firms have done good work on big rebuilds previously.
Well, I am no expert, but it's not long since David Wells did Guildford, and they have ongoing work, with some involvement of Henry Willis and Sons Ltd, at Liverpool Cathedral. Mander Organ Builders are doing Wimborne Minster and have recently completed St James, Sussex Gardens - a large 4-manual. Nicholsons have had some pretty large projects - St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle fairly recently, Llandaff not so long ago, and Manchester Town Hall, Radley College, the Bute Hall, St Mary's Portsea and two large London churches are all current and future projects. I suspect small firms are careful not to overreach themselves, always remembering that all this painstaking and specialised work on organs relies on very specific skills and experiences which are probably in quite short supply, but also these big jobs, surely, rely on a lot of workshop space being available and that must limit what some of the smaller firms can manage when it comes wholesale reconstruction. Am I right in thinking that some of the smaller firms tune and 'look after' some of our major instruments on a day to day basis but can't, perhaps, take on major rebuilds because they don't have the staff/space to manage them? Might they also get involved as sub contractors on some major jobs? It will be interesting to see what happens with Bristol. Leeds Town Hall details are to be announced on 19th July. Do we know who deals with running repairs etc at St Paul's Cathedral nowadays?
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Wells has announced the start of a £2M appeal for H&H to rebuild the organ. See here.
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Forumites may be interested in this little demonstration of the Guildford organ. It hasn't really been possible to discover much about the David Wells work, and although this video doesn't clarify on that score, it is interesting, and is a great reminder that second hand instruments can be absolutely outstanding as this one seems to be. Am I right in thinking that R & D has a rather mixed reputation? And if so, why is that when Guildford and Chester seem so good?
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... a bit outside the box and rather exciting! And probably tricky!!
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-gerre-hancock-organ-album-9780193552296?lang=en&cc=gb#
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Gosh - some exciting and very beautiful pieces there - well worth a visit - the Sebastian Forbes and the Jacques van Oortmerssen contributions, especially.
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Many thanks, Keith. I won't say that I got huge value for money out of Volume 4, but that is more a reflection of my ability than anything else, but I remain interested as so many top level people are contributing to this really interesting project. Let's hope they can crack on soon.
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Can anyone tell me where we have got to with publications stemming from this? I bought the first volume - Volume 4 - quite a while ago, but can find no information about subsequent volumes. The other day, I came across a video of Anna Lapwood playing a CP by Grayston Ives, but don't know if the music is available. Any intel anyone?
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Yes, awful news but let's hope insurance will do its thing and given time, all will be well and they will rise again even stronger. Very sorry to hear that one of the employees was hurt and hope he is ok. Just picked up my copy of the latest Choir and Organ to find a feature on the company written by Paul Hale which just serves to make it all the more sad at what has occurred.
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I realise that these things are not everyone's cup of tea, but if 'involvement' in these things is enough of an honour, then so be it. But in this case, it appears - and I may well be wrong - that people other than the musicians have been given something and the musicians have been left out. That is my point - and it's not unusual. Whether we like the system or not, people in all walks of life get these awards, but people at the top of their game in music don't seem to be rewarded in the same way as others.
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I just read this, about demise honours for those closest to HRH Prince Philip, including those who looked after the Land Rover and organised things. A shame there doesn't appear to be anything for the musicians.
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Some luxuriant adagios 'fell off my shelf' yesterday in the form of 'The Fagus Collection of Edwardian Preludes.' I think this is a new collection from earlier this year but a number of thirteen, two page, pieces within, by Alcock , Myles B Foster, John E West, Hollins and William Wolstenholme etc fit the description. I'm sure these and others like them are freely available in IMSLP, but I do feel that Fagus has drawn together a really good selection. I've come to realise that anything by John E West is worth a second glance and I played his Easter Morn on Easter Day this. David Hill has recently recorded one of his Passacaglias. Anyway, I can see myself playing all 13 of these as useful service music. Coming out of the ether on a Sunday evening before, or even after, Evensong, any one of these would set the tone for a beautiful service or a gentle walk home.
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15 hours ago, Paul Isom said:
I have a copy - it's worth a punt! You can buy it straight from Amazon - just put in the title and composer (£7.99).
Thanks, Paul - done!
What's this piece?
in Organ Music
Posted
I've listened to quite a few online services, Rowland, several with CG playing, and it has all sounded well and been very interesting, especially to hear some of her repertoire as you can tell from this thread. But I am always interested in what other organist play before and after services. I can't tell very much at all about the organ, and as I said in a previous post, I last played it over 40 years ago for an evensong. It's not hard to imagine that it's ready for a good 'seeing-to' but also not hard to imagine what a great job H&H will do.