Brian Childs

Would that be an Orchestral Trumpet (from TC) by any chance ? BAC

Oh does the stop knob read CRUMHORN ? Not the generally favoured spelling then !

Really? Even imitate an elephant with a serious case of flatulence or cover up for an overweight organist with a similar problem as a result of how Saturday night was spent ?

And laser guided ? PS : To change subject so as not to anger JR who originally said" You can always tell a Yorlshireman, but you can't tell him much..." Genuine question : know the quote but not the originator.

Dear Jeremy, Most helpful. Thank you very much. Brian Childs

It can MOVE backwards through the air but it cannot FLY backwards at the same speed as it can FLY forwards (which is what I mean by reversing), and the backwards movement is not possible except at low altitude. This is very useful for operating from non-conventional landing sites but has very limited potential as a means of avoiding any form of missile attack by anything even slightly more sophisticated than the rockets used by the first RAF Typhoons in Normandy in 1944. But perhaps we should return to the subject of organs

Steve, I am sorry that the things I left out of my post misled you into thinking I have a somewhat unworldly view of what the USA is like in 2006. Of course if we are considering specific projects then what you say must be right, but exactly the same would apply in the UK where there would be no question of virement between,for example, a project to restore the organ of Glasgow University's Bute Hall and one to refurbish that of the Royal Festival Hall in London. I was thinking in rather more general terms about a project funded by public subscription, in the same way that the public are invited to give for the purposes of charitable relief in the wake of a disaster such as that which recently befell New Orleans, although I failed to specify that. In such a situation my point was that if you are asking the public to subscribe for a major civic project - and in the case of Atlantic City the argument could surely be made that the instrument was of more than merely LOCAL importance, just as the response to Katrina reached beyond the boundaries of the States affected - then it surely made more sense to preserve something that already exists than to start again from scratch. It is very seldom that it is quicker or cheaper to build a brand new building as opposed to refurbishing an existing one.

But there are no fighter jets that can fly backwards ! Even the Harrier cannot do that, if by fly backwards you mean put into reverse like a car. I agree with you that in theory the one that can fly backwards ought to have the advantage but at the back of my mind lurks the experience of the 1930s, when the argument was between the highly manoeuvrable biplane and the faster, better armed monoplane. There was a school of thought that the monoplane would never out perform the biplane in aerial fighting which it was assumed would take the form familiar to Mannock, McCudden and Ball (and I should add Bishop (for our Canadian readers) and Eddie Rickenbacker for those from the USA). Some air forces, particularly the Italian, went with this philosophy and entered WW2 with a front line strength which included a number of biplanes that were perfectly delightful to fly and quite incapable of living in the same airspace as a spitfire or even a twin engined beaufighter. So perhaps the jet that can fly faster than the speed of a bullet or pursuing missile might have the advantage after all in an environment where targets are not seen but acquired on radar and attacked from distances measured in miles rather than the hundreds of feet of WW1 or the hundreds of yards of WW2 ?

Might I somewhat hesitantly suggest that somewhat different criteria need to be applied to instruments intended for liturgical use than apply to those purely for use as concert instruments, a consideration which does not always seem to have been taken into account in some of the comments made on this thread. The principal purpose of a liturgical organ is surely the support of singing, but doing this actually covers an enormous range from a few highly trained professionals to a gathering of several thousand barely on nodding terms with the words or tune of even one of our better known hymns. Moreover, the support may be required at various places in the building. It seems to me that this can provide a certain justification for providing various departments spread at strategic locations around a large building, which has no application to instruments intended purely for concert use, though even here a remote echo or antiphonal department is sanctioned by long usage, hardly likely to end civilisation as we know it, and merely provides the organ equivalent of effects which orchestral composers have also sought to exploit (where performing conditions allowed of it) eg Vaughan Williams in the Tallis Fantasia. Brian Childs

Between 1949 and 1952 initially. The link below provides the details. Cheers, Brian Childs .http://www.lawrencephelps.com/Documents/Articles/Phelps/motherchurchorgan.shtml

Hi Jeremy, Could I possibly trouble you to tell me who supplied your copy and also the number. I did not keep a copy of the OR proofs and so have forgotten the number . I seem to recollect PHICD 214 but I could be wrong on that. Many thanks. Brian Childs

Hi, have inserted a couple of comments in the quoted text.

Those pay attention to such matters may have noted that the last update on the Amphion Website still stands as May 2005, however, the good news is that the February issue of Organists' Review will carry a large advert for a couple of new Amphion releases, one of which features a selection of recordings of Ralph Downs both on the RFH and Brompton Oratory organs, including tracks drawn from the famous Pye Golden Guinea Bach/Widor LP and also from recordings made by Michael Smythe, which hopefully signals the resurgence of Amphion. Since Martin Monkman's historical recordings series has now reached the 1950s, it has to be a possibility (though copyright considerations obviously arise) that the next stop is the 1960s after all we have already had highlights from the Great Cathedral Organ Series. We can but hope.

I too would like to record my whole hearted endorsement of the sentiments expressed in the two previous posts. My own CD collection contains a number of treasured performances stretching (figuratively speaking) from New York (Gerre Hancock) to Seattle (Peter Hallock). If the performers on these CDs really had so little regard for the English choral tradition, they certainly took an enormous amount of trouble to conceal that fact. I find it difficult to credit that so much time and trouble as has evidently been expended would have been lavished on performances of repertoire which the performers really believed would have been better consigned to a skip and dumped on Statton Island (Fresh Kills is it ?)! So the traffic is certainly not all flowing in one direction, and I am very gt rateful for the immense pleasure that these performances have given me. Brian Childs

Dear Tony, Since I read your post I have been reflecting (a popular thing to do this weekend) on why Church attendance in America is higher than here. Whilst I do not claim to KNOW the answer I suspect that both the habit and the social pressure factors which I advanced as reasons in my original post continue to have an impact there in a way that they do not here, to reinforce what is quite possibly a higher number of genuine believers. Other peculiar features of the history of the USA also probably contribute thus (1) Some of the earliest colonists went there in search of a religious freedom that they were not accorded in Europe (Pilgrim Fathers, Mayflower and all that). It is not inconceivable that the intensity of puritain religious experience has proved more capable of surviving into the modern world than some other manifestations of it, whilst the celebration of the folk memory aspect will certainly have reinforced the HABIT of church attendance. (2) The US population has been built up through successive waves of immigration but the "melting pot" approach with its focus on creating a single American culture must have meant in a number of instances that communities discouraged from maintaining links based on ethnicity used the fact of their shared faith instead, especially in a country with a constitutional guarantee of freedom of worship for all. (3) |As anyone who has been to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania or the Waterloo/ Guelph area of Ontario can testify there is a tendency for those who share a particular religious viewpoint to concentrate in particular areas. Likewise the various "territorial divisions" into which New York City is split. This makes it easier to maintain the sense of communal involvement which has to be an essential feature of keeping up a widespread practice of public religious observance , even if it is not a requirement for a personal religious faith Whilst this is slightly off message, it is not totally irrelevant to this site, since the majority of UK organs are located in churches, which to survive need to maintain the attendance of a congregation, so that factors which encourage church attendance tend to being favourable to the interests of organ builders whilst factors which discourage church attendance tend to being unfavourable to those interests. Finally, I do like some worship songs. However, I remain to be convinced that the piano is a suitable instrument for accompanying a congregation of 200 untrained and unpractised singers, whatever its undoubted virtues in providing subtle nuanced accompaniments to small groups of trained singers. In my experience pianists who can maintain beauty of tone while playing constantly at ff or louder are not all that common.

I doubt that anyone who aspired to be a successor to Virgil Fox (and play to auditoria not 90% empty -in the UK anyway since I understand our European neighbours have not given up on the instrument) would seriously believe that Howells Rhapsody 3 was likely to do the job. GTB's Elegy, a good many of Whitlock's shorter pieces, and organically orchestrated JSB are much more likely to attract the paying public. BAC

Thank you for this. It had passed me by. I must ask my son, a philosophy graduate, to explain the finer points to me, but it seems apposite. For the benefit of Mr Bournias, who seems not to like the English very much and indicates he has Hellenic ancestry , I mention the names of two Englishmen to whom he might feel Greece owed some slight debt : George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron, and Nicolas Kynaston for the Athens Concert Hall organ.

I absolutely and completely agree with the first sentence, and the first part of the second. Whilst I also agree that "pressure" from a congregation is most undesirable, I learned in my youth that it was not the done thing to walk into someone else's house and to start re-arranging the furniture to suit your own tastes. I would suggest (with appropriate modifications) the same degree of courtesy should be required of someone who joins a church. Of course suggestions for change should be welcomed by those already there and considered with an open mind but if those already there are happy with the way things are done, then I do not see why there should be any kind of onus on them to change their ways to accommodate the newcomer as opposed to on the newcomer to fit in with what already exists (or take their custom to another establishment which more accords with the way they like things done, if they really cannot fit in). Surely any other approach is a recipe for constant change and too much change is every bit as bad and unsettling as the ossification resulting from no change at all. Indeed, my own experience is that the fact of change is less frequently the problem than the PACE of change : it is the speed with which change is effected that more frequently leads to resentment and arguments. Some changes, of course cannot be phased in. If we were to switch to driving on the right of the road would be an example of one that clearly could not. But in a liturgical context this would rarely be the position. I remain convinced that many examples of conflict in congregations could have been avoided if the advocates of change had been in less of a hurry and had been prepared to put up with the inevitable untidiness accompanying a more protracted period of transition. Brian Childs

Surely the point of Tuba Magnas is NOT to blend. They are the ultimate SOLO stop intended to stand apart from everything else and carry a line which is clearly audible even against full organ. This is not the same thing, surely, as a Bombarde Chorus intended to cap full organ ? I do realise that in most British instruments the one stop is frequently used for both functions, and that in some cases attempts have been made to voice the great reed in such a way that it can imitate a solo tuba when played from the choir, but my impression is that this has rarely, if ever, been done successfully. Also some tubas like those at Lincoln seem to have been intended as super great reeds/ a bombarde chorus by the builder. One can argue about timbre - from Wurlitzer English Horn through to the Tuba Mirabilis at York or the Solo Tuba at Hull City Hall and various points in between - and about the utility/versatility of different voicings - but surely in a large scheme with more than one climax reed available it is OK to have one which is not intended to be part of the chorus but only to sing solos ? BAC PS : Is that not the primary purpose of the Mounted Cornet, which might then be seen as the precursor of the tuba ? A dedicated solo stop, not primarily intended for use in chorus ?

I think I understand what you mean, however, "good" is undoubtedly a word which implies a qualitative assessment along with its comparative form, "better" and its superlative form "best" !! Good is bottom of this heap. I think this discussion is in danger of confusing two things which are better kept apart (1) The sincerity of a personal expression of religious devotion, whether that expression is devised by onesself or someone else (2) The quality of a work as a piece of music, or poetry or hymnody. The first is undoubtedly subjective and depends entirely on the intentions, attitudes and motives of the person involved but the second is not: it is objective. There are established objective criteria (to be sure neither immutable nor infallible but certainly independent of the attitudes or opinions of any particular individual ). These criteria are concerned with the "outcome", not with the effort expended. It is perfectly possible to work extremely diligently and to the best of one's personal ability and achieve nothing of objective worth. This is a hard lesson and amply demonstrates that life is not always fair , but the widespread belief that it should be is coincident with the decline in religious observance. That life will be fair is not one of the promises that Christianity, at any rate, offers to its adherents to the best of my knowledge of it.

I wholehearted agree with most of this,(although I do not claim to understand what is meant in the second sentence in paragraph 2 and I probably would assess John Rutter slightly differently, though no less favourably). There is no doubt that a chasm divides the age groups in their approach to, and understanding of the function of, objective standards. Most people of my generation (DOB 1948) take the existence of these as axiomatic. Many younger people do not and adopt the relativist position that personal preference/belief is the only significant guideline. This is not because they are inherently more stupid than previous generations but because they have been the victims of a monstrous travesty of an educational system which has produce the most schooled generation with the most bits of paper who simultaneously manage to be the most ill-educated for 100 years. I know whereof I speak having spent the last 30 years of my life trying to educate university students ; indeed not just university students but law students almost exclusively drawn from the cream of the A level crop, many with straight A's. Despite this a considerable number were incapable of writing a letter as accurately and fluently, and in as neat a hand, as my father , or for that matter my father-in-law, both of whom left school at 14 ! Yet these students were people who aspired to a career whose stock in trade is the precise and accurate use of language to convey a meaning which is not capable of being understood in more than one way ! It is not simply a question of their not knowing that "disinterested" and "uninterested" do not mean the same thing, but of not grasping that there was any use to them in appreciating this distinction , or of manifesting any desire to acquire a further item of knowledge ! The same malaise seems to apply across the board so it is hardly surprising if it has affected standards in music as well. One particular manifestation of this general trend which is slightly relevant to this thread is the apparent conviction that "progress" (= forward movement) and "improvement" are synonymous. Therefore, all new fashions in liturgy, music and worship must represent a qualitative advance on what went before, and that those who dispute this are either too blind to see or too stupid to understand. That this equation is not simply nonsense but as Bentham would have said nonsense on stilts can be demonstrated, I feel , by drawing attention to two matters of fact which certainly existed before the 1939-45 war and do not, I believe, exist now - 1/ Ernest Lough was one of three boys in The Temple Choir in 1927 who might have been called on to perform but was selected by GTB as being in the best voice that day. How many of the choirmasters on this site can honestly lay claim to have three solo voices of that calibre available. (And since I do know about the earlier onset of puberty, dietary changes and other explanations which apply to boys, I will allow three soloists of either gender and any pitch range !) 2/ According to the late Gordon Reynolds (who was at one time a member) the choir in the Holy Trinity Hull where Paul is now had 60 boys (including probationers, of course) on its roll. Again, how many can say that ? Two final points, very briefly. (1) Anyone, clergy or laity, is entitled to turn their hand to writing hyms and/or hymn tunes either for pleasure or as a devotional duty. What they are not entitled to do is to foist the products of their labours on those of us who have different tastes to the exclusion of the things that we prefer. If they have a right to do their thing, we must have an equal right to do ours ! (2) The principal objective of liturgical music is not to be entertaining ! It may well be of course, and if it is so much the better perhaps, provided that this does not detract from what is its principal purpose.

I think, if I am honest, that it is the visual association with bagpipes playing the tune (c.f Top of the Pops, c.1975) that did it for me. I have a horror of bagpipes - (is there a term for this?). Not to my knowledge but there is a kind of cure known as a Glasgow kiss which you might exerience if you owned up to this opinion North of the Border However, I confess that I do not like the tune either. The harmony in HoN (Anglican version) is extremely pedestrian - which did not help. After having livened-up one verse with a few ninth chords and the odd flattened tenth chord, I felt that the only way to go was up - a lot. Obviously. Perhaps that might have been the one occasion in your life so far when you might have found the resources of a Wurlitzer of some use. The hymn would undoubtedly create a different impression registered on sleigh bells and tuned bird whistles.

Can one ask was your antipathy directed at the hymn or the congregation or both ? If the former is it the words to which you object or the tune ? Just curious. BAC