Brian Childs

The logic of what Brian suggests is impeccable, but I know it to be flawed. The famous American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes's most famous aphorism -"The live of the law has not been logic, it has been experience" may be in point here. If your own point is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then I fully agree. I have never been a great admirer of the culture becoming ever more prevalent that values paper qualifications over demonstrated competence in the task being undertaken. Your uncle seems an apt illustration , supportive of my own view. Back then his lack of a piece of paper did not stand in his way: would that still be the case ? Or would some functionary seeking to engage a bass soloist rule him out at the first cut, because of it ? Worse , would such a person be constrained to rule him out because an "equality proofed" job description stipulated the need to possess bits of paper in order to give irrefutable grounds for weeding out some from the list of applicants on grounds that were demonstrably not based on race,age, gender, sexual preference, marital status, religious affiliation etc etc (pick those which are relevant) My uncle, now long dead, was a superb singer. He was a bass soloist who did the rounds of the various "Messiah" performances in Yorkshire. He was lined up with singers such as Isobelle Bailey and Kathleen Ferrier. The BBC wanted him to sign up for them, but he declined. 98% of his time was taken up as a dairy farmer...he just liked singing a bit, but never had a lesson in his life. A tonic sol-fa man to the end! In my own case, no-one EVER encouraged me to play the organ, so I taught myself. It was the school of hard-knocks, but I gained some degree of competence on the way; since which I have given recitals at some reasonably respected venues. It's a modest example of how enthusiasm can triumph over adversity, but I've never had the inclination to make music a career. Someone mentioned driving tests. How annoying it must be, when someone like Michael Schumacher comes along and earns millions, and had even picked up a major championship at the age of 16, before he could legally drive on the roads!! Also supportive of my own view I think![/i Academia must NEVER be remote, discouraging or inaccessible, because not EVERYONE fits into the neat academic sausage-machine. I could agree with all this provided we inserted after "inaccessible" "to anyone with the capacity to benefit from the experience" otherwise we are heading down the road of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity and down that road lies ruin. The academia that I went to was most certainly NOT a sausage machine, nor was the institution in which I started teaching. It had become so by the time I retired. The cause ? Pressure of numbers. Trying to process 15,000 people through an institution intended to cope with 5,000 ! Similar pressures in the NHS lead to trolly waits in corridors. The bureaucratisation that results from the need to cope with huge numbers of people tends to generate similar problems whether the setting is a university, a hospital, or a military camp in Southern England in 1944 ! People cease to be known as or treated as an individual and become a UID (unique identification [symbol]), just as the dairy cows which in my youth were Bluebell and Buttercup now have EEC herd numbers !! The point of the sausage MACHINE as opposed to making sausages by hand is volume production of uniform articles ! If you do not want that outcome, then you have to accept that hand production and individual attention will result in less product , and articles which no longer have the same predictable uniformity. There are trade offs here, and I do not pretend to know all the answers, but of one thing I am very certain : students at the present day have on average a much less enjoyable third level experience than did my generation and they (or their parents) pay a great deal more for it. Poorer quality at a higher price. And that is progress ? It doesn't matter whether it's Sir Simon Rattle or Carlo Curley; communciation and enthusiasm are the key components in ensuring a healthy future for great music and the organ, and because the RCO is now isolated due to the downturn of interest in organ-music within sparsely attended churches, they need to get off their bums and DO something about it. The resources are there, the organists are there and the music is there. The RCO COULD be a focus for both excellence and communication in equal measure, and if it reaches out, it would never be regarded as elitist. MM <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi MM Having no connection with either of the named organisations I am in no position to comment on much of this post but the above line caught my eye. It is wonderfully quotable but what is it intended to mean ? By definition an elite is a minority or it would not be an elite. That is why University (= for an elite, as traditionally conceived) education for 50% of the population is so much nonsense , whereas further, additional , extended or even "higher" education are perfectly feasible for that or greater numbers. The great con is in using a name which implies access to an elite status when that is not what will be delivered. No society or organisation needs as many chiefs [=people who sit at desks and supervise but do not actually do any productive work] as it has indians [=people who actually do the work], and certainly not more chiefs than it has indians ! In view of the tenor of other posts you have made it seems very unlikely to me that dumbing down so that "all shall have prizes" is what you mean. The rest of the post from which this is lifted seemed to be addressing the relevance orfitness for purpose of much of what was offered by the RCO as well as its mode of delivery of that which it does offer, which is implied to be rather out dated in approach. I just wondered whether what you were driving at here is not so much that people are kept outas that they stay out voluntarilybecause they do not see what is inside as of interest or relevance to them or their concerns. The issue of the size of an elite is different from the issue of who can aspire to be a member of it. Meritocracy as usually understood would allow all to apply but select rigorously. Some sort of caste or class system restricts those qualified to apply in the first place. I assume you favour the first rather than the second approach ? Brian childs

Against a get-together on purely practical grounds: Geographically, the strongest/most persuasive voices on this forum (recently) seem pretty well scattered. Roffensis is clearly in Merseyside, my spies tell me that pcnd is in Dorset. Barry Oakley - Staffordshire, Peter Allinson - Yorkshire, Brian Childs in Armagh, Pierre L in Belgium etc. etc. Whilst Armagh is indeed lovely and the ecclesiatical capital of Ireland, Bangor (the original which spun off all the others) is actually in the County Down (as in "Star of the...) famous for its "basket of eggs scenery" (drumlins) and as the real life landscape on which CS Lewis based Narnia. Here in East Bangor or Ballyholme as we prefer to call it, I can look from my back window over the Lough to Carrickfergus and the North Channel to the Mull of Galloway and the Mull of Kintyre. For Pierre's benefit (should he come across this) the organist of the Catholic Cathedral in Armagh since 1959 has been one George Minne, a Belgian. I am not sure whether he is still in post, since the Catholic Cathedral either has no website (unlike its Anglican Counterpart) or conceals its identity so well that a Google search does not retrieve it near the top of the list. Brian Childs

=MusingMuso,Oct 5 2005, 08:46 AM] Damn those lawyers! Can we ask for our money back then? MM <{POST_SNAPBACK}> [/i]Dear MM, It being still (just about) a free country of course you can ask for your money back. In the same way that Oliver was able to ask Mr Bumble for more. However, as the proverb has it "Blessed is he that expecteth not, for he shall not be disappointed!" Those who consider sheet music expensive should take a look at the price of legal textbooks. And the damn things are out of date in four years (less in some cases) and require to be replaced by a new edition. This might explain - very high overheads - why I would not advise holding your breath in expectation of the return of your money. All the best Brian Childs PS If you are asking the serious question ," Can someone who has bought an album of music which is not perfect but is still within the "margin of appreciation!" which means there is no breach of the contract of sale, return to the store whence they bought it and ask for a refund ?" the answer is yes. But like the policy that Marks and Spencer used to have about exchanging clothes , this is a concession on the part of the store, not a legal right. You can ask them to give you your money back but they do not have to actually do that until the errors get so bad that the article does breach the contractual rights of the buyer. Unfortunately, there is no clear bright line which makes it manifest when this situation has been reached. If the store is unhelpful your choice is legal action (not recommended) or chalking it up to experience and dealing with someone else in future. Not very satisfying but less debilitating on the pocket book than the process of throwing good money after bad.

I would like to see some of the more erratic editions sued under the Sale Of Goods Acts! I have been thinking about how one might do this but on what basis would you ground your claim ? Lack of satisfactory quality ? Not fit for purpose ? Failure to correspond with description ? I would have thought each of these lines of approach might encounter certain problems.

Not being an RCO member I have less of a stake in this particular question than many here, but a couple of observations. are interpolated. If they had signed with a UK company, most of the firms I know would, rather than cause a stink and lose a lot of future business, probably have swallowed this loss philosophically. Why should Goll do the same? They have no incentive whatsoever to lie down. If a contract has been signed, and all published information indicates that it has, we are into penalty clauses and (- God help us! -) someone will have to find a sum by way of compensation. Unlike copyright law I do know a little about the law of contract and the good news is that in English law penalty clauses as such are unenforceable. The bad news is that liquidated damages clauses are fully enforceable and that into which category a clause fits is determined not by the label the parties have chosen to apply to the clause but on which category the court decides it fits into should matters go so far. There is also a duty to mitigate loss, for example (and as appropriate) by going out into the market place and finding another buyer, or by stopping incurring additional expenditure through continuing to construct something which you have been told is unwanted etc. So the fact that a contract has actually been signed may be rather less important than what expenditure has been incurred by the potential builder which they cannot recoup from elsewhere. What is the actual situation I have no idea. In a best possible case scenario where virtually no actual work had been done the sum at risk might be quite small . On the other hand, in a worst possible case scenario, a completed instrument which was such that it could not be resold elsewhere, you might end up effectively paying for it anyway. However, given the length of time it takes to build a major pipe organ it would seem rather unlikely matters could have reached this stage . We (the membership) were never asked for our opinions; surely it would have made more sense for the RCO to re-house some really decent redundant organ, properly refurbished. They would then have saved enough to have some exciting (and varied) little organs from different builders. These would have been far better for holding courses, clinics, master classes etc. One of the most recent high profile cases of an organ being loudly trumpeted before purchase and regretted afterwards is the Bridgewater Hall. We were told that this was the organ we had all been waiting for, this was how all organs should sound/be designed/be built. Well, those who doubted have been rewarded for sitting back and waiting. I am not sure such doubters have been rewarded, though they may well have been proved right. It does occur to me, however, that this particular problem - an organ seemingly underpowered for the building in which it is situated - has a certain history in British civic organs. Was not the same criticism levelled at the original Willis scheme in the RAH which led to the Harrison & Harrison scheme of the 1920s, and likewise the Hull City Hall organ as originally conceived by Phillip Selfe (before Comptons got their hands on it) was the subject of a similar critique by no less than Norman Cocker. Is this a case of those who are unwilling to learn the lessons of history being compelled to repeat them ? Poor RCO... I wouldn't wish it on them. I definitely wouldn't, but - commit themselves to vast expense (some of it unnecessary) and..... <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have always taken this to be "in my humble opinion" but that was a guess and so probaly wrong. Brian Childs

John Sayer asks some thoughtful questions, many of which have not escaped consideration by various people involved with this project over the years. It is also true to state that the original situation of the Ally Pally organ can never be regained with any degree of practicality. The hemispherical recess, tiered orchestra and original roof are all gone. . I]Like David Coram I have absolutely no wish to get into an argument with anybody but if one takes the above statement from Mr Walmsley to mean what it says, the only possible conclusion is that restoration of the Alexandra Palace Organ (the one that Dupre was so enthusiastic about etc) is now impossible, especially if one holds to the view that the single most important stop on the organ is the building in which it stands. What is entirely possible is to construct an organ in the Alexandra Palace as it now is using almost entirely (but it would appear not exclusively) components from the previous instrument. This will produce a different instrument, albeit one with a very strong family resemblance to its progenitor. I would not for one moment deny that this is an entirely worthy project deserving of support. But it is difficult to draw any other conclusion than that the support which has been forthcoming to date has not been adequate to allow the project to progress to a conclusion. Nor can I recollect reading anything on this site which suggests "one last push" is all that is required for the completion of the project, even though it would seem to have been on the go for a very long time - one could make a case for saying that the history stretches all the way back to 1944 when the organ was rendered unplayable again by war damage. That being so, John Sayer's question becomes very pertinent. The time may not be yet, but if things go on as they are with no sign of substantial extra funds becoming available would it not be sensible to at least consider a fall back position, a Plan B, whereby the surviving pipework is used to create a "Willis" concert organ in another acoustically appropriate venue. Obviously this is no one's preferred course of action but is not half a loaf better than no bread ? Brian Childs

I think one can agree with virtually everything that Paul says and still think that recital programmes should normally be publicised well in advance unless what is on offer is the musical equivalent of a "mystery tour". How many symphony orchestras advertise a concert and DO NOT tell the audience what is on the programme ? It is possible to argue that if a recital is free or of the "retiring collection" type (whereby you can reflect your degree of satisfaction or otherwise by what you choose to drop in the plate ) then different considerations ought perhaps to apply. However, in many cases a ticket will cost £10 or more. There is also the expense of getting to a venue which may not be merely a walk away. I do not think it unreasonable for those who have to pay this to be told in advance what their money is going to get them. On the contrary I think they have a right to know this. If one were to list other London organs which really deserve to have good series, several of these are already catered for and carry on regardless of the numbers that attend, others equally deserving have no recent history of recitals at all. I would love to hear regular recitals at St.James' Spanish Place, (for instance). Many lesser-known London organs would be famous in any European city, but Joe Public tends to go where the loudest noises or biggest echoes are! For my money, a member of an audience at All Souls' Langham Place would 1. hear more actual notes (and far better articulation/expression) than at any of the more famous venues 2. see the player better than elsewhere 3. sit in more comfort. 4. hear (potentially) faster and therefore potentially more exciting performances than make sense in a vast acoustic The drawbacks at ASLP are definitely for the player who has nothing to cover the odd slipped notes! The organ itself is excellent - and the console gadgets are well up-to-date with everything a player could want except the ultimate luxury: The Professor's second sequencer control (slide-show projector wand-style) as at Liverpool. After many years of attending, performing and promoting recitals, my philosophy is as follows: Recitals are worth doing no matter how many actually come, so long as those who attend go away happy. I whole heartedly agree. But a factor that might well make people unhappy is turning up to a recital to find that what is being played is of no interest to them whatsoever. For example, both MM and I (to differing degrees perhaps) have indicated on this forum that the organ music of Herbert Howells does not do as much for us as it clearly does for many others. So neither of us might be expected to welcome arriving at a recital to find it entirely devoted to the music of HH. Recitals are an offering from the church to any who may care to come. They are also an invaluable stimulus to personal work. The only important question is, will a series cover its costs? A sensible church will weigh up several considerations, one of them being that a church has to be open and welcoming during the week - recitals are (in purely pastoral terms) an excellent outreach. Recitalists have a choice when they choose a programme, essentially the same as the BBC's - they can educate and stimulate a (possibly) modest number of people, or they can go whole-heartedly for a mass audience in which case their programme will have to be more-or-less down-market. I (for one) could not summon up the energy necessary to stay in practice if I were limited to the pieces that concert promoters in such situations might tell me to play! I fully understand the need for the performer to remain enthusiastic and engaged, and am all in favour of education and stimulation, but as with food, so with music a varied and properly balanced diet is likely to produce the most favourable outcome.

Was that all of Atlantic City, or just the 100" reeds ? They and the percussion section should fit just snugly in the SE Quarter Gallery, thus providing augmented resources for more appropriate accompaniment of praise and worship songs than is possible when just using ordinary organ tone. Brian Childs PS Before anyone has a fit, this suggestion is very, very tongue in cheek !

I was a student at Hull and can confirm the consensus view Do we have any statisticians on this site ? The reason I ask is that the proportion of former Hull students in a sample of 235/6 people seems extraordinarily high (about 1.7%). Myself, Parsfan, Richard McVeigh and MM I know of -anyone else care to own up ? And that does not take into account those like Paul Derrett who have other associations with the town. Is this the figure that one would expect or is Hull over represented on this site ?

I was a student at Hull and can confirm the consensus view Do we have any statisticians on this site ? The reason I ask is that the proportion of former Hull students in a sample of 235/6 people seems extraordinarily high (about 1.7%). Myself, Parsfan, Richard McVeigh and MM I know of -anyone else care to own up ? And that does not take into account those like Paul Derrett who have other associations with the town. Is this the figure that one would expect or is Hull over represented on this site ?

I see, from the Holy Trinity Hull page, that Gerard Brook's letter in OR has caught some people's eye. He makes some valid points. The recent recital, by Naji Hakim at Southwark cathedral attracted around 50-60 people. Those who stayed at home or in the pub missed nothing. A very ordinary improvisation, on three themes, disappointed. Three themes are too many especially when one of them is 'London Bridge is falling down'. Why, oh why, are organists given silly frivolous themes to improvise on. This recital actually persuaded me that Martin Baker was right when he said that the best improvisation occurs within the liturgy. Back to Brooks. As someone who worships at ASLP I feel obliged to support the recitals. But the church's website contains no info, the series leaflet gives sketchy details about the programmes. However, the killer for me is the day- Monday- when my inclination is to place myself in fornt of the telly like a beached up whale with a glass of shiraz. The time does not help either. I would prefer a start time of 1930-less hanging around. I suspect that many people choose not to go to All Soul's recitals as they regard the Harrison as not being particulary distinquished and speaking into one of the driest acoustics in any London Church. We do need recital organisers to get a grip and use the technology at their disposal. It's not good enough for the punter to discover the exact programme only when they arrive at the venue for the recital. In London the Temple Church, Westminster Abbey and Westminster cathedral all run excellent weekly recital series. If they want our support they should post forthcoming programmes on their websites. I think this has to be right. Of course, if the recitalist finds they have come without the correct music, one would (having made the effort to get to the venue) prefer that they played something rather than sent everybody home again. Also, some allowance has to be made for those occasions when "events, dear boy, events" disrupt even the best of intentions/ well thought out plans so that the difficult new piece it was intended to give for the first time is not ready for its public unveiling. And one might allow some lattitude in respect of smaller "fillers" but I can see no reason why the main works intended to be played should not be publicised well in advance. Having committed himself or herself the player is then placed under some pressure to deliver acceptable performances. I will play whatever I feel like when I turn up canappear to be a case of not wanting to be committed to doing that. The late Harvey Grace thought that all church organists (we are talking pre World War 2) should publish their voluntary lists in advance. His thinking went that no one would wish to advertise themselves as playing rubbish and so this practice would go some way to ensure that only appropriate music was selected. Likewise having indicated your intention of performing the G minor fugue (S542) or whatever three weeks hence you would hardly wish to turn up, deliver a pitiful performance , and then try and excuse that with an "I only grabbed this at the last minute and I have not practised it." Surely the basic principle of this approach applies equally to concert organists ?

In my previous contribution to this thread I did not draw attention to the fact that certain remarks were undoubtedly libellous, although I considered so doing, because I did not consider I should be the one to open this can of worms. However, now that the moderator has intervened and put that matter in play, perhaps I might draw attention to some features of English libel law which contributors may care to ponder on in the future - A statement can be libellous of an individual if it can be understood by reasonable people to refer to that individual. It is NOT necessary to name the person, it is NO defence that you did not intend to refer to a person or even that you had no idea they existed : as a judge once remarked, it is not a matter of what is aimed at but what is hit. One of the reasons local newspapers invariably give the name and address of John X in their court reports is to make it very difficult for anyone else to argue that the words were reasonably capable of being understood as referring to anyone but the particular individual of whom they are true. Every repetition of a libellous statement is theoretically a distinct publication. What this means in practice is not that a claimant can go around suing one defendant after another but that they have the choice of whom to take action against: there is no requirement that it be the originator of the story. Usually it will the person with the deepest pocket but anyone who repeats a libellous statement might find themselves in the position of having to defend it. A person would very likely be construed as repeating a statement by ,for example, quoting it in a reply to a previous post. It is a complete defence to a civil action that an allegation is true. However, libellous statements are presumed to be UNTRUE and it is for the defendant to prove that the allegation is true. You do not do this by showing that you have accurately repeated a story told to you or that lots of other people believe it to be true. If you allege X is a child molester, you have to prove that s/he is. It is not good enough to prove that somebody told you s/he was and you are simply passing this on. Nor is it enough to show that this allegation is in general circulation and widely believed. It is not even enough to show that you had facts in your possession which led you quite reasonably to draw this conclusion, if in fact it is not true. Such matters might well be relevant to the amount of damages or compensation to be awarded but they would not prevent a claim from succeeding. Everyone enjoys the right of comment on matters of public interest, which in terms of matters relevant to this site includes musical performances , the features of public works (like new organ installations)etc and they are entitled to be robust and opinionated in making those comments . There is no requirement that comments be objectively fair or balanced, or that the opinions be shared by anyone else. The only requirement is that such comment represents the genuine opinion of the commentator and is not malicious - a term that might be best considered as meaning -" actuated by some improper motive with the objective, not of expressing a genuinely held opinion but of inflicting harm on the person about whom the remark is made". It was, I think, a former editor of The Guardian, then The Manchester Guardian who wrote "Comment is free but facts are sacred". he was writing about the duty of a newspaper but perhaps there is a lesson here on which everyone needs to reflect. :angry: Brian Childs Edited by moderator to tidy up html tags, 19.Sept 2005

That's not so say there shouldn't be occasional injections of wit and humour - heaven forbid organ enthusiasts should be thought to take themselves too seriously. However, in recent weeks, 1 or 2 inconsiderate individuals have found it necessary to engage in silly and often offensive exchanges of crude schoolboy innuendo. They may get some perverse satisfaction out if it, but the rest of us find it tiresome and unamusing. It's also a gross discourtesy to other users and, not least, to the hosts of this site. You do not have to be solemn in order to be serious. Teachers have known for a long time that a serious point dressed up as a joke is more likely to be remembered than a serious point dressed up as a serious point. But more fundamentally, unless you outlaw all humorous remarks (which is not proposed) you have immediately to confront the problem of drawing the line which divides the acceptable from the unacceptable. I doubt anyone who contributes to this site is so naive as to believe that complete freedom of speech -anything at all goes - is either aceptable or feasible - so it ought to follow that we would all agree that there is a line to be drawn. It by no means follows we would all draw the line in the same place. The odds against that happening are pretty steep. So whose line is to be accepted ? It seems to me that the obvious, indeed the only practical, candidate to be "censor" (determiner of what is acceptable) has to be the moderator. Indeed I seem to recollect his having intervened from time to time on the Alexandra Palace thread when the discussion seemed to be getting a little heated, so the lack of intervention so far can only indicate either that his personal line has not been crossed OR he has given up in despair. I suggest the former explanation is slightly more plausible if only because I would have expected the latter reaction to be accompanied by a decision to close down the site or at least sever all connection between it and Mander, which has not happened at the time of writing. I can understand what prompted the initial post : indeed there are some remarks on a couple of threads on this site relating to identifiable individuals which would cross my personal line, and for all I know others may agree with me, but they may not. For the moment I shall continue to work on the assumption that JPM will let us know when things have gone too far in his book whilst forbearing to personally participate in any thread or sub-thread which crosses my own boundaries to the area of what is acceptable. Brian Childs :angry:

What exactly shocked you ? Was it (1) so badly built it was falling to bits or (2) built like a rock but very inconveniently laid out for practical use or (3) neither of these , but still seriously flawed ? Brian Childs

And for other recordings of the same instrument you have On LP Phillips Fourfront 4FO 7012 Nicolas Kynaston ALAIN Litanies, Deux Danses a Agni Yavishta, 1st & 2nd Fantaisies, Postlude pour l'office des Complies / LANGLAIS Suite Breve On CD two from Herald HAVPCD 120 Organ Music from Buckfast Abbey played by Father Sebastian Wolff, the Abbey Organist for many years AND HAVPCD 229 Jeremy Filsell plays Organ Music by Sebastian Wolff at Buckfast Abbey.

Two further suggestions: Choeur des chats for a particularly assertive high pitched mixture containing at least two clashing harmonics. Voix de Blair for a deceptively mild toned diapason with two mouths on opposite sides of the pipe.

An interesting suggestion but would that particular location be first choice for an Echo divison ? How easy would it be to make such a division located there softer than the South Choir but nonetheless readily audible the other side of the dome ? (This is a genuine and not a rhetorical question - I am not familiar enough with the organ live to know the answer.) Brian Childs

I do not think there is anything very new about this, nor is it confined to organists. Do not concert pianists concentrate on one or two of their repertoire concertos during a season ? What has changed now is not the behaviour of artistes but the mobility of the audience. Widespread car ownership has brought about the situation where enthusiasts have (or at least had until the recent rocket like rise in petrol prices) the means to travel considerable distances which would not have been so even 50 years ago, so they can now notice what they never would have a generation or two ago. In the days of music hall an artist could travel the country with the same act for years : that was why a number were quite unable to make the transition to radio and later TV with their incessant demand for fresh material when they became the principal purveyors of variety entertainment. So if only half the works are the same perhaps one should consider oneself lucky... Brian Childs :angry:

[] Don't think the Bridgewater organ would solve Sheffield Cathedral's problems. If it was placed at the west end, which I gather is the plan for a new organ, the congregation in the front pews would not hear it. ] [/i]But would n't the more traditional accoustic give it a bit of a boost and a greater chance of reaching r their ears ? Brian Childs