Brian Childs
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Posts posted by Brian Childs
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I would have to consider the matter at greater depth, but I suspect that adding second-hand pre-July 1st components containing over 0.1% lead, would be illegal,
if fitted to a new yacht.
MM
While I am happy for you to take on board the further consideration, I suspect you are likely to be right about this. There is a kind of pattern to the way these things are supposed to work though whether that is carried through into practice rather depends on people doing their jobs properly and you have several times pointed out that this cannot necessarily be relied on. Indeed, even people doing their jobs properly make mistakes. If the only standard we apply is perfection then disappointment awaits around every corner !!
What is supposed to happen is that after a very long consultation process involving virtually anybody who can be seen to have any kind of interest at all a set of proposals are arrived at and transformed into a directive to come into effect after a decent interval of time. The object of all this is to let everyone know what is happening and to provide plenty of time for adaption to a new situation, but once the set time has arrived then the new standards of manufacture/safety or whatever are expected to apply from that day forward.
What this basically seems to mean (though, as with all generalisations, there are exceptions) is
1. All new items manufactured/marketed after the date are expected to comply
2. Components and replacement parts for such new items are also expected to comply, since if they did not then neither would the new item itself
3. Pre-existing items do not need to comply and it is not unlawful to possess or continue to use them
4. Replacement components for pre-existing items do not need to comply where they would not function if they did, but if compliance would not affect functionality then it is certainly possible, perhaps even probable, that compliance would be expected
Thus the intention once the law has come into operation is to allow those who supply components or spare parts to continue to maintain stocks of parts for use in goods that do not have to comply BUT NOT to sell off their remaining stocks of non-conformng parts for incorporation in new products which are expected to comply. One of the purposes of the lengthy implementation timetable is to allow such suppliers to exhaust their non-complying stock before the date when the new provision comes into operation.
In addition to all this, European legislation has to be interpreted in the European or continental fashion. At a risk of some over simplification this focuses far more on what was intended than what the words of the law actually say. So whereas the traditional English Common Law approach is to look very closely at the actual wording of the law and construe what meaning that wording can properly be understood to bear , the continental approach is to look far more broadly at what the lawmaker intended and then interpret the wording used so that that intention is carried out. This approach allows considerably less scope for evading the operation of a law by means of searching for loopholes and trying to wriggle through them. Thus whereas in the past English judges have held that a piece of legislation did not succeed in doing what it was known that those who put it through Parliament intended it to do, it is far more difficult, if not impossible, for that situation to arrise when the continental approach to interpretation applies.
Brian Childs
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So: old organs OK, new organs dodgy, and the way out is via an exemption. Looks an entirely bog-standard reply me, apart from the reference to Caroline Jackson.
I am not completely sure about this but I think a derogation is not the same thing as an exemption. My understanding is (and this was never my particular area of interest or expertise so it would be well worth while checking, especially since all my work books are in packing cases in the basement ) that an exemption is temporary, usually four years and requires to be renewed. It is applied for by an interested party, eg an organ builder. A derogation, I think, is applied for by the State Member, is of indefinite duration, and exempts the state from having to comply with that aspect of EU law from which it has derogated. Assuming I am correct this means that the difficulties identified in earlier posts that are involved in applying for exemption would be circumvented. So it would represent progress. I will make some enquiries but it is just possible someone else already knows the answer and I try to avoid all unnecessary and most necessary work these days.
BAC
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Also, I'd venture to suggest that the piano repertoire is more technically challenging than the organ one. If you have a superlative piano technique you can probably play anything the organ repertoire throws at you. It's certainly not true the other way round.
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Presumably this is immediately true of anything for manuals only but surely a little conversion will be required for anything with a moderately demanding pedal part, especially if the hands are also fully occupied ?
I think I basically agree with VH's views, but I want to ask a different question of those who play both. What are the limits, if any, to the ability of the piano to accompany effectively large gatherings of untrained singers ? I ask this because at the church I attend at least one hymn per week has to be modern and is invariably accompanied on the piano - well I think it is actually a digital piano to be accurate. The DoM invariably manages to extract far more decibels from this than he does when playing the organ (which I thought was the most pusillanimous thing I had ever encountered until I heard it in the hands of a stand-in: for reasons I shall not go into I have been at pains not to let anyone here know I might have some familiarity with what the various buttons and switches are for). I find the sound excruciating even before we start considering the tune because ff seems to be the lowest dynamic marking ever employed. I like the piano but I am seriously tempted to vandalise this specimen. Is this an abnormal reaction on my part or is it the case that the piano is not necessarily as good as the organ at accompanying and leading untrained singers in unfamiliar and unrehearsed music ?
Brian Childs
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With all respect to those whom many admire, there isn't a single English composer for organ who can match up to Reger, yet they get played with nauseating regularity.
MM
Hmmm, well Elgar is certainly at least a match for Reger as a composer: Reger never produced anything as good as Enigma (nor did most other people) but perhaps you simply want to compare compositions for organ ?
On my desert island, given the choice of the complete organ works of Reger or of Whitlock , Reger would be going into the sea every time. I listen to music for pleasure and amusement and neither word is an apt description of the response generated by a great deal (though by no means all) of Reger's organ works.
Perhaps the reasons that the English works get played with greater regularity are (1) they appeal more to those who have to play them; (2) they appeal more to the (diminishing) number of those who pay to listen to them; and (3) they are better suited to the organs available. Getting Reger to work on a good many English organs requires a great deal more effort than is needed for those who wrote with such an organ in mind. Not everyone believes in salvation through hard work : some like an easier life.
BAC
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Why can the politicians not get it into their thick heads that we're NOT asking about existing organs anymore? That question has been answered numerous times but we are still in the dark about new instruments as far as I am aware.
Although I still stand by what I have written in earlier posts my determination to be optomistic and not panic does not extend to ignoring the clear message that is beginning to emerge from all these press rleases to which we are being treated, issued by people who clearly either have no desire to see the issue or lack the imagination and intellectual wherewithal to grasp it. Existing instruments are not covered but you can apply for an exemption is a fairly unequivocal indication that new ones ARE . If it were cars rather than organs involved, and a law had been passed which allowed all existing cars to be repaired but no new ones built unless made out of MDF with only the minimuml metal fixings needed to ensure the thing held together, I assume that the enormous problems this caused for existing car manufacturing (OK Assembly) plants in the UK would be understood, and the likelihood of their being driven out of business grasped.
Initially, I had assumed that it ought not to take much to get an obvious mistake corrected, but with each one of these press releases that gets published I am finding it harder to sustain that belief. This astounds me, given that there is hardly a country in the EU which does not stand to be affected by this. Stupidity cannot be the explanation. What is ?
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Oh the benefits of a musical education !!! Do you intend to record it yourself ; if not do you know Tom (aka Sir Thomas) Allen who certainly has the voice and I suspect the sense of humour to do it justice. You might just have produced the cross-over hit of 2006!!! This deserves, and needs, a much wider audience than will see it here for though the quality is very high the quantity will not cause the fear and trembling in the corridors of power that is needed to overcome the inertia of a body at rest. Go for it.
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He did see.....I promise!
I'll tell you what though, it is absolutely crystal clear and beautifully performed throughout.
I think it was just the first movement of the G-major Trio Sonata on second-thoughts.
MM
It was. I am listening to the CD as I post this. (Pro Arte CDD315: Dueling Organs, with Lyn Larsen and Carlo Curley playing the ex-Paramount NYC Wurlitzer (Jesse Crawford's Organ) and an all electronic digital organ {no make specified but probably an Allen} ) The Bach and Widor - Intermezzo from Symphony No 6 and "that Toccata" - are all played on the Wurlitzer, with generous use of the swell pedal in the Bach!! The Wurlitzer tracks sound fine but the digital ones would hardly deceive anyone these days.
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My first reaction waas to be astounded by this, but then, I began to understand maybe WHY anyone can say this.
Nowadays, people play Bach far too fast, and I've probably been as guilty as the next, to the point that lyricism evaoprates, and all that is left is jumbled counterpoint.
I believe it is how we approach Bach which matters most. Was he simply a dry, dusty academic with a penchant for invertible counterpoint, or was he the man who could write some of the most beautiful melodies on earth?
Is the Gigue Fugue (whether or not by Bach) an excuse for an Olympian hop, skip and jump race, or is it the rather elegant, refined and ever so teeny-bit saucy baroque dance?
Nowadays, if I can be truly bothered to practise right, I don't leap on the organ and bash through the notes as I once did. Instead, I relax, remain still and SING the melodic lines to myself....a bit like Glenn Gould, but without the hunched back and the saliva.
Take a gander at the 2nd (slow) movement of the Eb (No.1) Trio Sonata and sing the opening melody in the RH. Then you will find that wonderfully inverted contrapuntal second-section. Sing it in exactly the same way as you would sing the opening, but put in the missing ornamentation (also in inversion, of course); a trick I learned by listening to James Dalton.
Then learn the notes so well that they become second-nature; listening instead to the lyrical flow of the melodic content, at a gentle, relaxed pace, with each part shadowing the other EXACTLY as in something like the D-Minor Double Violin concerto.
If it still leaves you cold, forget the organ and take up knitting.
MM
Well not my mostest favourite but they can sound absolutely wonderful, however, I can understand how anyone who first encountered these works in the Simon Preston recording might not feel inclined to indulge in repeated listening. Those are performances which leave me completely cold and I used to think of myself as a Preston fan, certainly when he was recording LPs for Argo. On the other hand there is in my view a quite magical performance by Peter Hurford of No 4 on an old Saga LP recorded at St Alban's Abbey : perhaps the message is more important than the medium.
BAC
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That is two - which takes the biscuit?
There is, incidentally, a fantastic recording of the first work which you mention. I am quite certain that if they heard it, most people here (without seeing the cover) no-one would ever guess the identity of the instrument on which it is played....
Now let me see would that be Cochereau at Notre Dame or Demessieux at the old organ of the Victoria Hall, Geneva - the first two recordings of this work I ever acquired though I 've managed a few more since (but then I am quite old) - no have to be Cochereau for my money!!
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As for Reger being second-rate and turgid, I'm just awfully glad that those second-rate organists such as Fernando Germani, Simon Preston, Anton Heiller, David Goode, Jos van der Kooy and Melville Cook (plus most of the organ-playing/loving population of Holland) didn't or don't agree with you.
As also Brian Runnett, Virgil Fox, Carlo Curley, Rosalind Haas, Martin Haselbock and Germans too numerous to mention but then they would would n't they
As for the market for second-rate, turgid music, there shouldn't be a problem.
God knows, people have been playing and buying recordings of Guilmant and Vierne for donkey's years.
Now this is definitely out of order. Vierne possibly but Guilmant never!! You will be slanging off the Blessed Boellman next!!
MM
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Sigh! Yet again, a superficially encouraging statement that actually confirms the worst interpretation. In effect it tells us that new pipe organs are covered by this legislation, and merely reminds us of the provisions for repair of old ones.
When will anyone in authority anywhere get the point? They all seem to think that the preservation of the process of drafting laws is more important than the results. If the actual intent of all this is to remove lead from electrical wiring and circuit boards, why don't they just say in the directives that the measures apply to electrical wiring and circuit boards (and not to organ pipes)? Is it so hard?
Paul
No, it is perfectly easy to do that. The problem is not a technical legal one. It is one of motivating the appropriate people to act in order to achieve this.
BAC
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Well Brian, is IS very interesting indeed, and whilst there may be NON-LEGAL reasons as to why organ-builders should not panic, the law, as it is about to be adopted, DOES APPLY TO NEW ORGANS, as Reijo Kemppinen points out; thus bringing organ-pipes WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE LEGISLATION.
This is the critical thing, because once organ-pipes are included, it is quite possible that the dumb-ass politicians and civil-servants at the DTI will simply interpret the rules in the usual way, "without fear or favour" and in a high-handed manner. Then they will require organ-builders to apply for exemptions at very great expense and stone-wall any small amount of protest which may, or may not gather pace.
Brian must know better than anyone, that where laws apply, they tend to be applied, or prosecuted by those who may have a vested interest in seeing the downfall of the pipe-organ industry. That could be as diverse as "pop evangelists" and "ye maykers of ye olde worlde electronics."
It is these people who are the really hazardous substances in all this, and throwing THEM into a landfill-site is not, unfortunately, an option.
As I have stated before, satire is one way of making these people take the matter seriously and to get their facts right, and the other is to find out if public money is being spent on NEW organs.
If anyone, anywhere in Europe, knows of just such a project, then we have a very strong lever indeed, because it could force the issue without having to go through the machinery of exemption applications and time-wasting humbug.
Think about it!
MM
I would certainly not want to be understood as saying "and they all lived happily ever after...." : only that 1st July is not the doomsday that some of the more gloomy prognostications have implied, in the sense that if everything is not sorted by that date then the world will come to an end and the situation will be completely irretrievable. That is clearly not the case and I do not believe it helps the argument that we wish to make to pretend that we think it is. Panic is contagious and leads people to behave in foolish ways. It is not in our interests (I assume all of us here have the same interest in preserving the future of the pipe organ for generations, at least from this particular threat) to appear to be irrational or incapable of understanding the issues, otherwise we get the sort of condescending press release referred to in an earlier post today which clearly implies this is another scare whipped up by euro- sceptics who, in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davis, "would say that, would n't [they]". It cannot benefit us to have our arguments simply brushed aside in this way, and they will be if we can be made to appear hysterical, irrational and over- reacting.
MM makes the perfectly valid point that laws once enacted can be used in a self-serving fashion by those with their own agenda to promote. But this takes time to produce its effect. We are not in the situation of the occupants of Pompei on the day before the erruption - get out now or be entombed for 2000 years. We have enough time to organise an orderly evacuation: we do not need the equivalent of a panic stricken flight in which people are heedlessly trodden underfoot in the crush. Indeed, we can organise so that no evacuation is necessary, which makes our situation rather preferable to theirs.
To make my position quite clear, it is not that we can now sit back and do nothing. The problem "has not gone away, you know" and work for a permanent solution needs to continue to be pursued, and pursued with vigour. However, the world will not end on 1st July for organ enthusiasts, any more than 90 years ago it ended for the British army who encountered an equally traumatic July 1st but were still there on the 2nd. I am quite confident we shall be as well, absent that asteroid strike but, should that happen, it is unlikely toasters will inherit the earth!
BAC
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I have received this morning a response from Liz Lynne, MEP, following my initial contact with her re the EU Directive. She has enclosed the response from the EU Commissioner, Reijo Kempinnen, which I print below.
Thank you for your message, expressing concerns for the future of pipe organ building.
British organ builders need not fear for the future of their art and craft. The European Union has no wish to jeopardise this ancient tradition. Our only aim is to ensure that the intended health and safety aims of forthcoming legislation are achieved as decided by European Governments and the European Parliament.
This legislation, the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, should come into force by the first of July 2006.
Current media and broader interest appear to have misunderstood the Directive's requirements and their impact upon the organ industry. Much of the current reaction suggests that the organ industry will not be able to undertake repairs to large, historic organs such as those in Salisbury and St Paul's Cathedrals and Birmingham Town Hall. This is not the case.
Since the law applies to new products only, existing church organs are not affected.
Organists can continue to play pipe organs, you can enjoy their beautiful music and the industry can even continue to repair and upgrade them with lead without any further restrictions under RoHS.
The purpose of the law is protecting human health and the environment by restricting the use of certain hazardous substances in new equipment.
Under the law new products that are put on the market may not contain more than 0.1 per cent lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium and other substances that are known to be extremely dangerous to our health and environment.
The European Commission tries very hard to avoid unnecessary or overly detailed laws in Europe. Whenever possible, we try to ensure that European laws are implemented in a manner that takes into account specific circumstances.
The European Commission has taken very seriously the concerns expressed by both the industry and the general public with regards to this sensitive issue. Therefore we have decided to take urgent action to address your concerns. On March 22, the Commission has written to the Member States, with a view to clarifying, together with them, to what extent pipe organs fall within the scope of the RoHS Directive. Once we know the outcome the Commission will issue a statement and update its Guidance Document accordingly.
We will of course keep you fully informed of any development in this matter.
In the meantime, we would like to stress that, in any event, since the law applies to new products only, existing organs are untouched by the Directive and major repairs even with lead may still continue.
Equally, even if it is found in the final analysis that pipe organs fall within the scope of the Directive, manufacturers can still apply for a derogation to continue to produce organ pipes containing more than 0.1 per cent lead. As far as we know, no such derogation has been applied yet.
We would like to emphasise that the directive was adopted by all EU Member States, including the UK, in 2002. The text allowed four and a half years for transposition into national legislation.
Yours sincerely
Reijo Kemppinen
Very interesting. It seems that Don't Panic should be the order of the day (as I rather suspected might be the case) while still ensuring that steps are taken to turn an "understanding" into a clear cut rule. Meanwhile, I think people might carry on as normal, without worrying that the police will turn up en masse on July 1 and cart off to jail anyone found working on the instalation of a new organ.
BAC
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I don't think I would like to define "greatness," but I know what it is when I hear it.
Perhaps we are closer still to some sort of definition........that of depth and breadth, in addition to re-defining the boundaries and points of reference.
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I don't suppose that is by any means a definition of greatness, but then, I am the sort of person who listens to an old recording of Sidney Torch playing the "Teddy Bear's Picnic," on a Wurlitzer, and then refers to it as "a great performance."
MM
I rather think that this tends to support the point I was making that the concept of "greatness in music" is not the same sort of purely objective measurement as applies to how much milk goes into a pint bottle, but combines elements of both subjectivity and objectivity. I do not have a problem with that, and I would certainly apply the adjective great to performances by Torch and Quentin Maclean, so we certainly have some commonality of approach.
I wonder whether Music is not too large a category to make the question meaningful, though I seem to remember you restricted your original question to organ music. To take an analogy from sport it seems to me entirely pointless to ask whether Stanley Matthews or Len Hutton was a great, or the greater, sportsman : on the other hand it is meaningful to compare Hutton, Bradman and Michael Vaughan as batsmen. Just as I think sport is too big a category to allow of sensible comparisons, so I think music is too big a category and that attempts to compare a Chopin nocturne with a Beethoven Symphony are not capable of producing any result that is worth the effort required to generate it. On the other hand, comparing Debussey and Chaminade might just be capable of shedding light on the question because there are enough points of comparison to make objective evaluation a possibility. But it is only a possibility. FR Leavis could not find a place for Dickens in his "Great Tradition" which suggests to me that in literature also the concept of greatness has a certain fluidity which scientists would find quite unacceptable.
BAC
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I would love to enter the debate here but I do not understand the rules. How is "great" defined and by whom , and who invested them with the authority to produce this definition ?
I am familiar with measures of distance, mass, volume etc all of which purport to be objective. Is there a similar objective definition of "greatness" or is it simply a question of received wisdom/ long tradition/"everybody agrees that..."? In which case a story concerning an emperor and some new clothes comes to mind.
I think for the moment I shall continue to adopt the same approach to music as I do to food and aim for a balanced diet, enjoying both the substantial main course and the light and frothy dessert until someone can explain to me why Eric Coates Dam Busters March or "White Christmas" or even "We'll meet again" are not great music.
BAC
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But actually the directives don't include organ pipes. They don't mention them at all. Therein lies the problem: it leaves open the possibility that a later legal clarification could decide that they are forbidden (as MM points out). The IBO is concerned about this, whereas it seems that continental builders don't see a problem. This difference is entirely understandable insofar as Britain always does things by the rule-book while continental countries don't necessarily.
One organist in our area has just had a letter from his MP saying that the Government (meaning the DTI, I assume) has undertaken to secure an exemption for the UK. Now I'm not a legal eagle and I'm quite certain that there are more nuances to this debate than have been put in the public domain, so I may have it all wrong, but I feel uneasy because, as I see it, if an exemption is granted it will tacitly establish that organ pipes do indeed come within the terms of the directive, whereas at the moment that is not certain.
If that is the case, it seems to me that the only solution is to press the Commission for explicit confirmation that Commissioner Wallstöm's statement is correct - that organ pipes are not covered by the directives at all.
I tend to agree that this is probably the best way to proceed. As has been pointed out already the idea of an exemption is closely involved with the idea of allowing time to adjust by developing an alternative approach but other than an all wooden pipes approach (like Frederiksborg Castle, if I have the spelling right) there is no alternative to pipe metal about to hove into view.
As to nuances to the debate I think it is perhaps more readily understandable in terms of a frame of reference developed over a long period of time. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 introduced into English law strict liability for defective products to the end-user (previously this had only been available to someone who stood in a contractual relationship with a seller, other end users being required to establish "fault"). This was itself a European development which had taken nearly 20 years to come to fruition and thus owed its origins to events in the 1960s particularly Thalidomide (if you can remember that) and problems with the motor industry encapsulated in Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at any Speed". As with a good deal of EU/EEC legislation the subtext is heavily influenced by considerations of forestalling a Europe wide level playing field being prevented by individual countries enacting different levels of protection for their citizens resulting in goods not being able to be marketed across the whole community.
One of the issues that needed to be resolved was that of complex products like cars constructed from numerous components bought in by the car manufacturer. Should the car manufacturer be responsible for a defect in a clearly separate and identifiable product (the usual example was a tyre) which had failed and caused injury or should the liability go only to the manufacturer of the component (ie the tyre in the example) ? The decision went in favour of placing the liability on the car manufacturer, in other words looking at a complex assemblage of various parts as a single entity, even though it would have been perfectly possible to take another view. I think from that time, and as a result of that experience , the standard EU approach to complex machinery was to view it as an aggregate whole, rather than a collection of parts.
Now organs and cars are not very alike but organs do resemble cars in being highly complex machines using a great range of parts (and involving co-ordinated hand and foot control in the normal case). So I do not find it all that surprising that when we come to to the RoHS/ WEEE directive the "standard" approach resulted in the view that if a particular component part is clearly covered than the whole machine is implicated. This obviously had unfortunate consequences when applied to the pipe organ, but it is certainly not impossible to draft round the situation by ensuring that the rules apply only to the electrical components themselves and not to the larger entity in which those components are incorporated.
Since there is a significant organ tradition in many member states it ought to be possible to form a combined front which would be difficult to gainsay. But it will require a certain amount of sustained effort.
BAC
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II There seems to be something of a communication black-out between Spain and the rest of Europe when it comes to the organ, and I'm not quite sure why this should be.
IMM
One possible explanation for this is that the heyday of Spanish organ music would seem to have been in the 16th -18th century predating romanticism. The decline in interest seems to have paralleled the decline of Spain as a major European power, and interest in the organ and its development seems to have largely evaporated. Most of the celebrated Spanish instruments known to me pre-date 1800, whereas the majority of organist composers whose work is played come after that date. Bach, Buxtehude, Handel are more like exceptions than the general rule. Thus the Spanish composers join a host of German, Scandinavian and other European composers of this period in enjoying a state of relative obscurity as far as the average music lover and even the average organ enthusiast is concerned. (There are, of course, always exceptions to every generalisation, including this one)
Furthermore, the development of the organ in other European countries does not seem to have been replicated in Spain. I know of no Spanish Instruments dating from the 19th century which match in scale what was being done in Germany, France and England. I suspect at the end of the day money (or the lack thereof) will prove to be a significant part of the explanation. In nineteenth century Spain there was no equivalent of the English merchant princes who used the profits of Empire to produce the English Town Hall organ and to fund successive rebuilds and enlargements of church organs the length and breadth of the land. In Spain neglect seems to have been the order of the day, by no means an unmixed blessing since much has survived which would otherwise undoubtedly have been swept away. But in the absence of the development of suitable organs , it seems that Spain developed no significant culture of Romantic organ music. As a lover of much that Spain has contributed to the literature of the guitar, I would dearly like to know what might have happened if that generation had had available to them modern organs suitable for secular music making (but what are battle pieces if not a precursor of storm fantasias ?) but as far as I am aware they did not.
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Is there any chance it might get renovated? Considering it was a gift, I am surprised the authorities saw fit to disconnect it.
Well, if you cannot manufacture new pipework but you can renovate or repair what is already there under the EU directive than that must boost its chances a bit. Also since , as far as I am aware, the last significant additions were rather loud stops perhaps it is the turn for some more atmospheric ones.
Incidentally, is there not a similar disconnected division residing in the Triforium of Norwich Cathedral ? There was certainly an echo division there at some stage. Doubtless the NPOR would answer the question but it saves effort if someone else already knows the answer.
BAC
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Well I am at least reassured having found the text that the term "offensive line" refers to (presumably) American football rather than a front line trench from The Great War. But does anyone know the meaning of "tempestion" ? It is a completely new word to me, and one would have thought a strange choice for someone wanting to write in the most accessible way, unless it is in common use in American English.
My personal preference would be to introduce the author to the three bears shown in the picture. Indeed perhaps he has already met the bear lying back after seemingly having enjoyed a fine meal, in which case we shall be sadly denied any more of his imaginative new ways by which salvation may be obtained. My personal preference would be for something less physically painful.
Brian Childs
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For every "Be still" injunction in the bible I bet there's a "Make a joyful noise", "Shout unto the Lord", "Praise Him upon the clashing cymbals". And didn't that arch-conservative (with regard to music in worship) Ralph Vaughan-Williams set the text "O Clap Your Hands"?
The children where I play the organ and the piano sing both sorts of song.
And with regard to "choice" there wasn't much choice in 1662. If you didn't like the BCP then emigration or worship in secret were your only options.
Indeed and the churches were full and the parson collected his tithes, there was no proper street lighting, no effective police force and no indoor plumbing and no oven ready meals. Obviously a different age when religion mattered. Less than 30 years later we threw out a King because he was Catholic. We know about the events of1688 - 1690 in Ulster ! Because I like the dignified language of a certain age does not mean I want to live in it and forgo the benfits of modern medical and dental science (if you can get an NHS dentist). I am all for choice and I am happy to allow everyone else to worship in a way that suits them: all I require of them is that they accord me the same freedom . I am glad the children where you play "sing both sorts of song" but there are plenty of places where only one sort of song is heard and it is not the kind that would have been heard in church when I first started attending.
In any event my understanding of the puritain tradition is not that it was libertarian. It simply wanted a different authoritarian model. The problem with RCs seems like a precursor of the present problem with respect to some Muslims, namely a tendency to put loyalty to the faith ahead of loyalty to the state. Unsurprisingly the state took the view they had got this the wrong way round, and executed a number for treason. Some of them were probably innocent, but so was Jean Charles de Menezes.
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I may have friends who resemble sheep, but thus far, I do not have sheep who resemble friends. (All right! All right! So what if I do know how to pick up a lamb and sling it in the back of a trailer?)
That may not make you a fully qualified EU certified sheep operative but it gets you closer to the concept of being a "good shepherd" than a great many others on this board and the majority in the community today. Ignorance of such matters is widespread: remember the story about the boy who did not know fish did not come out of the sea with batter on it ? When I made an exception for you I was thinking of your tale of being attacked by the mother while rescuing a lamb from a barbed wire fence. You see I do pay careful attention to what you write. Sorry if it appeared I was referring to other references to sheep that have appeared from time to time ; such was not my intention.
"Fact" or article of faith?
Well now, I think I should refer you to Tony. However Handel in Messiah wrote I know that my redeemer liveth: NOT I believe/think that my redeemer liveth so some have clearly treated it as a fact.
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Like you, Brian, I mourn the passing of the old order. At the same time I can't help but admire the way in which the modern church accomplished a twentieth-century Reformation every bit as far-reaching as the sixteenth-century one almost without anyone realising that that was in fact what was happening. Make no mistake, the Anglican church today is not the church I was brought up in, though as far as music goes the cathedrals have not be too affected (girls' choirs being the obvious development).
You and I don't find the 1661 language difficult and I agree that anyone should be able to get used to it with a bit of effort. But, as you surmise, there's the rub. It's the soundbite culture again, isn't it? People want to be spoon-fed with easily digestible and enjoyable titbits. They want instant gratification. And the church needs to engage these people. It's a sad fact that, these days, no one poking their head round a church door for the first time is going to take this sort of language seriously. Non-believers very commonly assume that all church-goers are inherently hypocrites and the last way to reach these people is to use language which will seem to them precious and pious. I hate the modern way and it's why I don't have a church job, but I don't pass judgement - except on what's right and wrong for me personally.
This evening one of my wife's violin pupils asked for help with a GCSE composition. She had a tune in her head, but no clue about how to convert it into musical notation, because they don't teach rudiments at school any more. It's not the teachers' fault. The syllabus has to cater for all abilities so is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Anything cerebral doesn't get a look in.
I'm not really right-wing; I just sound like it.
I think you'll find that pcnd's the expert on sheep around here.
MM: I'd call it "old wine in new bottles". Perhaps it should have been left to mature where it was?
Dear VH
Oh dear, did I sound judgmental. I really did not mean to but I must have got carried away. I would also like to think I am not so reactionary as the post make me appear. There are many modern hymns and even some worship songs I like. In my youth I was quite taken with Michel Quoist's Prayers of Life. There is a lot of Victorian hymnody which is distinctly sub-standard and I do recognise the need to appeal to the present generation in a language they can understand. At bottom I think my objections are basically twofold :(1) the all or nothing nature of the reform which means that a range of choice is not offered to suit various tastes- I have no wish to ram the BCP down anyone's throat but why should I be expected to jump about and clap my hands - when I did that as a child I got smacked for it. I have absolutely no objection for those who feel comfortable with it worshipping in this fashion. My only point is that I, apparently you, and several others I know do not feel comfortable behaving in this way. I thought the injunction was "be still and know that I am God" - not jump about and make a noise. Perhaps I should become a Quaker but then no music !! (2) That a good deal (but by no means all) of what passes for modernisation is not really so. The language is often not that of the present but of 30, 40 even 70 years ago. I also think one ditches tradition at one's peril : it is rather more significant in giving us a sense of who we are and what we are supposed to be about than is frequently realised. Once gone it is gone for ever. It's a bit like good manners really which also appear to have bitten the dust. When I was growing up I knew how I should behave towards others in terms of opening doors, offering seats on trains or buses etc. Now I have n't a clue.
Cheers,
BAC
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What is this EU Directive really about? Is about the use of lead or the disposal of lead? If it is about the use of lead then Katherine Venning, on behalf of the IBO, points out that pipe makers and sheet lead casters are noted for their longevity of life. From my own father's involvement in the former letterpress-based printing industry, I know that many of his friends who were directly involved in the processing of molten (hot) metal, machine compositors and stereotypers, went on to live long and healthy lives well beyond retirement.
If it is about the disposal of heavy metals then I am all for control. But society in the UK increasingly takes a responsible attitude to the disposal of electronic devices containing printed circuitry. Indeed, local authorities in general have set up dumpit sites where items such as computers, refrigerators, television sets, etc., containing printed circuitry and other hazardous substances, are segregated. From my knowledge they are not all buried in the ground but are processed by specialist organisations who extract the microprocessors (they contain gold) and melt off the solder. Like many other waste products which councils collect, they are probably making some money from their efforts.
But this is a bit like the chicken and the egg, Barry. I think you will find that the reasons most Councils do have these facilities now is because European Legislation has required that they do. Prior to that once the war time ethos of recycling had evaporated - I can remember waste paper being collected for "salvage" - the UK was not that fantastic at recycling. The Harold Steptoes of this world went out of business and cars apart any handy field seemed to be the place for disposing of those things deemed to have outlived their usefulness. Remember Flanders and Swan and the "left foot laceless leather boot" ?
Our Council has within the last year supplied us with blue bins for recycling paper but prior to that I had to pay to recycle it at £20 a go. None of my neighbours availed of this service, needless to say. Paper clearly does not pose the same threats as toxic chemicals and heavy metals but it was capable of being recycled. However, virtually no local authority did because there was no discernible benefit to be gained for incurring this cost ; there was no demand from ratepayers to pay higher rates in order to provide recycling facilities !! So although European bureaucracy can frequently appear to have taken leave of its senses, this is not always the case: sometimes they get it right. In the case of waste disposal I think they have. It is unfortunate the pipe organ has been caught up in this but I think it is generally accepted this was by accident and not design. And given that there is a European wide pipe organ culture, I see no reason to doubt that this anomaly will be sorted out.
It is possible to get over excited about the consequences of conduct being declared illegal. Exceeding the speed limit has been illegal for over 100 years but motorists regularly do it. And the offence here is not even a police matter. If it is accepted that a mistake has been made and remedial action is set in train I would be somewhat surprised to find TSOs or whoever is tasked with local enforcement running about the country pursuing organ builders. There are many other calls on their time.
So take heart and do not get overly concerned about this. There is no evidence yet that this is other than an oversight which can be sorted out, and more easily if we do not get right up the noses of the people whose active co-operation can make it happen sooner rather than later.
BAC
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Hi
If you really want traditional, there's usually somewhere that it can be found - at least in Anglicanism. Locally, St. Chad's, Manningham (a Keble College foundation) or, a little further afield, Bolton Abbey I gather does a 1662 service.
The fact is, though, that most people today find that sort of language foreign, and don't relate well to formal (look at how teaching has changed in schools, etc. - I make no comment as to the rights or wrongs of this - it's a fact that we have to live with). Hence, it follows that more informal styles of worship are likely to be more readily accepted - althoguh even that is changing, with a greater seeking for spirituality - but finding the church irrelevant and boring.
Every Blessing
Tony
Thank you Tony. It is reassuring to learn that there is some hope of being able to find a church which I would feel comfortable attending .
As to the reform of modern liturgy aimed at making it more easily comprehensible to people at the present I have to say I find the process largely specious, ill thought through and inconsistently executed by those who do try to put it into practice. In what follows I am aiming at a trend rather than the views of any particular individual. There will undoubtedly be some who have thought this matter through and arrived at a coherent conclusion. If it satisfies them, and their auditors, that is fine by me. I do not want to prescribe for others any more than I want others to prescribe for me. So let us consider the points made -
(1) The language of 1662 is "difficult". Well it is certainly not current vernacular (see below) but my father and father-in-law, both of whom left school at 14, were able to understand it. Why are the much more educated (!!) people of today incapable of doing so ? Perhaps because it requires effort and thought and work ?? But whoever said the way of the cross was easy ? Or supposed to be easy . I had always thought that was the route to the other place - "straight is the way... etc" "Irrelevant and boring" - there is an old chinese proverb which says if man hit self on head with book and hear hollow sound should not assume there is nothing in the book. Perhaps those with the stated reaction should reflect on that message and consider that perhaps personal gratification is not what the gospel message actually is.
(2) Why do the modernisers who think that present day congregations cannot be expected to grapple with the language of 1662 (do these people never read Shakespeare ? are marginal notes out of the question ?) have no problem with constantly using metaphors and illustrations which relate to an agrarian society with which most of them have absolutely no connection, and of which they have even less knowledge ? Few here, I suspect, possibly excepting MM, are that familiar with the work of a shepherd , and equally few familiar with the proper care of fig trees. Even those who are so familiar are more likely to know modern day practice than what was state of the art in the Roman Province of Judea. Yet when metaphors are needed in a sermon or a prayer these are just as likely as not to be the ones selected. I recognise the problem created by the fact that God became man at a particular point in history in a particular geographical location but granted the modern trend in teaching which succeeds in imparting very little knowledge, even about such relatively recent events as the Second World War what realistic chance is there of the "modern" congregation having any familiarity with the social history of first century Palestine ?
(3) The language is not the current vernacular. That may not be an unmixed blessing since any double entendres are much more likely to escape detection. We have been provided with a certain amount of anecdotal evidence on this Board (some of which may well be apocryphal) that not all preachers are as alive to this issue as they might be , eg, the reference to "poke" in the context of an address at a wedding or the question "Do you have a hole in your bottom" ? While anybody at all can easily write a line like that, I fail to understand how anyone who was alive to the nuances of language would not pick up on it when they read their work over. The obvious implication is that not every sermon is as carefully considered and revised as it might be.
(4) Speech has its own rhythms and cadences as does music. The AV and the BCP are wonderfully evocative in this regard. Many modern attempts at revision succeed only in destroying the poetry without adding to comprehensibility a single jot. Yesterday in Church our First Reading (what was wrong with First Lesson) was taken from Exodus 20 . I do not know what the version used was but anybody who thinks "alien in your town" (I thought of ET) is an improvement on "stranger within thy gates" would presumably also consider William McGonagall a superior poet to Blake or Pope or Kipling or Milton.
I think the tone of my previous contributions to this thread indicates that I am not without sympathy for the problems which the clergy face in trying to propagate the gospel message , nor do I underestimate how much more difficult this task has become in a modern world where people are quick to speak of their rights but much slower to acknowledge their duties. But I do not think the answer is to infantilise the message or the medium by which it is expressed.
Best wishes,
Brian Childs
Defending The Pipe Organ
in General discussion
Posted
Hi,
I am not really an EU law expert but what I do know is that EU law always takes precedence over domestic law in those areas in which EU law is engaged. Thus although directives do not operate directly, member states are expected to implement them CORRECTLY, and the EU Commission can take enforcement procceedings against a State if it is considered that it has failed to implement a Directive properly.
Because this is the situation, an English judge will do everything possible to interpret the implementing statutory instrument so that it complies with the demands of the Directive, and only not do so when this is completely impossible.
But this would be a rather unusual situation, so I think one should probably see the situation as being that the European interpretation of the directive will always prevail in the end, but that there may be hiccups on the way to it doing so, especially in this country where the convention is that the courts defer to the superior authority of parliament. Although this convention seems less strong in the era of the Human Rights Act than it was when I was a student when there were effectively no exceptions to it at all!