WORCESTER CATHEDRAL ORGAN
It has been most interesting to read such a variety of opinions about the Worcester organ. Thank you all for such passionate discussion!
I can assure you all that the decision to move in this direction is not one which has been taken lightly. A lengthy process of discussion has been taking place over the last nine years to assure that all options in this beautiful building have been considered. In short, it is not an easy building for the transmission of sound, largely due to the softness of the sandstone, but also due to its length and relatively narrow Quire and Nave. Our aim is to provide organs where they are needed so that the need for overwhelming power is greatly reduced. Having said this, I have no doubt that each of the organs will have great gravitas and balance of tone which are needed for the wide range of uses to which they are put. There are, however, some key problems to be addressed to allow this to happen.
The location of the bulk of the instrument in the Quire is actually at ground level - some of the pipes are only about 10 feet behind the lay clerks' heads during evensong. The voicing of these self-same ranks however is largely designed to throw the sound down into the Nave, making accompaniment at this proximity very difficult indeed. Our proposal to lift the new organ into the triforium arches (currently blind arcading) will allow the instrument to sing around the Quire in a way not possible before. If our predecessors had been able to tackle this problem in their day, we should not be facing this difficult situation now.
The comments about balance and quality may have been made by some with rather rose-tinted spectacles concerning the facts. It is true that the organ can sound quite grand and imposing from a distance - in fact recordings are frequently the best way to hear this instrument, since they can balance the divisions in a way impossible by the human ear alone. In practice, there is not one principal chorus on the instrument which balances from top to bottom, by any standard or style. Many of the reeds are so unevenly voiced and slow in speech as to be almost unusable. The attempts of the 1890s and 1920s to take Hill's work and encourage it to fill the whole building make for impossible balancing in the Quire. On closer inspection, the voicing of almost every rank is so uneven that it would take a huge investment of time to try to make good what has gone before. It becomes clearer still from inside the instrument that the vast majority of Hill's pipework was removed by Hope Jones anyway, leaving the extraordinary patchwork of sounds we have today.
The present mechanical and electrical problems we are experiencing on a day to day basis are increasing exponentially. Of the 8 foot ranks which form the foundation of our service accompaniments, 5 are currently inoperable, unreliable or intermittent, and a further 4 stops on the Great will only work as a group (all together or nothing). Two out of three swell boxes do not function correctly (1 of these not at all) and there are ciphers on a daily basis on the pedals. Wind leakage on various divisions reached a low ebb in the cold days of February and March, resulting in a complete collapse on one day. There are also about a dozen notes which do not work on different soundboards or stops, mostly due to rapidly failing leatherwork, some of which is now 90 years old. The faults behind all these problems would need hundreds of thousands to repair – an action which we do not consider good stewardship on the Cathedral's behalf. At this stage it would be far better to look forward to the future, rather than dwelling on the problems, errors and misjudgements of the past.
The comments about the Rogers Electronic instrument are partly correct. We are purchasing a three manual instrument to tide us over, though not closing down the pipe organ when its use is practical. For our BBC Broadcast on Wednesday, for example, we were able to nurse her through a demanding programme, though not without spending considerable time in creating novel registrations, some of which look extremely bizarre on paper. With the Three Choirs Festival at the start of August, we felt that the risk of severe embarrassment was too much to bear and we decided to cover ourselves lest the worst should happen. I have no doubt that the two instruments, plus Ken Tickell's box organ will keep things moving along in a way as satisfactory as is possible in the circumstances.
There have also been comments about the Quire Scott cases from several correspondents. Whilst the Quire cases are, undoubtedly, unique it was felt that they were not his best examples by a large margin. Their squat design is also such that their transplantation to the Triforium would be unsatisfactory and that the use of his carved details would perhaps be a better testament to his work. The Transept case and pipework are really part of the Nave organ, a project which is still under discussion at present, and I am therefore unwilling to comment in detail. I would say, however, that we are currently intending to restore this case to its original splendour, rather than to remove it.
This message can only give you a small impression of the detail of the new project and I hope that, if nothing else, you will gain the impression that the painstaking work which has been undertaken on behalf of the Cathedral at Worcester has been done with broad consultation and aims to set the Cathedral up for at least another 100 years.
Adrian Lucas
Master of the Choristers and Organist,
Worcester Cathedral
