Nick Bennett

Not necessarily, you could just donate a lot of money to a political party. Or is that peerages? I forget.

Didn't see anything. I know Dr Pearson wanted more pistons (and more couplers) but didn't get them. There may be more archive material than I saw: all I had access to was the correspondence files stored at Harrison's. Mrs Venning told me a lot of other material had been deposited in the Durham County Archives.

I am afraid I don't agree. The performance of the "jig fugue" is execrable in my opinion.

It seems to me that relations with Abbott and Smith had broken down as much as the organ had. They were telling the church that the instrument was beyond repair but Pearson, the organist, certainly thought it was not in as bad a state as the organbuilders were making out. Could Abbott and Smith have been letting the instrument fall into disrepair as a strategy for landing a juicy order for a rebuild? That might well have had the intended effect of nourishing a desire for something new and better - particularly in Bishop Frodsham's mind.

The Swell mixture is bright but not that big. It doesn't really blend with the Great fluework and is soon overwhelmed by it. The Hohl Flute is not too big to be used as a solo rank although as Paul Hale noted when he gave a recital there, it is not the most distingushed example of the genre. The Great No. 1 diapason is leathered, but how much of the leather survives is another matter. When Harrison's reported on raising the pitch of the instrument, releathering this stop was one item of work they pointed out as needing doing. The pedal open wood is an odd thing. The bottom (32') octave is very quiet and can be used with the swell strings. In the 16' octave it suddenly becomes very much louder. The 4' extension of the pedal flute was a last-minute change to the specification for the 1929 rebuild. In fact, I think I am correct in saying it was the only change from Arthur Harrison's original specification. He had originally included the Glockenspiel III from the Abbott and Smith instrument, possibly at the organist's insistence. It seems to have been the vicar, Bishop Frodsham, who suggested doing away with it and adding an extra octave of pipes to the pedal flute. It is interesting that Dr. Pearson (the organist) got none of the changes he wanted (which included more pistons) past Arthur Harrison, and that by the time the new organ was opened, Tustin Baker was the organist. You may be interested to read a four-part article about the 1929 rebuild. I wrote it a few years ago for the Halifax PC Friends of Music Newsletter. I have published it here.

Commotio by Carl Nielsen. A very late work, written after the six symphonies. Not often performed - perhaps it frightens the horses.

No, the case is exactly as Harrison's left it in 1929, as far as I am aware. In fact, the entire organ is as Harrison's left it apart from the Great mixture and the piston compositions. Both were modified when the organ was rebuilt in the 70's. I have in front of me Walker's specification and quotation for the work done in the 1970's. You may be interested (and thankful!) to read what was not done at that time, viz: 1. Swell Organ: recast mixture to 19-22-26-29-33 2. Great Organ: Sesquialtera 12-17 to be inserted in place of Open Diapason No. 1 3. Great Organ: Flute 2ft inserted in place of Hohl Flute 8ft using pipes from Hohl Flute, revoiced, and new 4. Great Organ: recast mixture to 19-22-26-29 using pipes from Mixture II 5. Great Organ: Nason Flute 4ft inserted in place of Harmonic Flute 4ft 6. Choir Organ: New Nazard 2 2/3ft inserted in place of Contra Dulciana 16ft 7. Choir Organ: New Spits (sic) Flute 2ft inserted in place of Gamba 8ft 8. Choir Organ: New Larigot inserted in place of Dulciana 8ft 9. Choir Organ: New Cymbal III inserted in place of Flautina 2ft 10. Pedal Organ: Ophicleice 16ft and Posaune 8ft to be returned to the factory for complete revoicing 11. Pedal Organ: Open 8ft trebles to be replaced with pipes from Open Diapason No 1, Great Organ 12. Pedal Organ: Add new mixture 19-22-26-29 13. Pedal Organ: New Schalmei 4ft Each item is annotated "NO!" in pencil in the margin, in varying sizes and applied pressure. That said, the Great Mixture work did go ahead in some form. The organ has recently been granted a grade II Historic Organ Certificate, and steps are being taken towards having it overhauled.

I seem to remember someone (Simon Lindley?) telling me that the console at St Edmundsbury was equipped with a fire escape in the form of a rope ladder. Is this still the case?

Nice to see that he doesn't use his technique to simply play everything at the fastest possible speed. In fact, some people thought he took some pieces in the earlier rounds rather too slowly. It was interesting that the English competitors very noticeably had less assistance from their registrants than the overseas competitors and did much more hand registration. Some even did their own page turning.

Just got back from ten days at the International Organ Festival at St Albans where there were three British contestants in the competitions (a fourth had qualified but withdrew). Two made it to the finals, and in the Interpretation Competition the First Prize and Audience Prize went to David Baskeyfield, who hails from Cheshire and is a former organ scholar of St John's College, Oxford. There was an exceptionally strong field this year in both the Interpretation and the Improvisation Competitions, whilst the supporting events were of the higest quality and plenty of them. The next festival, in 2013, will be the 50th Anniversary Festival. Strongly recommended!

The other libraries certainly used to employ an agent who was in the habit of demanding copies on their behalf. Whether this still goes on I dont know. The BL also seems to have an extensive stock of music published overseas, too; whenever I have requested obscure foreign stuff it has come from Boston Spa. The problem with inter-library loans is that they are for only two weeks (which I think begins when your local library tells you the item is available for collection) and cannot be renewed; there is, therefore, insufficient time to learn the piece. I used to get a lot of stuff on inter-library loan when Bradford charged £1 an item, but then they put it up to something like £9. I don't suppose they get many requests these days.

Liszt's Ad Nos played by Jaroslav Tuma in the final of the Nuremberg Competition (which he won) in the 70's and broadcast by the BBC! An absolutely stunning performance that I used to have on tape: I haven't heard it for decades, yet I can still hear the way he phrased the last page to perfection.

When I was chairman of MM's local railway I ran into Roger Fisher on the platform at Oxenhope and introduced myself. He told me he had driven an engine on on the Llangollen, and described the surge of power on opening the regulator as being just like opening the swell box at St Mary Redcliffe!

The University owns the organ at the west end. The University Organist plays it for University services. In the 1970's when the old east end organ was getting past it, the vicar asked the University Organist if the parish could use the west end organ for its services. The answer was along the lines of "yes, of course, if you will make application on each occasion on which you wish to use it." In other words, "No!"

Do not feed the troll!

Nice bit of publicity for the instrument. Well done Richard Ingrams. Who would have thought it if they didn't already know?

How exactly did this work? Obviously, music was copied by hand, but how did people get hold of it to copy? In particular, did it come to you or did you have to go to it? I rather imagine it was the latter, but am I right there?

There is the potential for this instrument to have more couplers than speaking stops, viz: Ch - Ped Gt - Ped Sw - Ped Ch - Gt Sw - Gt Sw - Ch

It often seems the case that manual mutations become less and less effective the lower down the compass one goes. The tone ceases to bind; the individual ranks become audible and it starts to sound like a chord rather than a single note. How do builders avoid this effect in 32' based cornets? And if they can do it effectively on the pedal, why do they have difficulty with the bottom couple of octaves on the manuals?

Chopin's C minor prelude is very suitable. I remember being very moved by it a Remembrance service at school some forty years ago. What about some of the minor key pieces from the 48? The Bb minor from book 1 and F# minor from book 2 spring to mind.

The Isaac Abbott organ installed in the Long Library at Blenheim Palace can't have had much of a tenure there. It was installed in 1888, but replaced by the Willis in 1891. His Grace must have placed the order with Willis pretty soon after first hearing its unfortunate predecessor.

Didn't he toy with the idea of calling it "Fenlandia"?

Quite possibly- but whose comfort zone? If the church wants to massage mine, for example, it had better produce rather a lot of renaissance polyphony.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I really ought to have tried harder!

I have to declare an interest here as a member of the Advisory Council of the IAO and a member of three organists' associations, one of which I am the Secretary of.* As marketing people will tell you, perception is all. And thus it worries me that DRD has this perception about organists' associations. I am not going to argue as to whether his perception is accurate: that is neither here nor there. If it is accurate the associations have a problem of substance; if it isn't, they have an image problem. What really interests me is where DRD's perception comes from: in particular, is it hearsay or first-hand knowledge? And is it recent hearsay/first-hand knowledge, or does it date back a decade or two? In other words, are the associations really like his description, or do people just think they are? Either way, we (the IAO and its member associations) have some work to do. It isn't my intention to start an argument here - indeed, I suspect if DRD and I are going to have an argument we will need to move on to different ground. * I tried not to end this sentence with a preposition but the result, whilst gramatically correct, was ugly and almost incomprehensible.