Nick Bennett

It's St Eustache, Paris, isn't it? Definitely looks like it - and sounds like it.

It worked perfectly for me. I was rather impressed. Of course, I did realise after posting it that they would know who had sent it. Hope I haven't blotted my copy book before attending my first Advisory Council meeting!

As a secretary of a local organists' association, I'd be really interested to explore how this might work. I imagine it would help enormously if the local association approached teachers with ideas for an event that had clearly-defined objectivez that delivered some part of the national curriculum. But where would I start?

Or much less, depending on who they turned out to be! On some boards I contribute in my own name, on others I use a pseudonym. There have been occasions when I was glad of the anonymity, too, after making ill-advised posts whilst wrapped around a bottle of wine and several glasses of port.

Didn't one of the finalists at the Leeds Piano Competition have a lapse of memory in a Rachmaninov concerto? I seem to remember that, having observeh the exposition repeat, he started on it a third time.

Some stupid questions, yes, but not bad on the whole. And it's yet another sign that the organ's profile is on the rise at the BBC. Give them every encouragement!

For those who missed it the first time, here's the Tomkins Ground from Leiden, played by Theo Visser during a demonstration of the organ on 17 April 2007.

I seem to have a fourth type of memory which might be termed harmonic memory - i.e. being able to remember music in terms of chord sequences with inversions and spacings. In fact, I seem to read music in these terms to some extent.

I've bored you to tears previously with my enthusiasm for the organ of the Hooglandse Kerk, Leiden, but I still think it's a magnificent instrument. The pipework is apparently all old stuff, with work since 1702 being mainly the addition of more stops followed by their removal. Its history is: 1565 New organ built by Peter Jansz de Swart of Utrecht 1637 Rebuilding and enlargement by G van Hagerbeer 1702 Restoration and changes (compass enlargement) by J Duyschot 1879 Changes by Lohman en Schaafeld 1941 Restoration by van Leeuwen 1978 Complete restoration and reconstruction to the 1702 specification by Ahrend. This is Theo Visser playing a Ground by Tomkins during a demonstration of the organ on 17 April 2007.

I used to be able to memorise music when I was a teenager. In fact, I didn't have to try - it just happened. I can still get about half way through Sinding's Rustle of Spring, which I learned as a teenager, though I haven't seen the score for decades. It is a memory of what the piece feels like in the fingers. These days, although I can easily memorise the sound of pieces just as easily as when I was younger, I can no longer memorise how even the simplest of pieces is played. What I do find, however, is that memorising the odd few bars I am having difficulty playing helps enormously in getting my fingers on the right notes. This tends to be a photographic memory of both the score and what it looks like on the keys.

In the Parr Hall thread, Cynic mentioned this instrument in terms of approbation. What's it like, and what state is it in? Is there a curator?

I can't help wondering if continental - and especially Dutch - organ builders picked up the technique of copying old stops after the war in the course of replacing pipes and actions lost to enemy (and friendly!) action. For example, at Nijmegen, the entire left pedal tower was destroyed by bombing and had to be reconstructed using the opposite side as a model. One can imagine that it might cross the mind of the organ builder that, having effectively built half of an historic instrument, there was nothing to stop them building an entire organ in the same style from scratch if only they could find a customer to pay for it.

Hope you are enjoying Winchester and not too spooked by the bones of the Saxon kings! You can use this latter skill to impress your organ pupils. You profess from the start that you don't know the piece they have brought and you ask all sorts of questions about it as the pupil hacks their way through. When they have come completely unstuck in the hardest part of it you say "I'll just play it through for you and see if I can give you some tips," whereupon you sit down and give a really excellent performance of it - all the way to the end, which you haven't heard yet. Or at least, you can if your name is Tordoff. I gather the tests given to prospective organ scholars at Gonville and Caius College this year included sight-reading a score of which the top part was in soprano clef!

Interestingly, the wording of the Downing Street petition is simply to "save the Cavaille-Coll organ in the Parr Hall, Warrington". There is no mention of keeping it there: the phrase "in the Parr Hall, Warrington" merely defines which Cavaille-Coll organ is being discussed. If the intention was to petition for the instrument's retention at the Parr Hall, it has been worded very carelessly. Some people may be signing the petition to oppose the proposal to move the organ whilst others are signing to support it! It does not seem to me that it is in the instrument's best interests to leave it to rot under the ownership of Warrington Council. However, I can well understand why people in the Warrington area are hopping mad at losing such a gem.

That feels like approximately half speed to me!

Hmmm - it seems to come with a rather complicated set of instructions as to how to perform it. How fascinating!

I do but I am not sure I would want anyone to hear me! Cynic has recorded them - at Coventry, I think. Peter Hurford told a story about discovering either these or the Two Part Inventions when in his teens and expecting that, being in only two parts, they must be easy, then wondering what on earth was wrong with him when he had to work so hard on them.

But what a recital it would be!

It seems to me that RVW just hadn't thought about his subject matter properly. He was so sure that JSB would have loved hearing his works played by modern instruments, yet he would have been scandalised to hear performers taking liberties with his own compositions - e.g. by substituting an Ondes Martenot for the cor anglais in the slow movement of the second symphony. There were two aspects of the talk that took my breath away. One was his cavalier attitude to the notes the composer actually wrote and his advocacy of wholesale cuts in performances of the passions. The other was the revelation that, in late nineteenth century England, Bach was considered to be a good composer but not a great one. I wonder whom they thought of him as on a par with - Hummel, perhaps? The term "insufficient evidence" presumably indicates he wasn't at all convinced that the organ in Bach's time was in the baroque style. But in that case, what did he think Bach played? A Father Willis? Surely he wasn't so historically ignorant as to think the romantic style of organ went back to the eighteenth century - was he?

Next week's schedule seems to be part way between what we've had in recent years (odd pieces scattered throughout the day's schedule, and therefore difficult to find) and what we used to have decades ago (programmes dedicated to organ music - easy to find but arguably ghettoised). The question I'd like to discuss is this: which of these approaches will do most for the organ and its repertoire?

Somebody has probably got the sack for it. Or is now working on the sports desk.

Crikey - I see what you mean. About a third of Classical Collection next week features the organ. And very varied, too, ranging from Franz Tunder to some piece that I take to have been written last week. I think it was called Rrrrr. Let's hope this is a sign of better things to come rather than of the entire year's quota of organ music having been crammed into a single week to get it out of the way.

Pierre's spec would be a better organ for Bach than the 8-stop H&H I mentioned in the OP! Pierre's instrument at least has a decent chorus. The Harrison's biggest noise is the hooting great Open Diapason (with or without any other stops added - you can't hear them anyway). Surely one cannot expect any organ of eight ranks to be able to play "the best of the organ's repertoire", if by that one means works on a grand scale: such an instrument will always be limited to small scale works. I can't imagine there are many eight-rank organs anyone would choose to take Grade 8 on, for example - though I'd be interested to hear any suggestions. In any case, an organ in a small country church isn't really there to render the Great Works of the Organ Literature. It's there to accompany the choir and the congregation. Not that there is a choir at St Peter's these days. I suspect there was when the organ was installed. There are choir stalls that would accommodate a choir of about eight, and a selection of third-rate anthems going mouldy underneath a layer of bat droppings in a cardboard box at the side of the organ. The dedication recital was given by Mr Rooks of Blackburn Parish Church. I bet he was glad to get back to his Cavaille-Coll.

In 1897, a small church (seating about 150 say) ordering an organ from Harrison and Harrison got this sort of thing Great: Open Diapason 8' Dulciana 8' Harmonic Flute 4' Swell: Lieblich Gedackt 8' Salicional 8' (from Tenor C) Gemshorn 4' Gamba Oboe 8' (from tenor C) Pedal: Bourdon 16' Tracker action throughout. Three couplers. The OD is so big it obliterates the rest of the instrument. The Gamba Oboe is a reedy flue stop - quite nice on its own or with the Gemshorn as a solo line. There are at least two H&H organs of the same date with exactly this spec, and I believe I have found others (on the NPOR) with these stops plus a 4' Octave on the Great. What I thought might be an interesting discussion is: what specification would you want nowadays if building a new organ costing about the same as it would cost to build the above specification?

Gosh, I hope somebody noticed I was being ironical: I thought I was laying it on with a trowel.