Nick Bennett

Whilst I recognise the realism of Janner's post, it is not only depressing: it is defeatist and paints an unnecessarily gloomy picture. A church does not have to fund organ lessons on its own. There are diocesan schemes for assisting with the cost of organ lessons. Our local one pays a third of the price, the church another third and the trainee the last third. A year's lessons with our local teachers (FRCOs and ARCOs) would cost about £200, which would would be £67 per party per annum, or not much more than £1 a week. If there isn't a diocesan scheme (and if not, why not?) then there's the local organists' association (or the IAO if there isn't a local association). If they haven't got any money of their own they ought to know about funds that do (the Brereton Fund, for instance). Janner seems to be saying that there's no point in his parish paying for lessons for youngsters because they won't stay around long enough for his parish to benefit, although he admits that someone else's parish might. Boy, you guys in those villages must be really pissed off at paying taxes to send the local kids to school, only for somebody else (if anyone) to reap the benefit! I mean, in a small village where the number of youngsters can be counted on one hand, the chances of one of them becoming a heart surgeon must be only marginally better than the chance of winning the national lottery. The difficulties are very real: I do not deny that. Efforts to overcome them may or may not be successful. But using the difficulties as an excuse to do nothing isn't likely to achieve the desired objective. And you might just enrich some kid's life, even if the exercise doesn't get you an organist in thirty years' time.

If it were explained to me what this thing does, I might feel able to comment.

I certainly think so. It did nothing for me. And yes, the final chord was ridiculously long in the context of the speed he took what had gone before. The performance was grotesque.

My first organ LP was Carl Weinrich playing four works by JSB on a Scandinavian instrument - from memory it was 565, the little E minor, the A minor and the Passacaglia. I think we discussed this recording some time ago. My second may well have been a miscellany of Messiaen pieces played at St Sernin by Jean-Claude Raynard. It included Transports de Joie, which quite blew me away - and still does.

Now, this is an interesting comment. I seem to remember reading in Humphrey Carpenter's Britten biography that some pupil of Britten's who had previously been taught by Howells commented that Howells was a "vain little man" who only ever used his own music to illustrate a musical point, never anyone else's. What Vox says would seem to contradict that completely. How interesting!

Interestingly, the good Tordoff did his bell trick after my lesson with him last night. It is exactly as Bombarde32 says, a sixth, a fifth and two fourths. It doesn't sound at all bell-like on the piano, but on the Concert Flute on the Solo it is a remarkable sound that one can barely believe is being produced by the organ.

You could set up some microphones in the cathedral and relay the sound back to the player across the Internet. It would all be very much in the spirit of Hope Jones, bearing in mind that photograph of him playing his instrument at (I think) Wallasey from outside the porch.

Me - twice. Once when I started playing as a teenager, and then when I took up playing again in my mid forties having not playing anything (even a piano) for twenty years. My exposure to the instrument and its repertoire was, in the first instance, through Radio 3, then through records and later CDs and recitals. Fat chance of any teenager hearing much organ music on Radio 3 these days, unless he's prepared to listen all night on the off chance of the odd short piece turning up. Things have improved recently, but there is still a crying need for a regular slot for organ music. The Halle are currently raising £1,500,000 to try and bring orchestral music to school children. Mark Elder's view is that youngsters' indifference to classical music is not due to antipathy to the music, but lack of exposure to it. Organ repertoire is in the same sort of hole, only much, much deeper.

Far from it. The fact you don't have to be taking the Music Tripos to be an organ scholar is far from obvious, for example.

Why have instrument makers started to make viols and harsichords again? Surely the modern violin in infinitely superior to the viol and the pianoforte to the harpsichord? Shouldn't they simply be concentrating on making ever better violins and pianos? And if a church like the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, wants to have a "Bach" organ in the north aisle in addition to the romantic slush bucket at the west end, why shouldn't they?

I absolutely agree, David. And the question is, is it a good instrument or not. The evidence of my ears (and those of the other seventeen in the party) is that it is a superb instrument. I could have stayed there all evening listening to it, cold and hunger notwithstanding. Dutch organbuilders seem to have got rather a lot of practice at building in historical styles after the war. A lot of organs were badly damaged during the occupation and the missing bits had to be reconstructed in the style of the surviving portions. Half of the churches seem to have a corner with photographs of the roofless, smoking shell of the buulding. It is amazing that anything survived at, say, Oirschot or Nijmegen.

Sounds like something to be avoided at all costs. Sorry, but I just don't see the attraction of Curley's million mile an hour playing. Nick

So what do you actually think of the Dordrecht instrument, Paul? I mean, do you like the sound it makes?

I've just been on a week's organ tour of the Netherlands, and heard "demonstrations" of some dozen or so organs, and I regret to say that none of the excellent works listed on the Opus Two web site were used for the purpose. Instead we were subjected to such tripe as Trio Sonatas and Preludes and Fugues by Bach, Mendelssohn Sonatas, Franck's A minor Chorale, a suite by some guy called Boellmann and chorale preludes by Buxtehude, Bohm and Brahms. This was most disappointing, and I am sure Franklin D Ashdown's "Scenes from the Life of a Doctor" would have demonstrated the instruments far better. The piece based on the patient with an Epididymal Cyst is particularly fine, I think.

Oh, hello David - I hadn't made the connection. Speaking of weight and depth of touch, perhaps someone can explain this. At the Lutheran Church in den Haag I played a piece in F sharp minor, following which the organist of the church, Aart Bergwerff, commented that it was a difficult key to play in because of the depth of touch. Why would depth of touch make F sharp minor more difficult than any other key?

Has anybody heard (or played) the new "Bach Organ" in the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht? It's by Verschueren and is based on the principles of Silbermann, especially his organs at the Dom Church, Freiburg and the Hofkirche, Dresden. The church has apparently spent a million euros on it, whilst at the same time restoring the impressive 1859 instrument by Hendrik Kam at the west end of the church. Where do they get all this money from? I had the pleasure of hearing it a lot and playing it a little on the Dutch organ tour the week before last. Thought it was a very distinguished and exciting instrument, and worth enduring the piercing cold for (as I tried to keep my fingers warm enough to play, my breath was condensing on my fingernails at one stage). The organist, Cor Ardesch, described it as his new toy.

I think wrapping the exposed pins in polythene is woefully inadequate. You ought to turn off the power on that circuit until you can get an electrician to either disconnect it or fix it. If it kills somebody or sets the church on fire, your insurers (and the police) will find the correspondence on this web site a rich source of evidence. In fact, if the church has been in the habit of employing the sort of "craftsmen" that would do such a job, you ought to get the building's electrics inspected as a matter of some urgency. There is no reason why the humidifier shouldn't be running 24x7, but you shouldn't be able to hear it. The fact that you can means it has probably developed a fault.

Yes, an evening of Bach organ works is only likely to attract the converted, whilst the mismatch between organ and works will repel them. On the other hand I do rather fancy the evening of Stockhausen.

What a depressing thread this has turned into.

Also beware of tuners whose prices are too cheap to be true. This will be from the sort of firm that does four instruments a day. Guess how much work gets done on any one instrument. It makes my blood boil to sit at the console of a two manual instrument of 20 stops, grossly out of tune and exhibiting seventy-odd action faults (that I could find) with a card on it dated three days previously stating "instrument tuned and maintained".

Much the same could be said about solo piano works, symphonies, concerti, string quartets, songs, opera, choral works, works for piano and violin, etc, etc, etc. I notice that not all paintings are of the very highest quality either. Neither are the vast majority of novels, works of poetry, stage works or posts on message boards. Why single out the organ repertiore as if it had some flaw from which all other human endeavours were immune? And what, exactly, is your point?

Whereas I usually prefer tempi on the slow side, but just about lost the will to live when listening to Vierne's Bach.

You can hear how Vierne played Bach through the odd recording he made. His rendition of the "little" E minor P+F is, to my ear, unbearable. He takes more than twice as long as any other recording I have of the work (Hurford, Chapuis, Bowyer, Weinrich). FJ is no speed merchant, but I would think he will get through it in little more than half the time Vierne took.

I heard that happen to Gillian Weir at York Minster. There was also the occasion (at which I was present) of the RCO Performer of the Year finals at the Bridgewater Hall (was it 1999?) when the organ's electronics crashed in the middle of the Barber Toccata Festiva. Jonathan Scott was playing at the time. There was a lot of innefectual fiddling at the console before eventually they rebooted the thing. On neither occasion would I describe the result as entirely musical.

Perhaps because the instrument is being played in the way the composer intended (assuming the music was written before, say, 1970). Look at the constant stop changes in Bairstow's scores - he must have managed them purely with hand registration. With electronic gadgetry, the player can make registration changes the composer could never have contemplated. Maybe he would approve, maybe not. Having to change registration by hand may also restrain the player from adopting tempi much faster than the composer intended.