Goldsmith

Well, it's all a matter of taste in the end. And it's very unwise to make value judgements on the quality of art. Who was listening to/playing JSB in the years after his death, etc. etc.? Last night I heard Duke Bluebeard's Castle at the ROH, a masterpiece which only entered the Covent Garden repertory in 2002... I'm a great admirer of Ralph Downes, but he was a man of his time, and we all react against a previous generation's views. There's a whole body of British romantic music which is being re-discovered by performers and audiences: Alcock, Whitlock, Lemare, Harwood, Willan, Bairstow, Harris, Howells etc. There are many more than 'a few pieces' here. The English parish/cathedral instrument spends most of its time in accompaniment, like it or not. In the spirit of 'historically informed' performance, shouldn't we think about what sounds HH might have expected for his Coll Reg (for example)? Downes was working in a different tradition (tho' the Oratory is still the place to go to hear glorious orchestral masses 'realized' on the organ!), and I seem to remember that he was extremely disapproving of Cochereau's modern chamades at NDdeP... His ideal were those on the masterpiece at Toulouse. And I'm afraid I disagree about American instruments. Seems to me that the percussive chamades found overe there do actually blend with the American Classic sound very well. Horses for courses.

But modern chamades often don't blend any better than tubas, do they? There are some very nasty examples tacked onto romantic English-sounding organs, sometimes a few hundred yards away from the rest of the instrument. At least the tuba is usually tonally/physically related to the rest of the instrument. And it has some repertoire written for it...

I used to play the Mander Lawrence Jewry organ once a month for seven years or so, when a student. The choir 'reeds' were derived from the upperwork. By this stage in that late instrument's life, I found them to be unusable (never properly in tune). Piston 6 (tuba) on the choir also had a nasty habit of sticking...

Seems to me that these points (esp. the rallentando) are spot on. Doesn't a drawn-out final chord contradict the energy and forward movement (and I don't mean speed) of the works in question anyway?

I wonder if anyone has thoughts on the similar problem presented by the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C? Should the fugue end with a resounding pedal bottom C, or reduce to a spry flute combination?

A good point about Ralphh Downes; his book 'Baroque Tricks' should be compulsory reading. In another thread, it was suggested that flutes/principals, as a general rule, are better not mixed. At the RFH and elsewhere, the organ was designed so that classes of pipe should be used together (I generalize here, for the sake of brevity). RD's horror on hearing Peter Hurford using a 'skeletonized' registration for a Bach fugue (?) is very instructive.

Hmm.. I don't really buy this argument. For city dwellers, the Victorian street (cobbles, horses, carts etc.) would have been pretty noisy. Travelling by steam train would have been pretty noisy too. And how about working in a 'dark, satanic mill'?...

A non-organist friend, currently working on a doctorate at the RCM, has a good theory about high-pitches/mutations etc. It's simply that we lose the top end of our hearing as we get older, so experience low to mid-range sound as dull and indistinct. This would explain why I found that the headphones my new boss claimed were such an improvement on his old ones, sounded unbelievably tinny to me (being thirty years his junior). And also why Pierre Boulez has revised his 'Pli selon Pli' twice, each time producing a version with higher and brighter (and frankly more annoying), percussion. So my point is this: to get young people to listen to the organ, ditch your neo-classical paint-stripping device, and buy an H&H. Or better still a Hope-Jones.

I thought I was the only person in the world who had bought this... The playing is great, and it's very atmospheric. The tuning/winding are very dodgy (a great illustration of the organ pre-Mander); I particularly love the moment Timothy Bond adds a handful of tubas in the final bars of Transports de Joie... Not sure my stereo/the neighbours appreciated it much tho'. Matthew PS: To those interested in Messiaen, the Latry/ND de Paris complete works are currently going for a song on Amazon (£21.97). I'm glad I waited...

I have to say, I think it looks like a wonderful programme. I too heard SP play at the RAH last year (?) and will be fascinated to hear the Schumann again under such different conditions. Interesting too that the Scmidt was played by Susi Jeans at the RFH organ's opening. I also thought we were past the point of writing-off transcriptions these days; why is a good transcription less valid than an original work? After all, there are some impeccable precedents... On another point, I recently acquired the vinyl of SP's Abbey Nativite from the sixties. What a stunner! As someone who hears the Abbey organ quite often, I was sad to find that the instrument sounded a lot more coherent and convincing then (complete with Large OD and Gt Trombas) than it does now. The removal of these from the Gt makes the remaining Harmonics rather a Cinderella.

Much as I love the Herrick recording, I'd reccommend David Goode's from Christ Church Oxford (on Herald). The cleaner acoustic really helps. There are a number of things which make this great music IMHO. Firstly, it's the sustained contrapuntal writing, and the way tension is built up/relaxed over the duration of the piece via a great variety of textures. Secondly (and this is what's especially distinctive, for me) it is that Nielsen's compositional 'voice' is to be heard in every bar: this is obviously the same man who wrote the Symphonies, Maskerade etc. (This seems to be an achievement few 'mainstream' composers pull-off when writing for the organ.) It's a profoundly beautiful and serious work. I'm not sure it's that rare in recital. I heard a great performance at a free Westminster Cathedral Sunday-afternoon freebie (complete with obbligato votive coin-dropping) a while ago, which was fairly jaw-dropping.

There's a fantastic website for cantataphiles: www.bach-cantatas.com which provides chorale texts, Lutheran calendar and much, much more. A real labour of love.

I'd imagine that the OUP C H Trevor 'Old English Organ Music For Manuals' series might be pretty indispensable... The Faber 'Early Organ' series is a bit more esoteric. The Flor Peeters Chorale Prelude volumes also contain a lot of useful stuff; they're expensive new, but often turn up second hand.

Another one for the top-end of the list: Franz Schmidt - Chaconne.

Alain Trois Danses Nielsen Commotio Tournemire 'improvisations' (Victimae Paschali if pushed) Elgar Sonata (May not be easy to pull off, but when it works, it's awesome.) Reubke Sonata Reger Variations F#m Messiaen Messe de la P. Hindemith Sonatas (II?) Now I've started to think about it, quite a bit more... tho' much Widor/Franck etc doesn't bear a lot of repetition. As a teenager I developed a crush on Durufle, but again I'm not sure the music really bears lots of scrutiny, except the gorgeous little Prelude Sur L'Introit De L'Epiphanie. The Bairstow Sonata is pretty impressive too. And I've just seen the Widor Symphonie Romane post. Absolutely agreed; this is in an utterly different class from the rest of his output. Didn't Schweitzer say that with this work Widor had produced 'Sacred Art' or something?

Not strictly on topic, so apologies. I heard Margaret Phillips play a selection of the Eighteen on Saturday, on the QEH Flentrop. The only reed on this instrument is the Swell Cremona 8', which proved extremely versatile as both a chorus and solo stop. Very nice.

I've never regularly played such an instrument, but I remember being taught to feel the pulse in my fingertips, rather than waiting for the sound of the organ. It's certainly helped when deputizing on such instruments. Otherwise, even when playing on one manual, one can find oneself getting slower and slower. It all rather contradicts our attempts to listen to our own performances, and perhaps explains why organists are often accused of not doing so...

It's a great set though, some wonderful performances. The Tournemire is quite electrifying...

Gosh, with Mendelssohn, Dupre, Langlais etc. dropping like flies, I'm beginning to wonder what people actually LIKE? (And I'm choosing to ignore some curious remarks made elsewhere on this board about JSB.) I'm sure though, that there's often quite a difference between music which is satisfying to perform, and that which is satisfying to listen to, particularly to the non-player. And in the same way that the first recording/performance heard of a piece makes an indelible impression, so do pieces which we learn at particular times, and critical faculties desert us (me).

Horses for courses; they bore me rigid, unlike the BACH Fugues. And my beloved Marcel Dupre. As to the GREAT COMPOSER thing, I just added a note to my original post. Perhaps we can agree on Reger and Hindemith though, and I could try to win you over with talk of dismal Guilmant...?

For my money, the Schumann 4 Sketches (which seem to be popular recital fare in London these days) deserve a place near the top of the list. In fact, I can think of a few other examples of work by 'mainstream' composers dredged up by organists (often student pieces or simple exercises), perhaps in an effort to attract broader audiences? Misguided, I think. Oh, and I've just remembered that dreadful Kenneth Leighton Passacaglia-type effort. Yawn.

The Saetas were pretty popular when published; Germani certainly played them. I think there's an Amphion CD of FG playing one at Westminster Cathedral c. 1947.

I'd be interested to hear this; any details? It would be churlish not to accept your assessment of the instrument, but don't we usually judge a builder by his most successful work, rather than less convincing examples? Otherwise, we'd have to write off most of the big names in organ building...

OK. I own up. I was trying to Arthur-Harrison your scheme a bit. I'm afraid I dream flat twenty-firsts...

I was a student in Leeds fifteen years ago, and I don't remember that an awful lot of the G&D had survived the Wood rebuilding, but please correct me. I know the Hill at the Ulster Hall has a horizontal reed which is jolly enough, but I was hoping for some more recent successful examples on non-Klais/Marcussen etc-type instruments.