Goldsmith
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Posts posted by Goldsmith
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Have fun! This is my stoplist:
GREAT ORGAN
16 Double Open Diapason
8 Open Diapason
8 Stopped Diapason
4 Octave
4 Stopped Flue
2 2/3 Twelfth
2 Fifteenth
III Mixture (15,19,22)
8 Trumpet
Sw to Gt
Ch to Gt
Gt Reed on Ch
SWELL ORGAN
8 Violin Diapason
8 Rohrflote
8 Salicional
8 Voix Celestes (to tenor C)
4 Geigen Principal
4 Nason Flute
2 Gemshorn
III Mixture (22,26,29)
16 Horn
8 Horn
8 Oboe
4 Clarion
Sub-octave
Octave
Unison-off
CHOIR ORGAN (enclosed)
8 Gemshorn
8 Quintadenda
4 Octave Gemshorn
4 Koppel Flote
2 2/3 Nazard
2 Piccolo
1 3/5 Tierce
II Scharf (29,33)
8 Clarinet
8 Horizontal Trumpet (uneclosed)
Sw to Ch
Octave
Suboctave
Tremulant
PEDAL ORGAN
32 Double Open Wood
16 Open Wood
16 Bourdon
8 Octave
8 Flute
4 Octave Flute
IV Mixture (12,15,19,22)
32 Bombarde
16 Ophicliede
Gt to Pd
Sw to Pd
Ch to Pd
Gt & Pd Cmbs Cpld
Hmm...
I prescribe Tromba and Harmonics on the Great, and a ped Violone 16' to replace the Bombarde. But the first step must be to get rid of the horizontal reed... Can any one direct me to an example which edifies a UK instrument?
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Advice please:
I would like to buy a collection of Bach's organ works on CD. I have a budget of about £120. Which one should I buy? I don't mind the organs not being a Bach period (or close to) instrument necessarliy but a recording by an artist interpreting closely to the composer (if that is possible), i.e. not Carlo Curly'esque' (not that I have anything against his playing style).
Oh, just one more request, I have fallen in love with Healy Willan's Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue after hearing it at a recital. and hope to learn it when I get an organ installed into my flat at the end of the month. Any recommendations for a good recording of it?
Go for Herrick; the box-set is about £70 with excellent notes.
And notwithstanding Francis Jackson, I love the Boston/Gillian Weir Willan, tho' you do have to be a fan of that type of American sound.
By the way Lee, you must know my good friends Ged Act and Clarrie Bell.
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And of course, at the RFH one often does NOT hear all the notes... at least , not all the right ones. It's a very unforgiving instrument...
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The acoustic may be as dead as a doornail, the recording very 'close' but Dame Gillian and Priory seem to have done it again. The atmosphere is amazing and as expected the playing superb - try it!
AJJ
Heartily endorsed: a fine showcase for this beleaguered instrument, and for GW.
Actually, I get the impression that this was not closely recorded, but rather from the back of the hall: the blend is much better than from the stalls or stage, the cornet is far less agressive and there's a hint of bloom to the sound.
The recording demonstrates to my ears (as does this organ in recital) that the H&H excels in Reger, and other complex or contrapuntal music, where you actually get to hear the notes. (Also great for Messiaen, tho' others will disagree.) The Grison (for example) sounds fine, but its rhetorical flourishes are rather wasted in the RFH non-acoustic.
It will be fascinating to compare this disc with the sound of the resurrected organ in 2007.
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Richard - a diffident first post from a new member. I've followed with considerable interest your comments about current methods of chorister training, here and also in Choir and Organ, for example. This is of course an organ discussion board and I wouldn't dream of cluttering it up with off-thread discussion (unless others would find it interesting to read it as well), but there's an interesting exchange of views to be had on this subject, which is a complex one. Might such a discussion interest you? I'm Organist of a large red brick cathedral in the South of England which was completed in 1961 so I shouldn't be too hard to track down via the cathedral website..... Best wishes.
I too would be interested in reading such discussions, particularly for the views of such a fine player, whose choir sounds pretty nifty to my ears...
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Did not Michael Murray record a set of Franck at St Sernin ? And from the LP era Marie-Claire Alain (forget where she was playing but remember the notes provided a fairly detailed comparison between the organ she was using and St Clotilde in Franck's time. Also Graham Steed on Bath Abbey shortly after the previous reconstruction
Brian Childs
I remember being bitterly disappointed by the MM set. The organ sounds wondrous, but the tempi! The final pages of the Grand Piece Symphonique, for example, are simply interminable, and one is left suspecting this is all musically rather thin...
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I have vague memories of the Widor being played at one or more of the royal weddings. Wasn't Bach's F major also played at Princess Margaret's wedding? And a transcription of Strauss Snr.'s Radetsky March at Princess Anne's? I have a feeling it was associated with Mark Phillips' regiment.
Rgds,
MJF
The Radetsky was indeed given an airing at Princess Anne's wedding. (Surpassed only by Timothy Farrell's splendid accpt to 'Let Their Celestial Concerts'.)
The late Princess Grace (Kelly) went (I'm reliably informed) up the aisle to BWV 552a. Presumably very slowly.
And The Duchess of Kent chose Francis Jackson's (in)famous recording of a certain work featuring a certain high-pressure reed stop, as a desert island disc... On the same programme, HRH expressed regret at not getting an Oxbridge organ scholarship, but having to make do elsewhere... I jest not!
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St Augustines used (I think) to be a popular recording venue.
If memory serves, the instrument can be heard in the EMI Holst Choral Fantasia (with Ralph Downes at the console) with Janet Baker, and in the Vernon Handley VW Job on CfP...
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Hi all
I am thinking about getting a complete bach (organ) set. Any ideas and coments as to which one would be grateful, modern or old skool, artists, organ etcthanks
Peter
Of the zillions now available, Preston on DG is splendid but pricey and the earlier DG mono Helmut Walcha is rather a landmark...
... but I spent my money on the Hurford and Herrick boxes. They contrast very well and both are good vfm. Sound on the Herrick recording is splendid. His playing seems to me to be well-matched to the particular style of each set of works, and especially tuned to external influences. The trio sonatas disc is a desert-island job.
Having spent a couple of years running CD outlets, I found these two sets took the most repeated listening. Others will disagree, and as ever these things are utterly subjective.
Hope this helps a little!
Matthew.
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Accurate but not necessarily fair. Go to Google right now and search for barker lever - results 4 and 5 on the list are from this board. Alexandra palace organ - same thing again. Osmond Taunton - number 2.
Material put into the public domain will inevitably be associated with the person putting it there, irrespective of any caveats you include about personal opinions; for example, on my (I thought) fairly innocuous post mentioning a Gordon Stewart recital at Romsey, I used the words "pub" and "drink" which my employers at the abbey frowned upon, apparently having stumbled across it in an internet search for Gordon's biog. Even now, six weeks after the event, "gordon stewart organ" on Google brings that message up in the first 8. Had it been done under an assumed name there couldn't have been any association and therefore no issue; as it was, it could have been reasonably assumed by anyone browsing this public site that this was how Romsey Abbey saw fit to advertise its events. Knuckles rapped, circumspection plugged in.
It's easy to say that views on here are private; but in the public domain they're just not, and accordingly it's in the interests of free speech that those who use assumed names and make worthy contributions to the conversation must be able to continue to do so. Amongst our best contributions on the board come from pcnd and various other assumed names. Forcing people to identify themselves will either drive valuable contributors away or bring an enforced gentility to the conversation - in both cases, working very firmly against free speech. We are talking here about a low-speed organ anoraks' chatroom with an audit trail - hardly a court of law...
As we have seen, if anything is said that shouldn't be, or that 99.5% of us find distasteful and highly irritating, we have moderators who act quickly to restore the balance - and therefore no problem.
And Nimrod is an incredibly tricky piece to get through - musically. DGW and the sounds she can create are the reason I and many others kept on playing - I was getting bored of all the C.H.Trevor and pedestrian pedal exercises by about age 15 until I came across her Scherzo CD and saw for the first time the light at the end of the tunnel. Musically, she puts fire into bellies; she is an amazing writer & communicator, whoever the audience, as demonstrated by the article reprints on her website I am always banging on about; and an unrivalled ambassador for the organ in every global sense of the word, worldwide and across ages/skills levels. She showed many kindnesses to me when I was younger, and to many others of my generation going to Oundle courses in the early 90's - hardly a job she would take for the money. She has stewarded the organ and its music in and out of several different fashions with consistency and integrity. So, there's my two cents - leave off this amazing, skilled, inspirational, hugely generous and monumentally talented person who is giving her best - we all have a hell of a lot more to learn from her than the difference between a couple of wrong notes. Get a Clavinova with midi input if you want the notes right.
Well said.
Gillian Weir is a great communicator, and a great musician. More than most players, she transmits the sense of a work being re-created. I wonder if there's just a little snobbery in some of the attitudes expressed? Perhaps some of us rather enjoy the status of esoteric minority, and GW's ability to reach broad audiences is rather a threat? The RAH audience was certainly much more diverse than those usually encountered on the London scene.
It's interesting that clinical accuracy seems to have become the primary criterion by which an organist should be judged; not so, I think for other musicians...
I took two non-organ relations to the RAH. They were blown away by the whole experience. Unlike many instruments, the Voice of Jupiter has subtlety and splendour in spades, and non-organists love it (unlike many more fashionable installations).
It's depressing that within the organ world, so many are so very doctrinaire and seem unable to tolerate any diversity at all...
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Accurate but not necessarily fair. Go to Google right now and search for barker lever - results 4 and 5 on the list are from this board. Alexandra palace organ - same thing again. Osmond Taunton - number 2.
Material put into the public domain will inevitably be associated with the person putting it there, irrespective of any caveats you include about personal opinions; for example, on my (I thought) fairly innocuous post mentioning a Gordon Stewart recital at Romsey, I used the words "pub" and "drink" which my employers at the abbey frowned upon, apparently having stumbled across it in an internet search for Gordon's biog. Even now, six weeks after the event, "gordon stewart organ" on Google brings that message up in the first 8. Had it been done under an assumed name there couldn't have been any association and therefore no issue; as it was, it could have been reasonably assumed by anyone browsing this public site that this was how Romsey Abbey saw fit to advertise its events. Knuckles rapped, circumspection plugged in.
It's easy to say that views on here are private; but in the public domain they're just not, and accordingly it's in the interests of free speech that those who use assumed names and make worthy contributions to the conversation must be able to continue to do so. Amongst our best contributions on the board come from pcnd and various other assumed names. Forcing people to identify themselves will either drive valuable contributors away or bring an enforced gentility to the conversation - in both cases, working very firmly against free speech. We are talking here about a low-speed organ anoraks' chatroom with an audit trail - hardly a court of law...
As we have seen, if anything is said that shouldn't be, or that 99.5% of us find distasteful and highly irritating, we have moderators who act quickly to restore the balance - and therefore no problem.
And Nimrod is an incredibly tricky piece to get through - musically. DGW and the sounds she can create are the reason I and many others kept on playing - I was getting bored of all the C.H.Trevor and pedestrian pedal exercises by about age 15 until I came across her Scherzo CD and saw for the first time the light at the end of the tunnel. Musically, she puts fire into bellies; she is an amazing writer & communicator, whoever the audience, as demonstrated by the article reprints on her website I am always banging on about; and an unrivalled ambassador for the organ in every global sense of the word, worldwide and across ages/skills levels. She showed many kindnesses to me when I was younger, and to many others of my generation going to Oundle courses in the early 90's - hardly a job she would take for the money. She has stewarded the organ and its music in and out of several different fashions with consistency and integrity. So, there's my two cents - leave off this amazing, skilled, inspirational, hugely generous and monumentally talented person who is giving her best - we all have a hell of a lot more to learn from her than the difference between a couple of wrong notes. Get a Clavinova with midi input if you want the notes right.
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NO!!!! Absolutely not!!!!!!!!!
I hate hearing pieces rushed through at a million miles an hour. I envy the technique of anybody who can do that, but I don't want to hear them play.
Well said! I'm glad to find myself in good company.
I was bitterly disappointed at a St Paul's recital a couple of years ago, when someone destroyed the Meistersinger Overture by playing it at a pace ridiculous for ALSP, never mind the Cathedral. (A slight worry: had the player ever heard the music played in its original context...? And not necessarily conducted by Goodall/Knappertsbusch.)
Similarly, I found myself alone in finding a recent Abbey Summer recital very disappointing: too fast and too loud.
It's rhthmyic control which creates excitement/tension, rather than tempo. IMHO.
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In the Edwardian era (and indeed after) the prestige of an organ seems to have been measured by the number of Open Diapasons it had on the Great Organ. Two, three and four such stops were by no means uncommon......(snip)
It is not unusual for there to be two Principal 4 stops to go with the large and small Open Diapasons. They don't normally get called Principal I and Principal II but Principal 4 (the smaller scaled of the two) and Octave 4.
Is this all a good idea? Well, it has its problems. Although it is common, indeed usual, to have a correspondingly scaled Principal (or Octave) 4 for the two or more Open Diapasons, it is rare that this luxury extends to the 2ft stops and beyond. So when it comes to the upperwork, the organ builder has to decide which foundation stops (8 & 4) the higher pitched stops are going to be scaled to work with. Even more significantly, when it comes to the tonal finishing, how is he going to balance the upperwork? Is it going to belong primarily to the Open Diapason I and Octave 4 and so be too loud for the Open Diapason II and Octave 4? Or the other way about perhaps? Or a compromise so that it works half way with both, but not properly with either? This is a real dilemma and there is no resolution to it. Of course, one might provide two mixtures, one for the Open I and the other for the Open II. But how much more useful two complimentary and very different Mixtures would be, one "grave" and the other higher pitched.
In my experience the introduction of additional Open Diapasons introduces problems which actually compromise the final outcome of the organ....(snip)
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The quest for larger foundation tone actualy goes back a long way; to the late baroque in fact. At the Bavokerk, Haarlem, can be found a two-rank 8ft Principal on the Hoofdwerk. (1727?)
With the early romantic German organs and Topfer, came bigger scalings and therefore louder 8ft unison stops, which organ-builders such as Schulze seized upon with relish.
When Schulze completed the Doncaster instrument, it cause such a sensation, that everyone wanted at least one "Schulze diapason," but probably got nothing of the sort unless they were genuine articles. The English organists never understood the Doncaster "double chorus," of one based on the 16ft pitch and one based on the (louder) 8ft pitch; each with their own complement of Mixtures/mutations etc.
Go to almost ANY Victorian/Edwardian instrument, and there in all its' glory will be a "Schulze" Diapason no.1, which usually stands out like a musical sore-thumb, simply because no-one really bother to work out what Schulze had been doing; except T C Lewis of course.
In the Harrison & Harrison "standard" instrument, sheer outright power was very much the order of the day, and the organists loved it because it could not only lead large-scale congregational singing, it could quell riots!
Of course, without the appropriate upperwork, the Great choruses simply lacked brilliance; the dreadful Harmonics mixtures little more than a sticking-plaster for the equally awful Trombas, which never stood a chance of blending with such assertive flues without a little help.
I therefore believe that the "Fat Alice" Diapasons were a travesty born of misconception, and really have no place in a serious musical instrument. If the English organists had done their homework, and actually worked out what Schulze had been doing, we wouldn't have been saddled with stringy and ineffectual Willis chorus-work, or the ridiculously loud choruses of Arthur Harrison/Geroge Dixon, and those large-scaled, leathered Diapasons.
Now if Willis hadn't strangled the Lewis company and dealt the death blow to the company, English organ-building might have taken a different and better turn....but that never happened.
Of course, the idea of "Grave" and "Sharp" Mixtures was exploited by Schulze very effectively.
MM
Whatever the 'moral' justification for the Large Open Diapason, many of us quite enjoy listening to/playing English music written between c. 1880 and 1960...
I am thinking about getting a complete bach (organ) set. Any ideas and coments as to which one would be grateful, modern or old skool, artists, organ etc
Royal Albert Hall
in General discussion
Posted
According to the programme for DGW's recital last October, Simon Preston will be playing at the RAH on Friday 30 June 2006. Booking will open on 30 March.