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Paul Morley

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Posts posted by Paul Morley

  1. I believe that  quite a few piano concerti have been transcribed for two pianos   I would have thought that for anything up to and including Brahms, an organist with enough skill to play the piano transcription  of the orchestral  parts would be able to rearrange it effectively on the organ  - much as they might do so when accompanying  a romantic choral piece from the vocal score. 

    The following is quite interesting 

     

     

     

  2. That's a pretty good list. Can I be provacative and suggest that if we want to inspire children about both classical music and the organ as an instrument we should be prepared to include transcriptions?

     

     

    Fair enough. How about on my list substituting a Wagner transcription (preferably by a 19C German organist) for the Reger? Also, if one wished to make my list less Franco-German, a transcription of an Elgar P&S or one of Walton's coronation marches could replace the Mozart.

  3. You might be surprised at what children will listen to, enjoy and understand, so long as they are not told that it's 'hard'. For a long time I used the noisiest bits of 'The Rite of Spring' as a basis for a Yr 7 (age 11) composition project.

     

    Comments after first hearing included,

     

    'That's really scary. I like it'.

     

    'Was that from "Jaws"?'

     

    'That can't be right. Cavemen didn't have violins.'

  4. How about these:

     

    Buxtehude - Praeludum in G minor

    Bach - Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor

    Bach - CP 'O mensch bewein dien sunde gross'

    Mozart - Fantasia in F minor

    Mendelssohn - Sonata VI

    Franck - Chorale No 3

    Reger - Phantasie & Fugue on 'BACH'

    Messiaen - L'Asenscion

    Ligeti - Volumina

    Swayne - Rif Raff

     

    Bonus tracks...BWV 565 & Widor V

  5. Finally, at every broadcast I’ve heard, there’s been an idiot (the same one?) who has started clapping immediately after the final chord. Is he (I’m sure he’s a he) engaged in some kind of competition, to show how well he knows the music ?

    Are you telling us that an organ recital audience has included at least one person who should not really have been allowed out on their own?

  6. ....the motley collection of human blowers who used to lounge for centuries outside churches of all sizes, waiting for an organist to turn up. As late as the 1920s they were to be seen outside Notre Dame in Paris...At least that enormous instrument would not have been at the mercy of power outages in those days.

     

    No, just the unions...

  7. My quick study for the week is something similar. I've beeN asked to play 'Der welcher wandleit diese Strausse' from 'The Magic Flute' at a funeral on Friday. Playing the chorale on 4' pedal and the vocal score piano reduction on the manual is (for me at ant rate) somewhat less difficult than trying to play the walking bass on the pedals (it goes up to G in any case).

  8. Surely for an authentic Bach performance, the conductor should merely stand in front of the musicians looking rather cross, and periodically throw objects (pencils, erasers, scores, shoes, wigs etc) in the direction of any hapless individual who particularly displeases him.

  9. appeared on Youtube a few days ago - not really sure what to make of it...

     

    Well...

     

    I have a video of my son (then aged 3) doing something similar. However, it should be noted that:

    1) The building was closed to the (paying??) public at the time.

    2) Now he has reached the venerable age of 5 and has graduated to 'Chester's easiest piano course', he is capable of producing rather more musical sounds.

     

    There was a time when this instrument was so closely guarded that even organ scholars from other Oxford colleges had difficulty getting to play it.

     

    If somebody wanted to see what a musician from the Indian tradition might do with a western pipe organ, then why on earth didn't they secure the services of one!

  10. Exactly. At weddings they'll happily chatter (or worse) while the organ is playing, but the moment some bint in a tight dress gets up and caterwauls into a microphone, out of tune and in a mid-Atlantic accent (without accompaniment, of course), they will whoop, cheer, applaud and go generally ape. I'm only surprised that they're not so ape that they scratch under their armpits.

    At weddings around these parts, if one of their number reads a lesson, it's a safe bet that a significant proportion of the congregation audience will 'whoop, cheer, applaud and go generally ape' at its conclusion.

  11. I've always thought that Gt-Ch is more useful than Ch-Gt where there is a big reed on the Ch. IIRC, 'illuminated' Compton consoles are usually equipped with Gt-Ch couplers.

     

    This instrument:

     

    http://www.npor.org....ec_index=A00301

     

    (an interesting and IMHO rather successful attempt to create a Blackburn Cathedral tribute out of a town hall Binns) has both Pos-Gt and Gt-Pos, and also a two-way switch marked 'Bombarde 16/32', enabling the player to choose which of these two stops is controlled by the Pedal Reed reversible.

     

    Chester Cathedral has a Gt-Ch coupler (fitted c. 2000 and activated by piston with warning light, rather than by drawstop). This device has a number of useful applications - particularly as one could argue that this instrument is not really a four manual organ, but rather a very large III+P and a 13 stop I+P sharing a single console.

     

    Manchester Cathedral Organ has a provision of manual-on-manual couplers and 73 note soundboards that might be considered generous on a mature symphonic instrument in the USA.

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