headcase
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Posts posted by headcase
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If anyone needs a copy of BWV 903, PM me and I can send a .pdf copy. It runs to 12 sides of A4.
H
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Not compatible? - How so??
I have only ever seen one instrument where ALL of the Great pipework was 'on', as it were: even then only by having a single, full-length 8ft bass, passed around the several 8ft stops. It is (or at least was) usual to have the larger pipes stood off - usually in the fronts.
Tom was referring to jobs where even the bass of the Gt 4ft Principal wouldn't plant ! 8ft basses in the case or stood off - fair enough.
H
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You are quite right, Barry. Tom Robbins featured in an edition of 'That's Life' but in some ways the programme emphasised the wrong aspects of Tom's nature.
The true story would not have made for such colourful and mischievous storytelling. Miss Rantzen even playfully mispronounced Henry Willis's name (Mr Willies...)
Tom was certainly eccentric in some respects. He was, however, a painstaking craftsman. He had worked for Willis, spending some time under Mr Strutt in the drawing office, whom he regarded as an absolute martinette. Tom was ever frustrated at Willis's insistence on using scale rods for pipework and soundboards that were not compatible, which led to many pipes being stood off soundboards because they wouldn't fit ! For a time he also worked for Kingsgate Davidson but clearly found their work not to his taste and struck out on his own.
Tom and his family lived in a windmill, and he had a taste for fine old furntiure and anything generally well-made and pleasing to the eye. He cared deeply for small mechanical action organs and lavished great care and attention on them. He had some fiery comments for organs that had been badly rebuilt or modified unneccesarily. Sometimes referred to as 'top-note Tom', he was a skilful tuner, with great awareness of how 8ft stops should be carefully tempered (I didn't say 'equally'!). Tom died in 1990 and is buried in the churchyard at Kingsnorth, Kent, where he built a small single manual tracker organ, which he regarded as his best work.
Whatever his faults, I wouldn't like to think of him being lumped in with the likes of some already mentioned in this thread. I have the pleasure of tuning a few of the instruments formerly in his care and they are a living testament to a man of considerable ability.
H
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Stop jamb bushes is the answer you're looking for. This is the ivory collar that is glued into the stop jambs and is lined with felt to prevent the drawstop shanks rattling around.
What a handsome console !
H
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...ssshhhh ...let's just allow Spot to play his Tuba in single notes, while the rest of us obliterate the landscape with healthy dollops of heavy pressure.
H
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.. and since Percy loved the tuba so much, surely there must be at least one example in the Whitlock oeuvre to also demonstrate this ..
...Fanfare from the Four Extemporisations...does that count ? Exultemus from the Seven Sketches, Book 1, Sortie from Book 2...
ok they're not lengthy passages, just a tempting blast now and again to keep the anoraks happy.
H
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Good grief ! You're right.
Think I'll have a go at writing one...
H
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I think that Grant Degens and Bradbeer used large pull down magnets on their earlier organs before their mechanical actions were fully developed but i assume they were slightly slow in acting. Gloucester cathedral action sought to overcome that with the use of multiple small lever arm magnets working directly into the bar. Whilst appreciating that Ken Tickell makes great use of many modern manufacturing techniques I wonder if the credit for this new form of electric action lies with the consultant, one John Norman?
Yes, it's not a completely new idea (although as you mentioned Gloucester, there is no pallet in the conventional sense, only a series of pallet magnets opening into the bar) but I welcome the fact that it is being applied without any sense of covertness and where it will be evaluated very closely indeed.
H
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Off on a tangent
It is worth observing that the size of solenoid that can provide sufficient force to pull down the pallets of a ten-stop soundboard has a certain amount of inertia in it. This is potentially a much less efficient and responsive action than the traditional electropneumatic systems of old. In power consumption alone this is not a particularly good system.
Look closely at Lucasorg's (may I say) EXCELLENT pictures of the new organ for Worcester. You will see direct electric action intelligently applied. A small direct pallet magnet (KA) will be working in tandem with a heavy-duty pull down magnet (Heuss), opening the pallet. Theoretically, the small pallet magnet will work very quickly, relieving the pluck on the main pallet, operated by the larger pull-down magnet. Notice the shape of the pallet slot ? Narrow near the front opening, wide towards the back, where the pallet opening is less. The pull down magnets are thoughtfully mounted on something compliant, so that the frames do not resonate on the very substantial birch-ply magnet boards, and have a good working stroke of 8mm. These days, power consumption is not the thorny issue it once was. Switched Mode power supplies can deliver constant voltages and high currents effortlessly and are amazingly compact. Switching systems can drive magnets easily, without the risk of burning off key or relay contacts. I think you will find that the Heuss magnets only need about 0.5A at 12/14V.
I'm glad to see that Ken Tickell is prepared to stick his head above the parapet and use a much-criticised-in-theory method on a very high profile project. Perhaps some of those old theories will be blown out of the water at last ? With the design and thought that has gone into this application, I would expect to find it a reliable and robust action.
H
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It has A Double Open Wood 32ft but not a reed. You could see the largest pipes painted white between the case and wall.
H
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...and shame on Huw for his fake demonstration of stops at the H&H console...The Great Open Diapason tapered off with a little diminuendo !
But, on the positive side, it's good to see the organ being robustly defended as the best tool for leading worship.
WHAT was Malcolm Archer doing ? Could we not have had someone with a bit more pizazz ? Well, a lot more, in fact...
H
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I don't normally 'link' verses but I might give that some thought - thanks pcnd !
I do sometimes play a short introductory prelude for a rousing occasion. I first tried this with Monk's Gate, using the last half of the Thalben-Ball
version from his book of 113 variations on hymn tunes (Novello) which went down a storm. Start from the pedal Bb in the 3rd system...
Another contender for fine 20thC tunes :
Corvedale (Maurice Bevan). Common Praise 598 There's a wideness in God's mercy with a handsome descant to finish of verse 7.
H
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...if you thought that Compton had a big factory, the Wurlitzer one even had its own timber yard and railway sidings!
MM
...as did Norman & Beard Ltd at Norwich, St Stephen's Works. I have a brochure with an illustration of it.
H
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...no VAT is payable on funerals, and therefore many FDs are not VAT-registered.
I'd be surprised if F.D's earned less than £64k a year !!
If YOU are VAT registered, YOU are obliged to charge VAT on YOUR invoices.
The funeral directors must pay the full amount, irrespective of whether THEY are VAT registered or not, just as we all pay VAT on fuel, even though most of us, as individuals, are not VAT registered.
H
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The organ voluntary was Recessional, William Mathias (Op96, No 4). In similar vein to his Processional and perhaps a tad more tricky to play.
When I listened to it I realised that the first five bars were not played this morning.
Published by OUP
ISBN 0 19 375550 5, containing :
Recessional
Processional
Jubilate
Postlude
Canzonetta
Chorale
Toccata Giocosa
H
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Henry Chadwick, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in the 1970s and still, I think, alive after a spell as head of house somewhere in Cambridge, was an organist who had learned the organ at school from someone that had heard Mendelssohn play. He asked me about Messiaen in my interview.
Henry Chadwick's daughter, Dr Priscilla Chadwick, is Principal of Berkhamsted Collegiate School. The school produced a new hymn book about seven years ago and I believe HC had an editorial finger in that particular pie.
H
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Obviously, organists are never important, particularly when they are doing that piddling continuo stuff that is such an irrelevant part of the performance.
M
hmmm...piddling continuo stuff... that's playing by numbers, isn't it ?
H
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I agree pcnd !
H
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Marlborough College's new von Beckerath has electric tracker-touch keys for the Solo. They are made by Otto Heuss (www.ottoheuss.de) and seem very well thought out. The touch was indestinguishable from mans. I, II & III, the only giveaway being if one released the key really slowly, the release of the action magnet would just allow the pallet to snap shut.
H
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My parish changed from a mixture of AMR, Mission Praise I & II, 100 hymns for Today and More 100 Hymns for today.
We went with COMMON PRAISE. However, our service sheet is printed each week with all the hymn words, which are available on a companion disk, so there are no compatability problems. The choir have harmony editions of CP, the congregation don't need them. If we want a hymn that's not in CP it's no problem.
There are some surprises, as I've just discovered. For example 'The Advent of Our King' is not set to Franconia. A number of tunes have been transposed down and don't always lie so comfortably under the fingers for those of us set in our (AMR) ways !
But on the whole, we have found it does nearly all we want and there is a good spread of the better modern hymns/songs/tunes
I the Lord of Sea and Sky
Lord for the years
Be still
Broken for me
Corvedale (There's a wideness in God's mercy)
Coe Fen (How shall I sing)
etc.
For church musicians, at least the harmonisations have good integrity - very different from the poor quality offerings I've seen in Celebration Hymnal and the like.
Good luck with your search.
H
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I once solved this problem by taking a fan heater and an extension lead with me.
PLEASE be really wary about using fan heaters near organ keyboards. Toasters with plastic keys - not a problem - but I've seen many a fabulous set of wooden keys badly twisted by ill-placed heaters !
H
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If you have two trumpets + organ, John Gardner's Sonata da Chiesa is a must.
H
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The Hill organ in the Queen's Hall, Mayfair.
H
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As a young apprentice organbuilder (18, I think) I was sent to attend to a cypher on the Dukes Hall organ at the RAM (HN&B, long before the VdH).
I duly set to work but was interrupted by a veritable gaint of a man, who enquired if I needed anything. The answer being negative, he made to leave, suggesting that I should stop by his office if there was anything to report. Not knowing where his office might be, I asked, "Whom should I ask for ?"
"Arthur Wills," came the terse reply.
Doh!
H
Royal Holloway College
in The Organ
Posted
After Kenneth James died, Hedley continued the business for a short time, was joined by Stuart Payne, then briefly traded as Payne-James. It was said that Hedley left the UK for the USA. They are welcome to him. Numerous churches were left in the lurch when he departed but have probably benefitted from his absence.
Kenneth James's reputation seems to have been based on favourable words from Laurence Elvin's The Harrison Story. However, this seems to be at variance with reality. If one studies the way large firms operate, most of the actual voicing work is done in the factory ( i.e., cutting up, languid position, nicking, tip-hole size, etc). Kenneth James was said to be a good tonal finisher - referring to the limited adjustments one can make to pipework on site to give it the final 'gloss'.
I have experienced a number of organs rebuilt by Kenneth James (after his departure from H & H). Added pipework was poorly voiced and finished. One notable four-manual rebuild had the Swell Forster & Andrews pipework crudely revoiced to something akin to open-foot, flue-regulated voicing. The old F & A pipework did not take kindly to this treatment, which has now thankfully been reversed.
Best not to dwell on the quality of the organ building aspects of his work, either.
All in all, something of a puzzle...I often wonder in what he regard he was held at H & H ?
H