David Coram
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Posts posted by David Coram
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(With reference to the moving console:) It would first have to fly over a solid screen and a high altar, then down I think three sets of steps with more ecclesiastical furniture in the way. Your friends are obviously more talented than I.
Unfortunately funds didn't even stretch to replacing the chest magnets, which have had their day; for some years there has been make do and mend and borrowing magnet caps from elsewhere (particularly the trebles of the strings) in order to keep more important stuff playing. Everything from the key contacts, pistons and stop solenoids up to the magnets has been replaced, and the console has had a Rolls Royce job done on it and shines like new. At least the magnets are relatively cheap and can be done a rank at a time in phases. In short, ignore the comment on the Youtube vid which says the organ is going to be scrapped; it's not.
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The console is such a mammoth solid construction, and there are so many steps, that there really isn't any possibility of making it mobile. It's bizarre that the console is so solid because most of the rest of the instrument is made of hardboard and Tabopan.
Yes, the Harmonics is all derived from the one rank, with the exception I think of the largest unison. That's the way it was, and usually is I understand - a massively wide scaled stopped flute of Tibia-like quality with no harmonic development of its own.
As for 'sleeping on the job' I can't claim to be as dedicated as Thurlow, but I did take my excellent VW van with me (www.winniebus.co.uk)
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Most of the Mixtures aren't derived on that instrument - there are 2 independent ranks on each manual division, and as already observed the Pedal Harmonics has its own rank. We were slightly naughty, and added some extra ranks to the Harmonics. According to the old ladder switches, it contained only quints and a Tierce. Because the new system is software based, we were able to add a Septieme and None to it as well, and my goodness it thunders with the best of them now.
The trumpeter is the nearest person to the congro, and is right beneath the organ pipes and very much closer to the choir than may at first be supposed. The biggest problem with holding things together in there is the ridiculous position of the console - right up against the East wall underneath the window, behind a screen. It's an unimaginably difficult position from which to lead the congregation.
During the rebuilding they were using an Allen located just in front of the front row of seats, and it made things very much easier.
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Yes, I've no idea what the last verse of O Come was meant to sound like. Astonished they didn't have someone conducting in the nave. It's a weeny organ, that. The display pipes facing West are double over-length - it's the 8' Stopped Flute rank which appears only in the Pedal Harmonics. The expression boxes face north. Immediately behind the grille high up behind Decani is the Tuba, Diaphone and Polyphone. Bizarre budget layout. I can't believe how good it sounds despite all that.
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Ooh! Where's that? This time last year, I was re-wiring the organ and putting the restored console back in... assuming it's the RC Compton.
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Edited blank.
Oh, boo - I didn't get to see it!
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As this topic seemed to generate quite a few "watchers" I thought it might be worth pointing out that it ends about an hour from now at just after 2310.
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I believe I found out about the New College webcasts on this forum. I've been listening regularly and I'm terribly impressed. I knew the Choir was up there with the best, but over the last few months I've been mightily struck by how good the organ sounds in accompaniment. I've never been one of those who regarded it as a freak, or a child of its time, and I've liked it on the few occasions I've heard it live, but I'm quite bowled over with both it and the way it's handled on these broadcasts.
Haven't I always said it?! Excellent machine, sadly neglected.
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Is it normal for a pipe organ action to be driven off a 3 phase supply? I'd have been surprised to find a church which had 3 phases even coming in to the building. Is it to give better smoothing than is possible with 1 phase?
Quite a few have 3 phase blowers and lighting.
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Hope this breaches no rules. If anyone wants a fairly new unit, there's a good one listed for sale here.
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I hope I'm not breaching any rules with this, or if I am that I will be dealt with kindly.
I urgently need to find a tenor soloist for a concert including Bach's Magnificat in D and Sleepers Wake on 10th December near to Gloucester. Reasonable professional fees and expenses would not be an issue. I would be delighted to hear from anyone able to sing themself or with a recommendation and contact details.
Recommend you get hold of Edward Goater who has a presence on the internet. Also known to Gloucester audiences as a former lay clerk before going solo.
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You should look at some of his own compositions on his website.
Opus 71, "The Forsaken Brownie"???? After everything he's just said about Britten?
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The biography at this link is very oddly written. And the second of the two earlier links to Wright's articles has no validity whatsoever without the names of the musicians who are claimed to have written it.
If I weren't concerned about the effect of a take-down notice on the owners of this forum I would say more.
Isn't it an amazing site. I've had a very enjoyable half-hour.
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Interesting - my opinion is exactly the opposite.
Having played Rejoice in the Lamb and the Jubilate Deo, in C an a number of occasions, I regard both as being somewhat awkward on the organ *. For example: the middle part of the Jubilate, where both hands and feet are busy (playing chords which make little harmonic sense to me) - and then Britten asks for a crescendo. Whilst it could be argued that he wished to stretch the player's technique, I suspect that he simply did not realise that this was almost impossible to accomplish at that point.
Then there are his odd harmonies in the congregational hymns (for example) in his cantata Saint Nicholas. Again, I suspect that he did not understand the idea of sub-unison ranks on the claviers. His turgid, low, oddly-spaced layout I find most unsatisfactory. To be honest, the last time I played for a performance of this I re-arranged them, added one or two quiet-ish 16ft stops (on the G.O. and Swell) - and no-one was any the wiser.
In case it is not already obvious, I have no great liking for those works of Britten which I have heard or played - including the War Requiem (which I found anything but moving).
I completely agree, especially over War Requiem. I find the Wilfred Owen settings lightweight in the extreme considering the overwhelming pain of those poems. And I just don't understand the popularity of 'the' Jubilate. It's exceptionally awkward and fussily written.
Rejoice in the Lamb I do have a lot of time for - I find it strangely moving, and couldn't begin to tell you why. It has mostly to do with the choral writing in the Hallelujah though - and the chord which is reached under the word 'poetry' in the tenor solo, where Robert Tear does a massive pause (not in the score) on the high F#.
Other under-rated works are the Festival Te Deum with the repeated E major chords and the brimstone middle section, which does make terrific use of the instrument. And the New Year Carol is just glorious.
And there's no better National Anthem arrangement, you've got to admit...
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At the risk of starting or re-starting a flame war the bold comment above would seem to indicate that there are sound issues in the hall that are nothing to do with the organ.
No flaming intended except that I felt an uncontrollable urge to respond to some particularly condescending, ill-informed and pompous claptrap.
I've had a look on Google, and can't find anyone else from architectural and acoustic wonks to orchestral players and concert reviewers who have anything particularly nasty to say about the way sound behaves in the hall, apart from the odd derisory remark that it's no good for rock and roll but just set up for classical.
Even if my other post gets deleted (and perhaps I should do it, and save Rachel the trouble), it's fair to say that the hall was built for musical performance, and the organ should have been built for the hall. However, contracts were awarded and design work began on the organ in 1992, over a year before the foundations were dug out. Physical construction of the organ in the factory began some twenty one months - almost two whole years - before the hall was even completed.
In my view, there's the problem. My belief is that you simply don't put anything on paper - even so much as a stoplist on a fag packet - until the site and the room and the furnishings are in place and can be experienced. When you can get a feel for the building with its actual carpets and winter coats - and other moveable forces such as pianos and orchestras have begun to find out about unexpected dead spots - then you begin to think about scaling, floorplan and grid layout. You do some test notes. Then you begin, having given artistic instinct (which is the hallmark of any fine organ) a reasonable chance to prevail.
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The more I think of this, the more I realise just how little sense it makes, and I add a few points below in what may very well be my last posting here in order to try and highlight what a load of utter nonsense you are talking. In my opinion.
=============================You may blame whom you will, but the man who designed the economical family car would just laugh at you. My own car will touch 150mph, but I certainly pay for it, with an average consumption of 17mpg around town and 25mpg on normal roads.
>>>> Totally irrelevant. Organs don't use petrol and there is no significant ongoing cost downside to having larger scaled pipes or higher pressures. Ian was referring to an under-powered car, not an economical car.
Before I get into the science of all this,
>>>>>> which I note you haven't.....
perhaps you should ask yourself a few questions:-
>>>>>> no; perhaps you should.
a) Who should take the blame for the organ of York Minster, which doesn't fill the building unless the big Tuba is used?
>>>>>> Nobody. How often is the building full enough to warrant it? Twice a year? Does it sound absolutely fantastic in the quire the rest of the time? Is that where 99.9% of the building's liturgical focus lies? Well, good. All is well.
b ) What would the organ of Clifton RC cathedral sound like in the Royal Festival Hall, if it were just moved there as it is?
>>>>>> Totally irrelevant and a question which belies a fundamental lack of understanding of basic organ building. It was scaled and voiced for Clifton RC cathedral, and jolly well too. Nowhere else.
c) What would a Wurlitzer theatre organ sound like in the Bridgewater Hall?
>>>>>> Totally irrelevant and redundant question for the same reasons.
d) What did they do to make the new organ in the Disney Concert Hall a musical success?
>>>>>> Allowed the organ builder to work to an appropriate timescale, and accepted (and paid for) his recommendations for improvements when it had been in use for some time (which included new and additional blowers)
e) What do you know about modern building materials?
>>>>>> Ian's not building the organ. That's not relevant. We all know you know more than all of us about everything
f) What do you know about computerised acoustic modelling?
>>>> OK - now I'm scared of the bigness of your words
In fact, forget about organs altogether, and imagine what "Coll Reg" would sound like if you were to stand behind a cathedral choir, singing inside an anachoic chamber and facing away from you.
>>>>> I bow down before your majesterial intellect.
Would you be underwhelmed or overwhelmed?
>>>>>> Why the hell would I bother? What would be the point? Except to try and look clever?
There are things you need to know!
>>>>> With all due respect, not a single one has a single iota of relevance to the building of the Bridgewater Hall organ.
MM
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Never mind all that. Ian's right. The organ was bespoke to the hall, was supposed to be a concert organ, and it's inadequate. If it had been scaled and voiced and winded properly for the building, then there wouldn't be a problem. If the hall wasn't ready, then more fool the builders for agreeing to press ahead without knowing the surroundings they'd be working in.
The organs of York Minster and Salisbury Cathedral and numerous others were never intended to completely fill the nave in that way, as most services were in the Quire with maybe a bit of overspill.
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Liked the "Peter an' da Wolf," but wondered why anyone should choose to transcribe it to organ/piano etc.
Simply because all the instruments are already there, most kids with any musical input at all are familiar with Wolf and Carnival, and that makes it an excellent means of interesting them in the organ. Not the only way, but in my view an excellent way. Piano I don't understand however.
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Yes, it's good that the organ's on air, but what a shame that the BBC will fill up its annual allocation of 2.5 hours of organ broadcasting with something about which virtually every organist listening will complain. This could be used to justify hacking it back even further in the future. (Of course, now the message boards have been axed, the complaints won't get through - except through here.)
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I did feel that the "secret" Pedal 8' Bourdon/Flute was a bit precious. If the previous player had not left it "on", I doubt I would ever have discovered the switch for myself, for its Dymo label is not that obvious.
The action was finished off by Drake and set up exactly as Yates would have liked it, even though his (and my) preference is for a little bit more resistance than that - an over-light action is just as harmful as an over-heavy one.
Bearing in mind it's the original pallets and original soundboards, this serves as a useful example to those who tell me I'm talking rubbish when I state that most tracker instruments don't need to be as heavy as they are. Most - well, many - British organ builders appear to be woefully inept at getting the simple adjustment of pallet springs (and coupler set-off) right.
On that note, I have recently seen again the 1974 Drake now at Bristol University, which has been got at by a local builder. Also Bridgetown (Totnes) has been ministrated to by a gentlemen who is neither too loud nor too soft. In both cases the pallet springs have been messed with and the soundboards extensively bled, thus spoiling the two best-engineered instruments you're likely to have encountered.)
On the hidden Flute control - there was a good reason for this which I half-forget; as well as not wanting to spoil the console (there isn't space for another stop without pushing everything closer together) I have a feeling it was also something which Yates wanted to include but the church didn't, so he did it anyway. I could be getting my stories muddled up. Drake has done the same for a Tremulant on one of the London organs which he felt it really needed even though the church or the organist disagreed.
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There is a little village just north of Salisbury called West Lavington, wherein resides a 2m Bishop and Starr of c. 1860, which has a Great Clarabella of simply remarkable quality. Rather like a pear drop, it's uniformly smooth and sweet but there is just a mere hint of the best sort of acidity. Incidentally, the same instrument also has the most charming 4' Flute I have ever encountered.
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The show can do no wrong in my book - tomorrow night's features my Peter and the Wolf - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014gk1n
Next week I go up to do an interview, and that will go out (with a bit more music, hopefully from Carnival of the Animals) on either of the two Tuesdays which follow.
Who says an 1850's Walker can't stand alongside Wurlitzers on the Light Programme. Cheers!
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Great: Stopped Diapason 8A, Principal 4B, Gemshorn 2C, Octave, Sub, Unison Off, Swell to Great 16.8.4
Swell Spitzflote 8, Nason Flute 4, Plein Jeu 15.19.22, Tremulant, Octave, Sub, Unison Off
Pedal: Bourdon 16A, Principal 8B, Gemshorn 4C Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal 8.4
61 note compass, 73 note soundboards
Damn! that makes 9!
Next stop: a Trumpet at 8' on the Swell and 16' on the Pedal.
Why on earth would you have an 8' C of an Open Diapason and not have it available on the manuals?
Visibility of pipe organs on the internet
in General discussion
Posted
This surely must be to do with the sales-driven nature of the digital organ market. Most pipe organ builders I know can see several (in some cases, ten) years ahead and know what work they will be doing. A web presence is a useful way of showing your work, but nobody’s going to be filling their shopping cart or booking a home demonstration as they would with a digital provider.