David Coram

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Really? Super Diapason and all? I have played (knowingly) 2 instruments with his input, and chorus isn't a word one could use about either. PS - It is a great honour to be in the company of Henry Willis. I hope he is keeping well.

And Common Praise, and Hymns & Psalms, and most of the alphabetical order ones.

... except that in the age of the microchip Brickwoods, had they survived at all, would be a faceless and tasteless brand name of Interbrew and the local pubs would all be faceless and tasteless Enterprise Inns outfits run by people lured by 'earn up to £90,000 a week' adverts. Your uncle probably would have instead been on forums at half past midnight making observations totally irrelevant to the subject, like me.

With a degree of reharmonisation, the plainsong Dies irae fits in the tenor part of Personent hodie. Worth doing a verse half speed and hiring some trombonists.

I favour Richmond, because it helps emphasise the quiet, aweful prayerfulness of the first line. One of my colleagues thinks very differently, i.e. that the "tha-a-a-a-aaasand" moment in Lyngham emphasises the idea of the many.

... as does Jerusalem the Golden. Penlan is a sensational and under-used tune.

It also fits rather well to "Sun Arise" by R. Harris. Personally, I use it as an excuse to play Abbot's Leigh.

... and, of course, Wesley being famously and ardently opposed to equal temperament and insistent upon GG compass, anything remotely resembling the Hope-Jones sound would be unlikely to find favour. Imagine those first diminished chords at the opening of Wash Me in a sensible temperament. You scarcely need a Swell pedal - the tuning does all the dynamics for you.

Now this is something which can be discussed. I know of a particular diocesan advisor who has taken steps towards this by insisting that any builders working on his 'patch' are IBO registered. That means that there won't be any Drake work happening in that diocese, and nor many others who choose, for one reason or another, to steer clear of the IBO. (Often the bodgiest of the bodge work is not done on the cheap, incidentally; far from it.) Has anybody else ever browsed the IBO builder inspection reports and considered that the information given is sometimes at odds with the work they have seen in the real world? Would it not be better for the inspections to be carried out on a random basis by arrangement with the churches themselves through the existing diocesan systems, rather than the present arrangement where builders themselves are asked to select examples of their work for inspection?

Understood. Apologies all round. That said, being directly accused of jealously and inverted snobbery was, I felt, a good enough reason to be especially unforgiving of the inconsistencies and apparently deliberate misunderstandings of the accuser. As always, after a few days' distance and the odd personal disaster, my manner of doing so leaves me somewhat ashamed and I hope it will soon be forgotten.

My instinct naturally jumps to the defence one or two people who I know produce absolutely first-class work - work which I would choose over virtually any large firm, here or abroad - and the previous correspondent's excellent work keeping a particularly large and aged cathedral behemoth going is surely amongst that. But there's no escaping that there is a grain of truth, is there - from instruments which only seem to last ten years before needing rebuilding, to churches whose 884 single manuals are tuned three times a year. There are duffers in every walk of life - food, coffee, cars, ISPs - is it possible to get anything productive out of this line of enquiry, with or without naming names? Probably not.

"This doesn't mean that there aren't organ builders who sub-contract and come up with a first-rate result (Bill Drake is a good example), but they are the exception rather than the rule. I think Grenzing falls into this category as well." This is subtly different to the previous suggestion (more from others than from you) that buying in pipework means you're not a good builder. "The list of firms Bazuin provides are not, as s/he states, the best organbuilders in the world." - "I'm really sorry David, they just are..." I should have qualified that by saying not necessarily the best. What I wished to pick at was not the list itself but its use to defend the maxim that the best all make their own pipes. Countless examples - Drake, Shaftoe, Tickell - don't. Many of the worst make their own, too. I stand by the assertions behind the flawed expression, namely - i) whether you make your own pipes or not has much more to do with size of operation than quality of work, and the two don't necessarily go together (Rushworth? Daniels? Osmond? Hele?) ii) whether making your own or buying in, the end result is only as good as the instinct and impulse which informs the decision making about scales, materials and all the rest of it, and how well you communicate that information. That doesn't mean any fool could do it, as Colin stated; it's about having the experience and flair to realise what will work and what won't. Whether you communicate that information to someone downstairs or someone on the end of the phone is, of itself, of little or no relevance to the end result.

Why waste money on elephants when you can use half a pencil? I have a small graphite dot on my finger which even a long, hot bath has failed to shift.

The answer is that the blower room is having its ceiling repaired, and that entails taking the blower right out. The magnets of the Pedal reed chest are being replaced, and there is to be some remedial work to the console, plus a couple of new pistons.

Alright, let's try again... not NECESSARILY the best organbuilders, but certainly the most successful. It ought to be self-evident. 2 staff wages for a year at perhaps about £32,000... benefits and NI contributions cost a further 5-6 maybe... then a grand's worth of insurance for working hot things on the premises... then the plant and equipment, powering it, business rates and heat and light on the portion of workshop they occupy... shall we say £45,000 a year? You'd have to be certain of buying in 30-35 ranks of pipework every year for the next ten or so to make that a sustainable and worthwhile investment. That's probably more than one organ a year, and that alone implies something in terms of size of staff - i.e. probably 6 plus, rather than one or two - either that, or the use of lots of bits out of the P&S catalogue which would rather shoot the artistic integrity argument out of the water.

I don't think he has at all, because I don't think that point is valid. The craft is in specifying to an appropriate level of accuracy the scales, halving rates and other information; communicating that information effectively; and, subsequently, in the voicing room, cutting and deploying the moving parts to make the most pleasing sound. These are the factors which contrive to make an instrument work in a space. Cutting the metal sheet up and soldering the bits together in a given order is something either done right or wrong, and it will be quite impossible to convince me that there could possibly be any artistic merit gained by that task being completed by a person on your payroll as opposed to a person on your supplier list. Earlier I made the suggestion that bought-in materials are likely to be subject to greater scrutiny than those made in house, simply because of who is footing the bill for remakes. The list of firms Bazuin provides are not, as s/he states, the best organbuilders in the world. They are merely the most successful, and that implies something in terms of scale; at least sufficient shop space, turnover of work and financial resources to maintain a payroll and pay the maintenance and hefty insurance bills which arise from working with molten metal. The ability to keep that overhead supported implies nothing whatsoever about excellence, only salesmanship.

I think this is total nonsense - unless an organbuilder is working completely alone and employing no staff at all, 'complete personal control' is always going to be delegated at some level. Whether that's to an employed metalhand or to a subcontractor makes no difference, except a) subcontractors don't require lots of your space and expensive plant, and a subcontractor has to put mistakes right at their expense, not yours.

Give a musician a musical instrument, and they will make music, overcoming any perceived limitations. Let's face it, yours wasn't exactly designed for Bairstow and Elgar either, but it does it very well indeed if you're prepared to demonstrate understanding of what that organ is about.

For the UK - no, I don't think so. On my list of top ten UK builders, only one makes their own pipes so far as I know. Terry Shires seems to be doing most of the serious work. I think in mainland Europe where space is less of a premium and old buildings are re-used (take Aubertin's premises for instance, and the Metzler wood seasoning facility which enables them to have their own forest) the story may be slightly different. In general, does it make the slightest difference whether scales and sizes and styles are being dictated to an in-house staff, or someone else's? Personally, I don't think it does.

It was St John's, and it was packed to standing. The Swedish sauna is brilliant because a) it makes possible a West gallery, b ) it makes the place useable by the community without having to heat and carpet the place to death, and c) you can have decent interval drinks without having to cross the road to a distant hall. I thought it a superb instrument of its type. It seemed to me that it wanted to be approached on the basis that Great and Swell would accompany a choir, and you had to add the Bombarde (with its fearsome V rank Ripieno) for hymns. I know what you're going to say and, no, it's a long way from my personal taste and I expect the Hill was much better. But isn't overcoming perceived limitations what it's all about? If you put me in front of an organ, give me a cheque and command me to try and make music, and I find (as here, and on yours) that I can do so with ease, then I have a much more pleasant experience than the occasions when I can't.

1) There are many far worse offenders with packed order books, despite the 40 year trail of devastation in their wake! 2) Absolutely nothing unusual. Drake and Tickell, for two, use a well-known UK pipe house. The cost of new instruments if every organbuilder of every size is expected to train and retain a team of pipemakers would be extraordinary. 3) Is this not partially or all to do with the skewed ways in which heritage funding is given - and, if not, to do with the consultant? The vast majority of the instrument is mechanical and that must be of some benefit.

Is Kenneth Jones still trading? I thought I had read something to the effect that the firm was no more. I encountered his work at Emmanuel College, Cambridge at about the same time as I first encountered Pembroke College. The two instruments were clearly trying to do different jobs, but Emmanuel left a very clear impression on me as an exceptionally fine piece of work in itself, whatever may be thought of the way old material was treated. (But, then again, I thought the Catz organ was an absolute sensation - it was redone by Flentrop not long afterwards - so perhaps I was particularly impressionable.) That positive impression was confirmed when I saw the University Church in Cambridge, which I thought was lovely to play and listen to. There is a chamber/practice organ in Salisbury dating from about 2000 which doesn't quite match up to the expectations set by the earlier work.

If only I had a music notation programme - Finale Notepad isn't free anymore, alas - since I have about 30 million last verses. Anybody near me got the facility for playing straight in from a MIDI keyboard?

The biggest problem you're likely to find is the lack of Swell box control. This has certainly been the case on all installations I have seen on toasters or pipe organs.