David Coram
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Posts posted by David Coram
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I can't resist posting this. Three Open Diapasons are used; Swell, Choir (Dulciana), Gt no 2, all intermanual couplers. Which keyboard is played depends on the dynamic.
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A positive approach here is to respect the type of action such as it is but to improve it in places where evolution of that action type has taught us how to make it work better. The slavish approach only retains the issues that were there, be they good or bad.
And, of course, the purpose of restoration is to restore - not to improve. The job of a Heritage Lottery Fund is to make funds available for restoration, not improvements - especially not irreversible ones. If something is not good enough for restoration as it is, then it shouldn't be getting what is in effect public funding.
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Given the notoriously dodgy nature of this particularly tricksy action design, I would have left a year between completion and the opening recital, even if they have got one of the best firms in the business doing it.
I know that all the experts will be horrified by this suggestion, but I really can't see the point of this kind of restoration. A good modern electro-pneumatic action would work much better, could be made to feel very similar at the console and nobody would hear the difference. It typifies the waste of NLF money that gave us all those instruments with two consoles where nobody uses the tracker action action console.
Organs are (can be - sometimes, very occasionally) musical instruments, not some kind of exhibit out of a steam engine museum. This restoration will, I am sure, be done as well as it possibly can be, but I am quite confident that the tuner's book in 20 year's time will tell a sad story. This Walker action design is simply too complicated - it's just not worth perpetrating it in a working church instrument, where it will be nothing but trouble.
Doubtless many people much more knowledgeable than I will now explain why this is an idiotic point of view, but I know that I am right!
Well I'm with you - to a point. If it was an undistinguished instrument by a second or third rate builder, I would be electrifying like a shot. This isn't either of those things. If it's kept in fine fettle, and nobody decides to cut corners and give the maintenance contract to another firm, there is every reason for optimism. Theoretically, the leather of the motors should last longer than an electronic transmission system might be expected to and will not be susceptible to lightning strikes and other unpredictable problems (which are more common than you might imagine).
I challenge you to justify "notoriously dodgy" and "particularly tricksy". And "simply too complicated". And "all those instruments with two consoles" (because of HLF stipulations) - one? two?
And the difference - insignificant as it may seem - comes in 75 years time when the organ once again seeks major funding. If I had over-painted an original painting with a new type of paint a bit more UV stable than the original master used, or discarded a composer's manuscript in favour of a much easier to read Sibeliussed version, the result - though looking and sounding the same - would not be nearly so special, and it would not be preserved. Many instruments electrified in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s are now facing the scrap heap because, no longer being an 'original instrument', it was felt quite OK to make tonal changes and perhaps a detached stop-tab console, and character is diluted and lost.
Quite rightly, people should be able to see where British organ building was at in the early 1900s and how technology developed. Unlike a painting, or a manuscript, or an old car, we can't make a copy and put the original in a museum. Walker tended to know what he was doing and I think it's a mistake to suggest that an action which has coped perfectly well for a century should not be allowed to carry on.
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Sounds like a cowboy thingy!
But to be more serious - the Padgham book is an absolute necessity, and so reasonable too.
N
Yep, a bit like Wagon Train. Camp fire in the middle of the stage, horses tied up in the wings.
Another good author is Owen Jorgensen, but his books tend to be published in runs of 500 and consequently they go for a fortune when they do come up (The Lost Art of Nineteenth Century Temperament is currently on Amazon at over £300).
I have just spent a pleasant hour dipping in and out of this which provides an interesting analysis of particular tunings we know to have been in use at the start of the 20th century, and their effect on Chopin's piano music.
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The problem with organs, is the fact that any attempt at some exotic tuning temprament would last about 24 hours in our variable climate......there's much to be said for super-glue!
You make it sound like organs will naturally fall back into ET, like water in the bottom of a glass, unless someone sticks it to the sides. There is a fascinating and largely untapped world of Romantic-flavoured tuning which I long to make reality. For sure, we are long overdue a revisit of the Padgham trials which did so much to get the ball rolling. I had hoped to do a Temperament Recital while I was still in charge of an organ with ten 8' flues... watch this space for an imminent plan to round up several square pianos on a concert platform, however.
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All the organs I have ever played as resident, have always been in equal temperament, but the harpsichord allowed me to experiment with various others. What strikes me about the alternative tunings, is the fact that they restrict the music which can be played, which is probably not a bad thing if you wish to play early music in a French church, for example.
The problems start when the organist gets itchy feet and wants to play different music, and that is surely the main problem.
And that, sir, is EXACTLY the myth which needs de-bunking. Yes, pure quarter or fifth comma meantone is pretty hopeless for general use; Werckmeister III isn't much better. Move into the 19th C, starting with Thomas Young, and your Reger will sound increasingly splendid.
Daniel Grimwood has recorded lots of Liszt on an Erard piano tuned in an unequal temperament, and it makes so much sense. There is a particular interval that Liszt uses at a moment of great excitement, which sounds simply unspeakable in equal temperament... and here it doesn't.
Even more recently, Sterndale Bennett (d. 1875) uses two particular dominant minor 9ths in his piano music, and he uses these two over and over, regardless of the tonal context he's working in. He uses no dominant minor 9ths at all in his orchestral music. The conclusion is therefore that these two particular chords sounded particularly well on his Broadwood piano, and he wasn't using equal temperament (which he wouldn't have been if his tuner used Broadwood's octave-laying instructions).
Then there's Willis I. I call David Wyld to explain how Willis organs were seldom actually equal temperament but an 'improved' version (except in rare instances - e.g. St Mary's Totnes, Devon, which WAS in equal temperament when it was built in 1861 - a fact remarkable enough that the local newspaper mentioned it in a short write-up).
Research on alternatives to equal temperament appears to have focussed on the 18th century. The well-known Padgham, Collins and Parker trials of a few years back did just that, and took a broad sweep from 1/4 comma meantone and extreme Pythagorean right up to equal temperament, concluding (through blind listener trials) that the early 1800s temperaments were favoured for most types of music, even contemporary.
More needs to be done on this, particularly of the late 19th century.
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Talk to "hecklephone". He might have some useful tips from recent experience.
Ha! Well, I wouldn't call those particular instruments neo-classical exactly... certainly not in a perjorative way.
I always begin from the premise that music is music and musical instruments are (hopefully) musical instruments. Therefore, just play music. Attempting to create a sweeping full swell on a Brustwerk is doomed, so don't try.
There are certain effects you can create however - someone has already mentioned playing down an octave. Another is keeping similar registration on two manuals so you can fake a crescendo. (I'll shortly be releasing a version of Saint-Saens The Swan where I change from Sw to Ch to Gt and back again depending on the dynamic, and at no point can even I distinguish the manual change - three Open Diapasons of varying size.)
Paying scant heed to the printed notes and thinning/thickening the texture as appropriate gives a further illusion of dynamic control, as do spread chords, adding off-beat material or repetitions etc.
Where down an octave isn't an option - e.g. Howells, where you quickly run out of notes and it sounds silly - Magnus Williamson used (at St Mary's Oxford) to play on 4' stops. Whenever I have been to Evensong at New College, they frequently do the same - I have often heard psalms accompanied only on the various 4' Flutes, invariably with tremulants. It's amazing how quickly the ear attenuates to the new 'home' pitch, and then when you add an 8' it gives a good impression of sub-unison. 4' stops tend to be more gentle, too - think of Howells Like as the hart with a typical 8' Prinzipal in the tenor. Same thing with a nice gentle 4' Oktav and tremulant - lovely. Then add the pedal 16 sparingly, as you would a 32' wood, for touches of distant rumble.
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I agree totally on this point; therefore, there has to be some form of, dare one utter the word which must not be even breathed, compromise??
The organs, of which your example is one of many, provide a testament to the craftsmanship of a bygone age which can still be replicated, but at what a price. When one thinks of those magnificent edifices which were raised by our Victorian forefathers to nourish the spirit and ease the conscience I don`t think that many of them ever realised that their endowments for edifice and magnificent instruments would ever survive as long as they have in order to enable us to pick up the legacy ( and maintenance costs!! ) of keeping their spirit alive. I do not refer specifically to the Great and the Grand examples but rather to the numerous smaller churches throughout the land which recieved endowments from local benefactors.
I will not reiterate further on this since I spelt out one of the main reasons for Compromise in my initial posting on the subject. I still expect to be thrown into the tumbril as as an iconoclast for holding such views. I can handle that - no problem
I for one won't go for the jugular over compromise. I will go for it, however, when you infer that craftsmanship of a bygone age can only be replicated "at a price". Such craftsmanship can be replicated by finding a contractor for even the most humdrum tuning or cleaning work who is able to demonstrate a love affair with every part of an instrument in his care; that the action has been made the best it can possibly be, and so on. That has nothing to do with price, only ethics. I can think of some extremely bad expensive organs and extremely good cheap organs, probably nearly as many as the more obvious vice versa. Forget price - meet the head of the firm and establish for yourself whether you are dealing with a craftsman, a tradesman, or a contractor.
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The tuning temperament also plays a crucial part in their use and design too. Equal Temperament suits symphonic reeds and something unequal adds delicious spice to mutations.
This is such a fundamental black-and-white point that I wish would become more widely understood. There are so many who regard anything other than equal temperament as out of tune, as all they have experienced is 1/4 comma meantone. It is very sad. An awareness of temperaments is as profound as your trips to France to experience other instruments; the ears are awakened just as much, I think.
Pianists are beginning to show more interest in Romantic temperaments for the most mainstream piano music, so it's only a matter of time before this serious recognition filters through to us, not wishing to be out-done by creatures of only ten fingers.
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... having a mix of flutes and principals higher up in the pitch spectrum seems rather odd to me. Wouldn't the choir/"chaire" divisions of older English organs always have had at least a principal at 4', then also a fifteenth if a 2' was also called for?
Yes, in this country. However, Werkprinzip = the ideal to which a lot of these things were made = Principals at 16 on ped, 8 on HW, 4 on OW, 2 on Pos. Fractions correspondingly higher as well - frequently mutations at 5 1/3 and 3 1/5 on the HW, Nazard pitch on OW, Larigot/Tierce pitch on Pos.
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Do you have any evidence to support this? I know Marlborough College got a lot of organ for their money and there was some idle speculation whether or not it had been subsidised but I don't believe there was any conclusive evidence.
Reply by PM.
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The days of organ builders doing loss leader projects to get business in new markets have long gone and will probably remain a myth of the Victorian glory days.
I would venture to suggest that this is not the case at all. Marlborough College is just one very recent example.
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I can't imagine what the cost of transporting will be, and I sincerely hope that our own builders also have a fine reputation for build quality, but if not why not ?
I wonder if cost comes into it and that the project may be loss making but that Dobson's are looking for more business in the UK ?
Colin Richell.
Perhaps it is more about having a little representation in many corners of the world. With the UK export market being as healthy as it has been in recent years there's no harm in that. I don't suppose our hosts would want to be putting up instruments in Japan on a regular basis, but one is nice to have on the CV. Equally, I don't suppose Lynn Dobson wants to be spending a fortune on transatlantic flights, but an Oxford college instrument (even at a loss) will be very good for business back home.
There is nothing to be scared of. We are not overflowing with Letourneau instruments, as was the fear when they did Pembroke a few years back. There are no more than a handful of Riegers or Frobeniae over here, and it's quite obvious to most which ones they really made an effort with. At least the pendulum is swinging firmly towards finding instruments of character and distinction; there are some times when one or two mainland European firms seem to have been represented much more than is perhaps fair. Instruments which are of lesser quality or which are not as successful as they might be tend to result in a lack of repeat business, or at the very least a couple of fallow decades before someone is willing to give them another shot.
And we're getting a Taylor & Boody (in Cambridge) shortly; that will be very special indeed. I hope someone brings Paul Fritts over to these shores before too long; the ten or so of his instruments I saw in the USA last year were the most outstandingly detailed and finished I have ever encountered, and I include the work of our most pernickety UK builders (e.g. Drake) in that. If I were ever to emigrate, the availability of a Fritts to play regularly would be a strong deciding factor.
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I don't think so David and I would welcome such a project. As you will know from previous threads I have a keen interest in introducing the organ to children or children to the organ and my modest attempts in the past have been fairly successful. So this seems to me something very worthwhile and I look forward to the finished product which I feel will be of great value - and I am equally sure, knowing your prowess, that it will be an artistic and critically acclaimed success too.
Best wishes with it and keep us posted!
Peter
Thanks Peter, and to those who have pre-ordered.
Things are moving on apace and there's only about 4 days remaining on pre-orders at the discounted rate (less £3 and free P&P) for anyone who might not have got around to it yet!
D
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Somehow I have a feeling that nobody is going to complain about the looks of this organ ...
Anyway, Mr. Lynn Dobson is one of the not so many (?) organbuilders with an education in art and design. There was a gallery of his organ design sketches on the Dobson website a while ago - pity it's been taken off. One can still admire his sculptural work, though.
44 stops. That's about the size of the new Kuhn organ for RAM. It will be interesting to see the detailed stoplist of the instrument, once it's available, and compare the two. I did find the info that Paul Hale is involved in planing of this new organ. I wonder what is going to happen to the Walker organ?
It would be interesting to know whether they will attempt to find a home for it or simply ditch it. It's never been quite the success it should have been on paper, which is sad because other instruments of similar time (Islington e.g.) are very different.
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Jolly good. Before anyone bleats about English organ builders, that's exactly what they're ditching.
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Rutter - of course, he has his personal way of writing, and many true things have been said. I'm preparing the "Mass of the children" for performance on June 18 here, and after months I still can listen to the recordingand enjoy the rehearsals and am sure, that I will be touched to tears during conducting.
Beeing very critical for second class composers (regarding work-out of construction etc.), I have to confess that I cannot flee the attractivity of - at least this one of - his works.
It's a wonderful thing, and so's the Requiem.
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On the Rutter question, I think its a matter of knowing what you're going to get, so you commission what you like. What were the other options? Tavener? Too many echoes of mum's funeral. Llloyd-Webber (always a possiblilty with the WIndsors). PMD (too many reasons to mention). Perhaps we could have had some Malcolm Williamson to make up for the Sypmphony that was never completed in time for the Queen's Jubilee?
Radical, how about some Swayne, Whitacre, Jackson (Gabriel, not Francis, though he would have done a good job) to name but a few.
I have felt for a while that it's about time Chilcott started getting some serious recognition of this sort. Anyone looked at the Requiem? I can tell you this; my choral society (which battled with the, er, slightly different Howard Goodall one last year) has learnt it to acceptable performance standard in three rehearsals. And it is excellent music of profundity and gravitas which (like the Salisbury Motets published last year) sounds difficult and close-harmony-ish but the individual lines are quite simply a piece of cake. And the tunes are extremely memorable. This is where approachable, beautiful, singable and listenable music with just a hint of challenge is now to be found.
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It is simply that when you find a tracker organ which has not been serviced since 50 years, you can not
try it without the help of an organ-builder first.
I hope none of our organ-building contributors (or hosts) are going to accept this unsubstantiated nonsense? You are obviously very unfortunate, Pierre; there are tracker organs in daily use which haven't been 'serviced' (apart from routine tuning) for a very great deal longer than that. The same can't be said of pneumatic instruments which, as you say, have to be 'woken up' first.
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I simply report what I found on the field.
Here is an example of a little pneumatic Link organ:
And when you find one, left alone since many years, if you can start the blower, you go through the notes,
the register knobs, about 20' in order to awake it somewhat, you can try it. It works approximately, out
of tune indeed, but it works. A pypical restoration of such an organ is thorough cleaning and re-leathering
of the action parts, and that's it.
Pierre
But what I and others find 'in the field' is that you don't need to go through ANYTHING on a tracker organ to 'awake it'. The solid mechanical connection is either there or it isn't. You need to justify your original claim -
"Of course, the action is pneumatic (otherwise,
it would be unplayable after so many years without maintenance)."
- with an explanation of why any other type of action would "of course" be unplayable. It's a frankly ridiculous statement.
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Of course, the action is pneumatic (otherwise,
it would be unplayable after so many years without maintenance).
I think we need to commission some sort of survey to prevent you from saying things like this! There is no reason for a tracker organ to be 'unplayable' after much longer periods than this but the handful of pneumatic organs I maintain all need desperately careful treatment to keep in playing order.
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Sounds like a tribute to Virgil Fox...
Paul
Absolutely not. Just using the organ in the way it was intended to be used.
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Interestingly, only England had organs by Willis, Walcker, Schulze, Cavaille-Coll, Anneseens and Cavaille-Coll, and only England could transform all that into the organs of Arthur Harrison!
Urgh (and I speak as someone who only this morning played O Mensch, solo on Open no 1 accompanied by full strings with super AND duper octave couplers, massive crescendos and tasteless subito pppp's)
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Oh! I'm sure we absolutely agree. I was merely making the point that almost any of the European romantic instruments would have yielded similar, though not perhaps identical results. Instead of sudden, dramatic changes, the dynamic may have been more gradiated, as with Franck's orchestral music, and that tends to suggest that the ventils could have been a limitation rather than an aid to Franck's natural expressive tendencies.
We absolutely agree, except that I still think the differences are much more profound than that. Limitation or not, ventils give rise to a character which makes the nationality of the music indisputable - hence my mentioning it in response to your original point "Had French cathedrals been filled with Walcker or Willis organs exclusively, I suspect that the repertoire would have been written in much the same way as it was".
By and large, it strikes me that English music of the relevant era moves in piston-size blocks and hand registering is seldom out of the question; the French follow very particular recipes which seem to always work whether the organ has twenty stops or a hundred; and the Germans and Americans got closest do doing absolutely absolutely all they wanted in the way of full symphonic sweeping gestures, with no need to even liberate a thumb to achieve them. Three styles of music; three styles of organ; all as closely related as they are different from each other.
For that matter, a great deal of Reger and Karg-Elert is quite a challenge on a typical English instrument, unless Willis III has equipped it with a general crescendo pedal (and probably infinite frustration swell pedals).
Doing justice to Victorian Organs
in General discussion
Posted
I've been surprised to find nobody has yet replied to this. Time for some volunteers to create an updated version of the cassette which came with the Padgham book - perhaps a CD of Bach, Mendelssohn, Karg Elert, Reger and Messiaen, the same pieces on three or four different instruments in different tunings.