David Coram

I'd forgotten about Malcolm Archer's My song is love unknown. Someone cruelly once said "I can't believe it's not Rutter". It's a good piece and easy for two grade 5-ish sopranos to learn in an hour.

Well, after a few years off, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and hence doing lots of lunchtime do's for nothing. Typically, places seem to allow you about 3-4 hours setting up time, some of which may be restricted volume. Some instruments I find really hard - Christchurch Priory was one, just couldn't find any of the noises I wanted and occasionally ended up doing strange things (like the 4' flute passage at the end of the Durufle Scherzo, where I ended up using the Nazard down a fifth because it was the only thing I could find that didn't cough like mad when used alone). Next up is Truro, then St Stephen Waldbrook, then Grosvenor Chapel, then Sherborne and so on and so on and so on. Dreading it. The biggest difficulty I find is going off and getting distracted improvising my way around the sounds it can make for 3.75 hours leaving 15 minutes to set up the pistons. (Won't be such a problem at Grosvenor.) I've no discipline whatsoever. It's console idiosyncracies that throw me. At Christchurch, there was a Nave to Great, and a Nave Flues On Great. Using one or the other made a huge difference to whether things like the pedal stops would work. I never worked it all out but do remember trying to do a sudden decrescendo and killing the nave, to suddenly find a 16' Diaphone belting away that hadn't been there earlier. Also, the seqencer forgot who I was an hour before the start time. At Wimborne, all the couplers are in their own little line and I could never find Sw-Gt quickly enough. At St Mary's Southampton all the couplers are in the Willis standard tab position, which I found a nightmare, and it's got infinite gradation pedals, which I also found a nightmare. Additionally (and I thought I'd hate this, but I don't), the Sw and Ch stops are all on the left jamb, and Gt and Pedal on the right - not the normal layout, but actually I thought a more logical one - all the meat on one hand, and the veg on the other. Sometimes I just find an instrument that I totally melt into, and I love it when that happens. I remember years ago going on an organists' association wind pressure conference or something at Downside Abbey, just after some work was done (early 90's?) and having an absolute ball playing through Howells PsPr set 1 no 1 hand registering all the way - it just seemed to come so easily to hand. Don't think I've ever seen anything so easy to drive since. Although I'll probably never get to play it properly, I was once allowed a little sit-down for an hour or so at Guildford and found that incredibly versatile and easy to play. I have watched both Andrew Lumsden and Geoffrey Morgan sit down at the Romsey organ (a pig to play until you have lived with it for several months) and hand-register their way through Bridge Adagio in E from memory, both giving utterly faultless performances. Gits.

oops...wrong button again...itsh late innit. to compensate for your disappointment: http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/anywhere.htm try and get it out of your head in a fortnight...

Saturday just gone, at quarter past the hour, I decided to do a lovely little set of variations on a scale of G major. Very fine they sounded too. At twenty past we had the same thing again, but descending. At twenty five past I started joining in with the bells and using them as a cantus firmus, in a variety of styles from Purcell to Wesley to Mathias and finishing up with a parody of Transports de joie - that was very good fun indeed but anyone unable to hear both me and the bells might well have wondered what the hell was going on. The procession (first and last eight seconds of Pachelbel canon) was something of a pale beige anticlimax, if I say so myself. I hope nothing terrible has happened because when I drove past the same church earlier, they were changing the locks on the organ.

The majority of this is mainstream - as far as I know most people have been using PVA/silicone etc for sealing up conveyances, whether traditional or kopex, and a hot glue gun for tongue weights. I think the days of Chatterton are behind us except for a dedicated few. Personally I don't like silicone or kopex, but that's the way it is. I recently saw a fairly new instrument which made heavy use of PVC overflow pipe and waste pipe, and duct tape to seal reservoirs. I thought this was going a little far myself... On the other hand, I did similarly hear of an incident involving a highly authentic organ building firm which shall be nameless, whose employees were compelled to pickle zinc plated screws to get them back to raw steel before they could be considered for use. Now that too is probably going a bit far in the quest for authenticity, don't you think? I recently dismantled for restoration a very nice little chamber organ which had all manner of unusual features. For one, the inside of the reservoir had been painted in a nice red gloss paint, which was fine - except 30 years of constant damp chaser use had caused the paint to peel and shred and thenceforth work its way into every known crevice of the soundboard and pipework. Secondly, the few conveyances were made from secondhand metal pipes, cut above the mouth then along the long seam, rolled into a tighter tube and wrapped around with insulation tape. Lovely! I did however gain a nice long leather knife, left INSIDE the reservoir by the previous occupant... it would have been better left on the outside, as the organ was found to be trying to run on just under an inch of wind. With such vile little monsters around the place, it's easy to make the case for digital. However, a good blow out and a couple of bellows weights later, it sounds gorgeous and is set for another 200 years of service, with another blow out in perhaps 75 years or so. Not sure even the most adventurous and/or foolish digital builder can claim that kind of longevity.

Not back to pole dancing again, surely?

I use the latest version of Windows Media Player which allows you to steal music from CD and have your wicked way with it.

wow. two bits of fantastic advice. I confess I can play it more accurately WITHOUT the music cos I know what it's supposed to sound like (still only 2.3% right note factor however). Going to try the block chord idea first. Very good suggestion. Did that with the Messiaen Vingt Regards on the piano. MM - it's fantastic! what are you on about???

Without looking, I'd guess it's probably Cromorne being a French-based instrument. The same (brash, rough) could be said of any instrument in such a hostile acoustic - a very extreme example would be Wimborne Minster, which is terrifying and foul to the uninitiated but you soon come to realise it's the building that's at fault and the organ is actually doing very well indeed. As per usual, it comes down to registering with the ears, not the eyes, and understanding that when Howells puts "Sw to Oboe" that you have to use your intelligence and ingenuity. I sense Mr Farr will now write a very long post. Hope so. Christchurch is a fabulous musical instrument.

I guess exactly the same could be said of our own dear North of England, or those areas which are busily electing Nazi councillors?

I was gutted not to be able to make it. Might have to see if I can make July 29th. Glad it went well and the poor old Dame isn't coming in for the same lambasting as she did after the RAH...

The 20th Century Light Church Music Group significantly failed, too... the only thing I've ever seen FILL a church is an intelligent, spiritual preacher with catholic tastes and a love of traditional hymnody, who had something interesting to say and knew how to do so in under four minutes. This applies notably to two places; The United Church, Trowbridge, under Rev Gerald Stoddern (now retired to the SW) who used to get a full church every week and of course Romsey, where the regular AM congregation is in the order of 4-500 ish and around 80-120 for evensong (more when it's choral). I sense you can dick around with music and comfy chairs all you like, but if the right mix of social and spiritual enlightenment is missing from the leadership, you may as well save your energy.

I can tell you from personal experience (played for a couple of family funerals there) that it's a delightful instrument for accompanying. At Buckfastleigh there were a couple of little Heles (one burnt down, one bulldozed to make a new parish centre/worship space) that were similarly lacking on paper but did a fine job in the flesh.

Yep. And we mostly have to work in 'em. Of course the clergy don't listen to us - how much attention to we pay them when they attempt to discuss the finer points of musicianship? I recall once, some while ago, finishing off a pretty respectable improvisation, with a beginning, middle and end, which had a tune that went somewhere and did something, to be told - "your name's not ******* Tournemire, you know!" Yeah, cheers, thanks a lot. As someone who's basically a left-wing-ish atheist with a strong keenness to become a better person and where possible stop other people doing horrible things, I stay well out of theology but take an interest in the moral and political arguments around the periphery. Fortunately, at my current post, all the clergy are at least vaguely (in some cases extremely) musical and take a similar sort of back-seat interest in the music without trying to lay down the law about things that aren't their main professional interest. This is a two way street. The sooner we get back to fusing clavinovas the better. Polish it up and put it in the Free Ads. When someone then turns up at the church with a wad of notes and says "here's the money, do you want it?" the odds are the Clavinova won't be bothering you again.

He'd better come and see what he makes of my Barker Levers then...

I have a soft spot for nos 12 and 13. 12 is a rollocking good tune and 13 is a subject very like Down Ampney. I have the Harvey Grace editions with wonderful editorial prefaces explaining how Rheinberger is the god of harmony and counterpoint.

I've hit a brick wall with this piece. If you know it, could you help me by telling me how you got into it? I learned the first section and last section thoroughly, but really struggled with the second section (same as first but transposed a semitone). I had to skate through it for a couple of recitals so taught myself to be able to get through, making a vaguely idiomatically similar noise, without stopping. Now I want to polish it up and get it recordable, but every bar of the second section I improve results in me forgetting something else I already knew. How the hell do I get out of this rut? Or do I just accept that it's beyond me and go back to Eric Thiman? Can any of the many proper organists here offer any brain draining tips... before you all say it, I've tried going through slowly with metronome, doing hands alone, and all with no evident benefit...

I think that's one of the stupidest things I ever heard. Sorry.

I'm going to defend Sherborne. It's buried way back in quite a deep transept, not even visible to anyone except the first two rows or so of congregation. There have been umpteen attempts since the Coulson organ, by all accounts, collapsed: Bishop, John Budgen, and now Tickell. This last is by far the most successful, mechanically and tonally. The point at which you want the sound to be heard is the point at which it becomes sociable and musical. At the console it's as if you were sitting on the passage board, and needs must be, if you're going to retain mechanical action and a non-megalomaniac stoplist, which was the whole point of the work in the first place. By comparison with my instrument at Romsey, it has a scattering of prospects that make the knees tremble; a reasonably beefy 32' reed, a double reed in the Swell, and strings (albeit v. poorly and irregularly tuned when I last saw it). Also, a very fine and comfortable console. For accompaniment, such things are crucial in the organists' battery, and while I am bound to say that I don't think there's much that can hold a candle to Romsey tonally (I still can't believe how well it managed Spirit of the Lord, harp effects and all), I certainly wouldn't be complaining about Sherborne. It's a carefully thought out and voiced musical instrument which I found far more capable than, say, Christchurch Priory, to name another very badly positioned and roughly contemporary instrument in the area. Whatever my personal views are on the shortcomings of Mr Tickell's choice of tuning and maintenance contractor, it's a very, very long way from being the worst organ in the street, let alone the world. I've just returned from 7 hours of accompanying choral works from the 16th century up to Leighton on a Percy Daniel 4 rank extension at my old school. I would have to admit there were certain challenges and compromises involved in this, and a few composers will be turning in their graves tonight. Nevertheless, it managed it, with a respectable amount of tonal variety and quite admirable controllability. By comparison with that little Willis* that re-awakened this thread the other day, it was a positive joy - that Willis* was the sort of machine that just makes you weep and tear your hair out for just not having a single discernable organ-like sound anywhere on it, and yet still people with straight faces ask you to sit down and do everything from Purcell to Rutter on it, probably because they think it's an organ. Against such complete ineffable cruddiness as that, Sherborne, Christchurch and even my little Daniel extension job seem like the promised land indeed. * - just to reiterate, the Willis wasn't made for the building it's in, and has been modified by a voicer who was some years ago sacked from Percy Daniels for being Not Very Good, which is probably saying something. No reflection upon the present Willis firm is meant...

To be fair to it, it improves vastly at a distance and by the time you get to the crossing it's quite reasonable. It's possibly the worst positioned organ ever. I understand the positive has been deliberately voiced loudly as a mini-Great. Compared with what was there before... I mean 3 or 4 organs before, the Coulson masterpiece...

That's just you being plain silly.

Yes - there's a little 1m at Rockbourne, Hampshire, which is actually quite a nice musical sound in the church. It too has a Dulciana masquerading under the title "Sanft Prinzipal". Like the horror mentioned above, it had a common bass with the Gedackt only using slightly less wind. On the horror, this had been very poorly regulated and it dropped pitch significantly when the Dulciana alone was used. You're right about the name of Sext for the Mixture stop. I am told Mr Coulson is still alive, well and keeping his tunings going, notably this instrument, and also the machine at Edington Priory.

I've revised my original statement. A building I played at yesterday (not listed on NPOR) contains a 1968 Willis, rebuilt in a new case and restored by John Coulson of Bristol in 1993/4/5 "at a cost of £8900" according to a plaque on the wall. The case has to be seen to be believed - chipboard panels made to stand upright. The specification is as follows: Swell Rohr Flute 8, Salicional 8, Spindle Flute 4, Block Flute 2, Terzian 12.17, Tremolo Great Gedackt 8, Dulciana 8, Gemshorn 4, Flageolet 2 Pedal Subbass 16, Gedackt 8, Gedackt Flote 4, Klein Flote 2 (all extended) Usual couplers, plus: Swell super/duper/unison off Sw to Gt 16, 4 Sw to Ped 4 This is just the most hopeless musical instrument I have yet encountered. It's either much too quiet, or it emits loud wailing squeaks of indeterminate pitch but at least providing a rhythym for the poor sods trying to sing with it. A choral society of 60 and a congregation of 200 actually dropped a semitone in pitch while singing a hymn against full organ. I believe the church's bat problem has been solved however. In fairness to Willis it wasn't made for the building, it was made for a nunnery - so the lack of any kind of diapason tone anywhere on it is therefore understandable. My disbelief is that even a layman could consider this thing suitable for installation in a fairly ample village church, especially with all the nice Vowles' and Bishops etc etc floating around looking for homes.

Only one to add to the above would be Jesu, joy, which you can get away with in unison quite happily. The arrangement that New College do of Lux aeterna set to Nimrod works quite well in SA or SAB. I don't think it has the word "requiem" in it, only the bit about light perpetual etc etc so wouldn't be too inappropriate from that point of view.

Call me thick, but Westminster Cathedral hasn't been mentioned yet? I've not been in it since the age of about 11 so I don't know how far apart they are.