David Coram

As you might expect, I find that viewpoint - and the passages you have quoted - scarcely credible. "Musical flexibility" and "music [was] the last thing on the agenda" are baseless notions about as fatuous as "Let a smile be your umbrella". Just what on earth does "musical flexibility" mean? Pistons and upperwork? Can you not make music without? In the great majority of cases (but of course not all), those who seek to treat historic - sometimes ancient - material with the respect it deserves do so not out of bloody-mindedness but out of a desire for players and listeners to be able to experience a vast literature of organ (and choral) music as it was intended to be played and heard. Sometimes that means a Swell that is either open or shut or occasionally in between, but not necessarily flapping about incessantly. Sometimes that means a moment of time for hand-registering to take place, as sometimes a string player has to cross over two or three strings. Does not the passion of a lot of 'cello music emerge from the player digging into the strings and spreading the chord? If a device were to come along whereby the player could squeeze their knee into the instrument to lower the strings not required and this no longer needed to happen, would that be for the benefit of musical flexibility? Presumably so. Modern ways are not the only ways; inconvenience is not the same thing as imperfection, and neither are necessarily bad things. A good deal of musical expression and excitement for the listener comes from the live experience of the player having to overcome physical and mental hurdles such as many instruments throw at them. In my view anyone who seeks to play any music with no understanding (if not first hand experience) of what the composer envisaged the player having to overcome in order to play it is not qualified to attempt it. Through remembering these forgotten skills, we grew the Organ Reform Movement and a generation of scholarship which naturally began with a good deal of guesswork because much of the evidence had been destroyed. That destruction is why our history is, as you say, "fragmented, altered and scatter-brained", and that in turn is why there is so much interest in preventing the buggering-up of any more good English organs and seeking to make authoritative and scholarly reconstructions of important milestones (in no small way undermined by some of the more speculative reconstruction work which has gone on - and no, before someone comes and bashes down my barn door, I don't mean Nicholson's). Has anyone ever played a piano with a split (bass/treble) sustain pedal? They were commonplace in Mendelssohn's time, and his Songs without Words make so much more sense. Mendelssohn's markings (hairpins, vs. cresc and dim) only make sense when you understand the limitations of the instruments he was writing for - likewise Chopin's pedal markings - you gain your understanding of what he was trying to achieve through exposure to instruments of his era, and you then know that when playing Chopin on a modern Steinway you pretty much ignore the pedal marks. Says MM, "Living art MUST embrace the contemporary,and anything less is mere pretention at best, and third rate at worst." This is fine, if a little dogmatic (possibly a little Stalinist, even) in a brand new instrument not incorporating historic material and not intended for a specific purpose (e.g. a music college requiring an instrument for early music work). However, it's patent nonsense when referring to something which is already old, which is exactly what this topic is about. You might well move things or change them, even re-cast them, but you don't do either of these things - throw them out for no good reason, or graft on contemporary material not stylistically or musically in keeping with what is there already. That's what was done in the 1960s and it's how far too many good organs have met the end of their credibility - with a Larigot on top. You will note that I am deliberately echoing the strong language of "mere pretension" and "third rate", both of which are personal viewpoints which may or may not have any validity. I, personally, think absolutely not. David Jenkins once wrote "Tradition is not a noun, shaped once and for all in the past; it is a verb, active under God, now and for the sake of the future." Whether or not you go along with the God bit, history ought to have taught every one of us that we turn our back on our roots at our own peril. On edit - I've been looking at the prefaces to the BCP as part of a project to do with its anniversary next year. There are some wise words which apply to organs just as much as liturgy - "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, nor so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted... in this our time, the minds of men are so diverse, that some think it a great matter of conscience to depart from a piece of the least of their Ceremonies, they be so addicted to their old customs; and again on the other side, some be so newfangled, that they would innovate all things, and so despise the old, that nothing can like them, but that is new... it hath been the wisdom of the Church of England to keep the mean between the two extremes."

That was someone putting two and two together, and is my fault. Discussions are underway (as they have been, on and off, for 20+ years) regarding the future of the organ. Several firms have been invited to submit their proposals, but no decisions have been made. The old organ is currently in serviceable working order but its pneumatics are giving up the ghost and certain aspects of the mechanical layout make it difficult to improve further.

On pitch - the only problem you could expect to face would be with the reeds. The imitative stuff like Oboes might be a bit more forgiving. On the DD/Violone - those low notes will be on their own action and wind and not conveyanced from the main soundboard. I expect that by holding the manual note above the Pedal compass and drawing the stop, you will be able to hear the slider come on, whereas below that there will just be a firm on/off.

Coming clean - it's a small but perfectly formed 1903 Walker of 8884/88848/16 which became redundant a few years ago and which we hope to relocate to a new and appreciative home. Because new soundboards are needed (owing to weakening by woodworm attack), the opportunity is being taken to provide a Fifteenth which will be faithfully copied to the minutest detail from a period example by the same builder. Because the Principal chorus is spread over two manuals (8 on the Great and 4 on the Swell), care must be taken to scale it to work cohesively as a fairly bottom-heavy chorus and voice it to work with the rather large Harmonic Flute 4 already on the Great. This clearly indicates new pipework rather than secondhand material. Like Porthead, my preference is for cone-tuned pipework because of stability and aesthetic concerns. The one thing which would put me off is the prospect of pinched tops and use of the wrong tools. But isn't that less of a problem now than it was 20 years ago?

My limited understanding of these matters is that charge or exhaust refers only to what mechanism sets the wheels in motion. The final stage of pulling down the pallet is inevitably done by a large motor collapsing and drawing a pulldown wire with it, and in the course of electrification that can be caused to happen in a number of ways by where you place the magnets and what design of magnet is chosen. Please don't! My guess would be that only the first 30 (or 32) notes of the Great Double are on an independent chest, above which they sit on the soundboard. Therefore, you're not going to be able to borrow or extend to the pedal without making (and locating) a standalone unit chest for this rank. Therefore, you may as well provide an independent rank and not take up valuable floor space with something which is not going to add anything (because it's already doubled by the manuals). The very instant you change anything. Restoration means putting back. I'm glad there has been no mention of digital pedal stops. I know some here like them, but they never seem to last long.

Not so much interested in people's preferences, but wondering what knowledge there is on the board of when tuning slides became a standard fitting on new organs - particularly Walker. Also interested in people's views on a new cone-tuned 2' stop being added to an otherwise slide-tuned organ. It seems to me that the more stable it can be made the better, but of course it might get mistreated.

I suggest this has nothing to do with Norman and Beard and everything to do with the firm who electrified it, what transmission system they chose, whether or not the final stage was releathered, and if so in what thickness material.

Yes with caveats. As with most words, there is always an initial transient; even a Harrison leathered diapason has it. To create a sound wave without the beginning of that wave breaking on a solid surface somewhere is more or less impossible. What I call the "Peter Collins Cough" (expects to have to delete that later) will be the first thing to be eradicated when I come to power.

Ah - but it can't. There's no inherent faults with tracker organs. In your view, the pneumatic organ is a good thing, and you don't accept the view that slow response, varying performance in different climates and excessive complications are all inherent faults. In my view, if you're going to make any sort of organ which cannot be controlled with mechanical action, you need to ask yourself why you're doing it.

This really is turning into a thread of goodwill. Incredible! The gentle underlay here is that it is quite possible to accompany Choral Evenson without strings and banks of instantly settable button-ware. And, for that matter, a trigger swell. Go on - dare to say it...

Does anyone here know a British organist who regards his or her pneumatic action as a viable modern-day solution to making music, rather than a quirky but interesting relic to be carefully nurtured and tolerated? If so, please invite them along.

Your original statement that "the principle of pneumatic action is not to be questioned" has jumped forward two spaces, six to the left and turned around three times to get to this; the action is OK because this is what the music should sound like, and the music sounds like that because the action responds like that. The only alternative you admit is a chiffy neo-classical box of squeaks, which has nothing to do with the argument at all as far as I can tell. That's not the debate we're having. Nobody disputes that pneumatic action is an acceptable way of making pipes sound, and indeed some of them last quite a long time with the right combination of weather, attention and luck. You said the principle of pneumatic action is not to be questioned. Therefore, would you, in all seriousness, build one from scratch today in a country with long-ish dry summers, long-ish centrally heated winters and about four weeks of moderately warm and humid weather between each? I sincerely hope not. I think that before condeming all the alternatives as 'neo classical' you might address my earlier point; that the widespread adoption of the electropneumatic action happened because of the widespread difficulty, expense and inconvenience of having an action which was characterised by being slow in response, unpredictable on cold/hot/dry/wet days, and exceedingly complicated to fix should (say) something go wrong with one note of one coupler. Something better came along which kept the best features of the old and combined them with speed, reliability, convenience, compactness and a very low price. (That's not to say that I'd bin every pneumatic action. I wouldn't. But I'm curious about why your defence of them has to go so far into the realms of ideology that it begins to lose credibility.)

Not sure about that. Other systems have come along specifically to reduce the inherent complication of pneumatic actions, especially coupling, and improve response times.

What a lot of goodwill is breaking out today. This is all very true. Some know more than others about an instrument I currently hope to have a small interest in whose roots date to 1792. Of the four proposals submitted for its future, mine is the only one which retains existing soundboards and the only one which retains the old pipework, all placed back in its original holes, and only supplemented where material has been lost. Staggeringly, only one other proposal kept any of the 1792 pipework at all.

They said the same round these 'ere parts not so long ago. It is possible to get it right, you know - I'm watching it happen around me.

Another fine reason for installation of a new mechanical action. No number of magnets or puff motors could manage such a device with total reliability.

Not the place, but I think Pierre's point is a fair one, and it's that the bankers and tax-dodging firms/individuals are still doing very nicely. Instead of screwing services some considerable way beyond their reasonable functioning, some of us believe that reclaiming the 'let off' tax owed by Vodafone, Philip Green, Boots, Barclays and even George Osborne himself (who is personally dodging some £12m in unpaid tax) would largely wipe out the defecit - which, you might note, was grown (as well as some very stupid and regrettable mistakes, as every government makes) very largely of money invested in making the future cheaper, in relation to things like child trust funds etc.

It could also imply that Simon Preston may easily be mistaken for a tramp, which I'm sure wasn't what was intended.

It worked a bit, for a while, and then started to break. What's the point in restoring that situation?

There are some extremely valid points here, very nearly enough to change my mind. However, this instrument does not work. It hasn't worked for some years. When, after rebuilding in its present form, it stops working again, as pneumatic actions in centrally heated churches tend to do, you can't get at anything to fix it. The same probably applies to electropneumatic, unless there is a humidifier keeping things healthy.

You know that we're in agreement over the politics (and there are only about half a dozen people on Earth I can say that to). This, however, I don't agree with - not even in the short term, let alone the long term - and definitely not where accessibility for maintenance is difficult.

Well, Chinese trade is a high priority of this coalition government.

Elephants.

You might be quite surprised to find me agreeing totally with this. If it were tracker, then of course I wouldn't be - but then again we wouldn't be having this conversation, because a straightforward mechanical linkage by a builder such as Hill would be lasting very considerably more than 100 years save for the odd bit of regulation. I wouldn't dispute that there were/are reasons for a non-mechanical solution which offsets this relative disposability (and just how much of its life has this action been giving trouble for?), but disposability is exactly what is implied by choosing the least long-lasting and most complicated option - and therefore electrification is the only responsible way to go. And again in 75 years when Musicom is obsolete and no longer supported. And probably another 75 years after that.

And we're all talking about it. Let's all agree on 'noteworthy'.