David Coram
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Posts posted by David Coram
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It's a long time since I played at Calne (1977), but I wouldn't go along with most of the criticisms. Conachers' may not have been Harrisons or Willis or Walker - or even Binns - but they turned out a respectable product. They were the dominant builder in Ireland and I can think of some extremely fine jobs (as well as a lot of run-of-the-mill stuff). Kildare Cathedral is one. There are certainly a few passengers in the specification, but I reckon the main choruses are fine enough and there are some lovely soft effects.
I don't know what sort of connection the donor (Harris) had with conachers' or why he selected them to build his 5m house organ, which led to them getting the parish church as well, but I think Calne PC organ is a worthy monument and worth preserving.
I'm sure they will welcome your cheque. If I recall correctly, having spent just under £250,000 they now have two manuals working adequately to lead hymns on a Sunday morning.
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As far as I can remember, this included: fat, 'oily' flutes and diapasons, lack of decent chorus work (yes, I know it was designed during a different era....), reeds which needed serious regulation - and some revoicing. In addition, I felt that there were certain elements of the scheme which were wasteful; there was some duplication of tonalities in the flue-work, some odd choices (both on paper and in reality) and, to be honest, I should far rather have had a more sensibly designed instrument, spread over just three claviers.
I realise that this style of instrument probably would not appeal to me, even if it were in top condition - but you did ask me to elaborate on what I did not like about it.
I'd go along with all of that - it's a whacking great noise, for sure, bought only for its size and just preposterous in a small-ish town church. The cost of keeping it (just) alive and (just) playing in the past 20 years (which is roughly how long I've known it) could have paid for a wholly appropriate instrument of quality and distinction.
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However, my Grandparents, both Calne people and married in 1909, related that Henry Harris's wife 'requested' an organ in Castle House after hearing the St Mary's installation.
Definitely the other way round, I'm afraid - HH donated the giant in the church after his house organ had been so widely admired for its, er, size.
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We will have to wait and see if Gordon Curtis' book on Sweetland, the Bath Organ Builder, to be published by Ashgate Publications next year covers this point. (At the sweetland exhibition in Bath I picked up a flyer for this book which is offering a 20% discount on the purchase price.)
PJW
Oh dear - the exhibition at St Michael's I presume - curious choice of Sweetland organ to use! Nowhere to park, apart from anything else. Why on Earth did they not go to Devizes, where they would have had a far better instrument in a quieter surrounding and stacks of parking?
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So how do people get to know and understand an unfamiliar organ? Let's take away the time constraint and the preoccupation of how it balences the choir for accompanying choral evensong and let's focus on how people work out how all the elements of the organ fit together. What do you do?
Find all the trio registrations! And I mean all of them, including up the octave and down the octave. The instruments I know best and can get round the most colourfully are ones where I know exactly what balances with what.
In considering that statement, I've realised that pretty generally involves abandoning all playing aids and hand registering.
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The older engines would have been side-valve units, but I doubt that any re-design amounted to a completely "new" engine.......evolution applies as much to engineering as it does to nature.
As far as a lack of investment goes, there are only two ways of turning ailing businesses around. You can invest heavily in production techniques/design/marketing strategy, or you can cut costs and rationalise: neither being mutually exclusive in the real world.
When BMC became BL, cost-cutting and rationalisation were the preferred methods; backed by public funding as a stop-gap measure.
The Japanese and Germans, (largely due to foreign investment and the Marshall plan), chose the path of investment and the development of robotic manufacturing techniques, as well as "just in time" procurement.
The rest is history, as BL failed to compete or offer better products than their competitors at home and abroad.
Still, the genius of Sir Alec Issigonis lives on, if only in the brilliant design of the now commonplace Constant Velocity joint.
MM
Not the place for this, I know, but replacing the 1100/1300 (which was glorious, much admired, and both more clever and better packaged than the Mini) with the Allegro isn't representative of cost-cutting and rationalisation, surely?
I'm glad there are now voices emerging (including a recent Top Gear publication) which admit that, actually, the Marina wasn't that much worse than the Cortina. It's just that it wasn't as many light years ahead of the competition as every other BMC product had been.
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Fair enough. But I did consider the wording of your post for several hours before responding. I wanted to try and avoid mis-understanding you. Either I have failed to do so or there was a perceived ambiguity in the way you phrased it.
OK, I'm sorry it made you feel like that. As it happens, that part of my original posting wasn't responding to you or anyone else in particular, and therefore there's no reason for you to assume that anything in it was in any way referring to what you prefer to do, which I very much admire and wish I had the patience to do so.
I'm glad you can find your way round the octaves at Salisbury. I hate them. I'm only just familiar enough (and brave enough) with octave couplers to realise, far too late, where the extra noise is coming from and stare hopelessly at the Swell stops looking for the octave, before (eight pages later) realising the one I want is over the other side. Then knocking off the wrong one. And so on.
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I would not want to spoil a good story - but I suspect it is no more than that. These pipes (according to H&H, some time around the previous restoration/cleaning) speak on about 35 - 40mm pressure. They are very gentle, and unlikely to blow off anything.
That's not even two inches! I'd be astounded - and very impressed - if they were on less than 5. They're very good indeed.
You might not blow any hats off with them, but you can gently inflate the surplices of a choir lining up - I've done it, even though a whole tone scale descending down the sharp side and back up the C side wasn't the most musical thing I've ever played at 5 to evensong.
And you can certainly startle inquisitive tourists, to the quiet delight of the chap who rings the bells.
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I have thought about your comment above for a few hours. It seems to me to be ever so slightly pompous - or at least judgmental on my original comment.
Oh, I'm sorry - there was nothing further from my mind. I was confessing, apologetically, my own deliberate shortcoming that I tend not to bother with it too much any more. I used to, and spent so much time worrying about hitting the right button at the right time that I was far too tense and wound up to enjoy the experience and help others enjoy it too - which is why people organise cathedral visits, on the whole. So now, I make quite sure there are no surprises in store, and then go for a pint with everyone else
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So long as the work is doen well, it really doesn't matter, and when it comes down to the wire, the company holding the initial contract also carries the responsibility for making sure that things are right.
Amen to that.
(PS - I'd thought both the A series and B series engines had merely been light revisiting of very much older units than that?)
(PPS - do you really mean to suggest that nobody noticed the lack of investment in BL ('too busy to notice the effect')? Isn't that a bit of a glamorous spin?)
(PPPS - retires to Austin Rover Online forums)
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'Good reading all this - I see another book coming on somewhere. I do not tend to 'do' last minute cathedral playings although I was once offered one as a 'swap' at Salisbury. When I saw what they wanted me to play I opted to do the easier job to allow another organist friend to enjoy the Willis. I did however (a while ago now) have to do something similar at St Albans and all I can say is that despite what has been written about this instrument taking no prisoners I found it a joy and everything worked. More importantly no one complained after!
A
St Albans is indeed loverly, even more so now than a couple of years ago. We're there in August and I can't wait!
I'm afraid I tend to adopt the viewpoint that the resident organists know the instrument far better than I ever will, and simply borrow their 'general crescendo' channel and use common sense in its application. The three things I look for are; 1) in the Sw buildup, what comes first - Trumpet or Mixture - 2) which one brings on the Sw Oboe - 3) which one is the Solo/Choir Clarinet on. The rest I do by hand.
(Easier said than done at Salisbury where there is a veritable sea of interdivisional super and duper octave couplers, which usually get me in a tizzy. Where every option is provided like that, I find myself wishing they'd stuck with the row of tabs above the Solo...)
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You mean like the ones who regularly have to recall their cars because of often dangerous faults!
Think how much better BL cars of the 70s would have been had they bought in good technology rather than spending 50p trying to improve a 60 year old engine...
I can buy in a Fifteenth for about £900 from the very best pipemaker I know, the only man who can keep the most finickity of clients happy for sustained periods. For that money, I can retain a pipemaker on the books for three weeks or less, assuming I've already got the space and the materials. Let's say the materials in a Fifteenth are worth a week's wages. In reeds and 8' flues it's far more of course. You need to be turning out at least 27-30 new stops a year to break even on that one tiny part of the business. And, of course, any honest mistakes in production will be rectified at your cost. Then you must send your man on trips round the world sharing and developing knowledge with others, and pay for him to have a couple of weeks holiday a year, and a pension, and national insurance. 45-50 stops a year perhaps? Get selling! And don't be the least bit surprised when you end up at £20k a stop in order to simply tread water year after year!
It's strange I'm this belligerent, because I frequently pour scorn on those who buy all their action bits in. Those are generally things which are not difficult to make; it's just about being careful. Pipework (metal pipework at least) is altogether another matter.
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Email sent.
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I can't be bothered; I'm exhausted after the Hungarian post.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I have even come across "Cornet" stops which draw a Quint Mixture.
I'm genuinely interested in this. Cornet does seem to mean a dozen different things. As a Swell mixture, whether full compass or split bass and treble, you seem to be right. As a Great stop it more often seems to appear mounted as a solo voice.
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Anyone considering attending tomorrow's recital at Rochdale Town Hall with Robert Sharpe should note that thiks event has had to be cancelled due to a protest march. The local Police have advised the venue to remain closed in case of trouble!
CP
It's like the 1980s all over again...
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I'm not sure that the same rules apply about English Cornet stops of the 18th century, which are usually not flutes, but a part of the chorus, with a Sequialtera bass.
Could you provide some evidence of this? I'd challenge it.
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But what are 'bottleneck effects'?
I suggest anything which necessitates necking a bottle - e.g. Shepherd's Pipe Carol.
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A hypothetical to take this down a slightly different route -
Organ, big, old (late 1700s), not certified but probably should be.
Taken out of old case and placed in new one, with logical expansion (double flues and octave reeds).
However, new one cannot be positioned ideally in building; most effective way of getting sound out from compromise location seems to be to adopt a completely new style, a little along the lines of Clifton RC cathedral (see here for those not familiar).
Alternative appears to be disposal of instrument.
Which is the better option - re-clothe in alien outfit, or bin? Do you think a BIOS inspector, being faced with something which looks like the link but in reality is jam-packed with 18th century pipework, should write out the certificate? Or should he put the designer in prison?
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ian@robinhoodmusic.co.uk has been an excellent bet for tracking down out-of-print stuff every time I've needed him, and incidentally is quite good on volume discount for choral pieces too. Website dead, but he's definitely on the end of the email address - I've just ordered 50 copies of various Oldroyd choral pieces from him.
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3. Please would you explain in more detail your comment about winding and sound board design? I`d be interested to know more. I`d be interested to know why this is, as many instruments of that period have gentle fifteenths and twelfths all on the same sound board and winding. I accept your comment about the voicing. That`s when the skills and experience of the organ builder advising on any potential modification comes in to good use - if best left alone they should say!
I'm no expert, but if I was designing a soundboard to contain 4 or 5 stops of 8', plus a wind-hungry Harmonic Flute and maybe a Principal (but more often than not such things are on the Swell in a small scheme), and those 8' stops had to create vast volume, I would be providing good chunky pallets and a very ample wind channel. This would be necessary to support full organ and still make it possible to press the keys down reasonably easily. Conversely, if I was designing a soundboard to contain a chorus of 88442, it might have considerably more modest wind channels with longer and thinner profile pallets, since each successive stop to be added would be considerably less wind-draining than the one which went before; pallet movement need not be so great, the extent to which they bend under pluck is lower, and the action can be geared in a much more responsive way. How large a slice of bread do you wish to spread jam on; which sort of knife is most appropriate, or would a ladle be better?
Find me an organ builder who is prepared to respond to a parish's request for more stops with 'nah, leave it alone' and I'll show you a man who drives a 15-year old Volvo with 200,000 miles on the clock and has holes in all his jumpers... I'll also bet ten bob that the parish goes with the firm who says 'yes' to all their requests, however ill-advised they may be.
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ps.. failing to identify my church or diocese is intentional.
Dear Mr Clarion Doublette - when someone writes this, there is almost always a good reason for doing so and directly second-guessing the church and diocese is apt to create difficult situations for people.
My worry is this - should you ever want to make a sensible spec change/modification, something to really improve the instrument, properly thought through and everything, the BIOS certificate will just get in the way. The BIOS people will send you on a guilt trip for wanting to alter a 'historic instrument'. I don't think this is justified - do you?Your 'real improvement' may be someone else's 'wanton destruction'. There are too many instances where people have turned up, hacked the top two-thirds off a Dulciana rank and called it Fifteenth, or added totally inappropriate fractions and upperwork. Frequently, the people who do these things are not as talented as the original builder. In rare examples, they are (Roger Yates for instance).
I would tend to trust that a builder of Harrison status knew perfectly well what a Fifteenth was, but chose not to include one; and therefore the rest of the pipework wasn't voiced to accept blending with higher partials, and the choices made in winding and soundboard design would be ideal for wind-hungry 8' stops and Harmonic Flutes but would make life very hard for a 2' sufficiently delicate to work with fundamental-heavy stuff.
I can't say that I agree with every BIOS certificate ever issued, but it seems to me that the protection of good organs from the whims of organists, organ builders and diocesan organ advisors (who are usually just as human as everyone else involved) is a sensible priority to have. It also seems extremely right and proper that someone outside the church (e.g. a DOA) should be able to instigate that process to protect instruments from the whims of clergy who are often hell bent on throwing them away. It may frequently be a useful certificate to wave in insurance claims, too.
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...it looks more like the right kind of instrument for accompanying Anglican services...
Enjoyable and valuable as historically informed quasi-replicas are, there is something to be said for an organ designed for choral accompaniment...
Dogma in organ building works two ways; there's the Ralph Downes sort, and there's this sort. The sooner we collectively ditch the notion of designing organs for choral accompaniment (a completely nonsensical idea, if you stop to think about it for even a moment) and focus instead on designing musical instruments the better. That should be the end of the matter.
A distinguished elderly organist, whose passing was mentioned recently in another thread, lay down in front of the bulldozers when his church commissioned a historical reconstruction by Bill Drake after a fire. Of course, a few weeks of living with it went by and he then realised the absolute simplicity of the matter - they had obtained an exceptionally good musical instrument upon which - surprise, surprise - he was able to play pretty much any music, including accompanying the choir.
Therefore, it doesn't matter that this Cavaille-Coll won't sound like a Harrison. It doesn't matter that Gloucester doesn't sound like a Harrison. Whether they are good musical instruments or not lies only 25% at the most in the stoplist.
No two pianos sound alike; if the whole world were full of Steinways and nothing but, wouldn't it be a tedious place? Many pianists embrace different types of instrument and temperament and other characteristics and exploit them to the max. Yet frequently we organists are guilty of ruminating that no instrument should be without two sets of strings, a 32' flue and an enclosed Clarinet just like the ones at Salischester.
I will be very near the front of the queue for a visiting choir slot at Sheffield when this is complete.
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At the time, the Barker-lever was probably the best action avalable, but not nowadays.
Some would say the same of tracker. I think that's entirely beside the point, however; it's important to take things as we find them, accepting (rather like your diesel engine in a steam train idea) that there are pros and cons to any solution.
In this situation, it would be inconceivable to move an organ and install in a new 7-days-a-week role without replacing a 40-year old electric action and everything associated with it from magnets to cabling to key contacts to power supplies to transmission gear - in short, significant cost. It appears sensible to spend a little more on something which is a) restorative, and therefore qualifiying for more grants and generating more interest and
is quite likely to last longer than the electric action it replaces, whilst not having any significant disadvantages. -
On another note, are there any advantages to playing a Barker lever assisted action? I would love to hear from anyone with experience regularly playing an instrument with it as it`s rare that I have.
Six years' knowledge of the Romsey organ, which is Barker lever to the Great, convinced me of its excellence. You get a very fast and crisp action which is exceedingly low maintenance, can be played very expressively, doesn't require complicated transmission systems and power supplies, and from backfalls up is just a simple mechanical action with no underactions and nasties hiding within the soundboard waiting to go wrong. There is a definite difference between a toggle-touch electric keyboard and the actual feeling of pressurised wind against your fingertips. It's one of those things which will never be possible to simulate exactly.
IMHO talk of public order offences is just silly; such noise as there is tends to come when inferior quality leather buttons have been used or (as is frequently the case in France) maintenance is not so thorough. Then, whenever you press a note, you get a click as all the slack is taken up in the trackers, backfalls and usually the coupler chassis. That is all straightforward to adjust to give a perfectly acceptable clean and quiet response. Nobody in the choir stalls at Romsey could hear our action going, and even the close microphones when we recorded it only get the occasional clunk. I have experience of louder, coarser actions* of all types, from tracker to direct electric.
Incidentally, I don't think it's fair to cast about that they are about to create an anachronism which won't be any good for Choral Evensong, which appears to be just under the surface of one or two postings. To play music, you need a musical instrument. The controls might be in slightly different places and do slightly different things, but that doesn't matter. The more a player is engaged with and working collaboratively with an instrument, the more colourful the results will be.
* I make one exception - the incredible contraption by Aubertin/Gaillard at Thann, which has a Barker lever action running on very high-pressure air provided by an industrial-sized compressor. That does make a bit of a racket, it has to be said.
Smallest five-manual ever?
in The Organ
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Presumably only if they restored the fifth manual and undid all the tonal changes.
Is there not still a stipulation that anything the Lottery contributes to must have an element of mechanical action?
Much as I'm in favour of stick organs, I don't think I'd fancy making and maintaining a 5-manual coupler chassis, with or without octaves. Pneumatic might actually be smaller and simpler.