Contrabombarde

Photos and story of the rescue of one of these little gems here: http://www.stmary-caterham.org.uk/lawrence/organ1.htm Earlier thread: http://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/3604-hoxne-organs-and-benjamin-britten/

I think I can help! JWW wrote a number of rivetingly tedious books on organs, one of which is available as a pdf to download here: http://hdl.handle.net/1802/26524 On page 286 he says that he also describes his invention the Clear Coupler in Musical Opinion June 1886 pages 486-7 and in English Mechanic volume 69, 30 June 1899. Unfortunately for you volume 69 hasn't been fully digitalised so the only tantalising glimpses of a mention are below: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gUI_AQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=clear+coupler However, another of his books is available online in full, namely "The Organ, its compass, tablature and short and incomplete octaves" published 1884, in which Warman describes himself as "late organist of Quebec Anglican Cathedral", now seemingly based in Canterbury. There is a description without pictures of the Clear Coupler on pages 120-121 but in essence it seems that it is merely a Great to Pedal coupler that acts on the Great action distal to the key, so that if Swell to Great is also drawn, the depressing of a pedal note sounds the Great without pulling down and sounding the Swell key that is coupled through to the Great key: His reasoning was that when Pedal divisions were poorly developed, Pedal to Great with Swell coupled through might be too overpowering for the manual balance. Full text: https://archive.org/stream/organitscompass00warmgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

Good question. I can think of two pieces that require top G on the pedals - the Thalben-Ball pedal variations and Dupré Cortège et Litanie. Any others that stand out?

Having never (so far as I can recall) ever played an organ with a 6 1/5 or 4 4/7 stop on the pedal division may I be so naive as to ask what would have made them so useful at RFH (or for that matter on any substantial organ)? And why the Solo 2/2/7 (as opposed to an 8 foot pitch Septième of 1/1/7)? Contrabombarde

I'm afraid I've gone the other way....all but stopped listening to Classic FM. They play the same small repertoire over time and time again and seem to have a stock of just three organ pieces - two toccatas and the SS organ symphony. My many listener requests for them to play other music has fallen on deaf ears. Radio 3 has been a revelation - so Handel did write more than just the Halleluia Chorus etc. Back on post....other than the sometimes truncated organ voluntary at the end of Choral Evensong and Sunday Worship, what are people proposing to do to encourage more organ music on R3?

Thanks for that explanation Colin - interesting arithmetic observation that although metal (though presumably not wood) pipes slightly lengthen in hot weather, the effect of the speed of sound in hotter air more than cancels out the effect of the longer pipes so that pitch actually sharpens. But I'm puzzled by your suggestion that pipes increase in pitch by three cents per degree Centigrade - that implies that between a freezing winter and a hot summer, which could see a change of 30 degrees centigrade, the metal flue pipes will be potentially a semitone sharper in the summer. I can't say I've ever noticed such a dramatic change, and indeed if pitch was affected to that extent they would be unplayable not only with reeds but also with wood flues. Furthermore, I thought the adage was that reed tuning was affected more by temperature fluctuations than flues - are you suggesting that reeds actually stay better in tune than flues, and that when the organ sounds out of tune in summer, it's the reeds that are in tune and everything else is out of tune? Why do we find reeds unplayable with metal flues when wood flues remain in tune with metal flues in summer?

I find that the combination of Swell Unison Off, Swell Octave and Swell Contrafagotto 16 can give me a rather nice 8 foot cornopean. I suppose that similarly Swell Unison Off, Swell Sub-octave and Swell Harmonic Flute 4 would give me a strong Harmonic Flute 8 foot. That is, if I didn't simply want to just play up (or down) an octave.

Thomas Trotter is both Organist of St Margarets Westminster and Birmingham City Organist - not quite the same but a long distance between the two places of employment. And his predecessor George Thalben-Ball was also Birmingham City Organist and organist curator of the Royal Albert Hall, whilst his Sunday job was organist of the Temple Church in London. Any advance on that?

No, those of us who are left-handers are unrecognised geniuses who have no problem working out fingerings of either foot!

As it's a small one rank organ I wonder if the pipes are arranged chromatically from bass to treble, chromatically one whole tone apart so that the tallest pipes are either side and smallest in the middle (or vice versa) or largely chromatically with a few bass pipes at the treble side? I thought the whole point of arranging pipes a tone apart was to ensure a more equal distirbution of long and short pipes across the width of the soundboard to prevent wind robbing at the extremes. But portative organs and other very small instruments that I've seen tend to just arrange by length from left to right. Almost certainly I guess you wouldn't be able to rearrange the position of the pipes to find out if it makes any difference though.

I must say I'm kind of "what's the point" at this point. I mean, I can't really see any need for six manual organs though there are several in existence, and when I played a five manual in recital and used the top manual I almost fell off the bench trying to reach it. Indeed at Liverpool Anglican cathedral the music rack slides up to give access to the Bombarde, and when I played there I nearly couldn't find the fifth manual as it was obscured by the music desk. I'd have thought a series of divisional on-off stops to the fifth (or sixth) manual would be far more sensible given that once you get above four manuals there are several possibilities for the remaining keyboards - bombarde, echo, string, Grand Choeur etc. I don't know any organists who have Marfan's syndrome but I guess they would be pretty much the only people capable of playing the top manual of seven.

Resurrecting an old thread, I just read that the world is about to gain its second SEVEN manual organ with a combination of mainly digital and some pipe (Wurlitzer) ranks. http://sfcoda.org/SFCODA/Home.html Octopuses need not apply for the job of organists.

A worthwhile thought from Colin indeed methinks. It strikes me as somewhat ironic that for no more than a few thousand pounds some could could rip the guts out of the existing console, rig up some high quality secondhand speakers, connect to a laptop running Hauptwerk and the sound could potentially be way better than that of a new off-the-shelf electronic organ costing several times as much. I know of people who would be more than capable of rising to the challenge. But in a large ecclesiastical building with presumably fine acoustics and a budget that would extend to a modest reconditioned pipe organ transplant, why go for the mediocre, rather than the Rolls-Royce - or even the much cheap DIY virtual organ, which surely can't be any worse than the existing instrument and would probably sound quite a lot better than even a new electronic organ? Having personally built, for a very modest sum using mainly timber from B&Q and bits and pieces off Ebay, a very substantial four manual virtual house organ, I can see plenty of logic in at least rescuing the existing console, and for home practice and learning new repertoire it has made a huge difference to my technique. But for church use where there is any possibility and budget of rehousing a real organ, why not do so?

If the console is of otherwise decent quality then no doubt someone will soon be bidding for it on Ebay and for a few hundred pounds will be able to snap it up and install MIDI and run a very respectable virtual organ from it. Meanwhile if the church is looking to only spend £20k on an electronic organ I dread to think what one that is "all singing, all dancing" will sound like, given past experience of supposedly top end instruments. GIven the spacious looking balcony, was there not a single redundant organ in working order that could have been acquired via the BIOS list?

Not sure if this has been shown already, but what do you do if you can't decide whether to invest in a pipe organ or in two concert grand pianos? The answer of course is to get the two pianos, mount them on top of each other and clip a pedalboard to the lower one! Bach's Passacaglia as yoj've never heard it before.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF864Fev0ws

I've just started learning Bonnet's Concert Variations. It has an impressive toccata at the end and a fearsome-looking pedal cadenza passage complete with four-part chords with the feet immediately before, which I always assumed having once seen it in concert, as unplayable. It isn't - there are two tricks that make it considerably easier. (i) play in socks (ii) if that's too radical, Bonnet wrote an alternative version that's only a couple of bars long. Given Bonnet comes out of copyright in 2014 I hope his music is about to enjoy a renaissance (who couldn't enjoy his lovely, silky "Elves" for instance?). Another set of very beautiful variations with a brief but spectacular toccata-like flourish at the end are the Surzynski Variations on Holy God - see imslp.These appear to be very little known or played but are well worth learning - the music is of high quality, very straightforward to learn and shows off a wide range of organ sounds from diapason chorus then pp, through soft flutes and solo reeds to full Swell box shut to full organ.

Ooooh, now we're really starting to get off-piste and the fun begins! Barié toccata Callearts toccata (OK he was Belgian) Gaston Dethier toccata on Adeste fidelis (all 30 minutes or so of it) Grison toccata Georges Krieger toccata Mailly toccata Pierne toccata Réné toccata Renaud toccata Franz Schmidt toccata in C (Austrian - could this be the most difficult toccata ever written?) Vierne D major (Symphony 1) Vierne B flat minor (24 pieces) The Grison is a little on the long side but really lovely and there's a stunning recording on Youtube at Salisbury. I'm presently trying for the life of me to figure out how to learn the Vierne B flat minor which seems to break every rule of fingering in the book (thumbs on black notes etc) - any tips from the pros on this forum? Oh and Tony thanks for "coming out" about the Carillon de Westminster, I hate it too, perhaps because (i) it seems fiendishly difficult and (ii) it's too dull to be bothered trying to learn. At least the B flat minor has flair. On a serious note for learning, there's an excellent and inexpensive Dover book with loads of toccatas and carillons of varying degrees of difficulty, though many are now out of copyright and can be found on imslp.

Correct, the Odeon West End, from 1930 to 1988 known as Leicester Square Theatre, is a two-screen cinema on the south side of Leicester Square, London used for the BFI London Film Festival and occasional premiers. The Odean Leicester Square is the famous one with the Compton and the tall black monolith outside. It is proposed that the new hotel which will replace it will house a smaller two screen cinema in the basement apparently.

Indeed - and I hope it continues to impress cinema-goers for many years to come. We don't often hear about theater organs on this forum, but our kind hosts Manders are apparently in the middle of restoring what will be the biggest Wurlitzer in the UK, at the Troxy in Stepney: http://www.organfax.co.uk/_store/_files/articles/OFA_P3O4I7Q69TH.pdf There again, if my memory serves me correct it isn't the first time Manders have worked with Wurlitzer pipework (ducks for cover as the St Paul's Cathedral trumpet militaire makes its presence felt......)

The church website sets out its strategic purpose (Google translation attempted): http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=http://www.grotekerkzwolle.nl/&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSt%2BMichael%2BZwolle%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3Dri2%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26channel%3Drcs http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSt%2BMichael%2BZwolle%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3Dri2%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26channel%3Drcs&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&sl=nl&u=http://www.pknzwolle.nl/&usg=ALkJrhgGMxM0_TJF9x5a3qeDdlrGvtEOkw Of course the church has to live in the real world of shrinking resources and make best use of its assets to continue its ministry for future generations. The work of the church is far bigger than keeping its organ going - though the website does mention that for a fee advanced amateur players can hire the organ to play on certain days. Like Liverpool, Lincoln and some other cathedrals, a very worthy venture I think.

I gave a recital on a one manual foot-pumped organ last summer - amazingly I got through to the end without once running out of wind, though to prevent me forgetting to pump I had to keep one eye on the music and the other on the position of the little lead weight suspended from a thread adjacent to the music stand that had an alarming tendency to shoot up faster than I could pump if I let my attention wander for a moment. As this thread seems to have taken on a life of its own around blowers, I might have previously shared the frustration of the time I was working in Africa and used to visit Uganda every couple of months. I'd try to fit in an organ practice once or twice each visit, which meant a marathon two hour journey across Kampala to Namirembe Cathedral, and not infrequently I'd get there to find there'd been a power cut to that quarter of the city so no blower. I guess Bach must have had to perfect his skills on the pedal harpsichord, given that the St Thomas organ required 5-10 burly men to keep it winded. There's a story somewhere about the time Samuel Wesley overstayed his welcome at a church whose new organ he was trying out after a service. The pumper was already keen to get home and when Wesley introduced a second subject into his fugual improvisation, already past 15 minutes long, the vicar signalled to him, paid his due and he abandoned the organ in mid-fugue. The late John Birch had to abandon a recital at Norwich Cathedral after burning out the blower partway into his program - goodness knows what he had been playing. As for electric actions, Wayne Marshall probably regrets playing the movable console during a BBC broadcast at Bridgewater Hall soon after the Marcussen was built, since the transmission failed. That organ at least had a mechanical console that he could have sat at. Unlike the the infamous Proms Concert just after the Royal Albert Hall organ reopened when the blower could not be started due to an electrical fault. The concert went ahead with the organ subsituted for a Yamaha keyboard for the organ concerto (Ive's fourth symphony). On the positive side, lightening strikes maybe aren't such a bad thing if they can put out electric action organs that don't deserve to live (thinking of Llandaff in particular).

Most interesting. As I was watching it I couldn't help thinking, wow, those pipes look like they're getting on a bit and hardly fitting for a brand new cathedral. The trusty NPOR came to my rescue and I discovered that the organ was almost a hundred years old when it was installed in the cathedral, having originally been a large 3 manual Nicholson dating from the 1860s which Harrisons converted to a four-decker in 1899.

I must say there is something to be said for Rothwell's genius idea of having the stop(tab)s, rather than the pistons, arranged between each manual. I've played one of his organs and heard another in concert and have to concede they were both brilliantly designed and beautifully voiced and entirely deserving of historical organ certificates. Curiously I can't see any organ designers rushing up to build new organs with such a console though.

There is something to be said for hand or foot pumped organs with mechanical or pneumatic action in places without guarenteed electricity. A few years ago when the European Union was considering banning electrically blown pipe organs on the grounds that no electrical devices should contain lead I did sarcastically wonder if the organ in the Royal Festival Hall should be rebuilt with tubular pneumatic action and hydraulic blowing apparatus from the River Thames. It ought to have been completely legal as it wouldn't have been electrically powered, and I'm sure the scrap lead merchants would have loved to supply all their unwanted lead to make the thousands of miles of tubing that would have ben required!

Crikey, is that an organ console or a relic from the NASA moon landing mission control centre?