Contrabombarde
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Posts posted by Contrabombarde
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The William Drake restoration of the Buckingham Palace Ballroom organ (http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=D08337) mentions that "electronically controlled pumping of blower feeders introduced" - could this be the same as what I was asking about above?
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And that is the advantage of the footpump for this music - it's subtle, but does allow the music to "sing" with the phrasing in a way that a constant electric blower can't do.
Out of curiousity, baroque organs would all have been hand or foot-pumped originally. I'm aware that many baroque survivors (and their modern reproductions) will have retained the original blowing equipment but in addition will have an electric blower, and I'd wager that 99% of the time the electric blower is used rather than the footpump. But instead of a fan blower which delivers a constant supply of wind, have any baroque or neobaroque organs had electrically operated bellows fitted that go up and down like a manual pump? How different would the organ sound if hand (or foot)-pumped, or with an electrical motor operating the pump, compared to being blown with a fan?
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Here's a link to a recent recital on a four-stop organ complete with footpump:
It's hard enough focussing on the music when giving a recital, without having to remember to pump the footpump every few seconds!
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Dr David Pitches plays the 1854 Sprague at Hammerwood Park near East Grinstead this afternoon at 4pm (20 July):
Stanley (1712 - 1786) Voluntary no. 9 in G
Sweelinck (1562 - 1621) Mein junges Leben hat ein End
Zipoli (1688 - 1726) Elevazione in C
Bach (1685 - 1750) O Gott, du Frommer Gott choral partita
Pachebel (1653 - 1706) Ciaconna in F minor
Brahms (1833 - 1897) Schmucke dich, o liebe SeeleMassenet (1848 - 1912) Elevation, from L'Organiste
Vierne (1870 - 1937) Berceuse (from 24 pieces en style libre)
SS Wesley (1810 - 1876) Choral Song (introduction)The organ is a one manual instrument, likely the only Sprague still in existence. It was built in 1854 but designed as a much older instrument and features much older pipework. The specification is Open Diapason / Stopped Diapason / Principal / Fifteenth:
http://npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=D03181
This recital forms the first half of today's concert. In contrast the second half features the singer-songwriter and expert guitarist Bella Farny (outdoors, if the weather holds up!).
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More photos in the Daily Wail today:
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I once played at a wedding that was (mis)timed to clash with the FA cup final, and such was the football fervour that the service was peppered with football references. I couldn't resist playing hints of the "Match of the day" themetune inbetween verses of one of the hymns.
Needless to say, noone noticed.
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I just came across this piece by someone I'd never heard of and who has apparently never been discussed on this forum. I can't find any recordings listed other than this one either:
Hugo Kaun has four pieces of organ music listed on imslp though elsewhere I found references to other works. I thought this Abendstimmung was quite stunning, a bit Reger-esque with (it seems) every other chord a diminished seventh and every other note a double flat. Not too difficult, quite short and some dramatic sequences in the middle. Can anyone add anything about this composer?
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At my recent recital (projected onto a big screen complete with pedalcam) a sharp-eyed member of the audience afterwards asked me why I wasn't making much use of heels. Whilst my program included a fair amount of baroque music for which one would almost never use heels, it occurred to me that perhaps a side-effect of preferring to play in socks was that it was often just as easy to slide my toes onto adjacent notes than to use toe-heel. So perhaps my preference for wearing socks does lead to less use of heels if I can play just as legato in socked toes. Any thoughts?
Of course there is a time for heels - I'm starting to learn the Bonnet concert variations and can't see how you can play the four note pedal chords at the end in shoes, let alone without heels and toes!
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That always struck me as an anomaly, though at St St Paul's Cathedral the present choir master is titled Director of Music on their website:
http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Worship-Music/Choir-Musicians/Cathedral-Musicians
and can hardly be called Organist since he isn't actually an organist!
The organist is therefore called Organist.
This recognition doesn't extend to the Wikipedia article on St Paul's musicians however, since Andrew Carr is listed as Organist/director of music and SImon Johnson is "relegated" to suborganist!
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Dr David Pitches plays a recital of organ music with a public health twist on the grand Nicholson and Lord organ of Walsall Town Hall
Thursday 20 June 1pm, admission £2
Dr David Pitches trained as a consultant in public health. He worked for several years in central Africa before returning to the UK to work for Walsall Primary Care Trust. Until the 1970s, public health delivery was the responsibility of local government, and in April 2013 following recent NHS reforms public health has returned “home” again to local councils. It is to celebrate this arrival that he is performing a recital that calls to mind the contribution that advances in public health have made to life expectancy and health over the centuries, since many of the composers featured died prematurely from conditions that we would aspire to prevent nowadays.
Details of this and many other organ recitals can be found online at organrecitals.com
Johann Ludwic Krebs (1713-1780) Toccata, from the Toccata and Fugue in E major
Getting people to do more exercise is a high priority – only one in six adults in Walsall meets the recommended minimum level of moderate exercise per week. This exuberant baroque work was composed by Bach’s greatest pupil and is enough to get any organist’s legs into good shape!
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Sleepers wake, the watch cry pealeth)
This well-known tune, often used in television commercials, comes from a Lutheran hymn written at the start of the 16th century by a pastor who buried thousands of people during a particularly bad plague outbreak and is a reminder that none of us knows when our life may end. Bach was no stranger to tragedy: of his twenty children, ten died in childhood and his first wife died, possibly as a result of complications of pregnancy.
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) Mein junges Leben hat ein End (My young life hath an end)
Sweelinck was a noted Dutch organist, teacher and composer, spending his entire life in Amsterdam. This set of variations on a popular tune of the day highlights something public health professionals would rather not think about and would hope to delay!
Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726) Elevazione in F
Zipoli was an Italian Jesuit who went to Argentina as a missionary and wrote music for the local indigenous population. His beautiful, dreamy music formed the inspiration for Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack (most famous for including “Gabriel’s oboe”) to the film “The Mission”. Orchestral arrangements of his two Elevaziones are frequently played on Classic FM. He died from a tropical infection, possibly tuberculosis, before he could be ordained as a priest.
Edward Macdowell (1860-1908) To a wild rose (arranged for organ by Charles Scott)
Macdowell was an influential American composer and music professor and a founder member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His best-known short piece is “To a wild rose”, written originally for voice and piano and here arranged for organ. He died from dementia resulting from tertiary syphilis. Thanks to early diagnosis and effective treatment this is very rare nowadays.
Jeremiah Clarke (1674-1707) Prince of Denmark's March (arranged by Jürgen Knuth)
Often incorrectly attributed to Henry Purcell, this is Clarke’s best-known piece and was performed at the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles. He was organist at the Chapel Royal but fell in love with a woman he could not marry and eventually completed suicide with a shotgun.
Max Reger (1873-1916) Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (From depths of woe I cry to Thee)
Reger was a prolific composer whose life was cut short from a heart attack aged 43. He battled with profound depression and alcoholism for most of his creative years.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) O welt, ich muss lich lassen (O world, I must now leave thee)
This is the last piece Brahms ever wrote, as he was dying from liver cancer, one of a set of eleven chorale preludes based on hymn tunes.
Felix Mendlessohn (1809-1847) Variations on “Vater unser im Himmelreich” (Our Father who art in Heaven”) from Sonata no. 6
This set of variations is based on the Lutheran hymn tune for the Lord’s Prayer and forms the first part of Mendelssohn’s final organ sonata. Mendelssohn died aged only 38 from a stroke.
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) Veni sponsa Christi, from Vepres, opus 31.
Chausson entered music relatively late, having first studied to become a barrister. At the height of his musical career he crashed into a wall going downhill on his bicycle and was killed instantly.
Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897) Finale - Marche from Deuxième Suite
Boëllmann was organist at St Vincent-de-Paul in central Paris and composed many works, though he is chiefly noted for his “Gothic Suite”. He married the niece of his teacher and had three children, but died aged only 35 from tuberculosis. His wife died shortly afterwards, leaving his professor to adopt their three children. He composed this exuberant piece shortly before he died.
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The Rothwell organ at Gregynog has exactly this feature too.
THanks for reminding me of this, I played the Rothwell a few years ago and was most impressed both by its ingenuity and its sound. Miniture stop keys mounted between the manuals where thumbpistons normally go - how simple, elegant and easy to operate!
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Would it be possible to have it uploaded to imslp if you have a pdf version Nigel? Lemare died in 1934 so it should be copyright-free (though i suppose that depends how old your edition is). That site is a treasure trove of things, but it's only as good as what has been uploaded. Between that and scorser.com I have managed to expand my repertoire beyond my wildest dreams since I finished building my home practice organ.
Regarding the Renzi toccata, thank you to Davidb for pointing me in the direction of the Dover book. A copy is on its way to me in the post right now!
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Then what about Paladilhi's oratoria Les saintes maries de la mer, transcribed for organ by Albert Renaud and available here:
Nothing exists on Youtube under either composer so it must be pretty obscure but Renaud wrote some decent stuff and Paladilhi was highly regarded in France....
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Renzi (1857-1938) wrote a suite of three nautical pieces that are available on imslp:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Renzi,_Remigio
Fulgens stella maris (Shining star of the sea)
Amica stella naufragis (Shipwrecked star friend??? my Latin isn't what it used to be)
Jubilans stella in portu Jubilant star in the harbour)
He also wrote a rather spectacular toccata that I can't find sheet music to anywhere - if anyone can help on that score please pm me!
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Am I correct in thinking that a contributor to this forum (Contrabombarde) is currently the Organist at the abbey (as opposed to Director of Music) ?
I was one of several regular organists who assisted at the Abbey during the year that I lived in Shrewsbury. I am aware that Tom had connections overseas so am not surprised he is emigrating and would want to wish him every success for the future. I remain in touch with friends from the Abbey and the last I heard there was a real desire to see a raft of much-needed developments including complete organ restoration and most importantly, some practical steps being taken to identify funding sources and start raising the necessary funds.
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Anything by Bossi, who died mid-Atlantic following a successful recital season in Philadelphia in 1925?
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I would agree pretty much with Vox Humana on order of difficulty - I never felt I really properly learned the G major, there was always something to stumble over and I wonder if I will ever get it to performance standard.
The F minor is very underrated and very straightforward, the B minor is long but not technically especially difficult then there is the C minor fantasia and fugue 537 with the famous orchestral (Elgar?) version. For only slightly shorter works consider the P&F in C major 545. For standalone pieces consider the Fantasia in C minor 562 (and a few bars of a fugue remaining) and the very jolly G major Prelude (no fugue) 568. The E flat is very long so takes a while to learn the notes and has its challenges but is probably on the easier side of the big pieces too.
Going beyond Bach you might want to take a look at some of the Krebs preludes and fugues - most are rather annoyingly long but the E major and C major manage to stick to a decent length whilst full of boundless energy:
andA fun exercise can be had looking at them and guessing which Bach set inspired which (e.g. the F minor prelude and fugue seems based on the Bach B minor prelude plus the Bach F minor fugue; the Krebs A minor toccata is pretty similar to the Bach F major Toccata, you get the idea).
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There is a precedent for "organbuilders behaving badly". The monks at Weingarten rescinded on the agreed contract price with Joseph Gabler and so in addition to the many other remarkable mechanical complexities of this amazing organ, he installed a secret valve which essentially shut off most of the wind supply. After no-one else could find the cause of the organ's sudden asthmatic attack, he investigated - for a fee that made up for the shortfall he had been promised - and brought the organ back to full working order again.
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Whatever St Ouen's eventual fate, current (September 2012) indications are heartening. The crumbling external stonework of the central tower has just been restored in what appears to have been a very extensive and long-term manner. The building does have regular use as an events/exhibition space, and the city is quite commercial so likely to have deeper pockets than Abbeville. Elsewhere in the city, the flamboyant gothic jewel of St Maclou is buried under the scaffolding of another restoration. Different parts of the cathedral have been clad in scaffolding each year I've been; and recently one of the cast-iron corner turrets of its central spire has been temporarily removed. Those familiar with the sizes and heights involved will be able to speculate as to the costs of this work.
So I think we can be cautiously hopeful that the St. Ouen church will be capable of discharging its highest function - that of keeping the rain off CC's crown jewel - for a few years yet!
I did hear on the grapevine that one of the more celebrated organ sets available on Hauptwerk had manage to pay for its tuning and maintenance several times over as a result of a percentage of the proceeds of each sale going towards that organ's ongoing maintenance. It doesn't sound like the Hauptwerk microphones have been allowed anywhere near St Ouen yet (though the Caen Cavaille-Coll keeps many people happy at home in the meantime) but it's certainly a novel business model for keeping historic pipe organs going strong.
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Interesting scheme in that the chair organ is played from behind so the player has to turn around. Nice in a way - whenever I've gone to the Symphony Hall for a big oratorio it's always disappointed me a bit that they have the humungous Klais yet they don't use it, instead they wheel a little whistlebox onto the stage and that's the organ part. It reminds me of the days when many centuries ago the chair organ was played by the organist turning round 180 degrees (are there still any such organs left in Europe?). Though why they couldn't have controlled the chair organ with its own reverse keyboard AND the lowest manual of the main console beats me.
I suppose in any essential neobaroque organ you are going to have to compromise with the third manual - what is the function of an enclosed oberwerk in such a scheme, if not to be the "swell" in an otherwise baroque organ? The trouble is, if you don't have an enclosed division with full chorus to mixture or at least 2 foot, plus strings and reeds then large chunks of the (especially Romantic) repertoire become virtually unplayable.
The Japanese double organ is an interesting idea though things that have only ever been implemented once or twice (like the Pasi double temperament organ) tend not to be repeated for a reason. In this case I suggest it's because an establishment that can afford such an instrument could just as easily afford a brand new classical/baroque organ and rehouse a sizeable and decent pedigree redundant romantic organ and thus boast two organs if it wanted. In fact why not just throw all the pipes of several different styles together and control them from one console? Surely a competent organ builder should be able to blend pipework from across the centuries into a convincing single work of art? That's what Cavaille-Coll did very successfully at St Sulpice (with its Cliquot pipework). Others who have subsequently tried to do that have not had quite such success by all accounts (Pierre Cochereau at Notre Dame springs to mind...)
As to the observation that there is an alternative* to the Bradford that can achieve at minimal cost what the Japanese organ is trying to achieve, in the context of a music college I have said before and will say again, my own experience of that alternative is that it's actually a really good idea for learning new repertoire and for learning how it sounded (including experiencing the limitations such as lack of registration aids) on the organs for which it was originally written. With my four manual self-built home practice organ I can experience the challenges of playing a cinema organ, any number of romantic or baroque organs, in any number of different acoustics from dry to oceanically wet, tuned to the temperament of my choice, at the organ's original pitch, at the click of a mouse. The effect has been to hugely widen my repertoire and improve my technique. As a tool for learning and appreciating organ music it's been a revelation for me - but it so makes me want to go out and play the originals even more. In a small teaching room in a music college therefore it could be a fantastic tool to encourage more students to learn the organ and to learn on a variety of the finest "organs" from around the world, each the pinnacle of that particular design school - but it doesn't pretend to be a substitute for buildings that can and should be able to accommodate a pipe organ. A real concert hall needs a real pipe organ.
* At the risk of contravening forum rules by naming non-pipe organ products I'm referring to Hauptwerk in case anybody didn't realise.
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I have to be a little careful as I have seen some of the keyboard technique used, thinking particularly of the rotation of the wrist to use the back of the fingers, in some indigenous sub continental keyboard playing with the instrument that looks and sounds like an accordion but I think may be called a melodion. This however is a comment on technique, not on peace, transcendental meditation, hypnotism or other forms of meditation, all of which I would have thought were utterly impossible with that noise going on.
Maybe I display a lack of understanding, maybe I have yet to discern the difference between music and noise.
I offer this
as an alternative, antidote, whatever, to the use of loud registrations. I also offer it as a demonstration of the talent from younger organists in the US, refreshingly avoiding the need to adopt the style of the latest incarnation of CC.
I have always considered the Mander St Ignatius organ to have one of the finest cases of any instrument in the world so it's a bit hard on my eyes to see that post immediately before a clip from the Bavokirk. Regardless I think the Mander has the more beautiful console and the bench, with its huge ornate pillars is a work of the finest art.
But that Demessieux video got me worried - will the bench hold out to the end. Did you see it shaking slightly?
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An interesting spin off from getting hold of the C-C pack for me at least has been from the point of view of 'new' music to play. For example, the sets L'Organiste by César Franck contain some lovely small scale pieces that can work well in concerts or as voluntaries. These are on IMSLP or e-partitions as free downloads and contain many of the elements of his large scale pieces but in miniature. Likewise the Vingt-Six Versets Posthumes by Leon Boellmann which can by bought at a very reasonable rate from the Dr Butz publishing house. Also included are a rather lush Prelude á 5 by Lemmens and a decidedly manic Fugue á la Handel by Guilmant both of which they are getting this Sunday at my place. Although marked 'orgue ou harmonium' this music can work neatly on the sort of instruments I play on regularly yet can also transfer well to something larger. They are also not too technically demanding and there is a superb recording available, albeit on a German 'French' organ by Hans-Eberhard Roß in his César Franck Complete Organ Works Vol. III. Does anyone else here use this repertoire?
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Yes, frequently. Probably too frequently. The (dis)advantage I have found with my new Hauptwerk home practice organ is that one minute I can be listening to something new on Organlive that I think, "that's quaint", the next thing, I'm sitting at my console and searching for it on imslp, then I'll bring up whichever organ sample set best corresponds to the piece and I'll have a sightread through. Disadvantage since it means I'm accumulating vast amounts of wonderful and off-the-beaten-track music I had never before experienced, with an ever-increasing list of pieces on my "currently learning" list. I started a post on this very subject only recently with a few of my recent favourites:
http://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/3613-hidden-gems-and-stocking-fillers/
As this forum discourages discussion of electronic organs, let me also say that the opportunity to use my smartphone to download music in church that is new to me and that I particularly like during the service on occasions hasn't passed me by either! The joys of modern technology....
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Out of ignorant curiosity, as the screen with nineteen organ pipes flashed by too fast for me to read, which are the remaining 7 sharps and flats in the "19 semitone" scale (19 - 12 = 7). Each of the black notes can be either a sharp or a flat (e.g. C# and Db) making five but if we count E#, Fb, B# and Cb in addition that gives me 21 possible notes in the scale?
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I find it interesting that a certain Charles Sparkman Barker, who patented his eponymous lever in 1839, filed a patent for a "pneumatico-electric device" [sic] as early as 1862. He licensed its sole use to Henry Bryceson whose first essay at an electropneumatic organ - and thus almost certainly the earliest ever built in the UK - seems to have been in 1867 for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, subsequently moved to the University of Westminster, Fyvie Hall (formerly Regent Street Polytechnic). I have no idea what happened to it in the end:
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N16539
Two further electropneumatic organs followed in 1868:
Christ Church Peckham (organ destroyed in the Blitz)
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N16150
and
St Michael's Cornhill
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N17708
St George's Tufnell Park followed in 1871:
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N16881
Sources:
A second patent for electropneumatic action was filed by a Mr Goundry in 1863. The first electropneumatic action, designed by Barker and Peschard was at Salon (Bouche-de-Rhônes) in France where Barker was working at the time. Even earlier Henry John Gauntlett filed a patent for direct electric action in 1852 which would free keyboards from having to be echanically connected to organs, and improve key touch (see also the earlier comment about joining the various Great Exhibition organs together through one console) but the likelihood of this working satisfactorily seems small. And Audesley records that Forster (of Hull) claimed in the 1860s that Schulze had experimented with electricity in Germany too.
All this rather begs the question, when did tubular pneumatic action begin to be widely used in preference to the Barker lever, and why? There must have been a significant advantage to either tubular pneumatic or electropneumatic actions (besides the ability to build detached consoles) over it, for the use of Barker levers to be phased out in the latter half of the nineteenth century, never to return (at least, perhaps, until Willis' recent organ in Florence). From the chronology it would appear to me that both tubular pneumatic and electropneumatic must have developed in parallel initially, and it's tantalising to ask whether, had electricity supplies been safer and more reliable in the mid-nineteenth century, would tubular pneumatic action ever have been invented or refined in the first place? I suspect the reason why the advantages of electric actions were never realised until much later (and why therefore pubular pneumatic organs continued to be built right into the 1950s) ultimately boiled down to their (initial lack of) reliability combined with supply issues. One would have thought that if anyone was to champion electropneumatic action, it would have been that Hope-Jones hero-worshipper George Ashdown Audesley, yet if I recall correctly, even he, writing in the Art of Organ Building in 1905 felt unable to fully commend it due to the continuing unreliability of the technology at the time of writing.
This reminds me of a thread I started a little while back on the restoration of the organ in Shrewsbury Abbey; having been built originally with pneumatic action the plan now is to restore it but with elctropneumatic action. I raised the suggestion then that had electricity been more reliable during Victorian days we might not even be having the discussion since electropneumatic action would have always been the default for non-tracker organs and pneumatic action need never have been invented. However the need to repair and upgrade early electric actions is clear; around twenty five years ago my school replaced its organ (a 1930s Rushworth and Dreaper with console but no case, pipes were concealed behind wooden panels) with a new Peter Collins organ. The Rushworth console had to be removed, so a few pupils, myself included, under the watchful eye of a physics teacher, dismantled it over one weekend. His facial expressions ranged from pure delight (when dismantling the intricacies of the mechanism with no fewer than eighteen couplers across three manuals including intermanual octaves and subs, plus a combination system with setter) to horror (at the sight of all the poorly insulated cotton-covered wires and corroded rubber, a fire risk waiting to happen).
Youtube
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All the music was copyright-free, available free from imslp.org and saved as pdf files onto a 10-inch Android tablet to which a computer mouse was attached. The page-turner sat behind recitalist and clicked the mouse to advance the music one page at a time.
On my home practice organ I have a 26 inch 1920x1200 resolution monitor in place of a music stand, plus two thumb pistons and two toe pistons which advance the music two pages at a time or go back two pages. A 26 inch monitor has about the same area as a pair of A4 pages in "portrait" arrangement, and is only slightly narrower than two A4 "landscape" pages side by side. I have accumulated a vast digital collection of out-of-copyright music and have hardly used any paper music at all in the past two years.