Contrabombarde

Out of curiousity, NPOR records work having been undertaken in Ripon in 1901, 1913, 1926, 1963, 1972 (stop changes), 1987, 2000 (new console) and shortly 2012, all except 1901 (Hill) being Harrisons.You mention that you are expecting £260,000 to provide for another 25-30 years' service. Is there a particular reason for work of some description having been done, since the 1960s, little less frequently than once every 10 years, and how reasonable is it to expect further major work to be required in only another 30 years? For organs that are played heavily every day, whether home, school or major churches, what sort of working lifetime should be expected?

Hmmm, recently I've increasingly come across links to Youtube clips only to find the clip has been taken down. TUrns out there is an automated process going on, these are a link that explain the process: http://fairusetube.org/articles/20-falling-through-the-cracks with maybe a solution of sorts: http://www.wikihow.com/Unblock-Copyright-Infringement-on-Youtube So basically it sounds like if you put up three clips that someone, anyone wants to claim copyright of, Youtube can close your account and delete all your clips, regardless of whether the person claiming copyright actually does has any legitimate point? Digital rights gone mad!

Bringing comments from yet another thread, thank goodness for Tony and his colleagues who support NPOR and help protect organists from disasters at unfamiliar churches by enabling us to check up organs online before visiting!

I think I'm fairly tolerant when it comes to weddings - I operate on the assumption that congregations are there to support the couple not the organist so assume that noone will actually listen to me. Probably the hardest commission for me (as jazz doesn't come naturally to me) was the request to play some Stevie Wonder hits on a clapped-out pneumatic action organ once. Naturally the congretation listened spellbound to my every mistake... I do think it's good practice to offer to meet with the couple before the service since many are not familiar with the repertoire or assume that because something is well known to them, it will work on any organ. That doesn't always follow - once I was asked to play for a couple on a little four stop two manual organ with three 8 foots but I met the couple at another church which had a huge organ. I demonstrated Widor's Toccata on an open diapason with them wondering throughout why I didn't use tutti, and they liked it so we went with it. It was their wedding not mine. When it came to my wedding there wasn't even an organ at the venue so we had piano music instead. Liszt Consolation no3 anyone? Sumptuous.

I have the same name as a retired Anglican bishop and have not infrequently been confused with him, differing in spelling in just one letter. A few years ago after a lifetime of mistaken identity I finally summoned the courage to meet him and it transpired that we probably were distantly related, since we have an unusual surname and his love of geneology (tracing his ancestry right back to the Doomsday Book) showed several family members with my varient of the spelling and a general tendency to come from the same part of the country as my family.

The worship band in my current church were all on holiday so we decided to go for a "traditional organ" main service. St Ann Prelude at the start (announced, and after the congregation had come in but before the first hymn), Wir glauben all' an einen Gott during the Peace, Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam during Communion, St Ann Fugue at the end and hymns throughout. Unusual for that particular church to say the least, but appreciated none the less. I think it helped a lot that the minister introduced the service by explaining the Trinitarian significance of the St Ann and the relevance of the Clavierubung III chorale preludes to the Eucharist (yes, it was Trinity Sunday after all). After all, how often does the Eb P&F get played in churches up and down the land on Trinity Sunday and the organist is the only person in the building who knows why that, rather than any other piece, is appropriate for Trinity?

Fascinating thread. How much difference does the condition of the reservoirs or blower make to the wind pressure? I have no idea what conditiopn the organ was in by 1970 but seem to recal there was damage after the war. The difference a new blower (actually two, one temporary until the reservoirs can be restored) has made to wind stability in Shrewsbury Abbey is quite remarkable, making me wonder how much difference wind leaks would make to recording a wind pressure. If perhaps there had been leaks at the time it was measured at 3 1/2 which were subsequently patched up, could that raise the recorded pressure by almost an inch? How much can the pressure be changed before pipes need revoicing?

Once you've played St Peter's Raunds you may wish to eat your words. It may be in a small and of-the-beaten-track country country churcn but it is (IMHO) fully deserving of its historic organ certificate and was recently restored to glory by Nicholsons: http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N03492

You're surely not suggesting that they aren't habitually out of tune, are you?

Out of interest how difficult is it to retune an organ to a different temperament, and how does one go about it? Having more than once had the experience of an organ tuner whose attempt at bringing the organ into tune sounded more out of tune the following Sunday that it had been for the previous year since his last visit, I sometimes wonder how much difference a different temperament adds to an already out of tune instrument? One of the advantages of having a Hauptwerk practice organ at home is that I have a selection of probably a dozen or more different temperaments that I can play around with, but the sample set producers inevitably fine-tune the instruments either before recording or during processing so the organ (unless it's French) sounds pristine. Perhaps in the interests of authenticity I should suggest to the programers to have a "weekday winter tuning, central heating at 90 degrees for one hour a week on Sundays" setting!

Here's a photo of the Nicholson at Wolverhampton Methodist Church, Darlington Street, with one of the most complicated Whinfield combination systems I've ever seen, at least for the uninitiated. The pistons are again in pairs, though in the usual place between manuals this time: Link: http://www.npor.org....ec_index=N03142

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Well, if the EU thingy ever does come into effect it wil do wonders for the lead trade - just think of all those miles of lead tubes that will need to be used to convert electric action organs to tubular pneumatic (with gas, water of hand blowing of course) which would circumvent the ban!

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but am I right in thinking that there has been a reconsideration of this matter recently and pipe organs that contain lead pipes are again facing censure from our European Union masters?

The Mail article worries me, not least because of the number of times the word "alleged" appears. And frankly if the headlines are to be believed: "Two members who had together sung in the choir for a century were sacked" I'd be rather more worried at the health and safety implications of having several centagenarians in the choir stalls than by their reluctance to be CRB checked. The headline of course is sensationalising. Though I can't help wonder if CRB checks are a solution in search of a problem. At one church I attended, the age of the congregation increased the closer one came to the altar. The children and families all sat at the back where they could make a sharp exit if required, and the (elderly) choir were obviously at the front. The choir were the least likely of anyone in the church to actually come into contact with children, yet CRB checks were required for choir members. One couldn't help wonder if someone somewhere had got the idea that CRB checks were more to protect the choir against children than the converse.

Ah the wonderful memories of 1980s BBC television! Those of us who were mere infants in those days might recall the children's series "Silas", a period drama based in the nineteenth century about a young boy who ran away from a circus. It was most famous for having originally been a German production, dubbed into English, and the English lines had a tendency to arrive at any time other than the moment the original words were mouthed. At exactly 41 minutes into the final episode the eponymous hero, exploring the inside of a church, stumbles across the console of the very fine three manual organ on the rear gallery and tries to play it. Of course, there is no sound until a friendly priest appears and offers to show how he can make it work by drawing some stops and then he disappears off into the corner to furiously pump away on the bellows leaving Silas to play random notes on the organ. A dream come true you might think for the young lad. Given the patchy success of the dubbing elsewhere, it's no surprise that the notes that come out of the organ are neither the same notes as those he is shown depressing on screen, nor are they even sounding at the same time as he is pressing them - indeed they sound distinctly like something a 1980s synthesiser might produce! And to this day I've never worked out how a circus boy manages, after a few random notes, to begin playing something approaching a melodic tune with chords. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HG3R2bMPQ&feature=plcp&context=C38a95a7UDOEgsToPDskK4Pz8fou3oouLRXkbKTrXi Most importantly though, does anyone recognise the organ?

Interesting clip indeed - what's an enormous five manual console doing in a tiny parish church, especially when the organ on the rear gallery 14 seconds into the clip looks like a small one or two manual instrument? And since the demonstration during the first minute of different stops is on the Great, why are the stops being drawn from the left jamb, since pretty universally in the UK the Great division is on the right? Does that give a clue to the organ? Or was the swell to great coupler drawn?

A new peril that I have recently become acquainted with is the use of the projector and screen. Powerpoint surely has its place in certain service settings, but how many times do I need to explain to the projectionist that if he puts up a hymn verse by verse, he alone knows how the next verse begins, so it is unreasonable for him to take his cue to advance to the next verse by the congregation attempting to guess the hidden first line of the next verse, rather than advancing to the next verse as the congregation sings the last word of the present verse. A further problem is that the verses could have come from any source and therefore no longer have to follow what is laid out in the organ copy. Hence the Vicar can announce that "we will now sing hymn 526, words to which will appear on the screen", but disaster is bound to ensue if halfway through the hymn you realise that the order of verses as sung by the congregation bears no relation to that as laid out in the organ copy. Hmmm, we're on verse 3 according to me, so why have they already sung verse 6 and are now singing the words to verse 4? Is verse 2 coming? How many more verses are they going to sing? Will I provide one too many or one too few?

Simples! Just give him an A flat and come in on G for verse 3. Been there, done that, still alive!

MDF is available both uncoated and coated in a thin veneer of hardwood, so I suppose if you were building swell shutters (where its density makes it a very effective material) but didn't want any risk of disintegrating you could use the veneered version (and veneer the cut faces too for overkill). They would stain up rather nicely too! I was very impressed by the craftsmanship of a console I had the pleasure of viewing in the workshop of one of the regular contributors to this forum who pointed out that the climate of the place to which the organ was heading meant it was not actually built of solid oak but oak veneered marine-grade ply. If it's good enough for a boat, or a vintage British spoorts car (am I right in thinking that Morgans are still built around a wooden chassy) then it should be good enough for an organ.

I recently came across this account of what might be an unusual way of humidifying an organ: http://www.gesuparish.org/ministry/music/organ.html "To counteract the drying effect of winter’s low humidity, Kurt Mangel—curator of the Wanamaker pipe organ—devised a method of humidifying the organ space using the organ’s own windlines as a conduit for bringing humidity to the instrument. A large humidifier is installed in the blower room. When the organ is not in use, and humidity levels drop, an HVAC control system signals the humidifier to run, and the organ’s main blower to turn at low speed. This pushes humidified air into the organ. “Dump valves” located on the windchests open when the blower is not running at full speed, providing an outlet for the treated air. (When the organ blower is at full speed, air pressure inside the windchests pushes these valves closed.) Thus, there is a single place for humidifier maintenance, and a plumbed water supply." So when the organ isn't being used, the blower continues to spin at low speed and pumps humidified air around the windchests. I wonder if this has been tried elsewhere and how helpful it would be at preventing organs from drying out at this time of year?

Indeed it does exist, and it confused the @#$% out of the poor congregation at this evening's Nine Lessons in Birmingham Cathedral. Took me a while to realise that the order of the lines went first, second, third, repeat third, fourth, repeat fourth. Moral of the story - if you're going to take something very familiar and add a twist, either warn people in advance or do it as choir only!

At this evening's Nine Lessons at Birmingham Cathedral there was what I thought a truly delicious carol that I'd somehow never come across before, Well worth visiting the above youtube version sung by the King's singers and reading the appreciative comments. Imagine my surprise to turn the page and discover that its music was composed by none other than John Rutter.

Oh, so the forum is back up and running! Every time I've gone to it for the past few days the screen has said the forum is down temporarily for maintenance and will be back soon: http://www.mander-organs.com/discussion/index.php If everyone is still clicking that not realising the homepage has changed, a lot of people will be waiting a long time before starting to post again! Can the content of that address be changed to say, this is no longer the forum address, please change your bookmarks, or something? Apart from that, just leaves me to say, a big personal thank you to Mr Mander for this wonderful forum and a very happy Christmas to you, all the organbuilders working for you, and all forum members!