Contrabombarde

I've never quite decided whether Thomas Crammer would be proudly dancing in his grave at the thought people were still using his Book of Common Prayer five hundred years later, or turning in his grave that we were still using it and in doing so making worship inaccessible to the common man, the very reason (well, one reason anyway) for having the liturgy translated into the vernacular in the first place. But I am reminded by the wise words of one cathedral Dean who said, "tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living". Whether we form a new association, reform an existing one or just settle on being salt and light in our community and maybe our PCC, I hope we would agree we should be striving to preserve the former and striving to avoid the latter.

We had the War March of the Priests for our wedding. However, we were concerned about the chortle factor given that my father in law is a theology professor and several other relatives work for the church, so in the order of service we went for the German title. Most of the guests being American, we figured that they wouldn't bother to look up the real meaning! For the record, it's "Kriegsmarsch der Priester".

I shall henceforth be eternally in debt to MusingMuso for his erodite summary of EastEnders. Now I know; and I'm so glad not to have wasted a minute of my life watching the show to find that out. Contrabombarde

I've attended quite a few recitals by organists famous enough to make certain people "walk across broken glass" to want to be there and sometimes the bigger the celebrity the bigger the disappointment on hearing a cacophony of wrong notes and the feeling "crikey, I play that pice better myself". Getting the right notes right is a good starting point. In fact, sometimes any more than that is a bonus! If the performer at least bothers to get the notes right (assuming that they, and not the organ., are the source of the bum notes), I'm preprared to be more tolerant of and give credit for different styles and interpretations.

If you read the rave reviews that a certain Mr Hope Jones got following his stunningly successful new organ at Worcester Cathedral, you'd wonder why it wasn't preserved as a monument of national importance instead of being summarily excised just a few years later. One hopes that the equally rave reviews of the new Tickell still ring true for a little longer than its illustrious predecessor and that the current organ won't be replaced by anything along Hope Jones' tonal lines any time soon.

Ouch! Up to $500 for the organist? That's more than many recitalists would earn for performing in a concert surely! Contrabombarde

In fact speaking from personal experience, if you drive a lorry over a bike it will squash it flat. Thankfully I wasn't on it at the time (I saw the lorry heading my way and jumped off just in time) but the look on the driver's face after he came to a stop and peeled the bike up off the road was priceless.

Please do let me know when you are planning to come and visit my neck of the woods so I can make sure that my bike and I are the opposite end of the country! Back on topic, I tend to learn toccatas by heart (I tend to miss fewer notes that way than if I'm lifting my hands every few seconds to turn pages). I'm glad to know I'm not the only who gets stuck in endless loops with some pieces though. Any tips for "emergency escape routes"?

Wonderful thing, Google. The Prelude (not sure about the Fugue) was transcribed in 1966 by Dennis Morrell and sold both separately (OUP 019 3744725) and within A Walton Organ Album (1996), OUP 019 3758709. Don't know if that is the version being played here, but here's a link to a (somewhat clinical I felt) performance on the Mormon Monster (Tabernacle organ). Gives you a feel for the registration possibilties: And if you're quick, someone is listing both items in their current used organ sheet music catelogue at http://usedorganmusic.co.uk/cat0710.pdf

Sorry, it's a while since I played. Yes, whichever the "written" way is, swapping hands fits more easily. However, unless you want to look like an octopus, it's only really feasible if you can bring the upper part (LH?) down an octave eg by playing the right hand part, with the left hand, on the Swell with suboctave on and unison off. Correct me again if I got that the wrong way round. You just have to experiment.

I've been on both sides of the fence and can see how couples can feel pretty miffed, especially if they aren't regular churchgoers and don't understand what's involved in preparing for a wedding. When playing for a wedding I always offer to meet the couple beforehand in church to demonstrate how the music actually sounds on the organ where they are getting married (as opposed to what they want to think it might sound like). I can't remember the last time I played for a wedding that wasn't recorded - even if on a mobile phone - and so I just don't bother any more asking if a video is being made or not. If a guest gets their mobile phone out midway through the service and starts filming on it I can hardly up the fee at that stage. In the case of a professional organist with a contract getting "bumped" by a friend of the family I can fully understand why he or she would rightly feel deprived of a fee. However, I have had experience of churches that have asked me to play for a special service because their regular organist can't hit two notes - only to find afterwards that the regular "organist" demands their fee for having not played. I don't know how widespread that is, but given that there is probably a rather sizeable number of rank amateurs, some of whom shouldn't be allowed near an organ let alone allowed to play for a service, and yet insist on a fee whether or not they play, I suspect some of the anger in the Telegraph article comes from people who have been asked to contribute a fee to someone who can't even play the organ properly, and who doesn't then play for their wedding. I don't want to offend the many "reluctant organists" out there in so saying; but at the end of the day I personally think it is a bit rich to expect a fee under such circumstances. If others disagree or think I'm being unduly harsh then please say so. I'm not entirely happy with the wedding cake scenario either. When we got married, we were asked by the hotel if we wanted to pay extra to have a cake, to which we said no, since my future wife and mother-in-law baked the wedding cake, and the hotel said that was fine. Again that probably isn't unusual - what is the practice of hotels when the cake comes from outside, do they charge or not? (In our case the hotel said that was fine, we paid for everything else, and then they presented us with a bill for the imaginary cake the day before the wedding. We refused to pay, and they backed down...)

I haven't seen the film, but apparently there's a starring role for the seven-decker console of Atlantic City Hall in "The King of Marvin Gardens" (1972). Just out, a pivotal scene in "Salt" has the heroine/villain machinegun the innards of the organ of St Bartholomews New York during a service. If you ever wondered what would happen if you fired into the action and reservoirs of a pipe organ whilst the blower is running, the effects are quite impressive. Don't try this during the sermon.

Well, if Hauptwerk has come along and sampled one of his instruments (OK, I know it's not Hauptwerk per se that does the sampling but you get my point), I expect his work will become rather better known than it is already. Evidently someone thought this was a sufficiently exceptional new organ to warrant it being digitalised along with, umm Trost, Caen, St. Maximin etc etc. Quite a good advert I'd have thought.

Peanuts my dear friend. Atlantic City Hall has ten - and five 4 foot principals.

Has anyone seen the new movie SALT? The key event of the film, the assassination of the Russion President in St Bartholomew's Church New York whilst attending the funeral of the American Vice-president, takes in a console close-up before the assassin launches her attack by aiming inside the organ case and causing serious damage to the very fine five-manual Skinner by shooting at the windchests and mechanisms, causing massive ciphers at a quiet moment during the funeral. In the midst of all this musical chaos she then triggers a grenade that leads to the president's death. Quite a shocking way to treat a fine Skinner if you ask me. I was utterly traumatised. Though I did wonder this: when she starts her attack the facade pipes start jiggling and dancing up and down. Has anyone witnessed that happen before anywhere? Seemed a bit implausible to me. Contrabombarde

And how much beer did you all get through whilst working that one out???

And to think that he "retired" the year I started as an organ scholar at King's - in his mid seventies! R I P Contrbombarde

My sincere condolenses to you MM for getting lost in Birmingham. Happens to me all the time despite living there ten years. I digress, and it's off topic, but maybe not so much. When the roof came off our church, we breathed a quiet sigh of relief. For years the congregation had been stuck with a ruinously expensive Victorian building of no great architectural pedigree, whilst the dream (shared by the entire PCC and virtually the whole congregation) was to have a more modern, flexible and easily maintained building. Whilst designs had been mooted, the cost of a new building was always prohibitive and we restricted ourselves to repainting the church and wondered when it would fall down. The realisation that the church was going to have to be demolished and replaced led to a short-lived joy however. Unknown to the congregation, a preservation movement was gathering pace (even to the extent of having a website) and the church was given an emergency grade 2 listing (meaning in our case the congregation would have to pay for its upkeep, not the state). The irony was that those campaigning to keep the church open had never once attended a service and had no suggestions about how a small congregation in one of the most deprived parishes in the Diocese could afford several million pounds to repair the building. (Even after reclaiming insurance damage, major structual problems like a collapsing tower meant that the building would cost a fortune to put right.) "The church has masses of money". Clergy pension funds? "Turn it into a mosque". There is already a very high density of mosques, and the land was originally given to the C of E for the building of a church as a mission to the local community. "Turn it into a carpet warehouse". And expect it to remain preserved? In the event the listing was lifted, and the building demolished. I gather that plans for a remarkable new building are well under way, that will enable the Church's mission to continue in this area for generations to come. Meanwhile the congregation meets in the nearby school hall, going from strength to strength which makes you wonder why we needed buildings in the first place. However, I'm fairly sure that the style of worship, and budget, and building design preclude the possibility of installing a pipe organ. So, back on topic again, I doubt there will be any appointments advertised for organist and choir director for this church once the new building is completed.

The famous Bach In Dulci Jubilo is short (2 or 3 pages) and quite easy to learn, with big stately chords and impressive cadenzas that lie nicely under the fingers. If you are of ARCO standard it should be a breeze: even if of lesser capability it shouldn't be difficult since the original is scored in two staves and could therefore be adapted for manuals only quite easily. As it seems to be played at 99% of the carol services I've ever attended or listenedto on the radio, you might prefer something a little less common, in which case this thread has plenty of suggestions.

And a sonorous Amen to that! Back in the 1940s, writing from prison Bonhoeffer mused whether the Church would do best to shed all her assets and as it were, start afresh with nothing. When my former church in Birmingham lost her roof in the 2005 tornado, we moved into the school hall, prompting the Diocesan officer to suggest that maybe we should make that a permament arrangement, since in his experience every church building that had had to close, due say to arson, had experienced significant growth once the congregation lost the building they were familiar with and moved into a "neutral" building that was less threatening to, and felt more "owned" by, the local community. And having spent the past three years working in a war-torn part of central Africa and having missionary friends in Mozambique it's clear that you don't need buildings to have phenomenal church growth. Of course, if you experience church growth, there comes a point when you start to need to go beyond hiring a hall one morning a week, and you fundraise and you buy a building, then furnish it, and become established, and in so doing start to become inflexible by virtue of the building's limitations. The town of Shrewsbury is a classic example - several very fine and quite enormous town centre churches (with fine organs!), and an incredible sense of participating in a tradition of continuous worship for nearly a thousand years if you attend an Abbey Sunday service. Yet in building a Norman abbey that is robust enough to survive another thousand years, but unable to adapt to the demographics of the age, it does store up problems in that congregations inevitably find their mission risks becoming more to preserve these magnificent buildings for the next generation than what it should be - using the buildings as a resource to further spread the Gospel. Thus to address Patrick's concern about British organ building losing its way, perhaps, dare I suggest (knowing that there are plenty of theological heavyweights lurking on the Forum), the rehabilitation of fine old organs in new premises where they will be loved, used and maintained, potentially has elements of Biblical restoration. That's to say, if we want a pipe organ but lack the resources to commission a fine instrument from new (and perhaps even if we have those resources), is there more we can or should do to fine new homes and give new life to otherwise redundant organs? In so doing we could be acting out a metaphor for the new spiritual life that our churches are in the business of encouraging.

This fellow http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=N11817 is up for sale! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/church-Chamber-pipe-...str_Keyboard_RL Doesn't look too promising from the photos, lots of pipework missing. Any opinions about the merits of preserving Vowles compared to other and maybe better known companies?

Firstly my condolences to you - the period between death and funeral is often one of manic preparation with an awful lull once everyone goes home at the end of the wake and reality sets in. Secondly, on playing - I was asked if I'd play at my mother's funeral but until you're actually there it's impossible to know how one will hold up and I decided on balance not to. We were very blessed that the organist of her church (a professor of organ performance no less) offered to play instead. But I'd written a Nunc Dimitis many years previously that until then had never been aired in public, so I somehow found time to dust it off, rewrite it for the parts I could actually muster together in time for the funeral, transpose it so they could actually sing it, and rehearse it. That on balance was easier to cope with - though it was a hassle rearranging and rehearsing it at such very short notice. Maybe there's an idea for you if you've ever written music? Finally, nothing shows up either on NPOR or Google but I did find a phone number - 01482 671212 - and a photo of an alarmly gothic Victorian building: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/405091 Best wishes, Contrabombarde

Am I completely dreaming, or did a totally new version come out a decade or so back by Novello? The ones I'm aware of from my days as a student are "Old" Emery Novello Peters (must say I never did get the funny looking clefs....) Barenreiter (looked nice but much more expensive and lots of page turns) Then the Kevin Mayhew one came out, didn't it have some funny order like everything was in chronological order of being written? How well did that work in practice? What other editions are people aware of? If you had to pick one edition for the complete works of Bach today which would you choose? Incidentally, there is an electronic version - probably several in fact, though at least the one I have looks like it's probably a digital copy of an early Peters. There is certainly something to be said for carrying all your music around on a laptop and just sticking the laptop on the music desk when it comes time to play. If and when tablet PCs come of age (thinner but wider screen) it could be a real benefit to organists - and of course with certain pdf software you can even annotate the digital music score.

Pulling out all the stops... Below the belt.... Puffing billy.... Me and my tuba mirabilis... Me and my tin whistles... What big pipes you've got... Having a swell time Having a great time Of pipes and pallets Prinzipals and pommers (or for any other alliteration for that matter, check out www.organstops.org) 1001 pipes For the risqué... My organ's bigger than yours...

Normally the word "extention organ" sends a shudder down my spine about on a par to hearing about an electronic organ being fitted in place of a pipe. Yes, I own a practice electronic myself, yes I'm sure there are some very fine electronic organs in churches, but I've just never had the chance to meet one myself. (Well, almost: I found the cavaille-coll styled Johannus in Yardley pretty convincing, the Phoenix in Edgbasotn just sounded, er, electronic. Given the acoustics in the former church were dry and in the latter a huge reverberent space, it should have been the other way round. And others I've spoken to have had distain for the Johannus, so we can't all be happy...) What makes therefore for a "good" experience with what otherwise might seem like a very unhappy instrument? I can think of a couple of extention orgtans I really rahter liked, one in Huddersfield Uni by Woods - the difference between that and most very small two manual practice organs was that this one had a third rank of reeds and so a lot of unexpected extra colour. The other interestingly is Geoffrey Holroyde's organ in the basement of his home in Warwick - a very carefully chosen and IMHO very effective "multum in parvo". It also benefits from rather lovely (yet electric action) keyboards. Maybe part of the reason I enjoyed the Yardley organ more than I thought I would was the unusual console with terraced and curved stopjambs. So what would "do it" for you if you had limited money and decided to install a unit pipe organ rather than an electronic? Maybe twenty years ago there seemed to be a general distaste for all things Compton and all things extention - perhaps that has changed. What would you have done differently at Nottingham, assuming a budget sufficient for only a few ranks of pipes and a brief for an organ large enough to fill the church with as much repertiore versatility as possible - and a first rate builder prepared to risk their reputation by not building an all-mechanical multi rank non-extended action organ but rather a unit organ :-)? (Thinks mischievously of the mini-scandle amongst my friends when Walkers, used to building only new entirely mechanical action organs, fitted a polyphone into the organ at Lancing College...)