Contrabombarde

Dear Darky, that's a wonderful testimony that you just shared and I wish you every encouragement. I remember once someone telling me of someone who lost a couple of fingers yet still managed to be a concert recitalist. I'm a medical doctor myself; whilst not a neurologist I do know there are a few medical organists around so you might hit lucky. As your condition and story is so unusual you might even consider whether there are any research programs at somewhere like the Institute of Neurology in central London where you might find someone interested in studying your adaptation to the organ. As you obviously reached a higher standard than probably many of us on this board if you were thinking FRCOs you already have gone a long way. I presume your difficulty is with finger joint position sense as well as feet, otherwise you could learn music by heart and play accurately just by looking down the whole time. Purists might say, no cheating, but for goodness sake if it means you play the right notes well and make great music, who cares? Good tip on the manuals only music - plus don't forget the repertoire for pedals only too! Does choice of shoe help? Maybe rubber soles being less slippery keep your sense of where you feet are once you have located their position. Maybe playing in socks, being generally harder work, even slightly painful, but allowing your toes to curl around notes, might allow touch sensation, assuming you have retained that, to tell you where your toes are. Thinking a bit more elaborate, if you merely have a laptop and digital camera you could even mount the camera above the pedals either to one side or just behind the bench pointing down onto the pedals, then you will have on the musicdesk the exact position of where your feet are. Do report back to us on how you get on - there are a number of notable blind organists but we really must hear about players with other disabilities who have triumphed too! Contrabombarde

A blessed and happy Easter from the tropical heat of the Democratic Republic of Congo! Nearest organ to me sadly is a few hundred miles away in the next country but thank goodness for MP3s! Contrabombarde

At the recent Forum visit to Worcester Alistair mentioned that the new organ is controlled via a wireless network and the router has a unique IP address. That got me thinking, and I couldn't resist rising to the challenge of sleuthing the IP address. And so after a few sleepless nights I can proudly reveal the IP address that will log you into the Worcester Cathedral organ. From that you just need to hit CONTROL + HOME to switch the blower on, then you can play the notes remotely as follows: pedals 001-030, choir 031-092, great 093-154, swell 154-215, solo 216-277. TO pull out stops you enter the first letter of the manual plus the first and last letter of the stop followed by the rank length, so GOD8 gives you the Great Open Diapason. Oh, and don't forget to turn off the blower using CONTROL + ESC afterwards! The IP address you need to click to hack into the Worcester organ is HERE. For obvious reasons I'd strongly discourage you from doing this during a service. Plus I'm not sure that this post is very "legal", so I hope the mods will kindly look away on this occasion and not ban me from the forum! Contrabombarde

I have played the Fiskmonster, prompting me to start THIS thread. Nice organ, but about 50 decibels louder than it need have been to fill the cathedral...

I heard Thomas Heywood play at Headstone a couple of years ago, and wow, what an incredible performer, and what an incredible organ! I didn't manage to play it myself but have played the smaller and untouched three manual house organ at the University of Wales in Gregynog and, apart from its failing condition, found the stop "keys" very easy and logical to adapt to, though their presence did mean that there was very little space for combination pistons (which were just identical "keys" in any case). Throwing the question open wider, what other unusual designs of stop control have people come across, apart from traditional drawstops or stop-tabs? Here's my starter for five: LEDs Button-sized drawstops - an credibly fine organ from a prolific builder local to Leicester, also HERE ILLUMINATED BUTTONS ILLUMINATED NON-DRAWABLE STOPS (why can't toaster-makers stretch to real drawstops?) LCD TOUCHSCREEN (perfect for the Hauptwerk system, but surely it won't be long before a real pipe organ has such jambs)

I'm pleased to report that the wedding passed largely uneventfully yesterday after all. The Stevie Wonder moment seemed to be at least recognised, perhaps even appreciated. And given that the last time I played this particular organ for a wedding it resulted in THIS , I was just slightly paranoid. In the event everything was fine...until the final chord of the Wedding March, when guess what - the ivory of Great Middle C disappeared somewhere under the pedalboard. Superglue may be strong, but it's not perfect!

Well thanks to so many of you...I was touched by the Ray Charles movie but failed dismally to find anything I could play on a two manual R&D tomorrow. Stevie Wonder on the other hand....oh what sumptous chords, such Messianesque modulations. You and I, Ribbon in the Sky and Signed sealed delivered....let's see how I get on. At the very least it can't be any harder than the last wedding I played for, that started half an hour late because an important person forgot to bring the rings with him

Oh dear, this is quite depressing. They said anything by Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles, and everything I've seen so far on Youtube seems to be a ballad by a man who'se heartbroken at the breakup of his relationship. Please, did these folks ever compose anything romantic...

Well, I could have predicted it. I agreed to play the wedding for a couple I'd never met before, and when they asked me for suggestions, I said, of course, I'm happy to play anything within reason. Bad mistake. They want, during the signing of the register, something by someone apparantly called Stevie Wonder or "another Motown classic". Not being a composer or genre I'm familiar with, could anyone recommend me something suitable, including a link to the sheet music as a free pdf if possible? The wedding is Saturday afternoon Contrabombarde

Now that Hauptwerk is sampling the complete Salisbury Cathedral organ, I wonder how long wel'll have to wait before we can get to play St Paul's in our living rooms? The hardware is already there- WOW -, we just need someone with the patience of Job to record every one of those 10,000 pipes. And at the risk of causing our most generous moderators apoplexy since I know you have something of an interest in the "real" organ at St. Paul's - I can take no responsibility if you keel over at the very suggestion! But I wonder whether it is actually of considerable value to make accurate pipe-by-pipe digital recordings of such historically important organs, not to mention the experience of learning on a console that can be changed at the click of a mouse from a Silbermann to a Father Willis. OK, I'll abide by the rules and not mention digital again for a good while!)

Well, the new Disney organ in Los Angeles has no fewer than THREE 32 foots (ony one of which is resultant) on just the Great! I believe that's a world record for the number of 32 foot stops to be found on one manual. Even Atlantic City and Wanamaker can't match that (though there is a 32 reed on the Swell and a 32 flue on the Great at Pasadena). Contrabombarde (32!)

Depending on what is put into it at the time of drawing, I suppose the "Tibia Liquida " here takes some beating (at least it's a lot closer than Ratzeberg cathedral which I gather has a similar stop). Contrabombarde

Well, there's a very powerful, pulsating Contrabombarde 32 coming out of the boot of a Ford Escort full of teenagers that's just stopped outside my house, right now. It's a stop I normally enjoy in moderation, but at this time of night it's frankly criminal!

Oh dear, I'm sorry to have been a fool by airing my own opinion! Thanks for the Stephen Bicknell link, though it rather confirms my suspicions. I'm not saying there is no place for a twelth, but rather, why put one in an organ that has no mixtures and goes no higher than a fifteenth? And how often do you use the combination 8 4 2-2/3 2 and no mixture or higher harmonics on instruents where they are available? I think the point is that on classical organs you would usually use the twelth in conjunction with higher upperwork, and on romantic octopods there's little call for mutations in general. Put another way, if I was designing a very house or small church organ I wouldn't choose a twelth, I'd prefer a second fifteeenth for the Swell or larigot or perhaps even a light reed. Thoughts? Contrabombarde.

The original version of Guilmant's Sonata 1 was scored, initially performed as and still occasionally played as an organ concerto, and called, in the orchestral arrangement, his first symphony. Confusingly, his so-named second symphony was an organ concerto arrangement of his 8th and final organ sonata. He also wrote an Allegro pour Orgue et Orchestre - Opus 81 - I've never heard it, but Ian Tracey has made a recording in Liverpool Cathedral of it.

I do find the sound of diapason chorus with 2 2/3 but no mixture to be incorrigibly dull and never quite understood the point of having a Great with nothing above the 2 foot, no mixture, and a 2 2/3 foot to muddy the waters further. I can't ever remember the last time I used a manual Quint 5 1/3 either.

I'm intrigued to see from their website that their magnum opus is a 4 manual 70 stop instrument from 2006 in the cathedral in Abuja, Nigeria. But I've never heard of such a beast and Google wasn't any help either. Can anyone shed any more light, or is the cathedral being built in, er, African time?

As ever on these forums, fascinating! I once attended a concert, where, if my memory serves me correct, there was a small string orchestra playing, maybe even just a quartet. The cellist had to give a solo and gave a little speech in which he lavished praise on his fabulously expensive, rare, original 18th century instrument and how it helped him so much to play baroque music. Not to be outdone, when it was the violinist's turn to speak, she lavished praise on her brand new replica of an 18th century violin, claiming that it gave us an even more authentic performance than the cello, since the instruments that Bach's musicians would have played would have been new in those days, and they would not have been playing on 300 year old strings (did they even have cellos 600 years ago???

And a very fine recording it is too, especially of the later sonatas that I'd never heard played before. It was myself's Christmas present

I had the misfortune of landing myself with an exceptionally stroppy bunch in my university days. It was something of a poisoned chalice as I was the fourth organist to try running the show in less than a year, and within a few weeks of my arrival one member made a big show of arguing with the vicar and dividing the choir right down the middle ("nothing personal against you", he told me, "it's a problem I have with the vicar"). To the choir's apparent dismay, I actually got on really well with the vicar, and the congregation just appreciated the fact that they had a musician on the organ bench for once. I couldn't win. Choose simplistic music and they thought it was trite. Choose choral repertoire and they said it was too dificult. Attendance at services was hit and miss, sometimes I ended up singing the tenor part from the console if the tenor failed to show up (and I'm normally a second bass). in the end the vicar and I dismissed the choir and I settled on playing voluntaries. Nothing unpleasant, we just said they couldn't sit in the choir stalls any more and there wouldn't be any more accompanied music over Communion. The choir members were to sit scattered amongst the congregation and end support to the singing. It was noticable that within a few weeks they were tending to congregate on the front couple of rows (being Anglican, the congregation had that annoying habit of filling up from the back first). Then winter set in and they were cold, so they started wearing their robes and vestments again. Then the church got a bit full one morning so they decided to sit back in the stalls. The following week I submitted my letter of resignation and have never played there since. My deep sympathies to anyone who has to experience personal, as opposed to vocal, disharmony in the worshipping environment.

Come forth, ye sinners and repent... I hereby submit my humble apology for drawing Solo tuba, plus octave and suboctave, for the "pu-pu-pu pom pa pa, pu-pu-pu pom pa pa..." at the end of the finale from Guillmant 1, then coupling them to Great for the final chord sequence. As Mallory said of Everest, I did it "because it's there". (And also because in the original Guillmant specifies Acc Solo Trombe and I couldn't think what else he might have wanted.) And I loved every moment of it. (Though I also loved the luscious strings and found a use for the Hope Jones Viol in the Pastorale.) Contrabombarde

Errr, if the original poster feels that the intellectual challenge posed by designing a stop list of a certain size on a snowy day is too simple, why not add in an additional layer of complexity? How about asking, when listing your design, to specify pipe scaling and windpressure? That'll sort the men from the boys!

Well, I'm sure there will be a loft (?) of organists after me on this topic, but I'd just say what an enormous pleasure it was to hear, firstly a fascinating summary of the cathedral's former woes, visibly but thankfully not audibly demonstrated by the hideous case in the south transept with wooden diaphone pipes that looked big and strong enough to be capable of supporting the cathedral walls and roof if necessary (maybe that's why they are still in situ???) and following demonstration, we were kindly allowed to try the instrument for ourselves. Having last seen it in many pieces in Kenneth Tickell's workship two summers ago I was thrilled to finally hear it for myself. Doubtless someone will disagree with me (!) but my abiding impressions were of an instrument capably voiced to be able to approach most of the repertoire convincingly, with a wider than expected range of luscious strings and a very impressive variety of reeds. In the choir it sounded magnificent, though with its location and some relatively buried pipework, it would be unfair to expect the sound to carry all the way down the nave. Yet it still managed to sound impressive in the libary at first-floor level at the west end. The direct electric action with its unique (?) double magnets per pallett as a space-saving alternative to electropneumatic action might have seemed something of a risk in the project's gestation, but the reality was a highly responsive action with incredible repeat velocity. Let us firmly hope it will prove far more reliable than an earlier attempt at an electric action by a misguided telephone engineer! The console was beautiful, very clearly laid out, and included the drawstops for several of the yet-to-be-built divisions of the nave organ - I hope that one day soon these will indeed draw sound and the second organ will no longer be just a pipe-dream. I found the instrument to be one of the easiest large organs I've ever encounted to just sit there with no previous opportunity to try it out and just play something straight off with lots of complicated registration changes. Definitely a day to remember, for those who came from nearby and from those from further afield (I think I probably hold the record, having come all the way over from the Congo...) Many thanks to Adrian and so many others from the Cathedral who made this day, and this wonderful organ, possible. And thanks to Manders for the forum that's made it possible for us all to participate in this occasion, and who must have saved a fortune today in bandwidth costs as we've all been off the internet for a few hours! Contrabombarde

Staying well off topic (!), I visited All Saints Northampton shortly after the two 1980s Walker trackers had been installed but hadn't followed the church's history since then. So when on a recent organ crawl I discovered that the smaller of the Walkers had been removed and replaced with a 1939 HNB I was a bit surprised, maybe even disappointed, thinking that a 1930s HNB wouldn't exactly be my first choice if offered a redundant organ. But I was actually really surprised and impressed at how lovely the sound was (admittedly skillfully repositioned by Kenneth Tickell). Reading about the forlorn memories of the old HNB at Bath makes me smile - how tastes change! Contrabombarde

Last Sunday during the Comunion service I realised I'd forgotton to bring any appropriate music with me, but had recently been practising the famous Lemmens Fanfare in D (from his Organ Method - I'm sure you know the one I mean, just about the only piece he wrote that seems to get played these days.) I quite like it, it has the sort of catchy tune I find hard to get out of my head. But playing it during Communion? It's a toccata that was written for full organ isn't it? I went for a radical overhaul. Right hand as solo semiquavers on flutes 8 and 2, left hand accompanying on 8+4 flutes. And played at maybe a third to a half of the "correct" speed. I wasn't particularly concious of what I was playing, by memory, except it passed the time nicely as the congregation came up to the altar. But afterwards several people asked me what it was that I'd played as they liked it so much - that's pretty abnormal for my congregation to do. So it got me wondering - what other pieces have people on this forum tried, in public or in private, where you've played the notes the composer wrote, but changed the tempo or registration so radically that you've ended up with what was to all intents and purposes a completely different piece - and found that it actually worked quite well? For starters I heard there's one concert recitalist, but don't recall whom, that has been known to play the Bach Toc, Ad and Fugue throughout on an 8 foot flute. Other suggestions? Contrabombarde