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Contrabombarde

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Posts posted by Contrabombarde

  1. During a fairly protracted period of agonising whether to buy an electronic organ I saw a couple of times on Ebay a two manual and pedal practice harmonium made by Rushworth and Dreapers and was sorely tempted to bid, except that I knew it wouldn't get through my front door. Whether the new owner sold it quickly afterwards or whether there are several of these things still in existence that appear on Ebay now and then, I don't know.

     

    But it does raise some interesting issues. Does the expertise, and materials, exist to build a fully reed-driven home practice organ rather than a pipe organ, if I so wanted to? I might be wrong, but I can't imagine many pipe organ builders would be wildly enthused if I approached them to build me a complete stand-alone console just so i could plug in some electronics and have a digital practice organ. Who these days has the know-how to build a home practice organ-replacement harmonium (ie at least two manuals, pedals, pipe organ compass), and how would the cost compare to a small home pipe organ or a toaster?

     

    Probably hopelessly off topic , but I love the way discussions on this forum develop!

  2. I thought the challenge specifically banned us from using digital stops, in which case free reeds would be sailing pretty close to the wind as I thought harmoniums were the pre-electronic answer to electronic organs in people's houses...but having played some of the incredible instruments in the Saltaire harmonium museum including a free-reed replica of how the organ in York Minster used to be I can see why you'd maybe want free reeds in a home organ. But does anyone still make harmoniums?

     

    Anyway, for those of you yearning for three manuals but worried about the space, it IS possible to build a three manual tracker organ, complete with 16 foot pedal, in a case not a lot bigger than a piano. I actually played this one in its original home in the late Mr Armstrong's bungalow and can vouch that it does exist (though apparently now elsewhere).

     

    http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N01165

     

    Case:

    http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/PSearch...N01165&no=1

     

    Spec: Choir 8 2 1/1/3 Gt 8 8 Sw 8 4 Ped 16.

     

    Tracker to two manuals, pedals and third electric. Quite how he packed everything in is a mystery to me, but he did it!

  3. There's an intriguing little 14 stop three (!) manual dating from 1790 in the chapel at St Michael's Mount near Penzance, which itself is well worth a visit. But you have to choose your repertoire carefully as the keyboards are non-standard, Great long compass, and a short compass Swell.

     

    Contrabombarde

  4. Well, our hosts havegenerously allowed the continuation of this discussion thus far so I'll pose a question I've not seen addressed before.

     

    If I understand correctly, the biggest limiting factor with digital electronic organs is the quality of the speakers. Sampling pipes (assuming you go down that route rather than the Bradford approach) shouldn't be difficult. After all, you only need to sample once and can reuse the sample many times. You can use the most expensive, sophisticated microphone available should you wish. It's a one-time investment.

     

    The digital "innards" shouldn't be a problem either. Given that sound quality hasn't advanced greatly in say the past five years, yet processing power is improving all the time, there surely must be a point, and I'd be surprised if we hadn-t already reached it, when further advances in processing power or RAM don't lead to improvements in sound because there's nothing left to improve. After all, if you sample at say 256kb/s and then at 512kb/s, the difference requires a faster processor but as the human ear cannot distinguish the improvement, there's no point going for the higher spec. At what point will (did?) standard PC technology be sufficient to drive a large digital toaster?

     

    Onto the meat of my question. If the sampling and procesing are now as good as they can get, that leaves speakers as the weak point in the chain. Wha can be done to improve speakers further? In an extreme case, given that speakers normally take up a fraction of the space of pipes and each speaker conveys the equivalent of many pipes, what would happen if a digital organ was built in which every "pipe" had its own dedicated speaker, so that there wre several thousand tiny speakers, distributed across as wide an area as a pipe organ windchest. Has this ever been attempted? And how much different would it sound compared to having just a 5.1 speaker system say?

     

    Bringing the discussion back to pipe organs once again, if Yamaha and others can very successfully emulate the touch sensitivity of a piano when making high-end digital pianos, I wonder when electronics will permit precise control over the opening of a pallet according to the velocity of key depression - essentially designing a tracker sensitivity (not simply "tracker touch") for an electric action. I can't believe it's not been tried before, so assuming it has, why hasn't it caught on?

     

    Contabombarde

  5. ==========================

     

    As for organ-cases, some of them are incredibly ugly, and if I can find it, there is one in the shape of a duck, complete with wings, head and a beak! (It's porbably meant to be a goose, which has national significance in Poland). Some of the more modern "functional" pipe-rack displays take ugliness to a new level.

     

    MM

     

    I think you may have meant this bird? I'd agree it was hideous, were it not for being 250 years old next year! Oh, but what an incredible specification!

     

    Regał 8'

    Cymbel 2x

    Sedecyma 1'

    Kwinta 1 1/3'

    Flet kryty 4'

    Oktawa 2'

    Bourdon 8'

    Pryncypał 4'

     

    That website is incredible, and some of the Polish stopnames sound hilarious. Sadly the condition of many of the organs judging from the photos is pretty lamentable.

  6. Getting back to B St E the proposed rebuild....

     

    Do we have to? I was enjoying the subthread about professional recitalists' accidents with sequencers far more interesting :(

     

    Anyhow, continuing that theme...in an age of multi-level memory, can anyone explain why so few large organs have even just ONE channel with a remotely intuitive sequence of combinations? I mean, the number of times I've gone on an organ crawl, and with no time to adapt to the new instrument, launched into something requiring registration changes only to find an absoltely random pattern to the generals and/or divisional pistons, like 1 gives flutes, 2 gives you a tuba, 3 we're back to principal chorus, 4 is full organ, 5 is celestes plus a trompet someone forgot to push in etc. I mean, whilst I don't expect people to register their memory levels just for Organ Club visits, for any visiting organist it is a bit disconcerting to find a total lack of coherence amidst the pistons, and it's bad form to attempt to change the settings without the written permission of the Master of Music. I don't recall such ambiguities in organs I've played with fixed pistons, there's usually a reasonably coherent, even if not universally useful, logic to which stops come on and off, going from p to ff.

     

    Now, anyone care to answer, or shall we go back to discussing Bury St E?

  7. ======================

     

    That's what "Hogwart's School" lacks....a really good organ!

     

    :(

     

    MM

     

     

     

    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!

     

    You're being a bit harsh on Gloucester Cathedral organ aren't you? (Unsubtle reference to the filming location of the Harry Potter movies). Or is Gloucester not a good organ (ooops, slapped wrists all round!)

  8. Dunno how long it's been there, I've certainly seen it wheeled out on a number of occasions. I think it must have a "big brother" as I'm sure I've seen a chamber organ on stage from time to time. i once asked if, having proven myself with the firsh three notes of "Three blind mice", I might be permitted to tickle the ivories of its rather bigger brother in the concert hall but sadly but predictably such permission wasn't granted. :(

  9. At the risk of sounding like I'm promoting electronic organs...conflicts of interest stated at beginning. I have a Johannus at home. Second conflict of interest - give me a good tracker pipe organ any day.

     

    Can, or indeed should, electronic organs ever really be musical? My own preconceptions, and the decision to buy an electronic, were admittedly rather challenged by the installation of a Caville-Coll style console and samples at a nearby church (OK, by Johannus). The console is I think very beautiful to look at, and the samples in most cases pretty realistic - and they blend well. Further afield, at the Johannus factory is a demonstration concert hall which includes a four-manual Cavaille-coll model. They do a publicity DVD which I have seen, and it does sound and look pretty nice. Apparently the hall has regular concerts which are filled to capacity.

     

    So maybe that is an example of good art in electronics trying to catch up with the (obviously pretty strong) science. Sadly most of the rest of us can't afford such luxuries.

     

    At the risk of being banned from the forum for heresy(!), I wonder if perhaps we are missing out on the opportunity to digitalise more of the most outstanding organs. Looking at the samples available on Hauptwerk for instance, and knowing some of the organs featured, they are good, but I wouldn't say any of them are in the top ten organs in the world. If some of the finest instruments could be digitally recorded, note by note - and perhaps have precise measurements of pipe scallings and voicings to boot - there would be the beginning of a database of the finest instruments, to learn from, analyses, reproduce and (perish the thought) in the event of the loss of one of these organs have something of a template for reconstructing. If when practising my home organ I could flick a switch and bring up the specification and sound of say, Weingarten, Armley or Saint Sulpice...A sort of organ DNA database. Is this actually being done, or are the makers of electronics still tending to sample random churches that are prepared to let them have their pipe samples still, with not much regard for the quality or coherence of the tonal schemes therein? And what could builders of pipe organs learn from such an enterprise?

     

    Contrabombarde

  10. Well, I think I have mentioned before in these fora that if going for a home toaster I'd only really consider a three decker. I'm sorry, but an electronic is not a pipe organ, and with only two manuals and fewer stops to choose between I think I'd quickly feel cheated if I settled for anything less. At least with three manuals and nearly 50 stops I don't tire anything like as quickly of the sound. It's this that for home organs is perhaps one of the obvious strengths of electronics that is a clear weakness in church installations. In a church one has to design something of coherence, beauty and function and resist the temptation to add as manu stops as you can think of - and I've seen plenty of toasters with too many stops none of which is very good. But at home you can let your indulgence run riot, and if you have a five manual you can still play through your surround-sound headphones and bother noone else.

     

    Though I might be being a little harsh to the better toasters here. When I bought mine (3 manual second hand digital Johannus) I tried a few of the new ones in the showroom. Had I had the money I would have had serious difficulty choosing between say a 3 manual Rembrant and a 2 manual Monarke, given that the latter, with its combination of a console the size of a small home pipe organ in the style of an eighteenth-century instrument, speakers in the top rather than in the kneeboard, and a sound that actually almost convinced me it had pipes. Sadly responsive actions that simulate tracker don't yet seem to exist...

     

    That said, what would I do for my dream toaster if I had the money? Frankly I think personally I'd stick to four manuals, with the fourth being a composite Echo-Solo-Bombarde on the grounds that I can't think of any circumstances where you need both Solo and Bombarde, or Echo and Solo, simultaneously. But I'd also save the handwringing of what style to go for by having dual (or more) voicing and select a romantic voicing for romantic works and a baroque voice for earlier music. (I'd probably actually want several different voicings). That way I'm not limited to only one set of stops. Though of course it does create a further challenge in the shape of designing a specification that is reasonably coherent, not confusing to the player, yet can be credible with both 18th and 19th century voicings (what sound be paired to the Viol celestes or Tuba Mirabilis drawstops when on Baroque voicing, and how many romantic organs have six rank Sharp Mixtures?)

     

    Aesthetically I'm not absolutely convinced by taking an existing console and sawing it up to add an extra couple of manuals - personally I'd feel a bit odd if the keys on different manuals looked different. And are you sure you have enough room in the jambs for all the extra stops? Would it be better to add some height to the organ and construct new jambs? Though I did see a three manual Compton electronic on Ebay once that had an extra two manuals fitted coherently.

     

    Continuing my imagination further, I could also see a role for the dream toaster being totally liberated from any one design and allowing endless changes by doing away with stop knobs or tabs altogether, and instead having say a touch sensitive LCD screen either side of the keyboards where the stop jambs would normally go. You could display virtual stopknobs that would be touched to come on or off, and with that arrangement you could simulate any console of any organ in the world so long as the stops existed in the machine's memory. I have a vague feeling someone has already tried this - and I presume that's exactly what applications like Haupwerk are meant for.

     

    Ooops, sorry, that requires you to have an on-board computer...

  11. My absolute favourite recording of my favourite piece of Bach is Michael Dudman's stunning performance at Sydney Opera House (not least for his amazing cadanza near the end that runs off the climactic Db major chord). And his choice of registrations to my ears could have followed Bach's written instructions. That aside, I see no excuse for not varying registrations at least during the Passacaglia (there seems less scope for varying during the Fugue). After all, isn't that what other manuals were made for? And as for pistons, sure they aren't needed on a three manual organ with a stop assistant, but I'm sure if Bach were alive today he'd make full use of them. At the end of the day the P&F is a set of variations, and I sincerely hope noone would dream of playing Organo Plenum throughout the Sei gregrusset variations!

  12. I see the console was designed by a firm of architects. I think that knowledge alone would have made my heart sink before I ever saw it.

     

    Perhaps in future organ advisors should stick to employing car firms to design organs. I mean, could anyone fail to be wowed by what happened when Porsche (yep, the car manufacturer) generously offered to design - and fund - an organ for St Nicolas Leipzig? It's enough to make me want to go out and buy a Porsche right now (ooops, sadly can't as the toaster ate up all my savings).

     

    I'm not kidding, here's the link:

    http://www.porsche-leipzig.com/en/porschel...ulturelles.aspx

     

    And discussion on it on this forum:

    http://web16713.vs.netbenefit.co.uk/discus...p?showtopic=713

  13. Here here regarding the other movements - I can't decide whether I like the first or the second more, but either I prefer to the Toccata. To my shame I haven't actually learnt the rest of the symphony, I did get a bit put off by the technical challenges in earlier movements. Of course, the final movement is hardly easy, but as every wedding organist has to have it in their repertoire, I couldn^t avoid it...

     

    As for speed, I have a group of friends in a medical organisation who all at various points have asked me to play for their weddings, so I tend to see the same people at each wedding. Needless to say they have without exception asked for the Toccata, and the ongoing joke is that evefry time I play it it's faster than the previous wedding. There is a grain of truth in that, as the first wedding or two were in large reverberant churches and more recent weddings have been in drier acoustics which permit faster speeds :lol:

  14. Other than the fine Compton console at Derby Cathedral, with its illuminated (non-)drawstop knobs, I have yet to see a pipe organ with illuminated knobs. Why is this I wonder, given that with modern LEDs the risk of bulbs blowing is pretty much eliminated. Have any recent organs been built with such stopknobs?

     

    On the "other side", the mid-range Johannus organs (Rembrandt series) have illuminated stopknobs which toggle on and off by both pulling and pushing. It's elegant, but when I played one they did seem very plastically and actually rather frail. Is that necessarily so, and why should the toasters have all the best tunes, to paraphrase somebody?

     

    Contrabombarde

  15. Thanks very much for those two very comprehensive and clear explanations of upper harmonics and Septiemes and Nones. I'm familiar with the concept Hammond had of adding sine waves, but for some the idea may be new, and the example of multiples of tenor A at 110 Hz is very useful. I didn't know however what the Septieme and None add, or why so few organs have them if they are useful (or why any bother if they aren't)...

     

    So next question - if demonstrating the full talent of an organ large enough to have these stops, what wold you play to show them off?

  16. For reedy spice the Septime, in contrast, is so flat from the conventional 21st, it has little meaning within the musical structure so avoiding discord but provides that odd harmonic content (in contrast to even harmonics) which is otherwise provided by the Tierce.

     

    PS If it's useful here to expand on the reason why a fundamental difference frequency is produced by sounding of harmonics please let me know on or off list.

     

    At the risk of sounding naive, under what circumstances would you normally use a Septieme (or for that matter any of the other rare mutations, like the None 8/9' or the 27th (1 3/13')? I can't recall ever playing an organ which featured them, what exactly do they add? And how the heck do you tune them (in tune to the viol celeste???)

     

    Contrabombarde

  17. For anyone contemplating buying something "pre-owned" (second-hand doesn't seem quite right for an organ), I have been suprised at the number of small house-organs for sale in the Netherlands.

     

    There is an auction site, but I can't recall what or where it is; except that it works (not surprisingly) as a "Dutch Auction."

     

    They also have an abundance of toasters on the same site, but the lots come with flat pedal-boards....be warned.

     

    MM

     

    I think you were referring to

     

    http://www.marktplaats.nl/index.php?url=ht...rgels/c761.html

     

    Many electronics, but also some pipe, and just look at thsee prices! I bought my home Johannus from Holland, and paid around £700 inclusive to have it fitted with a concave radiating pedalboard (by the Johannus factory) and shipping to UK. Utter bargain.

  18. It's a fascinating exercise to try to put together the smallest spec that will allow the greatest flexibility without becoming tiresome. George Ashdown Audsley wasn't much help when writing his chapter on house organs "The Art of Organ Building" when if I remember aright he spent around 100 pages discussing concert-organ sized house organs and one sentence dismising anything smaller as not worthy of consideration. Ironic given that the vast majority of house pipe organs, certainly those built nowadays are probably around 5 stops or less practice organs!

     

    As a total aside, and at risk of being totally flamed, may I mention the word "digital"? Just once. As a thought. I know the brief here is to design a pipe organ, and in principle I'd always go for pipe over electronic. But for flexibility in case anyone reading this is thinking "I can't afford the space or size or cost of a house organ but don't want a toaster", I can say that the playing pleasure of a three manual electronic in my house has paid for itself many times over. Sure I know it's not the real thing, but given the choice between three and two (and Ive played plenty of naff two manual toasters, haven't we all), if you must get a toaster, adding a third manual and bigger spec adds back in versatility and hence playing pleasure a fair bit of what is lost in not having pipes. And the neighbours don't complain when I feel like playing in the small hours thaks to headphones. And for sheer mania, I've seen four-manual toasters for sale on the continent for around £10,000.

     

    But if I had the money, and the space (any idea how much something like that would set me back new???), that Jennings house organ is just sweet.

  19. Thanks, Pierre

     

    Ah, I see that the image needs to be on another web site. That could be a problem.

     

    Its just that I would appreciate comments on an idea I have for a pallet whose design could provide both a lighter touch and more control of the onset of speech. I haven't come across anything similar in existing designs. It would be completely tracker - that is, no electric or pneumatic assistance. I have no means of trying it out to see whether it would work and, of course, I could be barking up completely the wrong tree.

     

    I think it would be best if I could provide an image to accompany the explanation of function. I have drawn a CAD image which I have saved as a bitmap.

     

    Any ideas?

     

    John

     

    There are plenty of free-to-join image-hosting websites such as imagecave.co and villagephotos.com. Bascially, you open an account with them then upload a photo, needs to be small filesize, typically less than 250kb, so make sure you can shrink it down first. Then just upload your photo, and it automatically creates a unique web address (URL) for the picture that you link as you would any other site. Keep photos small for the benefit of people with slow internet connections,k remember to relog in every month so they don't delete your account and off you go.

     

    If you are having problems send me a message and I'll try to stick your picture up myself.

     

    Contrabombarde

  20. The church is indeed still in use. It's a smells-and-bells Anglo-Catholic church, with incense etc :). It's wonderful!

     

    P8210012.jpg

     

    P8210011.jpg

     

    St Mark's, however, is empty and neglected... :(

     

    DSC_0332.jpg

     

    I played the organ at All Souls Leeds during an Organ Club visit in 2004. It was mentioned that Abbott and Smith's workshop was round the corned from the church so the church benefitted from a free tuning contract with the mutual arrangement that they would allow demonstratrion of the All Soul's organ to prospective organ purchasors at any time.

  21. Thomas Heywood's CD of Melbourne deservedly got the Editor's Choice in Organist's Review, and it ranks as one of my all time favourite discs. I've met the guy and his wife in recital in London, and I must confess the idea of transcriptions took on a new life as a result. Why Beethoven? Because apparently no-one (I find hard to believe) has ever before transcriped all nine symphonies to organ. But he has the decency to publish them (very professionally, very clearly designed and well laid out) and I am slowly munching through V:

     

    http://www.concertorgan.com/index.php?data...f2e9f589c5897da

     

    I was once asked to play the Throne Room at a wedding too...it begins rather like the Mendlessohn Wedding March to add to the fun.

     

    One of my favourites is Meyerbeer's Coronation March from Le Prophete, I think that's already been mentioned.

     

    I once found a piano duet version of Rossini William Tell which without much difficulty transcribed easily onto organ (again for duet) and which I've had a lot of fun with, especially as one part is much harder than the other, so it's a good one to give to friends at short notice (I mean, letting them play the easier bass part).

     

    Something I have wondered, maybe it's the height of bad taste, but are there any organ transcriptions of piano concertos, with the piano part retained? Petit Mess Sodinghel excepted, there's not much music written for piano and organ, but I sometimes wonder how one of the great piano concertos would sound with a pianist playing the piano part and an organist filling in for the orchestra. Has this ever been done?

  22. Perhaps it's 'inappropriate' to rebuild the church. :angry:

     

    Well, perhaps having been both Organist and Treasurer at the time the tornado took the roof off, I should explain what I meant when I said a replacement organ would be inappropriate for the new church.

     

    The land the church was built on was originally given by a member of the Lloyd family (of banking fame) in the second half of the 19th century, to establish a church that would serve and be a witness to the local community. The Lloyd family home was at the time a grand mansion in Farm Park (still standing, and now used as council offices). From its beginnings the church has been evangelical in tradition.

     

    It happens to be in one of the poorest wards in the city and the Diocese, and the population is today predominantly Muslim Mirpuri Parkistani. On various occasions in the past there have been suggestions that it might be closed due to the combination of lack of funds (a small, not particularly affluent congregation with a large, expensive to maintain building) and shrinking member base (as the local population becomdes increasingly Mirpuri). In fact, during the 1960s there was a serious suggestion to turn the old Bishop into a 2 manual electric action extention organ, but shortage of funds and the possibility that the building might be demolished mercifully scuppered the idea.

     

    In the late 1990s the deteriorating condition of the building, coupled with the acknowledgement that an undistinguished, cold, unwelcoming and expensive-to-maintain building meant that serious consideration was given to replacing the building with something more appropriate to the needs of the present congretation, but that would also function as a community centre better meeting the purposes for which the land was originally given. The congregation was unanimous that it would be more honouring to the original benefactor, if when the first building had outlived its purpose, it was replaced by something more appropriate for the modern church's mission, rather than be saddled with an unwelcoming, expensive building that didn't serve the local community and distracted our priorities. At the end of the day, the mission of the church is to glorify God in the world and bring others into His kingdom, not to try to rescue dilapidated Victorian buildings, keep organs going, create work for organ builders or give jobs to us organists, even if that is an important aspect of liturgy and worship for many of us.

     

    The tornado has been a blessing in disguise therefore; for safety and economic reasons the old building had to be demolished (safety, as the roof was in a periolous condition, economic, because aside from the tornado, there were major structural problems that would need addressing before too long, that would not be covered under insurance, and since finding a few £million to put these right was well beyond the scope of the congregation), so it made no sense to spend insurance money on a new roof only to demolish the church at a later stage.

     

    As for the question of the organ, we only used it for hymns, and did not even sing hymns every week. Given the rarity of organists in the area, plus hymn singing is not a strong part of this particular church's tradition, it makes no sense to invest scarce building funds in a pipe organ; I doubt even an electronic organ would get played. I wouldn't suggest to an African Caribbean Pentecostal church meeting in a Portacabin somewhere that their priority should be a new pipe organ (many of our congregation are African Caribbean in any case). Where an organ is going to be loved, cherished, looked after and played to the greater glory of God then it has a vital role in the church's ministry, but I hope I have made a case for saying that not every Anglican church needs a pipe organ...

     

    As for whether it is inappropriate to rebuild the church, the area is crying out for a Christian witness, and the combination of land, funds and a willing and enthusiastic congregation mean that I sincerely hope and pray the church building will be replaced before too long. Even now, the church is very much alive and meeting in the hall of a local school. But I should close with the Archdeacon's wry comment that in all cases he had come across where a church building had been destroyed (usually around here by arson), and the church had been forced to relocate to a hall or school, the congregation had grown as a result. After all, the church is technically not a building but a collection of people, so in some ways that shouldn't be a surprise.

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