[Amusing Stories And Incidents]

I love these tales!

 

May I add an anecdote about the worst wedding I ever played for? It was on a very dilapidated 1930s Rushworth that clearly hadn't been played for a very long time. A few weeks before the wedding I met the couple (friends of mine) in the church to demonstrate different possible voluntaries etc. Apart from intermittent ciphers, at one point the organ suddenly developed the most remarkable banshee wail that initially I thought must be a treble tromba ciphering - but it continued with all stops in and was out of tune with the Great tromba. I discovered on entering the organ that a flap of reservoir leather was torn and every so often popped out under wind pressure causing the shrill noise.

 

More problems developed on the morning of the wedding whilst rehearsing with the choir, until in despair I dispatched a bass to go off to the local B&Q with a shopping list of emergency repair items such as duck tape and superglue. Thus in the interlude before the start of the wedding I found myself crawling arond the inside of the organ in my best suit taping over the cracked leather of the Great reservoir and hoping it wouldn't pop out again during the service. (Note: if any organ builders are watching this forum, could you please let me know if what I did was unforgivable vandalism or heroic salvage? I'd hate to think I caused expensive damage to the instrument wth a botched repair).

 

Five mintes before the bride was due, horror of horrors, the ivory of the Great Middle C fell off. I found it too difficult to play without an ivory (the bride was coming in to the Hallelujah Chorus and exiting to Widor) so I decided to liberally apply the remaining superglue to the underside of the ivory and stick it back on again.

 

Except that I put a bit too much on and found that not only was Middle C now stuck to B and D, but my left hand was stuck to Middle C.

 

I managed to unstick it all eventually and the wedding passed off, mercifully, without any further embarressment. But I've never been back to the church again and hope I never have to.

 

 

 

Oh rats, I just discoved our curate's been posted there and wants us all to come to his induction service...

 

Contrabombarde (new to the forums - I've posted a bit about me on Introduce Yourself).

[Introduce Yourself]

Hi everybody!

 

I chose the name Contrabombarde, not because I'm contrary (most of the time) or bombastic (hope not), but I have to confess it is my favourite stop on organs that have one (used in moderation of course!) In reality my name is David (Pitches); I originally studied organ at Manchester Grammar under Andrew Dean, then was an organ scholar at King's College London where I studied medicine.

 

For the last seven years I've been living and working as a doctor in Birmingham, during which time I've seen the demise of no fewer than two church organs. Firstly Christ Church Sparkbrook, which did have a rather nice if dilapidated 3-manual Bishop of 1877 untill two summers ago when a tornado literally raised the roof. Lots of frantic emailing around the world led to a Dutch firm who bought the organ from us to save, restore and relocate. I made a valedictory recording of the instument before the rains came, with part of the organ chamber open to the sky and me having to wear a hard hat for safety.

 

Having moved up the road to St Christopher's, the organ there recently died too - this time due to building works next the the church that evidently required the demolition of the blower house. I just wish somebody had told me before I started to play the first hymn on Easter Sunday... The instrument in question is a small Ingram with some Hill pipework; once again I'm trying to get it rehoused.

 

For practice I have a three manual Johannus at home (complete with 32 foot reed of course). I'm not sure that on these forums it's considered polite to mention electronic organs but I wouldn't swap it for anything...

 

Contrabombarde

 

Later this year I expect to be moving abroad to work with a medical charity (to central Africa - anyone know of any decent organs there?) but while I'm able to I'd like to be able to join in the chat on these forums - thanks for welcoming me!