gazman
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Posts posted by gazman
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I know of two organists - neither of whom is easy to please in such matters - who both settled for an Eminent DCS organ from Cathedral Organs Ltd. Jeremy Filsell, on the other hand, has a 3-manual Viscount Prestige.
I think Jane Parker-Smith has a 3 decker Viscount Prestige too.
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It is not uncommon for a couple to say they are not having a video recording and then for a friend or relative to take an unofficial or unauthorised video of the service. Collecting the fees in these circumstances is virtually impossible and pastorally unwise. Experience has shown that policing these events is incredibly difficult, even for vigilant churchwardens and sidesmen.
A solution to this is indeed given in my book. (This is, incidentally, still available at the reduced price of £14 including postage and packing to members of this Board.) I suggest that a standard (increased) fee is negotiated for all weddings and this fee includes all domestic (i.e. friends and/or family) video recordings. Professional recordings MUST be negotiated separately for obvious reasons.
My co-author and I hope to set up a website later in the year on which we can take and answer queries of this type. Also, we will be offering, free, a downloadable form of an organist's contract that will include provision for video recording, etc. fees.
Barry Williams
I'll look forward to receiving the book!
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Yesterday I played for a wedding which was clearly being recorded on a camcorder by one of the wedding party, although he was trying not to make it look too obvious. When I received my fee after the service, there was no video fee included. The vicar said that the bride and groom informed him that there would be no video taken of the ceremony, although he said that he did suspect that this particular person was using a camcorder, and that he spoke to this fellow beforehand to inform him that he wasn't allowed to use his camcorder unless an additional fee was paid.
This sort of thing has happened several times this year despite the fact that the bride and groom are always told that they should ensure that no recordings are made of the service unless the additional fee is paid beforehand. Unfortunately, with human nature being what it is, people often try to get away with paying less than they should.
I've lost out on several video fees this year and wonder if anybody else on this forum has encountered this problem and - better still - found a solution to it!
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This has just gotta hurt...
I have a former pupil whose skills were very similar. He subsequently found out about the RSCM recommended rates, and the suggestion that there should be a double fee if a video recording is made, and insisted that his vicar (who was reluctant to agree to this) applied this to all the weddings at his church. Imagine the poor wedding couples who not only had to pay him a fee to mangle the music at their wedding, but had to pay double for a recording. I suppose, however, they could send their videos in to "You've been framed!" and get their money reimbursed that way!
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I was very taken with the realistic swell sound when under box control of the Viscount, but thought that the key action was rather heavy - how have others found this? of course, they're all going to feel different to my electric action instrument that I play at church week by week!
I've had a Viscount Prestige three decker at home for about three years now. The initial "pluck" of the key action is slightly heavy (I think they intend it to be a means of replicating a "tracker feel"), but not unpleasant at all. I'm quite used to it, and find it a pleasant and comfortable instrument to play. The after-sales service is also very good. Last year I had to transport it to play for a friend's funeral as the organ blower packed up at the church in question. One of the internal speakers was playing up; I 'phoned Viscount late in the afternoon who sent me a replacement which got to me the following morning. Incidentally, the Viscount led a congregation of several hundred people without any problem at all, and people were coming up afterwards to say what a splendid instrument it was.
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Well, as I'm not made of money and my (soon to be) wife would relish the prospect of headphones being used, this is not an option.) I hope this topic is not entirely outwith the remit of this forum.
Also, do invest in a really good pair of headphones. Whilst the digital organ I use for practise at home sounds quite good in our small music room, it sounds absolutely excellent through a decent set of headphones and this is now my preferred choice for practise. Run-of-the-mill headphones just don't sound so good.
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The harvest of Sidney Campbell stories seems to be a fruitful one and the experiences of Vox Humana, especially, make for very entertaining reading; one looks forward keenly to the final results of all of these anecdotes, at some stage, in Churchmouse’s compilation.
The organist at Bristol Cathedral when Canon Edmund Fellowes was precentor found himself in a legal tussle with the Dean and Chapter; the case, having gone to court, was won by the organist, who returned to the Cathedral, choosing for the voluntary after evensong “Fixed in his everlasting seat” from Handel’s Semele.
But surely the palm for eccentricity should be awarded to the former organist of Truro Cathedral, Guillaume Ormond (1929 - 1970). I’m sure it was Gerald Knight (whose name I mention, not as an unreconstructed name dropper, but merely to suggest the veracity of the story) who told me one or two yarns about this gentleman. As is on record that the detached console did not appear until 1963 and thus Ormond was marooned upstairs for much of his tenure. It was possible to view some parts of the organ loft from the choirstalls and the dean was surprised, one day, to glance idly upwards during one of the spoken parts of the service and thus chance to espy bacon and eggs being fried on the organist’s bench.
On another occasion, it transpired that Dr Ormond had absentmindedly taken all the copies of the anthem upstairs to the loft and discovered his mistake during “Lighten our Darkness”. It was far too late to go downstairs and so the whole lot was jettisoned over the side. There must be more stories about this marvellous man; does anyone out there know any more?
DRH
Ormond was apparently also very forgetful. It is said that - more than once - he would drive somewhere to go shopping, do his shopping, forget that he had driven there, and return home by train. Subsequently, on finding his car missing, he would 'phone the police to report the "theft" of his car!
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When an apprentice I had to go with Mark Fairhead to help him do regulation on Selby Abbey. Mark delighted in calling the Posaune a P'saune, making a meal of the P's, shouting this to me from the console at every oppertunity when there were visitors in the Abbbey!
FF
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I think he'd calmed down a bit by the time I knew him. I've already mentioned the few anecdotes I have (there must have been more - probably I've just forgotten).
John Wellingham tells a good one from Campbell's time at Ely when Arthur Wills was his assistant. The BBC were recording a choral Evensong for broadcast on their Overseas Service. Arthur was at the organ. The producer asked for a 20-second improvisation at the start of the service. Arthur duly obliged - in spades, and in his inimitable style. Afterwards Campbell was seen tottering with his hands shaking limply in front of his chest in mock shell-shock saying, "The producer asked for a 20-second improvisation and what did we get? Five minutes of diarrhoea all over the keyboard!"
I remember John Wellingham being a good source of anecdotes. Mind you, there are one or two about him too! Several years back I attended a recital of his. As he had always told me that "music finished in 1750", I was surprised to find him playing some Rheinberger in the concert. I tackled him about this afterwards and he replied "Well, Rheinberger didn't have a swell box"! -
How about a future Archbishop of Canterbury?
FF
Aye!
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And to extend that argument, chefs would do better always to use powdered eggs and milk since neither of these could contain harmful bacteria.
Come on!!! For anyone to seriously suggest that an electronic reed is preferable to a real one.....sorry but IMHO this standpoint has totally lost it!
Electronic organs are getting better, electronic sounds can be entrancing but neither are real sounds in the way that any conventional instrument or the human voice make musical sounds. Their sound is not 'in the room'; it is pushed into the room via loudspeakers. Electronic organs are in many cases a very acceptable replacement/substitute for the real thing however they are not themselves the real thing.
Would you go to a theatre to watch a computer generated performance? Would you be happy for opera companies to use backing tapes as some Musicals have done? Would you treat your honoured guest to alcohol-free wines and lagers and pretend that these are the real thing? They are a damn sight closer to real drinks than electronic sounds are to pipes. This is not margerine and butter, this is someone advising us that we would be better off substituting engine oil for either.
The best use of electronics in pipe organs is, of course, in supplying the lower frequencies on the pedal organ where speakers take considerably less room than ranks of large pipes, cost less to install, and where tuning difficulties are unnoticable in normal playing. An organ local to me has had several electronic pedal "ranks" installed as there was not room to use pipes to supplement a scheme which was deficient in 16' tone. These are not only very useful registers, but are indistinguishable from pipes. In fact, no visiting organist has ever realized that they are electronic stops even when tried individually, nor has anyone been able to discover where on a certain rank electronics take over from pipes when challenged to do so.
To my ears, it's when electronic ranks are used at higher pitches in pipe organs that blend becomes problematic. But I'd be delighted to be proved wrong!
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Sounds like Brian has the sense of humour required to become a future church organist!
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There's a story about a soldier who was best man at his friend's wedding. He liked one of the hymns so much that he made a note of the number for his own wedding a few months later. What he didn't notice was that the church - a Methodist church - was using the Methodist Hymnal and the church where he was getting married was an Anglican church, using Hymns A&M.
The soldier arranged leave for his wedding and made arrangements with the vicar which included the number of this hymn.
Just before his bride arrived, the vicar asked him if he really wanted to sing that hymn. The soldier replied in the affirmative. After the bride was played in, the vicar announced the hymn number, the organist begain the playover, and the congregation began singing the hymn. By the end of the first verse, the vicar had to ask the organist to stop playing as the congregation had collapsed in hysterics.
Here's the hymn:-
Come, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
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Like Gollum, you can complain that the question is not fair, in that it is not an organ-related reference.
The definition of the computer language Algol-68 is written in a meta-language that defines and uses a large number of portmanteau words, of which one is REFETY, meaning "reference to, or empty". The cumulative effect of these words becomes almost poetic at times, as in this sample teken from the first line of a rule defining one type of array reference:
REFETY ROWSETY ROWWSETY NONROW SLICE
We had thought of naming the cat Rowsety, for the noise it made (hence Schalmei for the other), but Refety seemed a nicer name.
Paul
Ah! It's so obvious now! I wonder why I didn't get it immediately!!!
Thanks for enlightening us! 
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I guess this means Buxtehude was a lunar tick.
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The reference eludes me too!
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<post deleted due to trolls>
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I used to use dance shoes, which were flexible, but had a tapering heel which meant that I had to be extra careful when heeling so as not to slide off the pedal. When those shoes wore out, I replaced them with a pair of Organmaster shoes. The Organmaster shoes have a much wider heel than the dance shoes, but I miss the flexibility of the dance shoes and the ability to easily feel a pedal beneath one's foot which isn't really possible with the firmer Organmaster shoes.
Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!
Thanks for enlightening us! 
Digital Organ For Practice
in General discussion
Posted
12 matchstick pedals as found in "home entertainment" types of organ along with split keyboards?