Fiffaro

Not much use, but just in case it is interesting, I looked closely at this issue about 10 years ago in Australia, and there have been no mafor change to the legislation or licensing arrangements since that I'm aware of that effects this issue. Permission is needed to arrange another person's work when it is in copyright, hence even writing a descant and performing it raises legal issues. Hence, a last verse reharmonisation of a copyright hymn, even if done at sight, is not legal if the work is under copyright. What does this mean for people who play modern songs that are beyond their ability, hence change the rhythm inadvertently? Does transposing a piece amount to arranging? Playing something on an instrument that is substantially different in pitch to A=440 Hz? The whole thing becomes absurd. This is an area where the legislation and general license we operate under does not reflect the reality of what happens day by day for many people. It does not mean what they do is correct, when it is clearly illegal, it just means that the issues should be examined again. But then, until 2006, anyone using a video recorder to record a TV program was breaching copyright law. Eventually, the legislation was updated to reflect the position to which society long ago had moved on this.

I enjoyed learning and playing Fleury's Prélude, Cantilène et Final (1981). The Final is useful to add to one's repertoire for postludes, although it does require reeds that don't become too anaemic at the top of their range. In the great scheme of difficulty, I found this not to simple so as to be boring, it did benefit from a serious approach with written out fingering etc, but much simpler than some of the Vierne that so many of us like adding to our repertoire. For instance, I found the Cantilène easier to prepare for performance than Vierne's Sicilienne

I wonder how a tablet format computer would go at this? Then you could orient the monitor either landscape or portrait.

Did you mean the bit about "the day of fear shall come"? "In the middle of the night"? Clearly that bridegroom wasn't godless. (Obligatory Mendelssohn year reference.)

If the organ has an inbuilt MIDI interface, perhaps making a MIDI recording when the priest believes wrong notes to be being played might help? On the other hand, if I had an instrument with such an action and wanted to motivate people to replace it... !

'a second copy of a page of the work' Where in the Code of Fair Editing and Publishing is the requirement that works should be laid out so that only one difficult turn is allowed in any piece of music? As well, some publishers choose to use bindings that do not like sitting flat on a music desk.

Only German speaking readers would have thought that 'gedacht' was the correct spelling. Well, at least for 'thought'.

I have a little container of alcohol gel in the door of my car, and use it after visiting supermarkets, practicing in churches, and so on, as well as before eating when I'm not eating at home. I understand that alcohol gel inactivates the H1N1 virus. My son was exposed to swine flu and became sick, however tests were no longer being offered except for people in high risk groups so we don't know for sure that he had swine flu. Sampling in Australia indicated that over 90% of flu infections this season have been H1N1. We put liquid soap dispensers around the house and instigated an aggressive hand washing policy, limited the area of the house that he was in, including insisting that he used the guest bathroom only. The rest of the family were not infected. I have followed the developing understanding of H1N1 on the 'Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy, University of Minnesota' site. Recommended for keeping the hysteria in perspective. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/index.html

Hi Squinius, No one else has answered, so I'll throw in my thoughts. This work is on my list of 'must learns', but I haven't started yet, so I can only say in general, that fingering Mendelssohn can be a slow process for me, too. It is worth the effort and time, though, as once under the fingers, and attention has been paid to detail, the hard work is done, and you are rewarded with very satisfying playing experiences. The time, once the fingering and initial learning is done, to ready to perform generally is relatively short. Stick with the hard work at the beginning, then, and all else should follow more easily. Enjoy, Pfiff.

My analogy is that of a bride choosing a restaurant or function room in which to hold the reception, and expecting that she could bring in her own catering staff. Restaurants live and die on their reputation, and the chef would guard this jealously. The church and college where I am employed put a not inconsiderable portion of their resources into the music; they don't want the reputation of their music programmes to be placed in someone's care that has no responsibility to them. Yes, wedding services are easier to prepare for, and more financially rewarding than playing for Masses. I still remember, when starting work at a church with circa 150 weddings per year, that one of the previous incumbents 'offered' to play for all the weddings for me, and when I politely declined the offer, tried to insist on playing for all the weddings that had already been booked. The cheek!

Is this like a divided manual? Different registrations in the two sections? If so, is the note where the registration splits preset, or can that be changed? At what note does it split?

And then there was the review of an organ recital I read about six months ago that commented on the performance of the triplets in the Toccata from Widor V. That one passed by the editor, too. It somewhat undermines the credibility of the other comments made.

A few weeks ago we lost all power to the church mid-gradual. The choir really did lead the congregational hymn singing from then on. Fortunately, the Mass setting was unaccompanied anyhow. Why? We had just had a multi-tens-of-thousands-of AUD rewiring of all the church, new lighting, new heating, but no one had calculated the total power that might be drawn, and we blew a fuse on the power pole on the road outside the church. As for the lights or power being turned out during the final voluntary - I even object to the candles in the sanctuary being extinguished before I've finished. I remember, when I was accompanying a visiting choir at St Stephens in Vienna, that one of the priests returned to the lectern to make an announcement shortly after the assistant organist had started the postlude. This was drawn to the organist's attention, but he insisted, rightly, on continuing to the end of the postlude, after which the announcement was made and people left in silence. The priest at least showed some decorum by waiting patiently until the organist finished. I've observed a minister try making an announcement over the top of the postlude. Fortunately, it was not me playing at the church.

The Breitkopf edition calls this simply "Allegro". It starts on page 90 of the first volume of their 'New Edition of the Complete Organ Works' BA8196 (1993). I am not aware of any publication of this work much before then. I understand that as it was not published whilst Mendelssohn was alive, it never received a title, hence the variation in the title. It is also published by Breitkopf, on page 59 of their second volume. This work has also been recorded by Ulrid Span-Hanssen on the Classico label (CLASSCD 193-95) Definitely worth learning! I have just about every other edition of Mendelssohn except the modern Novello edition, so I can't help there, I'm afraid. Given how warmly Mendelssohn's music is received by the public, and how chamber players in particular regularly schedule his music, I fail to understand how so many organists still seem reluctant to program his organ music. There is still much research to be done on the subject of Mendelssohn and his organ music and its performance practice.

Not repeating a note when another part also plays that note became an enshrined part of the French romantic tradition. On this forum, in the thread "Slurs In Transports De Joie" this has been referred to previously. http://www.mander-organs.com/discussion/in...ic=2046&hl= In this piece, it is very clear that Messiaen expected the note to be held, and carefully noted slurs to this end. As ACC mentioned in this thread, Tournemire and Dupré taught that if a note is repeated within the voice, the first note value is halved, but if it is repeated because another voice is also given the note, then it is held. There is a question about how early in the French romantic movement that this applies. When I learned Franck's Three Chorales, back in the last century, notes communes was a given for his music, too. Thank you, themythes, for your kind wishes, and Cynic for your input.

I have recently looked at the Alkan pedal studies and tried some of them, adapted for the smaller range of our pedal boards. Given that he owned and played a Pleyel pedal piano, I assumed that the range of these was wider than we are used to. Having just done some Internet searching and surfing, though, I can't find any support for this.

This is a question for the Dupré fans, and particularly for those fans that play the Finale from Les Vêpres de la Vierge. In bar 34, as the arpeggio figure collides with the held a'' of the melody, there is a tie where I would normally expect notes communes to apply. Bar 46 is similar, but no tie is present here. Is this an engraving issue, or should I repeat the c'' in bar 46? (Bar 41 would appear to be missing a tie on the c''-sharp as this is so consistently present in the rest of the piece, so there is the possibility that in bar 46 the tie is missing by accident.) Bar 32 seems to loose impact if the a'' is not repeated, even though my understanding of notes communes is that it would normally apply here. (Compare this bar with two bars later, bar 34, where the notes are tied, perhaps because the 16th note rhythm is not broken as the pedal line has a 16th note there.) Do others repeat this note? I find that even with bars 29 and 31, for example, even though the melody is tied to the accompanying arpeggio, it sounds better to repeat the melody note as the arpeggio 'communes' with the melody. Perhaps the solution is to keep the rhythm continuous, by not observing the notes communes tradition if the result is a break in the 16th note pattern. If the pedal part has a change on the otherwise tied 16th note in the manual part, then notes communes can be observed. Thoughts and suggestion? This might all become academic in a luxuriously reverberant acoustic, but in the drier acoustics that dominate the Australian soundscape, that will not be the case.

How about "White Lady Funerals"? I have wondered if they would be able to get away with that name in the USA.

Rieger Auf- und Wiedergabesystem. Perfect for crematoriums!

Using quick edit resulted in a double post. Strange.

Geteiltes Pedal am Generalspieltisch? Hmmm. I can think of a number of possibilities, but none of them convincing enough for me to think that I've translated this correctly. Help, please.

Or the slightly risqué version... Here are Mr & Mrs Pneumatic and their lovely, well-rounded daughter Electra...

I would recommend a visit to Klosterneuburg, just outside Vienna, with the 1642 Freundt organ including pipework from the 1556 organ. The little town and the monastery are worth a visit by themselves, an important point to bear in mind if travelling with others who might not want to spend their whole time looking at organs. Easily reached by train travel of only a few minutes. If you want to enjoy the charms of an original Italian organ from 1741, visit the parish church of Salvator am Wienerfield with its Dacci organ. So many of the older, bigger restored organs I played in Italy showed a less sympathetic restoration than what Hradetsky managed with this delightful instrument. Wienerfeldgasse 11, in the 10th district. Phone 6732500 to talk to the priest. I would also visit the Augustinerkirche in the 1st district. The gallery organ by Rieger, and the smaller (II/25) Reil organ both speak into excellent acoustics for organ music.

Do check what is happening in the exhibition halls. I happened to be attending a congress in one of them and went for a wonder in the other halls, where an exhibition of model hobbies was in progress. Now, this was a few years ago, but I've never seen such an array of model trains and planes, even remote control submarines in action. The halls were big enough for them to be flying model planes inside. I took some free catalogues home for my children. There is also a subterranean complex that was part of the city walls, with restaurants, bars, live entertainment and so on.

Two thoughts on this topic. Working in the south of Australia, where the temperature inside our churches varies during the year from less than 10 C to over 30 C, the pitch of the organ will vary substantially, around 60 cents or so. This is, of course, a significant fraction of a semitone (100 cents). Perhaps we should think about how to train our young musicians to live with these variations in pitch. As I've mentioned previously in this forum, I was organist on a 1741 Dacci instrument where we were confident that the pitch was unlikely to be substantially different from when it was built (almost half a semitone sharp of A = 440 Hz). I am amused by the insistence, in some quarters of the HIP brigade, that A - 415 Hz should be used. I attended a concert last Friday night where the Viol player insisted that the Virginals be tuned down from 440 to 415 for the performance. The Virginals were (was?) much less stable than her Viol would have been if she had tuned higher. Grrr.