Vox Humana

There's plenty of evidence, just none for office psalms. Faburden (a form of harmonised chanting consisting at its simplest of chains of 6/3 chords with 5/8 chords at beginning and end) is at least as old as the second quarter of the fifteenth century and there are older pieces that are not so very different in concept. The many faburdens that have survived, whether as single voices or incorporated into polyphonic compositions, include Magnificats (which used the psalm tones), hymns (over 100 of these survive), Te Deum, processional items (Salve festa dies, litany refrains, the two psalms I mentioned above), antiphons, an offertory and a communion. It's always possible that new evidence will come along to upset received wisdom, but on the current information available I would have to say that the office psalms were not sung polyphonically until Tallis & Co began to write festal settings. For all that Edward VI was a staunch Protestant (if that word is not an anachronism at that time) he evidently did allow very elaborate music in his chapel. John Sheppard's vernacular services could hardly have been written at any other time since he died almost at the same time as Mary Tudor. Recent research has shown how unwise it is to make assumptions about the chronology of Tallis's music, so I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility of Tallis's festal responses having been written for Edward's chapel, although they do seem to sit more comfortably in Elizabeth's. From this later example by Gibbons we can easily see how formalised Anglican chant later came about. The instructions that Scottish Anonymous gives for faburden do include rules for improvising it in four parts. I can't say I have internalised them, but there's an old article in Music and Letters that discusses them. In the Latin services all polyphony was a mark of ceremonial - although not officially sanctioned in the customary, it became to be regarded as a highly desirable tool in the same basket as incense, candles, silk copes and everything else that was brought out to add greater solemnity to the ceremonial of special occasions and feast days (and the more important the feast the more elaborate the ceremonial). The forms that exist in Faburden are exactly the forms for which composed polyphony also survives, so the distinction was just one of complexity. Faburden would certainly have been viewed as polyphony. Flippin' clerics.

But the point is that the text is metrical.* Let's turn this around. Many musicians argue that the absence of barlines in Medieval and Renaissance music, considered together with the micro-rhythms of the individual polyphonic lines, proves that these lines were played or sung not with regular stresses such as barlines impose, but in free rhythm that followed the music. The mensuration symbol (equivalent to our time signature) in which the piece was written governed the music only at the macro level. You, however, appear to agree with Peter le Huray, who points out somewhere in his book Music and the Reformation in England that performers would have felt the tactus and the microrhythms would have been felt against this regular pulse (an effect not that different from barlines). If the former view were correct then we wouldn't be debating whether or not Latin fits Tallis's Canon, because the stresses in the music would then follow the text as necessary, not the "time signature". (In fact Tallis's psalm tunes were printed without any mensuration symbols, but that's John Day for you). Le Huray was surely right. There is just no way anyone could have performed the complex proportions ('tuplets' in modern transcriptions) found in Morley's Introduction, John Baldwin's Commonplace Book and elsewhere without feeling the regular beat of tactus and prolation very firmly. Morley's book makes it very clear that the ability to maintain an unyielding, rock-steady tempo was crucial in performance. (His Christ's cross be my speed is so horrendously complex that I seriously wonder whether anyone has ever managed to perform it.) So, if we accept that the music was subject to a regular pulse, how do you account for the clear misaccentuation of "Discretor" in bar 3 and "Gloria" at bars 45-7 of Tallis's Jesu salvator saeculi? Similar examples can be found throughout the Tudor hymn repertoire - and the Tudors so routinely accented Alleluia on the second syllable in their responsories that I seriously wonder whether they didn't pronounce it that way. * I find it interesting that Latin poetry in medieval services (hymns, sequences, rhymed offices) mostly obeys regular metres (Stabat mater dolorosa and Ave verum corpus natum are familiar examples) while English poetry of the Middle Ages is typically much more flexible in this respect.

If I accede your point I would have to accept that the plainsong tune was accented differently in different verses (viz. Confessionem personent in verse 2), but is there any evidence for such treatement?

I'm not sure that's entirely correct. It's true that an anonymous Scottish treatise describes how to improvise a four-part faburden upon a plainsong and Thomas Morley in his A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke provides harmonisations for the different tones, so the technique was certainly known. Nevertheless, so far as I know, there was no tradition in England before the Reformation of singing the psalms of the office in polyphony, faburden or otherwise. The only psalms that were sung thus were Laudate pueri Doninum and In exitu Israel, when sung during the procession to the font and back after Vespers on Easter Day - a special case. Polyphony during the office was, in any case, confined to feast days and then to a limited selection of items (e.g. at Vespers the responsory, hymn and Magnificat). There is no hint of festal psalm settings in Edward VI's reign (although it is also true that there are very few sources); they seem to be a product of the more musically tolerant reign of Elizabeth I. It would have been natural to have resorted, as Tallis did, to harmonising the plainsong tones traditionally used for chanting, but that doesn't necessarily point to an unbroken tradition. It is perfectly true that these settings evolved after the Restoration into the more rigid form of Anglican chant.

Really? Tallis's "Canon" (in the truncated form found in modern hymns books) fits Nunc sancte nobis Spiritus well enough, as well as other hymns in this metre. (O salutaris hostia might be a more familiar possibility.) Incidentally, I don't think any scholars now believe that Byrd wrote Non nobis Domine. See Philip Brett, "Did Byrd Write 'Non Nobis Domine'?", Musical Times cxiii (Sept 1972), p.855.

He may have just meant that it was apt to be overdone. Here's what he said: "It has been well argued that English in conversational rhythm has no place in singing in church. Without labouring the point, we may assert that when delivered upon a chord in four-part harmony it sounds musically fantastic and unstable. Few will deny that the quest for so-called speech-rhythm has carried the chanting of the psalms to ludicrous extremes besides encouraging the merciless pruning of dozens of perfectly good anglican chants. A careful reassessment of values from time to time is advisable." Nearly all of his own chants (not that there are many) have passing notes. He once spoke to me about the matching of chants to the psalms. I can't remember his exact words, but the gist was as follows. One had one's favourite chant/psalm matches and that, on taking up a new post, one's instinct was to make lots of changes; however it was much better to hold back and absorb the status quo properly before introducing any changes. On the other hand, you may have a point about the choir. The boys loved him, but he frequently complained that the lay clerks "couldn't or wouldn't" do what he wanted. One should bear in mind that in Campbell's time the lay clerk-ships were jobs for life, with all the disadvantages that that entails. After Campbell's death, Christopher Robinson expanded the number of lay clerks from nine to twelve, which helped to improve the quality, and it wasn't long before most of the older men had gone. The standard shot up.

Yes, I think that's what he meant. I was tempted to quote more of Campbell's introduction, but feared it might send my remaining reader to sleep! Clearly he didn't like people trying to sing in the rhythm of "conversational English" and deplored the excision of passing notes in Anglican chants. Whether he was still advocating the old measured style of chanting he doesn't say. If he was, he must have changed his mind on going to Windsor, for only a couple of years later he broadcast a Choral Evensong from there in which the chanting is most definitely speech-rhythm (it's on YouTube); however, he still thought omitting passing notes was wrong. I'm glad you brought this subject up. I hadn't previously appreciated how innovative Rose's responses must have been. Their publication certainly seems to have opened the floodgates, for a number of other settings were published hard on its heels. What we don't know is when any of these sets were actually written: they might have been in use in manuscript for some time previously - but if so, they didn't feature in broadcast Evensongs.

Having done some more homework I find that my information was incomplete; I had forgotten to check the files in my basement. Rose's was by no means the first of the latter-day settings, although it might still have been the first of significance. A set by one Charles Westoby was published in 1901. 1926 saw the publication of another by E. S. White, the Organist and Choirmaster of Great Warley parish church. Then in 1940 came one by Clifford Richardson. Harry Moreton also wrote a set for his choir at St Andrew's, Plymouth.* The publication is undated but he must have written them before 1958 when he retired and very probably much earlier (the engraving looks older). All of these are very uncomplicated settings. Moreton's are almost as uninteresting as Elvey's, Richardson's didn't grab me either, but the other two are better although I doubt anyone would rush to schedule them today. In 1960 Sidney Campbell published his arrangement of the "Canterbury Use" responses. These are not too far removed from the ferial ones and again are set very plainly. They are interesting because they include a long and typically idiosyncratic note by Campbell, perhaps intended for parish church organists, which reads almost as if he thought he was being innovative: "Numerous choirmasters and clergymen will no doubt raise horrified eyebrows at the appearance of these Responses. Not only do they defy well-intentioned attempts to establish a uniform setting for all churches in this country and indeed farther afield; by employing musical note-values, they contradict the opinion that certain parts of a service should be sung in 'speech-rhythm.' ... There are in Jebb's Choral Responses, settings peculiar to most British Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches. The Bristol Use is frequently heard: the Norwich Use has perhaps never been dropped: the Westminster Responses are sung at Ely. The Canterbury Use is sung regularly alongside the more elaborate settings of Tudor composers. It is sometimes unaccompanied, sometimes doubled by the organ and sometimes freely accompanied..." * A propos what I said previously about all sorts of things getting attributed to Tallis, by coincidence today I was given a manuscript book of Moreton's. It includes harmonisations of both the "Ferial Responses" and "Festal Responses", both of which Moreton attributed to Tallis!

I am sorry to introduce a cynical note, but it depends entirely on where you play. In most parish churches the ideal length is however long it takes for the bulk of the congregation to reach the tea and coffee urns at the back of the nave.

One should never say never! However I think it is probably safe to say that all early manuscripts have been well plundered by musicologists and if there were any other Restoration settings we would know about them. The extended "Tudor" period is well covered here and here, from which lists I note that there are some responses by George Jeffreys, whose career spanned the interregnum. Jeffreys was a first-rate composer, so I wonder what they are like?

Thank you very much indeed for that, Philip. That's most helpful and, I'm afraid, exactly what I suspected.

Could well be! How interesting. I wonder whether the COA funded the research. I would lay odds that Fellowes rather than Atkins was the driver behind this.

Yes, this would have been worth a separate thread. To answer your second question first, I would guess that choirs stopped singing festal responses when Oliver Cromwell put an end to cathedral services. What happened at the restoration I don't know. Maybe the practice was revived, but the only late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century settings I know are those by Richard Ayleward, Reading and Ebdon. So far as I can gather, during the nineteenth century only two settings of the responses were sung: Ferial and Tallis, the latter being sung on festivals. That is actually a slight simplification since there were at least nineteen different editions of Tallis's "festal" responses and there are very significant differences between several of them, which are not confined to the argument about whether they were originally in four or five parts. George Elvey, for example, published a four-part edition which has prompted one commentator to wonder why on earth he ever put Tallis's name to it. A different version of these remained in use at St George's, Windsor under the title "Windsor Use" until Christopher Robinson arrived there. They are no great loss. In the nineteenth century Tallis's music (but actually only his Responses, Litany, the so-called Dorian Service and If ye love me) was held to be the ideal model for sober, devout church music and all sorts of concoctions were irresponsibly foisted upon him, including Anglican chants and even in one instance a standard, two-chord, plagal Amen! Tallis's responses were a standard fixture at all large choral services and festivals in the nineteenth century. I think the renewed interest in settings of the responses must have arisen with the publication of the Fellowes/Atkins edition of the Tudor settings in the 1930s. In fact John Jebb had already published them all, except Morley's, in the mid nineteenth century, but they seem not to have caught on. I had a quick browse through the early Choral Evensong listings on BBC Genome Project. Composers for the responses do not begin to be credited until the 1940s and then it is just the familiar Elizabethan settings (including Tallis), apart from occasional references to "Westminster Use", "Bristol Use", or, in the case of Durham, Philip Armes. At Christ Church, Woburn Square, London in 1948-9 Michael Howard performed preces by Gibbons and by Thomas Hunt together with the Westminster Use responses after the Creed (because neither composer provided those). The first sign of anything more out of the ordinary (if indeed it was since I don't know the setting) was in March 1949 when Lancaster Priory, under Alan Stephenson, broadcast a set of responses supposedly by "Hylton Stewart". In fact these seem likely to be the same as the set Lancaster broadcast the following December when Henry Walmsley attributed them - surely correctly? - to [Haldane] Campbell Stewart (the perennial confusion between H. C Stewart and C. H. Stewart) - and I assume in turn that these were the preces and responses by "Stewart" that Bernard Rose broadcast from H. C. Stewart's old stamping ground, Magdalen College, in February 1962. So, unless the Stewart setting is anything special it may well be that Rose's 1961 set is the first modern-style setting of the responses.

Zimbelstern, I agree with pretty much everything you say, although with a few reservations. As I understand it, the term HIP (Historically Informed Performance) came into being as a result of disquiet about the word "authentic", a word that has become almost toxic. It is now acknowledged that a truly authentic performance of, say, Bach is unachievable. We do not think, dress or live like eighteenth-century Lutherans, so how can we possibly receive and understand the music that Bach wrote for them in the way that he envisaged? The best we can ever hope to do is to deliver a performance that takes into account such historical information as we have - musical, social, whatever.* We can never know how close to the original our result might be. HIP is not an ideology but simply an acknowledgement - surely common to musicologists and performers alike - of the limits of our comprehension. The term may well be misappropriated by performers and we should not assume that a performance is HIP just because it uses original instruments and eschews Romanticism in favour of moderns fads about tempo, articulation etc. Much as man makes God in his own image, so HIP performers mould early music in theirs. From the existing Bach documentation, it would be eminently reasonable to assume that he would have welcomed a larger choir than he ever managed to muster, but this is an assumption nonetheless. This road leads to the old "Bach would have used a swell box had he had one" argument. Of course he would. And if he had lived in the Romantic era he would have written Romantic music too, no question. But the result wouldn't be the Bach we know, would it? * I'm inclined to think that learning how to achieve historical reception is more important than delivering historical performance.

That's true, of course. Obviously a performer's job is always to make music - in the deepest sense of the word. However, if the choice really were so stark, my personal preference would be to choose some other piece. Maybe I'm just unmusical, but I don't believe I have ever encountered a situation where a filled-out arrangement would be preferable to the original texture. Even on the Foghorn - not exactly the world's most Baroque instrument - the original textures can sound well enough so long as you avoid Cornet voluntaries. It even has a French Horn stop (even if it is a bit loud for Corno voluntaries).

Well, I didn't actually accuse West's generation of being uninterested in history, only in historical performance practice. Nevertheless, on reflection I'll accept that I was being unfair. After all, West himself supplied the section on interpreting Bach's ornaments for the later volumes in the Novello edition of JSB's organ works. Also, early music practitioners like Ralph Kirkpatrick and a Dolmetsch or two were already active during Best's later lifetime - although even Arnold Dolmetsch had no time for musicologists' opinions on interpretation. Elsewhere scholarship had produced the original Bach-Gesellschaft edition, which IIRC served as the basis for the Novello edition of the organ works. The registration recommendations of Bridge and Higgs for these volumes are more restrained than they might have been. We do occasionally see instructions like "add another diap" followed by "diminuendo", but their markings are reasonably discreet and they left the text of the concertos alone entirely (maybe due to the difficulty of being prescriptive with these). However, I'm equally sure that old Harry Moreton was not untypical in his Romantic approach. The old, Edwardian style of playing Bach is well documented. Not every performer who pays lip-service to HIP is actually that historically informed. I once lambasted here a performance by a well-known early musician (held to be a God by some) whose performance of an English voluntary (musical and engaging as it was) was thoroughly inauthentic in style as could readily be seen by reading the three authors I have been quoting. Academics are actually much more likely to know what they are talking about - for obvious reasons - but it is only sensible to allow that they are entitled to differ in their opinions and interpretations in the same way that historians can differ about the interpretation of things in their domain. (Incidentally, I am not, nor ever have been, an academic, although I have known a few, most of whom are - or were - very highly rated performers.) The purpose of so-called "Urtext" editions (a poor term: 'critical' is better) is to present the player with what, according to best current understanding, is the most reliable version of any given piece recoverable from the sources - although the route to achieving that will often differ from editor to editor. No edition can ever be regarded as definitive. Even if, as one hopes, it is state of the art at the point of publication, knowledge will inevitably advance and the edition will eventually be superseded. The Neue Bachgesellschaft edition of JSB's organ works is a case in point. Actually it's still perfectly adequate, but the new Breitkopf edition offers new knowledge, alternative views and many textual refinements and deserves to be the choice for any first-time buyer. The job of a modern critical edition ('Urtext' if you must) is to avoid misleading the performer, by offering (hopefully) what the composer actually wrote, or something as near to it as the editor can achieve, so that the performer can then make his/her own, informed decisions about interpretation. The logical result of the non-Urtext copy is all too readily encountered on CPDL, the most depressing site on the web that I ever visit. (To anticipate the inevitable riposte, it's just masochism.) To be sure, there is some good work on there, but it is very hard to have confidence in most of it. It is full of so-called "editions" that have been simply copied without acknowledgement from someone else's work, often with an ugly layout, with mistakes (I noticed an atrocious copy of Walmisley in D minor some months ago) and, sometimes, with added - but not always acknowledged - additions such as dynamics and tempo indications. Editorial suggestions, originally carefully signalled, may be merged indistinguishably into the text (musica ficta is a favourite). With these "editions" there may be no way of distinguishing what the composer wrote from what the modern copyist has added.* I have certainly come across performers who have no interest in drilling down into the whys and wherefores and who prefer all interpretative decisions to be made for them. That's fine. One function of musicology is to serve performers and, as one publisher said to me a very long time ago when I suggested that an edition might give the performer a choice between two valid options, "It's an editor's job to edit." However, as an (ex-)performer I do like to know what my options are. The comment by Marsh that you quote is saying no more than what was also said about S. S. Wesley (or was it Sam?), viz. that his improvisations were far superior to his notated compositions. * When copying from public domain sheet music that is still commonly in use - Stanford is a case in point - why on earth don't these people just upload scans of the originals, as is the norm on IMSLP? We would all be far better off!

Thanks, Zimbelstern. Here's the link - I shall read this later: http://didattica.uniroma2.it/assets/uploads/corsi/37116/09_partimento_02_(2).pdf To be honest, I think Emmanuel Bach and Adlung are red herrings to the topic under discussion. Bach was very much in the forefront of the Galant. When you consider those sudden, Sturm und Drang juxtapositions of different moods, one can quite understand why he found the harpsichord wanting in expression. English organ music, on the other hand, carried on in its established, independent way. At the end of the eighteenth century, when England was going nuts about Haydn, his style did influence Francis Linley to some extent, but even Linley's music is still not so very different from that of the earlier generations. As far as registration goes, German practice has no bearing on England, any more than its organs did. Like the French classical repertoire, but in a totally different way, English registration was quite stereotyped. As I mentioned above, Marsh, Blewitt and Linley broadly agree in their advice (Linley seems to have copied from Marsh to some extent) and what they have to say is consonant with the registration directions found in published voluntaries. Firstly the 8' Open and Stopped Diapasons are always drawn, and remain drawn, on each manual. (On the Choir this would often need to be the Stopped Diapason and Dulciana instead.) Any solo stops were added to these, so one frequently had three 8' stops drawn. There were exceptions to this rule of thumb: the 4' Flute alone; the Choir Stopped Diapason and 4' Flute; and a Stopped Diapason and Principal (the best combination on the organ, according to Blewitt). Blewitt also says that both the Open Diapason and the Dulciana could be used alone, but the former only in slow music since the pipes are slow-speaking. For Marsh the finest Swell (solo?) combination was the Diapasons and Hautboy, with the Trumpet to strengthen it if required; both he and Linley agree that the Principal was not to be drawn without both the reeds as the octave tone would otherwise be too predominant and destroy the effect of sostenuto passages. Full organ, according to Marsh came in five guises: the Great Diapasons plus diapason chorus to Sesquialtera; the foregoing plus the Trumpet, or the Furniture, or both of these; and all of these plus the Clarion. Gapped registrations are not mentioned, indeed both Blewitt and Linley say that the Twelfth and Fifteenth are never used singly, but only in 'full pieces'. Stephen Bicknell's book lists some registration instructions glued to this organ that include 'Diaphasons & Fifteenth' and also 'Diaphasons & Twelfth', although one might question whether the term 'Diaphasons' here was intended to include the Principal.

Thank you for those interesting and helpful posts, Zimbelstern. I guess all of us who have played continuo parts will have come across unfigured, or sparsely figured, ones and wondered how the original players coped. For some reason your pdf link doesn't work for me. Could you give a website address for it, please? Another thing that would have had a bearing on how (and perhaps where) filling out was accomplished was the practice of doubling the bass. John Marsh and Jonas Blewitt, both writing in the 1790s, mention this, although for different purposes. Blewitt recommends that, where the bass has single notes only, it should be played in octaves as much as possible and adds that playing a subject in the bass in octaves sounds very grand. Marsh saw octaves as one of various ways of achieving an accent. He considered that accents at the beginning (and sometimes, in common time, in the middle) of the bar ‘may be in a great measure effected on the Swell of the Organ, by the management of the Pedal, especially in slow movements’ (!) Elsewhere accents might be effected through appoggiaturas or occasionally by doubling the accented bass note at the octave. Where a bass note is repeated in crotchets or quavers for several bars he recommends playing the lower note only at the beginning of the bar and sustaining it. Where a bass note and its octave repeatedly oscillate in quavers the player was to extend the lower note while striking the upper. When the Clarion was drawn, the effect of octaves could be produced by playing the bass an octave lower than written (compass permitting). It would be interesting to know how idiosyncratic Marsh's playing (or, for that matter, Blewitt's) was. One does get the impression that they had rather different styles, although their registration advice (and Linley's too) is broadly in agreement. English harpsichord pieces seem to have a tendency to be more fully notated than organ ones. For example, the first movement of Arne's Sonata in G major ( on page 12 here) might well give us a clue as to how Stanley voluntaries were filled out. Note the occasional left-hand octaves and the left-hand chords in e.g. bars 8-9.

But this would be the negative evidence argument. You can't say that because there is no evidence for X it is evidence for Y. Absence of evidence is exactly that. I don't claim any expertise in this repertoire - it's not my period. I am quite sure there will be people reading this who know far more about it than I do (and I wish they would chip in). However, I do have some observations, so let's try to pick this apart a bit. First of all I think we have to be clear on what type of "filling in" (if any) might have been practised by English Baroque composers. The evidence I have found - such as it is - points to a practice very different from that of the likes of John E. West & Co. Handel supplied extensive figuring in his organ concertos and, although he sometimes did so where it is superfluous, I can't see what else it can mean other than instructions to fill in - or fill out - the harmony - unless, I suppose, the figures were guides to the underlying harmony to be observed when embellishing the solo part, but that's pure speculation. Handel, however, appears to be exceptional. For one thing, he wasn't English and, more importantly, he was writing the solo parts principally for himself to play, so his practice might or might not reflect that of his English contemporaries. Francis Linley's An Introduction to the Organ (c.1796) has five sections: 1) a description of a 'complete organ' and advice on registration; 2) fifteen preludes; 3) eight voluntaries; 4) eight 'full pieces' and fugues; and 5) thirty-seven psalm (i.e. hymn) tunes with interludes. The psalm tunes consist of treble and bass lines with extensive figuring and, oddly, small note heads to show the harmony, which rather defeats the object of the figures, but that may be because the book was intended for students. The other music is completely devoid of figures and thus no indication that Linley expected any filling out of the harmony. That might (or might not) be significant. In searching through what facsimiles of this music I could locate I found only one instance of figuring. In a copy of John Stanley’s Op.5 voluntaries someone has added in manuscript some figures to just one bar: see stave four of Voluntary III here (this also appears to be the copy that OUP used for their facsimile edition). The right hand is playing a Cornet solo on another manual, so the added notes could only have been one or two in the left hand. But it does show that at least one player did indulge in a spot of filling out. What the Handel (and Stanley) figurings suggest is that filling out tended to be confined to passages where the bass is not very active, or where the right hand is able to add the extra notes. The over-riding impression I get is that any resulting textures were not burdened with notes. Contrapuntal passages rarely need to be in more than three parts, but some straight chords could easily have been fuller. Those isolated left-hand crotchets, separated by rests, that often accompany florid right-hand solos would be prime candidates. As for John E. West & Co. they saw all music through their own, Romantic eyes. They had little if any knowledge of historical practice and would have had no interest in it if they had. The only thing that mattered to them was pleasing their audiences who were similarly innocent. The Plymouth organist Harry Moreton, who was only a year younger than West (although he lived more than thirty years longer), had little time for Bach, whom he thought ‘dry’. I was told how once he was playing Bach’s Fantasia and fugue in G minor BWV 542 as a voluntary. About halfway through the fugue he muttered, ‘Oh, I’m fed up with this,’ and drifted off into an improvisation, culminating in full organ to Trombas and 32’ complete with Tuba fanfares. Cameron Carpenter, eat your heart out! Whether one regard West's ‘edition’ (actually arrangement) of Greene’s voluntary in C minor as musical depends on your viewpoint. Personally I find its thickened textures and stodgy octave doublings misguided on any organ. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it insensitive or unmusical, but it is very much of its time. Knowledge and tastes have moved on and West’s interpretation now appears unsympathetic and no longer passes muster. Few people nowadays would want to play the allegro section as slow as crotchet = 72.

Rummaging around a selection the old specifications on NPOR today (Bridge, Harris, Byfield, Seede, England, etc) confirmed that the French Horn stop was indeed rather rare. On the other hand it seems it was by no means confined to the Choir Organ: it could just as easily turn up on the Great or Swell. I also found an interesting movement in John Keeble's Second Set of Select Pieces for the Organ. It's on page 60 here. The passages allotted to the Great diapasons are very "hornlike" and in a low register. No mention of a Corno here, but bearing in mind what Andrew Butler said above about the piece by John Reading, I wonder whether on organs with a French Horn stop, the organist might have played the diapason passages an octave higher on that stop (presumably playing the bits on the third stave of p.63 as written)? This would have been technically possible were the Horn on the Great or Choir. Changing between the Choir (4') Flute and a Choir Organ Horn (plus Stopped Diap?) and back again on page 61 would have required some licence (especially on the top line), but should not have been impossible. Otherwise stop management would have been straightforward enough. With a Great Horn everything would have been much more straightforward. The Great (or Choir) would have been needed to accompany the "Ecchoes" in the final two staves, but again any stop changes would have been manageable.

More or less like the pdf file you can download here, but note the discussion in this old thread. The Fugue does make use of the pedals.

In 2009 the College of St Mark & St John in Plymouth acquired a little one-manual Lincoln, like Thaxted also from 1821, that had been restored by W & A Boggis. I read somewhere that it had originally been a finger and barrel organ. It, too, is very mild, but the tone is absolutely delightful.

Thanks, Andrew. How intriguing. I can't trace anything about this on the internet, so I guess I'll have to buy a copy!

I have just come across a printed letter by Sidney Campbell that was new to me. I think it sums up rather well the general position of the organ reform movement in 1950s Britain, at least from the players' perspective. It was part of a discussion in the pages of the Musical Times that ran for several issues in 1958. I have not yet traced the start of the debate, but clearly someone had asked in February 1958 why modern British organs lacked “the sonorous diapason grandeur” of older instruments. An answer was supplied in April by a correspondent who claimed that “It is because this is the ‘age of enlightenment’ and a handful of cranks are doing their best to bring about a ‘reformation’ in British organ building by getting Continental-type tonal schemes introduced into this country” in disregard of the fact that the organ had to be used for worship and not just for recitals. Campbell’s reply followed in May: “MODERN ORGANS This ‘Age of Enlightenment’ had better be described as one of transition until the ‘handful of cranks’ becomes an army. The question is not whether the organ is going to be used mainly in public worship: even if it were, the matter of cathedral music would arise because very few English cathedral organs possess the resources essential for accompanying the music written before the time of S. S. Wesley or that which will follow the Stanford School. Today the organ has at least the chance of being taken more seriously as a musical instrument. The ultimate verdict will depend upon the extent to which it is developed as an instrument in its own right by composers, organists and builders alike. Already the full repertory is beginning to oust arrangements. It is known how the music of Bach and the early French composers sounded, as well as that of Franck, Widor, Tournemire, Vierne, all of whom indicated precisely the registrations. A full range of necessities can be incorporated in an instrument of moderate size. An imitation clarinet or cor anglais is no substitute for a Tierce en taille. The specification of Tomkins’ organ at Worcester is known. John Stanley required certain effects and the Wesleys had something to say about them. Parry, Stanford and Harwood specified no tone colours except Full Swell and Solo Tuba. Herbert Howells asks once for solo reeds and (in brackets) solo oboe, but has otherwise followed in the steps of his predecessors. Indeed, he suggested to Harvey Grace nearly twenty years ago that his conception of a certain passage could be best realised by recalling its effect if played by a string quartet. I have been trying to register the opening and closing sections of an otherwise excellent new Toccata alla marcia by Robin Orr. Even with sixty-seven pistons here (!) I cannot make an independent pedal follow the general dynamic indications, but the writing rules out the use of couplers and the phrasing renders impossible the alteration of manual and pedal stops simultaneously. The future seems clear. Tonal design is being studied by a few people with success. Published stop lists suggest that builders are attempting to adapt themselves, but most of them need to pursue a lot of intricate research. Idiomatic writing for the organ is being developed elsewhere: genuine organ effects are being fully exploited, the several departments, including the pedal organ, displaying their true and effective identity without muddle. British composers may soon cease vaguely to write down ineffective impossibilities, hoping for the best. The player of solo and concerted works will then be freed from the task of arranging and making up composers’ minds for them. Independence of all departments, the ignoring of couplers, and a more economical layout, are the keynotes. It would be foolish to remove the ‘beautiful organ in the centre of the City’ and perhaps unwise to tamper with it. Probably it must be accepted that certain types of music cannot attain their full effect upon it: this need not silence the instrument. Improvers have done widespread damage in the past, and the fate of countless organs in this country demands the vigorous attention of an armed guard. The design of new instruments is quite another matter. Sidney S. Campbell, 5 The Precincts, Canterbury.” Musical Times, vol.99, no.1383 (May 1958) pp.263-4. The correspondence witnesses two opposed schools of thought that to some extent are still alive today, although not, I think, among builders. A major aim of the reform movement was to enable the main schools of organ composition to be heard with something approaching their "authentic" tonal qualities and, as Campbell hints in his letter, there was a belief that this would enhance the music itself and, in turn, help the organ to be accepted as a mainstream musical instrument in no way inferior to any other. In the event this never happened and the ‘handful of cranks’ never did become an army, although whether there really was any link between the two is debatable, to say the least.

Yes, I do understand where you are coming from, David. I often feel the same about Bach. Gordon Reynolds once referred to the choice on British organs being between "tubby Bach or skinny Bach", the veiled implication being that neither was wholly satisfactory - and I'd have to agree really. On the average British church organ, one always has to put up with a compromise. Classical French music comes off worst of all on such instruments. As far as Stanley and his contemporaries are concerned, I'm of the view that, if the organ is seeming to demand filled-out, orchestral harmonies, then there is plenty of music that was written that way, so there's no need to resort to inflating the music of earlier composers. I guess I'm incurable, having signed up in my teens to the concept of the eclectic organ as an ideal (though I always had misgivings about mixing Schnitgeresque voicing with Romantic voicing). My teacher was very much of the eclectic aesthetic and, although I have posted this before, I can't resist repeating what he once had to say about English Baroque voluntaries: "For close on fifty years organists have played English music of the earlier periods in editions one of whose aims was to provide for the use of pedals. The left hand, which should play the bass, was consigned to a predicament from which it did not always emerge with distinction. It either doubled the right hand an octave lower, clogged the sound with a stream of thick chords, or else provided scraps of counterpoint which continually petered out for want of elbow room, The bass line itself was sometimes modified 'in the interests of modern requirements', especially if a composer had been inconsiderate enough to write a left hand part which could not be accommodated on a modern pedal board. ... There is little point in arranging, for the organ, music which was actually written for the organ." (Sidney Campbell, 1956)"