Vox Humana

That was me! Troll: a usenet/forum member who posts deliberately inflammatory remarks. It was rather naughty of me and I humbly apologise to forum members - a bit.

I would call C49 "C in alt". In practice, though, I just draw a stave + clef + the note in the notebook. Could be problematical if the tuner can't read musical notation, but I assume they all can? But that isn't the reason I'm asking. I should have explained. I've inherited the job of editing our local organists' association's magazine and just want to make sure I'm following current good practice.

[troll] Why on earth not? I could go along with you on the Ch octave, but suboctave couplers are of no musical use, least of all in the hands of those impervious to the missing pipes in the bottom octave. I make an honourable exception for loud French music, of course; the French knew how to use them properly. Personally I think organ builders should only make them on condition that the moment any key below tenor G is played they operate the general cancel piston. [/troll]

Isn't this a bit like criticising Schnitgers for not being able to handle an orchestral crescendo? The whole ethos was different in them thar days and it's surely pushing it a bit to take FHW to task for not designing organs future generations would require. And isn't it over-egging the case to see his cost cutting as the cause of everyone else's subsequent economies? Cost cutting is a fact of business economics; it was bound to hit organ building, FHW or no. But I do agree with your main point that we shouldn't automatically look at FWH through rose-tinted specs. The FWH I first learnt on was nice enough, but wholly inadequate for the church it was in.

Ah, my memory wasn't entirely faulty then! Yes, I agree, though I come at it from a slightly different angle. I don't think it's unreasonable to think of the pedals as essentially a suboctave department. You could argue (and I would) that a manual to pedal coupler tells you only about the pitch of the manual, not the pedal. The fact that you might sometimes not use a 16' doesn't alter the department's fundamental pitch any more than playing a manual on only a 4' stop would. In the old days when Romantic organs were all we knew and cared about the octave difference in nomenclature hardly mattered, but in these more enlightened times it won't do. If you base the letter names on each department's fundamental pitch, what are you going to do when confronted with a 4-manual Werkprinzip instrument? If you call the bottom key CCC on the pedals and CC on the Haupwerk, then logically you'd need to assign the other manuals to C, c and c' - a recipe for confusion!

I feel embarrassed at having to ask this, but I'm a bit out of touch and not a little confused. When I was a kid the system used almost universally in Britain to describe the pitch of organ pipes was a variant of the one used by Robert Smith in his Harmonics (1748). The lowest note of a 16' open pipe was CCC, an 8' pipe CC and the subsequent octaves were C, c, c' c'' etc. And I seem to remember that when the system was used to describe manual and pedal compasses, the bottom key on the manuals was CC called, but the lowest pedal key was CCC. These days I get the impression that this has been superseded by a variant of the Helmholtz system which effectively moves everything up an octave so that a 16' pipe is now CC. And there is no longer any octave difference between the manuals and pedals: the lowest key of each is C. But am I right in thinking that this latter system (which has been endorsed by some influential people including Peter Williams, Stephen Bicknell and NPOR) is now usual? Which system do you use? And do you recognise an octave differential between the manuals and pedals?

It was learning the Symphonic Fantasia and Fugue when I was a student that did for me. It must be one of his most harmonically tortuous (not to say torturous) pieces. I only bought it because I was intrigued by how black it looked - fistfuls of notes that you could hardly see for the beams joining them together. I did eventually manage to get to grips with the Fantasia, but the satisfaction was entirely joyless and cold-blooded. After that I just couldn't face learning the Fugue and I've never touched a note of Reger since. It is a good piece though.

Come on, boys, give Steve a break. He hasn't flamed anyone on this thread and may be trying to turn over a new leaf. I didn't read any ulterior motive into his post; it seemed like a genuine query to me.

Reger at Crediton would sound perfectly frightful. I confess to being someone who thinks the big Reger pieces are inherently indigestible anyway, but even being open-minded about it, Crediton ain't the boyo.

I suppose the Elgar Sonata is too early (1895)? Any of Howells's Psalm Preludes from Set 1 (1915/16). Any of Parry's two sets of Chorale Preludes (1912 & 1916).

For anyone interested, here are the answers. I'm sure "Flautus Tremulus" must be a misprint.

Talking of which, I was interested to learn that the 109 (?) stop 4-decker in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles was a present to Los Angeles county from the Toyota Motor Corporation (love the "bad hair day" look of this BTW). Maybe if most of their UK production wasn't exported...? Nah, still can't see it somehow.

Close, but no Coconut Diapason!

More than that. A pianissimo 32 stirs the very soul. In the right acoustic of course.

Yes, Peter! I have no use for loud 32' flues, but soft ones, mmmm.....!

Thanks for that clarification, Paul. As you can probably tell, I have never had the chance to play a French organ. It's a big aching hole in my life. I hope one day I might get around to filling it.

I hope not too many of you have come across this one before. In 1882 William Hill & Son built a 4-manual organ for the Roman Catholic priory of Our Lady, Help of Christians and St Denis, Torquay, Devon. It had the following curious stop list: (William Hill & Son, 1882) GREAT ORGAN Tibia Pileata Gravis 16 Regula Primaria 8 Tibia Fistulata 8 Octava 4 Duodecima 3 Quintadecima 2 Miscella Triplex III Tuba Magna 8 SWELL ORGAN Tibia Pileata Gravis 16 Regula Primaria 8 Tibia Arundinacea 8 Octava 4 Quintadecima 2 Miscella Duplex II Calumus 8 Cornu 8 CHOIR ORGAN Tibia Dulcis 8 Tibia Salicionalis 8 Tibia Pileata Amabilis 8 Tibia Sylvestris 4 Tibia Harmonica 4 SOLO ORGAN Fidis Cruralis 8 Unda Maris 8 Vox humana 8 Cantus Cremonensis 8 Flatus Tremulus PEDAL ORGAN Tibia Aperta Magna 16 Tibia Pileata 16 Fidis Magna 8 COUPLERS Ped. Octavae Copula Man III Sub Octavae Copula Man. III ad Man. II Man. I ad Ped. Man II ad Ped. Man. III ad Ped. ACCESSORIES 3 composition pedals to Great 2 composition pedals to Swell Balanced expression pedal for Swell In 1984 the organ was rebuilt and enlarged slightly and the stop names changed to English. Anyone care to guess what the original specification would have been in English? Quite a few are pretty obvious, I think. The answer is on the web, but I'll trust you not to peek! Does anyone know of any other English organs with Latin stop names?

I think there is a place for a pair of fairly keen, undulating strings on the Solo, but I don't like them on the Swell. A Swell Flute and Salicional will (or should) blend to produce a useful warmth and prepare the way nicely for the addition of the 8' diapason, but a flute and a keen Viole-type stop only ever seem to sound exactly that - two individual stops. Maybe I've just heard poor examples? I wouldn't call the average Voix Celeste scratchy though. Not an English one at any rate - French and German ones are more keen - though I still like them. English ones I just find warm and far preferable (to my taste, of course) than a Vox Angelica which I just find colourless (though even that has its uses).

I'm not sure I agree. Or at least I do, but only partly. Judgement should always be informed, but to suspend judgement entirely and ignore what your ears are trying to tell you is surely wrong. I don't think it's wrong to make judgements. It's a sign of discrimination. If you haven't got a sense of taste, how are you going to make music? But taste is an individual thing and I am more than happy to acknowledge that other people can have different tastes that are no less valid than mine. I'm confident I understand the intention behind Open Woods and, yes, on a good organ they produce a marvellous rolling sound. However, I phrased my original question deliberately to ask specifically about making music. A glorious sound and a musical performance are two different things; hopefully the latter will include the former, but the former does not automatically produce in the latter (the old elephant trap that we have all had to learn to negotiate). But I guess what I really meant was that although they can lend a nice sonority to music, they are entirely dispensible. French Romantic organs manage perfectly well without them. I admit that I fail entirely to understand the thinking behind the Hohl Flute. It must surely be the stop with the fewest upper partials - just a thick, fat wall of sound that makes its presence felt in a far too obvious way (which I suppose is another way of saying that it doesn't blend very well - because of the dearth of said partials maybe?) Many Clarabellas/Claribel Flutes are almost as bad, though, as others have pointed out, there are some good examples around. PS My goodness, I'm in a pompous mood today.

I don't think so! I'm entirely unknown in the organ world! I just know how to do a bit of research...

Well, of course, at St George's Windsor (which you've played) you have these and a Corno di Bassetto and Orch Oboe! I'm also rather partial to descanting on a Solo 4' flute (alone).

This gets us into the realm of what we expect a cathedral organ to do. Is its primary job to accompany choirs/services, or is it to play solo repertoire? I guess most of us would agree that it needs to be able to do both and its then a question of where you draw the line of compromise. Personally I think a Clarinet (or Corno di Bassetto if you must) and an Orchestral Oboe are essential voices in a cathedral organ, but I wouldn't expect everyone to agree. As you've probably guessed, I'm not entirely sold on the Gloucester instrument.

I can't speak for the continent, Pierre, but as far as England goes this is definitely not the case. For one thing, crescendo pedals have never been popular enough here to become anything like a standard feature of Romantic organs - not in the way they did in Germany. I understand what you mean by the composers of Bach's time mixing stops of the same pitch: it works well with Bach's music on at least some the organs of his area, like the Hildebrandt at Naumburg. However, what I was referring to was the "orchestral" style of additive registration to build crescendos, which is a very different thing. This was in vogue long before the Organ Reform Movement hit Britain. A very elderly organist I know still uses this style; he was taught it in about the 1940s by an elderly organist who had a personal anecdote or two about S. S. Wesley!

There are those who have advocated this, for example, Reginald Whitworth in his book Organ Stops and their Use, but I seriously doubt whether it is true of organs of the symphonic era. During that period registration was entirely additive; you never subtracted stops, so by the time you had built up to full swell it would inevitably include all sorts of flues. Of course it is always possible that how builders designed their organs and how performers actually used them were two entirely different things, but I've not heard anyone suggest any glaring discrepancy.

Indeed. http://www.netreach.net/~druid/LVimgs/lv04.jpg