Vox Humana

My dear Steve Please believe me: my views were not aimed at you personally. I certainly have no wish at all for you to be unsuccessful. May every good fortune be yours! If you think I am jealous of American wealth, then, yes, I am to a certain extent. But if you think I am jealous of your large organs, then you misunderstand the point I was trying to make. You can take my previous post at face value. I would remind you that I have played Washington Cathedral. I also know similar organs over here. St Paul's and Liverpool cathedrals make just as fine a racket in their way. I can handle such organs - and have - but I don't have to prefer them to smaller ones. I acknowledge that you Americans tend to view these things differently. To find, as you not infrequently do in America, a sizeable four-manual organ in an ordinary church is something that's apt to make British jaws drop, but I don't have a problem with this at all. I'm actually all for it so long as the instrument is unified and coherent. I once played in a parish church that had a vintage four-decker E. M. Skinner and it was one of the most magnificent organs I have played over your side. In fact the vast majority of instruments I have played in the states have been good, coherent instruments. I just don't have a liking for ones that sprawl around the building - whatever country they're in. It's a perfectly tenable position to dislike playing an instrument if it feels like you're taking a jellyfish for a walk along an elastic band. And that is a problem with the Wanamaker organ. You ask Peter Conte.

I'm reminded of an organist who was having a previously untouched, small, two-manual Father Willis modernised and extended so that it could play Baroque music. I was horrified and said so. His response was, "It's all very well for you, but you don't have to play the thing every week." I still thought he was wrong, but I could see his point. Funnily enough, I'd never really heard the Worcester organ until this Christmas when a relative gave me that new CD of old Ryemuse recordings from the 1960s. The first track is the Worcester organ (in Mulet's Carillon-Sortie). If it really does sound like that in the flesh, then it's truly dire and the sooner it goes the better. It's not as if it were an unadulterated example of RH-J's work anyway, so there seems little historical reason to retain it. But it's easy to be an armchair critic and I'd be the first to admit I don't know the facts.

There is also the consideration that, over here, we realised long ago that the eclectic organ (by which I mean one that has Schnitger Principals, Cavaillé-Coll reeds, Cliquot mutations, etc., etc.) does not make a coherent artistic entity. Better to produce an organ that does have integrity and can cope with the whole repertoire effectively without trying to ape every different voicing style at once. Quite simply, you don't need more than 60 stops to get an organ that can play anything under the sun with something approaching the registration the composer wanted. Above about 80 stops, it begins to look as if size and extravagance is getting the better of people's sense. Remember Sir Thomas Beecham: "Organists are like broken-down carthorses: they're always wanting another stop". One of the things that makes Mozart a great composer is that he only wrote as many notes as were necessary. None is superfluous, every one tells (a generalisation maybe, but by and large it's true). Organ designers would do well to think likewise. Anybody can design an all-purpose specification by throwing in every stop imaginable. It takes intellect to get the maximum versatility out of limited resources. And, dare I say it? the result is likely to be more fun.

Dave's organ reminds me of one I had to inspect a month or two back: Great Open Diapason 8 Hohl Flute 8 Salicional 8 Principal 4 Harmonic Flute 4 Swell Violin Diapason 8 Rorh Flute 8 Echo Gamba 8 Voix Celeste 8 Gemshorn 4 Contra Oboe 16 Cornopean 8 Pedal Bourdon 16 Echo Bourdon 16 The instrument's one saving grace was that about a quarter of the keys didn't actually work, so reducing its awfulness by 25%. Actually, I think the very worst organ I've ever played was the one I got with my first church appointment when I was 14. I can't remember the exact specification, but it was something like: GreatOpen Diapason 8 (BIG) Clarabella 8 Wald Flute 4 Swell Violin Diapason 8 Salicional 8 Gemshorn 4 Pedal Bourdon 16 I've no idea who built it, but it was in a dreadful state and the parish eventually had Osmunds come and repair it. It was only a clean-and-patch-up job, but they did paint the pipes gold and of course the congregation duly thought it sounded so much brighter!

Technically administration is not liquidation. Administration implies that the company is in the hands of a receiver, but still remains (for the time being) a legal entity. It's a technique for allowing a company's financial affairs to be sorted. Many companies that go into administration do survive, e.g. when the administrator manages to find a buyer who is prepared to take over the debts. Whether that is a realistic expectation for an organ building firm, however, is another matter and the fact that the staff have been laid off (or at least one of them has) doesn't bode well. There may not be much hope, but I wouldn't start playing the Dead March in Saul just yet.

Cheers for that, ajt. It's on my list.

Now there's a voice to die for. I might be interested in this too, but what sort of speed does he take the first movement of Wiederstehe doch der Sünde? I'm still looking for my ideal performance of this. Gardiner is too fast and mannered for my liking, but the old Thurston Dart/Helen Watts version is too slow and indulgent. What I want is something gentle, but flowing.

That's the one! If it's on CD, I'm a-getting it!

Did anyone else hear Cantata 146 this lunchtime with the organ obbligato in the Sinfonia (aka the first movement of the D minor harpsichord concerto) played on J. L. Krebs's old instrument in Altenburg castle? Wow! Nothing apologetic here: for once the solo organ was allowed to be the King of Instruments. What a sound! What a performance! I was completely gobsmacked. If you missed it, it's no.63 on Radio 3's "Listen Again", about 50 minutes into the programme.

I would concur that both instruments sound very much as if they are out of the same stable. Both have a curious "undervoiced" quality which makes them sound somewhat less loud than they actually are (which may sound a strange statement, but it's true!) The same was true of the only other R&D I can remember playing - a largish three-decker at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.

Absolutely. I've heard it twice now (at two university graduation ceremonies) and from the repertoire given us I'm quite sure we had full organ. I was sat fairly near the back of the nave, but down there the instrument was less than overwhelming. I'd agree that what there was of it sounded really rather nice. It's OK. The tone colours aren't that distinctive, though. I'd expect more variety for the size. One result of this "sameness" (and maybe it was intentional) is that it does the smoothest stop crescendo of any organ I've heard - if you like that sort of thing.

That'll be this one:

I walked into Guildford Cathedral a while back while someone was playing the organ. My immediate impression was "that Full Swell sounds quite nice". I was quite looking forward to hearing the Full Organ until I realised that what I was hearing was Full Organ. (BTW, I'm not implying it's anything like the worst organ in the world.)

In a small building like this I wonder just how essential a Gt 2' is. Recently I was in a larger church than this that had an old organ with nothing on the Gt above 4' and the chorus sounded surprisingly adequate. So I wonder whether the following would work: Great Open Diapason 8 Stopped Diapason 8 Principal 4 Sw to Gt Swell (voiced to complement the Gt, i.e. not too reticently) Gedeckt 8 Salicional 8 Open Flute (metal) 4 Flageolet 2 Mixture (15.19.22) Fagotto 8 Tremulant Octave Unison Off Pedal Bourdon 16 Gt to Ped Sw to Ped Sw 8ve to Ped

I'd been told that this church has a very dry acoustic and the programme certainly does reveal that there's not a lot of reverberation. Yet the organ still manages to make you think you're in a resonant cathedral. If it's not just clever miking, I'd say that Manders have pulled off quite a trick here. Very impressive.

We have certainly tried that over here, back in the days of the "eclectic" organ. To take one example I used to know rather well 30-odd years ago, St George's Windsor had English Trumpets on the Great and French ones on the Swell (where the mixture was also effectively a French Plein Jeu; it was splendid with the reeds but hopeless with the flues). The Solo Orchestral Trumpet was English, but the accompanying Clarion had French shallots. The Chair Organ (not so called) had a parpy little Trompette that was meant to be I don't know what (English? Cliquot perhaps?) and the Positive a fairly vicious Baroque Krummhorn. The Pedal had an extended, French-style Trombone chorus, and a Baroquish Fagotto rank at 16' and 8', plus a Schalmei and a Kornet 2'. I use the past tense, but I doubt that much has changed. Most of it worked brilliantly, especially the synthesis of the French and English reeds. In fact, the whole organ was a triumph of design. The layout of the stop jambs was particularly clever: you could draw almost any combination you wanted with just one fistful, whether it was the Great diapason chorus, the Gt flute chorus 8', 4', 2', the Pedal Baroque reeds, etc, etc. With just 72 stops there was nothing you couldn't play with some approximation of the required tone colour - even that Messiaen piece from Les Corps Glorieux that requires Cornets on three manuals (though you had to pretend a bit with the Choir Sesquialtera). The only completely redundant stop on the organ was the Great to Pedal coupler - I'd have traded it in for an italian-style undulating Principal. Such organs are very much out of favour today, however, since they are seen to lack integrity as a unified instrument. I'd have to admit that you can level that criticism at St George's, but the bottom line is: in practice, the organ works! Unfortunately it sounds far, far better in the loft than it does down below.

The current generation over this side of the Atlantic is very interested in organs as musical instruments, Steve. The previous generation was too. That is precisely why many of us distrust sprawling monsters and another reason why we don't see too many of the excesses seen in America where money gets the better of taste. Make no mistake: for all its noble sound, I'm afraid Washington Cathedral's organ is a hotch-potch. I mean, what's with the Brustwerk and Positiv? What have they got to do with the rest of the organ? And you can't even hear the thing accurately at the console. The Pedal sounds louder in the nave, the Solo quieter and so on. But WC is coherent compared to that monstrosity in the First Congregational Church, Los Angeles. That thing wasn't designed: it just sprawled itself over the building. Anyone can adopt the blunderbuss approach to organ building if they've got the money. Organists ought to be suspicious of playing by remote control. No other musician would dream of it. Oh, I know the more stops you have, the more you can wow the masses with lots of effects. Organists are never happier than when they're pulling knobs, are they? It takes their minds off the business of actually making music. Well, some of them... Sorry for the rant. It's not meant personally, Steve. It's an old hobby-horse of mine and no one has to agree with me.

Thanks for your comments on that, Paul. I hope I didn't give the impression that we have no good voicers. Clearly the big names have no problems in this area and I know of at least one other firm that has their pipes voiced by someone outside the firm. I was thinking rather of some small firms who I have strongly suspected of trying to do the job themselves without posessing any artistic expertise therein. One such has recently gone out of business and, having endured quite a few examples of their rebuilds when I lived in their area (all of which spoke with a characteristic shriek), I can't bring myself to mourn for them. I don't really know whether this is a widespread problem, but it did ring bells when I heard the comments I mentioned about the rarity of voicers. But maybe I put two and two together and made five.

I've heard it said more than once that the biggest problem with organs today is that there are so few people around who know how to voice pipes really artistically. Could there be anything in this?

Well said!

Fighting words! Conservative? Nah, I reckon it's more the lack of money which forces us to design organs rather than allowing them to grow like a fungus.

I can remember the old days when it certainly did promote good standards. They lost credibility for me during the seventies when they started to cave in to lower standards of taste. The final straw for me was a series of articles in their magazine giving a blow-by-blow account of 100 Hymns for Today (or was it More Hymns for Today?) Every single one - would you believe? - was a perfect gem. Oh, pur-leeze! That wasn't teaching discernment and standards; that was just blatant propaganda. But don't take any notice of me - I'm just a grumpy old stick-in-the-mud.

I agree. I played the intrument for a couple of Evensongs about 25 years ago (back in the days when I could play a bit) and I have to say that the Dome Organ is quite devastating enough as it is, thank you very much! On paper the Swell looks as if it could do with a Quint Mixture, but in practice the Cornet is sufficient and anything more tinkly might compromise the integrity of the division. Just my impression on a very fleeting acquaintance with the machine. As for dotting pipes all over the building, well, I've never much liked making music by remote control - but I appreciate that that's a can of worms; you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Yes - and on an English Baroque organ they sound just great. A Victorian or early 20th-century Open Diap and 8' flute is not at all the same thing. OK, maybe I should have used a less subjective term. I was thinking mainly of instruments with specification that date back to the era of the symphonic organ when registration was additive - i.e. you piled on the stops in the order that gave the smoothest crescendo (8's first, then the 4's, then the reeds, lastly the mixtures) and never bothered to subtract any. As I understand it the builders' goal was an "orchestral" sound. Wasn't it Willis who voiced his Geat Organs so that the diapaons were stronger in the bass, but the flutes stronger in the treble, so that, by using both together you get a more "singing" tone colour as you get higher, but a constant balance? On such an instrument it would be a very good reason for using both together, of course. I've not checked, but I think the proliferation of 8' Opens has everything to do with the symphonic style of registration I mentioned above. Not sure you find them so much at an earlier date, but, like I say, I've not checked, so I may be well off-beat here. It depends very much on the organ and the builder. According to Stephen Bicknell, some builders like Willis and Lewis voiced their diapasons and flutes to be used (and heard) together; others like Harrison & Harrison [and Walker?] did not. I played an old Compton pipe organ recently where the Swell was really an Echo organ and had very little impact when added to the Great. There's a lot of variety out there.

It seems my memory was playing tricks. I dug out the specification that Washington sent me back in '98 before I visited and that states that the 64ft has (or had) three pipes, which would have taken it down to AAAA. I thought it went lower, but clearly not. What I do remember is trying it and thinking, "Yes, the rest is quinted".