Vox Humana

I am slightly surprised that no one has highlighted this Radio 3 series on here. I enjoyed all three programmes very much indeed, despite Ms Apkalna sometimes talking over the music (particularly infuriating in Thomas Trotter's awe-inspiring performance of the Thalben-Ball pedal variations). The various performances were quite riveting and introduced me to several new pieces. I was particularly fascinated by the extract from Péter Eötvös's Multiversum for pipe organ, Hammond organ and orchestra. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tw60/episodes/player

Which explains exactly why the organ is so ill-suited to Romantic music! 😉

There is a church in south Devon that has a serpent affixed one of the pillars in the nave. At least, it did have last time I visited the church. I do indeed. Wild did paintings of some of the royal apartments too. They are all wonderful.

https://www.voxhumanajournal.com/mccroskey2021.html?fbclid=IwAR16FiVQTgKMUrBCBSE3kWpYknBTRTCaxnyaHZmYiAWOCNGCi8goP2K0z40 [NB: Nothing to do with me!]

Were he still alive, I would be interested to hear what Campbell would say about what has been done to the organ he loved so much—from a safe distance. If you want to hear his music sounding absolutely 'at home', search out the late John Porter's CD of music by Campbell, Harris and others. In the Campbell pieces, Porter's playing captures the composer's style perfectly. When I first heard it I could really imagine the old man himself playing. Nevertheless, quite a bit of Campbell's organ music was conceived to be played on traditional Cathedral organs, especially the (old) organ of Canterbury Cathedral—although the exact style of voicing he had in mind is perhaps a moot point. His 'Variations on Vexilla Regis' (of which there's a fine performance on YouTube by John Pryer) seems, from the registration instructions and publication date, to have been conceived with Coventry Cathedral in mind.

You didn't mention the most obvious one of the lot, SL: that mass by JSB. Others that come to mind: Bach: 2 x P&Fs from the 48 🙂 Franck: Choral no.2 Franck: Prélude, Fugue & Variation Gigout: Toccata One of Bach's French Suites in in B minor, but I can't remember which one.

I totally agree. My erstwhile lord and master said something characteristically trenchant somewhere about the pointlessness of arranging for the organ music actually written for the organ. He didn't believe in romanticising music that wasn't Romantic. In any case, CC's introduction (if it is his), although enjoyable on its own terms, is over-cooked as an introduction to that Trumpet movement, which it turns into an anti-climax. Stanley's own introduction is a much better preparation - unsurprisingly. Not that I have an opinion, you understand.

The use of 'comprises' in the disclaimer is just as bad: "The information displayed about this property comprises a property advertisement." A body comprises its parts, not vice versa.

A terraced property? I wonder what the neighbours think! The house is advertised for £500k, but the blurb doesn't say what condition the organ is in. I'm reminded of one of my American jaunts. The chap I was lodging with was an amateur organ enthusiast. In the main reception room of his house was a 56-stop/29-rank three manual organ that he had cobbled up from second-hand pipework obtained from the Organ Clearing House, a sort of Exchange and Mart for pipe organs. He was also a dab hand with electronics, so his console boasted such delicacies as a Gt to Sw 2 2/3 and a Gt to Sw 1 3/5 (intended for use with single stops). The spec included a Ludwigtone 8'. It's the only one I have ever encountered and, TBH, I can quite see why this stop never really caught on. Taming a schizophrenic krait might be easier. Still, the instrument was nothing if not versatile and could cope with any repertoire and surely gave its owner hours of pleasure.

That will be this one. Now I'm wondering whether whoever was responsible for this was responsible for that awful galant trio mash-up of O Mensch bewein' dein' Sünde gross (https://www.breitkopf.com/bach-edirom/apps/breitkopf-bach-band-7/bwv622b.pdf). Probably not. Actually I like BWV 745 very much. It's always struck me as sounding more like Brahms than any of the Bachs, but that's largely due to the thoroughly un-HIP way I used to play it from Lohmann's edition, which added its own je ne sais quoi.

He already has! Musing Muso had an interest in Eastern European organs, but I'm not sure how often he looks in here now. The members section seems to have disappeared.

There's a reasonably reliable reference to Bach using a stick in his mouth, isn't there? Forkel's biography, or some equivalent source, if memory serves.

Love it!! 🤣

Harpsichord music by Purcell in the soundtrack to Tudor dramas is a fairly regular one. I was very pleased that the dramatisations of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall novels did largely have suitable period music—though having a votive antiphon by Cornysh during a mass was very naughty. (I know, I need to get out more.)

Some years ago, when I was researching the musical history of the two main pre-War churches in Plymouth, I found that the newer (and lesser) of these churches, the now-ruined Charles' Church, acquired its first organ (a two-manual Bevington with an octave of pedal pipes) in 1846, to replace the cello or gamba (described variously in the accounts as "bass viol" and "violin") that had previously supported the gallery choir. Prior to that the only interest that the vestry had ever taken in music was to resent the money that they spent on it and, at one point, to advertise for a new choir (reason unknown). The vestry had signalled its willingness to have an organ back in 1828, so long as the parish did not have to pay for either the instrument or the organist's salary, but by 1846 they had agreed to pay for both. After acquiring their brand new organ—and a leading local musician to play it—all the vestry ever did was to resent the money they spent on music, discourage any choir-only items, and moan about the dire standard of the singing. The vicars banged on continually about wanting "good congregational singing", but never had any clue about how to go about achieving it. By the time the church was bombed in 1941 the choir were doing what many parish choirs in the land did at that time: they sang anthems and, once a year, a passiontide cantata (Crucifixion and Olivet to Calvary are both mentioned)—maybe, too, the very occasional Mag and Nunc. Someone who heard them described them to me as being not nearly so good as they thought they were.

Peter Le Huray's Music and the Reformation in England, 1549-1660 quotes Archbishop Laud asking the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury in 1634 to ensure that the choir did not have too many tenors "which is an ordinary voice". Charles Butler's The Principles of Musik in Singing (1636) describes the tenor as 'neither ascending to any high or strained notes, nor descending very low, it continues in one ordinary tenor of the voice and therefore may be sung by an indifferent voice." Le Huray concluded from these remarks that the tenor was the commonest voice. Dr Andrew Johnstone of Trinity College, Dublin, pretty much settled the Tudor pitch debate with his 2003 Early Music article "'As it was in the beginning': organ and choir pitch in early Anglican church music", which suggested strongly that organ pitch was (at least reasonably) standard at one-and a-third semitones above A=440 and that the Tudor countertenor, tenor and bass voices were nothing more than what we call tenor, baritone and bass. Simon Ravens and Andrew Parrott have independently and comprehensively disposed of any notion that there was a falsetto voice in Tudor England—Alfred Deller and Michael Tippett have a lot to answer for there. Decades ago the late David Wulstan pointed out the stability of the voices ranges of Tudor church music throughout the sixteenth century as being evidence of a stable church pitch. He was undoubtedly right, even if the actual pitch he advocated (a minor third above A=440) is no longer credible. Secular pitch may well have been a different matter.

Yes, very interesting. It seems that Goss's tune appeared in the third edition published in 1869 (according to WorldCat). I was aware of the "Frail as summer's flowers" verse since Goss's manuscript of it was reproduced many years ago in The Musical Times, but I did not know that it had ever been published. (The verse is included in the Baptist Hymnal, 1900, but it uses the four-part harmonisation of the tune). I had always assumed that Goss's tune had been part of Hymns Ancient and Modern ever since the first edition, but that evidently isn't the case. The early editions only have 'Alleluia dulce carmen' (indexed, prior to 1875, under the name 'Benediction'). There was a major expansion of A & M in 1875, but that still didn't include Goss's tune. I wonder when it was incorporated?

Paignton parish church in Devon used to have a very effective pair of digital 32s. All the various digital additions (not acknowledged on NPOR) have been replaced since I last played it, but I have no reason to suppose they are any the less effective now.

I thought it meant what I call thumpy bumpy music—the sort that makes me humpy grumpy.

Indeed, there are a vast number of organists whose musical horizons are really rather narrow.

Voluntaries apart, the problem with this, for an organist, is that you are always playing someone else's interpretation; you never get a chance to air your own. Trying to do so when the boss is away might or might not be feasible because you'd be upsetting apple carts. You really do have to set your own opinions aside.

I would be surprised if this were unusual. There are plenty of people out there who over-estimate their capabilities as much as they under-estimate the professional standards and organisational abilities required for the job. Many years ago a top (Anglican) assistant assured me, in all seriousness, that there were people who would actually offer to pay to have his job. I still can't quite believe that, but he may perhaps have been thinking of the US, where he had worked for a while.

The honours system has long been utterly devalued by cronyism, such that it is impossible without inside knowledge to distinguish the genuinely deserving (of which I'm happy to count Wayne Marshall as one) from the rest. I have personally known civil servants who were recommend for, and given, gongs for doing nothing more than their routine jobs, simply out of favouritism. These were only minor gongs, to be sure, but that simply reflects the circles in which I revolved, ever decreasingly. I have absolutely no doubt that, at least where political service is concerned, the same principles apply right to the top of the tree. I have heard it claimed that the process of devaluation began when Harold Wilson gave gongs to the Beatles and that it was a deliberate Socialist policy. I have no idea about that, but it does rather seem that, outside the mutual back-rubbing cliques, gongs are very much weighted towards those held in high, popular esteem. Indeed, we now have a system for public nomination. Sadly, the talent in our organ lofts is of no interest to most of the public and not regarded as of national importance, so they no longer get a look-in. Perhaps you can't have it both ways. The more you give gongs to those who are not well known publicly, the more you may be accused of cronyism. I would happily abolish the whole system. It wouldn't damage my lifestyle.

I really can't imagine who would want that job, but I'm sure someone will.

It reminds me of the time one of our local Methodist churches was having a make-over. The builders advised ditching the speakers of the antiquated II/P Allen boopbox, assuring one of the stewards that the church's sound system could cope with the organ perfectly well. Needless to say the steward didn't seek the organist's advice, but agreed on the spot. The church has been regretting it ever since. (I appreciate that Contrebombarde's situation was an emergency.)