Vox Humana

I liked it. It was bleak, mid-wintery, quasi-nostalgic and very atmospheric. Some people seem to have found it painfully dissonant, but actually it was fairly tame compared to a lot of late Howells (even if his pencil might have corrected one or two of the chord resolutions). Each to their own though. For my part, I couldn't work out what "The holly and the ivy" gained from Lutoslawski's duffing up. Maybe someone can convert me. I thought the singing on both the radio and TV programmes was superb. As I said last year, somewhere, it was great to hear the voices blended and balanced once again. The TV programme, with only six men, made for a very different ambience from the radio recording. It was a much more intimate sound than we have been used to, which was heighted by the absence of the congregation. I found it quite moving. My only gripe was that the organ sometimes tended to overpower the choir a little, but that might have been due to the sound engineers.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Although the website is now defunct, elements at least can still be retrieved from Google's cache. I wonder how much of his biography can be verified? Apparently no one has ever found any evidence for the three doctorates he claimed to have: Ph.D., D.Mus., D.D. Do his compositions actually exist?

Ah. So that will be why Matthew Martin is playing.

How interesting! I think I would have liked that organ. A fine interpretation too.

Presumably elements of this.

I would guess that Covid is in some way to blame for the engagement of Matthew Martin.

Menu here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qks5

That's fifteen times what I got as a choirboy—half a crown a quarter. 1963 was the year I gravitated from a mere (unofficial and unpaid) assistant to my first proper organist's job, in a tiny church, at the luxurious wage of £1 a week—which was pretty much the going rate, locally, at the time. Being not yet 14 years old, I was extremely grateful that the church was sufficiently principled to pay the full rate for the job and not take advantage of my youth by cutting its costs. Even better, a member of the congregation preferred to put his weekly collection into my pocket rather than the church's, thus doubling my income. Wealth untold! Most of it went on organ music and LPs.

Advert for the Exeter job https://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/about-us/vacancies/

The principle of exact proportional relationships was a medieval one and died out well before Bach. It had begun to crumble at least by the end of the Renaissance and probably before, given the differing views that were current concerning some of the signs. One can still indulge in exact tempo relationships if one wants to, of course, if they are musically effective. It seems unlikely that Bach intended the fugue of BWV 582 to be performed at a different speed to the Passacaglia, given that he conceived the work as a single movement.

The Breitkopf edition mentions only one lost source: a copy described by Rust in 1867 as a fair autograph then in the possession of "Herr Consul Clauss zu Leipzig", though whether it really was an autograph is open to question. An English version of the commentary to the Breitkopf volume, with an assessment of the sources, is available here: https://www.breitkopf.com/bach-edirom/apps/breitkopf-bach-band-1/EB_8801.pdf

I accompanied a choir in St John's for a concert a few years ago. I thought it a fine instrument. However, due to it being tightly boxed in (so I understand), it is distinctly on the quiet side as organs of this size go. As at Exeter it was good to be able to use so much of it with a choir, but it did limit the way you could use the Swell. The Celestes, for example, were far too quiet to achieve any kind of balance without mixing with at least the 8' flute. I can't understand why anyone should hate it, but my acquaintance was only fleeting.

It was Nicolaus Bruhns, not Bach, who was noted as having done that.

Only some? I know I'm not that well connected, but I'm not at all sure I've ever met an organist who is completely happy with what (s)he's got. If they have not tinkered, it's probably only because of lack of funds.

It was Sidney Campbell who originally brought Arthur Wills to Ely as his assistant—unceremoniously ousting the incumbent man to make way for him, if I remember correctly. John Wellingham, who studied at Ely with Campbell, tells a tale to cherish. Ely were doing a broadcast Evensong on the Home Service. Campbell was going to conduct; Wills would accompany. The producer asked for a thirty-second organ improvisation in order to set a suitable atmosphere for the service. After the service was over, Campbell came up to John with his hands held limply quivering in front of his breasts in mock shock, saying in a quavering voice, “The producer asked for thirty seconds of improvisation and what did we get? Five minutes of diarrhoea all over the keyboard!” In fact Campbell had the utmost respect for Wills. Campbell had done his Durham D.Mus. externally on the back of a correspondence course (!) with Dr Frederick Wood of Blackpool parish church and he advised Wills to do likewise—which Wills did. That Wills (a) took Campbell’s advice and (b) succeeded would have counted for a lot. In Campbell’s eyes a D.Mus. by examination made you one of the elite. It was proof that you were a ‘real’ musician. Arthur Wills was certainly that.

I recall that Sidney Campbell's solution was to precede the first chord with crotchet octaves B C# F#, a slightly more subtle solution than JDB's and still thematically related. I'm not sure that it was really necessary, though—the choir never had a problem with the start of Stanford's B flat Jubilate. Campbell certainly used reeds for 'He hath shewed strength', but I can't remember whether it was the Solo Trumpet or the Great reeds. A Tuba might be overkill - or at least some might be. A lot of people seem not to like Murrill in E. The Magnificat does sound horribly trite when it's taken too fast (and I've heard one or two quite ridiculous interpretations), but if the 'Allegro' is treated as four in a bar rather than two, and 'comodo', it sounds well. I'm very fond of it and it has the advantage that it's eminently doable by healthy parish choirs.

When I have been sussed in the past, it has usually been my finger substitutions in legato passages that gave me away!

Quite. That's why I was careful to stipulate 'practical'. 🙂

I can't for the life of me see how touch screens are a practical advance on stop knobs. It's the easiest thing in the world to grab and pull a bunch of modern, electrically controlled stop knobs. Pressing three knobs on a touch screen simultaneously surely must require greater precision. (Is that even possible? The last time I encountered a touch screen you could only activate one stop knob at a time, but that was quite a few years ago.)

The last few posts beg the question of who exactly our target clienteles are and whether they require different strategies. Given that I’m a nobody, perhaps I have no business voicing an opinion, but I am afraid that I disagree very much with Brizzle. Perhaps this is because the people I gave recitals to (on the rare occasions I gave them) were always mainly musically unsophisticated—but these people are surely no less important than classical music devotees. That said, I don’t believe that it is necessary to patronise such an audience to provide them with an enjoyable experience. My programmes were precisely the sort of ‘chocolate box’ that Brizzle deprecates—a varied selection of styles and periods. All I can say is that it worked. Also, where physically practical, I’m a great believer in talking to the audience at intervals, telling them just enough about each piece and its composer to put them in the right frame of mind—no more than about a minute per piece (it’s not a lecture-recital) and no more than two or three pieces at a time. Breaking up the programme in this way adds to the variety and helps maintain interest. The ‘aloof’ approach (enter, bow, play, bow, depart) may be the norm for professional pianists, but it hasn’t really worked for the organ and I’m not sure that the remedy is simply more judicious programming. In the days when my city used to have regular Foghorn recitals by the great and good, a friend once commented to me that some recitalists’ spoken introductions (often given en bloc before playing a note) were in danger of becoming as long as the recitals themselves. That’s just a recipe for boredom. I wasn’t going to post this because no one wants to listen to me blowing my own Ophicleide, but it does support my argument. Several years ago I was the President of our local Hele Huggers. As such I had to mount an end-of-term entertainment. Since I had just accepted a church post for the first time in over a quarter of a century, I decided to give them a recital. The church was actually on another association’s patch, so I didn’t expect more than twenty Huggers to come. I thought it only polite to extend the invitation to the congregation and I did get them to distribute some posters, but, again, I didn’t really expect much outside interest and so I made no particular concessions in my programme. Since the Huggers were not particularly musically sophisticated, I adopted my usual ‘chocolate box’ style approach: Lloyd-Webber — Solemn Procession Bruhns — Praeludium in e minor (the longer one) Bach — Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland BWV 659 Gade — Tre Tonstykker Greene — Voluntary no.1 in G major Parry — Chorale Prelude on ‘St Cross’ Vierne — Claire de lune Messiaen — Dieu parmi nous Apart from the Messiaen I wouldn’t call any of this particularly taxing aurally, but even so I was somewhat alarmed when an audience of not too far short of 100 turned up. I even felt obliged to apologise for not providing a more ‘popular’ programme. I could not have been more delighted with the response I got at the end, but the best compliment of all, because it was completely random, came a week later. One of my choir had been on a bus, sitting in front of two ladies, and overheard one of them say, ‘We went to an organ recital last Saturday. Chap called [Vox Humana]. It was really good!’ ‘Chocolate box’ programmes didn’t do Carlo Curley any harm either.

Interesting development: https://www.sheffieldcathedral.org/news/2020/10/4/announcement-from-the-dean-of-sheffield-cathedral

Yes. 'Easter Song' is the A&M name for the tune and has the shorter note values as set by Campbell; 'Lasst uns erfreuen' is the EH name and has the longer values as set by Fleming. All perfectly logical in their ways. Just in case I haven't been clear, it's Campbell's single chant for psalm 114 that is incorrect in the published version. The published version of his descant for the Barnby chant is correct, but there's an altered version in circulation. It's easy to spot Campbell's original as the first quarter has the chant melody as a left-hand solo (which he used to play on the Swell Cornopean) and the first right hand chord is just a simple triad: E, G# B. In the bowdlerised version the first chord is a fistful of notes for both hands with a top G# on top.

For those on Facebook, both chants can be retrieved via the link below by licking on the 'posted' links, though you have to be a member of the Anglican Chant Appreciation Society group. The Barnby arrangement is the first chant listed, while the single chant I mentioned is no.29-4. Alternatively, if you PM me an email address I'll see what I can do. Both chants are technically still in copyright, but goodness knows where this now lies. All Campbell's immediate relatives pre-deceased him and even his cousins are all dead now. https://www.anglicanchant.nl/books/book034.html

Alas, it is out of print and seemingly unavailable, even in these days of photocopy on demand. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Introits-Chants-T-B-Anthems/dp/B0000CTZOI