Vox Humana

I think quite a number of those 1.125 are likely to have been bots though. When I looked just now there were 20 viewers, of whom 9 were were logged-in members. I wonder how many of the remaining 11 were real people? Yes, I often do this. Thank you, Steve! Now I shall have to think of something to post!

Over the years I have found this forum very interesting and useful. I do not contribute so much these days, mainly because I ceased playing some years ago (I hardly touch any keyboard these days) and no longer have much to contribute. Yet I still read the posts with interest and would very much like to see the platform continue somewhere, somehow. I, too, would favour a free model (would a subscription forum even be viable?) and I very much like the look of the new forum that Steve has uploaded. (Thank you, Steve!) I do occasionally search out old threads, usually through Google. Losing these wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would be good if they could be preserved, so I would certainly be willing in principle to chip in to help fund a migration. I wonder whether, on the new forum, there is any appetite for adding a category for Choirs and Choral Music? This was mooted briefly here once, several years ago, but nothing materialised. It is a topic dear to many organists' hearts and I would be in favour, but I am not sure how widely this view is shared.

Thank you. I was aware of that broadcast, but did not know whether the back rows had been augmented for the occasion.

Thank you, Martin. Indeed, there is nothing to be ashamed of there (except for that awful toaster!). As you say, this was six years ago and a lot can happen to a choir in that time, but, if it managed to maintain that standard, the dean's decision is hard to understand.

Are there any recordings of Sheffield doing an ordinary weekday Choral Evensong? I'm not looking for special services, for which one can reasonably expect extra resources to be pulled in, but an ordinary, routine performance. I would just be interested to hear exactly what it is that has been disbanded.

Very sad news indeed, if true. 😪

Very interesting, S_L. Thank you.

It seems unduly hard on the children because it's not their fault. Presumably they are not singing at the moment anyway, so maybe it is more of a matter of them not being reconvened until a new regime is in place. A very risky strategy, if so, which may well make things harder for the new DoM than they might be. Very many years ago a new vicar at our city centre church was determined to move the very healthy music in a happy-clappy direction. He appointed a new DoM who was enthusiastic about this vision. The choir was highly antagonistic and the congregation deeply divided. The atmosphere became very hostile, nasty and unchristian, to the extent that pastoral relations completely broke down. The vicar decided that the only solution was to disband the choir. He got his way and the musical reputation of the church was permanently destroyed - an opportunity for evangelism lost. Needless to say, the revolution did nothing to increase bums on pews. There are surely similar cases elsewhere. I am emphatically not saying that this is what is envisaged at Sheffield because I have no information on that, but it does demonstrate one reason why a clergyman might choose to dismiss a choir. Does anyone know how many children there were in the choir at Sheffield? I believe that at one point, many years ago, they were down to six boys. Was that the point at which the treble line became mixed?

Agreed. That is something that is not going to be forgotten.

I would just like to point out politely that I never suggested that we 'had' to be told anything. I was simply confirming what several people elsewhere have suggested: that we are not being told everything. They are correct. There are what I would consider good reasons for this. I very much agree with your last sentence.

Since someone else accused him of this, I listened carefully and that is not quite what he said. He wants to broaden the repertoire to include, for example, a whole range of Tudor music, Purcell, plus more modern repertoire such as Panufnik. I have a Facebook friend who is very well acquainted with the Sheffield scene and has great respect for the dean and his musical knowledge. He has filled me in on the background to this situation. I cannot, and will not, divulge what I have been told (so don't send me any PMs), partly because I have promised not to and partly because I might risk misleading yet further, but suffice it to say that, assuming my friend is correct, it puts a completely different light on pretty much all the statements that have been posted on the internet and explains why the chapter has acted in the unilateral way it has. It is certainly true that we are not being told everything.

Interview with the dean here at 00:55:15 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20200723-1752/2020-07-23

This is the nub of the issue, I think. If you are giving a recital, your job is to give as many of the audience as possible an enjoyable and memorable experience. That’s it, really. Granted, it can mean different things in different places depending on who the audience is. If you are playing specifically for organists in, say, London, or for some other audience guaranteed to be musically sophisticated, you could possibly get away with a more niche and recherché programme than if you are playing to a non-specific audience in a humble country parish church. I made it a rule early on never to listen to what other organists said. You can never please them anyway. There’s always at least one who will tell you how he would have played something differently. The people who matter are the general public: they are the ones to whom an organist has to appeal if the instrument is to be popularised. There is a reason why Carlo Curley was so popular. In a nutshell, he made sure that everyone went home thoroughly entertained. His approach was unashamedly popular. Not all of us would wish to be quite so low-brow in our approach and nor do I think that his was the only possible approach. However, whatever music we programme does need to deliver audience appeal. As Choir Man intimated, the programme doesn’t ‘have’ to contain Bach, or anything else in particular; it just has to be enjoyable. I once attended a recital on our local foghorn in which a well-known organist played a programme entirely of French Romantic music, nearly all of which involved full organ, on an instrument whose oily-smooth tones are about as remote from a Cavaillé-Coll as it is possible to get. Now I know that I suggested above that one shouldn’t take any notice of what organists say, but, when they are all complaining about having had their brains blasted out almost non-stop for an hour, you have to think that maybe they had a point. ‘A wall of white noise’ was how one FRCO described it. He was right: nothing is audible through that Tromba chorus. Except the Tuba. If the organists found it hard to take, what did everyone else think? It was a pity because the recital had been technically flawless.

I don’t like the Reubke either, but, as my teacher would have said, that’s my problem, not Reubke’s. I just dislike heavy Austro-German Romanticism as a genre – a result of having had a friend at the RCM who used to drag me to hear Wagner operas and Bruckner symphonies (amongst other things; I got my own back by dragging him to David Munrow’s gigs). I have much more time for the ‘classical’ German Romantics like Schumann and Brahms. At least the Reubke is a very fine work, which is more than I can bring myself to say about the bulk of Liszt, whose music is a triumph of effect over substance (pace some gems among the softer piano pieces). Yet Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler and the rest of them are exceedingly popular with many concert goers, so I hesitate to consign any of them to room 101. If I were to make an exception it would be Liszt’s grotesquely bombastic and vacuous piffle on BACH.

Having a couple of offspring who are avid festival-goers, I am fairly certain that the added-value is in the party atmosphere, the communal dancing and the sense of tribeship, the last being a bonding factor in some other pursuits, such as birding. I have not noticed this degree of cameraderie amongst classical musicians. Cliquiness, yes (and certainly amongst organists); broader cameraderie, no. How often after a concert/recital will an audience member approach a complete stranger and start chatting about what they have heard and seen?

Here is the NPOR specification and this exactly is as I remember it. I played the organ fairly regularly until I left the IoW in 1967 and, although at the distance of half a century my memory may be faulty, I don't remember being denied access because of work being carried out. Certainly, when I last played it in a concert in 1973 the specification was still the same. I would imagine that Walker's workmanship was of high standard, but artistically I thought it a very unrewarding instrument, to be honest. It was tonally designed to emphasise 8' pitch at the expense of all others and the Tromba unit was oily-smooth and suffocating. As I mentioned above, all the non-unison pitches on the Choir are extended.

That one dates back to Sir John Goss. See page 30 here.

Yes, that is a good example and, as you say, there are others. Howells is an interesting case. Most of his organ music is quite obviously orchestral in concept, even late works like the Epilogue and Rhapsody no.4 (cf. the Concerto for String Orchestra). Yet a large, cathedral (or similar) acoustic seems built into more than a few of these pieces and it is hard to imagine them retaining their true impact as orchestral works in a concert hall. In any event, the Paean is absolutely organistic in texture. Sorry. This has nothing to do with York so I shall stop hijacking the thread.

There are, though I wouldn't agree. Willan, probably. Duruflé, some of it could - and, like the Requiem, it might sound more colourful, but I find it hard to imagine the P&F, Veni Creator variations and Toccata sounding more convincing orchestrated. They are true organ music, surely? Franck and Vierne, I think fall into the same category. Much of the latter's output I find truly organistic. You can orchestrate anything, as Beecham tried to prove, in the same way that you can arrange anything for the organ. It's more a question of which medium makes the music sound best - though I suppose it does reduce to a matter of opinion in the end.

I don't do organ DVDs because, quite frankly, I'm not committed enough to the instrument, but it seems to me that the problem with the traditional British organ is that it hasn't generated any really great music that justifies the medium. Such decent music as has been written for it sounds - or would sound - infinitely more convincing when orchestrated. The obvious candidate is the Elgar Sonata, but it would be equally true of Whitlock, all of whose output would benefit immensely from orchestration. There probably are odd exceptions to my sweeping statement, but I can't think of them offhand. I shall now duck for cover, but please remember that, 'sending the boys round' is against government guidelines.

I have often thought that. BWV 29 usually fails dismally on that score. Not so the NBS performance.

I absolutely agree with this. Cutting the third bar makes the recap so mundane. It's supposed to be a crescendo, starting from pp where the triplets kick in, through Pos+Récit, then GPR, then a molto cresc with the swell box to lead back to D major where the Positif anches kick in for two bars - and only then the final whack of full organ as the theme returns (and some decent Pedal reeds will continue the effect of the crescendo). When it's done properly the effect is marvellous. The trouble is, on most British organs the lack of a proper Positif equivalent, with suitable reeds, may render this effect difficult to achieve. You need artillery in reserve after the box is open. Maybe you can add the Great reeds progressively (8' first, then 16' + 4'?), but if you can't produce the effect of a door opening onto a blaze of sunlight, it won't work properly. Incidentally, I love Chorzempa's speed for this. Just right! A good old rollick (as opposed to a headlong race) makes the theme so much more 'catchy' and hummable. (IMO, obviously.)

Talking of which, I remember this organ being quite fun, despite all the 'prepared for' stops. Both organ and owner are long gone, alas. The console is now at Kingsteignton in Devon and so, I believe, is the Positive pipework.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Early-1900s-Booklet-Colston-Hall-Organs-Past-Present-w-Photos/124054746126?hash=item1ce23d340e:g:U0wAAOSwLl5eJcpB

Beautiful indeed!