ajt
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Posts posted by ajt
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'Used to play it as a student - 'a little gem and with all the noise from the rest of the list a good one to remind of the need for thought etc. on a one manual.
Fair enough - it's certainly a lovely little organ!
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Thankfully, the organist of the next parish church up the road (St Cross) has kindly let me practice there when I want so I can remind myself every now and again what it is like to play a real organ.
St. Cross is just lovely, both the building and the organ! BTW if you want a totally different practice experience, you're welcome to use ours anytime...
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5. St Matthew's Otterbourne, Hants. (T.C.Lewis)
Why this one, out of interest? (I know it...)
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Mine will be pretty obvious to anyone who knows me!
1) Romsey Abbey, beyond any shadow of a doubt just THE most amazing combination of instrument and building I have ever found (as long as you mostly avoid the Tuba). There is no restriction on when you can use it, and the stewards and gift shop people are very nice! Despite slightly limiting and Victorian specification I have found almost no occasion when I can't get exactly the sound I want from it. In my humble opinion, it's the English equivalent of...
I have to agree, Romsey would come very high in my list too. Unfortunately I've never played a *decent* organ outside of the UK...
My favourites in this country, though - the order will change depending on the weather:
1. Truro (both organs!)
2. Ripon
3. Coventry
4. Romsey
5. Hmm. Feels a bit vain putting your own organ (so to speak) in one's list of favourites. In its present state, then it's not justified, but in fully working order, I think it's a pretty fine instrument...
The 1st 3 are quite similar (certainly 2 & 3) in many ways, 4 is just a wonderful Victorian English machine - cumbersome to play, but such a beautiful sound, and so versatile, considering the relatively small number of stops. 5 is a different beast again - very orchestral...
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I also agree about couplers - the H&H method I like best - put them with the departments which they augment - the worst place is as rocker-switches (or stop-tabs) above the top manual. Personally, I think that this is also a daft place for general pistons - miles away from where your hands are.
Totally agree. The Willis III style tabs along the top are, as you say, daft.
I still lose the less frequently used couplers, like Sw-Ch 4' or sw-gt 4' (note they don't call them Sw Octave -> Great!). In fact, the only ones I remember are Sw & Gt to Pedal and Swell to Great. God knows why there are also two thumb rocker switches, one for "Doubles Off" and "Pedal Off". Weird idea.
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I think Willis III used to have a lot of their instruments with a row of couplers above the top manual on rocker tabs and a huge array of pistons and accessories (and crescendo pedal) 'as standard'.
Yes, certainly mine is set out this way. Curiously, though, the layout of stops is "wrong". Most high rise organs have swell on the outside of the left hand stop jamb, with pedal on the inside (i.e. nearest the music desk), then choir and great on the right hand side, yes?
On this one, though, probably because the number of pedal stops (even though most of them are extensions from manual reeds) is so huge, the pedal stops are on the outside of the right hand jamb, choir is on the outside of the left hand jamb. A bit confusing at first!
http://www.laudachoir.org/organ/gallery/pi...s/picture-1.jpg
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My slight disaster happened when I was booked in to play Midnight Mass on December 24th 2003. This was at my local church and the organist at the time - who died in December 2005 - was absent and had gone on holiday. One of the choir members had been taught by the regular organist how to play the choir anthem so I mercifully didn't have to do that bit.
Dave
Christmas before last, we got to 11.25 for an 11.30 start for "midnight" mass. No vicar. Church wardens flapping in the vestry, 400 people in the church....
Guess who took the service?
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My "favourite", if you can call it that, wedding cock up was the first service I played for at my last church, which had a toaster with a transpose switch.
There I am, playing the Charpentier tedeum (sigh), when the pedal department decides that it doesn't like D major. It's now going to play in E major. Up a tone. I kind of struggled through a little bit (I've never tried partial transposition before), but gave up with the feet entirely when it popped back down to Bflat...
At my own wedding, the vicar asked if Rosie would take me to be her wife, which was mildly amusing...
The first wedding I ever played at was in Wolverhampton, with the bride in a pink panther outfit, and all the male members of the wedding party dressed as StarWars stormtroopers....
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And there we go - computeritis strikes. Where's the "me" in that sentence? Fool!
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And who has not had to pulp thousands of copies of the 32-page Annual Report cum Notice of the Annual General Meeting because they didn't change the date from last year's meeting? I know I have.
Oh, so true. I did a presentation a couple of months ago of a "Daft" Document. Somehow the R had gone astray...Reminds of the letter I received from Staffordshire County Council - because my postal address at the time was Keele University Chapel, I frequently got "promoted" to the status of vicar by correspondents. This particular letter, though, was addressed:
Dear Revered Taylor,
I had no idea I was held in such high regard!
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Ah, yes. An occupational hazard, I reckon:
Optimist: My glass is half full.
Pessimist: My glass is half empty.
IT technician: My glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Nah, that's an engineer. IT technician is "Hey, who's been drinking my beer?".
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Actually, I lie. What really gets me going is the "I know what I meant" brigade who think it really doesn't matter. But the world is full of people who don't seem to consider whether their drivel will be intelligible to others.
Oh yes, I completely agree.
I've just come back from teaching a bunch of Swedes about troubleshooting and problem solving, and, obviously, one of the key points to get across is that if you don't get the "problem statement" (i.e. What is wrong with what?) clear, then you're wasting your time.
But, for the Swedes, "Network problem" seems to fit with the "What is wrong with what?" question - in their mind, the Wrong with bit = Network, and the thing that's wrong with it is that it has a problem. What kind of problem? Oh, just a problem. Circular argument starts. And rages for several minutes, ending with the Swedish guy saying "Yeah, but I know what I mean".
Grr.
The whole point of writing something down is to communicate something to someone else, surely? If only the person "what wrote it"
knows what it means, then it's rather pointless! -
I was perusing the staff notice-board at school to-day and, in a memorandum from the HM, there was a hyphen missing, the lack of an upper-case character and one incorrect use of an apostrophe. Perhaps he was formerly a grocer.... Nice chap, though - so I did not complain!
There's something about apostrophes that brings out the pedant in me! I'm never more horrified than when I read something that I have written which has an apostrophe in the wrong place. Bizarrely this never seems to happen when actually writing, only when e-mailing or posting to bulletin boards like this. I think there's something about typing at a computer which de-focuses you, which would probably explain why I feel stupid most of the day!
At Uni, the "GreenSoc" posted, on all the available noticeboards across campus, a number of signs which read:
"Recycle! You're grandchilden
We'll thank you for it."
I got a bollocking from a porter for defacing the noticeboard when I went round with a big marker pen ...
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Have you ever seen The Rotunda* - Henry Willis III's house magazine?
I can really recommend you try to track it down, it's fascinating. I haven't got a complete set, but thoroughly enjoy the copies I have.
I imagine that St.Mary's Southampton has an article to itself in there, most of the new Willis organs of the period get a good write-up. There's a lot about the Infinite Speed and Gradation pedals too.
*There will be a number of libraries with sets, but you may have to travel.
Apparently there's a set in Southampton Uni library, so I'm planning to go in and have a look. Fortunately one of the choir members also has an archive of pretty much everything concerning the building of the current organ, as she was one of the organists at the time, plus the various "The Organ" articles by Sumner, etc, that relate to it, so she might have the relevant Rotunda article too.
Thanks for that, though - I'm always keen to find new sources of info!
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They (the Willis specials) had at least one useful characteristic, that was that you didn't get any stages. Even with your best elecropneumatic shutters - H&H or HN&B (when they were still building good organs) you might not hear the jumps in dynamic, but you might well hear the jumps mechanically - little pneumatic thuds as the crescendo 'happened'. With the Willis patent Speed and Gradation Pedals everything was as smooth as silk. They look like quite a bulky mechanism, to judge from the photos in Rotunda. I'm not surprised that they never caught on, but well worth a try.
In more than theory too, you could get a sforzando: by smartly pushing forward the box would jump immediately, probably nearly as fast as with a hitch-down ratchet pedal.
Yup, they are very smooth, no jump at all. I've not tried the sforzando - something to try tomorrow night, I think!
I'd still rather have a "normal" balanced pedal, though.
If anyone's interested in seeing the mechanism, I can probably take some pictures this week?
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i remember playing this organ over the summer. Those Swell pedals are defiantely an acquired skill. I remember spending a good 5 minutes trying to get the choir box 1/2 open (according to the dial) before playing some piece of music. It was surprisingly difficult. Not exactly intuitive and they caught me unawares a few times....
Well, it does help that the gauge for the swell shutters is now mostly working again - it now goes from 1/2 to fully open in a big jump, but it's better than not moving at all. I'm planning to swap the two guages over, so that the swell is the better working one.
I'm not having much luck sourcing a new guage from Smiths though
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Since the easiest form of research is to ask someone who knows, are the swell pedals at St Paul's still of the Willis "infinite speed and gradation type" or were they changed at the rebuild ? Since I have never actually encountered any of these in the "flesh" so to speak could anyone enlighten me as to the extent to which they demand a different technique ? My understanding is that the position of the pedal controls the speed of opening rather than reflects the extent to which the shutters are open. Is this correct ? If so, would the toe under the swell pedal technique be as easy, or even possible, to employ on an instrument with this type of swell control ?
I have these "delightful" pedals on my organ.
They take a lot of getting used to, I assure you!
Basically, as others have said, they are centre pivoted and sprung, such that they have no actual position information to give you (i.e. you can't tell where the shutters are based on the pedal position, because it always returns to centre).
We have 2 Smith's gauges (old Morris Minor fuel guages), which indicate the position of the choir and swell boxes. They can just be seen under the left hand stop jamb in this picture - http://www.laudachoir.org/organ/gallery/large-2.html
How far you push the pedal determines how quickly the shutters move. It is very easy, once accustomed to them to do a very slow crescendo, without actually moving your foot - just a gentle constant pressure, and off you go.
The toe under the pedal technique is just about possible, but actually very painful, because you're fighting against the springs without the advantage of a lever (i.e. the pedal itself with the central pivot point), so it requires significant toe strength.
The other thing that I find nigh on impossible is instantaneous sympathetic swells - i.e. when accompanying a choir, you can't instantly react to a slight + or - in volume from the choir, everything has to be pre-meditated, at least by a half second or so.
Another odd feature of this organ is that you can re-assign the swell pedals - i.e make the left hand pedal operate the swell and the right the choir, and vice versa. That's ok, but what's occasionally handy is being able to make one of them operate both boxes.
When I auditioned for this church, I needed to go from choir box shut to fully open during a registration change (down to choir strings - Vox Angelica, much more "Howells" than the swell strings), so I just kicked out my right foot as hard as I could. Unfortunately I hit the general crescendo pedal instead, so instead of choir strings and gentle 32' rumble, they got 32' contra tuba, full reeds, etc... Subtle!
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My father has often told the story of the cathedral organist who liked to slip out for a pint, apparently this was such a regular occurrence that the pint would be waiting for him on the bar! This arrangement worked perfectly until the minister was taken ill – and a member of the choir was despatched to recover the organist. No names, no locations, other than to say the 1960’s and a south of England location.
My last place had the organ in full view, right smack in the middle of the choir stalls, but I still crept out. I also had a well trained chorister who I could despatch to the local tea rooms to order me a bacon sandwich (before the service), so I could get out at the start of the sermon, get a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie, then be back in time for the end of the intercessions. Particularly handy the morning after a few pints!
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To bring the tone down to the gutter, I remember an evensong lesson at Ripon, where part way through the Canon leant forward over the lectern, (big brass Eagle thing in the middle of the choir), looked sternly at a certain boy (who shall remain nameless!) and said, rather loudly - "Will you PLEASE stop masturbating during the lesson, young man!".
My usual sermon habits are to read, but with the new church and organ loft, I haven't yet managed to work out where to position the mirrors such that I can still see down the church, but so that the congregation can't see me reading.
There's an old cabinet in the corner of the organ loft, that's had its doors smashed off. I think I might replace this with an armchair, and possibly a percolator - the smell of fresh coffee might wake some of the old dears up!
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You shold try standing in the decani stalls whilst your colleague is using it. It appeared to obliterate everything else.
It did, and I assume it still does. We loved it in the choirstalls, in a typically choirboy "anything loud is good" kind of way. That and the squeaky hand...
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Then again, I can go to ( for example) Bristol, Salisbury, Exeter or Ripon, and in a few minutes I am revelling in the lovely tone-colours of Violes, Clarinets, Harmonic Flutes and the like.
mmmm, Ripon... The first organ I had lessons on! A lovely machine.
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I would have thought the edition for SATB chorus and piano accompaniment would probably do for playing on the organ.
I've always played it from the Peters vocal score. Not the easiest thing in the world, particularly if you start getting into orchestral registrations...
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Surely one could draw a distinction between fictional/hypothetical/projected specifications and those of instruments that actually exist, where consultation of the specification could be a valid pursuit in order to
1/ Discover the available resources of an instrument on which one has been invited to play in order to ensure one selects appropriate music. After all, it has not been unknown for a recital programme to have to be changed at short notice when the recitalist actually met the instrument for the first time.
Ah, you've found the flaw in my argument. I do use NPOR to "research" organs on the very rare occasion that I get asked to play somewhere. (I'm not much of an organist - conducting's more my thing).
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I suppose that you do not also have any idea why it is apparently impossible to load an avatar? This function has failed every time I try. I know that it is not exactly earth-shatteringly improtant but, since the function is ostensibly there, it would be nice to use it. M. Lauwers has a nice one of what looks like a C-C console, on his Belgian (or French) board.
Nothing obvious that I can see...
I guess it's something to do with either no assigned storage space on the webserver for avatars, or permissions related. Either way, it would need fixing at the server end.
Oh, so true. I did a presentation a couple of months ago of a "Daft" Document. Somehow the R had gone astray...
Which Organ Would You Most Want To Marry?
in The Organ
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I agree - it does feel odd having a Tuba on that particular organ, but it's an occasionally useful addition. If you don't like it, don't use it! AFAIK nothing was sacrificed to add it, so why not?