ajt
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Posts posted by ajt
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No specific tip for churches - they're all stunning.
But, when in Florence, you should find the department store - "La Rinascente" - which is on the edge of one of the main squares (not the one with the Barghello, the one slightly further west, I think it's Piazza Republica, but I forget). It has a roof top café, which gives one of the best views of the Duomo from central Florence.
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This thread might be a good time to mention that it is, I believe, possible to setup the invision forum such that you have to register to read it, thus taking any comments made here out of the open. Might not be a bad idea?
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Does anyone recall an old (possibly from the EMI Gt Cathedral series) recording of Ripon and Canterbury (inter alia): Perrin & Wicks, respectivley? Allan W was playing the Peeters Concerstuck - fantastic, but I can't remember which piece of Karg-Elert the late-lamented 'legend in his own lunchtime' Ron P played. I'd love to be reminded of it and to find out whether this old vinyl has been remastered/digitised; it's not on the amphion re-releases as far as I know.
Many thanks
F4ever
I think I have that one on tape somewhere. I'll have a hunt. Ron was one of my first teachers - him and Bob Marsh on the Ripon organ.
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Have you ever been an organist or a director of music of a nightmare parish? Has the vicar been a pain, or had to battle with horrid churchwardens/church councils/congregants. Did you get appointed knowing that a parish or church had a terrible reputation and totally regretted going there? How did you deal with such difficult people or defuse explosive situations? Have you ever really 'lost it' and let the fur fly? What advice would you give to other organists?
Don't actually name the parish or people (or give clues where it is), but tell me, Jerry Springer, I mean Lee Blick your story.
Yes, I have. And I'm not telling and I'm not saying where. Not yet.
My advice, though, is always to discuss with whomever is actually responsible for the running of the parish before reacting.
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I remember playing an organ in East
Open Diapason 8 (BIG)
Did it say that on the drawstop?
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organ loft and pushed, pulled and twiddled every commodity in sight. You don't really need me to continue with this saga, do you? Walmisley in D minor must have sounded very continental; let's hope they didn't have to do the 15th evening either.
I had an interesting experience for my first wedding at a previous church with a Wyvern toaster.
I was playing the Charpentier tedium for the bride to come in, when I suddenly started making hideous pedalling mistakes (which isn't that rare for me). So I started watching my feet, only to discover that my feet were operating within "spec" - the pedal board, however, was transposing a tone up. Fortunately a power cycle cured it, never to happen again.
Last week before choir, I was experimenting with termperaments on the church clavinova, and forgot to reset it afterwards. Howells Coll Reg Jubilate sounds "lovely" in Mean Tone..
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That's very true of course. For the record, the toaster I hired was three years old, 50 drawstops, 3 manuals, 3 kw of amplification and 24 loudspeakers, sufficient to fill a 900 seater building.
!!! 3kw? That's insane!
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I am just trying to get my head around these figures. I needed to hire one for 12 months and the figure quoted by one of the big firms was £4,100 inc vat and delivery. We would have been hard pressed to have saved ten grand by buying one.
Well, if your hire quote was £10,000, and you bought an organ for x, and sold it at the end of the period for the same amount, then you've not spent anything, effectively. Hence saved £10k. Your quote might be for a smaller organ, or an older spec, or fewer speakers, etc, etc.
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Maybe this is an opportunity for DHM to give one of his machines an outing?
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Since any organ is made up of 'actionwork', 'wind(ing)work and 'speaking/pipework', shouldn't we agree the organ is modular in it's very basic concept?
modular in that it has modules, yes. Modular in the sense of mass produced plug'n'play modules, which is what I think folks are talking about, no.
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Which still does not alter the fact that, whatever may have been the views of any institution, it is now accepted that it is unnecessary - whether or not one allows that it also may be incorrect.
"It is now accepted" ... That doesn't make it correct, either. Accepted by whom? It is accepted by many teenagers to use txt spk and 2 say thanx. Doesn't make it correct. Some might say that the ' is accepted as being unnecessary, certainly 80% of the people I deal with on a daily basis haven't got a bloody clue how to use them, so often just don't bother.
Adrian, it is unlikely that I will persuade you that you are mistaken; it is equally unlikely that you will convince me that I am in error. Therefore I have a cunning plan - we could call this a stalemate and return to writing about organs.Sounds fair - can I taunt you about tubas versus chamades then, just to get another discussion going on which we'll never agree?
Grrr!!! Just another example of this stupid amalgamation - I read your post about stalemate *after* having made the above post. By amalgamating it, this board now makes it look like I purposefully extended the argument then agreed with the stalemate, which would be a contradiction!
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Reluctant, as I am, to enter this discussion, a brief look at Hart, Fowler and Truss suggests that the use of the apostrophe in the plurals of abbreviations and numerals was commonplace until recently, but is now thought best omitted. This, presumably, is part of the same ink and paper saving strategy made into a fine art by music publishers.
JC
My point exactly.
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1970's is also incorrect in the context in which you implied its usage.
's to denote plurals of numbers is perfectly acceptable usage. I am a total pedant about apostrophes, and get really ****ed off when I see them being as plurals, but in this case CD's and 1970's there is nothing wrong. Has anyone got a copy of a) that Truss book (I hate the title!),
Fowler?You may have been taught one way by some very good teachers, pcnd, but I would argue that I have been taught by equally good people. Some of these points of punctuation/grammar/spelling are institution specific - just look at spellings of organisation and organization - the OED, I believe goes for the z, whereas you can find other "British" English dictionaries that give you it with an s (Collins, I think, for one?) I believe the same is true of this usage of the 's for a very specific number of plurals - the *Oxford* Manual of Style implies that it is associated with an institution and mandates the writing style as laid down by that institution.
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I can find no reference that agrees with you - what's yours? The nearest thing I can find is that Hart's Rules (aka Oxford Guide to Style) allows constructions like 'do's as an alternative to dos for the plurals of words as objects, and a certain recent popular book on punctuation has mistaken this for do's - it would be easy to carry this mistake over to capital abbreviations, I suppose.
Paul
The language allows for the use of the apostrophe for plurals to remove abiguity - i.e. we could talk about dotting the is, but I think you would find it easier if I wrote i's instead.
It is also valid to use 's to denote plurals of capital letters, numbers and symbols, e.g. 's or 1970's or CD's. I have no reference for this - I don't even own an English language dictionary. I am pretty certain that the same text to which you refer above (the Lynne Truss, not Hart!) will agree with me. The best I can do is cite a few websites.
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Can we all do this?
AJJ
Sure.
The CD's what?Perfectly valid and correct use of the apostrophe - use when indicating a plural of a capitalised abbreviation. Current "thinking" says no on this, but, until recently, it was deemed the correct way.
I believe, although I could be wrong, that this form was the "British" form, and the CDs was "American", which, of course, has now taken over.
Sure.Perfectly valid and correct use of the apostrophe - use when indicating a plural of a capitalised abbreviation. Current "thinking" says no on this, but, until recently, it was deemed the correct way.
I believe, although I could be wrong, that this form was the "British" form, and the CDs was "American", which, of course, has now taken over.
Does anyone else hate this amalgamation of replies that the board now does automagically?
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I have one, how do I upload it anywhere, though?
P.
You can e-mail it to me (ajt at laudachoir dot org) or I'm sure DC will upload it somewhere for you.
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Dulzian - ha!
I laugh at such sounds.
I suppose that if one were to enjoy the sound of a duck with bronchitis trapped in a box, then this type of stop is pleasant, but....
I liked my Dulzian!
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Donald was not a mand to meddle
Couldn't you just put a picture of the "Grim Reaper" in there?
MM
That works...
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My new church has a picture frame in the vestry. Said picture frame comprises 6 photo slots, which contain photos of former choir members who have "passed away". All except 1 slot. Which is empty.
I'm toying with getting photos of the current choir members done, then trying each one in there, maybe a week at a time, to see how they look. Might make them worried
Or, maybe as a prize for the worst noise at choir practice? "That noise was worthy of the dead board" etc.
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At Winchester, a real Nave Organ, placed (say) in the 5th bay (working from the east) would improve matters considerably - the Nave is used most weeks for the two morning services.
I can think of an organ not too far away that would fit the bill nicely - not sure where it would go, mind... I took Andy into see it, but I can't imagine the cathedral stumping up the kind of cash that would be needed to get it reliably playable instead of designing a brand new, purpose built nave division.
Isn't the nave at Winchester something like 300 feet in length? That means it takes sound getting on for half a second to travel from one end to the other. If the folk at the back time their singing to when the sound from the organ arrives there, the people at the front will hear those at the back to be a full second behind their own singing, which would be getting on for two beats if the hymn were taken fast.There's a big distance to cover. We were lucky enough to do the Allegri in there for Ash Wednesday, and even though my semi-chorus's mouths were moving in time with my beat for the final section (they insisted on singing it for some reason - best not to argue with the 1st soprano, also called "wife"), the sound arrived a good 2 beats behind - listening to the recording, you can clearly hear the main choir singing tu os, finish, then you get a second tu os after the main choir has cleared.
I've always found singing/conducting in the choir stalls unrewarding, but conducting that Allegri was a different world - the nave choir were a long way back, and there were no seats out in the nave either, and this fantastically distant manna seemed to be just floating down on our heads. Quite incredible. Quite sharp too
(semitone up pretty much from the 1st verse). Andy Lumsden describes the effect as "a distant moistening of the undergarments. How true. -
Seeing that all there is on the end is an on/off switch, I'm surprised a standard P&S keyboard couldn't be used - the toggle touch ones are extremely pleasant.
Most of them will have a velocity sensor too, I believe, as some builders do try to model in attack/release.
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A instrument to be avoided at all costs. We had enough problems finding a Organ repair bloke to sort these out and each time a fault needed putting right it has prove expensive.
You should try Royston Orme in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton - a very handy chap. If you want his contact details, PM me, and I'll put you in touch.
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I have to disagree, I find the tune one of the most rewarding of recent tunes to play. It's not easy to sing in harmony, but like Woodlands, who needs to as its such a good unison tune. I don't think you can succesfully play the first line as a playover. Adrian Lucas wrote an intro which I still use and a jolly good descant too if you fancy a change from the printed one.
I also think it works best in E flat as well.
I met John Barnard a couple of years ago - he was speaking on hymn writing in general to an RSCM training day - and we were chatting about Guiting Power over lunch. He said that it's his hymn tune, therefore he abhors the idea of other people writing descants for it. Or such like. He was clearly, at the time, very proprietorial about it! Musically his points were quite interesting - he, apparently, struggled to think of a tune that was triumphant yet gentle enough for the Suffering Servant verse. The key to the whole thing, of course, being the rising 6ths...
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Does that mean that Phoenix is the better choice if you want French colour and Wyvern for British? Or isn't it that simple?
From what I've seen and heard, the technology is the same. If you can tell either company what you want and they have or can get samples to match, then you can have whatever you want - bombarde32 will be able to tell you more.
I recently looked at a Phoenix that was entirely based on Hill samples.
Fowler?
Amusing Stories And Incidents
in General discussion
Posted
Sounds similar to an experience I had...
I got a phone call early one Saturday morning (6.30am) from a friend. Please bear in mind that I was a student at the time, and was probably still drunk from the night/morning prior.
Could I please please please come to London (from Stoke on Trent) and play for a wedding? If I got the 720 train, I'd make it in time to practice.
So, off I trot. Still inebriated.
Turn up to some random RC church in Chiswick, organ console in gallery at west end, pipework detached but in same place.
Had a bit of a play, found my way around, went for a pizza and a beer, came back for the wedding.
First hymn - praise my soul. Somehow, halfway through the 3rd verse, on comes the pedal trombone bottom B flat. No amount of stop jiggling (stop was in) nor note slapping would clear it. Friend dives into the organ proper, can't find the correct pipe before the end of hymn, so I just turn the thing off. Cue long long long death stare from clergyman and couple until the wind finally plays out.
Some minutes later, I turn on the blower again ready for the Schubert Ave maria for the singing of the register.... Bbbbbarrrrrp... Click. Blower off.
We did the whole remainder of the service unacc, with my friend singing the most haunting Ave Maria I've ever heard, absolutely bang in tune.
Post service, we found the offending pipe plus size 12 boot imprints across a number of smaller pipes... Apparently the church had been too tight to pay for the organ to be covered during the re-leading of the windows and rebuilding of the window frames, plus the builders only route to the windows was through the pedal division.
I got paid £230 for playing 4 verses of Praise my soul, and the organ got a refurbishment fund started.