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innate

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Everything posted by innate

  1. Just seen this in a Church Times advert for a Director of Music at St John the Divine, Kennington, London: “We will be installing a four-manual organ, currently in use at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 2025.” Presumably with a new, more streamlined action, but possibly lots of other new parts too. The Kennington church doesn’t seem to be short of money.
  2. This is a tremendous recital beautifully captured with multi-camera video. The Rieger organ sounds beautiful and entirely appropriate for all the repertoire from Bach to Reubke under the musical hands, feet and ears of Richard Moore who registers everything with imagination and authority.
  3. Because real organs have pipes.
  4. So you’re deliberately inventing a definition of music designed to exclude the piece you don’t like? There are well-known and loved pieces of classical music that last about 1 minute. Wagner's Ring Cycle is around 16 hours. So there was already a massive range of durations. Satie's Vexations lasts 24 hours. Can you hum along to Perotin or Steve Reich? “There’s not a tune you can hum. You need a tune that goes “Dum dum dum di-dum”.” Stephen Sondheim, responding satirically to all the critics that said you couldn’t hum along to his tunes.
  5. At the risk of outstaying our welcome I’d echo this; and not just for simulation of pipe organs. It’s quite an old-fashioned view but I still think synthesised orchestral instruments are more useful and coherent in live situations eg theatre than sampled instruments. In lock-down I bought Organteq and found it very good for doing recordings of hymns etc.
  6. What is your preferred definition of what constitutes music? This is certainly organised sound. Other definitions are available.
  7. That would equate to Leipzig Chorton, c. A=465. An excellent solution unless there’s a non-equal temperament involved.
  8. I either repeat the previous note or play an octave higher than that. I’d like to know the latest musicological thinking on this moment of madness from JSB.
  9. Another astonishing performance of a transcription. This time Guillou, aged 84, playing Pictures At An Exhibition.
  10. Here’s the spec on the Dobson site: http://www.dobsonorgan.com/html/instruments/op99_sydney.html Even though the church has made much of the Dobson instrument in Merton College, Oxford providing the basis of choosing Dobson to build their new instrument (and full marks to the church for having the vision and the commitment to see this project through) the design and concept of the two organs could hardly be more different. The two digital 32' flues are a shame, in my opinion—yes, no one has to use them but they’ll sit there saying “Go on, you know you want to!”
  11. This is new on YouTube (I think) and it’s astonishing!
  12. Haringey didn’t exist as a London Borough until the 1960s or 1970s. I searched for West Green, which is now in Haringey but was probably in Tottenham before.
  13. Is it this instrument? https://npor.org.uk/survey/N16890
  14. Maybe he has turned down the offer of a knighthood. He accepted his CBE in 2007. Honourable list of decliners here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_declined_a_British_honour including people as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, Michael Frayn, Henry Moore, LS Lowry, Robert Morley, John Cleese, Virginia Woolf and Humphrey Lyttleton.
  15. Lovely playing, Colin! It’s a funny one because, to my mind, the two chorale melodies should be absolutely equal in prominence but because the rh one is, by necessity, on the same stops as at least some of the triplet figuration parts (one you tube version has the left hand on a different manual) it’s harder to hear the rh melody if the pedal registration balances the manuals.
  16. 1' stops—there is one on the enclosed choir of the Nicholson at St Michael’s, Highgate, North London, which I used to enjoy using, particularly in Chorale Preludes. It started out as a Larigot, I think, but the long-serving organist who was involved in the design of the instrument must have eventually thought a 1' more useful. There is to be a two-and-twenty in the Choir of the new organ at Gloucester Cathedral. I like “super gap” registrations, of which 16' + 1' is about as extreme as most organs allow.
  17. I’m rather nervous of admitting that this is a “punched card” voice on an Allen computer organ. Ages ago I made a personal vow that I wouldn’t take a position at a church that didn‘t have a functioning pipe organ but somehow I’ve been DoM at a church which has only had an Allen for the last c.40 years. To be honest there is a 3-stop Peter Collins box organ that is used for concerts and I have used it a couple of times for Tudor Choral Evensongs but I wouldn’t dare use it to accompany hymns at our Sunday morning service. The good news is that we are well on the way to a complete reordering of the whole site which will include the renovation of the church and a new pipe organ in the historic West End case. I can say with confidence that the new organ won’t have a 2' reed and as I was playing the Bach yesterday I did have a moment of regret that my elegant solution wouldn’t be possible on it. But everything else will be better! In fact I’m now wondering if the Pedal mixture might work here on its own!
  18. I played it for a wedding this morning not having listened to this. Manuals on Gt principals 4' and 2' and pedal played an octave lower than written on a 2' reed. It sounded rather good 🙂
  19. Are you talking about BWV 608 or BWV 729? I was talking about the Orgelbuchlein one, which is in Bach’s hand, I think. Wikipedia says that the pedal part was intended to be played an octave lower than written on a 4' stop, which would make the notation more of a representation of the sound than instructions to the player.
  20. I never attempted this before this week in >45 years of playing the organ. Is it just me or is it unusually tricky? Unusual patterns in the triplets; the twos-against-threes in one hand; the high pedal part. My only relief is that I’m not playing it from Bach’s original with lh and pedal on one stave. Are the top F#s in the pedal unique in this era and geographic area (a little like the low B in BWV 572)? And are there any generally accepted ideas for registration? Something sparkly across manuals and pedal or should the pedal stand out, say a reed against a light, bright flue 8,4,2 in the manuals?
  21. and rise in glory. His was a kind and knowledgable presence here.
  22. Congratulations on playing the Elgar concerto in the RAH. Microphones for instrumentalists are still very rare in the classical world of live performance although not unheard of in contemporary classical music eg George Crumb. In pop, jazz, Musical Theatre, “cross-over” and most other forms of popular music, live performances are almost always amplified; not always to increase the overall volume but to allow the balancing of softer and stronger sounds and to enable the provision of monitoring so that all the performers may hear each other either through small monitor speakers or, much more commonly these days, via in-ear monitors (similar to the way many organists in cathedrals now hear the choir and their own organ playing through headphones—is that something you disapprove of?). Many, probably most, singers are not trained the way that classical opera singers were trained in the past for projection in large opera houses; in a similar way most public speakers, including clergy and politicians, need amplification nowadays. You can complain that present day singers shouldn’t need microphones but the fact is that microphones are here to stay.
  23. I wasn’t addressing the necessity of microphones; merely the *relatively* new technologies of wireless mikes attached to the head or ear. What instrument were you playing with an orchestra in the RAH? I’m often amazed to think that there were political meetings in the RAH in the late 19th/early 20th century and the orators were heard in that acoustic, before the mushrooms were installed. The same goes for the Music Hall artists, Marie Lloyd etc. I’ve worked in Musical Theatre most of my life (the last 40 years) and I think I’ve only done one professional production where the singers weren’t individually miked—I don’t think there is much chance the tide will change in that area.
  24. Ah. My eyesight can see the emoji but can’t distinguish it from any other!
  25. I think that, whilst this is a common reaction and one I experienced myself, we are just being naturally reluctant to accept new technology. Can you imagine what you would think seeing someone wearing spectacles if you’d never seen a pair of spectacles before? And now we don’t give it a moment’s thought. Same goes for makeup, headphones, eyepatch etc.
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