innate
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Posts posted by innate
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10 hours ago, peterdoughty said:
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.
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3 hours ago, peter ellis said:
The church has the size to accomodate the sound of 32’ pipes but not the physical space for multiple ranks. So - why not digital.
Because real organs have pipes.
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19 minutes ago, John Robinson said:
Something which changes and progresses far more quickly... in fact, preferably in less than a day!
Can you hum along to this particular 'piece', for example? 🤣
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.
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1 hour ago, Keitha said:
Just to add into the mix, in addition to pipe v sampled sound, we also have synthesised sound in digital instruments. In my experience, having tried both in the same building several times, the best synthesised instruments beat sampled sound hands down - but still do not quite have the 'living' quality of a pipe organ - but they get pretty close. One type of synthesised system has just had its first full revision - but I haven't tried it yet.
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.
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1 hour ago, John Robinson said:
Cage! What a load of absolute nonsense this so-called piece of 'music' is.
What is your preferred definition of what constitutes music? This is certainly organised sound. Other definitions are available.
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9 hours ago, AndrewG said:
A former Kings organ scholar said he transposes the BWV 572 up a semitone into A flat purely to allow that one note. (Not sure if he was joking!)
That would equate to Leipzig Chorton, c. A=465. An excellent solution unless there’s a non-equal temperament involved.
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2 hours ago, Damian Beasley-Suffolk said:
I did suggest playing the Alkan pedal studies with your hands! (who would know?). I've only tried the simple ones, on a straight flat pedalboard - beyond me, as an enthusiastic amateur, but nevertheless rewarding.
How does one deal with the occasional B below bottom C of a pedal board, if it's not available? In the middle section of BWV572, for example. Just for that one note, quinting on the pedal seems to work on my instrument, though not so well with reeds.
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.
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Another astonishing performance of a transcription. This time Guillou, aged 84, playing Pictures At An Exhibition.
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1 hour ago, peter ellis said:
St. James', King Street in the heart of Sydney is installing a new instrument. It has been quite the project for the parish, particularly as the factory burned down during the construction phase.
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!”
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This is new on YouTube (I think) and it’s astonishing!
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19 minutes ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
Congratulations! Yes, not sure how I managed to miss that. I searched NPOR for both ‘Harringey’ and ‘Harringay‘ (some confusion about the different spellings) and, of course, neither yielded this organ. NPOR details the minor alterations, and interesting to see that Mander’s were the last to work on the organ before its move to America.
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.
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Is it this instrument?
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23 minutes ago, OmegaConsort said:
And what about John Rutter - he should surely be Sir John now given what he has given!
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.
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11 minutes ago, Colin Pykett said:
Emboldened by innate, I'll submit my own attempt at BWV 608 - on a home-made electronic organ, and demonstrating my imperfect technique to boot. Registration much the same as discussed by others above - 4 ft pedal reed plus flutes to 1 foot on the manual. However, to add a bit more interest I used two 4 foot reeds - one already on the pedals, plus another on the swell. The (simulated) swell box was almost closed and subjected to a tremulant.
http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/InDulciJubilo-BWV608.mp3
I have a recording by Helmut Walcha from the mid-20th century where he played it quite slowly at about minim = 72, rather slower than one usually hears it today,
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.
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2 hours ago, Martin Cooke said:
50 + years ago, I would have loved that 1 ft. There were three of theses that I came across in my youth and couldn't tire of. Maurice Eglinton built a small (but quite exciting at the time) extension organ in the church at Trevone, near Padstow in Cornwall, in about 1970. This had one, and actually, now I remember, so did the Nicholson at St Michael's, Newquay, along with its None, 8/9.
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.
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2 hours ago, Martin Cooke said:
50 + years ago, I would have loved that 1 ft. There were three of theses that I came across in my youth and couldn't tire of. Maurice Eglinton built a small (but quite exciting at the time) extension organ in the church at Trevone, near Padstow in Cornwall, in about 1970. This had one, and actually, now I remember, so did the Nicholson at St Michael's, Newquay, along with its None, 8/9. And when Daniels rebuilt and reduced the three manual HW III at my school they popped one on to the Swell. I find this one rather shrill.
But, goodness, innate, where's this 2ft pedal reed? Not many of those to the pound - well, not around rural Wiltshire!
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!
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1 hour ago, SlowOrg said:
A recording/video of the BWV 608 has been published today as part of the Dutch "All of Bach" project:
https://youtu.be/zrde4WqFNYg?feature=shared
Laurens de Man plays the Silbermann organ in Freiberg; he appears to be using Flutes 8, 4 and 1 from the Oberwerk and the 4 ft reed from the pedal division.
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 🙂
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14 minutes ago, sjf1967 said:
The whole question of what the pedal should play is very much open to individual interpretation - there's no autograph and the only two copies (Preller and Kittel, both quite a bit later than the date of composition suggested by the idiom of the piece) make no stipulation about what they play (although they are needed unless some chords are respaced in places). The earlier, shorter 729a is similarly unspecific (here the chorale is figured, not written out). The NBA has no pedal indication at all, the BG just (con Ped.), on who knows what authority. New Breitkopf suggests pedal for the first two chorale phrases, and then not until b39 to end. The 3-stave notation we're now familiar with is I suspect very much a development of the Novello editions. So a range of solutions is certainly acceptable. One possible system is just to use the pedal where you really need to, where the tune appears in fuller harmonised textures. Registration - possibly plenum, or a smaller chorus, but I've heard it done very beautifully on a single 8 principal.
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.
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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?
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57 minutes ago, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
May he rest in peace
and rise in glory. His was a kind and knowledgable presence here.
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4 hours ago, S_L said:
As an organist I am a rank amateur, a very poor ARCO standard! I began my life as a 'cellist - I played in the AH twice - once the Elgar concerto and, once the 1st Shostakovich concerto. A long time ago!
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.
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1 hour ago, S_L said:
Sorry to disagree!
But it isn't new technology. As far as I can see it is actually very old technology!! (I expect to corrected by Dr. C here!!) 'Pop' musicians have been attaching microphones to their faces since 'Pop musicians' and microphones were invented!! It was 1968/9 but I have played, as the soloist, a concerto in the Albert Hall with a orchestra of 70+ musicians behind me. I wasn't 'miked up' and I can't understand why a singer should need it either!!
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.
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4 hours ago, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
It was a joke.
Hence the wink emoji 😉
Ah. My eyesight can see the emoji but can’t distinguish it from any other!
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On 13/11/2023 at 10:12, Colin Pykett said:
No, he won't. In fact I agree, and I find the appearance of what looks like a huge wart emerging from performers' nostrils most repulsive.
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.
St John's, Cambridge
in The Organ
Posted
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.