innate

Thank you for the suggestions, Tony. In the end a combination of poor internet access and feeling under the weather meant I limited my preparation to silent study of the scores.

Dear forum members, If my request is not appropriate for this forum please forgive me. I am in Bradford for a few days with a free day tomorrow and would love to do some serious organ practice. If anyone can help me get access to a functioning pipe organ during the day in the Bradford area I would be very grateful. I am happy to make the appropriate contribution to church funds or whatever. Either reply here or email me on: innateATSIGNme.com Many thanks, Michael

Martin, the generous part of me would like to suggest that the photos don't do full justice to an organ in a transept position and you would be well advised to see the instrument in person before making such a negative judgement. The other part of me would say that your comments are out of place on a forum provided by a builder of pipe organs and that you could be well-described as trolling. To everyone else: don't feed the trolls.

Paul (Hector5) - agreed. I have a heavy digital piano and I've decided I'll only move it if I'm paid a porterage fee of £200. If that means I never have to move it again that's fine. My back, like yours, has suffered too much in the past and a decent porterage/hire fee means I can pay a "roadie" to do the hard stuff.

I found the Harvey Grace paraphrase interesting. Annoying, yes, but that's an important catalyst to interesting discussion. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and heard many express similar views on both Bach and the Organ Reform Movement.

I was involved in a production of The Burning Fiery Furnace at Oxford in the early 80s and Mark Blatchly gave a convincing rendition of the organ part on a "standard" Peter Collins 1-manual box organ of 8'4'2'. I don't know how much "fudging" he had to do to make the part playable on one manual, for some reason I suspect not very much. Funny to think of authenticity hitting music from the latter half of the C20. Given the rather odd indications of registration in Britten's liturgical organ parts (eg Missa Brevis) I would tend to treat his organ writing quite flexibly.

This discusses a recent development in the hire of musicians: http://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/news-events/2012/10/05/national-insurance-contributions-and-self-employed-musicians/

I don't know whether this is an appropriate forum for this topic. Apologies if not. Prompted by http://www.allsaints...ectorofmusicjob I am wondering about two questions of employment law. One is the old chestnut of self-employed status. It has been mentioned on this board and elsewhere that whatever an organist's tax status is for the rest of his employment any regular contracted position as a church organist is understood under English law and HMRC to be employed rather than self-employed, in other words the organist should be on the church pay-roll and NI Class 1 deductions should be made and PAYE Tax deducted according to tax-code. The second is a VAT question. Is it legal to say that a fee will be treated as inclusive of VAT where the person carrying out the work is registered for VAT but will be paid in full to someone who isn't registered?

Just wondered if this instrument has been installed and if anyone has heard or played it.

I can't remember now which instrument in South Kensington had a Great to Choir coupler rather than a Choir to Great about 30 years ago when I was practising for FRCO. I found it very annoying at the time. I thought it was St Augustine's, Queens Gate, but NPOR doesn't show the coupler I remember.

Thanks for the info, guys.

I’ve just discovered this fine medley as played by Simon Preston at the Royal Albert Hall. A search on Google has failed to throw up a supplier of the sheet music. Does anyone know if this is available?

I have a feeling this organ is now finished. Has anyone heard it? I would be very interested in what people think.

If you are deaf in one ear, like me, that's all pretty academic.

Is it so wrong to want to use an instrument of a similar, albeit deftly improved, construction to the ones that the great masters of the past played and composed for, in the same manner that other musicians do?

To this, and to justinf’s post above, I would say: the US is a very different country with a deeply different legal system. The First Amendment protects, for example, parody - which is often expressly forbidden in the UK.

What about using the Oxford Book of Funeral Music for a CD/digital download of funeral music mandated to be used at all civic crematoria in the UK. With no payment to the OUP or the editors?

The law would make small distinction in principle between commercial and non-commercial uses of recording, I suspect. Obviously there could be a big difference in terms of any potential damages. But just think about the fines being awarded in file-sharing cases.

Performance royalty payments are due where copyright works are performed. The details are complicated and the venue is normally the organisation that deals with them. I think that the payments go into a general "pot" and are shared amongst composers and arrangers according to various formulas. Where sheet music is only available for hire, the hire fee generally includes an element for recompense for public performance. I think there is a special exemption for performance royalties in the case of acts of worship but the exemption wouldn't apply to music performed in religious buildings not in acts of worship. The act of recording copyright music is generally not an issue as far as the holders of copyright in the music are concerned, but they are are extremely interested once the recording is disseminated.

There was a well-publicised case involving an editor and a record company in the last couple of years. In that case the repertoire was obscure. I'd be interested to hear of a case involving the editor or edition of a well-known Bach organ piece. Obviously if the sheet music is visible in a video recording that would be a different matter.

That’s an interesting question, Steve. Commercial performing venues have certain responsibilities to do with performing rights but whether they have a duty or responsibility to police copyright with regard to recording is, I suspect, moot. I'm sure it would be possible, in exchange for the right fee, to book the cathedral for a recording session outside normal opening hours, so I don't think it's the principle that concerns the cathedral authorities.

I wish I could find a link to a story about copyright on YouTube. The story is something like: Musician writes song and posts it on YouTube. Major USA political comment TV show uses above video from YouTube (without credit). TV company that produces the above show insist musician removes song from YouTube as it is in breach of their copyright. Complete Kafka-esque nightmare. Some of these details might be wrong. I think there are automated services (bots) that try to match any music or video posted with a (potential) copyright owner.

Thanks for the link to Parry's autograph score, Vox. Does the erased pencil scrawl at the start say "Much too fast"? I thought the St Barnabas performance on the slow side but, for all I know, that's the "right" tempo. Maybe the Abbey and Coronations need a slower tempo than, say, a small village church.

I played Master Tallis's Testament at the end of BCP HC this evening, which seemed apt. I also threw caution to the wind and ended the Merbecke creed with a Tierce de Picardy.

I'm not a choirtrainer but I've read a certain amount on temperaments and I've spent a lot of time close to choirs, choral singers and conductors. It would be hard to find a singer that's not been exposed to Equal Temperament; it's ubiquitous. However, most singers and most instrumentalists on instruments where the pitch of each note can be adjusted by the player will generally not perform in equal temperament. I have known top violin pedagogues tell their students that, when playing with a piano, they should tune (each note) to the piano. And choirs accompanied by piano or organ must sing so that their tuning matches that of the instrument. When choirs sing unaccompanied then the tuning tends to be determined by the director; chords, particularly opening and closing ones, may well be tuned to something approaching pure intervals but quite often leading notes will be sharper than their equal-tempered version, which in turn are sharper than a theoretical leading note. 200 years ago string players and singers were taught about big and small semitones but I don't know anyone that teaches them now.