innate
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Posts posted by innate
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But the best form of all is that in which the subject is clearly stated and the answer is given and both are subjected to a full exposition before the fun begins.
There's Dave Brubeck's Kathy's Waltz, where the theme isn't heard until the end; you get all the variations first. This is the internet, after all. It was invented for tangents.
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But does the orchestra lead the hymn-singing alone on these occasions and is the cathedral full? Perhaps I was not clear, but I was referring specifically to congregational singing.
Sorry, I did misunderstand you.
I remember reading a quote from either our host, John Pike Mander, or his father that trying to sing a hymn at the back of a full nave before the major work by Manders was next to impossible.
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I very much doubt that even that would do the trick. The first time I ever enetered St Paul's was to hear a performance of the Berlioz Requiem. We had seats near the back. I heard the first chord and the rest just was an interminably boring wash of sound.* It was a complete waste of money. I'm sure there is no way you could sing to an orchestra in that place. A brass band, maybe, but it would have to be something capable of being incisive.
On special occasions, perhaps 2 or 3 times a year, St Paul's Cathedral book the City of London Sinfonia to accompany the choir in its Sunday morning eucharist. I haven't heard that there are any particular problems of ensemble above or beyond what happens normally with the organ.
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I have been very pleased to read this thread, as I had been feeling rather guilty at programming the g minor fantasia by itself as the opening of a forthcoming recital. Time is limited, and the whole fantasia and fugue would just be too much Bach in the allotted 30 minutes. Cynic's views have buoyed me considerably.
I expressed this view to one of my teachers, who pointed out that the fantasia and fugue were never, originally conjoined ; I understand that the fugue originally existed in f minor, which only reinforces the point.
Confession time: about 25 years ago I was asked by a friend from university to play the organ for her wedding. She was a musician and had chosen the music with great care. Another friend sang the tenor solo from Rejoice In The Lamb. She asked me to play the Gm Fantasia & Fugue and I agreed, despite never having studied them. However, as the date loomed nearer I realised that, whilst I could play the Fantasia pretty well, I was not going to have the necessary time to prepare the fugue. Rather than cop out altogether I remembered there was another, solitary, Bach organ fugue in Gm which I had learned before; it begins, unusually for a fugue, with a full chord. Even though the detached console was at the front of the chapel I didn't dare look at the bride's face as I started the unexpected fugue. I'd told myself at the time and ever since, that Bach hadn't specified which pieces "went" together but had never believed it until this thread. Thanks, guys, my heart is lighter now.
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I'd been ignoring this thread thinking it was all about nave organs...
I haven't played for many weddings recently but there's one coming up. I suspect the couple want to play a CD of a popular song from the 1960s during the signing of the registers. Whilst I am prepared to fight my own corner with regard to the video recording of my performance who is responsible for protecting the rights of the, say, Scarabs
in this situation? I presume the church has a licence in place for the playing of the track. -
The question begs itself, did Bach consciously think of this while writing it, or was it his subconscious working. Knowing his fascination with mathematics, and his unparelled (personal opinion) talent, I would suspect the latter. I'm not expecting anyone to know the answer, its just hypothetical!
The number significance in Bach's religious music (and of course I include CÜ III in that) is an area that fascinates me; I'm looking forward to my retirement so I can have the time to explore it. My guess is that it was mostly conscious, in the same way that a jazz player putting in quotes from other tunes is conscious. I seem to remember that the number of notes in the descending scales in the continuo part in the "veil of the temple" recitative in the St Matthew Passion reference the Psalms that mention earthquakes!
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If you want to become a traditional Irish dancer, you should start at the age of about three. When are you too old to start learning to play the organ?
(A great many years ago, an organist told me that I was - then aged about 32 - too old because, he said, I was past the age of being able to learn to master playing both the keyboards and the pedals at the same time.)
There might be something in that, but I've no evidence either way ie I don't know of anyone who started to learn the organ aged over 30 who either succeeded or failed to achieve an independent pedal technique. People take up extraordinary challenges much later that 30 and succeed though.
I wish I'd worked harder in my teens, mind you. Someone should have told me I should be doing 2 hours practice a day. Then I might have made something of myself
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Whatever the rights and wrongs of your case, Cynic (and I'm sure that there is huge support for the organist in general on this discussion board) it is important to remember that we are essentially guests of John Mander and his Company here. As he has pointed out, the Company carry a legal responsibility for what is published here and it is in our own interests, as well as those of our host, to refrain from anything that could be construed as defamation. I think it is always better to err on the side of caution. If you feel that your story should be published then by all means go ahead and make your own website detailing the case in such a way that you will be obvious as the sole publisher. This forum is too valuable a resource to risk on the, however genuine, vented spleen of its members.
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I disagree with this. You have absolutely no hope of establishing a forward situation if you are going to rallentando at the end of the playover. What speed will resume?
The right speed?
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This makes interesting reading following this thread to it's ultimate limits perhaps.
Thank you for reminding me of this. I'd read it some years ago; it is so beautifully written it brought tears to my eyes. I was particularly proud, as a son of Derbyshire, to see how many of that county's organs are mentioned.
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I sometimes wonder whether perfect pitch is actually something quite independent of musical training. At my first ever church we gained a new priest who knew nothing whatsoever about music. He refused point blank ever to let me give him a note for the Sursum corda and seemed oblivious to the resulting chaos when the choir came in. But everything was fine after it dawned on me that, every week without fail, he pitched it on E.
I may be wrong, but I think the original phone phreaks were street kids in New York City who by chance found they could make free international phone calls from public phone boxes by whistling specific pitches down the phone. They were able to remember which pitch had which effect without any musical training. On a slightly different tack I caught part of a programme on the BBC World Service radio yesterday where they were discussing the connection between 2 specific genes and tonal or non-tonal languages. In spoken English pitch is used for expression but in Mandarin pitch is used to define the meaning of a set of phonemes. Apologies for any linguistic infelicities.
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I think that the Craftsmanship v Technology argument can't be used to explain why some of us prefer to do things 'traditionally' while others like to poke fun at that view: the romantic engagement with the past which is a part of human psychology isn't able to be explained (and shouldn't be ridiculed).
"The romantic engagement with the past" might be equally or to some extent involved in the respect held by some for Hope-Jones or John Compton too. In other words, a love of science, engineering and progress might not be completely "rational".
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I just can't get my head around why someone would want to make, let alone publish, a video of such mucking around; it's even stranger if they are then going to be sensitive about comments.
Absolutely. Particularly if she seems to be so aware of her web presence.
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In the "modular" organ stakes, John Compton was light-years ahead of his competitors, and the quality second to none.
You write as though there was something worthwhile about the idea of the modular organ.
But if it weren't for the "developments" of particularly H-J and JC there wouldn't have been such a fertile ground for the ideas of organ-reform to be planted. If British organ builders had carried on building Hills and Bevingtons and Lewises and Father Willises we have have had organs with integrity that the generation above me would have been satisfied with in the 1950s and 60s. The rot set in with the engineers. IMHO.
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Hope Jones was a telephone man, and very, very clever. He also built organs with superb pipe-voicing, BUT as a musical concept, it was a product of the age which many thought of as the bees knees.
Bear-baiting used to be considered a fine day out. I played the H-J in St Paul, Buton-in-Trent a few times 30 years ago. It was absolutely horrible, in my opinion.
A theatre organ in the right hands can produce many very beautiful sounds, but of course, they only work marginally well for certain types of classical repertoire......you know....Thalben-Ball's "Elegy" and Howells....that sort of thing.And not at all for anything classical outside 1900-1940. I'd consider H-J and JC about as useful for classical organ repertoire.
Compton similarly, was a brilliant organ-builder, who made many very fine instruments. His tonal approach was certainly unique, in that the sound pallette was seen as a pool of tonal resources, from which he would pluck the sort of tonal synthesis he wanted. However, synthesis is the important word, and THAT approach is utterly unique in organ-building, and quite unlike anything which Hope-Jones did.I've played the Comptons in Derby Cathedral, Bradfield College, St Luke's Chelsea, All Saints Poplar and, I think it is, St Olave's Hart Street in the City of London. Yes one admired the skill of the engineering and the magnificent glare of the stopheads, particularly at Derby. The Bombarde section was very loud indeed. But after a few earth-moving climaxes I felt completely restricted as to the repertoire I could play with any integrity. Whereas, as has been mentioned by others, even you I think, there are some instruments which are based on a narrow geographic area and historical period that positively encourage me to experiment with all sorts of good music.
Scientific he certainly was, but if you take a look at the organs in Hull (City Hall and Holy Trinity), both re-built around the same time, you have two organs which work wonderfully, have lots of sparkle and, unlike so many others by a certain famous builder from the same period, actually sound good.What all the JC organs I played had in common was a fine acoustic.
As for violins, I'd like to bet that a moulded carbon-fibre violin would sound absolutely superb. It's no use citing an electric violin which uses a solid block of maple wood. That's like comparing Segovia to Eric Clapton!I would have said comparing an H-J Diaphone with a Trost Pedal bass was like comparing Segovia to Johnny Rotten (or the other war around).
And how come moulded carbon-fibre violins aren't flying off the shelves? Interestingly carbon-fibre bows are gaining a certain amount of kudos amongst professionals these days, particularly in "hard-hat" areas such as arena concerts and theatres. Many years ago I knew the violin and bow maker Laurence Cocker who made bows out of six pieces of split bamboo cane; these Cocker bows became quite popular in some orchestras.
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I remember reading in Yachting Monthly a few years ago about some new 170ft yacht which had an organ aboard. I think it was just a 5 or 6 stop house organ. The owner's wife was an organist and if you're prepared to spend £5m on a boat, it may as well have an organ too. It was very neatly done - all the casework matched the rest of the cabin with the interior designer, all beautifully made, etc. It sounded perfect to me - I could combine 2 of my pastimes... In fact, it was my dream as a little boy.
Was it this one?
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I'm thinking in terms of design, rather than traditional craft methods. The latter may be extremely worthy, but does it make engineering sense in the 21st century?
You remind me of that oft-circulated "Engineer's report on attending a Symphony orchestra concert": For long sections of the concert the two oboes had nothing to do. All sixteen first violinists were playing identical notes.
In my opinion, the worst things that happened to the pipe organ in Britain were Hope-Jones and John Compton as they put science/engineering before art. Even though an organ contains many mechanical parts its raison d'être is musicmaking, as for other musical instruments.
If the great Cremonese violin-makers were still working today would you deny their traditional craft methods on the grounds that they don't make engineering sense in the C21? Violinists today have a choice of fantastic, very expensive old instruments, more affordable modern ones made in a very similar fashion to the old ones and modern "engineered" things like this. Violinists with artistic integrity wouldn't like to be seen playing Brahms, Beethoven, Sibelius or Britten on the engineered version.
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It is done occasionally, but it's not that common. It seems likely that the 61 note manual compass was introduced over here to reduce the effects of missing notes in the top octave when using the coupler (normal compass until late Victorian times was to g3 or a3 (56 or 58 notes) - and there's not much repertoire that uses the top of the top octave.
I have a vague memory of reading about a Victorian organ builder who marketed a small one-manual organ to churches on the basis that it had an octave coupler AND an extra octave of pipes at the top. I can't remember the actual sales pitch but it was a big claim!
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Having brought up the subject of half-draw stops, I must confess that I've only ever come across one myself. I don't know how its mechanism worked, and whether this is common, but it had a noticeable "catchy" point at the half-draw point so that it wasn't necessary to position it by the eyeball method. Has anyone else come across them?
I suspect organ-builders can be divided into two distinct groups: those that use half-draw stops and those that don't. The builders that favour them seem to use them in most of their organs. But no, I've never actually encountered one in the flesh. Are they always additive ie is the half-draw always fewer ranks than the full draw? Or could, say, the 17th rank in a mixture be present on the half draw but not in the full draw?
Half-draws are also used for undulating ranks in small organs, I think. A full draw will draw a diapason and the half-draw reduces the wind so it can be used with another 8' as an undulant. I don't know how successful this is.
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I suspect for battleships, the humble harmonium sufficed - the collection at Saltaire has a folding harmonium buit for the admiralty for just this use. I've vaguely heard of a pipe organ on a luxury liner - maybe in the Aeolian book that I read a few years ago?
There was some discussion along these lines on the PIPORG-L list some while back. You could try googling or ploughing through their archives which I think are available on http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/lsvcmmds.html
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I was "musing on the move" as one does, and the thought occurred to me that organs haven't changed substantially for quite some time. It's still wood, glue, leather, felt and half-a-million screws holding it all together.
When I look at engineering and materials science, I see something quite different: materials engineered rather than crafted, and specifically designed to act in a particular way and to a particular specification.
So here is my "thought"........
If the organ had never been invented, and someone came along and said, "Hey, if I blow this tube, it makes a musical note," how would you make a musical instrument which used ANYTHING at the disposal of designers/engineers to-day.
Remember, it has to last a bit longer than a £30 DVD-player from Asda, but does this mean only the use of natural and very expensive materials, or perhaps other materials and production methods?
After all, a Jumbo Jet is a high-tech product, which has to perform with faultless reliability over many years, and in the most extreme conditions.
Always good to question the traditional way and there are a few, mainly continental, organ builders who seem very willing to think "outside the box" in terms of case and console design. As regards the control of the stops and pipes, the late C19 and early C20 saw many revolutionary actions, most of which have gradually fallen out of favour compared to standard slider chests. There are continual improvements in the layout of pipes on the chest helped, often, by CAD. "New" materials have frequently been tried but it seems that the traditional materials seem to win over longer periods of time.
Now, about your Jumbo Jet - how many pipe organs get the sort of maintenance schedule that a commercial or military plane can expect?
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Well I have the opposite problem, in that I'm only 5ft 6in and couple of communion wafers high.
I just manage somehow, by sort of perching myself well forwards on the bench. I have yet to actually fall off, and with some awkward pedal passages, I do have to shift around a bit, like a jumping-bean, to reach some of the notes. I think I must also be slightly deformed, because for some strange reason, I am only really comfortable with the right-side of organ bench closer to the manuals by 2 inches or so.
My old teacher, the late CD Atkinson, was similarly short and also had the bench at an angle!
I tried an adjustable bench once, and screwed it down almost to periscope-depth. The big problem was then staring obliquely upwards across the manuals, which elicited the sort of gut-terror normally only experienced by climbers about to ascend the Eiger.I'd be more scared coming down, I think. But on a 4- or more-manual organ most of us will be staring upwards, even the 6' 3" ones.
Now if organ-builders were not so stuck in their ways, we could have scissor action consoles, where the pedals come up as the manuals move down. In fact, coming to think of it, there is no earthly reason why pedalboards should have to remain static on a console, and some sort of spring loaded adjuster, with a pedal to lock and unlock them would be just a spiffing feature.At least I can resort to flamenco shoes, but for Nachthorn, surgery appears to be the only (rather drastic) option.
Of course, the Netherlands organists tend to be tall. They are the tallest people on earth apparently, but the consoles are often old and cramped. They seem to cope OK.
I wonder if anyone ever gave up the organ on account of their height.
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I'd welcome a thread entitled "Did anybody NOT screw up this week?". It would guarantee my total absence from this forum, probably to the delight of 99% of the membership.
We could all respond "no".
Michael
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St Mary the Virgin RC Wandsworth - Stephen Cooke - charming little thing
It certainly looks lovely on paper (or rather, on-line). Maybe I'd have chosen something instead of the Oboe - a Sesquialtera, Cornet III, Trumpet, perhaps. And are the manuals really black naturals and grey sharps?
in this situation? I presume the church has a licence in place for the playing of the track.
"the Times" - Less Organ Music
in The Organ
Posted
But Debussy's great harmonic influence, particularly at the start, was Wagner, who was hugely influential for Franck and Chausson too. The other key figure in French C20 harmony was Satie, who, I think, was also influenced by Wagner at some point. Of course, by the time Debussy wrote the witty parody of the Tristan progression in Gollywog's cakewalk he'd achieved a certain independence.