innate
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Posts posted by innate
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My favourite Gordon Reynolds quote is the definition for tenor: There are either too many or none at all. When there are none it leaves an aching void; when there are too many it fills the void without removing the ache.
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I found this guided tour of the latest instrument from Juget-Sinclair very interesting.
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You know that movement in the original orchestral L’Ascension that, for whatever reason, Messiaen decided not to rewrite for organ which meant we got Transports de Joie?
Here are those orchestral Trumpet and Cymbal alleluias on the organ in an astonishing performance of his own transcription:
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5 minutes ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
I defer to you expert players - and this discussion has become entirely hypothetical anyway! - but in Stephen Bicknell’s scheme could a ‘party horn’ effect be achieved with the Great trumpet plus cornet?
I’ve often used the Cornet V + Trumpet 8' to serve as a “super solo reed” in pieces such as the Tippet canticles, especially on two organs that no longer exist where I was on the staff: the HNB at Exeter College, Oxford and the HNB at the Tower of London.
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15 hours ago, Robert Bowles said:
Thank you Owen. What a fascinating idea. And it offers the prospect of an entirely new and fully auditable basis for calculating organists' fees - by the note....?
I used to play orchestral piano and celeste occasionally for the English Chamber Orchestra. I viewed the owner/manager’s attempts to belittle my contribution by claiming I was being paid so much “per note” as demeaning.
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The Duruflé Toccata is in B minor and works well on Easter Day.
I have never heard of a connection between the Bm P&F and Palm Sunday. The Toccatas/Fantasias and Fugues seem to me to have no religious significance.
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20 hours ago, iy45 said:
Could it, perchance, have been E Power Biggs? I remember some Sweelinck in St George's Hall, Liverpool where the antiphony between chorus reeds and tubas seemed ever so slightly inauthentic?
Ian
Almost 100% certain it wasn't Biggs. I’m wondering if it might have been Christopher Dearnley. I had only just started learning the organ!
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1 hour ago, DariusB said:
I have a copy of the programme which I’ll post when I get home later. It’s unusual by today’s standards - I’m not that surprised at your reaction. And it also explains a lot about organ building styles at the time! I think it’s over half way through before he plays anything written after 1750....
I remember a recital in Westminster Cathedral c. 1975. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember who the recitalist was—someone famous. The first two pieces were by Byrd; played on loud chorus reeds.
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2 hours ago, Martin Cooke said:
I played it on Ash Wednesday. Today I played Howells Set 1 No 1; Whitlock Canzona; Malcolm Archer Hymn Prelude on Aus der Tiefe; Craig Phillips Hymn Prelude on Caithness; Paul Drayton Pavane; Rowley Chorale Prelude on Hollingside and Rutter Elegy.
That’s a whole recital—well done!
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Did anyone else play this today? Apparently musicologists now ascribe this to CPE Bach and the harpsichord. I must say the Peters edition doesn’t make it particularly clear which notes are for the pedals.
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21 minutes ago, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
Even experienced / trained singers don’t fit very well into these categories. Most men are baritones and most women mezzos and have to be shoe-horned into bass or tenor, contralto or soprano. Which does rather make one wonder why the categories developed in the first place ....
“Most men are baritones” is a reason to suppose that Tudor choral pitch was pretty close to A440. I can’t remember now which contemporary writer noted that “the commonest [adult male] voice is Tenor” which would equate to a modern baritone.
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39 minutes ago, Choir Man said:
I agree that people sing less than they used to slightly lower pitches are now considered more comfortable. I've noticed that the melody of a number of modern worship songs goes quite significantly into what I would consider the alto register, and as a tenor I find it more comfortable to sing up the octave. It also occurs to me that many film scores with choirs from the same era also sound quite high pitched (and screechy to my ears). Perhaps that's how tastes have changed over the years.
At the risk of meandering even further than normal from Pipe Organ-related matters one of the early discoveries of making movies of musicals was that the traditional soprano and tenor roles that carried so well in theatres didn’t work well on screen, particularly when the soprano was in close-up. As a result in the 1936 film of Show Boat all the soprano songs are transposed down by about a third. Many female pop singers sing in the low alto or tenor register and many “worship” songs are similarly pitched. It’s also true to say that most untrained singers don’t fit into the traditionally gendered SATB categories. Tastes and physiologies have changed but life-styles and musical experiences have changes too.
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On 23/01/2021 at 00:35, Rowland Wateridge said:
No hint of a gathering note (chord) in those hymns; the pace isn’t RVW slow either.
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40 minutes ago, Martin Cooke said:
And speaking of pitch pipes (and tuning forks)... it is awfully irritating to see in some of even our most celebrated 'quires and places where they thing', the person intoning the responses using a tuning fork almost incessantly - not just at the beginning of the set, but before each and every intonation, and sometimes holding the wretched thing by their ear and banging it on their head whilst they actually sing!!
I can imagine that might be the result of not-so-subtle work-place bullying by a DoM.
“I’m not sure you realised, but you managed to end the Second Collect a quarter of a tone sharp this evening.”
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5 hours ago, Tony Newnham said:
I presume you mean the ones about a young man that I was once asked to play for the funeral of a 90+ year old man!
Every Blessing
Tony
I’ve played those variations without shame at the funerals of many older people including my 85-year-old Dad. Even the oldest amongst us are young in comparison to the life of many church buildings and organs, oak trees, mountains and rivers. It’s cool. And the music is wonderful.
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1 hour ago, OwenTurner said:
I've no feel for this but how does the frequency of awarding of honours to cathedral musicians compare to honours to senior clergy, perhaps deans?
Interesting. Deans of prestigious cathedrals normally have high status and a lovely house but I’d say that cathedral organists and DoMs are much more likely to have job satisfaction or at least hugely rewarding moments. I may well not be in kilter with the general thoughts of this community on this but I have a feeling the time for a massive overhaul of the honours system, or its abolition, is overdue.
To avoid doubt I’m in awe of Wayne Marshall’s prodigious talent and musicianship.
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1 minute ago, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
Play from the original print? That’s three pages plus one system over, which could be stuck on the bottom of the third page.
Having said that, whilst it’s interesting and perhaps beneficial to play from original editions and manuscripts, I’m not sure I’d want to do it publicly!
I have a facsimile of the original edition of CÜIII. It is hard to read, not because of the C clefs and the pedals quite often being on the lh stave, but because the horizontal and vertical spacing is poor and there are more than a handful of misprints. I’m still committed to the idea of playing from original editions though!
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On 31/12/2020 at 15:16, SlowOrg said:
There are also cheaper, similar options which I would consider, especially if I didn't have a proper organ console. First there is Organteq.
I bought Organteq as a sort-of tax-deductible Xmas present for myself. I love the idea of it and even through computer speakers the sounds are hugely better than the organ sounds that come “built-in” with computer software such as Sibelius and LogicPro. I have a MIDI keyboard so can play Organteq with that but I must say I’m finding controlling the stops etc. cumbersome and storing the registrations in a MIDI file or Logic track beyond me so far. I’m not expecting any help from this forum but just wanted to share my frustration!
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9 hours ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
Two, perhaps three, Christmases ago the Willcocks arrangement of Adeste Fideles was sung at the ‘midnight’ services in St Peter’s Rome and the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC, followed by Westminster Abbey on Christmas morning, all televised, in the space of twelve hours.
Ker-ching!
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18 hours ago, David Surtees said:
Also, does anyone actually play the pedal ornaments in bars 24-31 of the prelude? They are not in the new Breitkopf & Härtel edition as they are not found in manuscript (Vogler) used as principal source for that edition.
I may be wrong but I understood that some sources that were available to the Bach Gesellschaft and Edition Peters were destroyed or lost during WW2 meaning that more modern urtext editions don’t have access to them. This might explain the discrepancy.
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8 minutes ago, Damian Beasley-Suffolk said:
Very helpful, Damian; many thanks.
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Can anyone that has a home organ tell me how high the lowest manual is from the floor? Many thanks.
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Yes, thank you for mentioning Hauptwerk, SomeChap. There are some very neat self-made set-ups around. I’ve also been looking at OrganTeq from Modartt, which is not sample based but physically modelled to recreate a Cavaillé-Coll type instrument.
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3 hours ago, Martin Cooke said:
Thanks for your thoughts, too, Martin. I’m definitely in the “not waiting” mode now.
Congregational singing.
in General discussion
Posted
That’s going to be our plan too, when services are inside. We hope to be outside for many of the Sundays from now until the end of September though and we will encourage everyone to sing.
Social-distancing: I think our plan is to have the North side of the church to be a free-for-all and the South side to remain for those who wish to maintain social-distancing as before with alternate pews roped off.