innate

Very useful tips, Tony. Thank you. The Content 224 Compact is the right size but too expensive at this time.

I was going to mention the area but then realised there might be child protection issues so I’d rather not.

Thanks for your good wishes, Dave. Sadly his school has nothing approaching either a chapel or an organ but you’ve made me think that he could maybe use the nearby parish church. I’ll get in touch with them post-lockdown.

Just wondering if anyone in the UK is thinking of disposing of a small 2-manual and pedal organ suitable for home use. My son wants to take up the organ and I realised (40+ years too late) that I would have progressed much quicker had I been able to practice more than once a week between my organ lessons. We have a limited budget. The pipe organ advertised in the latest Organists Review is out of our range at £20k. After years of being pipe-purist, well, tracker-pipe-purist actually, I’m now willing to consider any type even a harmonium (with electric blower) as long as it has a proper pedalboard, or even a pedal piano.

Might be worth doing that candle test singing the lower voices parts from the second movement of Chichester Psalms.

This is very sad news.

Following the mention on the Organ Design thread of the organ in the Disney Hall, Los Angeles, I found this remarkable video from 2012 of a 16-year-old organist. I hoper’s fulfilling this early promise. The organ sounds great too.

Wahl organbuilders, a small firm in the USA, make home/practice organs. http://www.wahlorganbuilders.com/organs/house/Two-Stopthird.shtml http://www.wahlorganbuilders.com/organs/practice/Six-stopPO.shtml It is possible to purchase slim books of detailed photographs (alas, no technical drawings) which give a lot of insight into the design of these small, compact instruments. I note that the latest iteration of their two-stop instrument has both II-I and I-II couplers (a feature that Bernard Aubertin also provides (albeit in larger instruments)). I’m dreaming …

There are many detailed technical drawings available (sometimes at a price) of old string instruments; lutes, viols, Italian violins. Also, similarly, of harpsichords. I’d love to see something similar for old organs. I understand that detailed technical drawings of instruments by our hosts or other modern builders constitute commercially sensitive intellectual property so wouldn’t expect to be able to see those, but it would be great to see how the old master builders managed to fit their pipes and action into sometimes quite small spaces,

I’m loving everything about it; sound, articulation, tempo. Reminds me a little of Simon Preston.

Thank you for posting the video and the very interesting link. At times like this I wish the forum had the option of a simple Like or Thanks reaction.

This one appeals to me a lot. Not many 8' manual flues but there are a lot of tonal possibilities. Might have cost a little more than £40k! http://www.pasiorgans.com/instruments/opus12spec.html

That has always seemed a lovely instrument to me. If you look carefully, there’s quite a lot of borrowing at the bottom end and it still has quite a large footprint. I bet it sounds gorgeous though; as gorgeous as it looks.

Not exactly on topic but I recently tuned our harpsichord with the aid of a Digital tuning app on my iPhone. The pitch of a harpsichord string seems to fluctuate as it is plucked and the sound fades. The relevance, I suppose, to the OP is that when we listen to harpsichord music we (or I) are not aware of this effect.

I don’t suppose anyone knows the installed price for the Skrabl 4 stop instruments. Apologies to our hosts if that is not a suitable topic.

A house pipe organ is my dream. As the years pass the dream becomes less likely to be realised. I played the Peter Collins organ at Addington Palace quite a lot in the mid-late 1970s and many years later spent a day with Theo Saunders and his Collins house organ. I’d definitely prefer a small, mechanical action 2 man and pedal pipe organ at home to the most extravagant simulation either at home or in a church. At this time of lock-down who here would not relish the chance to play for a couple of hours a day on an instrument by our hosts or any number of similarly classy pipe organ builders from the UK, continental Europe or North America?

Bruce Willis. Martyn Lewis. George Harrison. Charlie Drake.

Useful tip about the Fitzjohn editions, Tony. Thanks. Tallis to Wesley sounds like the Oratorios that my Dad used to refer to as Railway Announcements. Olivet to Calvary, calling at Gethsemene, Herod’s Palace … and all stations to … you get the idea.

I don’t find the “facsimiles” of the Stanley voluntaries tedious; I like imagining I’m back in the 18th century! I wish they hadn’t reengraved the C-clef parts though. Buxtehude—I’m really glad I don’t have to learn German organ tablature in order to play his music 🙂 In terms of favourites: whichever I’m playing at the time. I like the Stanley one in F with the horn parts a lot.

Christ Church, Oxford differs from the other Oxbridge choral foundations by being a full-blown cathedral as well as a college chapel but they have had Assistant Organists working side by side with organ scholars certainly since the mid 1970s with Nick Cleobury being Assistant Organist at Christ Church whilst still, I think, being organ scholar at Worcester College and Cathy Ennis after (or whilst) being organ scholar at St Hugh’s.

Sure, but the staff includes the Director of the show and other so-called “creatives” who will try to sit in every area of the auditorium during preview performances so will need to be protected.

Theatres and concert halls are workplaces so are subject to workplace legislation.

I only played for one Christmas service this year, a Lessons and Carols service at a church where I’ve played just a handful of times over the last 10 years. Bach Pastorella BWV 590 before the service and Bach Pièce d’Orgue BWV 572 afterwards. I won’t identify the church. I’m told that half the organ was destroyed by wartime bombing. What is left is: Great: 16 8 8 8 4 4 2 III Clarinet, Choir: 8 8 4 4 2 II Tromba, Pedal 16, 16, 8. There is no swell box, the Great couples to the Choir, in addition to Great to Pedal and Choir to Pedal there’s a Choir 8va to Pedal. A above Middle C and E a tenth above Middle C don’t sound on the Choir but do work on the Gt when coupled through. D two octaves above Middle C doesn’t work on the Great.

Škrabl have certainly made and installed a lot of pipe organs in the last couple of decades in many countries.

That is certainly a point worth making; thank you, Colin. But do we know if any non-fretted instruments used ET before the mid-C19? Did ET have a name in the C16, C17 and C18? If Bach was aware of it (he wrote for the lute and the viol) do we gather from his title “Das wohltemperierte Klavier” that he had rejected ET for Klavier music?