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innate

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Posts posted by innate

  1. 12 minutes ago, DaveHarries said:

    Good luck with getting permission from the church. Some churches, such as my local one - St. Mary's, Stoke Bishop, Bristol (III+P, 1979 Daniel of Clevedon (NPOR D07728) - charge a small fee for it which is understandable.

    Purely OOI which church is it? Will look them up on the NPOR. 

    Dave

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

  2. 6 minutes ago, DaveHarries said:

    Anyway does the school your son is at not have a chapel (or school hall) with an organ in? Either way I wish him much luck.

    Dave

    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.

  3. 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.

     
     
     
     

     

  4. 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.

     

  5. 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 … 

  6. 47 minutes ago, Niccolo Morandi said:

    My problem is that although I have drawn quite a few pipe organs in the past I have never drawn an organ that is to scale. Or a plan detailing where the pipes and components would be placed inside an organ case.

    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,

  7. 2 hours ago, S_L said:

    Some might criticise the tempi of the Prelude - personally I thought it to be superbly played.

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

  8. On 24/04/2020 at 09:40, Niccolo Morandi said:

    There is one organ I stumbled across that I kind the design of which is a small 8 rank organ that I'm curious as to what some of you think of compared to the Skrabl organ. https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/10179

    I suspect this would probably be due to the fact that in a more romantic leaning organ you would need 8' principle and string stops which wouldn't be as easy to fit into a tight space compared to something like a stopped 8' flute.

    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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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?

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

     

  14. 9 minutes ago, David Surtees said:

    But that only applies to the staff, whether performing or front of house. There are (to my knowledge) no similar protections for the paying public. 

    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.

  15. 4 hours ago, Colin Pykett said:

    However it does raise the issue of whether sound levels at public events are as well controlled as they are in the workplace.  Even if the legislation is in place, and I'm not sure that it is, how well is it adhered to?  It is just not acceptable that in a nominally 'advanced' society and in this day and age that we should even have to question whether event promoters are allowed to play fast and loose with our hearing, and particularly that of our children.  No wonder so many of us on this forum need hearing aids.

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

  16. 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.

  17. 1 hour ago, Colin Pykett said:

     What I was saying was simply that ET emerged quite early as a well known and fully understood tuning system with definite practical advantages, which either predated the unequal systems or continued to stand alongside them (depending on which temperament you are considering), rather than standing vaguely in the shadows until the 19th century which seems to be the position of many who write on this matter.

    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?

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