innate

I’ve known that frets on lutes and viols could be positioned so as to approximate to some non-equal temperaments for about 40 years! http://luteshop.co.uk/articles/tuning-temperament/

Thank you for the responses. pwhodges: I feel for your son’s early experience at Winchester, but how fortunate to have learnt on the Rieger. I was there when it was being installed and voiced. Tony; the nearest there is to a regular choir has no official place to sing but in the Gallery near the West End is very good from an acoustic point of view. So I imagine that would continue. The biggest problem I foresee with an integrated console would be communication with clergy immediately before or during services. Maybe there’s a technological solution to this already in use in some churches. What about using the organ in concerts? The delay will be apparent to the conductor, orchestra and choir at the east end wherever the organist is, but if the console is near the performers at least s/he can make the adjustment. At a West End console the delay would be effectively doubled unless some kind of headphone system is provided. What happens at St John’s, Smith Square (a similar building in scale)? My wife played in the orchestra for a recording of the Poulenc Concerto (I think) in Tonbridge School shortly after the Marcussen had been installed with Dame Gillian Weir—there were significant problems synchronising the organ and orchestra.

This is a rather wide-ranging question which might have benefitted from splitting into a few separate topics but let’s see how it goes. Given the choice, in a working largish parish church with an active liturgical and concert life and the pipes of a new organ contained in a historic case high up at the West end, between electric action and a detached console at the altar (concert platform) end at ground level and an attached console with mechanical action in or next to the case, what would your preference be and why? If your answer is “both” how likely is it that one console will, in practice, be used almost exclusively and the other lie gathering dust. Are there any effective reversed consoles with mechanical action on organs with a chair division? Are there limits of size (number of stops, manuals) that make a terraced console too large to see over? I seem to remember the organ in the West gallery at St Aloysius, Oxford being rather good from a visibility point of view. Does having a “side” console make for serious problems with mechanical action? In the old days organs were nearly always in the West Gallery (or on the crossing in a Cathedral) and the organist often obscured by the chair case. Liturgy was, I suppose, much more predictable then. In churches where organists are expected to respond to a glance or a subtle hand signal from the clergy or the Master of Ceremonies do modern closed-circuit video systems work as well as being physically close to the action? My preference is for mechanical action.

It’s hardly a difficult transposition—play it in Bb and at least you’ll have to concentrate a little!

Has anyone played Bach on a clavichord? I went to a clavichord recital once in Oxford and it took about 10 minutes of playing for my ears to adjust to the extremely low dynamic level. But the sound of a clavichord isn’t a million miles away from an early piano, just quieter! And they were the common practice instrument for keyboard players, I think. Some large triple-strung clavichords were made in Bach’s lifetime that perhaps projected better than the small ones. Just wondering where people draw the line? Bach on an early fortepiano might be interesting. I don’t agree with mkc1’s comment about the necessity of sustained tone; Bach wrote and arranged a lot of contrapuntal music for lute or Lautenwerk.

I can’t remember the official name, maybe “cubus”, but a continental European builder used to advertise small organs with a single “pipe” that produced many chromatic notes for a 16' pedal stop. Compton had something similar for the 32' octave. I think they work on the principal of an ocarina.

The building I’m thinking of has such a good acoustic ambience the >30 year old A***n D*g*t*l toaster doesn’t sound bad.

I’ve not heard this one but it has received very good reports: https://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D03624

It’s not that dissimilar to the secular instrument up the road: https://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N08021

I like your 4-man spec. Thanks for posting that. On paper it’s less “sparkly” and more “gravitas” than mine 🙂 Funnily enough the choir accompaniment isn’t the main thing, although there might be occasional choral evensongs. I respect your experience but aren’t there many examples from the 17th and 18th century of secondary divisions with no 8' principal base?

Spreadsheet unavailable [see attached graphic] There could, hypothetically, be an existing chair case for the Choir which would limit the number of foundation flues. Maybe, as in some “box organs” there might be room for an open 8' from Middle C, but I suspect that won’t satisfy you 🙂 I quite like having my choices limited in some regards and I hadn’t really thought of this department as being a traditional English choral tradition accompanimental division at all; the Swell and Great are designed to be sufficient in that regard. The Bombarde Flutes I imagined to be open, quite strongly voiced, particularly in the treble, definitely not Stopped or Chimney (those are specified elsewhere) but capable of being used as pedal flutes when required in eg trio sonatas. I like to leave some room for the builder to choose. I wouldn’t initially have thought of harmonic flutes for either but there’s a lovely one at St Michael and All Angel’s, Bedford Park (referred to above) which seems very at home in an otherwise quite classical stop list.

I couldn’t open your spreadsheet spec. One particular I could have mentioned is that this might be for a relatively small historic case, hence the slightly small pedal and swell divisions. I think the idea is that the Bombarde reeds are available via the coupler rather like an “Appel” (if that’s the right word); possibly easier to add and subtract than if they were on the Great, especially if there is a reversible pedal and/or thumb piston. With 9 8' flues on the manuals it beats some “classical” Cathedral organs. Christ Church, Oxford has only 7!

Vivat Regina, Vivat Regina Elizabetha! sounds like Latin to me.

I would choose harpsichord, clavichord or low-pressure pipe organ for Bach keyboard music and a circulating temperament for the “48”. The organ pieces would probably have been played on organs with less “modern” temperaments; Bach didn’t get his way with most organ builders, I think. But I don’t mind people playing Bach or Scarlatti or Byrd on the piano if that works for them. The music is glorious whatever. I really couldn’t care about the pitch standard though. Bach existed at a time of differing pitch standards and had to cope with up to three at the same time for some of his Cantatas, I think. The pitch of church organs would have changed by as much as a semitone from winter to summer.

Ruffatti made tonal changes to the Keble Chapel organ quite recently.

Very interesting! Not wishing to divert the discussion before it’s started but is there any common ground between the Orgelbewegung and the pioneers of other “early instruments” and attempts to rediscover lost performance styles, including Arnold Dolmetsch and Francis Galpin? And in turn do those pioneers connect with the pre-Raphaelites and the Arts And Crafts movement?

Paul Jacobs is in the same league as Dupré, or a higher one. He’s played the complete Bach organ works from memory and the complete Messiaen organ works from memory (in one day, I think—I caught Messe de la Pentecôte).

You need your own, designed to fit safely under the VdG draw stop, “Keep Cup”, that you take to Tim Horton’s for them to fill with their delicious brew. If Hortons are anything like any UK coffee outlet chain you’ll get a 30-50¢ discount on each cup if you bring your own cup to save the planet!

This was my list of omissions from when I made the spec: Omissions Tuba/Chamade solo reed Voix Humaine 2' flute 1⅓' 1' Choir: 8' Dulciana or Open Diapason, Larigot Great: 8' Open Flute, Twelfth, Cymbale Swell: 16' flue, 4' flute, “standard” Mixture, chorus reed Pedal: 32' Reed, 32' flue, 3rd 16' flue, Quint 10⅔', 8' flute, 4' flue, 8' or 4' reed Octave couplers (mechanical) eg Sw/Gt Suboctave; Sw/Gt Superoctave; Sw/Ped Superoctave; Ch/Ped Superoctave Enclosed Choir

There’s a Swell sub-octave to Great at the Swiss Church, Endell Street, which really beefs up the potential. Some have said that the Gt. 8' flute at St Michael’s Highgate, an organ I know quite well, although identified on the stop knob as Stopped, is in fact an open flute at least in the upper register. Thanks for the inside info.

It would have to be an unconscious reference to GDH! I do have a copy of a book about the American Classic Organ (or whatever it’s called) but reading it made very little impression on my thinking. The separating of the big reads from the Great is to allow Trumpet voluntaries and other music that needs the reeds to be separate. I didn’t say, but I would want this instrument to have mechanical key action and this design is a sort of mechanical Gt Reeds duplexed on Choir!

You’re not wrong, Jonathan! I love the enclosed Resonance division at St Michael’s; I’m in two minds about enclosing the Bombarde here. Obviously with the lack of a large chorus reed at 8' in the Swell it would be useful in the late romantic repertoire to have the Bombarde reeds under expression but there’s something exhilarating about unenclosed and untameable (?) fiery reeds. Maybe the flues in the Bombarde division could be enclosed and the reeds not; a little like at St John’s, Oxford.

I know many frown on this sort of thing but the board is hardly overwhelmed with posts at the moment so here goes: An Organ for a Large Parish Church GREAT (II) Bourdon 16' Open Diapason 8' Stopped Diapason 8' Gamba 8' Principal 4' Flute 4' Fifteenth 2' Mixture IV 1⅓' (19, 22, 26, 29) Swell to Great Choir to Great Bombarde to Great Cymbelstern SWELL (III—enclosed) Open Diapason 8' Stopped Diapason 8' Salicional 8' Voix Celestes 8' (from AA) Gemshorn 4' Fifteenth 2' Sesquialtera II 2⅔' (12, 17) Bassoon 16' Oboe 8' Tremulant CHOIR (I) Chimney Flute 8' Principal 4' Flute 4' Nazard 2⅔' Gemshorn 2' Tierce 1⅗' Sharp Mixture IV 1' (22, 26, 29, 33) Cremona 8' Tremulant Swell to Choir BOMBARDE (IV) Flute 8' Flute 4' Cornet V 8' (from Ten F/mid C?) Tremulant Bombarde 16' Trumpet 8' Clarion 4' PEDAL Open Diapason 16' Subbass 16' Principal 8' Mixture IV 4' (15, 17, 19, 22) Trombone 16' Swell to Pedal Great to Pedal Bombarde to Pedal Choir to Pedal

I’d be surprised if there were any limit set by national legislation. The rules for children performing under Local Authority licence in eg theatres or film or television are very strict but I’m not aware that any such restrictions apply to worship.