sjf1967

32 reed is mild in the stalls - it's in the Nave that damage is done! The Nave organ isn't really a Nave organ - it's on the choir side of the screen and can be used as a Positif at mp-mf or as an an extra Gt chorus from f - ff. Very good Cornet V. You can use it pretty freely for Solo playing.

Not again, Richard, please....

There are only a few pieces - all good in an austere North German sort of way, but probably not for the very general audience, if you see what I mean; it's not a style which transfers well to all instrument types. Undeniably interesting music, though.

Two birds with one stone...Vox - the first 2 Williams vols are now available in one book revised and enlarged - Cambridge. Worth it. Vol 3 (articles about various general aspects relating the organ works) you'll have to hunt around for - I don't think it's been reprinted. pncd - the Forkel biography is translated in the Bach Reader (David and Mendel, rev. Wolff 1998) - should be easy enough to track down - but the Spitta does not exist in a modern translation that I have heard about. http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/Book-Bach%5BSpitta%5D.htm will take you to reprint of the 1880s English version. I don't know off hand of a modern Schweitzer translation, but Breitkopf republished the Newman trans in 1990 - should still be available. There hasn't been a general study of the Bach organ works since Williams that I know of - the best general biography by a mile is the Christoph Wolff (OUP).

Vox - only had time for a quick dig in Williams, but he suggests that none of the versions is likely to be Bach - even BWV 740 has some inconsistencies and infelicities which JSB is unlikely to have perpetrated. He also suggests that the cf line may be for violin, to be acompanied by 4pt organ texture - there are of course some other Krebs chorales which use an obbligato instrument like this. There's another article in Bach Jahrbuch 2002, which I don't have access to, which makes a case for the 5 pt version being a 19th century construct.

The Burgon society apparently exists solely for the 'study of academic dress'. Marvellous.

Enthralled maybe the word I want - but I think most uses of the word 'entertainment' in the thread have implied the toe-tapping, tune whistling kind; the Mahler and Brahms recordings I mentioned don't offer any sort of escapism from uncomfortable things - and in that sense I suppose I don't think of them as entertainment.

Brian - Is the audience not just a tiny bit privileged to have the opportunity to listen to Bach or Beethoven? I agree wholeheartedly that it's not up anyone who is playing to feel smug that they have an audience - but surely both parties (player and listener) need to remember what the point of the exercise is - ie, the music, for which of course the player is just a conduit. Are Mariss Jansons and Brendel, Martha Argerich and Maxim Vengerov, Rostropovich and Carlos Kleiber also on a footing with clowns in the circus? If not, why is it only the organ which has to be 'entertaining' in the way I think you mean? I wonder if it might be this attitude to it as a tool for serious music making which has put us where we are. Once again, I would say that I can't imagine a group of pianists having this idscussion. I recently saw the DVD of Abbado conduct Mahler 9 shortly after his recovery from cancer - nothing less 'entertaining' can be imagined, but my God what a privilege to hear it. Kleiber's last recorded Brahms 4, on DVD from 1996 ( I think) - gruelling and far from entertaining - he's a wreck by the end of the slow movement - but again, an extraordinary experience. I would be surprised if anyone in the hall (maybe there were even a few organists there) felt that the purpose of the evening was to sit back and fold their arms and let it all roll over them with an ice cream to hand....so what's the difference?

MM - J A Reinken, 1632 -1722, wrote an organ tutor? It must be the earliest one extant, and would solve a lot of arguments about fingering....are we talking about the same Reinken that Bach met? The Reinken organ works are published in a new edition by Breitkopf, Nick, and should be easy enough to track down.

Absolutely, Vox. It looks from the facsimile on the BBC site as if the copies are in tablature; this could be very significant as most of the Buxtehude sources are later and written in staff notation. There could be some interesting variant readings. Even more exciting is the possibility that there are more significant things waiting to be unearthed - this is the same archive from which the unknown soprano and orchestra piece emerged not so long ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5303252.stm Copies, rather than new pieces - but still good news.

This is an impossible thing to settle, because we are on that impossible subject, taste, but it's still fascinating! I have to come clean, Brian, and say that I would have the Fricker Pastorale burnt at the stake. However - I'm glad you like it! But the more pressing general question is - why should composers (or indeed any other sort of artist) always 'please' the audience? What does 'please' mean? Was Picasso arrogant to paint Guernica, or Shakespeare arrogant to write King Lear? Of course not. Not many people find Shostakovich 14 an easy listen, but it's an important, and unpleasant, masterpiece. Or the second scherzo of Mahler 10 - M's annotations in the score read 'the Devil dances with me - seize me, accursed one, that I may cease to exist... farewell my lyre...' it's not very pleasant music, but worthwhile and illuminating to the highest degree. Must the organ be excluded from all this? As for pitching your food at the broadest common denominator - tell that to Raymond Blanc or Ferran Adria. They may well get more punters through the door if they dropped the prices a bit, served chips with everything and put brown sauce on the tables, but something would be very wrong....

Milan Slavicky. Didn't know there were two of them - which I guess rather proves your point....!

Up late - my wife has been singing Kurtag and Feldman at the Proms tonight and needs collecting from the last train! Re-reading the thread on transcriptions from a while back answers some of these questions I think, MM. You said yourself that Hector Olivera, for example, has got it right - but when did he ever play some Weidermann in a recital? He has got rich by giving people what they want (ie nothing challenging) and doing it quite brilliantly, but it's hardly innovative musically as far as I could see from his web clips - Star Wars medleys and turbocharged Jig Fugues are hardly the stuff of artistic revolution. I'm sure he can play the Reubke stunningly - so why doesn't he? The organ is au fond (pardon the pun) nowadays blessed with a dwindling audience that by and large knows what it likes, and likes what it knows. Maybe it always has been. Players don't give listeners what they think they want to hear - I think it IS what they want to hear. Anyone trying to push that envelope is in for a rough ride, or so it seems to me, and what that means for the future is for others to speculate on. I did once programme Slavicky ''Die Augen' at a major venue and was asked by the presenter to drop it in favour of something more 'approachable'. At least I tried, but I've still never found the right venue to play it and fear I may have wasted my time learning it, fine though it is - unless you know of a few Czech venues that would like to hear it played by an Englishman...

British recorded music archive - or the BBC?

Nick Thistlethwaite is your man.

Fantastic tip - thanks.

I remember a visit to Dallas with Ch Ch choir - Highland Park Presbyterian - a 5 manual in the chancel and a three manual in the gallery, both very good. The weekly collections apparently exceeded $50K on a regular basis - that's just from passing the plate around, not to mention pledges and gifts and the like.

thanks - I've had a listen and she seems to be rather mezzo- ish (mezzoid?). But there's some interesting stuff here - thanks for the link.

Yes, wonderful - but unfortunately it is a bit too low - the soprano in question (my better half) is Queen of the Night altitude...

After Peter's enquiry about cello and organ got some useful leads I thought I might try one of my own. I am trying to compile a fairly exhaustive library of music for soprano and organ - not arias from Bach and Handel and the like, with the accpt transcribed and played on the organ, but stuff that is originally scored for the combination in question. So far the search reveals (in no particular order of obscurity) - Gorecki, Gavin Bryars, Radulescu, L Boulanger, Heiller, Gabriel Jackson, Norholm, Sebastian Forbes, Simon Holt, Lutyens, Leighton, Philip Moore, Nystedt, Planyavsky, Doppelbauer, Reger, Langlais Missa Brevis, Peeters. Some very obscure Danish bits and pieces too (Per Norgard, I think). I've also got some rarities by Dutch composers like Andries de Braal, and some bits of Barrie Cabena (a lot of the unpublished stuff has been very kindly put my way by Robert and Sally Munns, who rather blazed a trail in this regard). I know about the Karg Elert pieces with violin, and the odd shaving of Saint Saens and Dupre, but are there any gems any of you might know of that I'm missing? I know of a Lutoslawski piece (Lacrimosa) but it's impossible to find. MM - any ideas from Eastern Europe? Any leads gratefuly received. S

Jonathan - I used to play the whole Suite, and still play the middle two movements from time to time - I'm not so convinced by the outer ones these days. Do you know the recording by Kevin Bowyer at Blackburn? I have a score of Mouvement, supplied on pdf from someone else who plays it, and have played it once or twice. John Scott plays it from time to time. There's also the Berveiller Cadence, of which I also have a copy (now out of print, I think, and also on the KB Blackburn LP).

No specific works to suggest, Peter, but you quite often find interesting things lurking in the catalogues of Breitkopf, Doblinger, Peters and the like. Have you done much commissioning?

Stephen Farr, Organist/D of M of Guildford Cathedral since 1999. Formerly assistant at Winchester and Ch Ch Oxford, and before that Organ Scholar of Clare College Cambridge and a postgrad for a year or two after graduation (Bach's late style and edition of JSB's trasncriptions of Vivaldi Estro Armonico). I was going to give a website address, but some nice people called ncr builders seem to have taken up residence there today.

Anything by Brendel - especially his poetry.