pwhodges

Dame Imogen Cooper. OBE for Julian Lloyd Webber. And surely they're actually the Queen's birthday honours. Paul EDIT - Oh, you mean at the funeral...

Very sad to hear; I have and enjoy a number of recordings of his. I contacted him a few years ago about one of his recordings, and got back a message which after replying to my query went on to ask if I was the boy who had disappeared unannounced from Christ Church choir in 1960 when he was organ scholar there! I was (illness, but a complicated story, and the school kept it secret why I had gone for some inscrutable reason), but he had only had a term to get to know me, so I felt that recognising my name over 50 years later was somewhat remarkable. Paul

There's also Moondog's "A New Sound of an Old Instrument": https://moondog.bandcamp.com/album/a-new-sound-of-an-old-instrument Paul

The amateur choir I'm in is singing in the car park for the first part of each rehearsal, followed by a sectional (which happens to be six singers, the allowed limit) inside when it's getting darker. Paul

It was merely a passing thought of mine, too late at night. The oldest publication I found omitted it, but on reflection looks hardly likely to be the true original publication. In fact, I now see that RSCM publish it separately, in a version which, from the one page visible on the Internet, must be the piano version. It may be that their publication includes the original date somewhere, I suppose. EDIT: Getting closer now. This listing of Walford Davies's manuscripts deposited at the RCM includes the entry in the volume for 1901 [sic]: Note that it has organ accompaniment. I wondered if that was a mistake, but then I found this publication specifically of that manuscript. Note that the verses both start with a partial bar, rather than flowing through regularly, and that verse two has a second (tenor) soloist. I'm now wondering whether the piano version or the organ one is the original. The figuration towards the end of the recit section looks more pianistic to me... In 1914 of the RCM catalogue there is the entry: I wonder if that is a early version of Wengen (which isn't listed under that name). Paul

The CD that comes from is a very rare beast indeed, and took me several years searching to find a copy of. It is on the Mirabilis label, and so was recorded by David Wyld. It's a shame that buying Willis (presumably) left him no time to continue his organ recording project, as every one of the disks he released is outstanding. As David's recordings are in Ambisonic surround, I have listed them in an appendix to my web site which is about that technique. The St Paul's disk is the fifth one down. Paul

The earliest publication of "Christmas Carol" I can find was in 1905. This page (towards the bottom) has the following entry: with links to scans of the two pages. The accompaniment is for piano; Willcocks made the organ arrangement in Carols for Choirs 3. A modern printing of the piano version is linked from Choralwiki, and is here. The other sources do not have the introductory recit, so I suspect that was added as part of Willcocks's arrangement. On the same page the previous entry is for Wengen, linking to the A&M Standard Edition of 1922. But the contents of that book were finalised with the Second Supplement of 1916, so the date of that tune is no later than that. It is IMO so inferior to his earlier tune that I guess he was commissioned to provide a new tune for that supplement and knocked it off without inspiration - but that is pure speculation. I haven't had as much luck with The Holly and the Ivy. I have found that Novello published an adaptation of Walford Davies's arrangement in or before 1951 (see here - expand the image to see the date), so it may be that it had previously been published in the original form by them - worth asking, at least. Around the same time, the choir of Westminster Abbey recorded it under McKie, so I guess the Abbey has old (original?) copies. Paul

I have two recordings he made - I don't have the source of this one to hand, but the other (in which the Tuba is properly regulated) is from the EMI Great Cathedral Organs series recorded by Brian Culverhouse (and recently collected in a CD box). Paul

I recall an occasion when an unfinished organ was required to be used for a Christmas service. We had an organist playing manuals and pedals, another being the pedal couplers as they weren't in place, and as there was neither stop action nor swell linkage, someone with the running order manipulating the slides on each soundboard - the organist just had to trust that a suitable setup was available on each manual at any given time... Oh, and someone had to pull a piece of string to play bottom D on the unconnected pedal reed! D is a very useful pedal note at Christmas, if you've only got one... Five people other than the organist, I think it was. It worked out. My place was unjamming trackers that were getting stuck (until I saw the reason and fixed it). Paul

Nice to see that Forwoods is still going!.. When I was at school in Canterbury, I spent many hours in Forwoods, browsing LPs and music, and having chats with Mr Forwood about Hi-Fi. I remember that the record player in the shop had a Burne-Jones pickup arm which had a pivoted head to reduce end-of-side distortion - I've never seen another. Paul

I found the sounds from organteq mildly unconvincing (on a good hi-fi setup) - but nothing like as bad as their awful piano synth. Paul

The choir (not a church choir) that I sing in will be one of very few such choirs in Oxford giving a Christmas concert this year. We are at present 20-odd voices. We are rehearsing (just started again today after lockdown) in an octagonal church, spread around the outer wall at 2m intervals - which actually works better in some ways than our usual layout in pews. We hope to be singing in the University Church (the formal risk assessment is tomorrow), with the choir laid out in a chequerboard pattern (like you see pictures of orchestras), and an audience limit of 80 (the same as the church is imposing for its own events) which is possible because it is a large area. We are singing German Christmas music from the Reformation to the present day. Paul

Presumably noise-cancelling headphones as a superior form of ear protection. Paul

That makes me wonder - has anyone managed to design or make a stop with the mouth placed at right-angles to the body, as in the way an orchestral flute is blown? Paul

Plumley's book merely says of each organ (on pp 45 and 156) that they were destroyed in a bombing raid during 1940. No more detail than that. There's no index of dates of destruction, and I don't have time right now to go through the whole book looking... But it may be of interest to know (from p157) that the pipework of the Jordan organ stored but not erected in St Benet Fink was sold for scrap in 1941 to aid the war effort. Paul