pwhodges

Well, Hampton Gay, just outside Oxford, has no other pipe organ than its barrel organ - but it does have a harmonium, so the above is not quite challenged by it.

Interesting decision to include several hymns in Welsh. Paul

Yes - Canada is life+50 years, USA is life+75 years. Both have provision for unknown artists, in which case it is the shorter of 50 years from publication or 75 from creation (Canada) or 95/120 (USA). Some people in the US are pushing for copyright to be extended to 144 years (basically, they're looking for nothing ever to come out of copyright again, you might think), but this is widely expected to fail. Recordings here in the UK are now 70 years, not 50 (a recent EU change), except broadcasts are still 50. Paul

How much of that is the cost of the work required, and how much for the transfer of ownership (the "value" of the instrument)? After all, if the total cost of preserving the instrument makes it not happen, then its value plummets. Paul

They didn't change to blue; the brown volumes, whether hardback or card, are the actual NBA volumes which are part of the full edition, and the blue ones are the performing editions normally sold in shops. My old card brown volumes came from Blackwells secondhand, and were part of an estate sell-off after the death of a subscriber (I got some full scores as well, and some Handel and Mozart in the equivalent editions), and my recent hardback ones (vols 10 & 11) in a Blackwells sale - they were incorrectly ordered I believe, and the blue versions were not yet out. The front matter and the position of the volume contents are different in the blue and brown volumes, but the music plates are identical, of course.

Oh? I haven't found that the NBA size changed, not like the Novello (which I don't have). My two oldest volumes (brown paperback, from the 60s) are perceptibly less tall (but barely 1mm even so) than the later ones, but otherwise they all match perfectly in size though the hardback ones are that little bit larger, as expected. Of the blue volumes I have, there are three distinct shades of the colour, and the most recent ones have the printing on the spine the other way round (but the even later hardback volumes still have it the earlier way). Yes, I have a really motley collection there, and the Breitkopf is wonderfully uniform in comparison, even with the change of livery! Paul

It's mildly irritating that they changed the volume livery for these final ones, so that people who have been collecting the series as they came out end up with a couple of non-matching volumes; a small matter, but... Paul

Ta-ta for now.

Not at all! I've been using such abbreviations in electronic communication since the mid-80s (i.e. well before the Internet reached the public). But then, I was using a computer at university in the 60s - these things are hardly new! TTFN Paul

The organ came originally from a 1862 exhibition, as I recall. It was the first substantial organ I played (and I had earlier been a chorister there). It is now in a very poor state indeed, and there has for some time been an appeal fund for its rebuilding.

St Mary the Virgin, Reading (the Minster church - my parish church throughout my childhood) has a 1936 case which had some potential of being moderately beautiful with nicely made details. But in the event, it fails, demonstrating that a beautiful case (1) should not have pipes sticking out above it, and (2) should not have zinc pipes. Paul

I went to school in Canterbury in the early 60s, and so became quite familiar with the sound of the Hammond there. I found it oppressive and unpleasant. Paul

The old organ at Ch Ch had no 32' reed. It was prepared for only, and I remember being rebuked when I pulled it by mistake instead of the 16' Ophicleide that Dr Watson was expecting. It did have a very fine 32' Violone, though, the bottom octave of which is now on the Grove organ at Tewkesbury. Paul

I played the pedals by hand for the first (Christmas) service on the rebuilt Conacher at Gresham's School, Holt in the late 1960s. Paul

I remember when I was at the BBC long, long ago, that one year the National Brass Band Championship became the International Brass Band Championship on account of a single band from Holland joining in. I dare say my son who is a pianist would not object to being called an International Concert Pianist - he plays in concerts internationally,after all. I suppose many do, but I suspect that less get around as widely (as well as the "routine" travel around Europe, he regularly goes to both sides of the US, Australia, Japan, Argentina...). Paul