pwhodges

That must have been frightening! Or perhaps you meant "lose". Paul

Squeaks and plinks can often cut through anything. When Walton orchestrated the original organ part of his anthem The Twelve, he gave the Tuba line in the last section to the celesta! Paul

Wrong. Audio CDs are written the same whether pressed or burned - which is why CD-Rs can be played on players built before they were invented. The encoding has two layers of error correction. There is a range of CD-ROM formats for recording data on CDs; these can also be used on both pressed CDs and CD-Rs. Some of these formats (e.g. CD-ROM mode 1, CD-ROM/XA Mode 2/Form 1) have an extra layer of error correction through interleaving, and some do not (e.g. CD-ROM mode 2, CD-ROM/XA Mode 2/Form 2) - but this is nothing to do with audio. The reason some golden ears have claimed that CD-Rs sound better than pressed CDs is that they typically have a lower error rate, which on some inadequate players favoured by these people (for fashion or fancy price reasons) can make a difference to the sound (this is actually a fault in the player, of course). Paul

Have you ever compared the error rate from a typical pressed CD with that from a typical burned one? Thought not. You might be surprised. Paul

My view of this kind of thing is that it is a salutory reminder that there are big gaps in the historical record, or our knowledge of it. These organs were built, and paid for; and there is no reason to assume anything other than that at least the builders and the people who commissioned them and played them thought they were not unreasonable and had some idea how they were to be used. That we may not understand is simply our loss. Paul

I have had bad downloads, and I have had bad CDs. But a compressed file using a recent MP3 or Vorbis encoder and a suitable bit rate will not be distinguishable from the original in a proper blind test by at least 99% of the population. Paul PS: Not quite the same, but related: a recent AES paper describes a very thorough series of double blind tests which showed that out of the large number of people tested (including some highly-regarded recording engineers, and some audiophiles who were allowed to specify the equipment used) not one could distinguish platback of a "high resolution" (24/96 SACD or DVD-A) recording of any genre from the same played through a system that reduced it to CD (16/44.1) resolution. Paul

From another thread: I'm by no means sure the effect on classical music CDs is a bad thing, either. There are far too many recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies and Vivaldi Four Seasons by huge orchestras fronted by jet-setting conductors (or these days, slightly smaller orchestras fronted by jet-setting conductors); if a fraction of that mony was more sensibly used, wonderful things could be done. Happily, cheaper recording means less time polishing the life out of performances, a wider variety of unknown, but good (and also not so good!) performers, and the impetus to change the bad habits of a couple of generations. This is why there is an increase in issues of "live" recordings, with certainly no loss in musical value - the extreme example of this is the places that are experimenting with selling CDs of the concert you've been to, to be collected as you leave. Similarly, if money is not being wasted on competing new editions of the same music, then maybe better editions for less cost could come of it in the end. The means of distribution is almost irrelevant - it has been shown that people will pay for downloads, and photocopied music. The loss of the requirement to hold stock is another saving, and means that, using electronic means, it should be possible to keep things in print instead of letting them become unavailable. What I do regret in this model, though, is the loss of the book or music shop in which one can browse - but perhaps there is a place for a revitalised library service to fulfil that role. Neither the music industry nor the publishers have come to terms with this yet (the music industry is ahead, but is putting as much effort as possible into digital rights management at a level which is beginning to be counterproductive - it is now being seen that people will pay more to be shot of it). Big changes, certainly, and the names we're familiar with may fall by the wayside. But someone will be along, not so much to pick up the pieces, but to bury them and start something new. One change that is needed is to remove the attitude that anything once done should be a source of income for a hundred years. The huge extensions of copyright periods in the last century have done little to help artists, and are behind the worst behaviour of the big corporations - this is a major tool in their money-making arsenal. Copyright and patents should be reduced to, say, 25 years, limited by the death of the owner, which would restore the original intention of giving the owner a head start in the market place without stultifying further development. I won't see this change, but I'm sure it will come. Paul

Why not? After all, improvisation is a step further, and that's not frowned on. Paul

As a choirboy at Christ Church in the late 50s, I had to get up early on red-letter saints' days to sing a boys-only plainchant eucharist in the cathedral. On these occasions our breakfast was unsupervised, and we used to make up a paste of equal volumes of marmalade, sugar and butter, and spread it thickly on hot deep-fried bread. Yummy (but I can't manage to eat it now )! Paul

Of course! My daddy was a filosoffy proffesor, see (but wrote books on religion). Paul

You may escape and be no longer a slave to past and present outside influences; but you can't alter the fact that you escaped, and are still aware of them. Paul

You can't escape your education and subsequent influences that easily! Paul

It's in the history in that recital program: the plan in 1948 was to link the Milton organ, with some new departments, and the Grove organ, doubled in size, to a single 5-manual console. The Milton part of the plan was carried out, but money ran out before the Grove was touched (apart, as we have heard, from pinching some of its pipes). When the Milton organ was rebuilt again, this console was removed; and it has been acquired by a squirrel . Paul

Not at all; I was merely showing how I had been misled. Putting the story right in this context is appropriate. Paul

That's a shame; it's also disappointing in that case that the account of the history and restoration of the organ in that program has no hint of it, and in fact emphatically denies it: Paul

The Grove organ in Tewkesbury Abbey is virtually entirely original. Thynne made it clear in public correspondence that he designed and voiced all the pipes, including reeds. It includes a Tuba on 12". You can read about it in the program of the reopening recital given by Francis Jackson in 1981 after a highly conservative restoration by Bishop's overseen by John Budgen. Paul

Yes - you could order it at the end of the recital. As far as I know it has never been made available again. It's an OK recording marred by mediocre cassette duplication. Paul

"Grove" actually. A gorgeous instrument - I still like to listen from time to time to a recording of the 1981 reopening recital by Francis Jackson. Paul

This may be true when playing hymns, and any amount of older music; but there's plenty of music which assumes a 16 foot unison on the pedals, and whose harmony would be inverted without it. Paul

It does - but it is a transformation similar to that which produced the natural sign; see "History of note names" near the bottom of this Wikipedia article. Paul

A great opera (I have 19 recordings of it!), but I find it hard to think of a less appropriate piece to associate with a wedding FWIW, it includes the only four bars that Bartók wrote for solo organ. Paul

Also Garrard Engineering - founded by Major S H Garrard in 1915, after the Jewellers had been asked to manufacture precision artillery range-finders - who after the war moved into making gramophone record turntables (theres a Garrard 301 just next to me) etc. (See history of that enterprise.) Paul

Depends what you call cheap, I guess. Many mid-range DVD players (e.g. Pioneer DV-600AV - I have the earlier DV-696AV) will play both DVD-A and SACD; also CDs of MP3 files and DVDs of video files as well as "real" CDs and DVD-Vs - so, everything, for just £120. The SACD layer cannot ever be played on computer drives; DVD-A can be, or not, according to the protection employed and the software available. Paul

Or A&M New Edition (1904), no 430, where I guess it first appeared in a collection. Paul

The text is generally fine, but note that there are a lot of C clefs in this volume. The original BG volumes were very large indeed (I had the volume containing the OB at one time, and it was the largest music volume I've ever seen), and still looked black on the page - printing out a scan on A4 paper would lead to an unsatisfactory experience, I would think. Paul