pwhodges

Not as embarrassing as forgetting to take off the PA mike at the end of a lecture before doing the same. Paul

Of course; but none the less, there are fundamentalists in musicology as elsewhere! Paul

It seems to me that musical scholarship is driven as much by fashion as any other part of life. Each generation discovers a new Holy Grail, and declares that the Holy Grail of 30 years earlier is now superceded. They would like you to think that the new truth is based on vast amounts of incontrovertible evidence, but often it is actually just one possible interpretation of a couple of paragraphs from a book that touches only peripherally on the point at issue. Often they generalise wildly from a special case. I won't give large numbers of examples, as I'm sure you can all find your own; but the recent question about the scantiness of evidence for varied ornamentation of repeats illustrates my point well enough. Another one that amuses me is singing Bach cantatas etc with one voice per part - it can be well done and be valid in itself, and there may be some historic justification for it in some special circumstances; but Bach had a choir to sing them each week, and asked for its size to be increased. So enjoy playing Bach on an organ that Mendelssohn might have used, or listening to Virgil Fox, or Kreisler playing Bach violin concertos, or Richter playing WTC on the piano. It is, as you say, the music that counts in the end, and we can each show a little bit of it in our own mirror. Paul

Donington doesn't cite any (I would have said). Dart (The Interpretation of Music doesn't cite any texts about this, but remarks on the number of written out varied repeats in music from the English Virginalists through to Handel, Bach and Corelli, and suggests that it is difficult to believe that similar varied repetitions were not played extempore when required. This argument can be widely found. There are cases of Bach arranging his own organ music for other instruments (e.g. BWV 527 -> BWV 1044) in which a repeat in the organ version is replaced by fully written-out versions with variations of both the ornamentation and the instrumentation (cf registration of the repeat on the organ). "Do as I do" even if I say nothing? Paul

Donington (The Interpretation of Early Music Ch X Sec 3(a)) cites CPE Bach (as above), but also Quantz (1752): Speaking of the lesser need for ornamentation in Allegros, Quantz writes: Make of that what you will! Paul

Yes, you're right - it's five. And a photo I saw of them recently seemed to show a damaged lip on one of them. Paul

It generates the little arrow on the right of the quote that links back to the original message being quoted. Paul

Ah. Someone was asking recently about where that might have gone (apart from the bottom 12 notes of the 32ft which are on the Grove organ at Tewkesbury). Paul

Found it here (or by another name here). And here's the context that led me to the title: Paul

Spoilsport! It's still a good romp that gets a lot of people enthused for a brief while. I must say that each time Mark Elder was shown I thought of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter Does anyone else remember the year they had an alternative sea songs medley (was it by Arnold?) which had the hornpipe in five time to put the prommers out? Paul

"6368 visitors since May 1998. Last updated Jan 1999." Latest news item May 1998 Blink and you'll miss it! And perhaps the "Contra Pousanne" in the specification of the organ would make a nice pot-roast. Oh, and their address doesn't exist, either. Paul

Walton The Twelve, last section. I remember the first performance at Ch Ch. Interestingly when he orchestrated it, the Tuba part went to the glockenspiel; so perhaps the tonality was not fundamental, just the ability to stand apart from whatever other noise is going on! Paul

Yes. I take the view that a language (or jargon, as organ stop names should be considered) contains the words (and spellings, for that matter) that people use and understand. Paul

So part of business is to persuade the world that it does want a better mousetrap - i.e. marketing! Then you can do this on your own terms. Well, it's worked for Microsoft, and to a considerable extent for the HIP movement. Paul

The current Organists' Review has a note on Auber's Élegie for cello and organ (UMP). Paul

The width of the pipe also has a part to play in the physical explanation. Paul

While we're on biographies, I thoroughly enjoyed Christoff Wolff's biography of Bach, and was fascinated by John Bird's on Percy Grainger. I've jst been given for my birthday Durr's book on the Bach Cantatas, but perhaps not for holiday reading. [Edit:] And Paul Badura-Scoda's on Bach Interpretation! Paul

You can read about me on my website, as shown in my profile: http://cassland.org Paul Edit: This seems a bit bald, so I'll add here a summary of my credentials relating to this board. I learned musical appreciation first as a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford under Sydney Watson, and then studied the piano at The King's School, Canterbury under Ronald Smith (hence my interest in Alkan). Although originally intending to read medicine, at Oxford I studied Engineering Science; but I also spent some time helping Martin Renshaw (then also a student) build an organ at Gresham's School, Holt. I attempted to join several organ building firms, but was unable to because none was allowed by the unions to take a graduate as an apprentice. I worked instead at the BBC as a Studio Manager (i.e. sound engineer) for a time, and then moved into computing, which is what I do still - though I have also recorded and mastered a number of commercial CDs over the last decade. For a few years I was organist (and treasurer) of a church without an organ (there was a single manual and one-octave pedal toaster), but these days my performing is in private, or singing in chamber choirs. Paul

I pretty much agree with this. My son (a pianist) and his wife (a singer) have gone to live in Germany because there's precious little opportunity for them here. Paul PS - what's the subject again?

For the same reason that you might want to hear a pianist play any of Liszt's transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies, or Busoni's of the Bach Chaconne, or Finnissy's of Gershwin songs, or (back to the organ) Bach's of Vivaldi. They may not be your cup of tea, but they may throw a new and interesting light on the original or even become works of art in their own right. Paul

Another vote for Naumburg here. Paul

You will find here a copy of an extended explanation of his artistic philosophy. Some useful thoughts in there about reaching the young of today. Paul

I also liked my BX better than the Xantia. The game I played was at the traffic lights, if there was a child in an adjacent car: let the suspension down flat; hold the brakes on hard while setting it up to full height - the brakes locked the wheelbase so the car couldn't rise; when the pressure was likely to have built right up release the brakes and let the car jump into the air - the kids loved it! Paul

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/...?event_id=39072 (found on the Hauptwerk forum) Could also be mentioned under shoes for pedalling... Paul

I can find no kind of listing for Christ Church, Oxford. My initial searching finds (in no particular order): Christopher Robinson, Stephen Darlington, Paul Morgan, Robert Bottone (who gave up the organ but is a notable piano teacher), Clive Driskill-Smith, Timothy Noon, Timothy Byram-Wigfield, Lawrence Cummings, Simon Williamson, Elizabeth Burgess, Neil Gaston-Nash. Paul