pwhodges

The idea that better keys means worse keys is obvious, but is it necessarily true? In terms of simple maths, of course it is. But consider the opening of David's post above in which he remarks (with a brief explanation) that the ET third is especially discordant - more so than a slightly wider third. This opens the possibility that a "worse" key may have "more acceptable" errors. Paul

Heh! I once played that instrument for a christening. It was not an experience I wished to repeat. Paul

AbeBooks has a number; the cheapest is barely £10 including shipping from the USA: Copies at AbeBooks

Just for the record (I have no connection with it), I recently happened on a CD of organ music by female composers - played by a women as well: From the American company, Raven CDs: "Music She Wrote"

Some before/after views of the cathedral (with a slider to move between them): http://m.nouvelobs.com/societe/20190419.OBS3029/avant-apres-notre-dame-sous-toutes-ses-coutures.html# Paul

In what sense were the organs of, say, Father Smith and Renatus Harris not "fully fledged, independent" instruments? Sure, they were smaller than the largest organs of the mainland continent, and suited to a somewhat different repertoire, but those are hardly the defining factors, I'd say.

I have a recording of Bach's Art of Fugue played on three chamber organs whose specifications add up to a typical modest two manual and pedal classical organ. The group was the Ensemble Wolfgang von Karajan, headed by the conductor's brother. I bought the original LP release in 1966; but when looking for the link above to a CD release, I came across a review of Herbert von Karajan's 1944 recording of the work with a string orchestra which contained the following fascinating bit of gossip: Paul

There was a Hammond in the nave at Canterbury by the end of the time I was at school there (1960-65), and even then, as a teenager knowing nothing in particular about organs, I found its sound oppressive and uncomfortable. Paul

The requirements also include coherent casework - which is why Mander's 1966 organ for Cecil Clutton is not included. The oldest British organ listed is a 1964 four stop (8842) organ by Arnold, Williamson and Hyatt for the RC Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in Romford. The next few included are by R H Walker (1965, St Martin's College, Lancaster), Harrison and Harrison (1966, RCM, London), T Robbins (1967, Kingsnorth, Kent), Grant Degens and Bradbeer (1967, St Ann's, Nottingham, 1968, West Brompton), Mander (1968, St Michael Paternoster Royal, London), P D Collins (1968, Shellingford), R Yates (1969, Dartington). Paul

Are you sure that's not in fact a light console? The pale patches on the keyboards are spaced like the picture higher up in this thread, rather than musical octaves (though I suppose it could be some kind of moire effect distorting it). Paul

There is a study of the patterns of bell ringing as one chapter of Music and Mathematics (OUP 2003) which you might find interesting if you can get hold of a copy easily (and yes, the previous chapter is by my brother). Paul

Surely playing a delicate manuals-only piece with the rest of your selection would be showing a wider range of capabilities. Not all capabilities need to be athletic! Paul

Although it's not relevant to the two pieces concerned, it's worth remarking that one reason for pedal arrangements is the use of notes below bottom C in many English manuals-only works. In the 12 Pieces, it's just three low As (not in the pieces mentioned) which are easily circumvented, but a piece like SS Wesley's Choral Song cannot be played on a modern organ without appreciable rearrangement; in such cases I prefer to make my own arrangement from the original rather relying on older editions which tend to be more sweeping in their changes. Curiously, Wesley himself offers a solution in the fugue, but doesn't bother in the first section! Paul

I remember Vaughan Williams attending a service I was singing in at Oxford. I was singing on Dec at the time, and he sat next to the choir on Can, so I had a good view of him. Age need not be an impediment to using computers effectively. Paul

On a PC you can type any character if you know its value in the Unicode table (and it will appear if your font contains it); but of course remembering enough codes is rather a problem - there are about 110,000 at present! Standard instructions for umlauts on PC or Mac are summarised on this page: http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/misc/typingumlauts.html However, on my PCs I use a small program called WizKey which uses simple mnemonic combinations to get a wide range of characters used in European languages; the idea is similar to how the Norsk Data terminals I used in the mid-1980s worked, though that used a special key: https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wizkey-makes-it-easy-to-type-accented-and-other-special-unicode-characters/ On British (not American) PC keyboards it is handy to know that acute accents can be typed simply by holding the "Alt Gr" key while typing the vowel concerned. But sometimes I just Google the word without the accent and copy and paste from a search result that has the accents in! Paul

The obvious one is simply philistinism. Paul

Second-hand copies come up occasionally; e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Organ-Sanity-Madness-Organists-Centenary/dp/B00A4EB56K Paul

Around that time the Oxford Psalter came out with pointing which tended towards a shorter reciting note and more syllables on the later notes in each part. Use of such pointing might make some discords uncomfortable if they needed to be repeated a couple of times. Well, it's a theory, anyway. Paul

Well, my copy is in his manuscript, presumably from sometime well before the end of his tenure at Ch Ch (1909-1926)*; it doesn't have the other changes you mention either. Paul * Edit: Inside the front cover he dates the book as "compiled in 1910 & revised in August 1923". The revision was the addition of a few alternative chants on spare lines, and in a couple of places a whole sheet of newly written out chants for a service glued over the old. On reflection, the change in writing style (specifically of the capital letter B ) means that my comment above about "another hand" was wrong, and the change I first remarked on was his (but either later or undecided, as it's in pencil). P

That chant (I presume it's the same, as he gives it to Ps 138 - it starts with an upward arpeggio) is in Db in Ley's book that I have. For some reason, it has been slightly altered in Ley's copy, in pencil by another hand, changing the Alto's Db in the antepenultimate chord to Bb. Paul

I have only ever heard "Lee". Paul

I have the recording of this event. It was clearly a lot of fun! Paul

That's a good thought. Yes, I still have it (it's hardbound with a crest on the front). It's time I got in contact with the organist anyway (for other personal reasons). Paul

When a choir boy at Christ Church I rescued from a pile of rubbish Ley's chant book. All the psalm chants and responses for every day and every special occasion that can be imagined, written in beautiful script with not a correction required from one end of the book to the other. Each chant written by an organist of Ch Ch was meticulously marked as such in red ink. Paul

Do minsters always have organs in dire need of restoration? The Willis in Reading Minster (St Mary's, Butts as I knew it in childhood) is another example. Paul