Ian Ball

It was indeed Noel Rawsthorne. I gave one of the inaugural recitals in 1985 and found it (then) the most thrilling organ I'd played. But you're right, the acoustic is dessicating and the sound rather brittle. Another 5 years of pendulum swing would have helped (along with a slightly bigger budget). It is so nearly right, but with lack of colour and gravitas in the pedals, and a so-called Cavaille-Coll Swell missing an 8' Hautbois, it's just not quite all there. Great shame it's under used. It has never really been promoted (save a notable and noble effort by David Titterington in the early 90s) after a poor choice for Borough Organist was made once the initial fanfares were over. A well organised outreach and education programme (a la Bridgwater and Symphony Halls) would/could work wonders there, but there does not appear to be the vision. I applied to make a recording there to mark the 20th anniversary in 2005 but the authorities simply didn't get back after some considerable effort on my part. Great shame. It's very well made and can sound wonderful if you've muscle enough to couple up and if enough chairs have been removed. It might also be the case that the 'authorities' there simply don't appreciate what they have. Cheltenham Town Hall is another case in point (wonderful Rolls Royce of an Edwardian classic), the tuner constantly having to battle with demands to use the organ case as a broom cupboard! IFB

She's already an organ widow... but she loves the Night on a Bare Mountain bit right at the end of the Coch 1963 and thinks it would sound good on our wee house organ

Indeed I'd be tempted to sell wife and kids to get hold of a good transcription of this, the best of the 2 improvised Coch symphonies on record. DJB once showed me JSW's handwritten transcription of the first movement, although there was an ongoing debate about the accuracy of the first chord (which, understandably, JSW had struggled to capture). I too saw an advert for the whole thing in print and would love a copy. IFB

Indeed - I was being specific about Tuba Tune and the reg indications in the score.

Very interesting! And there we are - I was wrong viz a viz Sw Mixture Although see Choir piston 8: 8+2 Mind you, I rarely set 'Swell to Mixture & Oboe' myself, preferring the sound of either a mini full Sw or 88844(2)Ob&Cornopean to emerge before full Sw proper, when I'm accompanying.

Absolutely - I learned the 'dark arts' from William Morgan on the fabulous Hill/HNB organ of Bolton Parish Church. There, the penultimate Sw piston was always 16 Fagotto, 8' flute, 4 & 2 principals plus super octave - nasty on some organs but just the most gorgeous mini full swell there, and perfect for coupling through to mf Ch and/or Gt combinations in psalms and other accompaniments. His crescendo was utterly seamless: the 'standard' alternation of manual additions, with Sw being shut each time unenclosed divisions had become louder than it, ready for the final roar. Back to 'new' Gloucester: the addition of the Sw sub octave coupler (one of the additions so much maligned by the sanctimonious) has enabled the kind of use MM expounds above, hugely adding to its flexibility, particularly under the choir. Vox raises valid points about neo-classical influences on 'traditional' cathedral registration, and we must define what we mean by 'old school' when so many of our teachers from the 60s and 70s would be appalled to see us registering Bach with 16,888,44,12th,2,17th,Mixt etc, when one stop at each pitch was de rigueur back then (even if it sounded stupid, as at the RFH). BUT, I do recall seeing several piston schemes from the late Victorian and Edwardian period where at least the Swell Mixture certainly came on before the reeds, and even where 8 + 2 was set on a Ch piston (Southwalk perhaps? Can't recall now). Perhaps it was during the 1920s and 30s when things went horizontal, perhaps due to American and/or theatre influence? You mention Francis Jackson - certainly a magician of the highest order - but (as a footnote) it's worth noting the 'neo-classic' registration he uses on the famous Tuba Tune recording from York. Certainly not what Norman Cocker had in mind at the beginning (FJ turned in into a faux organo pleno), apart from the glorious Tuba, of course IFB

Well, it was just hearsay... that RD didn't like the 'Swell to Oboe' colour. In practice, 88442Ob or 842Ob at Glos certainly sounds to my ears, and I tried to avoid it in psalms. The Oboe works with all the other 'fonds' and is refined enough to bring on very early in the build-up. It's a very pretty 2' too, which blends well with everything else, in particular the Nazard, Tierce and lower flutes. It is just bizarre that the Oboe doesn't blend with it. Perhaps an Oboe always needs a nice bright Fifteenth rather than anything flutier?

Absolutely. I always have an Oboe on the Sw pistons before the 2', except on the new Glos organ, where the 2' was deliberately voiced NOT to work with the Oboe, I believe. Indeed, several romantic organs had their Swell Oboe removed in favour of some silly high-pitched thing, thus depriving the chorus of an essential foundation stop. As we can hear from recordings of the old Gloucester organ, the Fifteenths were gloriously particularly bright Willis types, so rich in harmonics that a Mixture was hardly needed. The old Swell to 15th plus Oboe at Glos was a peerless sound. As for using mixtures before the big reeds, surely Swell 8842ObMixt was the standard penultimate piston setting on traditional cathedral organs, even if there wasn't a tierce in the mixture? Does anyone know what Sumsion had set up at Glos?

Hi, You could try Ned Tipton at the American Cathedral here or Fred Gramann at the American Church in Paris here. They are both delightful chaps who will be able to advise you further even if they're too busy to take you on as a pupil. Naji Hakim at La Trinité and Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet Hakim at Notre-Dame-des-Champs are also very friendly and I'm sure would point you in the right direction (perhaps one of their pupils) if they had full books. Ian Ball

But doesn't the dodgy winding always let these machines down, especially at that pitch? Mind you, even respectable 'straight' old dames like Salisbury suffer in that respect (where the Choir [organ] is truly dodgy).

Well there's a rather spicy one at Gloucester, of course. Jolly useful it is too. But I know the G-word raises hackles....back to m'Shiraz. Actually, I don't think there is one at Liverpool (on its own at least, and if there ever was one in a Mixture you can bet it's been 'suppressed' by now).

I played a toaster last night: a comprehensive 3-manual instrument in a prestigious public school in the South West. I would have loved it as a school boy - bowel-shattering 32s; shimmering strings, chiffy flutes, a 'cathedral' console; even a Tuba. These days, I wonder what possible educational use it could serve... Ah, 'console management' I thought (I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy)... until the organ simply conked out for half a second every time a pressed a general piston! I thought it was me at first, perhaps hitting the toe piston at a funny angle. But, no, every diminuendo or crescendo in Widor's 5th was marred by a microscopic black hole in the texture, while the organ decided what to do with its power supply, play the notes or change the stops. Why?

Forgive me, but I had always understood Cocker's TT to have been inspired by the (civilised) tuba at Cork Cathedral, not the Manchester honker (which could be heard from platform 16 at Victoria Station). It was still an act of vandalism to have discarded it tho IMHO.

Ah, to qualify what I do: I mark a large friendly '+' sign on my score (or on the lovingly torn square of Post-it note) but write the general piston number beside it, then the memory level in superscript. I can then immediately check the digital display if something's gone wrong. I always ask my page turner to keep an eye on this too, just be sure. In 15-or-so years of encountering steppers, only once did I press 'next' twice by mistake. My assistant immediately spotted the error and leaped for the correct general. Annoyingly, this was in a somewhat high-profile Three Choirs Festival recital, although no-one seemed to notice the inappropriate sounds (well, it was on the Gloucester organ ) nor the panic-induced few bars of improvisation. I've never made that mistake since though! I still think steppers are an invaluable aid to registering romantic and modern music on a large instrument. Some commentators have cautioned against the 'kaleidoscopic' style of playing that steppers can engender, but as in all things, bad taste and self indulgence can spoil things if not kept in check. I believe, if used tastefully, they can increased the expressive potential of our instrument; make it less machine-like; save a huge amount of rehearsal time; and allow the player truly to 'orchestrate' the music. They can also faciliate the most long-breathed and subtle crescendo and diminuendo (by using 'back') for improvisation. At Glos we always reserved two levels for such a crescendo.

Steppers every time for me please: quick and easy to use, and you're pressing the same toe stud or thumb piston every time. An unfamiliar instrument littered with generals adds considerably to rehearsal time, since you have to practise finding the right piston. Sequencers on the other hand (i.e. independent of the generals) are a nightmare: complicated and prone to accidents.

I agree with this entirely. I take Pierre's point about the colourful organs of Sachsen and Thüringen, and the desirability for weight, but tempo is an elusive thing. As MM reminds us, Thomaskirche (and, for that matter the Nikolaikirche) have relatively dry acoustics, particularly when full, and the whole feel is considerably more intimate and human than that of a great gothic cathedral. For the performer, the first thing that dictates tempo, as well as articulation, is the style and affekt of the music. It matters not whether it is for the organ, violin, oboe or harpsichord, to my mind. Surely the tempi Bach might have chosen for his organ works weren't vastly different from those suggested by other instrumental or vocal music written in the same styles. Granted, certain 'early music' bands arguably pushed tempi too fast during the 80s and 90s (driven perhaps by the recording industry's lust for something novel), and we've all had our fill of 'sewing machine' Bach from so-called 'international concert organists' (in haste to catch the next plane?) but the pendulum has swung back now, in some instances to speeds slower than those indulged by Beecham's generation. But the average 'tempo ordinario' passage (as Handel might describe it) actually varies little from period to modern instruments, in my experience. I know this is a generalisation, but you see my point. Another consideration is that even post-renaissance music was arguably still governed by the natural world - our heartbeats (c. 60 MM), horses trotting (duple time) or cantering (triple time) etc. Such things are no different today. Let's remember too that even the English Edwardian (with his leathered diapasons and harmonics mixtures) were brisk, no-nonsense fellows. Their Bach, like their Elgar, didn't slouch. In my view, the allowances one makes for acoustic, action and voicing are actually in a fairly narrow band, otherwise the affekt of the music changes entirely.

I agree, but surely you mean 'The Don'? Unless you mean the German for 'cathedral'...

I agree. When a student I was urged to keep tempi proportional or equal in Bach's D major Prelude (532a) and Fantasia in G minor (542a), and even in some freer works, eg the 'big' Bruhns E minor. It never worked for me - one section was either too fast or (more usual) far too slow and lifeless.

On whose authority is this assertion based?

Not quite played it, but was shown it last November. As at Liverpool and St Paul's, the music desk slides down and remains down most of the time. The dials were therefore covered by the music desk when I was there. I'm surprised no one has commented on the lack of division labels on the stop jambs. The stop head lettering, albeit upper case, is small and tricky to read, although extremely chic! Minor quibbles, but relevant I feel in the context of this discussion. However, a far deeper impression was left by the sound of this instrument: opulent without sounding effete, powerful without opacity; big reeds yet with a tutti dominated by deep, shag-pile mixtures of perfect clarity; and the biggest variety of flutes I have ever heard on a single instrument, from delicate gedacts to massive, cantabile harmonic flutes that would make Cavaillé-Coll weep. I know some commentators lament the 'loss' of the Ladegast-Sauer but the Eule is truly remarkable. As for the console's potential incongruity in its wider setting: I found the startling 'Egyptian' (post-JSB) columns and ceiling far more at odds with this ancient building that the Porsche console.

Wonderful to see these. Identical (although a tad bigger) than my sorely missed little gem at St Mark's Kingsholm, Gloucester (tho the Pentecostal congregation now using the place occasionally blow some air through it).

I can just imagine the interview with a drooling Clarkson... it'd be like Ellen Macarthur and Helen Mirren rolled into one

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Martyrs by Kenneth Leighton yet. Fabulous piece. Deeply satisfying to play too - lies well under hands & feet. Tomkins' Fancy for Two to Play is very sweet.

More Hammond's league, I think. Clarkson's not a Porsche fan

It's the Nickolaikirche, Leipzig (one of JSB's churches). It is a truly stunning yet simple console see here and here For the perfect combination of luxury and elegance, I love Fisk's horseshoe consoles, such as at St James's, Richmond, VA. Can't find any close-ups on the web but Rice University is similar (tho bigger). I agree with all above about HN&B consoles - I spent my formative years at Bolton Parish Church, where the Hill/HNB has a beautifully comfortable console of similar vintage to Selby Abbey. IFB