Ian Ball
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Posts posted by Ian Ball
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Must be a Percy Daniel special then.
How dare you sir. A pernicious slur.
Er, yes actually... five octave gap between diapason chorus and the mixture. Great Trumpet like Russell Watson blowing a kazoo.
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Hi all,
Sometime back there was a thread in which the name of David Bednall as sub-organist of Bristol Cathedral came up.
It may be of interest to know that, following a search by my local church - that of St. Mary's, Stoke Bishop, Bristol - to replace the previous organist (John Gadsden, who died in October 2005 IIRC), David Bednall has got the job as Organist and Director of Music at St. Mary's. I believe he has had the job just over 2 weeks.
Dave
Hi Dave
Sorry to dampen your fireworks, but he's had this post in the bag for a good while now - it was an important consideration in being able to afford his university studies. It's been fun working with him there for the Advent and Christmas Carol Services. However, what on EARTH is that Great Mixture? Classic 1970s "continental" broken glass. Great shame. Good organ otherwise...well, apart from the lack of Swell 8' Oboe...the usual gripe.
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No it wasn't Ear wax - there's something not right about the organ. The Grand Chorus isn't on it's 10 ranks anymore and the Tuba Magna is not on 50 and their resonaters have been cut down and tongues moved a few notes.
One of the most thrilling sounds I ever heard was the Anniversary Recital the year the Tuba Magna was moved to the gallery below the South Transept facade. The Dean (I think) welcomed the capacity crowd by reading Psalm 150, after which Ian Tracey immediately launched into Grand Choeur Dialogué using the Tuba. The effect on the audience, heads still bowed, was like a Mexican wave. Although loud, it was a glorious sound - the same attack as York, but brighter. The pipes were clearly visible on that occasion, but I don't recall seeing them since, or hearing the TM with quite so much presence.
I've always wanted to know why/when the Pedal mutations were suppressed. Anyone know?
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I've just returned from doing a couple of recitals "oop North". Unfortunately, at the first concert, whilst I spoke to the audience at the beginning of the recital, I felt my hands - previously warm - getting colder and colder. By the time I'd played the first piece, my fingers were like blocks of ice! This made all subsequent fast passagework problematic throughout the program, and I was unsatisfied with my playing. The audience - bless them! - seemed to enjoy the performance. But I didn't! The next day's recital, however, went swimmingly in a much warmer building.
Frozen fingers also became my lot at a recital a week before, although not to the same extent. Normally I have warm hands, but cold lofty buildings in winter don't seem to agree with the giving of organ recitals!
Any suggestions, please, folks? Granny gloves, portable heater?
Try holding your hands in a sink full of hot water for a good 5 minutes before the recital. Let the heat soak thru to the bone. (Obviously, if it's in Yorkshire, you'll have the cost of heating the water docked from your fee.)
Cold hands can also be a sign of nerves. Were you more anxious about the first gig than the second?
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Sorry - didn't mean to help turn this into a "have a bitch about Gloucester" thread. A Nativite du Seigneur there in the late nineties (given by Ian Ball, when he was assistant) did a lot to ignite my interest in Messiaen, and French C20th organ music in general.
Thank you - I miss playing the Messiaen every year. It really marked the start of my Christmas!
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I take your point that it was necessary to find an acceptable way of providing gravitas, without incurring a bill for £30,000 just for twelve pipes - plus the expense of hauling them up into place in the triforium again! However, I think that it is not unreasonable to conclude that David was impressed with the Pédale mutations at N.-D. and so wished to install something similar at Gloucester.
Absolutely. I was simply trying to express my opinion that DJB did not set out to make the organ sound "like Notre-Dame" or overtly more French in general, but simply that the organ lacked gravity, particularly in the nave and when used under an orchestra, and that pedal mutations were a cost-effective, space-saving solution. The notion expressed by some that he ruined the organ in some way is simply ludicrous, because nothing was removed from the HNB incarnation (except the roof, for well-rehearsed reasons which don't need repeating here).
Had DJB wanted to 'Frenchify' the organ, there's plenty he could have done, not least accede to one influential local organist's suggestion to replace the West Positive with a Bombarde division, or Ian Fox's suggestion of chamades on a turntable, so that they could be fired towards Quire or Nave as required! (Funnily enough, this latter idea, lubricated by London Pride, soon blossomed into the image of a kind of giant Leslie speaker of chamades, revolving at high speed
). Philippe Lefebvre painstakingly reviewed the instrument, inside and out, and also made some detailed suggestions for improvement, resulting in a 5-manual design. All these were resisted. As in the late 1960s, money was one deciding factor, but DJB was acutely conscious of not wishing to upset the Downes concept - yes a thing of its time just as BBC costume dramas of that period always have the protagonists in 60s hair and makeup, despite the Empire-line frocks and hunting pink - but of historical and musical value nonetheless.I love your revised Willis/Harrision scheme by the way. But I do wonder where it could all have gone
Re: organist's perception from the console (from another post) - yes the uneven-sounding Swell is a pain in the backside to be honest, and you just have to trust that your fingers are playing evenly. However, it's not a major issue and you do get used to it. Far more disconcerting and difficult to live with is, for example, the totally distorted impression of division balance you get from the console at Wells or Redcliffe.
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Back to Gloucester...
“More suited” - what does this mean? Why do some people assume that a style of accompanying Anglican cathedral liturgies that became the norm by the middle of the last century is the only valid aesthetic? The traditional Walmisley-to-Howells chunk of repertoire represents only a [small] proportion of many cathedral choirs’ libraries these days. The Gloucester organ is arguably better “suited” for everything other than Victorian/Edwardian music than a typical Willis/Harrison.
As for the intended style of the organ, surely the priority for Ralph Downes and John Sanders, once the options had been narrowed down, was to rediscover the Dallam/Harris organ and to design an organ which was ‘true’ to the stunning but tiny Carolingian case (hence a certain Franco-Flemish flavour perhaps). At least certain compromises were made; we could have ended up with this: Jesus, Oxford - an instrument of integrity and unity, but arguably even less "suited" to a cathedral role.
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it could sound quite fun - the casework less impressive maybe?
AJJ
Yes, it's a shame the original exciting case design had to be changed
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I'd refrained from commenting earlier, although I was very surprised that you chose Gloucester as an example. I'm prepared to accept that a willingness to discuss what might have been doesn't in itself mean that you are unhappy with whats actually there now, although I suspect we would both agree that a scheme along the lines of your suggestion above would almost certainly have resulted in an instrument more suited to accompanying the daily round of choral services.
I'm interested jonadkins comment "...the strings, which for a supposedly french-style instrument sound remarkably un-french and insipid". Nothing that I've read about the HNB rebuild suggests that it was intended to produce a french-style instrument. Obviously the alterations made as a leaving present to David Briggs are a different matter. The strings are rather insipid, and certainly not at all french in character, but are also quite etherial in that accoustic.
I too have been sitting on my hands... but wish to add two points: those who have lived with the Gloucester organ on a daily basis love the strings. I have always found them ravishing and, box open, certainly not 'insipid' as I understand that word. They have a real presence in the building and blend far better with boys' voices than keen gambas; all the more so when used with the useful new sub octave coupler. Secondly, there's nothing about the pedal mutations to suggest that they were a specifically pro-French addition. The Notre-Dame examples obviously have a high profile, but they are also prolific in Germany and elsewhere. The priority was to find a cost-effective way to add more gravitas, colour and definition to the pedal chorus, rather than to ape any particular style of organ building.
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Actually, thinking about it / him; he probably just played it from the full score - in his memory that is!!!
An arrangement may not exist...You might be right there, and the organ score does contain plenty of cues, including many of the brass fanfares and some orchestral bass. Incidentally, I notice Fox does join in with the orchestra
, playing rather more that the solo organ part!There is another excellent performance on YouTube
which is home-grown, but for me the performance (and organ) lacks the transparency and glitter of Fox's Riverside solo. -
Wow!
He's loving every note of that!
And why play the final run with your hands when your feet can do it perfectly well??!!
Hehe
I'm no blind fan of The Dish, but his technique and rhythmic drive are just phenomenal here, playing runs designed for two hands with one (1'57" onwards particularly neat), and apparently when suffering from cancer. Just love those bright tubas too... 
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Anybody know where I can get a copy of this, the last mvt of the Sinfonia Concertante, arranged for solo organ? Heard a couple or arrangements recently, including Virgil Fox's legendary Riverside performance, and can't rest til I've learned it. The chances of being offered a concerto at my time of life are rare and this is one piece which deserves to be heard more frequently!
PS - see
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"the English organ has changed so radically"
(Quote)
Halas !
What would you think if in Paris you'd find only fish & chips ?
Pierre
Well at least we wouldn't put mayonnaise on them!
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... and a 'tiercy twank', perhaps? Freudian slip. 'Twang' was intended.... post has been suitable edited!
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Absolutely!
I have been 'converted' to these by a colleague (who is well-known as a superb organist). His rebuilt instrument at Christchurch Priory has one of these - although in this case, I believe that it si the original Compton unit, which has been restored.
Form the mobile console (even when it is positioned at the front of the Nave), I had thought that it was so ineffective as to be not worth bothering about. However, this summer, I had occasion to be in the building playing the instrument (with GM upstairs, fiddling around with the weather-proofing to the chamber) and, after he demonstrated it to me (whilst I wandered around the building), I realised how useful it is.
Whilst I did not measure the polyphone, I have an idea that this particular one might be even shorter than nine feet - is this possible, or is there a minimum length, below which it will not sound at the correct pitches?
Oberlinger have patented a similar device at 16' pitch - the 'Cubus' - I think it's been discussed here before.
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Fair enough, Ian. I realise that it is, at the least, unwise to make aural judgements from a paper specification. In mitigation, I was also basing my assumptions on the sound-files which Pierre had provided a few weeks ago, which featured one or two instruments with this type of specification.
In addition, those German instruments which I have played (or heard 'live') have tended to contain quint mixtures as part of the chorus-work - so I drew conclusions....
I am still not convinced about the clarity (and my subjective satisfaction) of a chorus which is capped by a mixture which includes both a tierce and a flat twenty-first. However, I am not averse to conversion on this matter. Do you happen to have any sound-files please, Ian?
Alas I don't. There are a fair few examples on Pipedreams you might try, but none prepare you for the sheer warmth of tone in the building, and a richness that hugs you like a velvet blanket. But even with every stop drawn and 32's rumbling away below, the sounds is never opaque. (Oh and the variety and quality of the flutes...my goodness...I'm still quivering with pleasure
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As you say - we all have different tastes. Personally I do not like any of the Britten which I have heard. I have played the organ part for St. Nicolas on several occasions. Each time I am struck by Britten's apparently ineffective organ writing. For example, the harmonisations of the hymns (the 'voicing' of which I always change). He seems not to have understood about sub-unison clavier tone, for one thing. I have also played the reduction of Rejoice in the Lamb on a few occasions - and hate the piece. Aside from the fact that I find the libretto utterly incomprehensible at times, I also dislike the music itself. I cannot decide whether his knowledge of harmony was incomplete - or whether he simply had odd taste. Either way, it does nothing for me.
However, I have heard (and seen) archive recordings of him playing the piano and I am aware that, in this regard, he was extremely adept, posessing a wonderful sense of line - and superb tonal colour.
I agree. With the exception of the Sea Interludes and bits of War Requiem, I find Britten irritatingly weak and often pretentious. Give me Walton any day. However, Britten's excellent taste in poetry is worth noting - Boris Ford's Benjamin Britten's Poets is an excellent anthology of everything BB set; Ford makes the point that Britten chose poetry of the highest quality and range to set to music, unlike, say, even Monteverdi, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms or Wolf. Still, that doesn't count for much if the music doesn't match it...
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The trouble with specifications such as these is that there is no proper chorus. The mixtures seem to fulfil only a limited function - namely, the supplying of secondary colour of a reedy timbre. There is no true brilliance - and I do not mean shrillness. By designing these instruments in this way, they are thus robbed of one of the most glorious effects of which an ogan can be capable of producing.
Regardless of whether one likes such sounds, this type of specification has limited use - in the same way that a neo-Baroque organ often has a lack of foundation tone. I would still prefer to see a slightly more all-encompassing design. Yes, I know that what I am asking for is an eclectic design; but often there is actually less tonal compromise than in an overtly Romantic (or neo-Baroque) scheme, where the instrument simply fails to satisfy on several levels.
I gently have to take issue, Sean. A paper specification tells one nothing about the sound, and, in any case, the Hauptwerk cited above clearly does have a complete principal chorus, albeit one containing tierce and septieme. If Leipzig's Thomaskirche Sauer and Nikolaikirche Ladegast/Eule (which I heard in the flesh last weekend) are anything to go by, I can assure you that there is certainly plenty of clarity (surely the object of a good chorus), yet also a gloriously warm, transparent richness and gravitas, in a sound not dominated by manual reeds. They weren't even particularly 'loud' in the way we in the UK expect a 'romantic' organ to be overpowering. But 'brilliance' as we undertand it in England is not a typical characteristic of these organs (nor even of the middle German baroque organ, but that's another topic...!), with the possible exception of the tiercy twang.
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The Bourdon would be something I would like to have on the Swell, except the bottom 12 pipes would have to be installed outside the Swell box as there would not be enough height unless they were mitred over. The Violin Diapason would have stopped basses from P1 to about P5.
JA
I have heard of an organ (Bath Abbey, I think) where the lowest pipes of the Swell Bourdon 16 are outside the box, but with the mouths fed into the back of the box so they are still under expression.
Paul Walton
The bottom octave of the 8' stopped flute on the tiny enclosed Brustwert at Clifton Cathedral is handled in the same way (not that this is any way my dream organ!)
Ian
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Yes! Touch paper lit but here's another lighted taper to help! I know the RNCM's Hradetsky, having played it regularly for a couple of years some time ago. True, it has some wonderful choruses and some truly beautiful sounds but it just isn't a "do all" instrument. I always wanted to reach out for (let's call it an open diapason I for argument!!) something more as foundation on the great and just some relief on the pos. I even said as much to a teacher (no longer there)-how quickly one learns to be diplomatic!!
I'm sure this relates to other threads aswell, but in my humble opinion "eclectic" organs really never satisfy fully: they can do many things rather well but nothing utterly convincingly. An organ constructed with vision and integrity, of any style, can pull off music not only which it was created to play but of many varying styles. Yea, even a good old Fr Willis plays Bach well and more besides because it is an instrument of integrity: you use the "colours" from the palette you have and be satisfied.
Does lieblich gedackt 8, dulciana 8, gemshorn 4, flageolet 2 work better used honestly or a mutilated gedact 8, spitz prinzipal 4, octave 2, mixture 19, 22 (no breaks) with pipes of varying vintages and indifferent voicing?
F-W.
Here here! (And I too had similar reservations about the Hradetsky, despite its thrills.) Interestingly, your views accord with those expressed in two of the more interesting articles in this month's OR (the review of Ken Jones and David Ponsford's item). In short: eclectic organs don't do anything particularly convincingly, and organs built with real character tend to provoke polarised opinions.
I was interested by an earlier post in this thread which described organs voiced (I paraphrase) with bland colours, in order to maximise their blending potential. It's interesting that both Fisk and Guillou believe the exact opposite: the more characterful and soloistic an individual stop, the better the blend.
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I think that the Walker rebuild of 1907 was fairly comprehensive. I further suspect that the instrument was largely revoiced in the 'Walker' style of the time, since it sounds similar to one or two other Walker instruments of a similar vintage.
Perhaps Ian Ball can shed further light on the subject.
'Fraid I can't be more precise than "a lot of Vowles". It is 12 years since I was there...and at the time people seemed more interested in the amount of surviving Harris and Seede pipework, and whether conserving the pneumatics (some notes having 12 possible points of adjustment) was wise. Perhaps Manders can shed some light on the pipework question?
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Indeed. Why oh why did it take so long for some builders to acknowledge that the Sw Oboe is an essential part of the foundations?? Talk about spoiling the ship for an ha'peth o'tar!
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The following organ is rather good for almost everything, including Reger and Bach.
I could live with it quite happily, but I don't think anyone has ever copied the style since it was built.
http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N02956
Anyway, Pierre knows that I admire the Adema organ at St Bavo (RC) Basilica, Haarlem, as well as the work of Ch.Aneesens, so we are not that far away in our sensibilities. I just think that wasteful designs are wasteful designs in any type of instrument, and I see no merit in organs which play around with either fundemental tones or extreme expressiveness at the cost of linear clarity and capability.
MM
Hmm. I know the Huddersfield organ is well-respected, and has been valued by generations of gifted students, but the spec looks like any medium-sized, pan-European eclectic tracker organ, of which the North of England has a fair few, including the RNCM's Hradetsky and Bolton Town Hall's Walker. They are all excellent, versatile instruments, which were ground-breaking in their day. However, surely none of these organs possess sufficient quantity and variety of foundation colours, or low-pitched mixtures, to do justice to the Reger school like the instruments cited above? (Oh dear...light the blue touch paper...I'm going to regret this post in the morning!)
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To be honest, I found it hard to appreciate the 'gorgeus colours' cited by Ian, over the audience and traffic noise which was clearly audible over my speakers.
I liked the opening of the Duruflé - right up until the mixture was added. A pity about the fifty-four-note compass, too. There was certainly brightness - but I simply prefer a reedy registration to be supplied by reeds, as opposed to mixtures. However, I do enjoy hearing (and viewing) the clips which you post, Pierre - please do not stop!
Well, there was enough thru my speakers to make out some real quality - etheral Aeoline; sonorous, stringy, Hill-like Principal; and a versatile mixture that's very easy on the ear. I admire little organs and bold organists who make big music work successfully. I'd rather hear this than a 50-stop digital or knit-your-own-yoghurt chamber organ (well, who wouldn't?).
). Philippe Lefebvre painstakingly reviewed the instrument, inside and out, and also made some detailed suggestions for improvement, resulting in a 5-manual design. All these were resisted. As in the late 1960s, money was one deciding factor, but DJB was acutely conscious of not wishing to upset the Downes concept - yes a thing of its time just as BBC costume dramas of that period always have the protagonists in 60s hair and makeup, despite the Empire-line frocks and hunting pink - but of historical and musical value nonetheless.
An arrangement may not exist...
David Bednall
in General discussion
Posted
Of course. A guy's gotta earn a living. Cathedral's only a weekday commitment.
Only Advent carols so far at Stoke Bishop; Christmas on 23rd.