Ian Ball

More neo-classical (than Tewkers), I said!

I love the Milton too. A superbly musical and physical instrument to play, that really leaves you smiling. I think the Apse divison was well worth preserving. Yes it can be ineffectual on its own (except in echo passages), but can be very effective downstairs when coupled through and with generous use of subs and/or supers. The Solo, too, with its beautiful flutes, strings and medium-loud reeds is extremely useful for adding further colour and breadth to the Great (which sounds somewhat distant at the console), especially in French or German romantic music. I actually find the Choir division a bit of a problem. It is so much more immediate and penetrating from the Nave that it can, in inexperienced hands, make the organ sound like yet another 'dark' Edwardian organ that's been tarted up with glittering cymbals and snarling crumhorns. But used sensitively, the Choir division really helps the organ get out into the building, and is also extremely beautiful it it own right. I could play Handel concerti all day on that division alone! As for its reputation, it does deserve to be more widely appreciated, but it's certainly highly regarded round these parts I rather enjoy Christchurch too - but, like many, have never played it from the mechanical console. But it's a very different tonal scheme and generally feels like a much smaller and more 'neo-classical' instrument.

Well, as Churchill once intimated, there isn't always time to write a shorter submission Thank you for this shower of common sense. Lovely judgment too.

Good to see up on YouTube. The whole TV programme has done the rounds for years on VHS copies. This particular clip shows PC improvising a delightful, elegant scherzo after a somewhat less successful attempt by his pupil, Maurice Clerc ("un scherzo funebre?" asks PC ) - not included on this excerpt.

I agree with Pierre. The 7-stop gem of an 'octopod' I've just parted with was bright and 'loud' enough to lead a fair-sized congregation from its temporary gallery position. It could play Bach, Brahms, Caleb Simper and Graham Kendrick with equal aplomb, whatever technique one wished to employ.

Yes it was - an incredible double act!

Hi Malcolm Why don't you contact David Briggs? He is close to the Cochereau family and others who studied with PC (such as George Baker and François-Henri Houbart) and would be able to give you a pretty balanced picture of the man, as well as the tradition. There's also the excellent biography (albeit in French) by Yvette Carbou, published by Zurfluh. Kind regards Ian

Hear hear!

Well, thankfully, there's room for every interpretation in Music. However, I would always start with a deferential attitude that the composer was sophisticated enough to write what he intended (even Watkins Shaw acknowledges this, to an extent, in his latest edition), unless there is convincing evidence that a particular convention applies. I do feel that, sadly, musicologists demonstrating their rediscovery of conventions took disproportionate precedence over the written source, in the decades 1950-1980. Conductors desperately wanting to belong, I s'pose. Thank heavens for pendulums (pendula?) PS Behold isn't a French overture...why dot? Much more pathos and crunchy harmony if performed as written IMHO

Funny how fashion - even in the 'period' world - comes/goes around. I like Pinnock's recording. Late 80s so no doubt dangerously passé now . I like it not just because Wotan sings The Trumpet Shall Sound (John Tomlinson), but because there's is simply no doctrinaire double-dotting or other faffing about. We even have full quaver upbeats in, for example, Behold the Lamb and genuine adagios (how many emotionless performances have you sung in where the conductor got you to scrub out every cadential Adagio?). In my opinion, Pinnock puts back a great deal that had been swept aside by 'Thou Shalt' performance practice trends of the post-war period, and to my ears, is actually more appropriate to the timbres of the historic instruments used. Happily, my much missed late Grandfather (who always sang it that way) preferred Pinnock too Try it in Spotify. Heartily recommended. Sample, for example, the delicious diminuendo in [All we like sheep] have goooooooooone astray.....

Indeed, perhaps so. Wrong to judge from one choir-covered broadcast. Must get up there and hear it.

And how DREADFUL this sounded on Radio 4 last Sunday. Turning on half way through the programme (Morning Worship with the Choral Soc - splendid Messiah singing) I didn't know where it was from and, from the sound, assumed it was a small parish church with a Victorian organ that had had a high-pitched, narrow scaled Cymbal crammed into the Swell, and a Swell Fagot made available on the Pedal. Never having heard St Paul's Hall before (but having heard plenty of hype), it was disappointing. Excellent playing from Darius Battiwalla however Meanwhile, back in the US of A...

Nah. He means DJB (the Sortie he wrote for Kings)

An eloquent and moving post. I agree entirely. At least many of our cathedrals are still able to give [not just] young people a glimpse of the Gill and offer much to which they can belong.

My very first experience of a French organ was as a 14 year old, hearing my teacher play (after some de Grigny) Howells' Saraband for the Morning of Easter. The organ was St Denis and left an indelible impression. I can still feel the Contrebombarde on bottom C...

Yeah, but we'd also have to provide weak ale for choristers' breakfasts and retrieve the organist from the tavern in time for the final voluntarie. Alas, I doubt such worthy experiments in authenticity would be permitted under namby-pamby EU law these days...

Ah. Red rag, and all that I would challenge the use or intended meaning of the word 'focus'. To my (and many other) ears, it did not. It made the sound congested, squashed, tight, under-developed, and I'm not just referring to the tutti. There really isn't that big a gap twixt case and nave roof, but that gap allows the sound to develop in character and intensity - simply to 'sing' - in a way it never did with the lid on. As for the Quire-facing Choir case, one seldom heard its contents with its "tone cabinet" (what a ghastly, utilitarian, Bauhaus/IKEA word) intact. Certainly when I arrived in 1998, the way it had been played for years was with the rear Choir case door open, so the organist (sitting to the side of the instrument) could actually hear what he was playing. Does the organ lack any "focus" or clarity? Not to my ears. After all, the Nave roof is more than capable of bouncing sound westwards. And the West Positive, East Choir and Swell (facing both directions) each have a roof. It seems, with the Gloucester organ, one can't do right for doing wrong: either it's 'at odds' with Anglican choral and symphonic repertoires (something the 1999 rebuild tried to mitigate), or a 1970s 'masterpiece' has been 'ruined' by a NDP-addict (as if pedal mutations don't exist on any other organ!!?). It does rather send me into rant mode. As incumbent musician, one is faced with a whole range of options, and one's decisions have to take account of a whole range of factors - artistic, commercial, pragmatic etc. The roof is there to be put back; the new stops are there to be ignored, should one so wish. Perhaps someone could invent a kind of cabriolet roof? And a chamade reed on an electrically operated turntable [ian Fox's quite serious suggestion] so it could be fired East or West at will? For some reason, the roof has stayed off and the new stops are utilised most effectively, two 'generations' later and ten years on.

Well, the whole structure of the principal chorus really - that rare stringy quality - but especially the 2 foots (a la Truro), which are almost quint mixture substitutes in a good Father W.

Indeed. I love Sumsion's Elgar Sonata recording, despite some relaxed tempi here and there (i.e. in the trickier bits of the 2nd and 4th mvts). The organ sounds so bright too (as one would expect from a vintage Willis), as well as having such lovely orchestra colours.

Very nice and a very well known recording indeed. But it's very much a 'transcription' isn't it? C-compass, full compass pedalboard, pistons, rock-steady wind etc. Not what SSW had at his disposal when he wrote CS&F (go next door to St Mary de Lode for that!).

Of course! Nothing beats the real thing Interesting stuff about les Picards. "Inverted neo..." Goodness. What knots we tie ourselves with such categories. I understand what you mean though. A flute harmonique or an enclosed brustwerk does not a romantic organ make!

Of course, and I make no comment about the instrument HNB/Downes/Sanders replaced (let's not go there again! ) But I would ask, in light of your suggestion the best of the néos should be protected, should we discard the Gloucester organ and recreate what was lost? And, when did néo-classique become néo-romantique in the UK? (St John's Cambridge? Tonbridge School? Christchurch Priory? Edinburgh RC Cathedral? Jesus Cambridge? Worcester? Llandaff?)

Absolutely. Here are a couple of other examples, on the nearest an English builder got to Chartres, by Messiaen and Bolcom. And even fairly convincing colours IMHO in music written a tad earlier: de Grigny

These two guys are hysterical. and are brilliantly silly

GTB gave the UK première, didn't he?