Ian Ball
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Posts posted by Ian Ball
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I've just spent a hard-working, pretty chilly, but tremendously rewarding weekend accompanying a visiting choir run by a friend, singing the services at Tewkesbury Abbey. I'd heard positive but vague comments about the place, and was bowled over by the building and by the musicality of the 'Milton' organ when I arrived. It's one of those instruments that seems to turn every note into a beautiful sound, aided no doubt by the acoustic, and I found the tracker action to be very light and communicative. The Choir division, in particular, was stunning.
It did raise a few questions, though.
(1) Why is this instrument not better known and more frequently mentioned in the context of good instruments? Is it just me who found it so good?
(2) What is the purpose of the Apse division? I know the history of the organs there, including Stubington's grand plan, but what was the idea behind putting a division in a remote chamber, and what was the rationale behind the tonal plan of the division? It was far too distant for use in Quire services, but had no impact in the Nave (Tuba excepted). It was obviously important enough to be included in the 1997 rebuild though.
(3) How did Kenneth Jones manage such a supremely musical rebuild, when - for instance, and in my opinion - Nicholson achieved nothing of the sort in similar circumstances at Christchurch Priory only two years later? I don't think that the quality of tone or the touch of the action are in the least comparable, yet both must have cost similar sums at similar times and were guided by the same consultant. Different buildings, different acoustics, yes I know, but there's no obvious excuse for the disparity. Nicholson have seen plenty of regular work before and since, but Kenneth Jones' work is still rare in Britain.
Incidentally, I did spend quite a while gazing longingly across at the 'Grove' organ from the 'Milton' console, but sadly neither time nor circumstances permitted a closer acquaintance with it. Maybe next time...
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.
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Whilst I can see some reasoning behind the experimentation and production of simulated organs ...
Best wishes, (and as you see, my N Y resolution is not ever to be brief),
Nigel
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.
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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.
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I agree - thank you again.
Was his registrant Jean Fröhlich?
I have just been watching this one, and it must also be said that the registrant is extremely competent - and possibly possessing some intuitive ability, since he seems to know exactly what to do and when to do it.
Yes it was - an incredible double act!
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Over the past couple of days when going out of doors has been the least favoured option I have twice watched my DVD of interviews with and about Cochereau. Rather like the biographies I have read of Guilmant and Dupre, this DVD makes Cochereau appear to be the nicest person and finest musician ever to have walked this earth. Do members think he is accurately portrayed on the DVD and is his own style of playing typical of Parisian organists of his generation, carrying on a Notre Dame or Paris tradition or is he completely unique?
A while ago we discussed here PC's improvisations and the recordings and transcriptions of them. That was a very useful discussion but I am here asking more about his personality and interpretation of music by other composers.
I know there are some members of this Board who are very much into Cochereau so I should be interested to hear ttheir comments.
Malcolm
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
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Over dotting, yes; a flexible dot, yes,
Hear hear!
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Rightly or wrongly, I tend to rely on gut feeling (e.g. Does it work? Is it logical?) rather than what was actually written, on the basis that there may then have been no accepted way of notating what was expected/intended. A quaver upbeat in Behold the Lamb just feels wrong and illogical, bearing in mind the rhythmic figures that follow (and, at the time, a quaver was the only accepted way of writing that upbeat, whatever was actually intended - wasn't it?).
As regards cadential Adagios, I tend to treat them more as indications of mood than of tempo.
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
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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.....
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I am genuinely surprised by this, and particularly puzzled by the reference to the pedal reed. Actually, the pedal reeds are rather splendid in the hall, and I've heard some very good recitals on this instrument; not least by Nicholas Kynaston and Piet Kee, among others.
I wonder if the problem was not with the sound team, who normally seem to get things more or less right.
MM
Indeed, perhaps so. Wrong to judge from one choir-covered broadcast. Must get up there and hear it.
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Unless tha's referrin' to yon upstart neo-classic job at t'University.
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...
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Do you mean a transcription of a Cochereau improvisation? I think this has been referred to already. I presume you do - it would be difficult to prepare another organist's improvisation....
Nah. He means DJB (the Sortie he wrote for Kings)
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I don't know whether this is especially relevant or not, but I read Nigel's post and allowed my mind to wander back to the time when I was eleven years of age. Two very significant things happened to me at that age; the first involving going down the famous pot-hole "Gaping Gill" in the Yorkshire Dales, on a bosun's chair. ( A 365ft descent in near-darkness). It was a scary experience, and I recall how the waterfall sounded utterly deafening, dropping through a chamber almost exactly the same size as the dome of St.Paul's Cathedral!
I vividly recall almost exactly the same feeling, when I parked my bike and wandered into a big church for the first time. (We were not a church-going family). It was like "Gaping Gill" meets "Harry Potter"....mysterious, overwhelming and spooky all at the same time. Unbeknown to me, the gentle hissing sound was not that of running water, but wind-noise from the organ. When the organ began to sound, I was utterly transfixed by the acoustic, the mystery of the space and the sounds I heard. That was the moment which revealed an unknown destiny, and which has stayed with me through thick and thin. It had absolutely nothing to do with religion at all. When the organ-playing curate invited me to have a look at the organ-console, I was hooked. It was really that quick!
Nowadays, most churches are largely empty, and they probably deserve to be; the era of the thinking man relegated to the ecclesiastical dustbin. Trying to convert churches into thinly veiled imitations of working-men's clubs is no substitute, and neither is cosy sentimentality and the life-sapping drone of conformity.
Music, architecture and theological eloquence should be at the heart of anything which seeks to uplift and inspire, and the task of all religion is to show that there is more to life than hydrogen and helium; except that there isn't. Therein lies the fundamental mystery of life and the challenge of believing in something more.
The churches are rapidly becoming unexceptional and depressingly predictable; no longer at the cutting-edge, and rarely taken seriously. Having met and listened carefully to the late Gladys Aylward, when I was 14, I don't recall that she relied on microphones and a dubious PA system. Neither did she proclaim that the pathway to eternal life was carpeted with Axminster, nor began with group-hugs and religious karaoke. She proclaimed her faith by her remarkable courage and example; quite happy to sing the great Wesleyan hymns with enthusiasm.
Having got rid of choirs and organists, (always the biggest church youth-group in days past), they wonder where the younger generations have gone; failing to understand that for many, the road to faith began with nothing of the sort. Most simply wanted to belong, and a few took up the challenge of something more important. At the very least, they would emerge musical and highly literate, unlike many of their counterparts to-day.
Anyway, even though the churches are now largely empty, the young still queue-up to ride the 365ft down into the bowels of "Gaping Gill" of a Summer Sunday, mercifully unobserved by those who would smother them, mother them and wrap them in cotton-wool. They, at least, will discover the delights of a big acoustic and marvel at it.
What a pity that they will probably be denied the opportunity of wandering into a big church with a big acoustic, and hearing the wonderful sound of an organ being played.
MM
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.
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Has anybody tried to play Howells on a french organ ?
At Ieper Cathedral (Anneessens) the results are surprisingly good.
Pierre
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...
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Now you are talking!
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...
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The Gloucester organ as left by Downes had a roof to try and focus the sound down into Nave (and Choir). Unfortunately during the last work on the organ it was removed resulting in a very swimmy sound (although some would say louder). I would like to see it put back.
PJW
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.
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.....And this brightness may, among others, rely on the Great Mixture.
It seems to have very few breaks so that "it sings accurately with the rest".
Pierre
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.
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Indeed; and as far as I know, the "traditionnal british" school of the early
19th century might fit better S-S Howells.
This piece is "too baroque" for the Gloucester organ; as pcnd pointed out,
the pedal reeds are not intended for polyphonic use.
(But we all know to who this organ was suited....)
Splendid document, though. Along with the 4th movement of the Elgar's sonata,
which is among the others videos on the right of the page,
the french friends are astonished to ear this organ. And yes, the great reeds
are not the "oily" kind.
Pierre
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.
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Always a favorite of mine:
(....But it would be even better with more foundation tone in place of those
neo standard mixtures)
OH!!!!! AND!!!!!
Choral song & fugue played on...the previous Gloucester's cathedral organ!!!:
I won my day...
Pierre
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!).
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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!
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Yes, Iann. But Chartres did not replace a Mutin -or, for that matter, a 1929 Rinckenbach, or
anything else of the same kind-.
(I do not mean no Gonzalez replaced historic organs, quite to the contrary!)
Pierre
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?) -
Though the "modern" organ tends to resemble them more and more,
the "néo-classique" organs are out of fashion; they are "wrong", and will
soon be nearly all disposed of in the years to come if we do nothing
to protect them. Round and round....Etc.
But those organs reveal themselves, thrive with the music that was written
in their own period. And here is an excellent example:
The organ is a 1973 Gonzalez, specifications by André Marchal.
Pierre
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
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Slightly off our brief I know, buthas been doing the rounds for some time and is a worthwhile diversion...
These two guys are hysterical.
andare brilliantly silly -
Didn't Herrick Bunney play Rachmaninov 3 under Sir Malcom Sargent? I'm sure I remember reading that somewhere...
GTB gave the UK première, didn't he?
Thank you for this shower of common sense. Lovely judgment too.
) - not included on this excerpt.
. 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 
Tewkesbury Abbey
in General discussion
Posted
More neo-classical (than Tewkers), I said!