contrabordun
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Posts posted by contrabordun
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While we're on the subject though, let's credit Radio 3 for the coverage they've given this. The entire output seems to be coming from their popup studio, and I've heard more organ music on air in the last week or so than in the last 20 years put together (if you don't count Choral Evensong). A big thank you from my corner.
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A picture of the pedalboard would be quite interesting - Tony, do you happen to know if it's a reasonably standard compass?
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Well yes, but you can also draw a different inference from the absence of a full time chapter: that Llandaff is an establishment that is in other respects more similar to a major Parish Church than to a Cathedral. Plenty of those have found the funds to undertake £1M+ organ rebuilds, but rather fewer maintain a professional back row singing daily offices, notwithstanding which they maintain a high standard of music. Perpetual fund raising to cover revenue expenditure is far harder to do than that for which the objective is a single, identifiable tangible thing, particularly one to which you can affix a brass plate with Granny's name engraved on.
I say that with the greatest respect and sympathy to those affected. It is a great shame, both for Cathedral music in general and the musicians in particular, but I think some of the comments, particularly on various Facebook groups, have shown a somewhat tenuous grasp of reality. I realise that many here subscribe to the famous point view that the purpose of a Cathedral is to keep the organ dry, but it can't even do that if the fabric cannot be maintained, and while £45k p.a. may not sound like a great deal of money, it's quite a large sum if you don't have it and can't reasonably forecast a way of getting it.
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Gah - this is a bit like a stripper finally discarding her last piece of clothing - only for you to realise that she is still sporting an entirely opaque body-stocking
We'll take your word for it..
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by drawing all the tremulants on a general piston without any notes being played.
Here endeth the pipes-vs-digital debate.
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and to be honest, how the musicians organise themselves in their duties on such occasions is their business.
Well, yes. I wasn't implying any criticism, just being curious.
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As there are at least 3 different people playing during the course of the service, presumably they have to put the job title to indicate exactly which one it is!
BTW, would any of you experts like to explain why they use multiple players for these things? I'm assuming that any one of them would be perfectly well able to do the lot, so why the musical chairs? Is it just to give the more junior members of staff the experience of the grand state occasion?
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As "an" interviewer
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The sole music version from the organ went missing shortly after I took over.
Leaving no trace whatsoever save for a suspicious pile of ashes behind one of the gravestones?
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My attempt at the record for the least-suitable instrument for that particular work was undertaken on this: http://www.npor.org....ec_index=N05825
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Fiona Bruce's program about Buckingham Palace http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b014s302/The_Queens_Palaces_Buckingham_Palace/ features (47'20")
- the Ballroom organ,
- an interview with Andrew Gant and footage of him playing it
- a duet - the two of them singing How Lovely Are the Messengers
- (Lots of pictures of Fiona Bruce
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- the Ballroom organ,
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I'm trying to get a new RC rite Mass setting finished.....what an awful rite it is to set to music. You know it's bad when the rhythms have to jump around like a flea just to accomodate the words, and that is a special challenge when it is a congregational setting.
When you've done it, I'd be interested to have a look at it, (if you'd be amenable to that!) - I've got to add another one to our repertoire sometime this year, and I'm not overwhelmed by the options I've seen so far.
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He's too modest to mention it himself on here, but Regent have recorded fellow Board Member Paul Carr in what is, suprisingly, the first solo recording of the 1994 Walker at St Chad's Birmingham.
Hakim - Ouverture Libanaise
Hendrie - Toccata and Fugue in F sharp minor
Dupré - Esquisse No 1 & No 2 (Op 41)
Purcell arr. Dupré - Trumpet Tune
Prokofiev trans. Guillou - March (Love of 3 Oranges)
Ravel trans. David Briggs - Daphnis et Chloé
Briggs - Variations on Greensleeves
Berlioz arr. W.T. Best - Hungarian March
Litaize - Scherzo (Douze Pièces)
Reuchsel Nuages ensoleillés sur le Cap Nègre (Promenades en Provence)
full details at http://www.paulcarr.co.uk/CD.htm
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You'll forgive me for saying that there is nothing 'special' about employment law "as it applies to church musicians".
Yes...anecdotally the problem is frequently the opposite. It's not that the organist is seen as especially privileged by employment law, it's that it doesn't occur to anybody that employment law has any connection with the person who plays the hymns on Sunday mornings.
As an individual, in any employment, you don't want to take your employer to court to force them to recognise your rights: you want them to be aware that you have those rights, and to respect them.
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Thanks both - and to the various people who PM'ed. John was indeed most helpful, as were others, and I've got some good ideas to work with.
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There's a little girl in my choir who suffers from mild dyspraxia, which means she has difficulty controlling her facial muscles. You wouldn't know it in normal conversation, but she struggles very hard to sing notes accurately. We're an all-comers sort of choir, so that's not by itself a problem, but she's aware of it and very much wants to be able to overcome it. She's been coming 15 minutes early to choir for a few months to do 'sing this note/phrase back to me' type work and is making some progress, but I could do with some advice and guidance - if anybody has, or has any contacts with, specific experience of working with young children with this condition, I'd much appreciate a PM..
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Why "Revival"? What was there before that? I assume that up to the Reformation it was entirely plainsong, but apart from some disconnected vague mental images of boxes in chains, Serpentines, hurdy-gurdys and drunken bawdy fiddlers I realise I haven't a clue about what happened in parish churches between 1550 and 1800...
Surely though, The Anglican Choral Revolution would be a better description?
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Presumably, Justason would have been playing for at least some of these broadcasts? Well done him.
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JB Priestley's play, When We Are Married, written in 1938, but set in the West Riding of 30 years earlier has an interesting few lines of dialogue, which bear out MM's personal experience: Alderman Helliwell and his friends are discussing the shortcomings of the young O&C of their own chapel (Lane End), after his Messiah has failed to arouse much public interest:
PARKER: I said to him myself: "I know it's a Christmas piece, but you've got to get in quick, afore the others."HELLIWELL: Right, Albert. After t'end o' November, there's been so many of 'em you might as well take your Messiah an' throw it into t'canal.
PARKER: And look what happened. Hillroad Baptist gave Messiah. Salem gave Messiah. Tong Congregational gave Messiah. Pickle-brook Wesleyans gave Messiah. And where was Lane End?
SOPPITT: Well, when we did get it — It was a good one.
HELLIWELL: I'm not saying it wasn't, but by that time who cared? But anyhow all that's a detail.
Priestley was writing a gentle comedy of manners for a general theatregoing public, and that dialogue could only have been funny if in 1938 the notion of every nonconformist chapel in a small Yorkshire town having a choir capable of singing the Messiah at Christmas was itself unremarkable.
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Thanks for that info - my only experience of 3 phase electrics has been in theatres, with (eg) 100kW on each phase, separation between (eg) FOH, Stage and Grid and lots of attention to keeping lanterns fed from the different phases more than 2m apart, so I've always associated it with very large power requirements and the need for physical separation.
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Is it normal for a pipe organ action to be driven off a 3 phase supply? I'd have been surprised to find a church which had 3 phases even coming in to the building. Is it to give better smoothing than is possible with 1 phase?
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the practise of holding the first note of a hymn an extra beat or so. What is that called, why was it done, and why do we no longer do it ?
If it's what I'm thinking of, I believe it was called a gathering note, the idea was to give the congregation chance to get their bearings at the start of the hymn (or even of every verse) and we no longer do it because it brings the flow of the music to a juddering halt!
I was taught to train congregations to expect an invariable 2 beats at tempo after the playover and between each verse - after a while each person's innate sense of rhythm will tell them when to start singing. It does seem to work very well.
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The Bham.O.A. had an afternoon on the Town Hall organ shortly after the reopening and TT was kind enough to say a few words about what had been done: apart from the removal of the 5th clavier and the addition of some bells, it didn't sound as though very much had changed at all.
What was immediately noticeable from the platform was that the acoustic had a definite 'bloom' to it that hadn't been there before. The removed upper tier was quite steeply raked, and thus amounted to a solid wall of soft seating at the other end of the hall.
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