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Lausanne

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Everything posted by Lausanne

  1. The scale of the Great Bourdon 16' will be smaller than the typical scales used for a pedal Bourdon 16' and so the borrowed stop will not sound as full as a pedal Bourdon. The first octave of a rank of Viola da Gamba pipes is, I believe, below the compass of the baroque stringed instrument. Hence these bass pipes are renamed Violincello.
  2. It seems we have more evidence of influence on Italian organ building, rather than it influencing other styles. It has been mentioned some time back, but the Welshman George William Trice (born 1848) set up an organ building company after failing with his originally intended coal importing business in Genoa in 1880. He had trained with Sweetland of Bath and spent some time with Cavaillé-coll. His first organ partnership in Genoa was with Pietro Anelli and Zeno Fedeli in 1884 at the aptly named Quinto al Mare. They became famous for building a large organ with electric action at S. Andea, Genoa in 1888. One of their apprentices was called Giovani Tamburini, who of course went on to greater things. This might explain why some Italian organs of the late 19th and early 20th Century suddenly found themselves with stops called Diapason, Eufonio and Dulciana, amongst other things. Trice's action was quite a complex and costly affair, some sort of cone chest with Barker lever and coupled to him being foreign and Protestant, his business did not survive. But his influence did. There are one or two examples of his work still intact. The organ in the Waldensian church in Florence (originally the Anglican Church who moved to smaller premises but left their organ) is still going strong and spoken about with great respect by the Tuscan organ builders. However, like most things in Italy, Italian is best. They are very proud of their Ripieno.
  3. Sounds like the organist's 'A-Team', cue music...
  4. Oh you are such a tease MM! And for anyone struggling to follow this quaint reference, St. Peter's Harrogate has an electronic 32' reed. The chorus would be Schulze-like as it was actually made by the Schulze firm (even though Brindley & Foster erected it and several other firms have made changes). Perhaps to sound really well, a bold diapason chorus of the Schulze style really needs a generous acoustic. I was just trying to answer the question why there seemed to be relatively few copies of the Armley sound. Did B&F ever produce any diapason chorus that used the exact scales as Schulze did? I know that many Organ builders asked him for details and he was only too willing to provide these. He apparently said something to the effect that, "it's all very well having the scales, they've still got to make them sing"
  5. Thanks for this F-W, these are exactly what Stephen Bicknell refers to in all the articles he has written about the Grove and so his comments about the Lewis reed comparison does make some sense. Unless Nicolas Plumley got his figures from Stephen and they were wrong in the first place. I am tempted to believe your theory that the higher pressures H-S was talking about were for his combined organ, but why he would want to make such drastic changes to something that already filled the building with a glorious sound is a mystery. Perhaps the higher pressures were only for the rebuilt Milton organ leaving the original Grove pressures alone. There is a chance though that Cynic doesn't need to nibble the brim off his trilby just yet. ...and to keep the post a little closer to MM's original question: Further to Cynic's first post about the fashion for Hill style choruses waning, there were many articles and books written around the turn of the century by people such as Audsley and Dixon, in which Hill, for one, was heavily criticised for sticking with tradition. In fact, rereading some of these pieces, I think today Hill might have been able to sue Dixon for libel. Audsley's point was that Hill didn't really make an effort to build a concert organ, he just expanded his version of a Cathedral organ, and with nowhere near enough string stops for his tastes (only Skinner managed to satiate his demands in that direction) nor enough divisions under expression. Concert organists of the period were expected to reproduce orchestral works as well as the odd piece of 'organ music'. Perhaps Schulze's diapason chorus was not faithfully reproduced everywhere because St. Batholomew's, Armley is not everywhere; it is a cavernous cathedral of a building. I think it was MM who mentioned that the organ must have sounded rather odd (if not painful) in the much smaller church it lived in for a few years (Harrogate). The end of the Victorian period was not as vibrant as its begining, so all that we now generally agree to have been a 'good' organ sound was then considered brash. By the time people's tastes had recovered from lashings of Victorian brown paint, organists and builders were looking towards much earlier periods for their inspiration. The neo-baroque started earlier than people often think. The organ I play in Lausanne was enlarged in 1924 and included a nasard and tierce in the Swell. (Pierre will no doubt tell us of many earlier examples). I am glad that many organ builders and organists are now looking again at some of the organ highlights of the 19th century and not just with faithful restorations, but with completely new organs. And yes I know some builders never actually stopped being inspired by the 19th century, but their customers, on the whole, yearned for something different.
  6. The latest on the Parr Hall web site about the organ's planned move to Sheffield is dated last October. The cathedral make no mention of the Cavaillé-coll, but proudly announce they have spent money adding more stops to their electronic organ. This seems to suggest they have given up on the idea of having a real organ and a world famous one at that! It makes me ashamed to be a Yorkshireman.
  7. Stephen Bicknell referenced an earlier article by Huskisson Stubington (The Organ vol. 24 1944-5) about the Tewksbury organs, so he must have been aware if there were discrepancies in the recording of the various pressures. His comments about the reeds being comparable with certain Lewis reeds before 1885 make sense if the lower pressures he quotes are correct. Could the pressures have been lowered after Stubington's tenure? We both seem to have believable sources and for the moment I can't find any others to substantiate either. I'm sure John Budgen would know what pressures he found in 1980. Anyway, I have just ordered a copy of the new CD of Carleton Etherington playing both the Grove and the Milton, it is being released on the 31st January by Presto Classical (excuse the advert, but I'm sure many board members would be interested to know).
  8. Good old Audsley (Vol.II, p. 8) describes Lewis's reed pressures in his 1877 organ for the Public Halls (later St. Andrew's) Glasgow. The Great is on no less than six separate chests with 5 different pressures designed to increase the power towards the treble end of each rank. The 'front Great' flues and trumpet are on 3.5" in the bass, 4" in the middle and 4.5"in the treble and the three chorus reeds on the 'back Great' (Double Trumpet 16', Trombone 8' and Clarion 4') are on 4" in the bass, 5" in the middle and 6" in the treble. These pressures are comparable with the chorus reeds in the Grove organ on 5.75". The Glasgow Lewis also had several reed stops on the solo division, including a Tuba and Tuba Clarion and it is unlikely that these were on less pressure than the Great reeds, but as yet I have not found proof of them being as high as the 12" pressure Tuba in the Grove. No doubt someone on the forum may have heard or possibly played the Glasgow organ before its destruction in the fire of 1962. According to Christopher Gray (BIOS Journal 1998) the pressures used by Lewis in 1874 for his organ at St. Peter's Eaton Square, were 3.5" for the flues, 5.25" for the Great and Pedal reeds, 4" for the Pedal flues and 10" for the solo Tuba. This would suggest that the Glasgow Tuba was on a similar pressure. By 1901, for the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, he was using 14" for the reeds. I am not trying to prove that his tonal philosophy was similar to Willis, but we can not always clearly categorize organ builders into either high or low pressure reed voicing etc. It is, of course, a fact that Lewis favoured low pressure for his organs, but used higher pressures when necessary. Michell had known Vincent Willis from the early 1870's and they remained friends until Michell's death in 1921, Thynne was dismissed (most likely) from Lewis's in 1881 and when he and Michell set up their short-lived company they managed to pinch a good number of Lewis staff including his foreman George Adams. Northcott, the voicer of the Grove reeds, was trained at Walker's and so perhaps did not feel he had to follow either Willis or Lewis reed voicing of the period, but create something unique. There is also the possibility that the subsequent reed voicing styles of both Lewis and Willis were influenced by the Grove organ, but neither would ever have admitted it.
  9. Here's quite a good recording (youtube-style) of the Grove. Sorry if this has recently been posted elsewhere.
  10. Stephen wrote in 1999 (Bios Journal) that the Grove reeds were in some way to emulate the high pressure reed batteries of Willis, but, he says the effect they have is different and wonders whether they relate in some way to the heavy pressure reeds that Lewis added to such organs as St. Peter's, Eaton Square (originally Bishop, but with Lewis reeds dating to somewhere between 1872 to 1884) or those at St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. So he isn't really saying the Grove reeds are not Willis-style, but perhaps Lewis was making high pressure reeds around the same period that were closer to Willis than we think.
  11. A possible answer to the question: As tuning is achieved by comparing successive octaves to one set to your chosen tempered scale, in order to minimize errors that may occur at each stage the bearings are set around the mid point of all the octaves of pipes in the organ. If your organ has 5 octaves per rank and ranks from 16' to 1' (in a mixture if not alone) then the middle of these will be the middle octave on the 4'. That is, you will possibly need to tune 5 octaves away from this middle octave in both directions, but no more. If a lower octave is set, there are more likely to be errors towards the smaller pipes. In early organs the lowest pipes would be at 8' pitch (and probably stopped), so the middle octave in this organ would be even higher, but then the ability to set the bearing intervals limits you to using the usual middle (and sometimes tenor octave) of the principal 4'. In addition, as someone mentioned, many organs would not have a metal rank (more reliable than a wood pipe) below 4', so there is an historic as well as practical reason.
  12. These threads often follow the chinese whisper syndrome. In post number 4, whistlestop referred to the organ as a toaster. This provoked my suggestion that a rather more thorough cleaning method, not just a wheezy vacuum cleaner, might be what was needed. It later became clear that the organ was in fact a real one, but why on earth it was impossible to simply slide out the pedal board and clean beneath, I'll never know. And on another housekeeping thread, has there been any recent progress with your house organ Cynic?
  13. Sometimes there are a couple of screws holding the pedal board in place towards the back if it is on a wooden floor. But if it is on a stone floor, it is unlikely to be attached to this, they are heavy though, so it may be that your 'yank' wasn't quite sufficient. However, perhaps locating the vacuum's crevice tool might be safer. As to the age and origin of the organ, if you could post a link to a few photos of the instrument someone may well be able to give you more details. Have you checked the weights on the reservoir, they are often original and with the makers initials on them? Some builders signed their work on the inside of the windchest. Often the most obvious clue to age is the way the facade pipes or lack thereof, are arranged. Would I be right in thinking the NPOR reference is this? If so, then the organ is by R&D and dates from 1936: a four-rank extension organ with, according to the notes, some pipes from a previous organ whose NPOR listing has been deleted. My guess would be that this might be a Wadsworth or Jardine organ, given the area. So it is possible that some of your pipework is 100 years old. Interestingly there is a diaphone assistance for the lowest notes of the pedal open diapason - how well does this work? R&D also used a similar effect for another extension organ from the same period (1933) in their organ for the Diocesan College, Rondebosch, South Africa. The two solo synthetic stops presumably are a combination of an 8' with some harmonics from other ranks, probably giving a clarinet sound perhaps?
  14. Yes, my 'suggestion' was only for 'dealing' with the electronic variety and only then when they are replacing a pipe organ; I have nothing against electronic organs used in the home as practice instruments. Who was your organ made by? Have you had a go at sliding the pedal board out? Despite a previous post warning about upsetting things if it is a tracker, it is unusual to have a direct connection between the pedals and the tracker action and there is usually only one position they will go back in, so the pedals will still be in the right place to operate the trackers. I have only once found one organ (Swiss) where the builder hadn't bothered with any sort of woodwork to guide the pedal board back in and it was possible to slide the pedal board from side to side to such an extent that you could change the notes played by a third, or, as was often the case, just enough so that the pedals missed their respective tracker square.
  15. It is not clear from your posting if your organ is a pipe organ or a synthesiser as you refer to the visit of an organ builder and then later on to a 'toaster'. If your church has been paying for an organ builder to tune the 'toaster' then I can see a way of saving a little cash! Either way, most pedal boards are easily removed by sliding them out. Some may have a screw or two. Wheezy vacuum cleaners usually just need emptying and the filters cleaning. If it is still 'wheezy' with a new bag in it then most likely it has been used with a split bag and the dust has wrecked the motor bearings. I'm tempted to suggest that if your organ is a toaster, you could try the very effective method of pouring turpentine between the pedals and igniting the dust and fluff once well soaked. Be careful not to get too much on the pedals as it tends to take off the varnish and of course sometimes the pedals themselves actually set alight, so always best to have a bucket of water ready just in case.
  16. Lausanne

    DACs

    However, we do have a similar indigenous quotation to hand: "The English do not like music, they simply like the noise it makes." {T. Beecham} The original is even better: "The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes." Sir Thomas Beecham, A Mingled Chime 1944
  17. An excellent introduction to the organ, but such a pity that the description of how both the flue and reed pipes operate were wrong. Even if your french is not fluent you can see that their model of the reed pipe relies on the wind somehow lifting the brass tongue away from the shallot, rather than towards it before springing back open etc. Their description of how air in a flue pipe starts to vibrate is also curious. Apparently after leaving the pipe mouth some of the air goes outside the pipe and some goes inside. That which goes inside we are told creates a compression that travels down to the end where a little escapes, but most bounces off the air outiside the pipe (!) and comes back to the other end of the pipe and the process repeats at the speed of sound. He forgets to explain what causes the vibration of the air in the first place. Well, it doesn't matter, organ builders have been making pipes for centuries without really knowing how they work and TV presenters will continue pretending to teach approximate science. I wonder how much editorial control M. Aubertin had, most likely non at all.
  18. Thank you for clearing that up, I was sure it couldn't be the organ so soon after all your work. Those projectors just happen to produce a very convincing impression of organ wind eacaping left, right and centre! Thanks Alistair for the concert suggestions, I'll aim to attend. I also know there is a web site lisiting London organ concerts, I was just too lazy to check it out. DME
  19. I have just returned from Wayne Marshall's concert on the Royal Albert Hall organ this evening and wondered if anyone else had been there. Was it just me or did most of the programme appear to be played at break neck speed? I expect variations in tempo from different organists, but when it becomes difficult to recognise the piece being played, I find it hard to appreciate the music. There was certainly a great deal of technically superb playing, even if the 16' pedal pipes clearly were not impressed by being asked to repeat quicker than it takes them to sound in the first place. The sound of the instrument was very good, despite the poor acoustics. It must take a week or two to tune the whole thing. There was a relatively high level of background noise, either a heating system or perhaps even the organ wind (surely dealt with in the recent restoration). We were sat at the other end of the Hall, so up close it will have been intrusive during the quieter pieces of music. I was surprised to find that the next RAH organ concert is not until next summer, obviously one or two other things happen there in between. I'm in London until Saturday, any suggestions for other concerts?
  20. Although the only tribological advice it offers is that the motors should be lubricated in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions and I don't think Ian has a copy.
  21. If your motor has no oil ports it means the bearings have been pre-packed with grease. You can expect 30,000 hours of use at 80°C bearing temp. before they would require more grease. If you know the history of the motor you should be able to work out whether it needs such attention. For the smaller Compton-Parkinson motors (of frame size 80 - 180), EA6Polyurea should be used, and for the larger ones (200-355) Esso Unirex N3. Do not try to pour oil on the shaft as this will either just end up sprayed around the inside of the motor collecting dirt or dilute the grease if it gets into the bearing housing. For the older plain bearing type of motors that do have oil ports, the viscosity of the oil should be in proportion to the size of the shaft and weight supported. These hydrodynamic bearings work by squeezing a layer of oil between the rotating shaft and the bearing case, so that the there is no metal contact when the shaft is turning at its operating speed. If the oil is too thin, it will not be able to support the shaft. A shaft of a typical old blower motor is around 3 cm in diameter and oil such as used for chain saws would be too thin. An engine oil would be better.
  22. The Anglican Church in Lausanne had Walton's Crown Imperial March and judging by the brief applause at the end, some of the dears were actually listening for a change.
  23. There are a few more stop names lurking out there as forum members, or languishing if you prefer: Octave dolce, Octave, Dulciana, Clarabella, Fiffaro, Sousbasse and Waldhorn. At a pinch, Stieglitz might be included in the absence of a Rossignol. Although just exactly what sound a goldfinch makes (yes, I had to look it up) and whether any organ music requests it in place of a nightingale, is another matter.
  24. [edited blank] There must be a way to remove a post, but I haven't worked it out yet! A comment about Cynic upsetting the apple cart seemed less funny, when read three posts down, sorry... I'll get my coat
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