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Colin Pykett

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  1. It would be nice to know if anyone who has posted their (armchair?) opinions above has actually played or even heard the Sydney instrument - I've posted, but only while comfortably seated half a world away. Failing that, I'll risk seeding further dialogue by mentioning Haskells or helpers. (Now heads back to armchair and waits ...)
  2. Subwoofer (bass) loudspeaker units can fail over time in several ways. If the cone is supported by a foam or synthetic rubber surround this will have a high probability of disintegrating over some years owing to reactions with moisture and atmospheric gases. Or the moving coil (motor) unit simply burns out if the speaker is working close to or beyond its design power limit - some of these big speakers can get too hot to touch after a spell of long sustained 32 foot pedal notes. The solution here is to over-specify the speaker in terms of its power rating at the design stage, but of course this adds to the cost. Or the sheer amount of movement which the motor and cone execute eventually weakens or damages the suspension. Or the cone gets eaten by rodents - instead of just leaving them exposed I often wonder why designers don't cover the speaker apertures with the type of substantial metal grilles which are readily available and made for the job. These are mainly intended to protect the cones from physical damage when the boxes are being carted around by pop bands, but they are also helpful in an anti-rodent role. Similar grilles should be considered for apertures into enclosures such as reflex or tuned pipe cabinets. Or the water vapour in the cold and damp air in churches can soak into the fibres of some cone materials and destroy their mechanical integrity over time so that they eventually become little different to flapping bits of damp cloth in terms of effectiveness. And so on. But the moral is that electronic basses won't necessarily last as long as one might expect, particularly in large buildings where they have to be beefy enough to radiate large amounts of acoustic power.
  3. Some might think that a valid reason for 'why not digital' is that 32 ft electronic stops in large buildings are hard on the loudspeakers, which not infrequently fail. This potential danger afflicts all bass speakers which get hammered hard, as pop band roadies know to their cost, and it also happened at Southwell Minster. Another digital organ firm, not Copeman Hart (the original installer), was called in to replace the speaker units. But the above also shows that, if Dobson are deemed to have sinned at Sydney, they certainly weren't the only ones to have given in to temptation ... Seriously though, this story merely confirms that both pipes and electronics need servicing from time to time, especially after some years of hard service. So perhaps another and equally valid point of view is that one should be thankful that the Southwell organ was not only repaired but fairly readily repairable.
  4. I'm only an amateur among a number of professionals here, but the thing I like best about music, and indeed all the Arts, is its difference from science (where I suppose I can claim to be a professional because I succeeded in raising a family by doing it as a day job). With science, the topic you are studying defines what you do, to an extent which imposes the strictest of bounds on how you can think. The more you study this topic, the more restrictive those bounds become. For instance, once Newton had proposed the laws of gravity as then understood, both he and everyone who came after (until Einstein) had to follow them. In science you can't un-discover something and go in a different direction. Einstein was only able to do this with gravity because he was clever enough to discover something beyond Newton. Those who have since followed him, because they had no option, have also been trapped within his thinking. But with music, you can become a Cage. The topic does not define you, you define the topic. This does not mean you can just think of things willy-nilly. You have to be able to bring others of similar intellect and capabilities along with you, at least to some extent, otherwise you have difficulty avoiding charges of charlatanism, ignorance and worse. Having studied what Cage did and tried to understand at least some of his thinking, I consider it wrong to dismiss his work lightly. Instead, I have tried to understand it. However, as I said in my last post, that still hasn't persuaded me (yet) to spend money queuing outside concert halls where his most extreme works are to be performed.
  5. That's actually a deep question. One can hum an SATB hymn tune, but how many people bother to ask why only the topmost (highest-frequency) line is singled out for humming? Put another way, why do we not conventionally hum the alto part? Questions like this were explored by Cage and others of the avant-garde movement. Although I find the academic background to their work interesting, by and large I'm afraid the interest isn't great enough to persuade me to spend money attending performances. But now we've descended to me merely expressing an opinion, which is pretty worthless.
  6. An article has recently been published in The Organ entitled 'Henry Hackett FRCO (1872-1940) - Organist & Composer' by Nigel Hackett, Henry's grandson. It includes details of Mr Hackett's time as sometime organist of St Modwen's, Burton on Trent, which is one of the three Burton churches of which the late Stanley Monkhouse was priest in recent years.
  7. I also feel we might be outstaying our welcome here, but I might as well join the party ... A reason why synthesised sounds can (in principle) be more attractive is to do with voicing flexibility. With sampled sounds you are pretty much stuck with what you've recorded beforehand. Although things like loudness and treble and bass rolloff can be adjusted for each sample if necessary, these are relatively minor tweaks. Changing the timbre and other speaking characteristics (such as the attack transient) of a recorded organ pipe to the extent that a voicer can do with a real one is not possible. Nor can the simulated pipe be redesigned from scratch by changing its scale or other parameters. It's much like listening to a CD of an organ - whatever you do to the sound by twiddling the controls on your listening system, it will always sound more or less like the same instrument. With synthesised sounds this restriction does not exist - you could turn a simulated flute pipe into a tuba if you so desired. The only limitation then becomes the skill of the voicer and how much money you have paid to the manufacturer to do on-site voicing (some of them make several ranges of basically similar organs but of which only the more expensive come with a detailed tonal finishing option). So compared to this, I think the OP's demo recordings which kicked off this thread rather miss the point. They merely demonstrate that recording an organ in two different ways produces very similar sounds.
  8. I doubt my opinion will be of much interest.
  9. The video is comparing a recording of a pipe organ with a recording of a pipe organ. That is not the same thing as listening to a pipe organ in a building and comparing that experience with listening to a recording of it.
  10. I feel a special link of some sort exists between the piece and performing it on the organ. Yehudi Menuhin described the organ as linking "the mind of the Creator (or the Universal Mind if you prefer) with the human mind", and elsewhere as "an instrument of the elements, a superhuman instrument born of wind and rock, of air and shapes". The composition itself seems similarly elemental to me. Other aspects might illustrate the differences between acoustic art (music) and visual art. For example it is easier to give an immortality measured in many centuries to great paintings (such as the Mona Lisa) than to do the same with (the actual sounds of) music, so perhaps Cage had ideas such as this in mind. I believe he also envisaged the piece being played on the piano. Here, there might be a connection with his concepts of silence which he explored in other works where nothing is actually played. Yet in these cases one does not hear nothing at all, and on the piano the sustain ('loud') pedal can be used to amplify and extend the duration of whatever ambient sounds exist in the auditorium, because they excite the strings into resonance. At the very least, it makes one think I would suggest!
  11. Were any forum members at the recital (links below) at Halberstadt when the note last changed yesterday? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible#Halberstadt_performance and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68209691
  12. Thank you for highlighting the plight of this museum and, by implication, that of similar ones which have fallen on financial hard times in recent years.
  13. After several days nobody has replied to your queries even though there are several (mainly professional organ builders) who are eminently qualified to do so. I have wondered whether to reply myself, since I have to say that I cannot for the life of me imagine why you would want to conceive of making the hundreds of electromagnets that would be required for an organ action! The matter is not simply related to designing and making the magnet coils, as your post seems to imply, because the associated issues of the magnetic circuit of a magnet are important as well as the electrical one, together with the formidable mechanical engineering problems of fabricating the complete magnet assemblies from scratch. Having said this, you might find the following to be of interest: http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/electromagnets-and-solenoids-in-electric-actions-design-issues.htm and http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/HJ_OrganActions1889-1903.pdf (see the section entitled 'Magnet design' starting at page 14). I have to ask why you apparently do not wish to buy the magnets from a trade supplier, as your questions suggest that you are not yet at all close to being able to make them successfully yourself. I hope you will forgive the tenor of this message, as it is intended to dissuade you from embarking on an enormous exercise which could easily prove fruitless and disappointing. Please be assured that I have your best interests at heart in saying this. And yes, to answer your first question, I do have experience in (trying to) make my own organ electromagnets. The scars (and you do get scars, believe me!) rapidly persuaded me of the folly of ever attempting it again ...
  14. Malcolm Williamson perhaps? He seems to have been quite prolific as a composer. Some of his solo organ works are listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Malcolm_Williamson#Works_for_solo_instruments Not quite sure whether any of it falls into your 'Adagio' category, but the 'Elegy for JFK' might be a possibility (says he without having heard it). There's also a link to Tom Winpenny's CD here where you can sample all the tracks: https://toccataclassics.com/product/williamson-organ-music/ 'Fantasy on O Paradise' might fit the bill?
  15. There do seem to have been some action issues. It was reported c. 1995 that a 'comprehensive computer crash' occurred following an electrical storm, though the date when this happened was not mentioned. However it was also said that this ruled out some planned recordings of Messiaen's works by Gillian Weir. Then the builder's website currently states that 'in 2010, the electronics were replaced with a state-of-the-art bus-technology system'. Probably the former, and certainly the latter, will have involved significant expenditure, in common with all major refurbishments of electronically-controlled organ actions. Those just mentioned are in addition to the planned work mentioned by Keitha above. Against this could be set the argument that major interventions in the affairs of pipe organs every few decades might be deemed reasonable, particularly for large and important instruments such as this one which see heavy usage.
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