Colin Pykett

It's exactly the same with my Hope-Jones research, and in some cases worse. For over a century some eminent people have apparently thought they can just write down their subjective opinions with no attempt at justification, along the lines of "he built the worst organs ever made" , etc. At the other pole are those whose fawning sycophancy verges on the revolting. None of this sort of material is scholarly, regardless of who the authors might be. In the end I decided to put a representative collection of their remarks into an Appendix in the article, mainly for entertainment value to compensate for the bulk of it which must be dry as dust for most readers! The way I got round the myths and legends problem was to deliberately choose an issue (his electric actions) about which I was able to amass sufficient material at an objective, engineering level to counter statements of this sort. In engineering, things will either work or they won't, and if you can find out enough about them you can determine which applies. After some twenty years collecting what material I could lay my hands on, I had become impressed enough with what HJ had done to think about writing it down. I was also immeasurably assisted by the work of a few, unsung, others who generously allowed me access to the fruits of their labours and permitted me to include it. They are acknowledged in the article. I note from one of his posts that one way MM has tried to separate fact from fiction relating to Compton is by correlating information from several sources. Now that is a scholarly approach which historians worthy of the name are trained to adopt, and one which I wish had been more visible in the HJ case. Sorry, I'm hijacking a Compton thread, but it has evoked these resonances with one of his predecessors whose work was to some extent taken forward by him. At the engineering level their work is a bit like honeysuckle - closely intertwined.

I think I know something of what you are experiencing. I wrote a long diatribe about a far narrower subject, the development of Hope-Jones's electric actions in his early years before he left for the USA, and even that ran to some 37,000 words and 90-plus A4 pages, whereas you are covering the entire life of an organ builder. My first thought was to publish it, but the sheer difficulties involved - trying to interest a publisher, tweaking the manuscript into the format they would have wanted, etc, etc - rather put me off after a few initial sorties. So, as I already had a website, I merely stuck it onto that as a PDF file for all to see. It didn't make me any money of course, not that I was looking to turn a profit, but it would have been nice to have recouped at least some of my expenses of the sort you will undoubtedly have incurred. However it has now been so widely read, used and commented on that it has generated the consolation prize of giving me a lot of satisfaction at having done it. I also feel pleased that I was able to present what I believe to be an objective view of H-J's achievements which overturned quite a lot of the rather shabby so-called 'scholarship' which had gone before. So against this background I wish you well for these final stages of your endeavours, and hope they turn out as you would wish. (Incidentally, the last major update of my article was back in 2010 and I have now amassed so much additional information that it all really needs to be integrated into a new edition. So I suspect it won't be too long before I'll need to get immersed in going through the same processes all over again. Just think, you'll no doubt reach the same point in years to come ... !) PS. Have you thought about registering with a university and getting a PhD out of it - seriously?

I'm not sure I can contribute much more to a debate which hinges on what someone said to someone else - surely the simplest thing is to go back and ask the originator to expand and clarify? I'm sure this would be incomparably better than further huffing and puffing on my part. But in the meantime, it might be relevant to recall that Willis was close to Wesley, who mourned the passing of unequal temperaments. And Cavaillé-Coll's temperament(s) are being re-examined as the following example of several known to me shows: http://www.isabellelagors-christianott.fr/files/downloads/Les_temp--raments.pdf The first paragraph says: "A few decades ago, the vast majority of musicians, organists, organ builders and musicologists were convinced that Aristide Cavaillé-Coll had always left his instruments in equal temperament. But the information we have today shows that he used unequal temperaments! " But as I said in a previous post, these things are not fixed, they evolve over time. What a builder might have done at one time and in one instrument isn't necessarily what applied to another at a later date. And the preferences of the customer and consultant can exert an influence as well, over and above what the builders themselves might prefer to do. For instance, this might have applied to the temperaments sometimes used by Willis at Wesley's insistence, though the evidence here can be rather flaky. But none of this is really surprising. In this era (the first half of the 19th century roughly speaking), one has to set temperament in general and tuning practices in particular against the contemporary zeitgeist. It was not much earlier that written tuning instructions were still of the form "let this fifth be nearer perfect than the last tho' not quite"! No mention of beats, and therefore nothing on beat rates either. Helmholtz and Rayleigh had still to come along and give some real theoretical underpinning to the science of acoustics, which at that time was still poorly understood. Only a few milestones exist in the codified literature before that, in particular a remarkable book by Robert Smith c.1750 who was one of the first to understand what 'tuning' should actually entail. Among many other things he said that "times of beating may be measured by a watch that shews seconds or a simple pendulum of any given length". But he was a mathematician and a classicist and his book remains difficult to read even today, so whether the average tuner would have bought it or even come across it is doubtful. And most of them couldn't have afforded it anyway. All this underlines the importance of what Bruce Buchanan said above about the scientific abilities of Cavaillé-Coll, which are all the more remarkable when one sets them against the background of his time. (I mean, how many other young organ builders were giving lectures on theoretical acoustics to the Parisian Academy of Sciences or comparable institutions elsewhere?)

Hugh Banton may know the answers. He has written a detailed, highly readable and very interesting account of the origins of Makin Organs which includes their roots in the rump of Compton - as you may know. It's on the web at: https://www.organworkshop.co.uk/images/files/Makin_history_1972-1992.pdf Just a thought. I can't think of a better person.

I hesitate to keep banging on about temperament as it's a subject which inspires a spectrum of interest ranging from complete indifference to neurotic obsession. In addition, it's fruitful ground for those who enjoy discoursing about things which by definition have no end point, not unlike philosophy or theology for instance. So I'll just mention a couple of things and then go away. Firstly Cavaillé-Coll's and Willis's temperaments almost certainly evolved during their lifetimes, as did those of most builders during the 19th century as temperaments and the sheer mechanics of tuning moved away from the vaguenesses of late 18th century practice (which are often the subject of present-day anachronism by some who insist things were better defined than they actually were). There were several reasons for this which I won't go into. So when one asks questions like "what temperament did they use", one also has to ask "and when were they using it and in which instruments". But another point is that people do not perceive temperaments (i.e. small tuning differences) in the same way. Some are extremely sensitive to it, whereas others are pretty laid back., so even if they notice it they might not bother overmuch. As just one example, how many people know (or did know) that most analogue electronic organs from the mid-1970s until their demise were tuned to a mildly unequal temperament in which two fifths were tuned pure right across the compass (D-A and Eb-Bb)? (Yes, I know they were awful, but bear with me). In ET, which they were supposed to be tuned to, all fifths should be slightly flat (narrow) from pure. And this was fixed precisely by the way they worked, so even if the overall tuning drifted, these intervals maintained their relative tuning and remained exactly pure. Did it matter? Well, having tuned some digital and pipe organs to it more recently, I find it quite attractive, but then, I'm not an impartial observer since I had a priori information, having known about the phenomenon anyway. The more important point is whether it was noticed by those who didn't. This only goes to show what a slippery subject the whole thing is, not a million miles away from trying to pick up water.

Coincidentally, I also am trying to find out about a mixture which in this case once actually existed on a Victorian English organ but was subsequently removed. Like Matej, I was (and am) intending to seek the help of forum members. But I've been pipped to the post! Regarding the current question, it is at least possible if not probable that the hypothetical mixture in this Keates organ, had there been one, would have contained a tierce rank. So it might be of interest that there was a very thorough and detailed article on this subject in the BIOS Journal some years ago. See: "Thoughts on the inclusion of the Tierce rank in English mixture stops, 1660-1940", William McVicker and David Wickens, JBIOS vol. 32, 2008, pp. 100-162. This can be obtained via the BIOS website at: https://www.bios.org.uk/store/products_results.php?pageNum_WADAproducts=1&totalRows_WADAproducts=50 (although I should point out that I was grateful to obtain a copy from a good friend who is also the titulaire of the instrument mentioned above).

You spoke of 'false accuracy', though I'm unsure what that means. If something is accurate, then it's accurate, and vice versa. I think precision is the word which better describes what you mentioned above. There are two issues here which are often confused. One is the fact that acoustic instruments cannot realistically be tuned to minute fractions of a cent, though even if they could, you quite rightly point out that it would be a waste of time because of subsequent tuning drift. However the second issue is that it is also proper and necessary when doing arithmetic to maintain numerical precision to fractions of a cent (desirably two decimal places) throughout calculations on temperament, otherwise there is a danger that truncation or rounding errors will accumulate excessively in the final step. There is nothing new in this - one should always use at least one more decimal place in the intermediate steps of a calculation than that required in the answer. Padgham himself agreed and said so (though it is then unclear why he broke his own rule later on in his book!). Exactitude necessarily lies at the heart of temperament studies of the sort Padgham undertook, otherwise we can't decide at what point to call off certain debates before they become meaningless. One example is the difference between the fifth (Syntonic) comma and sixth (Pythagorean) comma meantone tunings (this latter being the so-called Silbermann temperament). As you doubtless are aware, the relative merits of these continue to excite discussion, but I sometimes wonder whether the fact they are very close is missed by certain interlocutors. This is because the two commas are nearly equal - the fifth comma equals 4.30 cents whereas the sixth comma is 3.91 cents - and note the two decimal places! So, less than half a cent between them, or three parts of naff all in practice to a tuner. This being so, can the subjective and allegedly musical differences between these tunings really merit the amount of scholarly time that has been spent on them? Plus the fact that, if you tune one of them as best you can, it will have drifted off anyway in one direction or the other by the time tomorrow comes? I do suspect that those who have immersed themselves in this and similar issues might have misled themselves through the use of digital instruments, which of course can hold their tuning precisely to fractions of a cent, whereas acoustic instruments cannot. Another issue, and one which Padgham appreciated, is that some so-called unequal temperaments are to all intents and purposes equal. This is true of Silbermann's sixth (Pythagorean) comma meantone tuning for example. One cannot realistically use all keys of course unless one is in a particularly masochistic frame of mind, and in this sense the temperament is unequal. Yet in the 'good' keys in which the Wolf fifth does not appear there are no differences in key flavour, just like in equal temperament. This arises because, apart from the Wolf, the remaining eleven fifths are narrowed or flattened by the same amount. This makes it an equal temperament for the 'good' keys. Another similarity with equal temperament which is of practical interest to tuners is that the beat rates in sixth comma meantone are exactly twice as fast as those in ET. This might be why Silbermann is reputed to have switched easily between his (allegedly preferred) sixth comma meantone and ET, to pacify people (allegedly such as Bach) who objected to his Wolf. One can switch easily because of the simple relationship between the beat rates just mentioned, since a tuner accustomed to tuning one by ear will have no difficulty tuning the other merely by shifting to an adjacent octave to lay the bearings. Which brings us back neatly to where we came in. These insights only attract our attention because we (should) undertake theoretical temperament studies to a degree of precision which is inappropriate for practical tuning in the real world. There is therefore a place for exactitude, but I agree with you that it does have to be kept in its place. I hope your piano tuning seminar will be all you hope it to be, though if it were me I would soft-pedal your belief that (quote) "in the piano world it is a matter of ignorance and fear of the unknown"! I had always assumed that world contained quite a few clever, rather than ignorant, people. One of them is Fred Sturm, who wrote a multi-part, highly detailed and very scholarly series of articles in the Piano Technicians' Journal which are among the best I have ever seen on temperament. If you haven't come across it I commend it to you. But maybe pianists don't lurk on here though, so you might be OK.

Padgham's book is indeed useful in many ways, but I'm afraid it contains many numerical errors. The following article enumerates those I tracked down a few years ago: http://www.pykett.org.uk/padghams-well-tempered-organ.htm

And with some posts by them here also, and not just on this topic of course. In fact, does not that rather say it all?

SL's post reminded me of a not completely unrelated situation which exists in the UK. If your land is current or former Glebe Land (that owned by the CofE where the incumbent was a Rector rather than a Vicar) then you might well have (possibly unbeknown to yourself) what is called Chancel Repair Liability, where the PCC has the right to come to you for all or part of the money for restoration or repair of the east end of the building. At the same time you would have no right of input into what work is planned or actually carried out - your function is just to fund it. And if this sounds academic, it isn't. This legislation has real teeth, as evidenced by a case in the early 2000's which bankrupted a couple who tried to fight it in the civil courts. So if you live in an old rectory, or in a road with a name such as Parsonage Close, Glebe Road, etc, then watch out!

Just came across this as I was having a gentle browse: https://www.julesgomes.com/single-post/Women-bishops-condemn-pipe-organ-as-symbol-of-toxic-masculinity-on-International-Womens-Day It wasn't dated April 1st either. Strange, as they missed an opportunity to really make the point!

To clarify, I don't necessarily disagree. But recall that my post referred to the advertising rather than the product. Over-enthusiastic ad-men/women can be a decided bane for a firm, though they often seem to be among the last to realise it. But I doubt this is really the forum to pursue it further.

It just shows what puffery electronic organ manufacturers have always allowed themselves to indulge in, and still do. Personally I think a better description is rowlocks.

Cinema/theatre organs have always fascinated me at several levels (action, tonalities, repertoire, etc), and although my opinions won't count for much, I find them fun and equally fascinating to play when the opportunity arises. Some which I've played in recent times include the Wurlitzer at the St Albans music museum (plus their rare Spurden-Rutt) and that at the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust, and the Gosport Compton. My first introduction to them was as a schoolboy when I was lucky enough to try the wonderful Conacher then at the Nottingham Odeon (formerly Ritz) thanks to the kindness of the late Gerald Shaw who was there to give a concert. I had a sort of entreé to that organ anyway because its resident organist, Jack Helyer, lived only a few doors away from us at the time. I have to admit, though, to not being terribly addicted to the type of light music which is their principal fodder, but that's just me and I have the greatest admiration and respect for the many professionally-qualified musicians whose amazing technique requires adjectives not in the language to adequately describe it. Against this background I find it strange that so many straight organists, whose fingers have not come within a hundred miles of a theatre organ, can sound off so confidently about their perceived shortcomings. This type of attitude not uncommonly spills over into related diatribes against the likes of Robert Hope-Jones, which wouldn't be quite so bad if these people actually knew what they were talking about at a factual level. It is particularly galling that not a little of this sort of material comes from the pens of otherwise acknowledged scholars. One expert not known for pulling his punches set a more proper tone, however. The late Bach scholar Peter Williams in his book 'The Organ' co-authored with Barbara Owen wrote that " the result [of the various expressive resources of the instrument] was an amazing instrument with a warm, novel sound, ill-suited to the music of Bach but ideal for its intended purpose". Succinct, correct, and a model that perhaps should be borne in mind more often by writers on the organ.

Yes it does, on the part of those who have already posted on this topic. I'm not sure it will apply to me and what I'm about to say though, but here goes. In his novel "Under the Greenwood Tree", Thomas Hardy describes delightfully the grumbles and rumbles which accompanied the removal of the west end church musicians in his not-so-fictional Dorset village setting, and their replacement with an organ complete with lady player (who turned more heads than one among the male members of the congregation). So, and probably quite unwittingly, Hardy was depicting something which was happening right across the country at that time as previous posts have mentioned. The novel was set bang in the middle of the Oxford Movement. I've never been certain, however, whether "organ" meant pipe organ or reed organ. It's some time since I last read it, but when I did I remember trying to establish which type of instrument he meant. I recall there was mention of a cabinet organ and, elsewhere, a harmonium (called 'harmonion' by the rustic choir and band), together with a passage implying that the lady blew the instrument herself with her foot. Perhaps all this sways the argument in favour of a reed organ, though in those days it was not unusual for a small pipe organ to be blown by a foot pedal. Incidentally, when I did last read the novel I was living in Hardy's fictional Weatherbury in an old thatched cottage which the great man was said to have visited often as a boy. I also played the organ there from time to time, which had escaped the reforming zeal of the age because it was still sitting resplendent in its west gallery in the late twentieth century!

Another titbit for MM. I believe that a firm called British Springs and Pressings made, um, springs and similar things for Compton at one time. The firm was still active in Sturminster Newton in Dorset around the 1980s because I knew someone who worked there and told me, in fact I had some custom spiral springs made by them for an organ at that time. There is still a firm making springs there today called William Hughes Ltd. I have no first hand knowledge whether they took over the earlier firm, but it seems somewhat unlikely that two spring-making businesses would have sprung up independently in that part of the country otherwise. A quick web search also suggests that a third firm, Baumann, might have been involved prior to Hughes. If you are interested to follow this up I could probably introduce you to my acquaintance, though privately rather than publicly on the forum. Of course, you may know all about this anyway.

An address given by Dr Jackson to the CMS is currently available on the web, which might be of interest in the context of the current discussion: https://www.church-music.org.uk/articles/edward-bairstow.asp

You are indeed correct. Apologies for this slip. CEP

Since it has been mentioned, I have always found the title of this book (The Making of the Victorian Organ) somewhat misleading relative to its contents. Within its nearly 600 pages, only a meagre 25 are devoted to Henry Willis, and nothing (beyond the occasional mention) to Robert Hope-Jones. Having bought it, it was a surprise to find that it only covers the period 1820-1870, whereas Queen Victoria survived until 1901. You have to read the preface to find that the book is really only a study of the work of William Hill, so one is left wondering why its title does not say so. Within this limitation the book is without doubt valuable provided you don't expect to find everything you might have anticipated between the covers. I was particularly disappointed that electric actions were only accorded two pages within an otherwise substantial chapter devoted to 'Music and Mechanics'. Although this is broadly compatible with the 1870 cutoff date, it gives scant credit to those Victorians who were well on the way to solving many of the problems in this new field before the twentieth century dawned. To my mind a more complete and better-balanced survey in some respects can be found in Stephen Bicknell's elegant and magisterial 'History of the English Organ' even though the Victorian era is represented by only four chapters out of 18, though if you have both books on your shelves then you will be off to a flying start. These remarks might seem a tad curmudgeonly, but when I found myself having to disburse nearly GBP 100 for these books when they first appeared, I was grateful for other people's opinions before deciding to open my wallet, rather than relying only on the obviously partial reviews printed on the covers. CEP

Bear in mind a matter that has been aired on this forum before, which concerns the differences between analogue and digital CCTV systems. With old fashioned analogue systems (which are presumably still found only as legacy installations nowadays) there is no appreciable delay introduced between the camera and the screen, and none between the audio and video streams. This is seldom true of digital systems, with which there will often be a highly noticeable absolute delay in the video, and sometimes appreciable lack of sync between audio and video because the delays are different in the two channels. Most consumer applications, such as security systems to protect premises, are not affected by this so little or no attempt is made to minimise it. Even in the professional-grade systems used for broadcasting the delay will often be measured in seconds. In these cases the only parameter which is adjusted is the differential delay between audio and video so that speech is approximately synced to the picture by delaying the faster channel to match that of the slower one. Even so, it is obvious when watching TV that this is not always done or it doesn't work properly. CEP

Seeing that this thread has already been comprehensively hijacked, I'll mention that Francis Monkman (who is a founder member of the Curved Air and Sky bands) is also an accomplished and professionally-trained organist and harpsichordist. He is also known for his personal research and detailed knowledge of Thuringian classical organs, on many of which he has has recorded several CDs. My only regret is that so few of them seem to be publicly available (and I've told him so!). CEP

That's incredible value for any professional service in any sphere today. If you sit down with, say, a solicitor or see a consultant surgeon privately, you will be lucky to get away with paying ten times that amount for a 30 minute consultation. Well done, RCO. In response to another thread recently similar to the OP's topic here, I also mentioned that on the subject of transposition there's a very helpful information sheet on their website. See: https://i.rco.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Hymn-transposition.pdf For what it's worth, it's by far the most helpful thing I've personally come across on transposition. CEP

Another story which illustrates the potential fragility of buildings if you want to put heavy furniture in them ..... I think it was In the 1970s when there was an incident concerning a Steinway grand on an upper floor in an 18th century grade 1 listed building of the 'Nash Terrace' variety. I don't know how the piano got there in the first place, but when the owner wanted to move he engaged a major specialist piano remover. Having perused the small print of the remover's insurance policy he decided to take out additional cover himself just to be on the safe side, so he called in at Lloyds of London. They said it was no problem and gave him a quote of £5 just to cover the move. Came the day, and the removers decided to lower the piano out of a window onto the street below. As part of the process they used massive baulks of timber inside the room wedged against the street-facing wall. All went well at first, with the piano dangling from block and tackle in mid air, until suddenly the entire frontage of the house collapsed into the street, piano and all. Lloyds presumably picked up at least part of the bill, but Steinway's were apparently able to reconstruct the piano because the frame was undamaged. CEP

Expressing only a personal opinion rather than wanting to make it a tablet of stone, I would recommend the Sennheiser HD-650 without a doubt from an acoustic point of view on the basis of those I have lived with. I think they have now been replaced by the HD-660S. However the 650's had to my mind a major drawback considering their price, which is that the plastic headband on mine eventually failed after some years of flexing as you put them on and off. They sold me a replacement but that cost c. £70 plus shipping, pretty poor I think for something in this price bracket. Since then I've put them on and off rather carefully. The 660S seems to have a similar or identical headband, so you've been forewarned! Also the foam inside the earpieces disintegrates over time, as foam components in anything always do, though I was never sure what purpose it served anyway. But I have enjoyed them for many years from a musical point of view and continue to do so. CEP

In a generic sense, this is an important issue for installing organs in domestic rooms (well, and any other sort of room really). It's not something you can just ignore and hope for the best. Pianos are similar. My massive 3M&P drawstop console, containing much solid oak (I know because I made it myself!), was so heavy that I sought the advice of the surveyor when moving into a home which had suspended wood floors, unlike the previous one which had a concrete-floored music room on the ground floor. I was particularly concerned because I intended to put it in a room upstairs. If I recall correctly, he first asked about the total weight, but I didn't know the answer to that. So then he asked whether it was possible for one person to lift each end separately off the floor, even if ever so slightly. The answer to this was affirmative (just), so the surveyor then said it would be OK if it was placed perpendicular to the joists, that is, so that the long dimension (the width) of the console ran parallel to the floorboards. This allowed the two load-points (the feet at each end of the console) to be supported by well-separated joists and their immediate neighbours. However, doing it the other way would have meant that virtually the entire load would have been taken by only two adjacent joists. At the least this might have caused the upper floor to sag, with detrimental cosmetic effects arising over time such as major cracks to the ceiling below, whereas at worst the floor could have failed completely with unthinkable consequences. A diagonal placement across a corner would also have been OK in this case according to the surveyor. Incidentally, this specific advice didn't cost anything because I was already paying him to do a general house-buyer's survey anyway. He also said that similar considerations apply to pianos, especially uprights. Apparently a grand piano isn't quite so critical because you can usually arrange the three load points optimally with respect to the joists, and the load is better spread anyway. Another point he made was that upstairs rooms, if bedrooms, are designed for use as such, and therefore re-purposing them by putting unusual items in them can result in insurance problems in the event of a major claim. Some insurers try to extract more wriggle-room than others in these situations, but then, we all know that. I suppose I ought to add that this information is supplied in good faith but for information only. I am simply retailing the advice I received in respect of the particular item of furniture and the particular house which the surveyor visited, saw with his own eyes, and was able to advise on. I think you would be ill-advised to proceed on the basis of this post without taking independent advice regarding your particular circumstances. From what the surveyor said at the time, it was clear that the issue Quentin raises here is a significant one, and one must always be safe rather than sorry. Bear in mind that it isn't just the weight of the instrument itself. You also have to add that of the player, and possibly a pupil if you intend to teach. And at a Christmas party when the room might well be full of well-oiled carol singers, anything might happen! So whatever you do, don't forget about the poor old floor which has to support it all. I admit to possibly being a bit over-sensitised to the matter, because as a child I was awakened one night by a terrific crash to find that the head end of my bed had fallen through the floor. It turned out that the lovely, large Victorian house in which we lived was riddled with woodworm. OK, it got fixed, at a price I guess to my shocked parents and we lived happily ever after as they say, but it goes to show that things like this can happen ... CEP