Colin Pykett

One reason is said by some to be related to prising funding out of certain sources. Some of them will apparently only provide it for a mechanical action instrument, even if there is also an electric console which in practice is the only one which is used. There are allegedly several instances of recent (i.e. within the last 20 years or so) organs in the UK where this has happened. At least one of them apparently has timers showing the amount of time that the respective console has been used - and the figures are said to say it all! In this case the electric console is moveable within the body of the building and, to all intents and purposes, it is the only one which is used. The mechanical one is in a ludicrous position in that the organist can't see anything, can't be seen, nor judge the effect of the instrument, the console is covered in dust, yet without it a major source of funding would (allegedly) not have been available. CEP

Still on the subject of Compton's R&D, the question also arises exactly what R&D would have been needed. Something as ground-breaking and complex as the Electrone could not possibly have been brought to the standard required for it to be marketed (and which it achieved) without very substantial prior R&D investment in time, facilities and therefore money. I have no idea how it was done in the sense of issues like whether it was all done in-house or whether there were significant extramural (contract) elements as well. Leslie Bourn and Wally Fair seemed to be associated with it from the outset until they retired if I'm correct. I know the former then did various organ-related things in his retirement, including being either the chairman or president of the Electronic Organ Constructors' Society in the 60s (might have been the early 70s), and I have some of the EOCS magazines from that time in which he wrote on one occasion words to the effect that "I will have to get to know more about these little electronic thingies called transistors", which suggested to me that he realised that the electrostatic additive synthesis-based Electrone had pretty much run its course. Somewhat later I met Wally for the last time in the 80s when he was very frail, and he was then interested in electronic tonal design using subtractive synthesis. Although this forum is for pipe organs, I hope these electronic reminiscences might be forgiven in that they might conceivably be of interest for MM's research. As for pipe organ R&D, one major aspect concerns the scaling laws required for successful extension organs. With his usual pursuit of detail and perfection I doubt John himself would have simply tweaked the odd top or bottom octave here and there on an extended rank during its tonal finishing as other builders did. Thus, somewhere in the factory, there might have been a dedicated voicing area where these matters were worked on more systematically, at least in the first instance before more experience was gained. There would also have been a lot of work required on action issues, including the firm's amazing combination capture systems, but I know from private correspondence that MM has a good handle on these. So forgive me, MM, if you think I'm paddling in your pond, which actually I'm not trying to do. I'm just intrigued as to how JC came to build the instruments he did, both pipe and electronic. I'm sure you will supply the answers in due course. CEP

Although your magnum opus has yet to appear, I'd like to congratulate you on the obvious amount of effort and sheer dogged perseverance that you've put into it. It will certainly fill a yawning gap in the literature and I look forward to being able to peruse it. Your costings are certainly food for thought. However the figures do not seem to tally with the reality which I found when I was interviewed for a job at Compton's (it would have been my first) prior to graduating in physics. (Forgive me if I've said these things before - I think I may have done somewhere or other but it might have been on another forum). This was probably in 1966. The background was that I happened to go to some technical event staged one evening at the Royal Institution and, to my surprise, a small 2M&P Compton Electrone was being demonstrated beforehand in the lobby. I tinkered around on it and the youngish guy in charge seemed astonished that anyone could (a) play it and (b) was even remotely interested in it. Of course, a vaguely-interested group of people then clustered around, attracted by the sounds presumably. This obviously suited his purposes because he invited me to join in his sales-type patter with my own 'physics' angle on the instrument. He then asked whether I would be interested in joining the firm as a demonstrator. I indicated that my preferences lay more on the R&D side, so was invited for interview at the north London factory. During that occasion I was shown a door into what they grandly called their 'R&D Department', and expected to walk into some brightly-lit, spacious facility complete with people in white coats. Imagine my astonishment to find that it was hardly more than a large wardrobe, devoid of activity and personnel, and smaller and no better equipped than my own audio/musical 'research facility' then housed in my indulgent grandfather's garage. I was then led into the vast main factory space, almost empty but for a large 4 manual Electrone drawstop console feeding a Rotofon speaker high on one wall. I played this but was not much impressed other than by some nice flute sounds. So I came away with the feeling that I had just visited a dying ghost firm which hardly offered the type of career prospects I was looking for. The main point of this otherwise inconsequential diatribe is to point out from first hand recollections that, if Compton's did ever have a large R&D setup which your figures suggest they might have been able to support, there was certainly no evidence of it in the decaying rump of the firm which existed in the mid-1960s. CEP

Another recent, excellent and similarly eminently readable PhD dissertation is that by Richard Dunster-Sigtermans: https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7217/1/Dunster-Sigtermans17PhD_Redacted.pdf You (MM) will find lots of Compton references in this one. CEP

One aspect of the neo-classical revival is the development of well-designed and responsive mechanical key actions. Although based on relatively straightforward physical and engineering principles in common use in other fields since the 19th century, their introduction into British organ building was surprisingly slow and erratic with the benefit of hindsight. One example of the muddled thinking which has persisted into the present century was that the masses of all of the components in an action have a comparable effect on its performance in terms of parameters important to the player, such as repetition capability or key release time. It was thought by some (Peter Collins was one, judging by an influential article he wrote in the 1980s) that the mass of a key, say, exerted the same influence as that of a tracker. This is not so, since the mass of pivoted components such as keys, backfalls and pallets has less of an effect than might be thought at first sight. This explains why it is quite easy in everyday life to rotate heavy things which are balanced and pivoted, such as a jacked-up car wheel, whereas it is more difficult to pick them up bodily off the ground having just changed the tyre. Consequently some misguided effort has been expended in recent times in reducing the mass of (pivoted) pallets for example in sometimes quite bizarre ways, without apparently realising that it is far more important to concentrate on the (non-pivoted) tracker masses. It is also only relatively recently that the excellent potential offered by suspended key actions has become more generally realised, even though their (pivoted) keys might seem very long and cumbersome. Some French classical (pre-Revolutionary) organ builders had obviously twigged this, probably intuitively or as a result of serendipitous observations. But whatever the reason, this type of highly-responsive action presumably had some association with, even if it did not directly lead to, the florid ornamentation and delicacy of French musical literature from that period. The music speaks to us about the action if we listen to what it is saying. Another important factor is not to use pallets which are too wide. A persistent hangover from the Victorian period, still sometimes seen in organs today, is to simply use the pallets to cover the gaps between the sound board bars, which means they get far too wide towards the bass. Simple sums show that over-wide pallets deliver only marginally more wind while magnifying pluck unnecessarily. The main reason for this hangover was that 19th century organ builders were released from the need to design pallets properly once they had transferred to pneumatic and then electric actions, and of course this has persisted to the present day in some quarters. Using these principles, a modern well-designed mechanical action is likely to be significantly better from a playing point of view than many which were made in the baroque era. Organ builders then didn't really understand these things, but the difference between them and us is that they had the excellent excuse that none of the physics had then been worked out. Today there is less of an excuse for mechanical key actions which are not properly designed at the drawing board stage. But besides the physics, the engineering has to be impeccable as well, otherwise the action just will not last very long. CEP

I used to do stage lighting in an amateur way in my youth, and used the old Strand manual boards a lot. The blackout procedure was simple - you just flicked a switch labelled (you've guessed it) 'blackout'. I can't imagine how or why anyone would have been thrown across the room. There was merely a dull thud as a contactor within cut everything off, not unlike the sound emanating from a contemporaneous Willis III console when you set a new combination on a general piston. The process for lighting a scene was something like: Look at the script carefully and annotate it appropriately. Decide on your melange. Write down how and at what point in the action to achieve it - this could involve operating several switches and dimmer wheels simultaneously. Feet as well as hands often needed to be used on the dimmer wheels. These turned a shaft onto which the selected dimmers were locked by turning their handles. Woe betide you if you didn't get the locking correct as then lights would remain on or go off unexpectedly, or if you turned the wheel in the wrong direction. Then set up the board for the next melange, which could be tricky if the action was fast-moving. Does this sound familiar? It's not much different to registering and playing an organ! Therefore the application of organ-type combination controls was an obvious step. I would have given anything for the equivalent of general pistons! Hence the Compton light console. CEP PS My efforts got an honourable mention in at least two competitive drama competitions, but of course the adjudicators did not even know my name. I was just the rather nerdy-looking and dirty 'sparks' labouring (literally) behind the scenes. One of the plays in question was Shaw's 'Major Barbara' I recall.

I think we need Lucien Nunes to jump in at this point!

You mentioned JC's adopted niece above, but did he not also have an adopted grand daughter? She was alluded to by name in another 'Compton' thread here a few years ago: https://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/topic/651-john-compton/page/13/ (See the post by Philip Wells further down the page). Is it possible she might be contactable? As for genealogical issues such as marriages and offspring, surely these are easy to trace nowadays via the internet? As an example, last December I was amazed at how easy and quick it was to trace how a relative had died during the second world war, when I had thought that publicly-available sources would have been widely suppressed and therefore difficult to recover nowadays. It only took an evening and the expenditure of £6 to discover, among other details, that he had been accidentally killed in Scotland and had died in the Gleneagles Hotel which had been commandeered for use as a military hospital. Elsewhere on the web was a photo of his beautifully-maintained current grave, and I was also able to discover who keeps it thus. All this was previously unknown to the family. In other posts above it was mentioned that BIOS might be a suitable vehicle to publish your researches. I would not recommend this because of the very limited circulation it would receive. BIOS only has a global membership of a few hundred as far as I am aware, and their publications are not well known or all that easy to get hold of outside that circle. Whenever I mention BIOS to the non-Brit organ fraternity, most of them think I am talking about computer motherboards. So although their material is worthy and without doubt scholarly, I do not regard it as well known in the public domain. From what I have seen of your work so far I think it deserves far wider recognition than that. Elvin's work was also mentioned above. He published most if not all of it privately using assistance from the Marc Fitch Fund. This is still alive and well, thus you might be able to draw on it also. CEP

A very interesting perspective, MM. Yet the organ records well in the building, or it can do if done properly. These things are rather subjective of course, but I still love the CD of Dr Jackson playing Bairstow which was recorded in 1990 (Mirabilis MRCD 902). This was David Wyld's company and he engineered the recording. Would he be able to comment, from a position of obvious expertise as an organ builder and a recording engineer, on the issues being discussed here perhaps? Perhaps the comparison between a recording and actually being there is misleading, since the microphone(s) can be placed in whatever positions are considered optimum, which is seldom true for one's ears. Also several or many can be used and later mixed down by a sensitive and expert Tonmeister (although the recording mentioned here only used a single mic position). CEP

I am as appalled by what has happened to the Wolverhampton Compton as anyone, but unfortunately its value to the council was probably nowhere near the figures being mentioned in this thread. This is because the value of an asset to a public-sector business is assessed in accountancy terms, and the figures reduce year on year in the annual budgeting process which all such organisations must (by law) undertake. For example, an asset write-down (depreciation) period of between five and ten years is typical, after which its value is as near to zero on the balance sheet and profit and loss account as makes no difference. Thus the point is that 'value' does not mean 'replacement value', as we all know from our experiences when trading in our current car for another one. An even more stark example was the channel tunnel boring machine, which was advertised on ebay a few years ago at a starting price of GBP 1! It sold for around GBP 40K if my memory serves, which was of course only a minute fraction of what it would have cost to buy. Yet other examples are the pipe organs which routinely appear on ebay. All of these items have done the job for which they were originally purchased, so they become almost worthless thereafter. So although it might be attractive for us to entertain the vision of some council employee being roasted in court for 'illegal' acts, in reality I wonder whether there would be a realistic prospect of prosecution provided that the accountancy procedures relating to public finances had been properly followed. It might be arguable that insufficient provision had been made for maintenance (though this seems unlikely given that the instrument worked quite well for a long time), or for eventual replacement. Here, there might be a stronger case, although where in the rule book does it say that everything owned by a council must automatically be replaced? CEP

The discovery of asbestos is by no means always a showstopper. Some relatives bought a house (near Wolverhampton!) some years back and were warned by their surveyor that the detached garage would have to be removed. It was an old-fashioned one constructed from asbestos sheets on a timber frame. Initially they were appalled but their surveyor said it did not present any particular problem provided they would do it by a certain deadline in which the local council and the mortgage provider both had a say. It was apparently a common problem. Also of course they would have to stump up the cost but that problem was solved, partly at least, by them requiring the vendor to reduce the asking price. So they moved in and it all went according to plan without any particular hiccups. So it seems that asbestos might be one of those kinds of problem which can assume exactly the magnitude that you wish it to assume to suit other purposes. Of course, I'm sure Wolverhampton council would never take this line. CEP

It sounds to me as though the examiner will be able to learn a thing or two from you on the day, rather than the other way round!

If you have not seen it, there's a very helpful information sheet, almost a crash course, on transposition on the RCO website. It might help you to polish your technique in these remaining days. See: https://i.rco.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Hymn-transposition.pdf It assumes you will have the New English Hymnal available, but if not the hymn tunes suggested for the exercises could be found in other books. For what it's worth, it's by far the most helpful thing I've come across on transposition. CEP

A detailed post regarding the organ has appeared on another forum: https://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,2231.msg10035.html#msg10035

That's a very good point. There's also a deeper implication in that a properly-chosen 'expert consultant' who is committed to the project, works hard and has enough experience and the right networks can personally facilitate the granting of HLF money. Like David and others on the forum, I know of other cases where Dr McVicker has done exactly the same thing. As to local councils and they way they husband their resources, both cash and assets, I'm not convinced they necessarily come up with optimum solutions despite loud and constant bleats to the affirmative. On the one hand they are hamstrung by their Victorian bureaucratic roots - who else these days still calls pavements/sidewalks 'footways' and roads 'carriageways', or sends an entire planning sub-committee out in a bus to look at an ordinary tree in someone's garden (this actually happened to me!). I doubt their operating mandate handed down from central government would allow them to do much about this. On the other hand, and like all public sector organisations, they probably do not lose as much sleep as their opposite numbers in the private sector who can face sudden wipeout if the bottom line turns red. So their financial imperatives are different when it comes to husbandry of assets such as a civic hall organ. I wonder if a simple fiscal comparison was done to at least see whether it would have been more economic to have advertised the organ for sale and removal prior to the work on the hall, compared with what actually happened? If so, it would be interesting to see the figures. If not, why not? It could have been done on a couple of sheets of paper in a day or two by someone in the finance and accounts department. Maybe I ought to submit a FOI request asking why my tree was apparently so much more important and worthy of preservation than the Wolverhampton Compton ... CEP

On the face of it the contrast with the Colston Hall at Bristol could not be greater. As we all know, they have an imaginative scheme to maintain the building as a major musical venue, with the organ included as part of the plans. Are there any obvious reasons in principle why this could not have been done at Wolverhampton? CEP

This is indeed surprising news, though I did wonder whether something was going amiss last year when Organists' Review announced that subscriptions for 2019 were to be handled by IAO Trading Ltd rather than Allegro. I'm sorry to hear of the reduced scope of the new Allegro and the difficulties they must have faced, as I found them unusually helpful on several occasions, almost going beyond the call of duty in a way which probably did not earn them much income. A great pity. CEP

Pipe organs which use electronics in any form, as distinct from those which only have an electric action of the old-fashioned (electromechanical) variety, are most at risk of damage due to lightning. Even one whose key action is entirely mechanical will commonly use electric stop control which includes an electronic combination system. The problem with electronics is that it is susceptible to relatively small transient voltage and current spikes which can be induced in the wiring (including the mains wiring) by a nearby lightning event, one which might not have caused noticeable damage to the building otherwise, or not even struck the building at all - maybe a neighbouring one or a strike which just hit the ground or a tree nearby. It is irrelevant whether the organ is switched on or not for the damage to occur. After all, a sudden current rush of 50,000 amps or more can induce sufficient energy to cause damage to anything containing semiconductors (integrated circuits, transistors and diodes) within a radius of at least several tens of metres. The extensive wiring associated with such systems in organs acts an aerial or antenna which picks up the radiated energy from the strike and feeds it into the susceptible circuitry. Old fashioned electromechanical actions (those containing relays but no electronics) are more resistant to lightning in that they will only fail when the currents are sufficient to cause physical damage such as burnt wiring. This generally requires a direct hit on the building of sufficient ferocity to cause obvious damage to other fittings and even the fabric itself. As to what can be done to prevent such damage, it's problematical. Lightning conductors will often prevent or reduce damage to the building itself, yet paradoxically increase the chance of damaging the organ because the massive currents flowing through the conductor augment still further the induced currents in the organ wiring nearby. One obvious approach is not to build organs which incorporate electronics. (No vituperative correspondence please - I've amassed enough of this over the years to paper my walls with it). Nevertheless, facts are facts. You pays your money and you takes your choice, which means knowingly accepting the risks when incorporating electronics in pipe organs. CEP

Yes, a vinyl LP album was issued. I used to have it but it seems to have got lost along life's travels. If I'm honest I found the audio quality of much of it rather poor. For example, the narrators were badly mic'd and you had to turn the wick up to hear what they were saying, and then of course turn it down again when the music re-started. The audience was noisy and probably well-lubricated. Depends whether you like that sort of thing or not I guess, although I suppose it does count as a period piece now. I wasn't there but several of my student friends were, and they said the LP wasn't able to reflect much of the occasion itself, which isn't surprising. Some of them kept for posterity the (485?) penny whistle-type things which were handed out at the door (presumably used in McCabe's 'Miniconcerto)! However, whether I liked it or not is beside the point. It seems to me an excellent example of the sort of thing needed to raise the profile of the organ, partly by encouraging audience participation as some have mentioned above. CEP

He was also possessed of a wide and deep intellectual remit, and of particular interest to me was his support of an unusual class of temperaments in which the octaves are not tuned pure. Probably the best known of these is that due to Serge Cordier, having slightly widened (sharpened) octaves which then enables all the fifths to be tuned pure. This is impossible in all other useable temperaments. Jean Guillou wrote the Foreword to one of Cordier's books, and he also encouraged the firm of Kleuker Orgelbau in tuning some of their organs to the Cordier temperament. He was not alone, as some other notable names at the time (we are speaking of the 1980s) such as Yehudi and Hephzibar Menuhin and Paul Badura-Skoda were also interested in impure-octave temperaments, though in their case it was more for the piano rather than the organ. Menuhin had his own Steinway tuned to Cordier. The fact that such temperaments were impractical before this is because they are difficult to tune without the aid of electronic tuning devices, and these did not become generally available until the 1980s. This alone shows how Guillou eagerly embraced new developments and was prepared to give them a go, rather than being suspicious and resistant like so many of his peers. CEP

Instead of just sitting them down to listen passively to a 'recital', would there be a possibility of inviting participation from some of them? This might range from a scenario where you had done some preparatory work with the schools to identify those who could play simple keyboard pieces as part of the recital, to merely asking for volunteers regardless of skill level to come to the console on the day and explore the range of sounds for themselves, and thus for the remainder of the audience. The organ has the advantage of having many quiet stops which can soften the otherwise excruciating effect of a child with no previous experience exploring the keyboard. I've done this (and still do) with my youngest grandchildren almost from the day they were born. I try to structure their explorations by suggesting they press the lowest and then the highest keys, using different stops both soft and loud. I do not encourage or allow them to just bash away however - it has to be an exercise with a modicum of structure. One of the things I do is to ask them if they can hear the topmost note of a 15th or 17th - I cannot because of age-related hearing loss. So I ask them to tell me what these very high notes sound like to them, and sometimes they try to imitate them by singing. The lowest notes also seem to interest them. Then I move to the sounds of the various stops, which they select themselves but under my guidance. Older children of junior school age or beyond might also be interested in things like synthetic tone formation using mutations. One such demo is first to successively add mutations, particularly the 12th and 17th, to a unison tone while they continue to hold a key down, and ask them to remember the sound in their head. Then ask them to release the note and then re-key it. The resulting composite tone usually sounds completely different subjectively because the brain has not had the opportunity to hear in advance the constituents making up the total sound. In my experience even some adults are surprised and fascinated by this demonstration. You could also demonstrate the similarities and differences between such a synthetic tone (8 + 12th + 17th) and a real clarinet stop, asking them to articulate what they hear. Still older students, probably into their teens, might also be interested in a simple explanation of how the synthetic stop is picking out the same harmonics already 'built in' to the real clarinet sound. You could also add a 4 foot tone to the mix, and compare that to a real Cor Anglais or Oboe stop if there is one on your organ. Even if there isn't, the difference in sound can still be instructive. At this point the discussion is clearly leading onto how electronic synthesisers work, which might help these older children to maintain their concentration. You could tell them that today's synthesisers use ideas first discovered by pipe organ builders hundreds of years ago. There are lots of other possibilities. CEP

I've certainly been the target of the sort of thing you mention. The private messages in question received from certain forum members haven't quite reached death threat levels I'm glad to say, but on occasion I've felt it necessary to report it to our hosts since the originator was using the forum's messaging system. Other examples have reached me via my personal email address, and some articles either on my website or those I've authored in journals such as Organists' Review have been discussed in similar terms on other musical fora whose 'tone' descends far lower than this one. There's no doubt that there are some extremely unpleasant individuals out there, who usually masquerade under pseudonyms of course, though it's often not difficult to figure out who they are from their IP address if nothing else. But I can't understand why this is. After all, at the end of the day we're only discussing organs, not wishing to start world war 3! But no matter - and as others have said, I wish everyone a happy Christmas and New Year. CEP

Some interesting aspects here. In terms of formal qualifications I'm a career physicist rather than a musician (even though I did manage to scrape some lesser exams under my belt in the latter such as G7 distinction), and it would be easy to point to a similar situation in physics and mathematics to that described here - i.e. a cumulative reduction in standards which seems dramatic when measured over my lifetime. But objectively, I'm not so sure. As just one example, my daughter was struggling many years ago with her GCSE maths homework which she eventually involved me in (groan). The book she was using happened to have answers in the back, and neither of us could match our attempt to one question (in statistics) with what it was 'supposed' to be. I have to admit I gave up, but she did not, and went back to her room. The following day it turned out that she had proved the book answer to be wrong, and was properly credited by the teacher for being the only one to have discovered this. She was not a brilliant mathematician, in fact she hated the subject, but by golly, she has always been imbued with determination in everything she has tackled. What does this tell us? For a start, the various syllabuses I followed in maths and physics never went near probability and statistics until the first year at university, yet a generation later she was doing it for GCSE. Of course, other things which I had studied at school had been removed to make room for it and similar subjects, but that's beside the point. So perhaps one moral of the story is that changes of emphasis and syllabus in education can be misinterpreted as a lowering of standards if we aren't careful. Another example is the sheer slog and drudgery extending over several years involved in making sure we knew how to do complicated sums using tables of logarithms. I cannot express my delight that this has long since slid off the bottom of the syllabus, having been shoved out by pocket calculators over 30 years ago - and a good thing too. But it does not mean that today's kids are less good at maths simply because they will not even understand what I'm talking about. (To illustrate the profound change that has taken place here, see ** below). Another aspect is that perhaps we need to ensure that this forum does not reflect the views of a bunch of old fogies who have an over-fondness for the good old days, whatever and whenever they were. I'm not pointing the finger here, but merely acknowledging that I'm certainly old myself, and probably a fogey as well. "Weren't school/teachers/universities wonderful in OUR day, and weren't we clever at doing such difficult stuff" etc, etc. Should this be happening, then we only have ourselves to blame for the fact that new blood is repelled and that the forum might well be dying, as Martin Cooke pointed out recently in another thread. In fact, this topic seems to have arisen precisely because of his plea for us all to get off our backsides - which is a Good Thing. But in return for our newly rediscovered collective energy, I'd now like Martin to do something for us please. As the former senior educationist and musician that I believe him to be (forgive me if I'm wrong), perhaps he could give us the benefit of his professional experience to illuminate the issue of whether educational standards are in fact declining, and particularly those in music. Many thanks in anticipation! CEP ** Some forum members of my vintage might recall the following which will doubtless mean absolutely nothing to youngsters today: "Have you heard about the constipated mathematician who worked it out with logs?" It tells a story of how things change though because my son once told me that "logs" is now replaced by "a pencil", but I now fully expect to be thrown off the forum ...

Yes, that's a good scheme John, and when I have the time I do it myself to overcome the pickiness of the forum itself. However I prefer to use a very simple text editor such as Windows NotePad, as Word inserts such a lot of invisible garbage (formatting characters etc) inline with the text that sometimes it seems to cause more problems than it's worth (although you can get round this by saving the Word document as a TXT file first). But I still maintain that we shouldn't have to do this in an ideal world, and it may well be one reason why people are put off posting. CEP

Glad to find that I'm not the only one! CEP