Colin Pykett

Mention of W C Jones harks back to my interest in whether Compton might have met Hope-Jones as mentioned in previous posts in this thread, and hence whether there might have been an element of technology transfer between them. Like Compton after him, Hope-Jones had earlier employed Jones's voicing skills (despite their names they were not related as far as I know, although 'Jones' is a particularly difficult name to trace for obvious reasons) and there remain to us a number of testimonials to the excellence of the reedwork in H-J's organs. For his part, Jones was supportive of H-J's work. In response to those who regarded him as a charlatan (some of the most strident rants originating from W T Best), he replied after H-J's death that "whatever else he might have been, he was certainly no charlatan". Perhaps Compton might have taken that view as well? It would be nice to know more. CEP

The problems of deriving mixture and mutation ranks via extension are not limited to tuning issues. In a rank which has to do duty for several stops It is difficult if not impossible to regulate the power of each pipe so that each stop sounds right within itself (e.g. doesn't scream in the treble, gets too thin in the bass, or sounds too fat in the middle so that aural transparency is degraded). The same applies to scaling (choosing the length-to-diameter ratio) of each pipe in the extended rank, because non-optimum pipe scales bring their own set of problems. These things are difficult enough to get right in a 'straight' organ which does not use extension. The problems are not limited to derived mutation ranks of course - they affect derived stops at any pitch in a similar way. I have found it difficult to find out enough detail of how Compton and the other better builders of extension organs addressed these issues in practice by doing R&D, though the larger firms did appear to at least have a go at it by experimenting with extended ranks having different scaling progressions across the compass, and applying different voicing and regulation treatments (no doubt largely funded by a succession of customers!). How successful the outcomes were depends partly on personal preferences I think, so it's probably best viewed as a 'horses for courses' matter at the end of the day. Nevertheless, for his larger extended instruments as opposed to the tiny ones such as the Miniatura, Compton certainly believed in providing enough basic material in terms of numbers of pipes so that there was a reasonably wide pool of differing tonalities and pitches to draw on when developing his derivation schemes. I say "certainly" because he said so quite often, and he was also honest enough not to hide the problems outlined above. A good example of his thinking is in Sumner's book 'The Organ' (p. 434, 3rd edition). Here he (Compton himself, not Sumner) analyses one of his own 9-rank extension organs having 826 pipes. This complement would only provide for a small straight instrument with roughly 13 stops, yet he manages to derive 42 speaking stops from them including three mixtures and various mutations (but, mercifully, no tierces!). Unfortunately, yet further problems emerge when you study this scheme in detail, such as the impossibility (in the scheme as described) of providing an independent swell organ because so many of the ranks service the two manual divisions and the pedals. Thus he had to label the divisions as 'Great' and 'Positif'. This does not necessarily mean that no ranks at all could be enclosed, though if they were it could produce some rather strange effects. Another issue is the lack of couplers, not mentioned and not included in his example stop list, because when there is so little actual material in terms of pipes and so many stops on all divisions drawing on it, the concept of coupling starts to lose meaning and just serves to muddy the waters further. CEP

Another reason why derived tierces work on theatre organs is that when the wobblers are on, they drown out the problem anyway! CEP

I'm even more confused now! The beat between a unison and a 12th arises between the 3rd harmonic of the unison and the 1st harmonic (the fundamental) of the 12th. So if the waveforms are sine waves as they were in your experiment, there is no 3rd harmonic in the unison to generate a beat to start with. And yet a further issue is that you were listening to binaural beats which are generated (if at all) in the brain, whereas the beats one actually hears in a real life situation from an organ are objective phase-interference phenomena which exist in the atmosphere before they reach the ears to start with. However the ear/brain combination can generate weak beats if the sounds are loud enough, which complicates the matter somewhat. Maybe you were hearing these, but if so they are quite a different animal to those a tuner hears and uses, for the reasons just outlined But as you said, beats are affected by the strengths of the harmonics in the sounds (which is another way of saying what I just said about sine waves, in which all harmonics except the first are of zero amplitude). This is relevant to temperament studies, where beat rates and their strengths are of prime importance. If one uses stops with few harmonics such as flutes, the beats are less pronounced, and therefore less objectionable, than if using principal-type tones. So the relative subjective attributes of temperaments depend on the registration used. This makes the organ unique among all other keyboard instruments when it comes to pontificating on temperaments. I have never seen this mentioned in the literature, thus the organ is often lumped in with other instruments such as the harpsichord and clavichord as though the choice of temperament affects all of them in the same way. For the reasoning just given, this is quite wrong. Going back to Hope-Jones and Compton and whether they met, you quoted Elvin who said that H-J 'went to see' Compton. Well, of course, anything is possible, but would it not have been the other way round? By c.1900 H-J was at the height of his fame in Britain and desperately busy trying to fulfil orders, keep his business(es) afloat and debug the increasingly complex mechanisms he was introducing into his instruments (such as 'suitable bass'). I wonder, therefore, why he would have taken time off to go and see a virtually unknown young organ builder with consequently zero reputation and not yet 25 years old? On the other hand, H-J did have a reputation for hosting almost anyone who knocked on his door (much to the annoyance of Thomas Threlfall, the canny brewer-businessman who was the chairman of his first company and a major stockholder, and who was aware of the need to guard the intellectual property H-J was generating). Just a thought ... CEP

Thank you MM for the info concerning H-J and Compton. It does suggest that at least some others thought that they must have interacted in some way even if the evidence is, as you implied, slender. As to your 'beats' experiment, I'm not sure I fully understand exactly what you did from your brief description, but three thoughts spring to mind: (a) the brain can in some circumstances continue to 'hear' sounds for a short time even if they have been completely switched off. The classic example quoted in what are now old fashioned textbooks or papers is the mechanical clock which suddenly ceases to tick because it has run down - it's old fashioned of course because such clocks are now rare. While the clock ticks you aren't usually aware of it, but if it stops you metaphorically jump to attention and can sometimes continue to 'hear' it for a short time when in fact it is silent. I recall experiencing this as a child when my bedside alarm clock, which ticked quite loudly, did once stop while I was reading. Quite eerie. And (b) objective frequency is not exactly the same as subjective pitch, which is measured in mels for the very purpose of distinguishing it from frequency in Hz. Finally (c): subjective pitch depends to some extent on volume level. I have a recording of the Saint-Saens organ symphony in which the final chord seems to go flat as the volume level dies away relatively slowly owing to the prolonged reverberation of the auditorium (the instrumentalists have already just ceased making sound during this period of course). I once used it to demonstrate the effect to a professor of audiology who was dismissive of me maintaining that the effect was real (at least to my ears). When I played it to him his face showed he was astonished and it was clear he had not come across the phenomenon before, despite his specialisation. But for quint pitches picked off a la Compton from an equally-tempered rank, I think the reason it works reasonably well (at least in terms of tuning - there are other issues such as regulation and scaling difficulties which I won't enter into here) is quite simple and nothing to do with (a), (b) and (c) above. It relies on the fact that the differences between pure tuning (i.e. tuning twelfths to exactly three times the fundamental frequency - the 3rd harmonic of the note played) and the tempered tuning is in fact pretty small. Take middle C (261.63 Hz for an equally-tempered rank tuned to A440). Its 3rd harmonic is three times this figure (784.89 Hz) and this is what you 'should' tune a twelfth to in an ideal world, either as a stand-alone mutation or as a rank in a mixture. But the frequency of the tempered twelfth above middle C, treble G, is 783.99 Hz. This is what you will get if you pick it off from an equally-tempered rank. But the difference is only 0.9 Hz, less than one beat per second. This is pretty slow, and the point is that beats of this order occur anyway all over an organ as the pipes drift around slightly in their tuning, regardless of how the quints are derived. So it's at least arguable that you can get away with it quite easily. It's not the same for tierces though, where the arithmetical differences are far greater and thus the beats are much faster. CEP

I hope I'm not wasting MM's time by continuing to harp on about the Electrophonic organ firm and its products, nor that our hosts will mind me talking briefly about a pipeless organ. The possible excuse in both cases is that it might just turn out to have some connection with the Compton story, however tenuous. So to expand Tony's list of Electrophonic installations, I think there might have been one in the delightful church (St Mary's) in the grounds of Portchester Castle situated on the waterside at Portsmouth Harbour. Like the one mentioned by Tony, it too had enormous speaker cabinets, sitting either side of the west balcony. It was still there until a few years ago, but when I was last in the church it seemed to have been replaced by another electronic. CEP

The following might be a complete red herring, and it relies on the current contents of my memory which might not be entirely correct, but I'm fairly certain there was a post-WW2 electronic organ firm with 'Electrophonic' in its title and located somewhere in or around Southampton. So maybe it was resurrected after hostilities ceased and could therefore have been the same firm as you mentioned. Either then or shortly afterwards I seem to recall someone called Colin Washtell got involved with it - he was a senior BBC audio engineer at the time and had designed a fully electronic (not electromechanical) system which he called the 'Electrophonic Organ'. Somewhere I have an article about it, written by him and published by the IEE (as they were then called) IIRC. Not many instruments were made and I think the firm faded away many years ago. On a different tack I am sure you will know about the connection between JC and Lloyd's of Nottingham. I think JC did an apprenticeship with them. A minor point of passing interest is that Ernest Wragg, the founder of the once very prolific organ builders E Wragg & Son in and around Nottingham, also did his apprenticeship with Lloyd. His firm passed to his son, Fenton Wragg, and when he died in the late 1960s the firm's interests were acquired by Henry Groves. I should be interested to learn more about the connection, if there actually was one, between Compton and Hope-Jones in those early days. I have come across anecdotal information several (if not many) times over the years suggesting that they met and discussed electric actions, with JC taking a decision quite early on that direct electric rather than electropneumatic (H-J's preferred option) was a better way to go, at least for parts of the action such as coupler relays if not for doing the heavier job of opening the pipe valves. However the time window during which any interaction could have occurred seems to be quite narrow, with Compton not really getting going on his own until c.1898 and H-J emigrating to the USA in 1903. However perhaps JC's ideas started to crystallise while he was still tied to Lloyd? This would widen the window somewhat. I doubt Lloyd himself would have had much interest in such new-fangled ideas as electrical control, as the organs of his I met as a youngster were on the whole singularly unenterprising in almost every respect. However there might be others who will disagree about that. CEP

I have found this exchange and the other current one on the Corno stop riveting, and a credit to the forum as well as to those who have posted. As only an amateur musician, I would not presume to enter the debate on the musicological or performance aspects though I've learnt a lot from it. Many thanks for that. However I should like to raise a not unconnected thread concerning tuning and temperament from the physics point of view because there are some parallels in HIP here to what has already been discussed. Temperament and pitch often figure in the musicological debates which dance around HIP, and the main point I should like to make is that a significant proportion of the assertions and conclusions are unfortunately misinformed or in some cases simply wrong. This is because, to form a proper judgement in these areas, it is necessary not only to know about musical history but the history of physics as well (a non sequitur in itself because our term 'physics' only began to assume its current meaning c.1830, and of course temperament studies take us back well before that). An example of the problems one finds is that some modern authors seem to assume that people in pre-Enlightenment times knew as much about the physics of music as we do, and that they were able to undertake the most involved calculations without the aid of computers or even calculators. By 'people' I mean not only the theoreticians who wrote the early texts on temperament, but tuners, composers and performers as well, and it is somewhat unlikely that these knew much about physics. These unwarranted assumptions pour out of certain books and papers. Not only that, but some work has assumed the status of tablets of stone when in fact it is riddled with errors. One embarrassing example is Charles Padgham's widely-quoted book 'The Well-Tempered Organ'. I'm sorry, but it needs to be made clear that this contains so many numerical errors that it is actually an inexcusable travesty, and it should only be used with the greatest circumspection. Inter alia, it has resulted in some well known authors using Padgham's results in their own work with the predictable consequences, but I won't name them here. As to the history of musical physics, one frequently finds confident statements today relating to the pitch standards adopted in the 16th century or even before. Yet on what basis, one asks? The mere concept of absolute frequency was only vaguely understood at that time (pre-Galileo) and it was not until a century later (the late 1600s) that musical pitch was shown to be related to the frequency of vibration. Admittedly, Mersenne had done it (inaccurately) prior to 1650, but another more definitive experiment, seemingly trivial from today's viewpoint, consisted of holding a piece of card against a rotating toothed wheel. Lo and behold, it emitted a musical note, and this was considered so important that it was demonstrated to the intellectual bigwigs of the Royal Society. Subsequently it became possible to measure the absolute frequency of this 'siren' reasonably accurately using a modified clock mechanism, and shortly thereafter in the early 1700s the tuning fork arrived on the scene. But this was some 200 years later than some of the assertions made today about pitch and tuning standards in certain quarters! Another, more generic, problem concerns the culture and zeitgeist of science itself. Prior to the Enlightenment (to be more precise, until well into the 1700s as far as we are concerned here), physicists investigating tuning and temperament were in fact philosophers. They believed that problems could be solved merely by sitting and thinking about them, and after that they wrote their books. On the whole, what they did not do was to confirm their conclusions by experiment as an intermediate step. Not only would this have not occurred to most of them, but it was frowned upon when it did. So the early texts on the subject have to be read and interpreted in this social and intellectual context. Relatively little of what one reads from that era was actually tried for real, and this is as true for, say, medicine as it is for physics. Consequently there was a massive intellectual disconnect between the non-empirical theoreticians (even when they happened to be right) and that great army of tuners, composers and performers out there who had to actually get their hands dirty and make music. Yet another topic concerns accurate tuning, which of course lies at the very heart of temperament. There are two issues. One is that the instruments of the day (particularly the harpsichord and organ) would not stay in tune very well even if tuned accurately. The other concerns tuning practices. Tuning which is accurate enough to highlight the differences between, say, fifth (Syntonic) comma and sixth (Pythagorean) comma meantone tunings has to be very precise. In terms of the tempering (beat rates) of the fifths, these are almost identical and very careful beat timing is necessary to set either of them up properly by ear. Yet the practice of timing beats itself had to wait for two things to happen: firstly, a practical source of portable time (desirably at the keyboard) had to become available to the tuner, and secondly there needed to be a culture shift within the tuning community so that they came to accept the need to tune more accurately. Not until the 19th century dawned did this really begin to happen. Prior to that, tuning instructions (when available at all) were typically of the form "let this fifth be purer than the last tho' not quite"! All this is only a small part of a story quite the equal of the musicological complexities. Like HIP itself, one has to understand that knowledge and its acceptance by practitioners happened differently in Britain compared with continental Europe, and that is true of the historical evolution of many other intellectual pursuits. But I've already said (more than) enough here. CEP

Was he an independent organ adviser/consultant whom the church chose and paid for, or the honorary Diocesan Organs Adviser (DOA)? The two have distinct roles. The DOA's primary role is not to advise the church but to advise the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC). This is made quite clear in the document entitled 'Guidance Note - DAC Advisers' issued by ChurchCare - see the link below: http://www.churchcare.co.uk/images/Guidance_Notes/DAC_advisers.pdf Quoting from this document: "The primary role of an adviser is to advise the DAC. Advisers may, if they think it appropriate, give informal advice to parishes in broad terms, but it is not part of their duties to draw up detailed schemes or to recommend a particular contractor for a project. It is not unusual to become aware of situations where the parish needs a specialist in order to prepare a suitable set of proposals for their intended project. In situations like these, the DAC adviser should never appoint themselves as adviser to the parish and prepare a scheme of work for them. A parish about to embark on a potentially costly and possibly complex scheme in need of advice should appoint a paid consultant". Having been involved myself in situations where the DOA automatically took it upon himself to act as the consultant and insist on a particular course of action, I know how difficult it can be to get the DOA to properly understand his own role! In one rather extreme case the DOA seemed outraged that the PCC had had the nerve to instruct an independent consultant whose views were at odds with those the DOA was trying to foist on the church. But with patience and diplomacy we eventually 'won' (if that's the right word), and the necessary Faculty was granted. On the other hand, if a paid consultant (i.e. not the DOA) is the source of the problem, the answer is much easier - kick him out and find another with whom the church can work in a more positive fashion. Although the events in this thread are old news, they are still relevant to the point I'm making here, at least for the CofE. CEP

I respectfully disagree. I find the views of professional musicians such as David with long and wide experience to be a valuable feature of this forum, and I trust he will continue to express them! My interest in mixtures and mutations arises mainly from the physics of music which is where my expertise (such as it is) lies, but it needs to be augmented by knowledge from 'the other side', i.e. from musicians who have to actually cope with and use the things for real. I'm also keen on getting information from yet a third source, organ builders, which is another area where this forum is so helpful. CEP

The 32' reed (Contra Trombone) at Cape Town cathedral came from the old Walker organ at St Mary's, Nottingham. I think the entire 32/16/8 pedal reed unit was shipped over c. 1973. CEP

Low humidity is clearly an issue. But humidity which is too high brings with it another set of problems to do with bacterial and fungal growth, which could have major consequences for the wood and leather work in an organ action. I mention this having experienced it myself in a domestic environment. Many years ago we had double glazing installed in our home. Prior to that the internal humidity level went up and down in response to the weather outside and this was particularly noticeable as the seasons progressed each year. One result was that the internal woodwork (e.g. door panels) expanded and contracted like a concertina, the wood swelling in autumn and contracting again the following spring. So the solid wood doors would stick in winter but not in summer - it was a predictable and highly noticeable effect. I remember thinking more than once "no wonder organs have humidity problems"! But after the double glazing was installed the concertina effect virtually disappeared, to be replaced by really bad problems to do with mould growth on walls etc. Sometimes we had to physically wipe the water off some walls. Apart from anything else, the mould was a potentially dangerous environmental health hazard. It occurred because the new windows created a virtually sealed environment from which water vapour could not easily escape, though it was surprising how long it took for me to arrive at this conclusion. Thus the humidity rose to around 100% and stayed there, but without a hygrometer this was not immediately apparent. After trying lots of things including DEhumidification (!), the solution was to retain a modicum of moisture in the internal atmosphere but to control it by monitoring a couple of hygrometers installed upstairs and downstairs. (When first brought into the house they almost went off-scale). Thus we now have what is essentially a closed-loop humidity control system, with me being the human servo-actuator who has the job of slightly adjusting the amount by which we open the window ventilators every few days or weeks. I find a humidity level around 60% is about right. This simple measure has dramatically reduced the bacterial/fungal growth problem to negligible proportions and it also more or less stops the annual oscillation in the woodwork. Incidentally, I had to discover this solution for myself - it wasn't mentioned in an expensive report which I commissioned from a so-called expert surveyor, whose services were completely useless. And the time it took to find the root of the problem was not because I was an idiot (even though I might be), but because anything you do in this situation has a very long time constant - you have to wait weeks for the effect of any change to become apparent. So perhaps a conclusion here is that it is necessary to have some sort of humidity controller installed as part of the humidification installation, either automatic or (as in my domestic example) manual. Otherwise there might be a danger one set of problems will be exchanged for another. CEP

Thank you for these responses. Replying to John Robinson, perhaps I should have made the point more clearly that I was surprised that none of the page-one search results in my simple examples picked up pipe organ builders rather than pipe organs in general, whereas this was not so for digital organ firms which appeared in droves comparatively speaking. By and large, pipe organ builders do seem to want to attract business in much the same way as digital organ makers do, because of the way they both advertise at obvious expense in the major organ magazines. Therefore it would seem logical that organ builders presumably want web surfers to land on their websites as well. It's in this aspect that there seems to be a difference. CEP

One of the things I get involved in is search engine optimisation (SEO) related to internet searches. It's to do with making a website as visible as possible to a search engine such as Google, and it means that you have to make the site appear as a result of as many user search terms as possible, and to appear as near to the top of the list of search results as possible. For instance, if you are selling apples, you would need to work hard to ensure that Apple computer products did not dominate the search results for your market garden website! For all their oft-lauded sophistication, search engines are actually pretty dim, particularly when you ask them to look for minority-interest subjects such as pipe organs. This has come home to me during some recent internet searches, so I was led to wondering whether pipe organ builders might be missing a trick here. As an example, I looked for the term 'pipe organ' (omitting the quote marks) on Google. Out of the ten results which came up on the first page, not a single one was for an organ builder, which rather surprised me. (I was doing this on the UK version of Google. You can log into the US version, but it didn't make any difference because Google knows the country from which you are searching from your IP address and therefore it no longer allows you to assess how the results might vary with search location). Yet when I looked for 'digital organ' (again, no quotes), nine out of the ten results on the first page were for digital organ firms. This surprised me even more. If this matters to pipe organ builders, perhaps one conclusion might be that they look at SEO when they next ask their web designers to update their websites. However, there is no single SEO solution which lasts very long because the web is continually evolving, as are the search engines themselves. Therefore what worked yesterday might well not work today, which means that the SEO fixes on a particular website have to be tweaked on a frequent basis. It also means that the results you will get if you try these searches might be different to those which I obtained just now. Of course, one way to get to the top of the search results is nothing to do with interesting academic subjects like SEO. Instead, it's to do with hard cash. If you pay the search firms enough money, they will promote you to the top of their search lists. So perhaps the digital organ firms are merely doing that whereas the pipe organ firms aren't - just a thought. Finally, a disclaimer. I'm not advertising my services here. I just wanted to bring a situation that strikes me as interesting to the notice of a wider audience which is well-disposed towards pipe organs. CEP

Apart from what else might be got from this book, it gives the impression that Hollins was a thoroughly nice person. He also did not seem to have been one who allowed life to get him down, despite all the many difficulties he had to contend with. Not only was his glass half full, it seems to me that it was flowing over! CEP

This seems to have been interpreted liberally: "There is no dogma that the organ or harmonium can be used in church, but not the drum" Cardinal Francis Arinze CEP

Thank you David for bringing this to the forum's attention. It reminded me again how thoughtless it is of organ builders to use luminous stop controls, something I've often pondered on. If it only applied to the Compton era maybe it's a criticism which has less relevance today in the pipe organ world, but the fact that most electronic organ makers still use it widely shows a surprising (and somewhat callous?) disregard of the difficulties of those with visual impairment. And as for touch screens ... Regarding S_L's remarks about Hollins's music, I was surprised to read some years ago that Hollins's own favourite was apparently the Andante in D, considering the other superficially more impressive works he penned. However it gave me encouragement in that I was able to play the Andante reasonably competently, which could hardly be said for some of his other pieces! CEP

Some reflections ... There might be wider issues of culture and national identity here. I also have observed the 'touristy' nature of St Peter's and other Italian cathedrals as well. The last time I was in the country I got to Pisa early (where I was flying back from), so decided to spend a few hours doing the tourist bit in the cathedral square. It was just the same as in Rome. An evening Mass was in progress, it was warm and balmy and all the doors were wide open. The organist, in jeans and an open-necked shirt, seemed to spend most of his time somewhere else, only dashing back to the console when he had to play. (The organ didn't sound up to much though - I don't know anything about it). People were milling in and out all the while, including quite young children who rushed in, genuflected and then rushed out again. Yet I have to say that I found it refreshing that even the grandest places of worship in Italy are considered so accessible to everyone, from aged nuns to youngsters. And the place was packed full of heaving humanity the whole time. Isn't that what worship is actually all about? How very different to (stuffy and elitist?) Britain! It's a pity in some ways that the organ is still so strongly identified with the church, rather than being regarded as a secular instrument like every other. But that's the situation we have, we are where we are, and if there were to be a hypothetical fight to the death between the church and its music, I think I know which would lose. And quite right too, really. A couple of quotations: " ... it does not help when someone like Carlo Curley takes an Allen into a place like Ely Cathedral, where I was two weeks ago, and due to the acoustical situation and placement, the Allen sounds depressingly effective." Jonathan Ambrosino "I am as fond of fine music and handsome buildings as Milton was, or Cromwell, or Bunyan; but if I found that they were becoming the instruments of a systematic idolatry of sensuousness, I would hold it good statesmanship to blow every cathedral in the world to pieces with dynamite, organ and all, without the least heed to the screams of the art critics and cultured voluptuaries". George Bernard Shaw Heavy stuff. So to counter it, I'll conclude by mentioning that my sojourn in Pisa ended with an al fresco meal during which we could gaze up at the leaning tower silhouetted by a full moon. How wonderful it was. I just hope us Brits can continue to enjoy these Italian pleasures post-Brexit. I love the place and people, and am so glad it isn't at all like home, cathedrals and all. I hated having to leave as I watched the city lights recede from the steeply-banking plane ... CEP

Thinking a bit further, David Drinkell's preference for a sharp celeste rank might be related to the impure-octave temperament imposed on the detuned rank as I explained above. A sharp celeste rank has slightly narrower octaves than the exactly-tuned octaves of the in-tune rank. This means its thirds will be slightly better in tune (narrower) than they would otherwise be, and it is the rapidly-beating thirds in many temperaments (and certainly in equal temperament) which are the most objectionable - ignoring extremes like Wolf intervals here for the sake of argument. On the other hand, a flat celeste rank has slightly wider octaves and therefore wider thirds also. These will beat even faster than they do in ET and consequently they will be that bit more objectionable to someone whose ears can detect the difference. It is therefore quite possible David is picking up on this difference when he expressed his preference for a sharp celeste. Hope-Jones provided three-rank celestes in some of his organs, e.g. at Worcester cathedral. There was one unison rank, one tuned sharp to it, and one tuned flat. The unison and sharp ranks spoke when the stop tablet was first pressed, and the flat rank was added when it was pressed again. (At least, I think that's how it worked, though the tablet might have had an extra mechanical detent which you moved through using extra finger pressure if you wanted all three ranks). However he used the first (double-touch) method widely, including in some quite small organs such as that at Pilton (Devon), where the detuned rank is still added to this day to the Phoneuma on the swell if you press the tablet twice - at least, this was so when I last played the instrument. I think similar arrangements were provided by other builders. CEP

Like many on this forum I imagine, I've heard this many times in that some organists prefer sharp celestes and others flat ones. Personally though, I can't really tell the difference though I'm quite prepared to believe that the ears of a professional player are more attuned (ha ha) to some subtle difference(s) which I can't perceive. So without thinking very much about it, I've always taken innate's view quoted above that it shouldn't really make any objective difference. However I've just done a bit of arithmetic and discovered that there is an objective difference after all. Let the beat frequency across the compass of the double rank be set to N Hz (i.e.N is the beating frequency between the in-tune and out-of-tune notes). Typically N might be 2, 3 or something in that region - it doesn't matter. It is assumed that N is made constant across the whole double rank by careful tuning of the detuned pipes. For both sharp and flat detuned ranks, there will then be a beat between successive octaves of N Hz. This means that, if you play (say) middle C and treble C on the detuned rank alone, the two notes will beat at N Hz. This will occur for any octave across the whole detuned rank. Thus the octaves of the detuned rank are not pure (not in exact tune), as I mentioned in my previous post above. However, here's the rub: the octaves are sharp (widened) by N Hz if the celeste is tuned flat to the in-tune rank, and they are flat (narrowed) by the same amount if the celeste is tuned sharp. I think my calculations are correct, though I will check them again. If they are correct, this shows that there is a small difference between the two cases. The difference is calculable, measurable and therefore objective rather than being subjective. Therefore it is quite possible that some people might be using these small differences unconsciously when expressing a preference for one type of celeste over the other. This is not extraordinary in any way if one looks at the situation in this manner: the detuned rank has had an unusual 'temperament' imposed on it consisting of impure octaves rather than the more usual case of impure fifths, thirds or whatever. In one case the impure intervals (the octaves) are flattened and in the other they are sharpened. Lots of people are very choosy about which temperaments they prefer, on the basis of flattened or sharpened intervals and the way they beat, and this case is not really any different when one looks at it like this. CEP

Oh dear, one of my long-term hobby horses has hoved into view here which I can't resist chipping in about. An electric action using the original type of electromechanical technology which they used in the first place can usually - in fact it is probably safe to say ALWAYS - be repaired by any local organ builder or even an educated member of the congregation if push comes to shove. This sort of technology uses no electronics, just electromechanical relays and lots (yes, LOTS!!) of wiring in the form of fat cable harnesses. But its foremost advantage is its survivability and ability to resist obsolescence. I've written articles about the matter in places such as Organists' Review, and you wouldn't believe the stick I came in for for my pains (or maybe you would). Threats of litigation from certain electronics firms for 'defamatory remarks', 'damaging their business', etc. Together with insulting letters from top organ advisers. I'd love to print some of it just for your entertainment, but discretion sometimes has to take the place of valour and there's no point setting the pot boiling again. I'll leave it there because Vox Humana's post admirably confirms my view independently, and in any case, this forum is not the place for excessive self-advertisement. But you can find it all on my website, including the original print articles, if you want to search for it ... CEP

That is true. The number of cents by which the celeste rank is detuned should increase towards the bass and decrease towards the treble if the beat frequency is to remain roughly constant across the compass, so it requires careful tuning. However I have found that if this simple rule is applied too slavishly, the effect can become just too out of tune in the bass for my ears. For instance, if a 2 Hz beat rate is desired the detuning required at tenor C on an 8 foot rank is 26 cents, just over a quarter of a semitone. Should the detuned rank be carried right down to the bottom note, it has to be detuned by over half a semitone, grossly out of tune with the corresponding in-tune rank. Faster beats necessarily result in even greater amounts of detuning. To avoid this problem of two obviously-out-of-tune pipes sounding simultaneously, I shade the detuning towards the bass to reduce the beat rates between the two fundamental frequencies to at least half of what it should be in theory (i.e. to about 1 Hz in this example). Yet this is not readily apparent to the player or listener because beats at the 'correct' frequencies still occur between the second harmonics, which are generally stronger than the fundamentals in string pipes. An interesting observation is that tuning a celeste rank this way (i.e. constant beat rate across the compass) results in its octaves becoming perforce slightly out of tune. This adds to the aural interest and richness of the subjective effect of a celeste. I've drawn up an Excel spreadsheet which tabulates the detuning required for each note across the compass for any desired beat frequency, which the user has to insert. If anyone wants a copy of it please send me a private email, either via the forum or using my personal email address which you can get from my website at www.pykett.org.uk (I don't want to broadcast my personal address on the web for obvious reasons). CEP

Having just read Contrabombarde's reply, it seems a bit silly not to reveal the organ I was speaking of above. Yes, it is Malvern Priory! I simply felt a bit shy when penning the earlier post in case the organ builders (Nicholson's) thought I was criticising their work on another organ builder's forum, which I am not. It is and was a gorgeous instrument which was dealt with entirely sympathetically in my view. Also I might add that Nicholson's have been very helpful in providing details to assist my research into the physics of organ pipes which draws on the sounds of this organ, and I'm glad of the opportunity to give them a public 'thank you' for this. Incidentally, the reason why the 16' Dulciana was discarded was because it was deemed virtually inaudible according to one of the articles I read about the rebuild. Everything I've said here is already in the public domain. CEP

This is an admirably succinct summary of a common problem. However it is easy to be wise with hindsight or to have insufficient knowledge of exactly why changes are made, so one has to be careful when being critical of particular cases. As an example, I've studied the recent changes wrought to a justly well known Romantic four manual organ built in George V's reign with tubular pneumatic action. Little expense seems to have been spared at that time, to judge by things like the 16/8/4 reed choruses on swell and great, and the luxury of several quiet manual flue doubles. The effect prior to the recent intervention, and making allowances for some mechanical and winding defects which obviously had to be remedied, was of an instrument with mellifluous and well-blended chorus work everywhere as well as some stunningly beautiful solo voices both soft and loud. But at the recent rebuild the action was electrified (maybe not so great a sin as some maintain), the soundboards were moved around so that inter alia the mixtures would project better, and one of the 16' manual doubles was discarded. In addition some of the fluework was revoiced to become less fluty. It is still a splendid instrument, and in terms of craftmanship the organ builders did a fine and worthy job, though its character has changed to one (i.e. me) who knew it previously, so one has to get to know its capabilities again from scratch. But these remarks are not intended to be negatively critical, and a fine organ has now been given a new lease of life for a long time. So the point is that making changes at a rebuild is not necessarily a bad thing. In saying all this I am only making some general points by referring to a special case. But more importantly I should point out that I am not relating the issues to Bristol cathedral in any way, which merely triggered these more general remarks. CEP

Pneumatic actions evolved incrementally, starting from a simple pneumatic motor which was inflated by the wind fed via a tube from the soundboard pipe-hole. The motor opened the pallet valve. This system enabled pipes to sound which were separated by a significant distance from the soundboard itself but it did little or nothing to relieve the touch of the organ. This was followed by the pneumatic lever type of action which was essentially an add-on to a conventional tracker action, made famous by the way Cavaille-Coll used it though he did not invent it. This did relieve the touch of a heavy tracker action. Then came tubular pneumatic action. So this relatively leisurely rollout of incremental technology did not overtax the research and development overheads of organ builders in the way that electric actions did not long afterwards. Electric actions were a disruptive or killer technology as we would say today, and they hit the organ world hard. Hardly anyone understood anything about electricity in those days, and that included organ builders. This is not a criticism, because how many people even today understand basic things like how to use the Ohm's Law equations and its analogue for magnetic circuits, Hopkinson's Law? So one can imagine what it must have been like in the mid-nineteenth century trying to get a handle on it and design a half-decent electromagnet for example. Then there were all sorts of practical problems, like enamelled magnet wire was still in the far future, so the wire had to be fabric-covered (silk or cotton). But this then had to be wax-impregnated to keep out the damp. Unfortunately rodents then ate the wax, and moth larvae fed on the fabric (which was later impregnated with moth-killer which is why magnet wire from that era was typically blue or green). And so it dragged on ... and on ... for decades. In the meantime many builders who dabbled initially with electric actions returned to tubular pneumatics with relief because they suffered from none of these issues, which is why they were still widely used until well into the 20th century. Hope-Jones managed to solve a lot of the problems because he was a professional electrical engineer, holding the MIEE qualification for starters. But even he had to devote far too much time to R&D to the detriment of running his successive businesses, which was a major contributor to their downfall rather than being merely a reflection of his alleged lack of business nouse as is often facilely assumed today. Somebody had to do all this clever stuff, and who else was there in those days? An organ builder couldn't just hire an engineering consultant as might happen today - there weren't any to speak of. And the era of third party suppliers from whom one could buy-in parts such as magnets likewise had not arrived, so builders had to make everything themselves or make one-off arrangements with small engineering firms. Henry Royce, he of later Rolls-Royce fame, was one of these. But it was an expensive and uncertain way to go. In the early days of any new technology there are therefore lots of casualties which fall by the wayside, such as Hope-Jones's several companies. Perhaps our hosts have other angles on the differences between pneumatic and electric actions which haven't been drawn out so far, in that they have developed a particular reputation for conserving and restoring the former type. CEP