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Colin Pykett

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Everything posted by Colin Pykett

  1. That's very sad and I genuinely sympathise with the publishers and all others who have been affected. However it does seem to illustrate the importance of maintaining regular backups on a physically separate medium, i.e. one which is physically removed from the main computer immediately after each backup has been completed, as opposed to a second HDD say, which is just as vulnerable to attack as the main disc would be. I know I'll probably be berated for being smug and wise after the event for having preached the above homily, but I had an exactly similar problem some while ago in which I was the unhappy victim of an attack which my antivirus did not trap. Fortunately the backup protocol described above was in use. After each session on Word or whatever, a USB flash drive was inserted, the backup copy on it was updated, and the drive was then physically removed again. Everything of any value to me on the machine had been backed up in this way. So all I had to do was to reinstall Windows and then recover everything else from several memory sticks - it took a couple of hours or so and all I had lost were some trivial bits and pieces which I hadn't bothered to back up. It's boring and a real pain in the proverbial to do it, but in this case it worked a treat and with hindsight it was obviously worthwhile. Another method is to use only a totally offline machine for doing your most important work, preferably in addition to the protocol just described. I do this as well, having an icon on the desktop from which I can switch the internet port (wi-fi or ethernet) on and off. There's actually no need for me to have it 'always on' most of the time, and frankly it's just asking for trouble if it is allowed to be. And for belt-and-suspenders protection, I also scan the flash drives themselves from time to time as well - it only takes a few seconds. I certainly scanned them on another machine before using them as part of the major system re-install described above. As I said, forgive the sermon. It also goes without saying that I hope the book will now be a complete success, and thank you David for updating us. CEP
  2. Without wishing to do the thing to death, on the matter of Cavaille-Coll counting 'double' values for frequency, I subsequently came across a footnote in Audsley (his book 'The Art of Organ Building') which also made the same point - so he had obviously come across it too. Apparently they knew each other, so maybe the matter was discussed between them on one of Audsley's visits to the 'atelier' of the great man as he charmingly put it! (Audsley may have been somewhat verbose, though many of his anecdotes and turns of phrase add colour to what he said, I find). CEP
  3. Maybe, but it's each to his own I think. I wouldn't be able to hold a candle to you in terms of your musicianship, where I am enthusiastic but remain a mere fumbler! I find the spectrum of abilities and professions represented on this forum is perhaps its greatest strength, and I learn a lot from it. CEP
  4. In the early decades of the 19th century there was still confusion and a lack of agreement over what we now take to be simple matters of physics which most school students understand today. The time period and frequency of an oscillating system such as a clock/watch or metronome were one example (I say "one example" rather than "two" because the two parameters are reciprocals of each other). I once got into a complete muddle trying to understand what Cavaille-Coll was on about in one of his early scientific papers relating to the end corrections of organ pipes. I have great admiration for his depth of understanding of acoustical physics, but was stymied in this particular case until it dawned on me that the figures he was using for frequency were twice those we use today. He was apparently counting two acoustic impulses per complete cycle of the sound waveform. It is even more obscure than that though, because he seemed to change his mind later on when he apparently adopted today's convention, perhaps because later in the century the measurement of frequency became internationally standardised along with many other physical constants (a movement in which the French themselves played a significant role). It is possible this might have something to do with the metronome problem being discussed here, as DyGW suggested above. CEP
  5. Contrabombarde rightly suggested we need an organ builder here. However, as an amateur one who has built a few consoles from scratch both for myself and others, I've found the following measurements work reasonably well. I also play so I have some experience from that angle (pun) as well, in terms of whether music does or does not fall off, etc. Inclination from vertical = 23 degrees approx. Slant height of desk = 32 cm approx. These figures give a desk from which the music has little tendency to fall off, and it is also high enough to prevent even the tallest books (e.g. those awkward European ones from a century or so ago) from bending backwards over the top of it. My current home organ with a console built in 2006 uses these measurements. As to desk hooks, yes, they can be a pain to get hold of. And even when you can get them, they often cost an arm and a leg for what they are. In my time I've written to suppliers who didn't bother to reply. However Kimber Allen stock them (or at least they did when I last looked at their catalogue) but they add a premium if you are not in the trade, though they are far more polite and always respond to an email in my experience. But the last time I got hold of a couple was when an upright piano appeared on a nearby street with a label attached encouraging someone to take it away. So I just walked off with the desk hooks, which now repose on said console! Hope this helps. CEP
  6. I think I need to respond to John Carter's post above. There was certainly no intention to be "pompous", "rude", nor to "rubbish" anything or anyone, and I am extremely sorry that it came over like that to him. I also apologise to any other members of the forum should they hold similar views. To try and clarify the matter, I was merely enquiring whether anyone had a view on the matter of tempo so that I could learn something from them - nothing more, nothing less. Many here are professional musicians (I am not) and far better players than I, and it seemed an innocuous enough question at the time. But having said that, surely one is entitled to remark on any performance by any performer? I am fully aware of the musical pedigree both of the player and his mentor(s), but in view of the turn the dialogue has taken I should like to emphasise that I also admire them enormously. Mr Carter used the word "amateur" to describe the performer. I would only respond that this describes me, rather than him. CEP
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpAQI2TpNIU This (above link) is about the speed I have previously associated with this piece, as well as that I aspire to - because that's what I was taught many years ago. It's quite well played but the sound is rather poor and it doesn't do justice to the performer, and I have only used it because it's the first one I came across that makes the point. CEP
  8. I wonder what others here think of the above rendition. I've always assumed that it should be taken far faster, indeed it's marked Vivace in my Peters Edition copy. He also inserts quite a lot of rubato whereas I haven't come across that before. He also puts in the occasional ornament which might be gratuitous on his part. Still, one of the glories of the piece is that (as proved above) it seems to matter little what speed one plays it at, and his slower pace might well be better suited to the acoustic. CEP
  9. One of the many topics raised in Lucien's post concerned the " direct-electric combination capture action" of the Southampton Guildhall organ. For those who really are into the nuts and bolts of organ building, I described this in an article at: http://www.pykett.org.uk/electro-mechanical-capture-systems.htm#Compton This could not have been written without Lucien's assistance as it was he and his colleagues who actually did the refurbishment work, and this was why I described him in a recent post elsewhere as "the world's greatest living expert" on the system! So for this reason alone this special event could be well worth attending. CEP
  10. Abe Books seem to have it but it's priced in USD and with shipping it might be a bit steep for what you want: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22393589228&searchurl=tn%3Doxford%2Bpsalter%26sortby%3D17%26n%3D100121503 If you are unfamiliar with them I've used them and found them to be a reliable, if not the cheapest, firm. CEP
  11. Many years ago I played at a small village church in rural Dorset and was waiting for the bellringers to finish doing their stuff. When they finally did, a dog belonging to one of them gave a single bark, whereupon the Rector said "Ah, the hounds of hell". The congregation including myself couldn't help laughing, so he then said "What a pity I don't get that much reaction from my sermons". CEP
  12. It would seem that another organ builder once had similar thoughts. Among other things, he said: "By this means [basically, additive synthesis] any kind of timbre can be exactly reproduced, and the tone of each stop is mathematically the same from the top to the bottom of the compass. In saying any tone, we must understand not only those which existing organs, orchestras, and voices have rendered familiar to us, but also an infinite variety of new tones, some of them most charming" (The italics are mine). He also proposed the system whereby any rank in a sound pool of pipework can be used at any pitch on any manual and pedal division. His name? Robert Hope-Jones, who gave a lecture on these matters to the RCO in 1891. (Being more precise, they were not 'royal' then and they were just called the College of Organists). The quotation above is taken from the transcript of that lecture though in fact, and presciently, it referred to additive synthesis using electrical sound generation and reproduction rather than using pipes. And his 'sound pool' concept of 'warm foundation stops' (not that he called it that as far as I know) became the key underlying technology of the future theatre organ of course. And as for "sounds assembled which are hitherto unheard of", surely there is little scope left for innovation here in view of the many decades over which electronic sound synthesis has been practiced? If anything, the digital music industry has long since grown away from its early and somewhat juvenile enthusiasm to invent new sounds. It now concentrates more on trying to synthesise ever more accurately the sounds of real acoustic instruments electronically, as evidenced by the amount of investment being poured into techniques such as physical modelling. In other words, it's a case of been there, done that. So why should there be a market, and therefore paying audiences, for starting again just to do it with pipes? I might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick here, but I am having trouble seeing the rationale of it all. CEP
  13. And in view of the difficulty of keeping it all in tune, I can only assume the instrument comes with its own permanently-resident tuner who lives in a neat little one-bed apartment tucked away inside. CEP
  14. The old builders certainly did like the effect of 16 foot registers even in small organs. For instance, in Schnitger's two manual organ at Cappel which I referred to above, there is a 16 foot Quintad on the Hauptwerk as well as the fractional 16 foot Dulcian on the Ruckpositiv. The manuals can also be coupled. I have Helmut Walcha's recordings of Bach's organ works recorded largely on this instrument, and he deployed full organ frequently. Its effect is very fine and grand even though the instrument is now in a church which is rather too small for it in terms of its acoustic. The contemporaneous instrument by Wender at the 'Bach church' in Arnstadt did not have room for 16 foot pipes on the Hauptwerk as it was shoved into the top balcony close to the ceiling, but it had an acoustic makeshift in the form of a 5 1/3 foot Quint. Acoustically this makes little sense because its pitch does not coincide with a harmonic elsewhere in the 8 foot plenum, but it produces a sort of ersatz 16 foot resultant growl in the lower part of the keyboard which has its own charm. (The organ was meticulously reconstructed in 2000 so one can hear it pretty much as Bach did, and the 'growl' is quite noticeable). I am not a musicologist, but my admittedly uneducated view is that these techniques might have been intended to balance the shrillness which is associated with instruments from this era. It might therefore be a mistake not to include 16 foot tone in neo-baroque organs whenever possible. CEP
  15. We really need an organ builder to respond to some of these questions, but another approach is to consider how we perceive the sounds of reed pipes. At medium pitches, say middle C on an 8 foot stop, their tone colour results from a retinue of strong harmonics whose strengths are comparable to that of the fundamental frequency up to the seventh harmonic or so, after which they begin to fall away. This is why the addition of a tierce or seventeenth to a flue chorus adds a reedy piquancy to the sound because it lifts the overall strength of the fifth harmonic in the ensemble, and if the flat 21st is also added this augments the seventh harmonic as well and makes the sound even reedier. But top C of a 4 foot stop has a fundamental frequency around 4200 Hz, thus the seventh harmonic is at nearly 30 kHz which is way beyond the range of human hearing even for babies! Even the second harmonic at 8400 Hz will be almost inaudible to many adults in their 60s and beyond. Therefore there is no point in making reed pipes as small as this, regardless of how difficult it might be in a practical sense. Even if they were made, they would not sound any different to flue pipes simply because the upper harmonics which are characteristic of reed tones would not be perceived towards the top of the keyboard. CEP
  16. It would be difficult, though not impossible, to carry a 4 foot reed up to the top note because of the excessively small pipes. So, as others have said above, they usually break back an octave at some point while still using reed pipes, or they continue at 4 foot pitch using loudly voiced flues. Both options have long been normal practice (for instance they were mentioned by Audsley in 1905 and Hopkins & Rimbault in 1870), so does your question just concern the breakpoint at which the change occurs? Often the top octave consists of the modified pipes but I guess different organ builders equally often choose alternative breakpoints. Or maybe I've missed something and you are asking an entirely different question, in which case, apologies. CEP
  17. Ah, yes, so he did. Thank you. But I've probably confused the issue by not being more specific. The statement I had in mind was a rather tongue-in-cheek one to the effect that "the old baroque builders actually invented the sound of 'full swell' hundreds of years ago by placing a sole 16 foot reed plus a mixture on the same division". But between us I think we've made the point adequately! CEP
  18. Maybe the question needs to be asked rhetorically of the old baroque builders! The extant 1680 organ by Arp Schnitger now at Cappel has a Positive whose sole reed is a fractional 16 foot Dulcian in a division where the Principal is at 4 foot pitch. There was probably an element of slavish copying of baroque tonal architectures in the mid-20th century without perhaps a complete understanding of why the early builders did what they did. I have also seen it suggested that the main elements of the British full swell which arose in the 19th century, namely a mixture plus a 16 foot reed, arose from the same roots - presumably because it simply sounded good in chords. (I can't recall where I read this but think it might have been suggested by John Norman somewhere back in Organists' Review. If not, apologies to him). CEP
  19. Not quite sure whether you meant to include Hill, Norman & Beard, but if so: Guard's Chapel, Wellington Barracks, 1920 & 1971 Wymondham Abbey, 1954 Exeter College Chapel, Oxford, 1967 St Asaph Cathedral, 1966 Llandaff Cathedral, 1958 Almost certainly not a complete list though. CEP
  20. I remember reading some while ago that he remains something of a feted personality in his former Devon stamping ground near Barnstaple and they sometimes arrange musical tributes to him. I can't recall the source of this information now, which was fairly detailed, but there is a web page here which might provide some leads: http://www.devonlive.com/forgotten-caleb-scores-hit/story-11838618-detail/story.html Good luck! CEP
  21. You are right about Downes's opinion of the pedal reed which he wrote about in his book Baroque Tricks. Quoting: "One prominent feature was the so-called Contra Trombone 32-feet, the first I had ever met at first hand: making an excited first trial of this stop I was astounded at its literally thunderous effect, so much as to lack credibility. What was there of 'trombone' about a sound which merely threatened [it seemed] to wreck the organ gallery? It was only after I had inherited its younger brother at Brompton Oratory, fifteen years later, that I could appreciate how this stop had been conceived and why it was basically so wrong". So he used the same adjective 'thunderous' as I did a few posts above, without consciously recalling his remarks at the time. Like me, he had also taken lessons on the instrument, though there the similarities between us cease! I might add that my teacher (the late Russell Missin) seldom allowed me to use it, and if it popped out with a piston he usually poked it back in again. The bell ringers didn't like it either! But organs reflect their time and place, as does so much of human culture. It was just part of the zeitgeist of the Edwardian period. Having not played or heard the Wimbledon organ which started this thread, I wonder what its Contra Trombone is like today? CEP
  22. Yes, now you remind me of it Richard, I do recollect that. Thank you. I may have have forgotten which ranks, but have a memory that a swell reed and a mixture were included? I recall with more certainty that the thunderous 32 foot Contra Trombone went to Cape Town cathedral. I think all this happened after the instrument was advertised as nothing more than a list of bits and pieces in Musical Opinion! CEP
  23. Thank you, most interesting. I've had a quick look at the links to these instruments on the Mander website provided in another of today's posts by your webmaster. Concerning Wimbledon, it is gratifying that we still have an organ builder in the UK who is at home with, nay an expert at, pneumatic actions, and I take my hat off to you when thinking about the thicket of tubing and other mechanisms! What patience must have been required, quite apart from the necessary skills of course. In the Restoration Report is a mention of one of the near-contemporary organs from that Walker stable, that at St Mary's Nottingham which was said to have been broken up in 1973. In fact this was some years after the instrument collapsed completely in 1968. However I consider myself fortunate to have had lessons on it prior to that, and despite its shortcomings (one of which was a near-ludicrous position in the building), I still recall vividly its tonal beauty as experienced at the console and nearby. Not wishing to be a party-pooper, might I also point out a slightly embarrassing typo on the page on your website where you refer to the "Specification of the Walker Organ at the Scared Heart Wimbledon" ! (It happens to all of us from time to time ... ) Best wishes. CEP
  24. Indeed, and Hope-Jones did in his first prototype instrument at St John's, Birkenhead. It's possible if not probable that the dynamo was made by Henry Royce. But town gas was little different to mains electricity in those days in the sense that both were seldom available outside large towns. It's still much the same today with gas. Hope-Jones pre-dated the lot of them though, because he described the principle of additive synthesis in a lecture to the College of Organists in 1891 (they were not 'Royal' then). Unusually for him though, he never seemed to have patented it. I don't know about church caretakers necessarily being humble - I've come across some pretty aggressive ones in my time who almost frog-marched me out of the building having previously switched off the organ blower. Mind you, the way I play sometimes could have given them the excuse ... CEP
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