Colin Pykett

I am not a musician in the sense of having gained any qualifications beyond grade exams, but when I retired I toyed for a while with the idea of aiming for ARCO - though other blandishments of all that newly-gained freedom rather pushed out that laudable aim. But I did notice at that time that some of the keyboard tests did not attract many marks, even the difficult (to me) ones. I seem to recall that transposition at sight only accounted for 9, suggesting that it didn't really matter if you even declined to do it provided you were able to make up the shortfall elsewhere. I could probably have done that on sight reading for example. But it was drummed into me that, although the set pieces might seem to be fairly straightforward on the face of it, the standard of performance expected was very high, which ties in with what Vox Humana said (#3). But sorry, this has drifted rather away from the original question. CEP

Same here. The issues of maintainability, repairability, obsolescence and limited lifetime all arise with digital electronics. At one extreme are PCs and the like which are lifed to only about three years nowadays - anything more is a bonus. This is driven largely by the need to replace the hardware fairly frequently to keep up with the insatiable demands of software which require ever-increasing resources to run at a reasonable speed (which is why your 3+ year old PC starts to struggle when opening web pages, doing virus scans etc, etc). This is unlikely to affect things like pipe organs as strongly though. Software upgrades will presumably occur, but not at the same breakneck speed as they do for PCs, phones, etc. So lifetimes will depend more on how long the hardware itself will survive. But when it goes wrong, will it be possible to repair it, or will it involve replacing the whole shooting match, internal computers and all? From the evidence of what happens to electronics generally in organs (e.g. solid state transmissions) this is exactly what does happen - the whole system needs to be replaced because obsolescence often dictates that replacement parts cannot be obtained after a few years. However there is a reasonable prospect a system will last 10 years or more before this is necessary. I agree with VH's other remark that a firm of the stature of Klais will have factored this into the maintenance agreement with the client, and the client will therefore be aware of it. Still, it's very different nevertheless to the conservative technology which used to characterise organs. Good old fashioned electromechanical draw stop or stop key units have hardly changed for half a century. They are still readily available and replacements can be dropped in as required, and that doesn't happen very often anyway. Quite different to touch screens. It's today's electronic control systems which make the electromechanical stops pop in and out which are the weak(er) link. As an aside, I feel saddened that organ builders sometimes seem to forget the needs of the visually handicapped player in their enthusiasm for the latest control technology. I might well be wrong, but I can't help thinking that it must be easier for such a player when s/he can physically feel the stop controls and detect whether they are on or off. CEP

I've often wondered about this myself. However, as Martin said, it must depend largely on the instrument. Normally I would use a flute with the Vox, but I once played it on a well-maintained WurliTzer theatre organ (!) and it sounded best using just the reed alone, even though there was a flute rank available besides the Tibia. Both of these added too much mud, notwithstanding the fact that Vox's are supposed to be voiced with the Tibia strongly in mind, for light music at any rate. The Wurli tremulant, applied only to the Vox, was also just right in this case. It was fairly fast and fluttery, not unlike that on the Cavaille-Coll organ at St Sernin. CEP

I too have enjoyed many of the CDs in this series, but from time to time have found the technical quality somewhat wanting. An example concerns Franck's Andantino in G minor played on a certain instrument (I won't say where for fear of flanning flames), where there was quite distinct mains hum at 50 Hz corrupting the track. This was most unfortunate, especially at the end where the 16 foot pedal G's at 49 Hz were beating unpleasantly once per second with the hum. I wrote to complain and to their credit the firm replied, but of course they blamed my equipment - without knowing anything about it whatever. Having played the disc on several other systems since, exactly the same problem arose whenever the bass response was good enough to hear it, that is. I did take it back to the speciality record shop (my word, that dates the story - what's a record shop?) and it was inaudible on their pathetic in-store system. I wasn't particularly looking for a refund but thought they ought to be aware of the complaint, and they were grateful. As an aside, I was amused to read Andrew Thomson's sleeve note which described the piece as a "buried treasure which lies in the set of pieces for harmonium, l'Organiste". I searched high and low in this collection but could not find it therein, though it's fairly readily obtainable separately. I also prefer Harvey Grace's dismissal of the piece as one which "does not call for discussion" ('The Organ Works of Cesar Franck')! CEP

Like Vox Humana, I do find this thread rather odd. I mean, why are we discussing what is really private information about someone's family? If any of them are reading it, might they say to themselves something like "excuse me, I do exist you know". It's a bit like discussing somebody who happens to be within earshot in the same room ... Sorry guys, but rather bad form IMHO. I don't mind being seen as a net-nanny, and I've pressed the 'Report' button on this. CEP

For a long time now I've found the presence of an audience increasingly intrusive when trying to listen to music at any form of public concert, not just organ recitals. They fidget, eat sweets, emit gases, rustle their programmes, burrow into their handbags, clear their throats, cough, whisper or even talk, and of course their phones go off despite all the pre-concert announcements exhorting them to switch the darn things off. It's easily possible to hear them vibrate even when in 'silent' mode, and of course the owner just has to look at the screen when that happens. On one occasion someone next to me was singing along to Messiah at the RFH! An even less tolerant person than me who was sitting on the other side told her off during the interval. When at the Last Night at the RAH a few years back, someone near to me played a recorder (badly) during Land Of H&G. Although perhaps excusable on that occasion, it mightily annoyed some members of the audience nevertheless despite the general shenanigans. It's not unknown for a conductor to lay down the baton on the worst occasions, and Carlo Curley once stopped abruptly in the middle of a piece to berate someone who was eating crisps. They just gave him a certain kind of salute and carried on. However ... Although I might well be getting more bad tempered as I get older, I think the problem really is that I'm just getting increasingly spoilt by the ready availability of so much high quality recorded music nowadays which can be listened to in the quiet comfort of my home (with a dram or two in hand, David please note). It's not just CDs as there are so many other media sources in addition. So I feel I have to accept part of the blame for my intolerance. And as for singing along to Messiah, isn't that exactly what used to happen in the 18th century when going to the theatre was mostly about being seen there and having a jolly good gossip under cover of the music? CEP

In reply to Contrabombarde, greater loudness in a given pipe is achieved by higher wind pressures, though it is also a function of other parameters such as mouth width in a flue pipe. A wider mouth consumes more wind, so you would need a greater flow rate in this case as well. I can't answer your question as to why the wind pressures were chosen as they were. I can't see that the temperature of the wind which caught your attention was produced by the compression necessary to achieve the said pressure. Compressing a gas does raise its temperature, but even 30 inches water gauge is only a tad over one pound per square inch, which is pretty low compared to the sorts of pressures involved when we sense that compressed air gets hot in everyday life (such as when blowing up a bicycle tyre). So I'm wondering why the wind trunk you mentioned in post #2 got so hot. I suspect it might have been because the air flow was either static or so low (was the organ being played at the time?) that it was only passing through the blower slowly, and blower casings can get pretty hot of course because of the heat transferred from the motor when air flow is low. It is not unusual for motors to get so hot that you can't touch them, and some of this gets transferred to the wind. But if the air temperature applied to all the pipes is the same, the fluework will not go out of tune with itself. However reeds react differently to temperature changes, and that is where the problems arise in organs of course. I can't really comment further on your final paragraph because there are so many imponderables, other than to say that the tuning drift figure of 3 cents per degree refers to air temperature inside the pipe resonator itself. As it gets hotter the speed of sound increases and the pipe goes sharp (the expansion of the pipe material compensates by making the pipe go flat, but this effect is negligible in comparison). And vice versa. As you said, all interesting stuff. CEP

This organ was built just at the time when an alternative technology was emerging which could be harnessed to fill large spaces with sound. This technology was electronic amplifiers and loudspeakers. Until then only the pipe organ could do the job for centuries past. So it could be argued that it was unfortunate that this was perhaps not fully appreciated before the contract for the pipe organ was signed. However, electronic PA systems in those early days were truly awful. Intermodulation and harmonic distortion was insufferably high, and the 'tinny' frequency response of the horn loudspeakers often used resulted in the system sounding little different to those used in railway stations. On the other hand, an acoustic instrument such as the pipe organ does not suffer from either defect - it produces zero distortion and the frequency response can be matched to the building by proper design of stop list and pipe scales. So the decision taken at the time was the correct one in these respects at least. Having said that, one wonders whether Emerson Richards (the instrument's designer) might have had second thoughts about its concept and musicality. He seemed humbled when he first encountered a Schnitger organ in the 1940's, writing of this epiphany: "Full organ fills the rather large church with a flood of pure tone - no rumble or muddiness. Bach ... came out with an entirely new meaning. A precise, bell-like tone, rich in harmonics, but characterized by a lightness and transparency, gave an interest to the music never achieved by the romantic organ to which we are accustomed. There is plenty of power; the Mixtures are responsible for that; but it is a different kind of power. After becoming accustomed to it one never has the same interest in chorus reeds as instruments of power" As for wind temperature effects on tuning (post #2), yes there is a major effect of 3 cents per degree Celsius for flue pipes. Therefore a temperature change of 33 degrees results in a whole semitone pitch shift. CEP

Reading this thread made me realise I had omitted to mention the horse shoe coupler in a survey of the many methods used to implement reversible pistons. If you are interested, see http://www.pykett.org.uk/reversible-pistons.htm John Norman wrote that " a book could be written about the many ingenious designs devised for this one piece of organ action". One of my former organ teachers, who thought himself a wit, once told me "not to worry about how they work, my poppet". That is the most awful pun, and if you don't get it I'm afraid you will have to read the article after all ... (Hint - to save time, just scan it for 'poppet' using the 'find' facility). I only include this anecdote because it might interest Churchmouse in the context of her search for odd organ-related quotations. CEP

For myself, I come from an employment background (not music) where most of those who reach a certain pay grade automatically get some sort of honour on retirement regardless of whether they actually deserve it against any reasonable measure of exceptional performance. In many cases it basically means nothing more than they managed to keep the public side of their noses clean. Those at the top of the tree get the K's. This sort of thing debases the currency of the whole business to my mind, making it meaningless. It's common practice among large organisations. Those I respect the most are those who turn down the proffered honour ... A system like this doesn't help those who DO deserve recognition, such as some in the categories mentioned above. They have an uphilll struggle to even enter the competition against those from other employment areas which bulk out their submissions with, frankly, mediocrity. CEP

Thank you for the replies to my original questions. They suggest that today's tonal strategies applied to the design of mutation work sometimes appear idiosyncratic to others besides myself. Maybe I am perhaps naive in expecting a continuing adherence to the stricter design disciplines of the 17th and 18th centuries in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as the classical (pre-Revolutionary) French organ. With most of those instruments it is not difficult to discern an overarching logic, and I still remain disappointed that it is not more apparent today. I hope I will not be regarded as patronising if I mention the professionalism which comes out in this thread. I do not for a moment agree that Vox Humana is ignorant and inexperienced as he himself suggested, and Friedrich's command of English makes my rudimentary linguistic skills look all the more pitiful! Thanks again. CEP

Here are the full stop lists of the swell divisions of these organs which I was talking about in my original post. Apologies for not including them at the outset. The two issues I raised were the lack of a 2 2/3 foot rank and the apparently random flute or principal tonalities of the mutations. Forgive the imperfect formatting and lack of accented characters. Organ number 1 (British): Viola da Gamba 8 Viola Celeste 8 Hohl Flute 8 Geigen Octave 4 Lieblich Flute 4 Fifteenth 2 (principal) Tierce 1 3/5 (flute) Larigot 1 1/3 (flute) Mixture III Contra Oboe 16 Cornopean 8 Krumhorn 8 Organ number 2 (Swedish): Rohr Flute 8 Salicional 8 Principal 4 Hohl Flute 4 Wald Flute 2 Tierce 1 3/5 (principal) Nasat 1 1/3 (flute) Septima 1 1/7 (flute) Scharf III Schalmei 8 These are both 1960s organs but I have observed similar things in more recent ones. I just don't get a complete picture of the tonal strategy in both cases. To my ears, it does matter because one gets some rather strange effects sometimes when trying to develop choruses, and as I said in #4, the lack of the 2 2/3 rank limits synthetic tone-building flexibility. CEP

Thank you Friedrich for your considered response. I really ought to have given the entire stop lists of these organs, but did not have not the time to type them out. Apologies for this, as I realise it will have added to the confusion. Briefly, there are 8 and 4 foot flutes on both instruments together with a mixture in both cases whose compositions I know. I must also admit to being rather a devil's advocate here and was writing somewhat with tongue in cheek, because both organs are really quite acceptable most of the time. There are some oddities in blend though owing to the apparently random tonalities (principal and flute), and the lack of a 2 2/3 stop is rather silly. It limits the opportunities for synthetic tone-building, and prevents a Cornet from being built as well. I will try to find the time to give you complete stop lists. I am sure there is logic in there somewhere, though if so, I cannot see the complete canvas myself. In my more gloomy moments I have wondered whether the organ builders had ranks lying around which they simply incorporated to get them out of the way! In my mind I was comparing these instruments to those built by Gottfried Silbermann, for instance his two manual organ at Fraureuth which is one I have studied in some detail as far as I am able. There are no missing pitches (footages) there, and the tonalities seem reasonably logical to my simple mind. The range of mixtures (four in all) is also luxurious. But maybe the comparison to such a master is unfair ... Thanks again. CEP

Can anyone enlighten me as to the logic behind the choice of pitches and timbres (tone colours) for mutation stops please? I admit to defeat in some cases. Two examples: The first is a 1960s attempt at an eclectic organ by a well-known British builder of the day (no longer with us). The swell has a Fifteenth (2'), Tierce and Larigot. The first of these is of principal tone whereas the other two are flutes. There is no Twelfth or Nazard at 2 2/3', perhaps because the division is built on a 4 foot Geigen (there is no 8 foot Principal of any sort). Therefore the Larigot is correctly pitched to do duty as a twelfth with respect to 4 foot, but its flute tonality does not match that of either the Principal or the Fifteenth. And why, then, is there a flute Tierce, whose pitch and tonality do not fit at all with the Principal? (I should have expected it to serve as the fifth harmonic of the foundation stop, but when that stop is of 4 foot pitch its meaning and purpose seem diluted). The second example is a neo-Baroque organ of the same vintage (1960s). On the swell much the same remarks apply - the foundation stop is a 4 foot Principal, there is no Twelfth, the 2 foot stop is a flute this time but the Tierce is a principal, and there is a Nasat at 1 1/3' of flute tone. Oh, and there's also a flute Septima at 1 1/7', but let's not go there. On neither of these organs can one develop a conventional principal chorus at 4 foot pitch from the available material because not all of the constituents are of principal tone, and in the case of the Tierce the pitch is wrong also. It all seems rather odd. CEP

Yes, I've experienced that with an open car window. The enclosed air in the car acts as a Helmholtz Resonator. Other examples are bass reflex (ported) loudspeaker cabinets, and the ocarina wind instrument. But car-sized organ pipes, while not being particularly long, would take up a lot of soundboard room! CEP

Cavaillé-Coll's Montre pipes were slotted at the top, not to assist tuning but to produce a deliberately different type of Principal tone. In some respects it was midway between those of Gottfried Silbermann a century earlier and contemporary British nineteenth century Diapasons. The latter frequently had a dominant fundamental (first harmonic) stronger than all the others, whereas the second harmonic in those of Silbermann was often the strongest. This made them brighter and more zingy in effect than the British ones. Cavaillé-Coll's slotted Montres usually had the strong fundamental but the effect of the slot was to maintain the levels of subsequent harmonics somewhat higher than those of British builders. Sometimes this effect went as far as the seventh harmonic or so. The result was (is) that there was still enough energy in these higher harmonics to stand out when a flute was added (the flute's acoustic power is concentrated in its fundamental). This prevented the ear from being bombarded with too much fundamental tone, while at the same time allowing sufficient of the Montre timbre to stand beyond it and remain identifiable as a separate acoustic entity. Hence the fabled blending properties among his unison stops alluded to in earlier posts. All this was quite deliberate. Cavaillé-Coll was probably the most 'scientific' builder of his day anywhere in the world - he presented papers on organ pipe acoustics at the Parisian Academy of Sciences for example. Also his methods and thinking are still available to us in his working papers which have been preserved. It is clear that he knew as much as anyone in his day about what he was doing at the level of physics, not to mention his artistry. Apparently T C Lewis loathed Cavaillé-Coll's Montre tones, and he wasn't too keen on Willis's Diapasons either, which some (including W T Best) thought were little different to Gambas. Lewis was a disciple of Schulze, but that's another story. Among other things, he wrote a scathing monograph on the subject (of which I was fortunate to find a copy in a second hand bookshop while toiling up the steep hill towards Lincoln cathedral some years back). CEP

Loved the pun David (extension ... ) Maybe 'my' gatepost was actually the long-lost organ pipe you described? The gate in my message was only a few hundred yards away from a nice old church with a not quite-so-nice organ (a very early Allen digital with a couple of small speaker boxes wedged high up in the chancel roof). CEP

A strange title? Yes, partly because I couldn't think of a better one. There is such a thing as the Aeolian harp which emits sound of its own accord when the wind caresses its strings. and it was a similar effect which my wife and I came across yesterday while out walking on the South Downs. We heard a distant, eerie yet compellingly beautiful sound as we approached a gate. It got progressively louder and it turned out to be generated by a gatepost made from a closed steel cylindrical pipe about four feet high and a few inches in diameter. It was pierced by three pairs of opposed holes at the top, middle and bottom which were presumably there to allow wires to pass through when performing its usual role as a fence post. As the wind speed increased the pitch of the note rose abruptly by a fifth, and it dropped when the wind died away. We heard it emitting three separate notes at different times, an interesting demonstration of mode-switching. The timbre was that of a rather loud stopped diapason. It was a fascinating example of organ pipe physics at work, and I intend to go there again to make some measurements of the pipe and also to record its sounds. It is also interesting that natural phenomena such as this (but generated by wood rather than steel tubes!) might have suggested simple wind instruments, and thus organ pipes, to our ancestors way back in pre-history. CEP

I have lost count of the number of times visitors to the console had no idea that organs had a pedal clavier, but on one occasion the enquirer asked "is that how you pump the bellows"? on seeing me playing on it. CEP

I have a 'Beware of the Organist' sign on the door of my study. It's quite a nice thing made of cast resin and nicely painted, and they are probably fairly common as it was advertised on ebay. More to the point, I've also seen one in a church but cannot recall which one. I could post a picture of it in theory, but unfortunately do not know how to do it on this forum (I've tried before and given up). Its provenance is possibly from the pop music side of things, deriving from the traditional antipathy (real or imagined or just hyped-up) between guitarists and keyboard players. But it might be something to consider for your book. CEP

There was a very odd sign at the console of St Luke's, Battersea rather a long time ago when I was a student at London university. I can't remember the exact wording but it read something like "do not switch blower off during sermon or the lights will fuse". What this meant was that you were ill-advised to switch off during a service because the motor starter was an ancient hand-operated rheostat which had to be operated carefully and slowly in a prescribed manner to let the motor gather speed, otherwise fuses would blow and the lights (and everything else) could indeed go out. Therefore you first had to move the handle a short distance towards a detent, and let it rest there for ten seconds or so before moving to the fully-on position. This was something which could not be done hurriedly, such as in a situation where the preacher ended his sermon abruptly. Therefore it was safer, if not very eco-friendly, just to let the blower rumble on all the time as the notice recommended. (Note that I said 'his' sermon deliberately - there weren't many female preachers then, if any). I am sure this curious situation will have been rectified (ha-ha, engineers please note the pun) long ago. Besides other interventions, the organ was rebuilt by H&H some years back. Incidentally, I trust they had a good go at the tubular pneumatic action which was so slow you had time for a cup of coffee between pressing a note and hearing the sound. (In fact I believe they installed a new e-p action). It was a divided organ with the pipes on the north side of the chancel and the console on the south side. But the quality of the Lewis pipework was beautiful and fully made up for the shortcomings of the instrument. CEP

There is one interesting issue relating to 'blend' (whatever that may mean - I note that it hasn't been defined so far, even by HW III). A stopped flute (such as an 8 foot Stopped Diapason) does indeed have weak even-numbered harmonics. This means that, if combined with a 4 foot Principal-toned stop (all of whose harmonics are strong, both odds and evens), its harmonics coincide in frequency with the weaker even ones of the 8 foot rank. They slot in neatly, rather like fingers going into a glove. To my mind this explains, partly at least, why a Principal chorus can often 'stand on' a Stopped Diapason just as well as on an 8 foot Principal, yet the two choruses are usefully distinct for musical purposes. This trick works best on mildly-voiced choruses of course and it is particularly useful in chamber organs, some of which don't even have the 8 foot Principal at all. It also underpins the tonal philosophy of the Baroque era in which the Principal chorus of a subsidiary division was often built on a 4 foot stop, with only a stopped flute at 8 foot. Weren't they clever? CEP

Not quite a draw stop, but Robert Hope-Jones used double touch stop keys frequently (well, tilting tablets actually). You pressed them once and they did something, and again to get them to do something else. Celestes were a case in point - the first touch brought on the perfectly tuned rank and the second touch added the detuned one. There is still one like this in his small 2M&P organ of 1898 at Pilton, Devon (or there was when I last played it). In fairly recent 20th century rebuilds the organ builders retained the facility even though the action was converted to electronic transmission. In his Worcester cathedral organ of 1896 he went a step further - the first touch brought on the in-tune and a sharp rank, and the second touch added a third (flat) rank as well. In this organ (and some later ones) there were also double touch tablets for some of the unison couplers. These were quite complicated functionally - you pressed them once to get the coupler as usual, but if you pressed them again the coupler would then only act via second touch on the keyboard. So in the latter case you had to press the keys harder to get a louder sound - logical, but probably surprising to organists at the time. Useful for accented effects in pieces such as Elgar's Sonata in G (which was not written for this instrument though, as often stated incorrectly). Hugh Blair, the organist, was a great fan of this system. He wrote "is it too wild a flight of fancy to hope that now we may find a solution to that problem - hitherto unsolved by organ builders - of obtaining variation of tone directly from the fingers?" He had to wait about a century for that to happen with the 'aftertouch' facility incorporated in electronic keyboards, which we were discussing on another thread only recently. CEP

It surely is! But then, it always has done. When I was a lad my relatives bemoaned the fact that things were so different, racing away from them probably. Looking back, the most vociferous ones were a generation removed - my parents were less vocal and just got on with it. Nowadays I often find myself doing much the same thing! It's an age thing, I think. I did have a grandfather whom I have always respected, who seemed to take a more balanced view. He once said "don't take any notice of your aunty so-and-so when she says how wonderful things were in the old days. They weren't, and you should never believe otherwise". CEP

Some of the replies here are nearly as funny as the original post (if not more so)! But a few years ago I seem to remember seeing another mention of Mr (or Ms) Paril's fertile imagination, and funnily enough it was around the same time of year as well. Then the light dawned - I strongly suspect the author who kicked off this thread is a long-lost friend of mine! But I won't blow his cover. CEP