Colin Pykett

I'm starting a new topic here, though its context is quite resonant with some recent ones. I came across this dissertation the other day about the changing fortunes of the organ in South Africa. Eminently readable and interesting (at least, I found it so) because it describes the dying embers of the impact of British Imperialism on the religious and sacred music scene there, as seen by someone on the ground who is trying to cope with it and pick up the pieces, rather than some remote and lofty historian from the UK telling us what they think it's like, as so often happens in discussions of this kind. But the interesting thing is that the current situation has ended up pretty much like that we are experiencing here, told in the first person from the point of view of an organist deploring the gradual attrition both of the instrument and liturgy he loves. He's pretty limited when it comes to solutions to the problem though, just as we seem to be on this forum. Hopefully this link will work. It should download quite a substantial PDF file of c. 160 pages (note, it downloads into your 'downloads' folder, rather than displaying it immediately in your browser. At least, it did when I clicked on it from a page of search results. So don't click it if you don't like this to happen. Sometimes I find this habit of Google to be annoying, though this time it was worth it). https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjQ7u6bwtmBAxWBhv0HHeVGCPg4HhAWegQIDRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fvital.seals.ac.za%2Fvital%2Faccess%2Fservices%2FDownload%2Fvital%3A30569%2FSOURCE1&usg=AOvVaw0Vh2pPG9UWlMcjEy0bQQww&opi=89978449

Very insightful comments from Contrabombarde, a highly-qualified musician and player - thank you. (I'm being carefully polite because I know well who you are, as perhaps do others, but it would be breaching netiquette to blow your cover!!). It's difficult to take issue with anything you said. There is, perhaps, another aspect however. Regardless of how easy or difficult it might be to access an organ, either of the pipe or digital varieties, some other factors have to be at work here. Firstly, let's recall that the sound of the organ in the shape of recordings is as readily available as it has ever been. While one could easily drown in the avalanche of the old fashioned format of the CDs which are still widely available, there's so much else now. Just this minute I've finished a long session comparing performances of Reger's Toccata & Fugue in D minor & major on youtube. I only stopped listening through sheer saturation, not because I couldn't find any more. And that's besides lots of other streaming options. It's absolutely wonderful, really. Secondly, there are probably more organs per square mile than there have ever been, thanks to the conventional digital home organ and the virtual pipe organ, as Contrabombarde pointed out. And yet - appreciation for the organ seems to be dying on its feet, at least according to some of the remarks made here. Relating this to me and my family, I came to the suspicion some while ago that music appreciation is perhaps something one is born with - or not. Forgive me, this will bore you, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway. I grew up in a not particularly musical household, but there was a fairly substantial library of mainly classical 78 rpm gramophone records. Some were of choral and organ music (e.g. Ernest Lough's performance of 'O for the wings of a dove' accompanied by Thalben-Ball). To this day I have no idea where they came from, but before going to primary school aged 5 I can vividly recall playing them to myself avidly during those early years. We also had a piano and my parents must have noticed my interest in music because I started lessons on it at 6. Well before that I tinkered with the keys and noticed that tenor C, for some reason, had a distinctly different timbre to its neighbours. To this day I have retained a rudimentary perfect pitch because I always notice when a tenor C on ANY piano is played! Then at 13 I met the local church organ, a distinctly respectable 3-decker, and you will all guess what happened after that ... Yet my own children have no interest in such things, in fact my infatuations must have driven them mad. They like music of different genres, but not classical, and definitely not the organ. My grandchildren, though fascinated by my VPO at home, show little sign of the semi-obsession that must have driven me at their current tender ages. So is there some genetic trace that I inherited, lord knows from whom, causing me to listen when classical music speaks to me, whereas it has passed others in my family by? I rather strongly suspect that without having inherited the relevant genes, organ music just isn't going to cut the mustard with anyone who hasn't, despite how closely or otherwise they are exposed to the organ in later life at school. But, and this could be more important, and although I'm certainly no expert, I'm told that these genes not only need to be there, but they also need to be 'switched on' and nurtured at a very early age - before 5 or 6 years at the latest. This then enables the relevant brain synapses to get tweaked up. So this can only really take place in the home for most small children. Yet 'home' today is very different to what my 'home' was. In those days mothers seldom worked until their children were sent to school at 5, and even then many never worked at all. They stayed at home and brought the kids up. This enabled me to benefit from the 78 rpm records and the piano all day long for several years. But today, children, whether they have the 'music genes' or not, are almost universally sent to nurseries or pre-school playgroups when barely able to toddle. So their 'music genes' simply do not get nurtured or switched on in the same way. Thus they grow up with less of the obsessional interest in music that is necessary for the likes of you who are reading this. Although there will doubtless be exceptions, it is likely to be too late to expose them to organ music later in life after those early critical years have gone. Does this make sense, and does it chime with your own early experiences I wonder?

Re the health of the forum, there has always been a substantial number of members as far back as my memory goes - currently it stands at about 1220, and I recall it being over 1500 some years ago. That's about twice the membership of BIOS! Older versions of the forum listed their user IDs, and since many of them used their own names (and, then as now, one had a pretty good idea who many of the others were) there were numerous illustrious members of the 'organ Establishment' (particularly organ builders and performers) both here and in other countries represented. Yet even in the halcyon days, in the noughties say, when one could hardly venture to say anything without attracting hordes of replies, it was the case that the vast majority of signed-up members never put electronic pen to paper. This was, and is, a great pity because how wonderful it would be if some of the same great names had participated in the proceedings, and if they did so today. All along it's always been left to just a few active names to keep things alive, granted that those few have gradually been replaced with others over the years. So it is a most curious situation that so many apparently rushed to join the forum when it was set up yet have never been active in its deliberations. Why? And why do people keep joining even today (good) but then never post (not so good)? Answers on a post card please, because I'm clearly not going to get the answers here!

Thank you indeed for this. I saw your other post under 'The Organ' which looks the same, and found that one downloaded with fewer problems than this one (not that I'm blaming anyone for that other than myself and my pesky setup!). Although not intended critically, I found the recording sonically rather top-heavy and found that some bass EQ evened up the balance a bit. I only have one other recording of this organ, by the late Roger Fisher made in 1984 (the year after yours) and live at a recital in 2011. He confined himself to French romantic works whereas the programme here is more eclectic, so they complement each other very well. I was particularly surprised how well Bach came over - not at all opaque as he sometimes does on other C-C instruments. Also C-C's rather strange mixture compositions sometimes work against the 'theoretically purer' (if I can put it like that) vertical chorus work of the baroque era, at least in Schnitger-style Werkprinzip organs up to c. 1700, though this was less noticeable here than with some other of his organs. And (somewhat late) congratulations to Gillian Adams. Is the CD you mentioned available? ---- Later edit: I have tried to download again but only the Bach F&F G min seems to be there now. Is it just me? (Quite likely ... )

From my personal and professional perspective there is an aspect of the 'game' which interests me, and that concerns the acoustical physics of organ design and placement in a building. A detailed mathematical analysis of any particular situation is impossibly difficult, but some general guidelines can be developed which can help decide, for example, how many stops and of which tonalities and powers might be appropriate for each division. It helps if acoustic measurements can be made in the building by placing loudspeakers in different positions radiating various types of tones including the sounds of recorded pipes, continuous noise and transient noise bursts to judge the effects at various microphone positions. By doing this, usually by having instructed an acoustics consultancy, some organ builders in the past have developed scaling and voicing strategies for their proposed instrument. It is standard practice in acoustics and no different in principle to doing the same thing when the acoustical treatment of a concert hall is being designed. My personal involvement with the 'game' obviously could not go this far in this case, though I wonder whether it has been done. When details of the organ are finally revealed it will also be possible to play the 'game' again to compare the before and after results. These days it would also be easily possible to create a virtual pipe organ and use it as a test bed to try out the effects of various stops and combinations of stops. The loudspeakers would be placed in various positions to assess their relative effectiveness. As to the sample set, the obvious thing would be to generate one with a similar or identical stop list to that proposed for the pipe organ. At least some organ builders have now assembled enough electronic sample libraries to enable them to make a VPO which should approach closely to what the final pipe organ will sound like. Even if they haven't, they can be readily purchased. Since there is a VPO already in service at Gloucester I would be surprised if the opportunity had not been taken already to experiment with it along these lines. I wonder whether these suggestions would fall into the category of the 'claptrap' mentioned by an earlier contributor to this thread?

@father-willis I would be sorry indeed if you felt you had to delete the thread. After all, it has already attracted three replies (excluding your own) in about 6 hours, and that's a lot better than many of mine which still sit in splendid isolation years after they appeared. Not that it concerns me in the slightest, as Martin Cooke said. And if one can be bothered, one can look at the statistics to find out how many have read it, which is a more important aspect. And as you said yourself, it's only a game, and one which has been played often here in the past. There is currently a vacuum about the plans for this organ, so I can't see any harm at all in what you suggested. Thank you for having helped to inject much-needed new life into the proceedings.

Peter, I echo S_L's apologies for not knowing much about the area. But there appear to be 'c8 boxes' (presumably meaning 'about 8 boxes'?) of parish records available at this link going up to the time the church closed: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/aab45786-aa37-4088-95f2-87419300d8d4 So there might be some organ-related material there? More generally, elsewhere the web suggests that the church itself, still a handsome listed building by the look of it, now houses a business centre (if I've identified the correct church, that is). See: https://www.walkersingleton.co.uk/commercial/st-johns-business-centre-calder-street-hx4-8aq/ There might conceivably be some tenuous leads from this, backtracking via sources such as the local council's planning department to the events which led to the development, and hence, perhaps, to people who might have some organ-related information from the time. I've done similar searches myself, not for churches I must admit, but for the history of a particularly interesting Victorian house I was brought up in. This was demolished to make way for a petrol station in the 1960s, along with some very old adjacent properties which today would almost certainly have been granted listed status, so the demolition likely could not have happened. Anyway, I managed to find out a lot about the house by searching through the most unlikely records, such as Kelly's Trade Directories and the like. It took a long time but eventually yielded the info I was after. Along the way I discovered there are individuals and organisations who will do this sort of thing for you, but at a price of course. Good luck.

There seems to be a quietly-evolving situation regarding digitals on this forum. Not all that long ago I recall the 'rules' saying quite explicitly (in large letters IIRC) that this was not allowed. But having just checked again, I can no longer find this mentioned, assuming I'm looking in the right places. Within reason, in my view it's sensible of course, given their acceptance by a large number (the majority?) of players and their presence everywhere from cathedrals downwards. However it would be unfortunate (but again, only in my view) if the subject escalated in prominence to rival the rather dreary discussions about topics such as how to repair ancient Hammonds and Leslies, whether digital clones of them are as good, etc, etc, that one sees elsewhere.

Many thanks for this fascinating info about (literally) cleaning up old records. Re worn down shellac, I once calculated that the pressure on the groove created by a typical massive 1930s pickup head playing via a steel needle at a tracking weight of around 8 ounces (getting on for 230 gm) was about 30 tons psi! No wonder playing a new record just once physically ruined it thereafter in those days. Terrible pity really. Those were the days! But I think we're still fortunate to have a goodly number of players who can help recapture the spirit of those times with their breathtaking technique. I find this one still raises the hairs on the back of my neck every time I play it: Just unbelievable! I also love to listen to Reg Dixon playing the same piece in one of his several arrangements I have in my CD collection.

Yes, these recordings are interesting. Thank you. I have a considerable number of them on the Sterndale 'Dixonland' CD compilations from the 1930s where they have been rather heavily CEDAR-processed, so it will be interesting to compare the sound quality of those with yours. 1950 is quite late for a 78 rpm recording, so this one is pretty good in terms of noise level compared to earlier ones as one might expect. Have you processed them in any way before uploading them? Audio issues apart, his technique was fabulous when he really got going, and so was the Wurli organ action in being able to articulate it so precisely.

During the signing of the registers the music was played by a very good string quartet consisting of young people at a London conservatoire, friends of the bride. They were grouped around the detached console of the organ. After the service, having observed me playing, one of them said "I had no idea organists played with their feet."

Having just this minute posted on another topic I thought I'd contribute to this one before signing out. For what it's worth: @ Martin Cooke: Yes, I think we are dying out. If not, then I don't know what else a dying forum could possibly look like. @carrick: I don't know why people bother to join either, if they aren't intending to contribute. It's an open forum so they could save a few hundred nanoJoules of biological energy (and, indeed, electrical energy) by not bothering to join if all they want to do is lurk and read. @Bruce Buchanan: I have difficulty agreeing with your self-analysis of laziness. More importantly, I greatly value your contributions. (NB As those who know me will attest, I am not given to sycophancy ... ) Incidentally, your BOT's purple prose shows just how pathetic AI is. It's always so easy to spot when reading such drivel. The real danger of AI is the increasing number of people who take such stuff seriously, especially those in positions of power who have no independent means of verifying what is dished up because their own grey matter is so akin to a bowl of spaghetti on the subjects they are supposed to be dealing with (aka 'expert at'). Am I thinking, inter alia, of politicians? Surely not ... ------- The days of traditional fora are long over, having been overtaken by social media. But I find the superficiality, silliness and (often) sheer nonsense of what one finds there to be scarcely worth the bother, plus other factors such as the difficulty of searching for the bits you want. But then, that's social media for you ... To be honest, I think this forum ought to be shut down, but until it is, I'll continue to annoy people from time time.

Speaking of photographs, there's a picture of the former Hope-Jones console at St Paul's, Burton in one of my web articles. If you go to: http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/HJOrganActions.htm and then download the PDF version of the article (it's far too long to have put it on the website itself), you can see it on page 51. This is the actual console which still exists, not just a copy of an old photo. The console is now preserved by the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust in their Hope-Jones museum at Manchester. The museum also houses the similar-sized Hope-Jones/Norman & Beard console from St Modwen's, Burton. Equally fascinating but quite different. When Stanley and I were conversing about them he said that he was intending to go there and have a (silent!) play on them! I don't know for sure whether he did, though. For those with the interest there's also a lot of technical detail about the actions of these organs elsewhere in this article which you can find by searching for 'St Paul's' or 'St Modwen's'. Forgive me for what might appear to be grandstanding or self-promotion. This is absolutely not my intention, but as this thread is still obviously very much alive, I thought it might be of interest.

I may be wrong, but suspect he was not. I think his tenure as vicar did not begin until 2014.

That's at odds with what the builders of the new instrument (then known as Orgelbau Otto Hoffmann) themselves said in publications which they issued at the time, authored in collaboration with the then Director of Music at Arnstadt, the late Gottfried Preller. According to this 'from-the horse's-mouth' material, the original pipes which they managed to recover had previously been incorporated in a romantic tubular pneumatic instrument as a few so-called 'Bach Registers'. My versions of these publications are in hard copy form, supplied to me personally from the organ builders who were extremely helpful, but originally in German which I translated myself. Being more specific, the total number of pipes in the instrument ('pfeifen insgesamt' in my sources) was quoted as 1252 of which 320 were said to be original ('originalpfeifen'). Presumably Orgelbau Hoffmann knew exactly how many new pipes they had had to procure for the contract, so it's difficult to see that the figures can be disputed. What sources did Wollf & Zepf quote?

I agree, and (presumably) so do 26k other subscribers. His video of the 'Bach organ' at Arnstadt was particularly interesting in view of its rather singular disposition compared to contemporary organs further north with their complete vertical chorus work and relatively few unison stops. The opposite was true at Arnstadt - incomplete (gappy) chorus work but far more choice of 'horizontal' colour at unison pitch, showing the emergence of a distinctly Thuringian type of instrument. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpNaouE6KZo I don't know whether he has also demonstrated a VPO version, though a sample set exists. However bear in mind that the current pipe organ, from which the samples were taken, is a modern (c. 2000) reconstruction in which 75% of the pipework is completely new. So it's impossible to say how close the organ sounds in comparison with the original which was largely lost c. 1860 if not before.

But no more under this conductor I suspect: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66604555 (What an extraordinary story. I had to double-check in case the date was last April ... )

Recently I met a consultant surgeon (FRCSI), now practising in England but who had qualified at Dublin. I asked him if he knew Stanley and it turned out that he was his Professor of Anatomy at the time. He said that Stanley "had a fine mind", although he did not know of his musical activities and professional qualifications, saying that "he must have kept that well hidden from us". He was saddened to hear that Stanley had passed away. The conversation reminded me not only of how well known Stanley was within so many different circles, but of the large number of people he helped to qualify and, in so doing, to have assisted them to go on to help so many others in their turn.

He was one of those of whom countless anecdotes could be related, many of them hilarious and enhanced with his own brand of wit, though I can imagine that not everybody would 'get' some of it and others might even be offended. I first came across him many years ago when he contacted me out of the blue about the large 4 manual Hope-Jones organ that had been installed in St Paul's, Burton upon Trent - one of his three churches there. He had come across an article on my website which discussed it in detail, and I recollect that he was intending to print it off and leave copies at the back of the church. (He might have thought better of it though when he discovered it ran to 100 pages!). He was also delighted to learn that the console of this instrument had been preserved by the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust and placed in their Hope-Jones museum in Manchester, where I believe it still resides (along with another H-J/Norman & Beard console of similar size from St Modwen's, Burton - another of his churches). Rowland mentioned that Stanley had lived in Nottingham when his career took him to the medical faculty of the university, and as part of exercising his musical talents there I know that he also became President of the Organists' Association for a spell. As well as the interview in the Church Times which Rowland linked to above, together with his contributions to 'Thinking Anglicans' ("yes, yes, I know" quoth he on one occasion), he also maintained a blog where he posted many essays as the muse moved him. As I write, the last one can be found at: https://ramblingrector.me/2023/06/28/why-do-i-bother/ By clicking the 'previous' button at top right you can move back through as many of the others as you wish. Many will miss him, and will also want to wish his family well at this sad and difficult time.

I can't add anything of substance to what has already been said, except that Stanley was one of those people whom I never met (other than through internet correspondence) but wish I had.

It would be interesting to get an opinion from a visually impaired organist concerning illuminated stop controls, including touch screens.

I was raised in a home where there were cupboards full of pre-war 78 rpm recordings encompassing a wide range of genres, but I particularly recall a heavy boxed set of Beethoven's fifth symphony conducted by Toscanini on HMV. I think it occupied five twelve-inch discs with sides numbered non-consecutively so that they could be loaded onto an early autochanger which then played the symphony complete, only requiring one manual intervention when you had to invert the whole stack of discs half way through. Coming back to organ music, Sir Walter Alcock admitted to sometimes "coughing discreetly" (as he put it) when playing his own recordings to others, as he was aware that not all of the performances were flawless and of course he knew in advance where to do the coughing ... I don't want to be picky, but thought I detected one or two slips in Dr Prendergast's recording of Wesley's Larghetto, but with an engineer behind him holding a stopwatch and no doubt prodding him from time to time to get a move on, is it to be wondered at, given Reginald Foort's reminiscences quoted above?

... without getting broken in transit. It reminds me of an anecdote retailed by my father who spent part of WW 2 at RAF Benbecula whence they flew sorties trying to catch U-boats going around Scotland on their way to and from the Atlantic. He said a 'chippy' there knocked up a wooden transit case for him so that he could safely transport 78 rpm records to and fro between the base and his home in the Midlands when on leave. As for this interesting recording, I noticed that all of the repeats in my edition (arr. H A Chambers, 1947) were omitted, presumably so that it would fit on one side of the record. With the repeats, it occupies about 5 1/2 minutes whereas without them, this recording lasts for only 3 1/2 minutes. I also thought that the last section was rather hurried, perhaps for the same reason. This reminds me of yet another anecdote, this time from Reginald Foort, who said that in his experience the most trying aspect of making recordings in the 1920s and 30s was the difficulty of ensuring the piece would fit on the record. Endless rehearsals against a stopwatch were necessary to ensure this, but on occasions when the actual take was a shade too long, the wrath of the engineers was something to behold on account of the expense involved in writing off a wax master disc and the costs of obtaining and setting up another. Apparently, according to him, the most successful recording artists were partly chosen in those days because of their skill at timing their performances to a nicety. Thanks to you and Stanley for posting this link.

The continuing secrecy here surrounding something which has been advertised for all and sundry to see in the public domain is beginning to strike me as slightly silly! Nevertheless I won't be the plot-spoiler, but if anyone still wants to find it, just google for the following extract from the OP's post: The shortlisted candidate was required to play: A Prelude or Fugue by J S Bach Widor’s Toccata A hymn given on the day: play first verse, improvise for 2 minutes, modulate up a tone for a final verse. Short-listed Candidates will also be asked to direct members of the choir in practice for about 20 minutes to prepare a new psalm and accompany a Rutter anthem on the piano. Simples!!

Not knowing anything more about the post than what you gave us above, nevertheless I can see what you mean, but it might have attracted the attention of a youngster in the VIth form who perhaps might have failed to get an organ scholarship somewhere more prestigious. The ability to add it to her/his CV when applying subsequently to a uni or conservatoire would probably carry some weight - and the fees for someone of that age would be rather more than the average pocket money many would otherwise get I suspect! (see *** below). Alternatively, a retired person might also find it of interest. In both cases there is the implication that the church in question knows what they want and that the standard they expect of their musicians is relatively high. And if the organ is a good one, it would add weight to the package. But I can also see that the chosen person might not be there for too long before moving on to greater things. ------------- *** My first organist/choir trainer post was when I was a VIth former. It paid £60 per annum, paid quarterly, and it bought me my first motor cycle which was necessary for the commute between my home and the church. Without the stipend I could not have afforded it. This figure will indicate the approximate time that has since elapsed! I had quite a nice well-maintained two manual organ about 30 years old with pneumatic action and I felt very lucky and was happy to be there for those couple of years until leaving for university. When attending for interview for a physics (not music) uni placement, the interviewer was at least as interested in my musical activities as in exploring my depth of scientific knowledge, and I was offered a place. It transpired subsequently that he was also an amateur organist, though he did not say so at the time. Some years later when attending similar interviews with prospective employers, the same thing happened - they were just as keen to explore my extramural musical interests as anything else. Much later when I found myself interviewing youngsters for jobs, I placed weight on those who had multidisciplinary interests as it seemed to make them more interesting and well-rounded individuals who would be more likely to survive the cut and thrust of a high technology career in a large organisation. Not wishing to be too pompous, I have bored you with all this because it goes back to what I said at the outset about the post that S_L mentioned being a potentially useful investment for a youngster early in their journey through life.