Colin Pykett

In my copy it's in A minor ...

I sort of concur in the sense of knowing what you mean. But both he and others in that era deliberately wrote (because they had to) for the burgeoning population of amateur organists with little technical attainment - hence all those dreary and interminable Adagios/Andantes. If you need to make a living you must keep an eye on your market. (Elgar anyone - the Vesper Voluntaries?) But is it also something to do with their limited compositional toolkit - sequence-heavy, interminable tunes that seem to go nowhere, oompah accompaniments, continual descending sevenths, etc. As an antidote I sometimes have to switch to Bach to clear my head (and definitely after too much Wagner). But even then I eventually tire of all that restless polyphony - why didn't he just keep still for a while and stop jigging about! I think the bottom line is that it must be me - I'm never satisfied ...

One thing I've always liked about Franck's works is that, when a major change of registration is necessary, he sometimes inserts a longish pause - to enable you to do it perhaps on an organ without the benefit of today's registration aids? It occurs, for example, towards the end of Piece Heroique before the Piu Lento final section begins. S S Wesley did the same - for example just before the final section of the Larghetto in F# minor where, again, he gives you nearly a bar of silence to do it. Of course, the intentions of these composers might have been nothing of the sort - perhaps they intended to heighten the drama of the piece. But I've heard players on modern organs with general pistons or steppers ignore these convenient breaks and plough straight on, so that theory perhaps doesn't hold water. Is there a definitive answer? If you haven't come across it there's an extremely useful and entertaining booklet, short and to the point, by Harvey Grace entitled 'The organ works of Cesar Franck' (originally written as a series of articles in MT in 1923 but not published by his widow until 1948). Only 37 pages. Few other authors would have been able to cover so much in so terse a form as he did. It's also highly amusing, containing many examples of his pithy witticisms to the extent that you can almost hear him speaking them. E.g. : 'the organ music of this time was that of the Lefebure-Wely type, and there are not a few traces of that cheerful writer in Franck's earlier efforts.' Or 'apart from the Andantino in G minor and these two books [of short and easy pieces], which do not call for discussion .... ' Ah well, I quite like the Andantino myself, but perhaps I should defer to Dr Grace's better judgement. Never mind. And again 'it is simply an example of Franck's weakness for sharps' (referring to a long passage written in A sharp major in his Final in B flat!).

Only the other day on another thread a post appeared about changes at Buckfast which, on the face of it, looked similar to what SL mentions here. Having said this, I have no further knowledge about what might be happening there so there might not, in fact, be all that much similarity for all I know. See: https://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/topic/3877-appointments-2/page/21/#comment-80947 (and then scroll down the page to the post by DaveHarries).

Two possibilities: (a) An organ builder who had the thankless task of adjusting an errant primary pneumatic in an overcrowded organ chamber, affixed to the bottom of a chest with a clearance of just a few inches above the top board of the bellows when full. (b) Said organ builder adjusting the spill valve of said organ on said top board of said bellows. Let's hope s/he had placed a sign at the console saying "don't turn on the wind".

Header tanks to stabilise the water pressure were quite common, not only in organs but across the water engine scene in general in Victorian times. They were used to supply engines designed to work at moderate pressures (typically engines could be obtained for applications requiring from around 10 to 1500 psi in round figures). The height of head required for a given engine can be calculated from the formula: 1 psi equates to about 2 feet 3 3/4 inches of head. (Forgive the Imperial units but it seems appropriate when discussing British engineering of this vintage). York Minster had its tanks installed on the roof of the north transept c. 1900, and they held around 5000 gallons. Norwich cathedral's tanks were in the tower until the 1930s. Etc, etc. Pressure stabilisation was sometimes necessary for several reasons, one of which was especially important for churches - the majority of the burgeoning middle class population (those who could afford their own piped water supply) inconveniently took their weekly (!) baths on a Sunday morning at exactly the time when their cooks were also placing unusually high demands on the supply while preparing the Sunday roast. So not only did the pressure predictably fall during Matins, but the volume of water available was also at its lowest point of the week. So one can envisage it to be perfectly plausible that someone might drown in such tanks, though since you quite properly did not include a plot-spoiler, I have no knowledge whether that is what actually occurred in the book. " ... sleaze, ruthless ambition and violent vengeance ... ". Sounds fairly typical of the situation organists have always found themselves in, then. Incidentally, there was until well into the 1970s a very high pressure water main running around London which was originally intended to power hydraulic lifts in the city's many hotels. Some other large cities had similar arrangements. When I was at King's College in the 1960s such a lift, complete with liveried operator, was still working in one of its constituent (and very shabby) buildings which was originally the Chesham Hotel in Surrey Street. It was completely noiseless and very fast. The pipe network still exists but has now been taken over by fibre optic comms cables on which the city's internet connectivity largely depends. To avoid digging up the streets, engineers developed an ingenious method for blowing the fibre into the pipes using compressed air. I'm sure you were all desperate to know this. Originally the water pressure was derived from stationary steam-driven beam engines, often installed in those beautiful cathedral-like pumping stations of the Victorian era. An excellent chapter on hydraulic organ blowing is included in Laurence Elvin's meticulously-researched book 'Organ blowing - its history and development'. As for falling to death in the works, any form of organ blower can deliver a very high mechanical force. It is quite possible for someone sprawled across the top board of a reservoir to be crushed to death against the soundboard(s) above if someone inadvertently switches on the wind. If one adds to this the cranks and reciprocating components of a water engine, the mutilation that could result causes one to shudder ... The Victorians were not known for their interest in health and safety aspects of their otherwise excellent engineering.

My version was edited by William C Carl, and is the same as the Marsden Thomas version mentioned above in that it suggests crotchet = 60 with the melody carried by crotchets, not quavers. So, yes, I've always considered it ridiculously slow and have always played it at speeds similar to Martin Cooke's video - i.e. getting on for twice as fast as written or thereabouts. It seems to sing and flow at that speed.

Adagio from Guilmant's 3rd sonata in C minor op 56. It is played here about twice the metronome marking in my edition which is marked sostenuto at crotchet = 60. However that might be an editorial slip - I have no independent knowledge. (My edition is an old Schott album - no date other than the piece was copyrighted by them in 1915 - but I suspect it was printed somewhat later than that because the cover price was 5/- which seems a bit pricey for the pre-1920s).

I agree the website is dreadful for the internet visitor. Not even a search box into which one could insert "organ", as far as I could make out. At least you don't have to click on an "enter" button to access the other pages, a lesson learnt painfully by web designers who hadn't heard of SEO. But beyond that, it has nothing to recommend it at all. A very old fashioned and irritating initial exposure to the way their operations manager (or whoever) presumably thinks things should be done. Not the sort of site I want to waste more than a few seconds of my time on.

Agreed that being there removes a raft of uncertainties. But the problem still remains - where do you sit? Balance might well be fine, or not, at that position, especially in such a large building. But what about everywhere else? There isn't a single answer to the problem and one can argue for ever about it. Multichannel recordings, each one arising from a different microphone, can enable you to post-mix to achieve a subjectively satisfactory result (after the event) by endless knob-twiddling. But even then you are only satisfying yourself. Others, sitting at the same mixing desk and twiddling the same knobs, will arrive at different solutions. The posts above demonstrate this. In situations like this I prefer to do something else and get a life ...

I was a bit surprised by the latest issue of Organists' Review (June 2022). If my sums are correct, it informs us that the annual subscription rate will increase by 14.8% compared with what I paid last December. Then two of the articles plus the editorial are from the pen of the same author, interesting and well written as they are (though I am aware of and fully sympathetic to the difficulties being experienced in handing over to the new editor). Four articles are by regular contributors, though should any publication wishing to reflect a dynamic image have such things as 'regular contributors' in this day and age? Another two are essentially obituaries, interesting and timely, but perhaps reflecting the gerontocracy-dominated world of the organ? As a member of that segment of society myself, I was therefore getting pretty desperate by that point to read the articles by younger authors! Yet another article was written a decade ago. I'm being overly grumpy of course, and apologise for it if I offend anyone, but I've been taking OR for over 30 years and I can't recall another issue which made me wonder quite where the magazine is going and what future it might have 'in the competitive market in which it operates' (quote from page 3). Having said all this, I was taken by the fascinating article about the National Archive of Anglican Chants, and wondered whether the author had come across the triple chants composed by Robert Hope-Jones (and possibly others), so I wrote to enquire. He replied immediately that he hadn't and would love to include them. Unfortunately this has put me in the embarrassing situation where I can't lay my hands on any of them, though I've certainly seen them somewhere in the past. So if any members could assist with this it looks as though their efforts would be appreciated by the curator of the archive.

Changing the wind pressure will alter the tuning of a flue pipe, by an amount depending on the pitch of the note involved. Typically a flue pipe will continue to speak over a range of wind pressure, going flat with decreasing pressure until it ceases to speak at all, and going sharp with increasing pressure until it flies to the octave (for an open pipe) or the 12th (for a stopped pipe). Allowable frequency deviations are typically around plus or minus 1.5% from a nominal 'in tune' figure before the timbre as well as tuning start to suffer badly, though pipes will often continue to speak in some fashion beyond this range. So for a pipe at 16 foot bottom C (33 Hz in round figures, assuming the organ is tuned to A440) the maximum permissible frequency variation in either direction before the pipe failed to speak properly would be about 0.5 Hz, resulting in up to one beat every two seconds with another 16 foot stop. This is pretty slow and would probably be scarcely noticeable most of the time unless you were alert to the issue and listening for it. But at middle C (262 Hz) the frequency variation might be up to about 4 Hz. A pipe beating at 4 Hz with other 8 foot ranks would be very noticeable indeed and deemed to be unacceptably out of tune. Things would get progressively worse going further up the keyboard and especially with higher pitched stops. Therefore these figures confirm that you can perhaps get away with softening a bass pipe by reducing the pressure, whereas higher up the compass this would not be the case. Hope-Jones experimented with this method of trying to get more than one power from a single pipe. He tried applying it to his pedal organ Diaphones, and in the case of his Worcester cathedral organ (1896) there were supposed to be 'Diaphones at two powers'. I think the selection was intended to be made depending on how far down you pressed the respective stop tab, which had a tactile detent which could be felt halfway down its travel according to one of his patents. However to the best of my knowledge he never got it to work in the actual Worcester instrument, or it may not have been installed in the first place.

I haven't seen Jennifer's book Paul, but was aware she was writing it. I have a recollection that she might have contacted me about H-J a good while ago, so thank you for bringing me up to date on this. Another interesting contact, again a long while back though, was from someone who was researching the psychology of loud noises and the technology needed to produce them, and I think he also has now written a book. He also was interested in organs (and probably foghorns!) in this context. I recall mentioning one of my pet theories - that organisations such as the church, part of whose raison d'etre was a political one to dominate and subdue an unruly peasant population by imposing its views on it, built large buildings which visually dominated the landscape (not unlike castles) and they also put large noise-making machines inside them to complete the job acoustically (aka organs). He thought this was quite an interesting slant on the subject. Thank you for the kind remark about the Wesley article. You might have seen the recent thread here on the same subject which was very helpful when I was writing it, and which I referred to.

From time to time I dabble among the statistics which show how my website is being used, and recently have become simultaneously gratified yet perplexed at how popular the articles to do with our erstwhile friend Robert Hope-Jones seem to be getting. The gratification reflects relief that at least some subjects evoke interest, whereas the perplexity stems from asking - why? I suspect the answer is that a series of books whose central character is a small girl called Hope Jones seems to be creeping ever higher up the global popularity stakes. Although I haven't yet read a complete volume, and currently have no intention of doing so, it seems that she might be an (insufferably priggish?) individual who has grandiose plans to 'Save the World', judging from a current title. I trust that those fond parents who are presumably searching for these items are not too fazed when they land on my articles with titles such as 'Hope-Jones and the Dry Cell'. Maybe it's only a matter of time before I get involved in copyright lawsuits in which I'll have to struggle to prove that my articles appeared first?

Is there any further info on the builder and what the speaking condition might be when blown, especially the Gamba, and the physical state of the pipework (e.g. is it in generally good nick, or needs a lot of straightening/knocking out, etc?). Are the wood pipes still sound or worm eaten, or with splits or the glued joints opening up? Stoppers tight or slopping around? Any photos? Or any general remarks on what it sounded like as a hymn machine when the hall was still in use and the organ in reasonable condition? Many thanks.

Maybe I'm being too curmudgeonly, Paul. However on too many occasions I've found myself unintentionally in the middle of edit wars, where my carefully crafted purple prose was wiped out and replaced by, well, garbage. On another occasion I contributed to an article about digital organs only to have it deleted by somebody who complained in the 'talk' pages that it referred to my personal website - which it didn't. Somebody else had inserted that link. (I gather Wikipedia doesn't like links to personal websites). In the end I got fed up. Life's too short and I'm fortunate in having far more fulfilling things to do. There just seemed too many people on there who might be happier, and do us all a favour, if they got out a bit more. Or tried stronger tablets. Or whatever. Not unlike social media in fact, now I come to think about it. But good on you for persevering and sharing your knowledge. Wikipedia certainly needs more like you.

While on the topic of the direness of the internet, I've just come across another example, though it's only yet another of many I've encountered. Searching just now for a subject to do with temperament, I came across the Wikipedia entry for Wolf intervals. According to the not-very-learned anonymous sage who penned the first part of this entry, quarter comma mean tone temperament not only has a Wolf fifth (correct) but eleven perfectly tuned fifths (totally wrong). For the benefit of whomever might read and learn, the eleven fifths in this temperament are flattened by a quarter of the syntonic comma - hence the name of the temperament. (Further down in the Wikipedia entry a completely different answer is given, obviously by a different author, though I can't be bothered to check their maths. Why should I be expected to be an honorary proof reader for Wikipedia?) It's terrible though, isn't it. Google automatically promotes a Wikipedia article to its first search item (after any ads), and the vast majority of the planet seem to accept it as gospel. It's not unusual to be in a social setting where virtually everything you say sets somebody checking it on Wikipedia via their phones, and then arguing with you about it. It's totally wrecked what used to be the sort of dinner party I looked forward to. What a world we live in. Long ago I decided that Wikipedia was an excellent example of an organisation that was set up to produce absolute garbage to a uniformly high standard. Social media sites deliver the same product but don't even bother about the high standard bit. (P S: Apologies to those who are rightly fed up to the back teeth with me banging on about temperament ... )

Although I might have expressed it differently I cannot disagree with the conclusions. Maybe 'inconsequential claptrap' is the phrase I would have reached for. Unfortunately the general level of internet dialogue has long reduced discussion of just about everything to its lowest common denominator. At one time I had naive hopes that forums such as this would continue to be a home for those who wanted something better, but things have not turned out like this. Even here we now find members (usually anonymous of course), who have played little or no useful part in a thread, attempting to belittle those who have. It's a problem which affects all fora - I can't mention them because we aren't supposed to do that, but most readers will know what I mean ...

You can have both options if the combination system allows for a 'neutral' (neither 'on' nor 'off') position for stops such as couplers and tremulants. The simple switches in some early (c. 1930s) manual setter boards were often not spring-loaded with a mechanical detent action, so they could be left in a convenient intermediate neutral position. This was not so for spring-loaded switches, or when electronic capture systems arrived c. 1970 which only offered an 'on' and an 'off' state for each stop. I have designed several electronic systems, one of which incorporated a few small mechanical switches for designated stops which could selectively remove them from the control of divisional (but not general) pistons. Since the number of such stops is relatively small it isn't particularly expensive to incorporated such a feature, and the switches can of course be easily set by the organist rather then needing the intervention of a tuner or organ builder - as might be the case for today's more sophisticated software-controlled systems as mentioned in previous posts. As one with a lifetime's involvement with hardware and software system design, I've always been a fan of the KISS principle in matters such as this - Keep It Simple, Stupid - though not all designers seem to agree ...

A feature of the physics of flue pipes in general (note I said 'flue' not 'flute') might be relevant. The air sheet, arising from the flue slit and moving upwards across the mouth, oscillates back and forth across the upper lip - moving from inside to outside the pipe - while the pipe is speaking. If the relative positions of the upper lip, the languid and the flue slit itself are such that the sheet spends the same amount of time inside the pipe as outside over each cycle of oscillation, then the even-numbered harmonics in the generated waveform will be reduced in strength compared with their strengths otherwise. This minimum condition occurs regardless of whether the pipe is open or stopped at the top (though stopping the pipe reduces them even further). The situation is similar to that of a square wave in electronics which has no even harmonics at all, and it sounds extremely 'hollow' in tone if heard through a loudspeaker, having some vague similarity in this respect to the 'hollowness' of most flute pipes. The square wave has what is termed a 1:1 mark-space ratio, the same as the air sheet in a flue pipe in the situation just described. Should the mark-space ratio be varied away from 1:1, then the even harmonics will begin to reappear (for the square wave), or regain their strengths (for the organ pipe). The 1:1 mark-space ratio is, broadly speaking, a desirable voicing aim for most flutes, which seem to sound more attractive when their even harmonics are somewhat suppressed (though it is avoided for principals/diapasons and strings where strong even-numbered harmonics are essential components of the desired timbre). Quite why 4 foot flutes rather than, say, 8 foot ones, should sound the most attractive I could not say, though we are now firmly in subjective territory here where adjectives such as 'attractive' and 'beautiful' (the word you used) are only in the mind of the beholder. In a few cases, such as powerful solo flute stops with names such as Orchestral Flute or Flauto Traverso, the above might not apply. In these instances the voicer might allow the even harmonics to become stronger to better imitate the orchestral instrument, by adjusting the relative geometry of the upper lip, the languid and the flue slit. Such adjustments are obviously easier to make in metal pipes rather than wooden ones, where the dimensions are less amenable to adjustment.

At the risk of attracting the ire of those who might understandably be getting fed up with this long thread, I'll mention that I've been revisiting a recording of S S Wesley's complete organ works played by John Robinson at Carlisle cathedral (Priory PRCD 1015). Although still available it's a little elderly now, having been recorded in 2008, and at first I wasn't over-enthused about it. The thumpy action noise pretty much ruins some of the quieter moments for me, and the organ sounds as though it's too big for the space it's in. Both of these indicate that it might have been rather close-miked (a problem I referred to in another thread recently where I suggested 'adding a bit of distance' using artificial reverberation - doing this reduces both problems). John Robinson's playing is impeccable, although sometimes not adventurous enough in terms of registration for my tastes. But to counter all this, it's nevertheless nice to have everything that Wesley composed for organ (at least, those pieces which were published) easily to hand, either as a reference source or just to accompany a glass of Aloxe-Corton of an evening. (And don't worry, I'm not going to mention the T-word).

I've replied to this thread already about the Kent and Cooper music emporium in Nottingham in the mid-20th century, but was reminded of another one in the same city when I bought a copy of S S Wesley's Larghetto in F# minor recently from an ebay seller. Its front cover is embossed with the name 'Nequest, Sherwood Street' and belonged to one by the name of Churchill, though the initials are not readable. It's a Novello edition dated 1947 and the cover price was 3/- (3 shillings, or 15 pence today). It brought back memories of the place which I had quite forgotten. I used to browse around it as a schoolboy and my piano and organ teachers sometimes used to source their music from there (the latter was the late Russell Missin, then at St Mary's Nottingham before the old Walker was replaced by the Marcussen). The shop can be seen in this link: https://picturenottingham.co.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/ntgm002646/posterid/ntgm002646.html The shop was founded by Peter Nequest, perhaps going back as far as the Victorian era. He and his wife had a son, also Peter, who was killed in the first world war at the age of eighteen. Genealogical details expanding on this sad story can be seen here: https://secure.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/RollOfHonour/People/Details/1029

It might be rather difficult for Donald Hunt to express an opinion of any sort on what has just been written ...

It might be worth mentioning that S S Wesley's father, Samuel, was at least as interested in the subject of temperament as his son later became. He gave a lecture in February 1811 entitled "The most eligible method of acquiring a command of keyed instruments - tuning - old and new method - equal temperament". He recommended players to become proficient in all keys, and went on to discuss the respective merits of unequal and equal temperaments. During the lecture he had an organ at his disposal which had been specially modified for the occasion (at a cost of £5), enabling him to demonstrate at least two different temperaments, 'old' and 'new'. Presumably a few of the stops had been retuned temporarily. Can we further presume that 'new' meant equal temperament and, together with his desire for proficiency 'in all keys', that he himself preferred it? Regardless of the correctness of these presumptions, might this interest in temperament have continued, and might it have planted a seed later in the mind of his son (who only attained his first birthday in the year of the lecture, but whose opinions developed in maturity seemed to diverge considerably from those of his father as we have noted in posts above). (See 'Samuel Wesley: the Man and His Music' by Philip Olleson, p. 110 et seq).

Oh dear, yes. Thank you. Maybe I should have replaced 'hare' by 'red herring'. Could I then have said that they should be kept firmly in the net (hence the term 'keep net')? And Wesley was a fisherman too ...