Damian Beasley-Suffolk

This may be of interest. Orgues Thomas has been acquired and re-started, with just 5 of the previous 14 employees. Doorstart voor orgelmakerij Thomas | Orgelnieuws.nl

A video of the fire in this article from the Belgian newspaper Le Soir shows just how difficult it is to tackle a roof fire, and gives an idea of just how much water is needed to do so. Soberingly instructive. Bozar dans l’incertitude après l’incendie de lundi - Le Soir

Sounds like a good opportunity for the local organists to have a bit of fun and play something light-hearted. That should help lighten the mood and put a few smiles on faces. Perhaps they can take requests. After all, where I live here in Holland there are a couple of carillons (Voorburg and The Hague) from which weekly recitals are given. You're as likely to hear tunes from the Beatles or some prog rock as you are Sweelinck or other such worthies, and it's nice to see the smiles on the faces of people, me included, who finally recognise a familiar ditty on an unfamiliar instrument. And where cathedrals are concerned, there are few paces with better all-round musicians.

It depends on what your lowest manual is. The BDO standard is 850mm, +/- 10mm If you look here, you can check the British Standard for organ consoles: https://www.midiboutique.com/index.php?route=download/download/get&did=196 and if you look here (Page 27 / Seite 27) you can see the German BDO standard for organ consoles: https://www.midiboutique.com/index.php?route=download/download/get&did=158 Many home organ builders simply look in the Laukhuff catalogue :-) It's very informative. My pipe organ, being built in Holland, has dimensions which are close to the BDO standard. My portable-ish digital organ, which came with a not particularly suitable, off the shelf, Z-stand, has been set up by me to be close to the BDO standard. Both have straight, flat 30-note pedal boards.

I read this to my wife this morning, who played the same piece for grade 8 violin many years ago. She told me that the examiner watched the piano accompanist all the way through with evident appreciation! He must have been listening to her as well, as she got a distinction :-) At the end of one of my own piano exams the examiner asked me if I was an organist. She said my sight-reading gave me away. I still don't know exactly what she had spotted - perhaps me reaching for the non-existent swell pedal during some dynamic parts.

I'm told I look angry while I'm playing, although I'm sure it's just my concentrating/thinking face, so facial or even verbal recognition for page changes is a feature I should probably avoid. I have tried a couple of Bluetooth based page turners for use with my tablet, as I've found that swiping its touchscreen is not reliable or repeatable enough. I bought a device with two foot switches, aimed inter alia at musicians, which can be programmed for a number of functions, including page forward and back. Functionally it's great, but the foot pedals are short squishy things with no physical switch feeling which make the experience very uncertain. I plan to buy a couple of proper organ foot switches to replace the existing ones, and then experiment with how to use them. On my electronic this will be no problem as there is ample ledge space on the pedal board, but on my pipe organ, and many others, placement might be a problem. On YouTube there is a video of Pär Fridberg playing Vierne 3 at Hedvig Eleonora church in Stockholm, from a tablet. In the comments he explains that an out-of-sight colleague was changing the pages for him from a wireless device, as well as managing registration via midi. A nice idea if you don't like being overlooked or, as in the case of a local organ with a side console, there is simply no space for a page-turner, even if it's your better half.

It's been going for some time, happily. I went to a number of lunchtime recitals there in 2019 whenever I was in town, and they were gradually fixing things. Obviously, I haven't heard it this year. But as I said in an earlier post, the cathedral itself is undergoing a major restoration, and any significant work on the pipe organ must necessarily wait. Being fair, as I also mentioned before, the Phoenix is good, having heard that at several lunchtime recitals as well. It does sound rather 2-dimensional, mainly because of speaker placement. I was thinking about this while at a concert on the Willis at the Hooglandse Kerk in Leiden over the summer. That organ is on the floor in the north transept, which is very high. This gives the pipes placed further back in the organ the freedom to speak up and around, rather than just through the front pipe rack. The effect is a rich sound where you can almost hear, or imagine you can hear, each pipe speaking from a single point. To an extent, a similar but less pronounced effect is noticeable from the de Swart/van Hagerbeer organ high up on the west wall, but this is different, being a much older, gentler instrument which sings out so clearly from this position. I've not heard both of the Toon's organs playing at the same time. It could be a fun experiment, while they're both still there.

In the book "Cavaillé-Coll en Nederland", perhaps a bit off-target, the author discusses two C19th CC concert hall organs, the Paleis van Volksvlijt in Amsterdam, and the Philharmonic Hall in Haarlem. Neither had 32' reeds, in sizeable buildings. There is an appendix with a number of similar instruments, only two of which had 32' reeds - Sheffield, as mentioned above, and the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris, in a hall which was a bit smaller than the Albert Hall. So, rare indeed. This book deals with CC instruments of all sizes in the Netherlands, and the smaller instruments are very interesting. Most of them, on paper at least, have the minimum to make a CC chorus - montre, flûte, 16' bourdon, trompette, on manuals at least, with couplers and borrowed pedal. I'm getting carried away. As I write, I'm in a cafe in The Hague, gazing dreamily through the windows of the French Protestant church (Eglise wallonne, Waalse kerk) at the 2 manual CC on the balcony in there. That's a treat to listen to.

As someone similarly involved in university research, I like things to be clear and, as far as possible, unambiguous - it's not always easy to be both clear and concise. I have been a fan of the Oxford comma since seeing the cartoon "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin" 🙂 Once seen, never forgotten! As one of the few native English speakers in an international organisation, I am often consulted on questions of style and interpretation, and do my best to spread good English style - and inevitably get my comeuppance from time to time when making a mistake. Ah well, all part of the fun. Like playing Bach on an accordion, or Joplin on a harpsichord, it's sometimes a matter of taste. As the song goes, you say toe-may-toe, and I say it correctly. I only remember one rule from a university style guide - this was for engineers, though. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, avoid hyperbole!" Wouldn't want to be accused of over-exaggeration.

Another example of the extraordinary wealth of churches in East Anglia. The late David Drinkell seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of them, and their organs, and there are a couple of websites dedicated to them. A rich legacy of a particularly wealthy period of English history. Again, despite my name I have no links at all with Norfolk and Suffolk, but I long for the time when I can explore these counties properly!

When the concert hall of the Danish national broadcaster was being planned, a scale model of the inside was made by a Japanese acoustics company. I read somewhere else (and of course have forgotten where) that some of these models are put in a chamber filled with a gas which affects the speed of sound prorportionally, so that things like movable acoustic panelling, stage layouts, and organs can be planned and experimented with. The organ in this hall was built by van den Heuvel Orgelbouw, in Dordrecht, NL, not too far from where I am. I might have a demo CD of it somewhere. With 91 stops in the decidedly French, C-C style that van den Heuvel are known for, and have used in halls such at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, and the Tonhalle in Zurich, I'm not aware of it being underpowered. A question of overall design concept and context? It's not as if organ builders don't know these things. I really don't know. What is interesting is that, as far as I can see, it only has a single, mobile console, whereas many British concert organs, according to comments in these pages over the years, seem to make a point of having en fenêtre mechanical consoles which are rarely used. http://vandenheuvel-orgelbouw.nl/en/instruments/item/426-dr-kopenhagen-en.html#dr-byen

I recently read about "Choir pits", at Whalley Abbey, Lancashire. Apparently these are the only remaining examples in Britain. These pits are placed below a choir, to provide some reverberation and enhance the effect of the choir's sound. I had never heard of this before, it sounds like it is a very old idea. I know of this idea being used more recently for organs in dead spaces to bring a bit of life to the sound. Birmingham Symphony Hall, for example, has large concrete chambers behind or to the sides of the organ to do this. Klais say that they put a number of ranks of the organ in them! Is this used anywhere else, for organs as well as choirs? I've heard of a couple of "Fernwerk" divisions, e.g. the Walcker organ in the Martinikerk in Doesburg, the Netherlands https://martinikerkdoesburg.nl/walcker-orgel/ where an echo division is placed at the end of a 21m long tunnel for the distance effect, and a couple of tunnels directing sound around awkward shaped churches, but never this. https://ecclesiasticalandheritageworld.co.uk/news/481-work-on-historic-whalley-abbey-choir-pits-completed

Ideal, multi-organ-cultural venue - try the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. There was an article about it in OR a year or so about it, though to my shame I have never been there.

The blower failure is known, and these things happen. Snooping around, there is also an "installation report" from a local air conditioning company explaining how they had completely replaced the system which had been installed around the organ, to keep the instrument at the same temperature as the choir. And speaking with the experience of the last few days, when the top floor of my house is uncomfortably warm even at 5AM, I would say it needed it, but probably interrupted things. I didn't know the Tickell could play the Rodgers, but this is hardly difficult these days, especially as it is an electric action. Coincidently, perhaps, Viscount have an installation in Manchester in which a rather nice pipe organ and one of their digital organs can each play each other, or both. There is a church here in The Hague - I forget its dedication, it's just known as the Elandstraat church - in which a nicely restored 3 manual Franssen, high up on a west gallery of an enormous church, can also be played from the console of the electronic in the choir. There's also a deconsecrated church in Scheveningen where they took the console out, but converted the action to Midi so anyone can plug in whatever they have to get it going. I was looking for, but could not find, the huge set of photos of the Tickell's installation which Adrian Lucas took. Really fascinating. It showed part of the action installation, looking very similar to the computer network installation of a small company, and using many of the same components. In particular, I was looking for console photos, as the Tickell is prepared for the planned Transept division. I think the plan was to move the current Transept case from the south to the north, and then provide a full 2-manual organ within it. With the rest of the technical part of the installation, actually hooking up the console would literally be "plug 'n play", although it's more sophisticated than midi.

I'm reasonably sure that this is the Rodgers electronic. Why? Because I have a couple of pictures of my wife playing it, as well as the Tickell continuo organ, which is not so small. At that time, the Rodgers was in the choir, the Bradford was still in the nave, although it was getting rather ricketty by then. I remember Donald Hunt giving a recital on the Bradford in 1990-ish, and it sounded quite nice, although a huge acoustic helps. Like any cathedral organ it must have taken a hammering over so many years, so it was bound simply to wear out.

A super performance, both musically and technically. Alkan's music is on IMSLP, I once looked at some but it was clearly well beyond me. But watching this it's such good music. Alkan is an interesting character. His Wikipedia entry is now much longer than the last time I looked, and well worth reading. This is the Temple Church. I'm slowly working through Anne Marsden-Thomas' book on Pedalling for Organists, and watching a video like this which shows pedalling technique so clearly is very instructive, although it will be some time until I get to this level ( Chapter 35: Chords ). I'll have to get my dancing shoes on!

A news report from French TV, TF1, about works to remove the organ from Notre Dame for restoration. The plan is to have it ready for re-inauguration of the cathedral on 7 April 2024. Even for non-French speakers, a nice, optimistic report: https://www.facebook.com/TF1leJT/videos/210788290355722/ And more here from the local paper: https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/notre-dame-de-paris-cinq-mois-de-travaux-pour-demonter-l-orgue-03-08-2020-8362911.php

The comment facility is there now.

An accessible obit in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/30/jane-parker-smith-obituary

Professor Magnus Williamson is giving, via YouTube, a live streamed concert on the Aubertin Organ in the King's Hall, Newcastle University, on Thursday 23rd July at 1.15 PM. Bruhns, Dandrieu, Bach, and Mendelssohn. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2020/07/virtualorganrecital/

The Introduction and Passacaglia is a very nice piece, and built on a nice theme. I'm partial to passacaglias as well, and have been working on it myself in my enthusiastic amateur's way. Some echos of Reger's I&P, but still original and not terribly difficult. I don't think I've ever heard it, which is a great pity, and needs putting right.

The only thing I can find after a short search is this: https://tijdschriftraster.nl/de-kunst-van-het-machinelezen/viii-het-lezen/ See the picture under paragraph 103 Taal. It's short enough to copy and paste into Google translate. It's not detailed, but I think you'll get the general idea. As for why it never caught on in England, I don't really know. English ones are (usually) on the floor and close to the front of the church. Most of these side-saddle Dutch organs are bolted half way up the back walls of churches. Putting the console on the side makes it easier for the organist to see the action, and also requires less floor space and therefore is cheaper to build, an attractive consideration for the locals, ever keen to save a guilder or two 😉 I have no idea about background of the link above, but it is quite eclectic and fascinating. Scroll down to paragraph 107 Tekening, and it shows a couple of drawings with a tantalising reference to how the knowledge of organs spread from Ancient Greece via Arabic and Early-Islamic scholarship - a well-trodden intellectual path - to our age, and books in the British Museum.

Interesting view of Hexham's front here https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9711954,-2.1023726,3a,75y,95.81h,95.17t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPqf5gURhfcmGvURDj4OMMxe5ToXUxs9FJx96Vi!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPqf5gURhfcmGvURDj4OMMxe5ToXUxs9FJx96Vi%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya28.58945-ro-0-fo100!7i9728!8i4142 and a view of its much less interesting back https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9716057,-2.1025749,3a,75y,283.78h,104.84t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOrMe3R-eqAquxb67MY0fMNwxurHZ7mW-0wi-iG!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOrMe3R-eqAquxb67MY0fMNwxurHZ7mW-0wi-iG%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya156.87067-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352 If you go up the stairs in the south transept and peer into the triforium adjacent to the organ, you can see what I think is the Echo organ of the previous instrument. Why is the back of this instrument so bland? I can't find an explanation of the ideas behind its design.

Oops - I didn't expect people to spend money on my book recommendation! The edition I have is from 1977, so as Colin correctly says, since then the field has developed and even some principles reconsidered, but it is nevertheless representative of its time. The thread started with perceptions of pitch and diplaclusis - the sense of hearing the same tone differently in each ear. This is part of the field of psychoacoustics. Searching for a CV of a British engineer in the field which I had read, but whose name I have subsequently completely forgotten, I came across the WIkipedia entry for it. WIkipedia may have its faults, but for scientific and engineering matters it's usually pretty good as a guide to a subject if you're new to it, easy to see if someone has been sabotaging entries, and often has a good selection of proper references. If anyone's interested, especially for things often discussed here such as hearing non-existent fundamentals, octave illusions, masking etc, it makes for an interesting read, and anyone with access to an organ (real or virtual) could probably perform some decent experiments of their own. Something to stir the stir-crazy locked-down brains to mull over 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplacusis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_psychology

With all respect to our generous hosts, here is a link to the web site of van den Heuvel, of their restoration of the Leeflang organ at the Maranatha Church in DInteloord in the Netherlands. Scroll through the pictures of the works (click on the small picture) and there are several shots of the interior, where the stop and key actions can be seen. http://vandenheuvel-orgelbouw.nl/en/component/k2/item/661-maranathakerk-dinteloord-en.html#prettyPhoto Paul Isom is right about Dutch pedal boards, they are a pain in the small of the back, especially as they are made for long-legged Dutch organists, a tribe to which I, as a rather compact and sturdy Englishman, would never be admitted. In fact, recently I bought a lightweight portable organ bench with adjustable length legs to deal with this. The main problem of course is not getting enough practice time to get used to it, especially if you insist on playing dynamic romantic organ music which, if you don't like registrants or, as is often the case with these side-saddle consoles, there is no space for one, demand that you play with one hand and both feet while yanking stops with the other hand!