Damian Beasley-Suffolk
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Posts posted by Damian Beasley-Suffolk
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The Cavaille-Coll organ in the Philharmonie in Haarlem has 2 4' Clairons.
The organ was originally Cavaille-Coll's atelier organ, and was sold to the Paleis van Volksvlijt in Amsterdam in 1875. Then, the clairons were both reeds right to the top (C - g3). After a period of storage the organ was installed in Haarlem in 1924 - avoiding the fate of some other CC organs, as the Paleis van Volksvlijt burned down in 1929.
In 1965 the organ was restored by Vermeulen, during which the action was electrified and the top octves of the clairons replaced with labial pipes. However, during a further restoration in 2004-6 these changes were reversed, the mechanical action reinstated and the clairons restored again to reeds throughout the range.
Perhaps someone can explain why 4' reeds might be treated differently in different situations.
http://www.orgelnieuws.nl/cavaille-coll-haarlem-gerestaureerd in Dutch but will be OK via Google translate
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"Experto crede" - believe in the one who is experienced. And has the scars to prove it.
Not such a bad term, when properly understood
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Several French media report this as a fact, that Bernard Aubertin is busy building the instrument, but don't give any details. Nice that this is happening, as when the previous Nigel Church organ was removed there was concern that there appeared to be no plans for its replacement. As it's for a hall rather than a chapel, and they have a decent recital programme there, it will certainly be interesting.
https://rcf.fr/culture/la-manufacture-dorgue-aubertin-courtefontaine-un-bilan-detape
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Google translate can be unintentionally funny, but this seems to be an unfortunately poor effort. However, artificial intelligence based on neural networks still has to be taught to the system, especially for specialist language, and mostly by users making many contributions to refine the context. I imagine that the language of pipe organs doesn't generate that much traffic.
Anyway, the natural, wet "intelligence" allegedly residing in the jelly located between my ears comes up with the following:
"A mechanical slider-chest organ by J W Walker from 1858. In 1961 the instrument was restored and enlarged with an independent pedal by George Kirby. The installed pedal board runs from C to g', (32 notes), but the coupler and the wind chest only go to e' (29 notes). The Swell Organ runs from Tenor C."
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I have played (briefly) and listened to (with much more pleasure when someone else was playing) the Gray and Davison at Huntley that Gwas Bach mentions. The "Choir" seems almost to be incorrectly labelled. I recall it being a nice, fairly strong "rosbif" division which suits the not large but rather lovely church nicely - perhaps the addition of a Fifteenth might be too much. I don't recall there being any indication that a Great was prepared for or even considered. But the whole instrument sounded just right. And it did indeed acquit itself with the required raucousness with Lefébure-Wély at my cousin's wedding there a good few years ago :-)
As for other oddities, the organ which my wife first played at as a 12-year old at Witton Park in County Durham, http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N15085, has a Swell of 8,8,2,8 to go with an 8,8,8,4 Great. The 2' is just about noticeable above the Great 8+4, but seems to work nicely along with the other Swell stops in the building. Looks odd, sounds nice. Trust your ears, they always say. More about that instrument when I get around to addressing the drought of letters in Organists' Review.
In a good number of small instruments seen here in the Netherlands and in Germany, one often sees really odd specs such as 4,2 (1 1/3, or 1/2), 8 (regal), and mostly on neo-baroque instruments. Sometimes this is found on the "second" manual of smaller instruments. Bourgarel made a few, such as this http://www.france-orgue.fr/orgue/index.php?zpg=org.doc.fch&ido=792, and there are some Iberian examples such as this http://www.france-orgue.fr/orgue/index.php?zpg=org.doc.fch&ido=792. Odd to my eyes, but common enough to appreciate that there is a repertoire for these instruments of which I'm wholly ignorant, apart from having fun playing Batallas badly, beyond just making a compact study organ.
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Henk Klop of Garderen here in the Netherlands produces a version of his continuo organ with an 8' prestant, and a second manual with an 8' regal. He told me years ago that this was developed expressly for performing Monteverdi's music, but I didn't think to ask him what the source for the development was. Klop adopted the "organo de legno" tradition for all of their instruments almost from the beginning of the firm, so the developmemt is logical.
I have been to many concerts of renaissance music using very small continuo organs. I am always astonished at how well a carefully-voiced 8' flute, no matter who made it, can carry along even quite large churches, and how captivating their voices are.
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On the console of Wokingham Parish Church, about 20 years ago, a paraphrase of Ps94:18
"Alas my foot hath slipped, but the Lord held it up"
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The G&G at St John and St Philip in The Hague (http://www.goetzegwynn.co.uk/organ/st-john-st-philip-den-haag-netherlands/) also has a half-draw on its Sesquialtera IV (dropping the tierce). If it also had a half/alternative 16'/8' drawstop for the pedal reed it would also be great for French classical music.
The Flentrop choir organ in the Sint Paschalis Baylon church in The Hague ( http://home.planet.nl/~kort0158/DHpaschaliskoor.html) which I played in its former home at the now demolished Liduina Kerk in The Hague, has a I-II/II-I manual coupler, manual II being the swell. The drawknob fully in is I-II, half draw is uncoupled, fully out is II-I. This also adds flexibility to a relatively small mechanical instrument, although I have no idea how complex, costly, and reliable the mechanical actions for such couplers would be.
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King's College organ theft.
Diabolical.
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Friedrich makes an important point - you really need someone else to tell you about your posture, unless you're in the habit of videoing yourself. But although seeing your self as others do is instructive, it's not always comfortable. I well remember watching part of a wedding video, laughing at the pirouetting head-tossing prima donna playing the organ. Then I realised that it was my brother's wedding ...
My piano teacher often tells me off for various postural problems which I am simply unaware of. The main problem is playing with my shoulders hunched so much that they're approaching my ears, an obvious cause of that horrible stretching pain across the back of the neck. Solving this often soothes other back problems. Another is, of course, the fingers. Years of playing on stubby organ keyboards, sometimes with rather heavy actions, or actions which require a firm thump just to make everything sound at the same time, encourage poor habits if not pointed out and corrected by someone much more competent than the self-taught person's tutor. And, for me at least, proper advice about posture has helped reduce a lot of the shoulder and back pains I used to have while playing too long. And improved technique, posture, and fitness really do create a synergy, especially when, especially here in the Netherlands, you're faced with an instrument that doesn't seem to conform to any known standards of the placement of manuals, pedals and benches relative to each other - especially for this rather compact Englishman. It's worth it for the sheer joy and privilege of playing these instruments though :-)
But you really can't hide some things from people who know. Recently, at the end of another ABRSM piano exam, the examiner politely enquired whether I played another keyboard instrument. Somewhat surprised, I told her that I played the organ. "I thought so", she said, "your sight reading gave you away!" I'm still dumfounded, but the lesson is, always ask advice!
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"There must be very few extension organs ... in which all the stops are the same on all divisions."
http://www.france-orgue.fr/orgues/index.php?zpg=prg.doc.fch&ido=352
Excuse me, I couldn't resist it! Although extreme, it isn't unique.
As for expressing stops in percentages, I haven't seen that but I do know of an Oberlinger organ that has a mixture stop Riesling II.
http://bibliolore.org/2010/08/12/wine-for-the-organist
I don't know whether this is representative of regional variations for communion wine - when I was young, the preferred fruit of the vine was Harvey's Bristol Cream ....
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You may be referring to the Hill organ in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, which was recovered from North London before the building it was in collapsed, restored, and installed there in 1994 by Sicco Steendam. It complements the very old Van Hagerbeer organ at the "West" end, which at the end of the 90's was restored to its original state, complete with mean-tone tuning, and therefore not much use for modern music such as Bach. The Hill was installed on a new platform next to the "Quire".
There are a good number of English organs in the Netherlands, mostly revered for their "romantic" or "symphonic" characteristics and their battleship build quality. I'm not really sure what the specific attraction is, as the sound of, say, late 19th century English and Dutch organs is completely different, but I suspect that things like composition pedals and swell boxes might be attractive, as otherwise you really do need three people to perform music with any dynamics, one to drive and two to yank stops in and out and perhaps turn the pages at the right time. And it's a given that there is nothing like an English Open Diapason in the Dutch or German organ vernacular. But they are certainly valued. Recently, Goetze and Gwynn have just finished restoring a Pilcher organ in the Koogerkerk in Zuid-Scharwoude, a surprisingly small church I know quite well which has three organs, and up the road in Noord-Scharwoude a Forster and Andrews nestles next to the sanctuary of the catholic church. The organ builder F R Feenstra does a good trade in restoring and installing English organs in the Netherlands and Germany, which are sadly unappreciated in their home land.
http://www.orgelmakerijsteendam.nl/ned/home.htm (Web page of the organ builder for the Pieterskerk organ)
http://www.hengstman.net/organ/ (English organs in the Netherlands)
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I visited Newcastle earlier in the year and there was a true stop-gap electronic, with a functional tab-stop console right at the east end by the high altar, and an obviously temporary pile of loudspeakers in the loft where the pipe organ console is.
On May Day I happened to be there in time for evensong and this instrument had disappeared. But, unknowingly, I had taken a seat in the choir right next to a new electronic choir organ, the speakers being contained behind a rather pleasant and discrete screen, to the east of the current choir organ. Mooching around later revealed a similar but much larger arrangement on the west side of the main organ. The 4 manual electronic console controlling it all is in the loft right next to the old one, and it looks very impressive. This is stopping a very large gap. The organist said that while the long-term plan is to replace the pipe organ, the cathedral is at the start of a major restoration and it could be a good few years before a new instrument arrives, which must of course be pretty much the last phase of the restoration.
Incidentally, I commented that it sounded surprisingly rough compared with the couple of electronics I have owned, He said that it had only just been installed and needed voicing, which is fair enough. A large acoustic helps hide the evidence as well. However, the difference at point blank range is clear. In mitigation m'lud, my home toaster was replaced by a real pipe organ, but much though I love it, my ego and I do occasionally yearn for something with headphones, 50 stops, 32' reeds and an electronic reverberation with a "big cathedral" setting - although I think the family would settle for the headphones.
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Being a Bristolian who knows the Lord Mayor's Chapel, and an engineer who has spent his professional life involved in radio and wireless systems, my main question about a wireless console in this building is - Why? It's not a big building at all, and there's very little space to move the console around from what I recall is a raised position opposite the organ, surrounded by stalls.
Further, my own knowledge, confirmed by sometimes bitter and occasionally sharply biting experience, is that low power radio systems are very fickle and prone to unreliability not only by their inherent nature, but also because the radio bands reserved for their use are rather crowded with other control and data systems doing similar things. Various techniques mitigate this, of course, which is why time-insensitive systems are very reliable, but there's a limit beyond which things just go slow. While the claimed 35ms delay may well be imperceptible, it could very well be longer depending on the wholly unpredictable number of other users in the area, a situation that simply cannot be acceptable for playing an organ in real time where delays are immediately perceptible to the ear, as there is no aural equivalent of persistence of vision.
I would heartily recommend, even demand, that every such wireless system comes with a socket and a length of cable which connects console and organ. Many movable consoles I have read about feature this, and the buildings they are in often have specific connection points at the two or three positions in the building where the console is likely to be used. There is an advantage that completely standard connectors and cables can be used and they are reliable, even if, as John Norman noted in an OR article some time ago, such consoles tend to find their own comfortable niches and stay there.
Please don't think I'm dismissing such techniques out of hand. Multiplex and/or digital transmission in organs certainly have their place - many instruments big and small would probably be impossible without them, a fanatical devotion to tracker action might not be a wholly Good Thing for the art of organ building, and a remote diagnostics facility is essential for these systems. And it's well know that many organists are engineers who are as absorbed by the technical aspects of the instrument as its music and history, as are organ builders. But I'm both a horses for courses and a belt and braces person who likes the technology to serve the cause rather than vice versa.
Still, wireless interference could be worse. Years ago I was sitting in church one Saturday evening waiting for proceedings to begin when a crackle came over the speakers, followed by the opening calls from the Bingo hall a few hundred meters away. I like to think I wasn't the only one who turned the hymn book to "I'm in heaven, 57!"
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As usual, I should have been more specific and stated that these were Scottish Pipes, which are of course intended to be used outside and consequently are very loud. No wonder there were laws about them, and I believe that in Spain there were similar restrictions on the use of the batteries of llamada stops during services - too much of a good thing, of course!
My wife, the real musician in the family, hails from the North-East and among her many musical interests is Northumberland's folk tradition. Northumbrian pipes obviously form part of this, and are a different beast altogether, being elbow-blown, played while sitting, and intended for use as an equal voice among whatever other instruments happen to be around. While in Newcastle over the May bank holiday there were a couple of pipes players around, one in the rather beautiful arcade off Grey Street. They produce a rather pleasing, plaintive sound, obviously reedy, but blending. An organ stop sounding like this would be interesting, and I could imagine it suiting some early vocal and consort music quite nicely, if that is what is intended. But of course I don't know, and look forward to finding out. And if so much thought has gone into just one particular voice, imagine how much has gone into the rest of this instument.
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My cornet de bagpipes quip was just that - not a criticism. I simply have no idea how such bagpipe stops would sound; perhaps they are meant to be imitative of a Breton cornamuse, in acknowledgement of the local-ish Celtic music culture. I am no more than a dilettante in these matters, but I'm very curious to know.
I've only once heard bagpipes in a church, during a commemoration service for the 11 September attacks in the Klooster Kerk in The Hague. The Marcussen was no match for a 5-piece bagpipe group. Although unusual, they played a very moving lament, wholly appropriate to the commemoration, and put paid to the claim that "bagpipe music" is an oxymoron. But it is easily the loudest thing I have ever heard in such a building.
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A Cornet de Bagpipes?
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Should have recalled this earlier.
Franz Liszt, "St François d'Assise, La Prédication aux Oiseaux", transcription for organ by Camille Saint-Saens, in IMSLP at http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/f/fd/IMSLP67641-PMLP11042-Liszt_-_S175_No1_La_predication_aux_oiseaux__arr_org_Saint-Saens___typeset_.pdf
Might be rather long for your purposes, but I've heard it played simply but effectively, and beautifully, on the organ in our local church, with no swell box, no voix céleste, manuals to F etc.
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Time to come clean then. You got all but one of the places I was thinking of.
The missing establishment is Northampton, which has a real organ by Hendrik ten Bruggencate by the sanctuary, and an mp3 player (as my organ builder calls them) at the back.
Interesting to hear of another Compton stuck in a back room somewhere whose sound was relayed electronically to the outside world. This also happened at Salford, as well as at Newcastle RC, where the original Lewis organ was moved from the original gallery at the back to a cloister at the side of the altar, but effectively outside the building and shouting through the wall. At least they were able to replace it with a real instrument even before the present instrument. I've heard about hiding your light under a bushel, but I'm sure that something came after it, especially for expensive lights. Given that the basic principles of acoustics which apply to placement of organs (and pulpits!) have been known for aeons, albeit greatly refined with time, who could possibly have thought or advised that this was a good idea?
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Actually I wasn't thinking of Sheffield, and it sounds like its real organ will be restored soon. So in addition to the "mystery" (although obvious to me, and I thought well-known) cathedrals above, there are two more.
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I can think of four RC cathedrals in England with electronic organs as their main instruments which are not considered as interims. But it appears that it would be impolite to identify them, directly or otherwise, and I may be wrong, so I won't.
Music desks
in Nuts and bolts
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Does anyone know of a standard, or have any views on, the ideal angle for the music desk on an organ?
The desk on my de Koff house organ is so steep, barely 10 degrees if the inclinometer app on my phone is correct, that nothing heavier than a few pieces of paper will stay on it. In fact, even an A3 sheet with a decent fold in it will push itself off.
I'm just about to have a clip-on music desk made by a local company who will make anything out of perspex, and it's always better to ask advice than make even an educated guess. Height is another problem, but that is determined by fixed dimensions of the case, and I can work to those limits.