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Andrew Butler
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Posts posted by Andrew Butler
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http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=E00594 - This has manually operated shutters to the GREAT to adjust sound in the gallery....
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The now retired secretary of our organists' association once told me about a Conacher instrument he had practiced on as a young man where the back-rest was connected to the swell shuttersl. I took it he was pulling my leg, because he has a wicked sense of humour. Evidently not.
It sounds utterly impracticable though. Presumably it would have to be sprung so as to follow when the organist leaned forward. I have visions of the shutters slamming shut as the organist reached forward to turn the page, and the Swell manual becoming almost unreachable with the box open. Or perhaps vice versa.
Has anyone come across such a contraption?
Yes - I've heard of this. Can't remember where though.
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I remember an evensong at Chichester in the mid-late 70s with Richard Kok (sic) playing, no sign of John Birch, lay clerks conducting, and excellent performances of (albeit sraightforward) repertoire. If I remember correctly Wood No 2 in Eb and Holst "Turn back, O man"
Apologies - I was mistaken about the spelling. I was thinking of someone else It is Richard Cock!
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On paper, I would say that there are more accompanimental possibilities than with the existing instrument, which only has an 8' flute as the only unison flue on the Swell - although it does have 16 & 8 reeds. Time will tell.
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This would also seem to be the case with the 'decent parish church' side of things too. The place where I was most involved had a second organist and therefore conductor for anthems and 'big stuff' but the rest was largely un conducted. Later, with a change of regime it always felt slightly unnecessary to me to have someone standing mid choir waving quite competent musicians through hymns and psalms that had been thoroughly rehearsed previously. A personal view only.
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I played for a wedding at a nearby church (not my own) the other week. The choir of three were conducted in "All things b & b", "Sing Hosanna" and "One more step"
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Some of Ken Tickell's smaller instruments have a 12-17 Cornet as the only Swell mixture. I wonder if these are intended for chorus use?
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Certainly in 1975, two organists were almost always present at Chichester Cathedral for daily services. John Birch was most often downstairs with Ian Fox and then Richard Cock playing the Allen. But... JB had favourite pieces that only he accompanied - The Wilderness, for example. There were days when he was away (teaching at Sussex University and the RCM) and the sub organist had to manage with the lay clerks conducting either side like 'olden days.'
I remember an evensong at Chichester in the mid-late 70s with Richard Kok (sic) playing, no sign of John Birch, lay clerks conducting, and excellent performances of (albeit sraightforward) repertoire. If I remember correctly Wood No 2 in Eb and Holst "Turn back, O man"
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Apologies - John Mander has advised me that my assertion is total rubbish - although there are apparently old consoles from previous incarnations stored in the triforium. I must have got the story from somewhere though!
I have discussed this today with Barry Rose to see if he remembered anything. He thinks that Christopher Dearnley had some sort of mock-up of the stop jambs in his house, but not a full console. Interestingly though, when i asked the question on my Facebook page, a non-musical friend recalls seeing a documentary years ago about St Pauls and remembers something about a mock-up!
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Apologies - John Mander has advised me that my assertion is total rubbish - although there are apparently old consoles from previous incarnations stored in the triforium. I must have got the story from somewhere though!
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I remember that Christopher Dearnley did have a mocked-up St Paul's console in his home- maybe in Dovercourt rather than Amen court, after the Mander 1977 rebuild.
Could be - although I thought it was Amen Court. Can John Mander comment?
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Goodness - what fun! Was it there just for decoration or did it have a few ranks of pipes?
I'm still waiting for someone to confirm I'm not dreaming here, but I think it was just a dummy to allow practice of registration changes, and familiarity with the (then) new console
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Are you sure? It wasn't there in John Dykes-Bower's or Christopher Dearnley's time.
if I am correct, I think it dates from the first Mander rebuild. can't remember how i heard about it but i don't think I'm dreaming....... Anyone......?
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I don't know if it still exists, but did there not used to be a mock-up of the St Paul's console in the organist's house? Does that count?!
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The west end organ is the England, put together and installed by Cedric Arnold. The larger organ in the transept is by Lincoln. Until the recent restoration, it looked almost derelict, but was still playing.
Sorry - posting in a hurry and got mixed up. I knew that!
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I had a moment to stop and take a look around Thaxted Church today - what a wonderful building! It was good to see the Lincoln organ in the South Transept fully restored and looking beautiful. The GP England organ "on stilts" at the West End looked a little sorry for itself. From behind, there are just exposed pipes and the case (except for the front) is very poor. The console was pushed to the back wall, covered with a big heavy dust sheet and looked like it hadn't been moved or played for sometime.
Next to this was another console which also had a big dark cover over it. All I could see was a number of swell pedals and some toe pistons and a large data cable which disappeared into the ground floor of the tower and then up into the England case. It was then that I noticed a load of speaker boxes up inside the case.
I was wondering why they had a toaster there and when, if ever it was needed or used?
Makin Organs' website's "Installations" section mentions a 42 stop 3 manual for "Thaxted Festival Foundation" (from memory - I haven't checked) Could this be it? i visited Thaxted in the early 1990s and the west end Arnold instrument appeared to be in regular use then. The England didn't look as though it was in use - was it playable at that time?
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Was this instrument built (or rebuilt) by Roger Yates?
Whilst it is more recent, the instrument in Kilkhampton Parish Church, Cornwall (rebuilt by Yates, in 1958) still has its electro-pneumatic/electro-mechanical action functioning well. Yates manufactured most of it it himself. The quality of the workmanship is excellent and the ladder switches and wiring looms - all mounted in glass-fronted cabinets - are items of beauty in themselves.
The Yates instrument (2 manual, totally enclosed with extensions) at Ulcombe, Kent, is a beautifully constructed and reliable instrument. Specification and lack of inter-manual coupler take a bit of getting used to, but it is a very effective organ.
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The Norwich job is a decent specimen by Norman & Beard which originally stood in an RC church in Maddermarket.
Gt: Open Diapason, Clarabella, Stopped Diapason (bass), Keraulophon, Principal, Lieblich Flute, Fifteenth, Mixture 19.22
Sw: Open Diapason, Stopped Diapason, Salicional, Vox Angelica, Principal, Piccolo, Oboe
Ped: Bourdon
3 unison couplers
3 composition pedals to Great
trigger swell
Not a big cathedral organ, but it stands in an open position in a good acoustic and sounds bigger than it is. An oddity is that the plate is dated Norman & Beard 1876, which was before George Wales Beard joined the firm, and it is a palimpsest, with James Scott of West Tofts on the reverse side.
Apologies for being slightly tangential here, but was Percy Beard related to GWB? I played for a funeral some years ago at Brightling, East Sussex, where the builder's plate read "Percy Beard" (As I remember, it had a Voix Celeste AND Vox Agelica, but one - can't remember which - wasn't undulating)
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I often wondered where the HN&B organ from the Tower ended up! Thank you DHM!
There is no mention of the current location of the pipework on NPOR or on the cathedral website...
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Salford did have a 2 manual pipe organ prior to the installation of the Makin - it was a rebuild of the Compton http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N12617 Norwich, last I heard, had a Bradford Computing organ in addition to a small pipe organ in the south transept that looks as though it came from elsewhere. http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D07254 The Northampton pipe organ is, I believe, not fully functional, and suffered from poor execution of the original design. http://www.northamptoncathedral.org/Cathedral/TheOrgan/tabid/70/Default.aspx
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If this works for you, then all well and good. Whilst I would not dispute for a moment that the incumbent organists know their instruments far better than I could on casual acquaintance, nevertheless my method has never let me down. In addition, it does have the advantage of avoiding problems such as the time I had to play at a cathedral where there were few divisional channels and the assistant had changed the 'home' channel to allow convenient performance of a particular work the day before. The settings as found would have made accompanying Evensong most inconvenient. Instead, I re-set the 'visitors' channel in the way I described above, and all went perfectly well.
I almost came horribly unstuck at Canterbury some years ago. I opted to use the then assistant's accompaniment channel for "my" evensong, but between my practicing in the week, and the service at the weekend, he had set the Swell 8 & 4 Reeds on Sw 1 in place of the Celestes - for a psalm verse I imagine. Luckily I spotted it in time!!
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New Diocesan DoM coming from Leeds Cathedral sometime this year I think.
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Daniel Justin - starting this month according to cathedral newsletter
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Nick's funeral will be on Tuesday March 24th at 11am at St George's Cathedral, Southwark. (Information from Nick's sister)
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Nick Gale, until recently DoM at St George's Cathedral (RC) Southwark, died tragically in an RTA yesterday. RIP
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On another tack, is there a standard distance up from the top surface of the pedalboard for a balanced swell pedal to be mounted? A local organ to me has a (I think) Rushworth and dreaper console from the 1950s, and the swell pedal is uncomfortably high - you have to lean backwards to get your foot up onto it.
Hand-operated Devices For Moving Swell Shades
in Nuts and bolts
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I'm sure there is a village organ somewhere in Norfolk with shutters operated by hand lever.....