Jump to content
Mander Organ Builders Forum

Bruce Buchanan

Members
  • Posts

    38
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male

Recent Profile Visitors

2,172 profile views

Bruce Buchanan's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/3)

0

Reputation

  1. Yes, it does. The 1912 edition entry for the RAH has: Organist and Assistant Conductor to the Albert Hall Royal Choral Society: Henry Lucas...etc etc, which can be read two ways. The RAH archive simply has: Henry Lucas Balfour was the organist of the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall for 30 years, and also organist at Holy Trinity Church for 40 years. Possibly, if you are/were the organist of the Albert Hall Royal Choral Society you are/were ex officio the organist of the RAH. For niceties such as this was the Internet created. .
  2. Something to fill the gaps; the Willis organ now in St Joseph's Catholic Church, Seattle WA was built by Henry Willis & Sons to the order of James Lucas Balfour, stockbroker, of 13 Elmwood Road, Broad Green, Croydon and erected in a new concert hall seating 450, built in the garden of his house. The organ and the hall were for the use of his son, Henry Lucas Balfour (1859-1946) who, then aged 26, had completed 12 years of study at the National Training School for Music (later the Royal College of Music) under, amongst others, Sullivan, Steggall, Prout and Macfaren, and had just returned from two years of study in Leipzig. In late 1884, Henry Balfour advertised himself in the local Press as a concert organist available for recitals and as a teacher seeking pupils. Balfour was organist of St Saviour's Croydon from 1879 until 1902 (during which time he took time off for Leipzig) after which he was appointed to Holy Trinity Sloane Street. He was organist to the Royal Choral Society and in that capacity, he played frequently at the Royal Albert Hall. I cannot yet find a definitive record of an appointment as organist of the RAH. He was organist to the RAH Masonic Lodge. In 1891, Willis’s removed the organ from Elmwood Road to West Green, Christ Church. The fitting of the Choir Nazard in the place of the Lieblich Flute 4ft occurred whilst at West Green, presumably undertaken by N P Mander Ltd. The Valotti tuning is, I understand, a local (Seattle) indulgence. I have a conventional picture of Balfour but its size is evidently beyond the capacity of this post or me.
  3. Of course, I thought it only polite to ask the bot to respond to its own question. He/she/it said: Your question is excellent and would certainly spark an interesting discussion among organists and organ builders. It addresses a crucial aspect of the organ world where tradition meets innovation. It would encourage participants to share their experiences, insights, and perspectives on how they strike a balance between preserving tradition and incorporating modern advancements in organ craftsmanship and technology. This topic is sure to generate valuable insights and foster a productive exchange of ideas.
  4. Always keen to keep abreast of technology and being amongst the laziest members of this Forum, I asked ChatGTP for a subject; this is what he/she/it proposed. Title: "Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Organ Building in the 21st Century" Question: "To organists and organ builders alike, how do you navigate the fine line between preserving traditional pipe organ craftsmanship and embracing modern technology and design innovations in the construction and maintenance of organs? What are the key challenges and opportunities you've encountered in this delicate balancing act?"
  5. In fact, Herbert Norman did think it was the installation of JTH, which was why he sent the picture, congratulating HW&S on getting the job (I know, I know). Characteristically, HW4 said that it could not be JTH because of the white labourers. If someone will tell me how, I will put up the picture (maybe elsewhere) in its 27.23 MB form. I show a blow-up of the notice below the Hill, Norman & Beard Ltd sign in case someone can make it out
  6. Whilst on the subject of mystery organs, this picture was sent to Henry Willis 4 by Herbert Norman in 1976 under the misapprehension that it was Johannesburg Town Hall in the course of site erection - which it plainly wasn't if only because the sign reads Hill Norman & Beard. It's not, I think, Kingsway Hall either, but I forget the reason why I think that. I still don't know where this one is, but given the ease with which the Queen's Hall job above was identified along with the conductor's collar size, I have high hopes of an answer here.
  7. Alexander Ellis (1814-1890) says in an appendix to his translation of Helmholtz On the Sensations of Tone, 2ndEd, 1885; “In 1851, at the Great Exhibition, no English organ was tuned in equal temperament, but the only German organ exhibited (Schulze’s) was so tuned.” On the matter of Henry Willis and unequal temperaments, we do not have an opinion from him. We might infer something from the fact that the 1842 Gray & Davison organ at Hoxton, Christ Church, where Willis was organist from 1839 to 1860, was tuned in unequal temperament. Willis assumed the tuning of the organ (from G & D) after 1851, but in 1861, after Willis had resigned his post, it reverted to G & D who cleaned and overhauled the instrument and introduced a ‘new system of tuning’ (Hoxton, Churchwardens’ accounts) after 1871. Willis therefore cheerfully played an organ tuned to an unequal temperament for 21 years when he probably could, if it pleased him, have brought it to equal temperament at any point. I am inclined to think that Willis had, at this stage, no opinion on the matter. If the Client wanted ET, as didn't Wesley at St George’s Hall, then they should have it. In his letter of 26 November, 1856 to William Bower, organist of Leeds, Holy Trinity, complaining of his treatment in the musical press, Wesley says … ‘The equal temperament both Willis and I are of opinion will not do for organs’. Wesley explains that the matter was tested at the St George’s Hall by Willis tuning one Open Diapason rank at an unequal [presumably conventional] temperament and another at ET. ‘The latter was vastly inferior, indeed destructive…’. I have no doubt that Willis happily if insincerely agreed with Wesley as he had issues with him on other matters, and that he was in fact not of the opinion that ET ‘will not do for organs’. Initially, both Winchester and Gloucester had unequal temperament tuning; Winchester because Wesley was the organist first presiding at the ex Gt Exhibition organ installed 1854, and Gloucester in 1847, probably because at the time it never occurred to anyone to change the existing tuning.
  8. Bob Pennells died on Saturday night, 17 July, after a long illness. He was 86. Bruce Buchanan
  9. Rather than designate stop lengths in feet, the Portuguese, uniquely, I think, do so in 'palmas', or hand palms, the span from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger, nominally 8 inches. Thus, 12 palms equal 8ft and 24 palms are 16 ft.
  10. In fact, the organ was originally built by Henry Willis in 1859, opened on Tuesday, 24 May that year (sermon by the Bishop of Oxford). The stop-list of the instrument has not yet come to light.
  11. This is alarming, but I cannot quite see it happening here. On the other hand... http://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/la-cathedrale-de-rouen-privee-de-ses-grandes-orgues-02-11-2019-8184978.php?fbclid=IwAR1GG4LDYMOPHTDm4hqt9da0iquM3A99enm0VOYMEvJGxklbpveQAF9gtMo
  12. Where is this, please. I think London.
  13. And yet and yet… Very many years ago, doing night work at St Paul’s, we took as usual our tea break at 2.00 am in the crypt mess with the two night watchman, who in those days patrolled the Cathedral each night. The conversation turned to the reverberation in the Cathedral (12 ¼ seconds according to HWIII and faithfully repeated by me ever since) and I remarked on the case of Sheffield City Hall where, as I amusingly put it, the reverberation ceases ¼ second before you lift you hands from the keys. The older of the two watchmen listened gravely as I expatiated, with all the skill and certainty with which youth is invariably blessed, on acousticians generally and Hope Bagnell in particular. Waiting politely to see if I had finished, the aged watchman then said that his experience was different. It turned out he had been a bassist, I think with the Hallé. It was the only hall, he said, in which he had been able to hear from his position among the basses what everybody else was doing. For this reason, he said, he felt he gave a better performance at Sheffield than anywhere else.
×
×
  • Create New...