Dafydd y Garreg Wen
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Posts posted by Dafydd y Garreg Wen
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3 hours ago, Colin Pykett said:
You can log into the US version, but it didn't make any difference because Google knows the country from which you are searching from your IP address and therefore it no longer allows you to assess how the results might vary with search location
You could use a US-based VPN to achieve this (vel sim).
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3 hours ago, Colin Pykett said:
This seems to have been interpreted liberally:
"There is no dogma that the organ or harmonium can be used in church, but not the drum"
Cardinal Francis Arinze
CEP
Not the only bit of S.C. that has been "interpreted liberally", e.g.:
"[. . .] the use of the Latin language is to be preserved [....] The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services."
If I'd had a penny for the number of times I've read/heard that Vatican II abolished "the Latin Mass" I'd be a rich man.
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19 hours ago, ajsphead said:
The little brother to Downside, apparently the church authorities visited Downside as part of their decision making process for a rebuilt organ. All Saints also has a straight Swell and a straight "solo".
It wasn't in good condition when I played it a few years ago. The parish had explored the possibility of restoration, but the cost was prohibitive.
Several of the bulbs in the stop controls had blown and not been replaced, and some stops simply weren't working (but they might - or might not - light up). This made playing for Mass with minimal rehearsal time rather "interesting".
The distance between console (half way down south aisle) and pipework (east end of north aisle), with the congregation in between, didn't help either. At times it was hard to tell whether a stop was not working, or was just inaudible.
A shame that the instrument was not in a better state and that restoration seemed unlikely.
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2 hours ago, OmegaConsort said:
I think Downside Abbey and Derby Cathedral still both have "Press button, light up consoles"
All Saints', Weston super Mare
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Dr Pykett can probably give us chapter and verse on the history of the doubling idea - and a complete explanation of why it doesn't work.
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10 hours ago, John Robinson said:
Then there's this: http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03908
the veracity of which I seriously doubt! Who would include four Open Diapasons on the Great along with no less than TEN Principals?
But compare S. George's Hall, Liverpool, for a less extreme instance at the same period:
http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=R01924
I think the underlying (erroneous) idea was that you got more volume by duplicating ranks. The problem in York which they were trying to address was how to fill such a vast space with sound. Weren't some of the duplicated ranks east-facing and others west-facing?
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4 hours ago, Barry Oakley said:
Quite agree about your entombment comments. There were some murmurings just a few years back (or so it would seem) that the Stafford H&H was the serious subject of restoration but I've not heard anything more.
From the S. Mary's website:
QuoteSadly, the instrument is not maintained due to the major work required and roughly 50% of the instrument is now unusable either in part or totally. There are many leaks, the action is slow, a lot of the couplers do not work, many stops are inoperable and the tuning is interesting.
A day conference organised by the British Institute for Organ Studies took place on Saturday 22nd May 2010 to discuss the relative merits of replacing the pneumatic action with an electronic system. The unanimous conclusion of the conference was this instrument was too important and should therefore be restored as it was built. The total cost of this including endowment, will be in excess of £1,400,000 and could be part of a wider project to make St Mary's more accessible as an educational and concert venue.
http://www.stmarysstafford.org.uk/the-stafford-harrison.html
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Press report on closure of S. Thomas' church:
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I've had a quick look at the 1966 Temperley article. It is seventeen pages long, and goes into some detail, considering such questions as whether the timings are distorted by cuts or missed repeats, and includes works by Mozart, Haydn and Handel as well as Beethoven. As you say, Temperley's view is that the tempi implied do not greatly differ from modern (i.e. 1966) ones.
QuoteTo sum up, the conclusions may be divided into those that are more or less inescapable on the evidence and those that have an element of conjecture. It is certainly true that Smart performed some music faster than modern conductors, some at about the same tempo, and some (including some Beethoven) slightly slower. But he had no consistent tendency to perform either slower or faster than modem conductors. In playing Haydn's and Mozart's symphonies, he certainly did not make a habit of playing the long repeats, and he may not even have played the short ones. If he did play the short ones, his average tempos must have been a little faster than modem ones for these works. In Beethoven's symphonies he did not usually play the long repeats, though he may have done so occasionally. He did not regularly make substantial cuts or interpolations in orchestral works, but he may have occasionally made a substantial cut or even omitted a whole movement of a symphony. He did not usually leave very long intervals between movements (that is, more than a minute or so at the most), though the ninth symphony was an exception. In oratorios he did not make cuts that are now common (e.g. of da capo sections).
Turning to less well established conclusions, I believe that all the facts suggest that Smart was apt to treat Beethoven with rather more respect than other composers. His performances of Beethoven's symphonies were less perfunctory than those of Haydn's and Mozart's in two ways: he did not rush the tempo as much, and he played the repeats more often. It also seems to me, on balance, that Smart probably had a smaller range of tempo than modem conductors: that is, he tended to play slower movements faster and faster movements slower than we do.
It is worth noting that, as Temperley relates, Smart had played for Haydn, and had met Beethoven, with whom he discussed tempi (though note Smart's caveat!):
Quote[...] Smart's timings have a certain authenticity through his personal experience. He had played under Haydn at Salomon's concerts in 1794; and when he visited Beethoven at Baden in 1825, "Beethoven gave me the time, by playing the subjects on the pianoforte, of many movements of his symphonies, including the Choral Symphony, which according to his account took three-quarters of an hour only in performance. .. This I deem to be totally impossible."
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It's easy to forget that so much of what we think is obvious (e.g. what a metronome marking means) is in fact arbitrary and conventional. To someone in a different age/culture things may look quite different.
There's nothing implausible in the idea that a nineteenth-century musician confronted by a "fast" metronome marking would just shrug his shoulders and say, "Ah, one of those people who counts a double beat," and adjusted accordingly, and this was so "obvious" that no-one ever thought to note the possibility down. Just as a contemporary reading an early paper by Cavaillé-Coll would realise he was counting one way, and reading a later paper that he was counting the other way.
Even so, it would be nice if there were some concrete evidence for the hypothesis! In acoustical physics one can prove that an anomalous method of counting was employed; in the more subjective area of musical tempi, alas, that's not so.
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That's very interesting.
There are precedents for such a way of counting. Those who have learned Latin may have wondered why a Roman mile (mille passus, i.e. 1,000 paces) appears to be roughly half a modern one (taking a yard as a bit more than a pace). If they had an intelligent Latin teacher it will have been explained to them that the Romans counted as a pace the interval between one foot touching the ground and the next time it did (i.e. a double pace by our reckoning).
Nor is confusion/ambiguity a thing of the past. Even today problems have been known to arise because a mathematician who may have devised an algorithm starts counting from 0, but the engineer implementing it starts from 1.
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There is the hypothesis that some people considered a single beat of the metronome to consist of the time it took, not for the pendulum to reach the other side (one click), but for it to return to its original position (two clicks). This would (obviously) give markings like the Samuel Wesley one that appear exactly twice as fast as they should be.
This has been advanced as an explanation for the fact that Reger's original metronome markings seem very fast and Straube's editions of his work (apparently issued with Reger's approval) tend to halve the markings.
Snags for this hypothesis:
1. Lack of any contemporary evidence for this.
2. This method would get very confusing in compound time.
3. One could imagine Beethoven and Sam Wesley confronted with a novel device coming up with an idiosyncratic way of using it, but surely by Reger's time such anomalies would have been squeezed out.
Thought: Is there any contemporary evidence of a sufficiently hard nature to shed light on these questions (e.g. "This piece/movement took 5 min 34 sec to perform")?
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Hear! Hear! Multos annos!!
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1 hour ago, Contrabombarde said:
Just remember when screwing them in that you may need to put a heavy clamp or something over the bottom rest where you are screwing in to stop the wood from splitting!
And/or drill a pilot hole. The advice at www.piano-tuners.org is:
"Care must be taken when fitting bookholders to music trays that have not had them fitted before. You must make a pilot hole. We use a 2.5mm drill"
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1 hour ago, Colin Pykett said:
As to desk hooks, yes, they can be a pain to get hold of. And even when you can get them, they often cost an arm and a leg for what they are. In my time I've written to suppliers who didn't bother to reply.
Easily available here at £4.50 a pair:
https://www.piano-tuners.org/piano-accessories-shop/piano/brass-piano-bookholders-38.html
Postage at £3 is a bit steep, but the total cost of £7.50 isn't too bad. Haven't been able to find them cheaper.
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58 minutes ago, innate said:
no metal “stays” to keep books open
Music desks without these are the work of the devil. What possible excuse is there for inflicting them on keyboard players? And yet they are not uncommon.
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I suspect the root of the matter is different playing traditions and styles. I wasn't trying to be funny or rude when I commented that I didn't at first recognise the piece.
Although the British organ tradition generally is somewhere between the German and the French (and influenced by both), in Mendelssohn it is perhaps closer to the German - which is unsurprising when one considers his involvement with, and influence on, British music making.
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I note that O.U.P. on its website describes its edition as having "an orchestral reduction for rehearsal purposes". The implication seems to be that it was not designed for accompanying a performance.
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21 hours ago, Colin Pykett said:
I wonder what others here think of the above rendition. I've always assumed that it should be taken far faster, indeed it's marked Vivace in my Peters Edition copy.
I must admit I didn't recognise the piece at first. I thought it was something from the French repertoire rather later in the century! But perhaps that's how it's normally played in France.
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There are two different Ricordi editions, which doesn't help. There are lots of minor differences in the accompaniment (phrase marks mostly), and in some places the actual notes differ.
I tend to agree with Vox Humana about manuals only. It's years since I accompanied it, but looking at my copy I see that I played Domine Fili on the manuals - with pedals coupled but no stops for assistance where necessary.
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A lot depends on how the bookseller has catalogued an item and precisely what search terms one uses.
I find the best place to start is here:
Not only does it search a wide range of sites (including, but not confined to, Amazon, ABE and ebay) but - somewhat counterintuitively - it often throws up copies that don't show up if one goes straight to a particular bookselling site and queries it directly.
Worth trying it for music too: coverage is much less comprehensive than for books, so it's more hit and miss, but it quite often throws up a bargain or that elusive item one has hunted for in vain.
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£20 including postage from a British supplier:
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22393589228
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Tho' rails aren't much of an obstacle for cats.
We had one (a cat, not an altar rail) that came to church (but only Welsh services). My father (the priest) turning round from the altar to address the congregation (none of that modern ahistorical nonsense of facing the wrong way to celebrate) was bemused to see the parsonage cat parading along the altar rail.
Still, she had sufficient reverence not to approach any nearer. She played the piano too. But not the organ.
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Of course it was once normal for people to take their dogs to church, hence the need for these when they started fighting:
http://www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1965T4898
And indeed the need for communion rails to prevent profanation of the altar (cf. Archbishop Laud's Injunctions of 1636).
English Voluntaries for the Corno Stop
in Organ Music
Posted
Eh?? How can it be both "attractive" and "dull"?