Dafydd y Garreg Wen
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Posts posted by Dafydd y Garreg Wen
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Prepared improvisation??
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The norm seems to have been to use the church organ, with pedals - though with the caveat that if the bass line is too athletic manual(s) only is preferable.
But that doesn’t mean a small instrument was never used.
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Good luck. If scores/copies of either or both works are available legitimately I’d be interested.
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Attractive piece. Thank you for drawing it to our attention.
I wondered about the left hand octaves in bb. 8-12. Maybe use pedals to help out at this point (Bach explicitly described this sonata as “ohne Pedal” but does that mean “You must never ever use pedals,” or “Not obbligato pedal”?).
Examining the video I see that the player cuts the Gordon knot by simply playing the lower note only of the octaves with her left hand.
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On 11/04/2023 at 14:52, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
The extensive use of pedals suggests this is not the fugue’s original form. I’m guessing that Cutler’s version is based the John E. West arrangement published by Novello in 1906, which I have not seen.
The work is listed in a Novello catalogue of 1866. Bumpas confirms that it was “originally published by Novello in his Select Organ Pieces.” It would be interesting to have sight of this earlier version, or indeed a manuscript (if such exists).
I have gleaned a few more details from the 1866 Novello catalogue.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5SZcAAAAcAAJ
The Attwood fugue was no 93 in the series Select Organ Pieces. (There were 108 numbers in total, available separately, in 18 “books” or in 3 (presumably quite bulky) “volumes”.)
It is not one of the few pieces in the series indicated as having “Pedal Obbligato”.
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Thank you. Yes, I’ve seen that.
I wonder what the source is for the description there of Attwood as ‘the man who "brought the foot pedals" to the English organ’.
It was during his time that Bishop added pedal pipes to the S. Paul’s organ (previously only pull-downs). Presumably, as a pioneer, and of an earlier generation, his pedal technique was less developed than Wesley’s.
For what it’s worth Attwood’s only other organ piece, the Dirge composed for Nelson’s funeral, is playable with the hands only, though it would be easier with the help of pull downs.
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Can anyone shed light on Thomas Attwood’s “Cathedral Fugue” in E flat, please?
There is a version here edited by Mike Cutler:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Cathedral_Fugue_in_E-flat_major_(Attwood%2C_Thomas)
The extensive use of pedals suggests this is not the fugue’s original form. I’m guessing that Cutler’s version is based the John E. West arrangement published by Novello in 1906, which I have not seen.
The work is listed in a Novello catalogue of 1866. Bumpas confirms that it was “originally published by Novello in his Select Organ Pieces.” It would be interesting to have sight of this earlier version, or indeed a manuscript (if such exists).
Opinions vary on the fugue’s merits. A 1906 reviewer in the Musical Times calls it a “really fine work,” but in 1938 in the same journal G.D. Cunningham dismissed it as “deplorably dull.” Judging by the Cutler version perhaps a verdict somewhere between these two would be appropriate.
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42 minutes ago, Colin Pykett said:
But doesn't it sound so, well, ELECTRONIC?
It does, doesn’t it? Hardly makes me want to rush out and buy one. (Rather to run in the opposite direction.)
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Sounds like quasi-baroque improvisation.
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Not for the first time I have muddled up Oxford books! I was playing from Organ Music for Manuals, where Trevor prints the second verse and I’ve pasted in the first.
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On 02/12/2022 at 20:05, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:
A very small addition: there is a second verse to the Walther, not printed by Trevor.
Having played this piece before evensong just now, I see that it’s the second verse that Trevor prints.
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20 Prae- und Postludien, Op.78, no 18:
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It’s in Anne Marsden Thomas’ The Church Year, Volume One, referred to in the other thread.
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A very small addition: there is a second verse to the Walther, not printed by Trevor.
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3 hours ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
Fictitious firms’ names are sometimes chosen for a reason.
Stainer and Bell, being a good example in the music world. Seem to recall the company’s founders wanted a name redolent of solidity and reliability.
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Without hearing the instrument in the building and in use liturgically, almost impossible to assess it.
My reaction to the visual aspect (granted that even that is better judged in the church) is that it’s clearly constrained by the architecture, and the proportions are therefore unusual, but that does not mean that they are automatically invalid. The case is tall and thin, but so what? Occasional departures from the norm are not necessarily unacceptable in aesthetic terms. If people went around installing lots of tall, thin cases for no good reason that might be another matter (but then again our idea of what the norm should be might shift), but as something of a one-off it seems fine to me - a bit quirky, but what’s wrong with a bit of quirkiness?
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An eminently sensible idea, so (alas) it’s not surprising it hasn’t caught on!
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One local organ has the opposite problem, a bench fixed a long way from the keys. It has clearly been like that since the instrument was installed, and some serious carpentry would be needed to alter the situation. The original organist must have had arms like a gorilla.
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18 hours ago, Damian Beasley-Suffolk said:
Here's a very nice way of making bench-raising blocks - admittedly not a problem I have ever encountered! The rest of this chap's website describing his design and construction of his own pipe organ is well worth a read.
Because most of the village church organs round here have low benches (sometimes low to the point of making the pedals unplayable - and I’m not especially tall) I travel with a set of blocks I made, loosely based on this design. I find them invaluable - very stable and allowing different additions to bench height depending on where I am and how low the bench is.
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Still sung hereabouts.
It’s in Ancient and Modern Revised but not among the general hymns, presumably because, although it references harvest, it’s not really about harvest (any more than “Abide with me” is about eventide in the literal sense).
Not that there’s anything inappropriate about singing the one at a harvest festival, or the other at evensong, I hasten to add - rather the opposite.
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36 minutes ago, Rowland Wateridge said:
Gracious, was this actually an article? I assumed they were the kind of crank ‘letters to the Editor’ which one can also find in other newspapers.
It was an article reporting comments some Twitter users had made.
Lazy journalism, but mining social media for material is a common substitute for old-fashioned reporting nowadays. The broadsheets and B.B.C. do it as much as the tabloids.
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Thank you.
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The V.W. is a decent enough piece but the Towers is so much more atmospheric
Did the rules of harmony involve considerations of temperament?
in General discussion
Posted
Just a thought to throw into the mix … namely that thirds were considered dissonances by medieval theorists (and presumably practitioners). Whether that is relevant to your hypothesis, I don’t know ….