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Matej Kubes

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Posts posted by Matej Kubes

  1. On 10/05/2019 at 19:22, philipmgwright said:

    No doubt the long awaited book on Brindley by Bryan Hughes will expand on this.

    I understand it is being sent out to subscribers this month.

    I was wondering if anyone could point me to a place where I can subsribe to/order this book. I have found this email address theorgan@hotmail.co.uk in another thread on Mander Forums. I have not received any reply thus far. Anyone knows if this is the valid email?

  2. On 07/05/2019 at 16:35, MusoMusing said:

    There have been changes to the scholarship in recent years, and some (but certainly not all) of the facts presented by R J KNott, in his history of the Brindley & Foster firm have been disproved. I think that Carl Schulze WAS a relative of Edmund Schulze, but I do not have all my notes at my fingertips at the moment. Carl Otto, I believe, was the voicer who became head-voicer at Bridnley's, and later left to join Keates. I'll check this out when I find a gap in my writings about John Compton, yet another Brindley employee for a short while.

    People often underestimate Brindley's involvement with Schulze, because he did some of the voicing at Doncaster. Not only that, he bought out the company known as 'Violette', and therefore supplied all the pipes used by Schulze after the Doncaster Parish Church instrument. I wonder if Keates didn't also buy pipes from Violette..

    The NPOR builders' database mentions several builders named "Otto" - Rudolph Otto, (brother-in-law of Carl Schulze/Schulz), his sons Frederick William and Ernest R. Otto, as well as a London-based organ builder born in Hull named Rudolph P. Otto. The first three are listed as employees of Brindley-Foster. I haven't found any information on Carl Otto. Would you know by any chance which one(s) was the one that went on to work for Keates?

    Would anyone know of some good read on Brindley and Foster (other than R J Knott?). I am also wondering if there is any literature on Violette... When disassembling the Keates organ, we thoroughly documented everything, including photos of the pipework - would there be a way to tell a pipe comes from the Violette workshop?

    On another note - the builder we are working with had transferred and restored another 1894 Keates organ from Stockbridge Methodist church in Sheffield that was being reorganized in 2008 . This organ didn't have the builder's plate but was later identified as a Keates instrument - thanks to an inscription found in the wind chest that read "Schulz". I could not find this organ in the NPOR database {I wonder why}, I am therefore attaching its description in English and Slovak from an organ festival bulletin. If anyone would be interested, I can share a picture folder with some shots before/during/after the restoration (as well as higher-quality scans of the bulletin) of this neat little Keates with pipe stenciling in the facade.

     

    Skalica_Keates_1894.jpg

  3. On 06/05/2019 at 10:08, Colin Pykett said:

    Coincidentally, I also am trying to find out about a mixture which in this case once actually existed on a Victorian English organ but was subsequently removed.  Like Matej, I was (and am) intending to seek the help of forum members.  But I've been pipped to the post!

    Regarding the current question, it is at least possible if not probable that the hypothetical mixture in this Keates organ, had there been one, would have contained a tierce rank.  So it might be of interest that there was a very thorough and detailed article on this subject in the BIOS Journal some years ago.  See:

    "Thoughts on the inclusion of the Tierce rank in English mixture stops, 1660-1940", William McVicker and David Wickens, JBIOS vol. 32, 2008, pp. 100-162.

    This can be obtained via the BIOS website at:

    https://www.bios.org.uk/store/products_results.php?pageNum_WADAproducts=1&totalRows_WADAproducts=50 

    (although I should point out that I was grateful to obtain a copy from a good friend who is also the titulaire of the instrument mentioned above).

    Thank you for pointing out this article; I will definitely order it - hopefully, it will shed some light for me on the topic of Tierce mixtures and their popularity in England back then.

  4. 43 minutes ago, MusoMusing said:

    I know nothing about Keates scaling or mixture compositions as such, but dependent on when the Keates organ was built, it may well have been the voicing work of Herr Otto, who had arrived in the UK as a Schulze employee when they were involved with the great Schulze instrument at Doncaster. Otto was one of the Schulze employees who elected to remain in the UK, and become employees of Charles Brindley. Otto became head-voicer at Brindley & Foster, before leaving to take up a similar position with Keates.

    The implication may well be, that in searching for clues as to suitable Mixture scales and compositions, one could probably do worse than look at organs from Brindley & Foster, and especially from the 1870's, when Brindley was under the spell of Schulze. The problem is, I know of no Brindley organs with Tierce mixtures!

    I am delighted that at least one redundant organ has been saved from the scrap heap, and especialy from an organ-builder of considerable merit.

    MM



     

    Thank you for the pointer, I am somewhat confused by the name of Keates' head voicer you mentioned -  "Herr Otto". Would "Otto" be his first name, perhaps? There was a Swiss organ builder named "Johann Andreas Otto" who, however, didn't seem to have left Switzerland. I was under the impression that the connection between Edmund Schulze and Keates was a man named "Karl Schulze" {not related to E. Schulze, only employed by him).  It looks like there must have been more Germans working for Keates then...

    Neither the tierce mixture, nor the "Harmonics" mixture are common at all in our neck of the woods (Central Europe, south-German organ building tradition), especially if it is to be the only mixture in the organ. But it seems to me that the English tradition (at least as represented by Keates) seemed to have preferred the Tierce mixtures over quint mixtures - that is if there was to be just one mixture stop in the organ. Would this be true for other English builders of the time as well?

  5. On 05/05/2019 at 21:36, Aeron Glyn Preston said:

    This page may serve as a useful starting point.

    http://cdmnet.org/Julian/cf/bldrs.htm

    Thank you for this page; it is quite informative. It even features an archive photograph of the Baptist chapel {now demolished} where our Keates organ stood originally.

     What caught my attention was the assertion of the writer of that article that "A visit to some of Keates' surviving organs reveals work of surprisingly variable quality; his instruments are less like each other than those of any other builder in my experience." I understand that Keates' organs have all quite different facades, but would the quality of the craftsmanship and voicing vary greatly, as well?

  6. Our parish church in Slovakia has bought and transferred a 2-manual, 17-stop tracker Albert Keates organ (1908) from a closed church in Derbyshire.  As part of the restoration project of this fine instrument, which will hopefully start sometime this year, we would like to add a Mixture rank for brilliance.

    I understand that most Victorian and Edwardian countryside organs in England wouldn't posses a Mixture. Nevertheless, would anyone be familiar with examples of Mixtures built by Keates for two-manual organs and potentially their composition {including the break points and potentially the scaling}?

    I would also like to ask whether anyone is familiar with any relevant literature on Keates - thus far, I have come across a Wikipedia article {in English, and the more extensive one in German} as well as a book called "Some Sheffield Organs" by C.G. Andrews. The Ars Organi article on a Keates organ transplant basically paraphrases the information listed in the German Wikipedia article. Disappointingly, neither Thistlethwaite, nor Bicknell mention Keates in their works.

    Any pointers would be highly appreciated!

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