davidh

What a useless reply, I thought. With a bit of effort one should be able to find the town, but it won't tell us if the piece is an improvisation or not. Wrong! Find the town, find the organ, find a CD by NA and all will be revealed.

Alas, babelfish doesn't speak Swedish!

I have just bought a copy of "Bön" (prayer) by Jerker Leijon. The registration suggestion is "Bör spelas med romantisk registrering, gärna voix celeste el. dyl. Solostämman kan med fördel oktaveras." Some of the words I can guess, but not others. Is anyone able to translate, please?

Nice pictures, but sad that 7 of the 11 have this sentence in the text, "The Grand Organ, with it's 7256 pipes has undergone it's 30 year resoration costing £1 million."

Look for the double-page centre spread in The Guardian today, Simon Johnson at the new mobile console at St Paul's. (Not available in the online version as far as I can see).

It's BWV 1128, see http://www.echomusik.com/detalj_helsida.php?artikel_id=5744 and for details of the programme see http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/.../wk38/tue.shtml (and scroll well down).

As their website states, "improved pressure point and touch by an optimally angel". What more could one want?

There's nothing new under the sun. About (because he was vague about his chronology) a century ago Charles Ives specfied the use of a piece of wood about 14 3/4 inches long in his Second Piano Sonata (Concord). If you enjoy other "non-traditional" uses of the organ, look out for Pneo by Daan Manneke, for example on DVD played by Jos van de Koy on the Muller Organ at Haarlem. http://www.crotchet.co.uk/artists/Jos%20van%20der%20Kooy

Or try http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/ where a search on "robertsbridge" will find references to 4 different web pages; the first two are performances of the dances. They aren't individually indexed within the programmes, which run to an hour or more, but you can move the slider on most programs that play these files and find the start of the pieces by trial and error. Better still, start at the beginning and listen all the way through until you hear them - there's some good stuff there. Unfortunately there's nothing on line, and as far as I can tell, there are no CDs to buy of another piece in the Dolinger "Organum antiquum" book, the piece by Ludolf Wilkin aus Winsem dated 1431, "Wol up ghesellen an der tyet IIII notarum". Its easy and fun to play, but a lot of the notes sound very wrong to my ears, and it would be hard to convince the average audience that the right notes were being played. It's also not clear, even with the instructions in the preface, about how the short squeezed-in ornamental bars should be played.

St Peters, East Blatchington, East Sussex. Old pipes conceal toaster loudspeakers.

If we are allowed cases in any country, then this "son of Haarlem" in Zaltbommel is one of the best. http://www.flickr.com/photos/84141431@N00/547998775

Peter Allinson started this thread by writing, "I have just come from Beverley Minster, after hearing Dr Alan Spedding play a wonderful recital, to a very good sized audience. Whilst sat there pondering, as you do, I was looking at the organ case on the screen, and thought how good the colours of the pipes looked under the lights, and thought, is it one of the nicest cases in the country ..." Yes, Haarlem and many overseas cases are extremely nice, but the thread was about cases in "the country", which, presumably is the UK.

A Google search on "organum antiquum" shows that it is available from Allegro, and at Sheetmusicplus there is a contents list and two sample pages, including one page from oneof the two RC estampies.

Thank you for that link. How could anyone so musical be so absolutely wrong about almost everything to do with Bach? That is, judging by the current accepted view of historically informed performance! Perhaps the fellow had never heard a well-regulated harpsichord built on baroque principles, and based his opinion on some plucked version of a grand piano. It's easier to sympathise with his views on the neo-baroque organ of his time which exaggerated some of the characteristics of the early instruments to the point where they became intolerable. It would be wonderful if we could look 60 years into the future to learn what our successors will think about historically informed performance as practised in 2008.

And their website offers musical as well as electrical monitoring, "Full data logged reports for minuets hours, days or weeks with everything could ever want to know about your electricity supply. "

No, not turning, just decomposing (into odd harmonics).

Contrabordun has understood.

Yes, all that you need to know is here http://www.speedylook.com/Numerical_Organ.html The site contains a reasonably competent account of the electronic organ. Unfortunately it appears to have been written in French and put through a poor French-to-English translation program. The following quotes can only give you a flavour of the full content:- The decomposition of Furrier shows that it is made up only of odd harmonics. Obviously, these instruments had all the defects of the time: if each play were interesting by itself, the mixtures gave only one vague sound yoghourt. One can record what one plays on computer thanks to the MIDDAY and, if it is wished, to convert this recording into partition (very practical for immortaliser an improvisation or more modestly to correct itself, to judge acoustics by taking retreat: one can listen oneself to play without playing). One can play in silence, with a helmet on the ears, which is quite practical not to disturb the neighbors or to work during the night. And of course, a numerical organ holds the agreement perfectly. Not need to grant the sheers every fifteen days! … It is enough to include/understand the technology of synthé (a stamp uniformly widespread on the extent of a keyboard) to guess that the principle of the resumptions of a supply, a cymbal or a full play is practically unrealizable there. And from the link on that page to "Organ" ... The emergence of daring type-setters like Antoine Tisné, Andre Boucourechliev or György Ligeti, gives a direction and a primacy to the mechanical organ.

Well, I suspect either myself or the builder of ignorance (could be both,of course) , which is why I didn't name him.

I have been surprised to find several instruments with a contra fagotto stop at 8' as I had always assumed that "contra" was an octave below the usual pitch, and therefore the term applied to 16 and 32 foot stops. Is there an explanation for this other than just the whim of an (unnamed) organ builder?

One April 1st at my school the grand piano made an interesting noise, but it sounded better after the broken chair legs and board dusters had been lifted off the strings.

When travelling in ordinary tourist mode (and not with a bunch of organists) I often go on guided tours of churches. I can't remember any church where the guide didn't say something like, "It's one of the best organs in the twon/county/country", "It has a very sweet tone", or something similar. Some guides are more technical, "This organ has 5,000 pipes" or "This organ has 25 miles of electric wire". What is the oddest information anyone has been given by these well-intentioned people?

That's the good news - it has in fact been open for a while now. The bad news is that many of the scores listed are not accessible again, and are being held back until any copyright issues have been resolved.

I heard Lionel Rogg play this at the Royal festival Hall nearly half a century ago. The final section is marked "lentement" although the right-hand in demisemiquaver sextuplets suggests quite a lot of movement. Rogg started this section at less than half the speed that many players use, and about half of what he used in other recordings. I don't know whether this was a deliberate choice or whether he had misjudged it, but he stuck with it all the way to the end - which seemed to take a VERY long time.

A very odd choice? So presumably it was the Dorian !