davidh
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Posts posted by davidh
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That will certainly put you on your best behaviour for the next few weeks.
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Fugue State Films have done it again - another multi-media pack fully up to the standards of everything that they have done before.
The set includes:-
DVD1: The Genius of Cavaillé-Coll. It follows his life through 3 periods, 1811-1840, 1840-1862, and 1862-1869, in 157 minutes of video, where the history of his life is very much the history of the organs that he built and the composers that he nurtured.
DVD2: The Organs of Cavaillé-Coll. 202 minutes covering 15 of his instruments.
DVD3: Apres Cavaillé-Coll. 140 minutes of composed music and improvisations inspired by his instruments.
CD1 and CD2. More than 70 minutes each, presenting performances on each of the instruments which appeared on DVD2.
A 80-page A5 booklet with specifications of each of the instruments.
The set costs £64.50 for UK buyers - see http://www.fuguestatefilms.co.uk/ for more details and a video trailer, or try youtube cavaille-coll. The company needed £80,000 to fund the making of the set, and many people subscribed in advance to make it possible. It was an excellent investment!
Last year "Tempo Primo" lamented the prospect of Farnborough Abbey being included in the project. Unless I have missed something, his fears have not been realised.
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Organ tutors warn against playing without appropriate shoes, but I have seen well respected performers wearing what seem to be quite unsuitable ones, for example Michel Chapuis in his deck shoes.
Willem Tanke in his Bach recordings http://www.willemtanke.com/Bach_organworks.html and his Messiaen DVD seems NEVER to wear shoes, yet he plays with great precision and sensitivity.
Is playing in one's socks really inadvisable?
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Sorry, but this is nonsense.
I have seen this console from the point of view of the organists' bench. It was well made - certainly of rather higher quality that the previous console.
The former console was made by Hermann prior to his death in 1964 (of course) and should have been solid wood, but when the 1990 restoration took place it was found to be chipboard with a rosewood veneer. Alterations were impossible, so a completely new console was built by Philippe Emeriau.
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In 1999 it was controlled by two IBM PS/2 with 80486 microprocessors working at 16Mbps linked by a token ring, and two CRT displays, controlling the pipes via MIDI. There was also a synthetic voice so that the console could inform a blind organist of its settings. All state of the art at the time, but some people have expressed the view that MIDI would have too much latency to work effectively on an instrument that size.
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It's a vocal piece, but might well work on the organ if the performer knows the appropriate conventions: Guillaume de Machaut's "Ma fin est mon commencement".
The top two parts are the same, but one is the mirror image of the other. The third part is the same as the first, but at twice the speed and reversed from the middle. So it's a palindrome plus!
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The reviewer wrote, "the wonders of Carpenter's technique (his foot pedalling is beyond compare) could only sustain interest up to the end of the first piece." No comment on his hand pedalling then!
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Of course there is the need to keep up to date with changing operating systems. Will Sibelius work under Windows 8?
That raises the interesting question of why new operating systems should be incompatible with older ones. There is no obvious technical reason why a new version of Windows, say, should not run all existing programs as before, while providing new facilities as options for new programs.
I am cynical enough to suspect that this is to necessitate the purchase of new versions of software which were quite satisfactory, thus helping the software industry, and as operating systems and programs get larger, forcing the user to upgrade the hardware as well.
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Different vicars operate in different ways. I'm sure in many Parish Churches the DOMs pick the music without any interference from the clergy whatsoever. In Cathedrals its usually the Precentor.
I currently pick the hymns at our place, and the vicar is happy for me to do so on the basis that he may change them as he wants.
It is a long time ago that I took services in one of the free churches, but I had been taught that the service needed to be planned as a whole, with the readings, hymns and sermon related to each other, and if the DOM chooses the hymns, the lectionary prescribes the readings, and the preacher chooses the theme of the sermon, without some co-ordination won't the result be an unrelated ragbag?
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I still wait to hear from David Drinkell. I'm sorry, CV, but I have only one copy and I respect copyright (when the publisher bothers to keep an item in print).
My copy cost 2/6d - in today's money 12 1/2p, and the price now from Fuller Music is £7.50, which is 60 times as much, a ridiculous price for 4 pages of music + title page and biography of Sowande
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A Benedictine monk is correctly addressed as "Brother Joe Bloggs OSB". So confusion at the monastery when an envelope arrived, marked "Private and Confidential" and addressed to "Brother OSB"!
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A useful site it might be, but a shame the owners of copyright are not identified (unless I missed it)!
That is the sad thing about so many postings on Youtube and other sites; there are clips from interesting CDs and DVDs, but often it is impossible to find the source, and even when one tries to buy a copy they have been discontinued.
Short clips might technically (and legally) breach copyright, but they could be regarded as free adverts which would attract legitimate purchasers. If the copyright owner has ceased to sell the material, then he or she is losing nothing by the web posting - which is still not legitimate.
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It's better than a lute. It is claimed that lutenists spend 2/3 of their time tuning their instruments, and the other third playing them out of tune. A lutenist of my acquaintance did not disagree with that view.
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I recall Ernest Hart (of Copeman Hart) saying that he set his instruments to sound as if they were tuned a few days ago. There are good reasons for Hauptwerk sample set producers to fine-tune sample sets which may be subject to temperament changes, but some sample sets forbid that, and perhaps they do include the minor shifts from perfect tuning, so producing a slightly richer chorus effect.
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You know the solution: an enharmonic organ! But where to put all the extra pipes?
This is one argument for a toaster.
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There's a lot of good stuff at Carus-verlag. In particular I would recommend Contrapunctus 14 (the incomplete one) from Bach's Art of Fugue.
Zoltán Goncz has demonstrated that the 3 subjects in the known part follow a definite pattern, and the same pattern can be continued systematically in a way which includes the missing theme. While it is less exciting, for example, than the more free completion by Lionel Rogg, it can be argued that it is a logically more consistent completion than rival versions.
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What will he be wearing? Will the programmes be televised?
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How about a Consolation of organists?
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They did put in pneumatic action on the pedal a while ago, but it didn't last. I believe that the whole action was replaced during the 1959 -1961 Marcussen "restoration" with a balanced action. And very nice it feels, with no "clanking" at all.
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Whatever the truth of the matter, Bach certainly seems to have been quite an enthusiast for tierce mixtures thereafter, and possibly explains why an organ as remote from Thuringia as that at the Bavo-kerk, Haarlem, is so absolutely right for the music of Bach.....colour, richness and vibrancy of tone as well as vivid tonal contrasts.
MM
And it would have been even happier with its tierce mixtures before it was retuned to equal temperament.
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Simple acoustic theory is often quite inadequate to explain what really happens in musical instruments.
Take organ pipes, for example. The sounding length differs from the physical length by the end correction, but this is frequency dependent (and the simplest accounts don't even mention that) and so the harmonics should be out of tune. Add phase locking to the account, and we see why the harmonics really are all in tune, unlike the nasty harmonics of a piano with its stiff strings.
Now in simple terms, celestes and angelicas should sound the same. When tuning one pipe against another the beats don't tell you whether you are above or below pitch until you change the pitch slightly and observe whether the beat rates get faster or slower.
So what are the extra factors which determine any difference in sound between the two?
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From April 16th to 21st, 2012 there will be a tour of organs in the South of Holland. There will be a maximum of 16 participants (not all players) so the players will have an exceptional amount of time on each instrument. So far 13 people have registered, so there is room for 3 more.
See http://www.dutchorgantours.nl/ for details, and in particular note the review of an earlier tour. Everyone is welcome from non-playing listeners to players of all abilities.
David Hitchin
Howard Goodall's "Story of Music"
in General discussion
Posted
UK television viewers have had the opportunity to see the first two parts of this series.
Howard Goodall has an exceptional ability to communicate some of the technicalities of music in simple and easily understood terms, and I can easily forgive the excessive use of graphics (probably not his fault) and the appalling electronic keyboard which he uses for demonstrations. A simple account of some difficult topics can't take account of the more subtle nuances, but even so I have to disagree with some of his opinions, and note one definite error.
He said carefully that the "selling point of the piano, making it different from the harpsichords, clavichords, spinets and virginals was its ability to play soft and loud, that is "piano e il forte". Accurate but misleading; the clavichord was never "loud", but it was capable of a wide dynamic range, perhaps wider than that of the early piano, although at a lower level.
In explaining temperament he said that Western Music needed "at least" (careful words) 19 subdivisions of the octave, and that close sharps and flats are subsumed into the best approximation on a single key. To illustrate this he showed a diagram of a set of 19 organ pipes on which an ascending 19-division scale was played. Unfortunately these were labelled
C natural, D flat, C sharp, D natural, E flat, D sharp, E natural, E sharp, F natural, etc
whereas D flat in 19-division temperament is HIGHER than C sharp, so the series should be
C natural, C sharp, D flat, D natural, D sharp, E flat, E natural. E sharp, F flat, etc
Few modern scholars would now maintain the old view that Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was intended for equal temperament, but Goodall said that it was the most conclusive evidence that equal temperament worked. I am not convinced either by his statement that it made easier for different instruments to play together in tune.
As for our organ, equal temperament results in mutations that clash with the harmonics from a fundamental note, and equal temperament resulted in the death of the traditional English Cornet stop.
He did say, very wisely, that we now all hear music through the filter, or some would say "distortion" of equal temperament, and ... everyone now hears music as "in tune" or "off key" as, say, everyone in 1600.
David Hitchin