Jonathan Thorne
-
Posts
176 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Jonathan Thorne
-
-
The Birmingham Town Hall organ has bells. They are most effective in the room and can be heard on a more recent recording. They are tuned so they can be used in pieces. A welcome come back for what is a wonderful musical instrument.
-
Oh here is the link to some pictures - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012...p;id=1225382779
JT
-
Hello all - i've just seen some horrific pictures of this organ from a friend on Facebook and was wondering if anyone knows of this organ? It's on a gallery and hasn't tuned for 20 years I believe. Basically it's just been left to rot- seems a shame really.
JT
-
Tony Cawston was (and probably still is) a very good organ builder.
It would be helpful to know something about this new organisation and in particular the training of the staff. If they are good they need to be given a chance.
Barry Williams
I know that two of the members are trained in organbuilding (I used to work with one of them). I've come across two of their recent overhauls and they seem to be doing very well so far.
-
Does anyone on this forum know if James Binns made any instruments bearing his name before he started his own firm in 1880? I know he was an apprentice at Radcliffe & Sagar till 1873 and then worked for Isaac Abbott (pre Abbott & Smith) from 1873 until 1880.
The reason I ask is that the organ at Eriswell Parish Church in Suffolk (recently rebuilt and rebuilt several times before) has 'James J Binns Leeds May 73 (1873)' written in pencil in two places. One of these is on the inside of the original upper rear Swell box casing. His name is about 2 feet wide so he obviously wanted people to know about him! I don't know if Binns displayed his name like this when working for either of the above firms or if this organ was possibly an early attempt of his own (presumably using quite a few ready made parts although the pipes are marked with his writing). The date of May 1873 is interesting as it's the year he changed jobs, but I don't know exactly when in the year he moved (and don't seem to be able to find out). All the pipe names are also in his writing and one of these also bears his name. The orginal part of this organ does have a slightly primative nature such as a couple of suprising bottom octave omissions. The Swell and Pedal Bourdons use identical pipes and the reservoir is single rise.
It would be worth me looking at Radcliffe & Sagar and Isaac Abbott organs of the same period to look for any clues.
Thanks,
John R
Why not try David Wood from huddersfield - he has all the Binns archive. Isn't Eriswell near Elveden estate?
All best
J
-
Everybody has seen this, I suppose? http://www.tickell-organs.co.uk/KebleCollegeOxford.htm
Exciting stuff.
Yes - but didn't want to spoil the fun of the thread thus far.....
-
There is a great cd of this by Davis Sanger from the very fine J W Walker organ of Exeter College Oxford.
-
But we have all forgot about that women who is known for her untidiness otherwise known as Messay-Anne.
-
I’m trying to track down the publishers and where to obtain the scores for the following pieces by Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens:
Prélude à 5 parties (Grave) in E flat major
Cantabile (Allegretto) in B minor
Would be grateful for any ideas.
J
-
Having read comments in the Dupre topic about how people view his P&F as one of the best organ pieces ever written, what are everyone's favourites? This could be to play or to listen to (or both!).
It would be extremely mean to say you have to pick one piece alone, so if you have a selection of favourites then list them down here!
I'm intrigued to hear how much of it will be 'mainstream' and whether some pieces will be rather less well known.
Over to you...
For me it must be Dupré's Psaumes XVIII, op. 47. The most haunting piece for organ.....
-
Members may like to come along to St. Chad's Cathedral Birmingham nest Wednesday and hear Roy in person. 19.30 hours start £5 on the door. J
-
I have been told that, as a general rule of thumb, the depth of false touch (i.e. the key travel before the contact makes) should be the thickness of an ivory, so this seems about right.
S
Yes I agree. The organ at St. Chad's, Birmingham does have a top resistance about the thickness of the bone (or ivory). One thig I notices at Rieger Orgelbau was how thin the sharps were from side to side. Also what about sharps that sink back from the front? All a question of taste I guess.
-
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/loca...year_old_organ/
Looks like 'Our friends in the North' will be doing the work: http://www.riponcathedral.org.uk/organ01.php
A pipe sponsorship scheme puts a value on each and every pipe- don't all rush for bottom C of the 32' reed- there are other bargains!
http://www.riponcathedral.org.uk/dox/Organ...20low%20res.pdf
Gosh isn't this a regimented way of going things! I wish I got paid £50 or £25 for every pipe I tuned! I wish the campaign all the best. J
-
Ir was rebuilt by H&H so taking on a typical H&H spec: open woods, ophicleides, choir/solo wth orch reeds and Tuba, Gt with trombas 8,4, usual swell. See NPOR N11998. I heard Rawsthorne (I think) recite on it back in the 1960s. Lovely church (used to be anyway) near the CofS cathedral, like a JL Pearson, but (I think) by Burnet.
Couldn't find NPOR N11998 or any reference to this Harrison on the website.....
-
Is this the Koopman recording you heard?
Gosh what a lively and interesting performance!
-
Oh Dear! I feel this debate is getting a bit too heated and emotions are beginning to show. I think a bit more respect and a little less emotion needs to be shown in some of the response above (including mine)....
I'm sure everyone here respects Leeds Cathedral's decision and wishes them well for a successful and happy project. I'm sure no-one here wants to hinder the project in any way - in fact, I'm sure we all want to give Ben, Klais and his project our full support. ...
Ben - I apologize if you misread my last message as implying you and Leeds Cathedral were "clueless". I really didn't mean to - I was thinking of some less happy projects where the client had micro-managed the builder against their better judgement. I've never met you and know next to nothing about the project at Leeds - so who am I to speak about it?
Yes quite right - I look forward to Leeds progress.
-
(in anger) Why is Klais a curious choice for such a project? The fact is they were better at pitching their product then any UK builder - when will the Brits stop being dogmatic?
-
This is a very interesting point but might I add a few observations? Last year I had the privilege of working with Rieger Orgelbau, Austria and I was absolutely breath taken by their approach to their work. They build between five to eight NEW organs every year and probably have an order book for the next four years. When I was there I worked on the organ for Kaarst – a three manual organ. The training they gave was very good and their approach was totally very different to anything I had experienced in the UK. I thought - how do they get their contracts? Well for me it’s certainly something to do with PR, how else would they do it? They market themselves brilliantly and seem to get good results, by doing what the customer actually wants rather then what they think the customer should have. I did have a few issues with the materials they were using but essentially they were getting the work in - and new work at that.
Now with regard to Leeds Cathedral. I have no doubt that they have thought long and hard about this and probably in the same way as the organ for the RCO was thought of. I remember one UK company just simply winging that they didn’t get a proper look in with the RCO project and all they did was do submit ‘Specification A’. Well if that’s all they did then no wonder the job was awarded to someone else with more imagination. And isn’t it surprising they are the first people to complain? I’m not sure if this has happened at Leeds. It certainly hasn’t happened at Worcester, Llandaff and St. Ed’s Cathedral. But for me there seems to be a defensive and lazy approach from some UK builders (and some are pricing themselves out of the market) and this is why I think some contracts go abroad.
When I was organ scholar at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham from 2005-6 I met some of the Klais guy’s. I asked one of them about contracts going abroad and he said that they experience the same political sagas too – why go somewhere else if we can build it ourselves?
I hope the Leeds job goes well and I guess it would be interesting for Klais to have a go at doing something like this. I don’t think it will be another Bath Abbey of Symphony Hall and looking at the pictures it seems they have learnt something from us, but I do feel we need to learn a lot from the continent builders as well.
-
Quite so.
And of course we all know that the house of Willis never bothered with Tierces.
How many Willis organs do you know with Tierces in the Mixtures?
Come on!!
This is getting silly!!
Listen to Salisbury.
It's ALL Quints!!!
R
Hmm
Salisbury still has tierce mixtures and cone tuned as well as Truro, St Mary's Ipswich, Giggleswick School Chapel and no doubt the Ally Pally organ and many more I'm sure.
-
St. Nicholas Gt Munden.
I helped a bit in 1999 with it's installation on the newly made gallery.
http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi...ec_index=D01304
J
-
A fun piece. There is a good recording played by Robert Gower at Rochdale Town Hall, but it's quite hard piece (maybe!).
-
Thanks for this info. Roffensis. I don't know much about Nicholson and Lord's work, have only ever come across one of their jobs, a small one in Yorkshire. Will keep you posted. Rob.
Nicholson and Lord Started in 1878 as far as I know and were based in Walsall. They were acquired in 1951 by the Walter James Bird firm of Selly Park, Birmingham. They made some remarkable instruments and I assist in tuning four of them in the Shropshire area. My favourite one is in St. Lukes Ironbridge, built in 1890. The specification is as follows:
Pedal
1 Bourdon 16
2 Bass Flute 8
GT-PED
SW-PED
Great
3 Open Diapason 8
4 Clarabella Treb & St Diap 8
5 Dulciana 8
6 Gamba 8
7 Principal 4
8 Harmonic Flute 4
9 Fifteenth 2
SW-GT
Swell
10 Lieblich Bourdon 16
11 Open Diapason 8
12 L Gedact 8
13 Viol d'Amour 8
14 Voix Celeste 8 TC
15 Gemshorn 4
16 Wald Flute 4
17 Fifteenth 2
18 Cornopean 8
19 Oboe 8
20 Clarion 4
21 Tremulant
SW OCTAVE
The reeds have so much character and you can do anything with them (i.e. open them in and out without them flying off etc). The Pedal Bourdon and Bass Flute are separate ranks. Nicholson and Lord organs were known for their soundboards being chromatic until tenor G (i.e. 10 on the sharp side). As well as their own impost profile design and casework of pitch pine, they were also known for their membrane chests for off notes of pedal pipes. My guess is that if the Liverpool N&L organ needs restoring then these chests will have to be carefully restored.
It's a shame the firm isn't widely known.
For those interested I have a Nicholson & Lord appreciation society on Facebook.
Regards
JT
-
Mr Thornton writes: 'At the time of the H&H restoration it was considered that the upper registers of the larger open wood developed too much 'roll' in the space of the completed building'
'It was considered' - by whom? This comes down to the point that Pierre has often made that tastes change. I have no axes to grind either way, except to note the swings and roundabouts of outrageous fashion. 2 open woods were considered necessary in Trinity College Cambridge, and then were not. Also King's. Also Newcastle cathedral. Also York. Also Leeds PC (or are they still there there?). They are still considered necessary in Durham and Westminster Abbey. I could go on. I remember Norman Sterrett in 'The Organ' complaining about the 'hoot' of the Exeter Octave Wood 8, but it's still there, as is such a stop at Carlisle and other places. It comes back to the ego of the consultant. And there's another thing that occurs to me. Our susceptibility to high and low pitched sounds changes as we get older. If my inner ears are anything to go by, high pitched sounds become more distressing to the ear the older I get. If this is a common phenomenon, the age of the consultant presumably affects his or her prescriptions for upperwork and voicing. How old was Alan Gray/Arthur Harrison/George Dixon when they specified a Great 32 and two open woods for Trinity? and so on. A field for research, the interface of neurophysiology and organ building ...!
In fact there are two Open Woods on the organ at the Birmingham Oratory. The 32ft extension is taken from the smaller of the two O W's.
-
Rollin Smith (in 'Playing the Organ Works of César Franck) gives the following speeds, from editions (Tournemire and Dupré) and recordings (Marchal and Langlais):
Allegro maestoso
Tournemire: crotchet = 132 (Tempo fluctuations are left to the player's discretion)
Dupré: crotchet = 112
Marchal: crotchet = 126
Langlais: crotchet = 126-132
bar 305
Tournemire: crotchet = 132
Dupré: crotchet = 132 Più mosso
Marchal: crotchet = 108*
Langlais: crotchet = 160
* Smith says 'Dupré, Marchal and Langlais interpreted the ending considerably faster than the rest of the piece', so this figure may be a misprint (crotchet = 180?)
Regarding the controversial metronome markings, William Whitehead wrote an article 'New Perspectives in Franck Studies' in the 2003-4 RCO Journal, quoting a hypothesis proposed by Tom van Eck that Franck was reading his metronome wrongly - from beneath the wedge rather than above - and his markings should be therefore be reduced by 20%. (The same theory has been proposed for the metronome markings in Vierne 3, which many find ludicrous.)
Franck's tempo of minim = 100 would come out as minim = 76-78 - still faster than all the interpretations above. In general, adjusting Franck's metronome markings in this way and comparing them with the speeds of the 4 players mentioned above show that Franck's tempi were more extreme - the slows slower and the fasts faster.
Paul
I have an excellent recording played by Susan Landale from St. Étienne de Caen and from 359 to the end there is a little accelerando but totally justified. With regard to overall tempo I've always been a bit cautious with it but my Franck edition (Wiener Urtext Edition Schott/Universal ed.Gunther Kaunzinger) gives no indication of a metronome speed. The original edition of Franck organ works were by Durand and published in 1880. I've often hear English organists play the Prelude Fugue and Variation and Pastorale played so slow, I wonder if Franck played like that at all.
Recitals
in General discussion
Posted
Hmm I agree with you in parts. I don't think there is a maximum charge for concerts, you only have to go on the Internet and look around at major pop and classical venues and you will find £15 is not as much. I do agree that there should be some concessions if it is to attract the student generation. In fact I think that should apply to other organisations in the organ world, not just organ concerts but also in organbuilding groups, but that’s a different matter. If I was still a student then I wouldn't attend it, because I wouldn't be able to afford if I hadn't saved. Oh but having said that this concert is in October isn't it - most student loans would have gone in by now anyway, so good thinking on the Cathedral is they had thought of that! Joking aside there is not very much difference in £10-£15. Are you saying you can't afford £5? I don't think David would be as interested in how much the cathedral charge provided he gets his fee, which would have influenced the final cost per ticket in any case. Please also don't forget that the Cathedral has a new Organ to pay for as well! I don't think they have been arrogant (I think you might have mentioned that in another post - can't remember), because they would not have invited us forum members to have a FREE go on the organ back in February of this year.