Barry Jordan
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Posts posted by Barry Jordan
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My objection to the pervading English organ style, is that it completely re-invents the organ by turning its' back on the essentially contrapuntal nature of the instrument.
MM
Style of organ, or style of composition? Did the instruments produce the music, or the music the instruments (unlikely)? Chicken or egg?
I personally rather agree with the Howells-sentiments - beautiful liturgical music with too little drama to be really successful where people "really listen", as I said a while back - while liking the Hymnus P. quite a lot, for example. Still, I think the question (too) whether the organs which already existed when Howells was working really encouraged anything else.
So why did organs (not just in England) lose their contrapuntal capacities? Because counterpoint generally went out of fashion?
Is Bridgewater really such a brilliant contrapuntal organ? I have never heard it, but from what I know of its builders' other recent work, this would surprize me.
Cheers
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That's in very short why I believe the british romantic (the baroque we know very very little about) organ is under rated, and, even worse, under rated by the people
who are responsible of their preservation.
Well, we agree about that! Interest in British organs is awakening on the continent, that's for sure, for whatever reason. You may know that a company in Wuppertal makes a good living by buying up scrapped organs from England and relocating them to Germany or elsewhere on the continent (www.ladach.de).
I believe that these instruments do a better job than any others of playing Reger AND Franck......... that might be because I spent a lot of my most formative years at the console of a large and largely untouched Hill.
Not quite sure if Bach cantatas really come into this equation, but we can leave that!
Cheers
B
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Since the most obvious reed to put on the Chaire is a Cromorne (or similar), I chose to place such a rank on the Solo, in order better to facilitate the playing of Couperin, de Grigny, Marchand, etc. These composers sometimes call for a dialogue between a Cromorne and a Cornet séparé.
They do indeed, but they also assume that the Cromorne will be in the chair case and the Cornet séparé not........
Just let's make it a lovely clarinet, OK? And get rid of all that tinsel.
Cheers
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I'd like to go back on this:
any one style really convincingly, unless it's the accompanimental Anglican one of the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries
(Quote)
-Isn't that understatment?
I don't think so. One of the recurrent themes of the Worcester discussion has been what a marvellous instrument it is for accompanying the choir. It seems fairly evident that the accompanimental use of an instrument sets different priorities from solo use, particularly when a great deal of the repertoire requires an almost orchestral breadth of sonority; also that the use of the organ to accompany a choir also requires somrthing different from its use in leading congregational singing.
-Was Bach's music something else as liturgical tool in its time?Yes. We don't really know for what purpose the big choral-based pieces were written, but the Preludes and Fugues are not liturgical music - even if they were played before or after services, which we do not know and for which there is no evidence, they were certainly not played during them. Nothing which occurs before the salutation or after the dismissal is liturgical! This does not of course apply to small early pieces like the Arnstadt chorales.
-By the way, what is a style?That is a mischievous question! Although the boundaries of all styles are fluid, it is self-evident that the styles themselves do exist! How narrowly one wants to define them is a difficult question; but when one says "German romantic", everyone knows what it means, even though there is a big difference between Sauer and Walcker or Steinmeyer and Voigt. When the difference becomes too big (e.g. say Sauer and Ladegast) you'd have to start wondering whether you perhaps need a new label!
Cheers
B
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The question is to have a definition of what is a "bad" organ.
This definition should be agreed upon by the organ builders
from all parts of Europe, I mean the "leading" ones, that is,
the builders that demonstrated they can restore historic organs
from differing styles and periods.
(snip)
Best wishes,
Pierre Lauwers.
This is taking us away from Worcester, which is certainly a good thing. I think you'd have a hard time arguing convincingly that any English cathedral organ represented any one style really convincingly, unless it's the accompanimental Anglican one of the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries. There is almost no solo music for this type of instrument, certainly not that was meant to be "really listened to" - that is, playrd primarily in recital and not as a "voluntary". Yet these instruments - the better ones at any rate - are really astonishingly versatile and can give a good account of a large amount of repertoire. I do think that that is what most organists, if they are honest, really want. At a consultants' conference early this year a distinguished professor from Düsseldorf remarked on the St. Sulpice organ, which he has played often since he is a life-long friend of Daniel Roth, that although the organ was of course superb in every sense, he "wouldn't want to have it". That caused some gasps, but many of us understood what he meant... it included playing ease.
I can't really agree that
The worst situation is whenever-wherever an organist may decide
alone.....; but 9 times out of 10 the result is a catastrophe.
The organist looks after "Repertoire", while any charachterfull, interesting
organ is by definition restricted in that respect.
So any "organist-designed" organ must be an "would be all purpose"
one, it's logical! save that it does not work.
because in fact most organist's do not have the courage to design a scheme which will be met with opprobrium. Eclectic organs are simply not "in" at the moment. Most new instruments are either french symphonic, maybe German romantic (coming back into fashion) or some more or less easily identifiable form of baroque or even earlier instrument. Why? We do not live in the gothic era, we live in the 21st century. The mania for recreating old instruments is a symptom of a chronic lack of courage on the part of all involved, or possibly (which may be worse) a failure of creativity. Elsewhere on this board I recently took a swipe at the Mafia of the organ world, which was understood to mean the critics but which in fact meant more the acknowledged gurus most particularly in the early music world. They are admirable men and women, but they often have more influence than they should have.
The art of organ building developed because great organ builders had 1. free reign - who would have dared to tell Scherer or Schnitger or CC or Sauer what sort of organ he should build, or to suggest he should build in a style other than his own? 2. vision and 3. a healthy disregard for music earlier than that which was being written at the time he was building his instruments. Organists have always had to get along somehow, and that is just fine. Nobody gets upset when a cellist plays Bach on a modern cello, and nobody expects a harpsichordist to bring 4 instruments if he plays music from different countries and different centuries in a single recital, but when an organist plays an eclectic recital, eyebrows are raised and the comment is heard, "Well, of course you can't really play that on this organ"........
English cathedral instruments are by definition "all-purpose". That's what makes them special, and it works very well. What Adrian Lucas seems to be wanting is something LESS all-purpose.
Cheers
Barry
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Oh, I know that, I've played it......... the Cuthbert Harrison information came from the estimable vicar, Tony Whatmough; I simply took it at face value!
Reply to Pierre: you're right, In Germany you couldn't even change the wiring, and that's really stupid. There seems very little point inspending lots of money on restoring instruments to conditions in which they never worked properly in the first place, but it goes on all the time here. I certainly wouldn't want to wish that on the English.
It is not really pride in their heritage which drives the Germans to their manic conservationism, but guilty conscience. Probably no nation was in a position to destroy so many good instruments in the period 1960 up until easily 1985 as the Germans were. Now that they've realised that, they have come up with a whole rack of unproductive guidelines for "Denkmalschutz" in which, I want to stress, THE CRITERIUM OF QUALITY HAS NO PLACE WHATSOEVER. There are of course no really objective grounds for a judgement of tonal quality; every time we hear a stop which we regard as utterly ugly, we must remember that at least one person - the voicer - must have liked it like that. Still, an unwillingness to judge quality must lead to a stalemate for the art of organ building; almost no new churches are being built, so if new organs are to be constructed, old one will have to make way for them.
Turning briefly to Worcester again: I played this organ once very briefly. I do not have to live with it, so I am less well qualified to judge it than those who do. I must say that I rather liked it. I too wonder whether scrapping it is the only answer, but it seems clear that the cathedral does need a nave organ, because they have been using one for decades now! Initially it was the rolling "modular" organ of which this list spoke a while back, later that perfectly ghastly "Bradford Computing Organ". One option might have been a new triforium Great/Pedal linked to the existing divisions in the Quire, and a new west? organ - perhaps a Cologne-type soultion might be preferable, although of course the cathedral is not nearly so wide.
Just some random thoughts.
Waiting for those trucks, Pierre - actually relocating the organ to (Eastern?) Europe might well be an answer. Plenty of huge Basilicas in Poland who'd find it a god-send - and plenty of organ builders there who can keep anything going with a tube of glue and some cotton-wool.
Cheers
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Arthur Harrison....Redcliffe is possibly the least altered example of his own work from scratch.
Speaking as an ignoramus from another continent, isn't Redcliffe Cuthbert Harrison?
Just asking.
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If anyone was on here debating my own church organ, I would be on here stating my case. Perhaps the worst aspect of all this is the relative silence.
May I just point out that Adrian Lucas addressed all the similar criticism quite persuasively on orgue-l. I should imagine that he's getting a bit tired of it now.
Like many arguments, the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"-line being put forward with sometimes quite hysterical force here has its limits. Like the strictures against rebuilds - hotch-potches is the favoured pejorative - a too rigid enforcement in the past would have robbed us of some of our greatest treasures. And the "only a custodian" effectively means no freedom of action for anybody using an instrument, or even a building, which doesn't actually belong to him.
Cheers
Barry
I think that the mud-slinging is a little inappropriate, however much opinions may vary. Adrian Lucas is an able and dedicated musician; we may assume that he is acting in good faith. He may be wrong, but he is certainly not crooked.
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We have some very fine instruments here that could add something new, rather than just another set of the Vierne Symphonies on a Cavaille-Coll. Westminster Cathedral, Truro, Lincoln, to name just three.
Part of the problem here is that there definitely has to be a good reason for recording particular music on a particular organ if one doesn't want to get roasted by the critics right away. If Dupré didn't actually play the organ, then some critic is definitely going to ask why, when there are so many organs that Dupré did play, one has chosen to record it on this one. That it is the instrument over which one presides is a reason which only partly mollifies; and a typical "tourist shop" recording of an organ - a broadly based "showcase" CD is likely to get a very sniffy reception. At any rate here on teutonic ground........ someone (I forget who) recently did the Elgar sonata here on a German instrument and was fairly solidly toasted for the effrontery of trying. Although I've done it a few times in concerts and it's always gone over very well, although it sounded distinctly odd. Of course if you commit it to disc you prepare yourself for much more in the way of flak on a much broader level; all your colleagues read the "trade journals", and getting bad reviews is not good for your career.
Wolfgang Rübsam recorded the Whitlock sonata last year (I think) on an American organ (Skinner) for a German label (ifo). What about that? I'm not a great Rübsam fan, but the organ sounds luscious.
Cheers
Barry
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You can hear many examples on a CD recorded at Essen-Werden (Walcker 1900):
Now THIS organ is a masterpiece!
BJ
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May I suggest that a more appropriate sweeping statement (suggestion) might be restore it properly or trash the lot. If the instrument has merit to any degree, it should be restored I think. If it does not, one ought to have the courage of ones convictions and simply start again.
John Pike Mander
That would of course be an idealistic way to react. In this particular case the organ is not very distinguished, although it stands in an important and large church (it's not THAT one, John, incidentally). It's a substantial 3 manual instrument with a very mixed pedigree and three rebuilds behind it, trashing it would be the best option, but not financially viable.
The question is, what would count as restoring it "properly"? Whether you electrify the action up to the last motor before the chest or add relays or use tubing of geater diameter, you are "improving" the action, which is in terms of normal German thinking on the matter. not on.
There has been one report suggesting building a mechanical action for the instrument, which would basically mean starting again but recycling the pipework, because the current layout would be a nightmare on tracker.
Churches here have no money, because no-one goes to them, so doing anything at all to organs is essentially a question of keeping them playing as cheaply as possible. Most of them are just hymn-machines anyway, so whether they are electric or pneumatic is unimportant, as long as they play. My point was really, this organ was restored very well not 10 years ago, but nobody has been happy with the result, because rubbish remains rubbish, whatever you do to it!
BJ
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the pneumatic action works with 6mm tubing and the tubes are up to 9 metres long.
(Citation)
Who was the builder?
Are there at least relays along these 9 meters tubing?
Best wishes,
Pierre Lauwers.
The builder's name was Hugo Hülle. You will never have heard of him, which is quite right too. And no, there are no relays, which is why it was quite mad simply to have restored the organ as it was. As it was unplayable before, it would probably not have cost very much more to have "upgraded" the action than it did to "restore" it, even though money is still of course very tight here in the eastern half of Germany.
The point is, I think, that there is a sort of reflex action here, that any organ is better off in its original state than in any other. And that is sometimes simply wrong, especially as most German pneumatic actions are really ghastly, partly because they use pressures that are too low and action runs that are too long. Electrify the lot, I often say, and cause jaws to drop!
BJ
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Here is an example -from Scheffler's words:
http://aeolus-music.com/deutsch/orgeln/bremen.htm
You will read: "als elektropneumatische..." (about 3/4 of the text)
Best wishes,
Pierre Lauwers.
Of course you are right about this. I played in Bremen last year but had forgotten that the console is eqipped with sequencers and all mod cons. BUT this is not the case in Leipzig, and there are other German builders restoring pneumatic consoles all the time; a Rühlmann instrument not 200 yards from my front door (Restoration by Hüfken of Halberstadt last year) being an example. In fact I would say that there are numerous pneumatic actions being restored which shouldn't be. I was called in to look at an organ recentls where the pneumatic action works with 6mm tubing and the tubes are up to 9 metres long. This was carefully restored about 5 years ago, and doesn't work any better now than it ecer did.
Cheers
BJ
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- Christian Scheffler does excellent restorations particularly of Sauer instruments, and has St. Thomas, Bremen cathedral and dozens of others to his credit.
Yes, but none with pneumatic console.
I don't understand what you mean; St. Thomas and Bremen both have fully pneumatic actions. So, unless we mean something quite different by the term, pneumatic consoles do. As does the Michaeliskirche in Leipzig.
Best
B
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And the perfect Reger organ?
It's just got to be Passau, in which Straube had a hand, but I guess the purists will argue the case for a great Walcker or Sauer instrument of the period. Others would be perfectly happy to play it on the splendidly re-built Albert Hall instrument.
MM
Passau? Is this really an organ? Sound squirting from the walls all around you? It's just a huge toy. You get the same effect from an electronic with lots of speakers......
Eisenbarth is just not one of the world's great organ builders, sorry
BJ
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Sauers are extremely interesting, refined organs. Moreover, Sauer had an excellent
pneumatic tubular action.
- Well, it is very slow by English standards!
But it seems nobody can restore a pneumatic
console in Germany nowadays.
- Christian Scheffler does excellent restorations particularly of Sauer instruments, and has St. Thomas, Bremen cathedral and dozens of others to his credit.
It is worth noting that Reger developed projects not only with Sauer and Walcker but with a lot of other firms as well, including Steinmeyer, Maerz, Jehmlich and others.
Cheers
BJ
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The best digital manufacturers are perfectly capable of synthesising proper individual pipe-speech these days, but the best do not come cheap. In fact, the Marshall & Ogeltree installation at Trinity Church, New York, is mighty impressive, and has prompted some favourable comment and not a little admiration.
Is this really true, and have you heard it and played it? Because a source who does not wish to be named has told me that it is dreadful (in spite of the fact that even the banging noise mad by the inflating reservoirs is to be heard when you turn it on. But I suppose it's a question of what organs you choose to sample).
BJ
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The matter of the possible use of electronically generated sounds which are not intended to replace or replicate organ sounds is one that needs to be kept quite separate from that of "combination" organs or digital substitutes. Instrument makers and composers have been searching for new sounds for as long as they have existed; I often think, heretically, that the best electronic "organs" there have ever been were the "B" Hammonds! They sounded like Hammonds, and not like organs.
There have been some experiments with midi-interfaced synthesizers attached to "real" organs (Beckerath built one in Blankenese / Hamburg for the composer Hans Darmstadt , then organist there, about 15 years ago). So far they haven't proved to be very fertile earth. And of course, those peculiar organs so beloved in Germany about thirty years ago which consisted largely of peculiar mutations - think builders like Bosch - were in themselves an attempt to make pipe organs sound like synthesizers.
I can sympathize with cathedrals feeling they really need a 32' - soft flue, preferably. Never heard a synthetic reed I could love...... But that really is the limit. Electronic mixtures? Forget it!
Cheers
Barry
I also agree with Mr. Mander as far as the organ is concerned, but sometimes I wonder if there is a (positive) result to be expected in a combination between a large 'real' organ and electronics (like synthesizers) that are not used as replicas (or replacements) but produce there 'own sound' and somehow dialogue with the organ (... thinking of the Ondes Martenot in Messiaens Turangalila ...). -
Well, of course he is. He's a politician. Don't forget that the city of Hamburg is a state on it's own (like Bremen and Berlin), so the Mayor is what would be called the "prime minister" in any of the other how-ever-many-it-is states. I don't think it's as clear as all that that he would lose in court, since the legal provision for expropriation after a certain number of offers to buy is fairly clear. Pierre is right of course; these jobs tend not to materialise after the fact, at any rate not in the numbers in which they were promised, but somehow the phrase "Well, we'll just have to do it all in Toulouse then" works every time.
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Well, it might help. But then again it might not. The most important sentence in Charlie Kropf's article is one which a non-resident of Germany might possibly overlook - "the public is raging". Airbus promise up to a quarter of a million new jobs - and a parish refuses to give up its church or its land! The thoroughly unecclesiastical Germans do not understand this at all. The issue makes the national news on a regular basis, and the words "organ" or "Arp Schnitger" are not uttered. And if they were, who would care? Not the unemployed, except possibly unemployed organists.
Hamburgs Lord Mayor has threatened simply to expropriate everything without legal regress if the parties concerned do not sell. And Airbus has extended the deadline by, if I remember correctly, two years. We can do what we can. But I fear that the future is no longer in our hands.
Cheers from not so very cultivated Germany
Barry
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I'm not actually sure what kooiker wanted to tell us (since removed to save space), since I could see only a quote from David Sutherland's query, but no, I don't think you're right. The french bourdon can be many things, but mostly it is a stopped or half-stopped flute, perhaps most closely similar to the English stopped diapason.
At St. Ouen, for example, it is (on the GO, at 8' pitch) of wood, stopped, in the bass octave, thereafter metal, stopped, up to middle g, thereafter a chimney flute. The Positiv Bourdon is constructed the same way. But at Sacre-Coeur it is entirely stopped.
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Other sourcs which I have available state that the Totentanz organ was "restored" (instandgesetzt) in 1475 and 1477 by J. Stephani. Jakob Scherer added the Rückpositiv in 1557/8 and Henning Kröger the Brustwerk in 1621/2. Friedrich Stellwagen worked on the instrument 1653/5.
Even the organ reform movement realised that this instrument was much older than the other "old" organ - St. Jakobi, small organ - which Lübeck boasted at the time of the congress of 1925.
It would be interesting to see the composition of the mixture on the HW, because it's a fairly safe bet that this must at first have been a Blockwerk. Was the 4' Oktave originally a part of the Mixture, or was this a new stop at some stage?
I found the disposition as it was before the destruction (which was the basis for a "reconstruction using the old scales" by Kemper after the war - a terrible instrument). Apart from a few orthographical differences (not really significant, since the stop knobs of such organs have normally been rewritten many times, very often simply on paper).
The only differences are:
16' in the HW is Quintadena
There are two extra stops in the pedal: Oktave 2' and Nachthorn 1', but no Krummhorn - not a stop that one would usually expect to find in the pedal, although logical when the two subsidiary divisions each have reeds of this kind at two pitches.
Cheers
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On this page you can find a picture of the Totentanz organ
http://www.die-auslese.de/html/ausgaben/1-...z/totentanz.htm
as well as this disposition, which differs (one again) in some important respects from the Hill quote.
Disposition der Totentanzorgel um 1630
HAUPTWERK 1475 - 77
Subbass od. Quintade 16'
Prinzipal 8'
Spitzflöte 8'
Oktave 4'
Nassat 2 2/3'
Rauschpfeife 2f.
Mixtur 8-10f.
Trompete 8'
BRUSTWERK 1621 / 22
Gedackt 8'
Quintadena 4'
Hohlflöte 2'
Quintflöte 1 1/3'
Scharf 4f.
Krummhorn 8'
Schalmey 4'
SCHWELLWERK 1760 / 61
RÜCKPOSITIV 1557 / 58
Prinzipal 8'
Rohrflöte 8'
Quintade 8'
Oktave 4'
Rohrflöte 4'
Sesquialter 2 f.
Sifflöte 1 1/3'
Scharf 6-8 f.
Dulzian 16'
Trichterregal 8'
PEDAL 1475-77, 1621 / 22
Prinzipal 16'
Subbass 16'
Oktave 8'
Gedackt 8'
Oktave 4'
Quintadena 4'
Zimbel 2 f.
Mixtur 4-5 f.
Posaune 16'
Dulzian 16'
Trompete 8'
Krummhorn (1579) 8'
Schalmei 4'
Kornett 2'
Aus "Die wunderbare Welt der Orgeln" von Dietrich Wölfel
Particularly interesting is the implication that the "Swell" - without stops - was constructed in the 18th century by means of enclosing the Brustwerk, which, in this version, has no trumpet. You will remember that the typical Brustwerk in many north German organs was in fact an extension of the Hauptwerk, often having no keyboard of its own, and containing reed stops which would have needed to be tuned more often and could more easily be done by the organist without a key-holder when not on the main HW chest .
At any rate in this form, the RP disposition does echo at least one aspect of Hildebrandt's style, his tendency to put simlar flutes at several pitches on to one manual, but it seems otherwise to be typical north German disposition, being very much a secondary chorus. The dates given are illuminating: the HW has not been altered from its gothic form (although this seems unlikely) whereas other parts of the organ are new or altered. The case shows this clearly too!
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Main Organ:
HW: 16, 16, 8, 8, 4, 4, 2 2/3, II, X-XV, IV, 16, 8, 4
RP: 16, 8, 8, 8, 4, 4, 2, II, V, IV-V, 16, 8, 8, 8
BW: 8, 8, 4, 4, 2, 2, 1, II, VI-VIII, III, 8, 8
PD: 32, 16, 16, 8, 8, 4, 2, 1, VI, 24, 16, 16, 8, 8, 2
There are a few mistakes in this, or perhaps simply "differences", depending on which source one has used. According to Klotz, The Werk reeds were Trompete 16', Trompete 8' and Zink 8', whereas the UNterposiztiv had Dulzian 16', Baarpfeife 8', Trichterregal 8', Schalmei 4'. The use of 4' reeds is more plausible in the context of short-resonator stops in this style of building.
The "Sifflet" in the BW was 1 1/3', not 1'.
The 24' Reed in the pedal seems very odd - This can't quite be discounted, would then mean however not that the stop sounded an odd pitch but that it began perhaps at F - perhaps a survivor from a previous incarnation of the instrument with different compasses. Klotz however gives the stop as 32'. But of course mistakes can easily be made where the organ itself has not existed any more for nearly 200 years.
Barker Lever
in Nuts and bolts
Posted
Don't know about Willis, but Ladegast had an exhaust action Barker (for example in Schwerin and in Poznan). Schuke wanted to copy it for our new organ here in Magdeburg. But we are getting Kowalshyn machines instead (the proper name for Fisk's system). They are installed in Lausanne and work very well. But the top resistance of Barkers is of course eliminated - as Pierre has pointed out, this comes from the Barker pallet and not the pipe pallet anyway, so, although nice to have, it's just an illusion!