Barry Jordan
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Posts posted by Barry Jordan
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The current nave organ doesn't seem bad, apart from the case which doesn't really look period.
Period? You want to build a gothic case?
If more sound is required in the nave on occasions, I cannot see why a professional amplicifaction company with experience in dealing with cathedral acoustics could not be employed to mike the Willis through speakers concealed high up in the nave. Perhaps this would save a lot of money on a cathedral which appears to need a lot spending on it anyway. A switch located on a preferably "new" four decker console could bring the amp and speakers into play as and when required for big services.You could just get a digital, in that case. The principle is the same, isn't it?
Have a good day
Barry
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There is only one crescendo marking in the whole of the original scores of the sonatas. Did Rheinbeger write for an organ without a Swell box?
Barry Williams
Yes. And quite a small one, too, as organs in his neck of the woods tended to be, on the whole, at that period. If I remember correctly, pretty much reed-free. Got the spec. somewhere.
German swell boxes never had much in them anyway. Adequate for a crescendo from about pp to mp, at the most - see Ladegast, Wernigerode, for example.
Cheers
Barry
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The sources are such a mess that I can't help feeling that this is a case where you might as well get hold of one good edition and decide for yourself how far to rewrite the notes on the page. A bit irresponsible of me, maybe, but it seems to me that if you have the critical faculties, your decisions are as likely to be viable as the editor's and, at the very least, in line with contemporary performance practice (which I'd guess is what led to the mess in the first place).
Reviews gave Albrecht's Bärenreiter edition the edge (just) over Breitkopf, but that is highly regarded too. The Beloti I'd not heard of, but I like the sound of it being printed on two staves. I used to use the Hedar's edition (Wilhelm Hansen/Chester), but that has been well superseded now.
Tempi in North German Praeludia need to be related to one another, but they needn't be the same! Twice as fast is good!
B
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How minds work much the same, even though I refrain from using the word "great."
I recall that one of my more able academic efforts was to write about "the advantages of Yak transport for London."
I suppose that enquiring minds need to know whether, like sheep, the lesser-coated attack-llama and the gentle, long-coated Yak may graze safely in the same fields?
If not, then we would be back to an M25 situation, with the added hazard of bio-pollution.
MM
"Yak may safely graze", to get this minimally back on topic.........
Barry -
I've only met (and tangled publicly) with a Rollschweller once and it was a bit of a shock.
One doesn't like to admit to areas of ignorance, but this is definitely one for me.
For a start, I was alarmed to find that they work backwards from what one would expect from just reading the subject. Where a balanced Swell Pedal would usually be, you find a cylindrical treadle, about the size and shape of a small biscuit tin on edge covered with ridged rubber matting. To create your general crescendo (with blind stop addition) you paddle the thing towards you.
The reason I ask.... I'm currently working on a Karg-Elert score written for an organ with a Rollschweller and it is specifically mentioned. Problem: both feet are busy and if the one I met is typical (and this is the question) when you release the pedal for a second it returns to its original position .. i.e. the stops go back off again in an instant. In this piece that would be nonsense.
So (anyone who knows)
1. Is it always customary for the pedal to give a crescendo by pulling towards the player (bearing in mind that we all expect Swellboxes and General Crescendo pedals to work precisely the opposite way)?
2. Are these pedals usually sprung back to the neutral position, or did I meet a rogue one?
Not a topic for everyone, but someone 'out there' will know.
Thanks folks!
Definitely a rogue - where in the world can it have been?
It is indeed normal for crescendo to be towards the player, but most German swells until fairly recently worked this way as well (they regarded the swell as a brake not an accelerator, i.e the "normal" position was open).
Normally on would just take short stabs at the Walze with the foot that is currently not being used, it only takes a quaver or so....... but I#ve never encountered a RS that returns to 0 when left alone.
Incidentally, the "Walzen" a normally about a foot wide, so yours seems to have been a bit peculiar in that respect too.
Cheers
Barry
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Believe it or not, one guy has actually recorded pretty much all of it; see here.
yes indeed he has. I know him. He is a strange person.
B
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Strange, this idea that american organ-building equals noise. Strange for a country
that must have build 70% of the total amount of celestes stops worldwide, and
where Audsley wrote (yes, he was against the Celestes!).
My two pennies: would there exist some slight preconceptions sometimes somewhere?
(just a tought)
Pierre
I think Pierre is absolutely right: the USA has some of the finest organs in the world - but certainly also some of the worst.
Not only are there lots of very gifted builders active in the USA - for example Taylor and Boody, Richards Fowkes, Paul Fritts, and also Manuel Rosales, a man with a very strong tonal vision all his own - and not forgetting the older generation, including the incomparable John Brombaugh , but the Americans also import organs in style and thus end up with some of the best products of European manufacture as well.
It is always difficult to include new or newish organs in such lists, just as new compositions are likely to be felt to have not yet met the "test of time". But I am convinced that the organ of St Ignatius Loyola New York will also make this list some day.
Cheers
B
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It occurred to me that both these comps should be taking place this year. Does anyone know if either or both are still on the go, or have they gone the way of the Dodo?
Don't know about Dallas, but Calgary is no more.
Anyone know of Dublin still exists? That was always my favourite to be knocked out of in the first round.
B
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Barry Jordan, 48 years old, married (quite often), two sons and a daughter all younger than they should be at my age.
Born and grew up in Port Elizabeth on the south-east coast (bottom right hand corner) of South Africa, where my first lovers were two Bevingtons, a Walker and, best of all, a Norman and Beard originally built for the Great Exhibition in Kimberley in 1890-something, and which sadly no longer exists.
Went to University in Cape Town, where I was assistant organist at the cathedral (Hill, once in St Margaret's Westminster, thrown out of there by Edwin Lemare and moved to the colonies in 1909 after a spell as somebody's house organ in Sheffield or somewhere) and privileged to witness the installation of Rudolf von Beckerath's last organ before his death in the University's concert hall - and to have lessons on it with Gillian Weir for a while.
After that I played the clarinet in a military band for 4 years. This was called National Service. 4 years of playing the first violin parts of (for example) the overture to "Tannhäuser" on the clarinet in a smallish room also containig 7 trombones and 6 tubas makes one want to stop doing it very badly indeed. Then back to Cape Town for a 2 year spell as DOM at a girls high school and and M.Mus in Composition at UCT.
Then a year in Vienna studying organ with Martin Haselböck and composition with Francis Burt; after that, several years in Lübeck at the Hochschule (still Haselböck), combined with a job in Kiel. Having finished soloists diploma and all the general church musical hoop jumping required in Germany, I was appointed cathedral organist in Magdeburg. And that was that.
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I should think the most obvious example of a performer with limited repertoire must be Pavarotti. As far as I know he sings nothing but extracts from opera.
No, sometimes he sings whole operas too, although not all by himself.
More seriously, singers have their instruments along too, so the comparison is not really fair. You're taking the performer and the instrument into account at the same time.
I could elaborate, but I'm quite sure everybody knows what I mean.
Cheers
B
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Not necessarily the best choice, Barry - William Hill throughout his working life maintained excellent chorus-structures in his instruments; those of a fair size often had two quint mixtures to the GO (the tierce rank in the 17-19-22 mixtures almost always dropped out at the first break). Apart from a Cone Gamba and a wide choice of flutes (including claribels, flauti traversi, wald flutes, gedeckts and suabe flutes) his instruments are not overly Romantic, in the sense of a 1920s HN&B, or an Arthur Harrison.
That's why I chose Hill, actually, meaning that he wouldn't have approved at all!
B
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Yes, perhaps "is full of" is a little too cheerful.
Let's say, rather, there are quite a lot of decent organs around.
Cheers
B
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My 5 (not ranked), but only including organs I've actually played:
1. Naumburg
2. Tangermünde (Scherer, 1624)
3. Norden
4. Pacific Lutheran University (Fritts)
5. St Johannis, Lüneburg
How about that? Now 5 runners-up:
6. Cape Town Cathedral
7. Freiberg cathedral
8. Merseburg
9. St. Ouen
10. Zeerijp
When one comes to think of it, the world is full of gorgeous instruments....
Cheers
Barry
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It does seem to me that a lot of the discussion above - that which is not purely xenophobic - rests on the presumption that "foreign" builders still build instruments with lots of fractional length reeds and breaking glass mixtures. This is simply not so. Kuhn's organs have in the last years become so romantic that they'd have had William Hill running for cover; I find most of them too loud, but that is a personal opinion. Their engineering is impossible to beat, and they have a team of superb restorers - even though I once again find that they tend to leave organs better than they ever were. Whether that is a good thing or not is an open question.
It does seem a little odd to have a Swiss builder building an instrument with a stop list in the English language - and some of his stops may not sound very much like what an English organist might expect - a Dolce will certainly sound quite different from a Salicional, for example. On the other hand, the organ is to stand in England. Quite a lot of players might like to have the stop names in their own language.
Cheers
Barry
PS the idea of Kuhn ever undercutting anybody at all is quite funny.
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The information re. Trost in my previous post was incorrect and leaves me wondering where on earth my memory got it from. Please excuse this.
Sorry about the misinformation.
Cheers
B
Looking at the Waltershausen page referred to in the "Porsche organ" thread reassures me that I was not wrong after all........ there they are, all those "Portuns"!
B
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I would like to know more about this:
HPTW
Mixtur Major 4-5 ranks 2'
Mixtur Minor 3 ranks 1 1/3'
RP
Mixtur 4 ranks 1 1/3'
SW
Progressiv harm. 3-5 ranks 2 2/3'
It may seem somewhat "HPTW and RP classic, Swell romantic", but of course
this is only paper-tiger.
Are there tierce ranks and mixed pipe families in these Mixtures?
The backbone of the organ is fairly classical - the Fagott in the RP is a copy of Naumburg, and a magical stop! - so the mixtures have no tierces and are really principal choruses. But the instrument is obviously voiced to be registered additively. The HW Gamba is very German, so not to be used with FH et al in the CC manner; but in general the sound of all divisions is warm and romantic. The Pos mixture is perhaps a little higher and louder than absolutely necessary, although it gives a convincing account of itself in a Petit plein Jeu....... it is a remarkably versatile instrument, which doesn't give up all of its secrets at once. The Pos. Principal 8' I find simply heartbreakingly beautiful. I wish it were mine.
Best
Barry
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Quite right - my apologies for wrongly accusing Eule of the botched 1980s job.
It did indeed have illuminated stop lozenges when I played it in April 2000, in the same style as the Gewandhaus organ.
Another eloquent testimony to the quality of Eule's recent work is, of course, the magnificently restored Hildebrandt organ at St Wenzel, Naumburg - IMHO the finest Bach organ there is, anywhere.
JS
Eule is flavour of the month in some circles. But their new instruments did not quite attain the quality of their restorations until recently - I have always rather disliked the organ in the concert hall of the Hochschule in Leipzig, but they scored a spectacular success with their new instrument in the catholic cathedral across the road from us here in 2005.
http://kirchenmusik-bistum-magdeburg.de/3910.html
Their head voicer Gregor Hiecke is becoming a name to conjure with.
Cheers
Barry
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The magnificent Sauer console with its terraced, coloured porcelain stop tablets survived until the 1990s, when the Eule firm, then a VEB, or state-owned firm, ripped it out and put in a hideous, cheap mobile affair with illuminated stop lozenges, rather like bell-pushes. Eule is obviously a very different firm these days.
It is indeed, but I'm afraid not all the other info is correct! The last major work on the organ took place between 1986 and 1988. It was done, not by Eule, but by Sauer. The console was indeed hideous, but it was (by eastern standards) not cheap ! Did it really have illuminated stops? I don't remember that, but they were popular in the DDR.
The VEB's (Volkseigene Betrieb, or, popularly, "Vatis ehemaliger Betrieb") ceased to exist in 1989.
Cheers
Barry
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Do you know the old Klais ones, those that were made in the pre-Hans-Gerd era? They still exist in some organs, I believe in Erfurt as well, and were copied for the rebuild at Cologne cathedral, because they were very popular with the organists there.
Best,
Friedrich
I've encountered these at Himmerod. Klais gave them up as well - i wonder if the reason was, that they are comfortable for the Organists, and uncomfortable for registrants?
They take a while to get used to.
Cheers
Barry
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Well, tablets are a different matter of course. But I refused to have those.
I think it is very unergonomic to make the same movement to cancel a stop as to engage it. And they simply look horrible.
Cheers
B
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Vox assumes the stop knobs are reachable, and maybe they are if you have the arms of an Orang-Utan!
They are. The norms here are different, and that affects the distances between the stops - but it also means that the manuals are closer together than they would be on an English organ (not saying that I necessarily like it, that's a different matter.....). So judge not the distance from the highest manual, but from the lowest.
The group on the left hand side, at the top, hardest to reach, are the solo stops. Hardest of all, the tuba. There is some strategic thinking behind this.
German console norms do assume that other people are going to pull your stops, that's not pleasant but it's the way it is. However, this organ does have divisional combinations, an absolute rarity here (very hard to push through) and lots of generals with stepper, so I don't think it'll be problematic.
The Germans think the stops are terribly close together, and awfully small.
Cheers
Barry
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I've been looking in on this web cam from time to time. Anyone who hasn't taken a look for a while might like to take another look now that it's really starting to take shape.
There are some more "insider-type" pictures on our "other" web-site at
http://www.domorgel-magdeburg.de/html/bilder_neubau.html
I will put some more up on Friday; after that the organ builders will take two weeks holiday.
Cheers and don't melt in the heat,
Barry
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Graham Powell is right: an inverted conical open Flute with a somewhat
reedy tone.
According to Hamel, the Clarabella would have been derived from it by trials
with Stopped Diapason pipes whose stoppers were removed in order to imitate
it (I think it was Bishop). A typical german baroque stop.
The information re. Trost in my previous post was incorrect and leaves me wondering where on earth my memory got it from. Please excuse this.
I have discovered that some South German /Austrian builders used the time for the main, rather fluty principal of the "Q´Werk". Meanwhile, Rühlmanns catalogue says it is a conical (one would probably rather want to say "tapered") Gedackt, 8 half-tones wider than a normal principal. The cone is 1:2, mouth 1/5, cut-up straight and 1/3 of the mouth width. The caps are "Normal". He also built an "Offene Portnalflöte", the pipes Cylindrical, with a taper in the upper portion, but the cylindrical portion is longer than the cone. The cut-up here is 1/4.
Sorry about the misinformation.
Cheers
B
Barry
Tracker Action
in General discussion
Posted
Just for the record, I've now experimented sitting on the bench in front of "my" new console, and I can reach everything, even the tuba, and I'm about the smallest organist I know, being just 5'7" on a good day.
One of the reasons for wide spacings is of course the size of the switching units. Here in Germany, builders have basically the choice of Laukhuff or Heuß; Heuß have the reputation of being slightly more reliable and quick. But they don't let themsleves be packed any closer than mine are without being impossible to maintain or even to get out again in the case of failure.
Incidentally - at least the stop knobs themselves in the Sydney pictures certainly didn't come from Hradetzky - I've never seen anything as English as those on te continent!
The console has obviously been tarted up in the last few years, so that the Ahlborn-type rocker switches over the top manual look even more horrible than they must have done originally......
Straight pedalboards are simply continental standard. They are not uncomfortable, actually, you just have to get used to them! As long as the lengths of the "black" keys are arced, there are no problems, especially if the board is not flat. The standard is in fact known as the "doubly arched" board, whereas the English / American version is "triple" so..........historical pedals are another matter, of course. These can be problematic!
Cheers
B