sprondel

She will play a recital on said Schuke after Easter. I am very much looking forward to that. Martin Schmeding thinks she is a real asset to his class here.

No, her name is Hee-Jung Min. She studied with Arvid Gast, and now takes lessons with Martin Schmeding. Quite a passionate player, she is.

In the congregation in hich I am a member, there is no getting away with it for anyone. This is of course due to the fact that we have lost our church (with a beautiful II/26 Schuke in it) to another congregation that does not use the organ, and that we now are having our services in a room that seats about 50 or 60. We also have lost our regular pastor, so that when organising the services (which is my task) I choose out of a pool of a dozen or so retired pastors, most of which are happy to step in. That is, some of them, when first on the phone, asked how the services were attended, and when I told them (about a dozen people form the adamant core), their promise to come sometimes sounded a bit sceptical. But then there they are, standing but a few steps in front of the cogregation, and are forced to speak to people they can literally look into the eyes. The sermons of those who repeatedly came to our modest "worship facility" have improved quite a bit (yes, there is still a mildly ascending learning curve beyond the age of 65). No need to do anything else than listen. I believe the best you can do is hold people responsible for what they say, make comments, and ask back, so they actually realize that they speak to someone in the first place, and only in the second place about something. We are glad to have the most gifted and dedicated organist, who came from Corea to study in Leipzig and earn excellent grades in her exams. We arranged for her to practise in our former church (the congregation there has put a fee on organ practice hours, which we are happy to pay). Of course, in our services she plays the 1910 Bechstein Grand. Schumann does very fine in postludes, you know, as does the odd Chopin Prélude. (Yesterday, we even had Burgmüller.) Best, Friedrich

Janácek's "Taras Bulba" has an organ in the first movement. It figures as a church organ, the scene depicted by the music taking place after mass, and ending in a mess. How popular homophonic organ music was with any Cossack population, I do not know. And there are the two Rheinberger concertos, which are quite beautiful, if not very exciting. Best, Friedrich

Don't forget RVW's "Sinfonia Antarctica" in which Scott finds the odd Tuba right at the South Pole, along with all the bad news. I keep wondering which organ (and hall) was chosen for André Previn's gorgeous recording back from 1968. Or does anyone know, incidentally? Best, Friedrich

I sat through a rather dull chapter meeting yesterday night and designed a really exctiting concert hall instrument, soundboard layout, front & all ... speaking of pastime. This scheme seems quite hopeless to me. It appears to be very idiomatic, which makes me shy away from any change. There are of course some issues in the stoplist to address, e. g. the lack of a chorus mixture, and of a unison flute on the Swell. If I brought myself to suppress my bite inhibition, I would ask what the Keraulophon does for you, and, if you wouldn't come up with an answer within three seconds, suggest to get it out and put in a mild Nasard instead. Next on my list would be the Wald Flute, one of three 4-foot flutes. Perhaps it could give way for a Twelfth, or even a two-rank Mixture 2 2/3' + 2' (that might start out as 2' + 1 1/3' and break at middle C -- but then, the "huge" Diapason might refuse to co-operate). Another issue: the Swell unisons. I would hate to do anything to them, but there still is no 8-foot flute under expression. So I would ask if the Swell could live with the Gamba alone, and replace the Geigenprincipal by a Gemshorn, with a well-defined bass and a fluty treble. Now: Is the "Acoustic Bass" a wired extension? If not, what is it doing in an organ with no double on the Great (and, originally, not even a single chorus reed)? A 16-foot Violone, maybe with the lowest five, eight or even twelve notes combined as 8' + 5 1/3' (here I go again), would give some mild definition to the Pedal that might come in useful as soon as there is a mixture on the Great. The space doesn't seem to be very big, after all. And now there they sit, Wald Flute, Geigenprincipal, and Keraulophon, with the Acoustic Bass sulking in the background, eyeing me accusingly. "Baroque Tricks", they would mumble under their breath as if it was "Mein Kampf", "we heard about it but would never have thought it might happen to us." So I would sigh guiltily and recommend to have that organ restored with no change at all, and raise some funds to get one of those charming box organs, or to have a II/15 classical organ someplace else in the church. Best, Friedrich

I find some disorientation in Dupré's later writing. Of the op. 36 Preludes and Fugues, the A-flat major piece is wonderful, all the more when you hear it played by Dupré himself (he recorded the op. 36 set at Saint-Sulpice). The C-Major piece remains a bit silly. There is much simplistic stuff in later Dupré I don't like so very much. There seems to lurk some "hand-crafted" ideology to lurk from behind those pieces that gets in the way of the music. With the "Symphonie-Passion" and the "Evocation", I believe it depends strongly on how they are played. The "Nativité" movement is, admittedly, quite naïve, and Messiaens "Bergers" are way above it (btw, Dupré recorded that Messiaen movement at Saint-Sulpice as well). The first movement of the "S-P", on the other hand, I find very well written and exciting. The end of the "Evocation" I never found satisfactory, until I heard Nicolas Kynaston's recording at Westminster Cathedral. He made it sound entirely plausible. Best, Friedrich

Detest ... Well, this is a strong word. Detest I found myself, now and then, pop music when it is really, really stupid. That includes much of the stuff that is played in churches by praze bands. When it comes to to organ music, there is some I could live without. "Volumina", however, is definitely not among them. Many pieces from Franck's "L'organiste" are way below the composer's actual ability, and are dreadful to listen to. Some Rheinberger movements I find profoundly harmless. I tend to react annoyed to some of the "processional"-type pieces of American offspring, and could never bring myself to like Rorem, Rawsthorne or Yon a lot. Just too much simplistic stuff there. Rots the brain. And there are the "chamber" pieces by Dupré, for strings and organ (Trio, Quartet, Cello Sonata), in which I can't find a single note of good, or even tolerable, string writing. In this respect, Rheinberger was miles ahead of Dupré. All in all, I tend to be annoyed by rather than detest certain music. Wherever I sense stupidity in music, my patience melts away like, right now, the icicles outside my window under the sun of March.

I think one of the crucial matters in playing Bach is rhythm. Bach's italianate style of rhythm, with its steady pace, is always in danger of being played just boringly. I find the E-Major Prelude deeply irritating because it mixes a North-German sectional toccata with Italian rhythm and harmony. You just can't allow yourself to let go of the pace as much as you easily would in Buxtehude or Bruhns. There are always Vivaldi's violins and cellos in the background, waiting to pound along and forget all about any concept such as stylus phantasticus. The best performances of Bach I have heard used sound and articulation, whatever they were, to bring out the rhythm powerfully and convincingly. E. g., you can do so much for BWV 544 and 548 just by working out a good articulation for the pedal notes in the opening ritornellos. By the pedal octaves you decide whether the piece swings along or marches gravely. With a good, not overly quickly-speaking Posaune, you can have, in one single registration, everything from mf to ff, depending on how you articulate the short notes. Give me BWV 541 on an 8-foot open flute everyday -- if you get the rhythm straight, I buy whatever you give me. Best, Friedrich

Tuba canonica, then -- which alludes to what these things actually do. The heavy artillery. Pointless destruction, I mean. I really can't see what they want with those honkers. They already have a bunch of them in the chancel organ, after all. Hooded ones, which Philipp K. (and/or his staff) likes to call, in an utterly ridiculous attempt at neologism, "gehooded" (as a German participle). Best, Friedrich

Not quite, I'm afraid. For the rebuilding of the Mühlhausen organ, Bach specified to add a 32-foot Untersatz, i. e. Bourdon. He also had the organbuilder make new and larger resonators for the 16-foot Posaune in the pedal (and kept the 2-foot Kornett reed). However, Bach left for Weimar before the work at Mühlhausen was completed. The stoplist that was specified by him, btw, was quite peculiar in some respects (e. g. he had the Great Trumpet removed in favour of a 16-foot Fagott), and I wonder if any of you would be pleased if he found himself having to play even an all-Bach programme on such an instrument. Bach's rebuilding proposal, alsong with his stoplist, is on OSIRIS at http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/ftp/pub/earlym-l/organs/ Look for the file wender.st-blasius.muhlhausen.-.de.1709 When Bach started at Weimar in 1708, the organ in the Schlosskirche was rebuilt (at his wish?) with new soundboards and a new pedal Subbass, the pitch of which is uncertain; it might have been a 32-foot stop. Again no 32-foot reed. Here again the stoplist -- or at least the first extant one, dating from 1739 -- is quite strange, with Quintadenas 16' and 4' but no reed on the Great, a Trumpet in the Positive-like Unterwerk which has a four-rank (or -foot?) Sesquialtera as its only mixture, and the pedal with flues only up to 8-foot. Bach knew and played organs with 32-foot reeds, e. g. the Contius at the Marktkirche, Halle, the Hildebrandt at Naumburg, and the Trost at Altenburg. But the Nekrolog still tells the truth about him having never had "a quite large and quite good organ at his disposal". Bst, Friedrich

Well, as a motter of fact, I have. When I was six. Still don't know the stopping board too well, though. As far as weaponry is concerned, I think I would prefer the Way of the Sword. It's messier. Best, Friedrich

Dear Pierre, wasn't the Fagott stop the famous "Riem 16'" with wooden boots, resonators, and even reeds? Best, Friedrich

Those indications appear in a copy by Walther. Of course that's not like they were written by Bach himself. On the other hand, since there is no autograph, you hardly can get any closer to the origin than by the copy of Bach's cousin. I think it is a matter of choice, and of the character of the instrument. If you look at the Passacaglia, for instance, you immediately notice how the texture shapes the dynamics of the piece, and how well it does. There is this simple rule for the organ: the more notes are played at the same time, the louder the sound gets. Spacious acoustics can result in a virtual simultaneity of sounds that still enhances that effect. This natural crescendo is somewhat flattened out by complex sounds, such as mixtures with multiple or, if there are several, overlapping breaks. Thus, the question is one of what you prefer: to let the inherent dynamics of the piece work for themselves, or maybe to support them by one registration that brings them out best, or to enhance them by having the registration follow the dynamic line of the texture. And of course, there are organs the choruses of which just were not meant to sound attractive over more than 10 minutes of playing. Indeed. But nevertheless, I am glad that, where I live, the density of Ukrainian accordionists playing Bachs's Vivaldi arrangements has decreased a little. After years of "El condor pasa" before that, and now with them disappearing, I wonder what will be next. Maybe "Nessun dorma" done by Mongolian overtone singers. Best, Friedrich

Uh ... drink came first, then came the divorced, protestant, slightly his senior etc. etc. wife. I guess his catholic family found it hard to decide which was worse. But then, both daughters were adopted. Best, Friedrich

If you want him sober, take his op. 59 pieces (including the famous "Benedictus"). He wrote them in two weeks' time, one piece a day, taking the Sundays off. He was under close surveillance from his family then, who had only just saved him from drowning completely in Wiesbaden. Another sober piece would be the op. 73 variations (I just love the Donald Joyce recording). He wrote them in Munich when he was forced to demonstrate 1) to his family that he could get along without them, 2) to his wife that he could make a living as a composer, even if she was protestant, 3) to himself that Munich was the place for him to be, him competing with the well-established cliques of the time. Of course, he soon started drinking afterwards again. His wife used to clubber him with umbrellas for this. Cheers, Friedrich

While travelling in England, Mendelssohn must have seen and played organs with some sort of swell mechanism. Maybe he even used it when playing recitals, many of which he was forced to improvise because of the pre-German-system organs, with G compass, no pedals, short-compass secondary divisions etc. To play Bach on organs like that was nigh impossible. But in his organ works he apparently did not take into account any such device; see the foreword to his sonatas, in which he specifies some sort of terraced dynamics. But on the other hand, if it makes sense with the organ, with the music and with your interpretation, why not use the shutters a little, or even a lot? I have heard it done to very good effect. Best, Friedrich P. S. What exactly do you mean by "changing direction in the rapid demi-semiquaver passages"? A change of pace, of registration, or of the actual direction the notes are running?

The organbuilder Gerhard Grenzing sometimes uses "Weißblech" for certain trumpet stops, claiming that this was an old Flemish tradition. For example, the Trompette on the Positif in Brussels cathedral (a most interesting instrument, by the way) was built with resonators made of "Weißblech". I take this information from a CD booklet. Of course you never should trust translations you find in those tings, but here it's different; Grenzing's German text has been translated into French by Jean Ferrard, an eminent Belgian organist and organologist. He translates "fer blanc". About the English translator, a Mr. T. C. Madder (which might just as well be a pseudonym), I don't know; he translates "Weißblech" as "tin plate". Wikipedia knows: "Weißblech ist ein dünnes Stahlblech" -- thin sheets of steel --, "dessen Oberfläche durch ein Schmelztauchverfahren oder elektrolytisch mit Zinn beschichtet wurde" -- the surface of which is covered with tin in an [?] or electrolytic procedure. "Eine Schicht von ca. 0,3 µm Zinn, das entspricht etwa 2 g/m², genügt, um den Stahl durch Versiegelung vor Korrosion zu schützen." (A covering of about 0,3 µm of tin, about 2 g/m², provides sufficient protection from corrosion.) So this apparently is the stuff tin cans are made of, after all. Best, Friedrich About the Brussels organ, see <http://www.grenzing.com/organosshow.cfm?id=23&ip=2300&out=1>

I'm afraid I can't say which ending is which as I do not have the music here. There may be even more versions than just two, with the revisions affecting more than just the end. One was recorded by Virgil Fox on the album "Organ Music from France" (EMI Classics) (plus Virgil's own additional bars in the beginning of the "Sicilienne", suggesting, strangely, a wind-up mechanism starting the piece). Philippe Levèbre, in his recording at Chartres cathedral, also played a version without the penultimate solo passage for the pedals. I greatly prefer the ending played by John Scott and most other players I have heard. It not only brings in an inversion of the second theme, but also effectively links the ending back to the very beginning of the Prelude, of which it is a transposed version with the intervals expanded (Prelude: E#-G-F#-D, Toccata: G-C#-B-E#). Maybe this was how John Scott came to play the C-natural in the final pedal solo passage -- it is closer to the beginning of the Suite. In dubio pro reo -- maybe it was just his analytical brain. Best, Friedrich

I am not sure it is. There is the classical French method of having a "Grand Nazard" on the Grand-Orgue, which means a large-scale, quite prominent Flute 2 2/3 (not 5 1/3), as opposed to the smaller Nazard of the Positif. But these were never meant to be played with the chorus. If you do, the chorus gets a strongly nasal character. That is a musical quality all the same, but it is quite different to that of a principal-scale Twelfth. It is, to my ear, an either-or option. It would be rather possible to have a Great Sesquialtera 2 2/3' + 1 3/5' of light principal tone, that could go both with the chorus and as a solo stop. Then, a Nazard and Tierce of fluty scale could be put on the Positive. This would as well see to what I feel to be a certain lack of Cornet colours in the scheme. Or go for the Schnitger method an have it all -- a pair of stops on every pitch from 16 to 2! Best, Friedrich

There is one in the Walcker-Treat-G. D. Harrison organ at Methuem Memorial Music Hall. It can be heard on many recordings -- if you listen closely, that is, because the beating reeds come on much faster than the free-reed, Grand-Grandfather style 32'. Best, Friedrich

The Physharmonica is a free-reed stop that came up in early-romantic German organbuilding. It had brass reeds and, if I recall correctly, zero resonators. In some smaller organs by Walcker or Steinmeyer, e. g., it had its own manual and an own expression device that increased or decreased the wind supply of that stop. It sounds basically like a big harmonica. Best, Friedrich

Thanks, Nathan, for your kind comment. Yes, a soundboard duplexed this way would have to be considerably longer. The wind-robbing is held at bay because the same stop is never used on both II and III, and the groves are fed by separate pallet boxes. Construction and voicing of this kind of instrument seems to take some experience. There are builders like Späth (Freiburger Orgelbau, Germany) or Bigelow (American Fork, Utah, USA), who have built several organs to this design which appear to work successfully. Bigelow calls this design "Either-Or-Organ". Some stops seem to react better to this type of chest than others; Mixtures and small stops in general, for example, seem to be duplexed quite rarely that way, and builders rarely go higher than 1 3/5 in this kind of design. But even if the Mixture was available only on one of the manuals, I believe the scheme would still work fine. Best, Friedrich

Thanks to you as well, pcnd. There are some examples of combined 16' Violones that work very well; e. g., for Walcker it was quite common to apply this method when there was not sufficient height. The Riga organ has a very successful stop of that kind in its Schwellpedal. There are also some organs in the U. S. that were built by German builders that have successful stops of that kind, often constructed as "monkey quints". About the GO: The idea of having a rudimentary but assertive four-rank Great chorus I took from some English and American stock-model organs from the late 19th century. It is found also in small Schulze organs. For a concert hall organ, I found it more important to have a mixture on the Swell, so the Great had to go without one. The Cornet gives a glowing power with strong treble ascendancy -- great for a tutti underpinned by a trombone. In terms of repertoire, was thinking more of the organ + orchestra compositions than of the usual organ-solo standard.

Thanks for your reply and your suggestions, Pierre. The Orgelbewegung has had its feast long enough, and in concert hall organs it failed more often than not. Well, the 40-stops thread -- there are so many examples of well-designed organs of that size around. Maybe it is a new aspect that everyone wants two enclosures these days. But 40 stops is a size that does not pose so many difficulties regarding the choice of stops. Klotz's III/25 is a lot more interesting in this regard. About the "wandering stops": You are right in that characteristic voicing is hard to achieve when stops have to serve more than one use. But I wonder if that had to be the case in the scheme proposed (maybe the 16-8 pedal stop would be food for thought). There actually is a strong structure: Great, Swell and a rudimentary Pedal, with their respective principal, flute and reed choruses. The one special thing is that the Swell is duplexed mechanically. About the 4' reeds: Yes, they belong to the full Swell effect. But then, some builders find them of little use in concert hall acoustics, where they lose thir fire so that the full Swell with shutters closed sounds like a big harmonium. So, when I was thinking about what stop had to go to keep the scheme small, the Clarion was out on the plank and ready to jump. (The Great Gemshorn would probably be the next stop to visit the fish.) Best, Friedrich