handsoff

I endorse this very sound advice. A great deal of early music for manuals only is musically worthwhile and well worth learning. I play quite a lot of it and not only because my pedalling technique is perhaps not as good as it should be. My regular organ has a very noisy pedalboard and can detract from the musical experience for the listener. I use pedals in hymns because the congregation seem to appreciate the 16' tone and sing more lustily when it is used but for voluntaries I guess that about 60% of the repertoire I use is pedal-free. Matthew Camidge wrote some good music and after hearing Ian Ball's CD including Camidge's 2nd Concerto in G Minor I was inspired to dig out my old copy and relearn it. The 4 movements can happily be used as separate pieces. The final advantage is that I can practice at home on a relatively cheap Casio full-range keyboard and avoid freezing in a chilly church.

There's a recital from Peterborough by Robert Quinney being broadcast live tomorrow evening, Sunday 19 January, on Radio 3. As a huge fan of Mr Quinney's playing I am greatly looking forward to this.

Christmas communion at 09.00 this morning and the organ music was Dupré, Variations Sur un Noel with Vierne 1 Finale afterwards. That was in the car on the way over to the church; I actually played the JSB Short Ps & Fs in G Minor and F Major before, Dupré Chorale on In Dulci Jubilo during the communion (because it took me a LOT of work to learn and I wanted people to listen without gassing over it) and Wilbur Held's In Dulci Jubilo afterwards. They gassed over that. Humph... Best wishes to all for the remainder of the festive season. "Bring me flesh and bring me wine" Oh, I'm cooking am I?

In view of the approaching festive season I hope that I may be forgiven for this... http://www.performantsystems.com/GM.html

The BBC is broadcasting live from The Drome. A link to the programme is pasted below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0lg2

... and Dupré, please.

Thank you for these responses. Vox's earlier posting is very interesting and I think that most of it still holds true today. I played the piece again today and at a decent speed the crunch is barely noticeable and, to me, quite enjoyable. I shall play it on Sunday morning and be ready with an explanation in the extremely unlikely event that anyone mentions the bar in question. They don't, after all, mention my unintentional wrong notes!

My organ is a 1 manual + pedal with 7 stops, all full compass with no bass/treble splits. I was running through a Flute Piece by Thomas Thorley (Old English Organ Music for Manuals, Book 2) yesterday and in an attempt to inject some colour used the Stop Diapason and Larigot which sounded fine until around bar 12 where the Larigot caused a false relation when the bass A natural (sounding Middle E natural pitch) scrunched against the E flat an octave higher in the right hand. I quite like the effect and that is probably sufficient justification to use that registration but wonder if it's acceptable in a musical sense, i.e. would anyone in the 18th century have used a registration like that which caused what an audience might hear as a wrong note? The suggested registration is light Flutes 8 and 4 which I can achieve with the Stop Diapason and Flute 4 but much prefer the more colourful sound. An alternative would be to use the 2' Piccolo instead of the Larigot but as the organ has just been tuned (the Larigot goes off pitch very easily) I thought it good to give the stop a rare outing while it is usable. I'd be interested in any opinions. I've discounted going inside, removing the Larigot pipes below Middle C and blocking the holes!

I did hear most of the broadcast while I was fiddling about with MM's photos for another thread and getting the links to work. The organ sounded good but the Britten isn't a piece I like at all. To my probably ignorant ears it does nothing, goes nowhere and there are plenty of organists who could improvise a theme, variations and fugue to much better effect. Most of the organ's colours weren't needed for the piece and I should like hear some better repertoire played on it. [i do know why the piece was chosen...].

Here are the 3 photographs to which MM referred along with his own notes and descriptions. The first is obviously Henry Willis IV, the second is Caleb Jarvis, but the third is a bit of a mystery to me after all this time. The little man is Dr AH Reginald Dixon of Lancaster Cathedral, I know that, and I think one of the clergymen is the then Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. However, who is the second gentleman from the left? Could it be Healey Willan in his latter days? This was 1964, I believe, and Willan died in 1968. Hopefully, someone may know. All these have been rescued from badly colour faded slides and converted to greyscale.

Edited blank until I can make the links work...

Or possibly the year formerly known as 4 BC.

Thanks again for the replies. I shall download the itunes bits and although not an iplayer user will presumably be able to play them via my PC's sound card. P

Thank you Oscar. I shall investigate those and see if downloads of individual tracks may be available. I find it odd that no solo disc has been produced.

I have been searching for a recording of the organ as last restored by our hosts but without success. Is anyone aware of one please? I know that it appears on various choral recordings but I should very like much a solo CD. Thank you.

Thank you David for this update. I am delighted that this organ is to be restored. When I was given a set of encyclopedias (The World of Wonder, Charles Ray, Editor) at the age of about 7 I was fascinated by the pictures and 2 page description of the instrument with its 7 keyboards and myriad of stop tabs. I saw a youtube item about it a couple of years ago and felt quite upset on hearing the out-of-tune squeaks and groans. It was almost like a much loved old dog barely to get to its feet and wag its tail. it will be a real treat to follow the restoration as it progresses.

I would always make anyone who wanted a go on my instrument welcome. You never know, he or she may feel sorry for the poor little box of whistles and its suffering player and offer a large cheque for its replacement! We normally holiday in the West Country and if the local church has a pipe organ I make an effort to contact the church well in advance to ask if I might have half an hour on it at a convenient time. I have never been refused and if my offer of a donation is waved away always put something in the donations box. On one occasion in a village near Barnstaple I was looking at the organ, a nice Vowles if I remember correctly, on a Sunday morning and was asked by the vicar if I played. At the time the answer was that yes, I do, but not for a while. I ended up playing for an evening service, 4 hymns and 2 voluntaries after a couple of hours practice in the afternoon, as the resident was unable to play because of a sudden family crisis. The vicar offered me quite a generous sum which I declined and we settled on a couple of pints and a bag of crisps across the road This occasion, along with some encouragment from Cynic after a chat following one of his recitals, was why I started to play regularly once again.

I endorse this. Just a couple of weeks ago I had just finished practicing when a mother and little boy of about 3 came in to the church from, as it turned out, a holiday cottage owned by the churchwarden. The boy asked, "What's that?" pointing at the organ. His mother told him "It's the organ for playing music - a bit like a piano* but with different sounds." I asked him if he'd like to hear it and what would he like me to play. "Baa Baa Black Sheep, please". (Oh good, he's not a child prodigy!). I busked through a few verses using different stops and somehow morphed the tune into "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" then asked him if he'd like to press the keys. He had a whale of a time for some minutes until his mother thought that I'd had enough although I was enjoying it as much as he. The look on his face when the sounds came out was a great reward for me and who knows, the experience may have struck a spark for the future. *More so than most instruments, having only one keyboard.

Another way to record anything that uses one's computer soundcard is Total Recorder, which can be downloaded from... http://www.totalrecorder.com/ A one-off fee is payable which avoids a "beep" being introduced into the recording as is used on the demo version. It's an excellent tool which is very handy for saving, editing and using to burn CDs from any source - obviously subject to strict observance of copyright.

I thoroughly enjoyed this prom concert; as did Mrs Handsoff who normally squeals and runs away when "that organ music" is mentioned. Unlike previous years' organ proms by "celebrity players" the music was superbly performed, well-chosen and demonstrated the huge range and tonal variety of this shockingly under-used instrument. Tiger Rag, the encore, was beyond words. The only sad part is the BBC's token use of the solo instrument in this year's proms programme. Roger Wright appears to be the worst thing ever to have happened to R3, with programmes filled with exhortations to email, text and twitter apart from his own evident dislike of and disdain for our instrument. "What do mean there's no organ music on R3 - there was a recital from Lincoln only this year". [sorry if this clipped review reads like a Choral Evensong write-up on the Radio 3 forum but foccacia dough proving in the kitchen waits for no man...].

The scheme proposed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll would have been entirely appropriate and aurally stunning. It is a great pity that it was never realised. I wonder how tricky it would have been, had the organ been installed, to have produced a range of recordings such as we have from St Ouen and St Sulpice?

Is a single taser enough for the whole bangs and twangs music group? Not that my church has one, but just in case I happen to find one...

My current congregation are well behaved before, during and the services and we don't have a coffee bar but in a previous life I had problems with chattering in the postlude which led to some acrimonious exchanges. I suggested to the vicar that if he were to announce the name and composer of the piece I planned to play it might stimulate some interest and lead to a quieter audience. This did work to some extent if only because the audience may only then have realised that the organ was being played. My solution now as an older and grumpier man would be to switch off the organ after the final hymn and make my rather obvious exit as the priest processes out.

Oh no! Does that mean that we'll get "Streets of London" on a 6 string twanger on flights to Paris as a busker tries to pay for Ryanair's extras?

Thanks Vox - I'm not sure that any part of this organ is especially musical but it will be better to hear some, if not quite enough, notes rather than a wooden clatter!