heva
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Posts posted by heva
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Was, mate, was.
Thank Adobe for the 'Save a Copy' button
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Also, I don't understand how a dutch organbuilder could have done this project; they know how 'Monumentenzorg' (heritage) work here: approval first, than work (also just like (re)building a house). Can't be much different elsewhere.
Personally, I don't like either of the cases:the old one too 'originally' ugly (to me), the new one a neo somewhat-19th-century-dutch pastiche.
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FWIW, the chamadron seems to be on 250mm pressure.
That's only a third of the Cologne-Blasters
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In a way, I can't mind spending this amount of money on an 'original' instrument like this, keep it.
Spending 1.2 million euro's on a 34stop would-be copy of a Silbermann, and then claiming it to be a 'Bach-organ', while fully disregarding whatever other/more-important organs surrounded JSB, seems more insane to me.
Surely, grass and green and other sides etc. etc.
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Thanks for this comment; this composer is not known to me.
Please could you recommend one or two works that some of us should try?
Try the Fantasy and Fugue on BACH, or one of the symphonies for organ. Not much recordings around, you might try this one.
You could listen to some variations played by the composer here.
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Piet Kee does Organ Music? this i would really like to here.
Yes, even for three organs (large-small-barrel) - quite modern.
Arie J. Keijzer has written and still writes many works. Sublime organist himself (played almost everything in concert), 'knows' how to write for the organ (no tricks/gimmicks).
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In Holland: Piet Kee, Arie J. Keijzer, Jan Welmers and a ferry full with truckloads of Dutch choralbased crap ...
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The topic title would not pass through my mailfilter, btw.
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Incidentally, an unrelated question, and probably for another thread - why build a 5 manual organ with 120-odd stops, down to 32' on the Great and 64' on the pedals, with mechanical action and a mobile console in the nave? Nothing wrong with 5-manual organs, but it seems the mechanical console a few hundred feet up level with the triforium arches is hardly ever used. And my experience of Birmngham and Manchester halls has been that the mechanical action consoles there are seemingly never used either. Why go to the engineering trouble, cost and design restrictions of a massive mechanical action organ only to then only ever use the obligatory mobile console?
Contrabombarde
My guess: because the neo-baroque movement has 'taught' us to do so.
Well, Schoenstein doesn't care obviously; may I invite you to listen to their new organ in the Laura Turner hall at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville?
Click the audio player here.
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Cologne Cathedral 's tuttis + 64' gives quite an earthquake.
Maybe that's something for St.Pauls if one would something, a 64' - the tutti is indeed very very loud near the south transept (tubas poking your ears).
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Don't worry about the power; Klais can handle that ;-)
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Name convention and composition were known to me.
I believe someone one this forum once mentioned a 32 acoustic bass 'tric' by playing C 16' with the 8''s E, B-sharp and d - just like the theorbe.
I've once tested this on the Hill in our church with a 'big' bourdon 16 and a very round st.d.8 and on some notes it shook the floor (although not like the one time a lorry stood before the church with a running engine, sounding exactly an octave below the 16' G - scary that was...).
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BTW. the stop 'theorbe' seems to be deployed mainly in modern, say post-symphonic instruments.
For me the name is wrong; I don't see why renaissance names should line up in neo/post-symphonic designs, but that may be me being to 'calvinistic' (which all dutch are to some extend) perhaps?
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There are some here, tough (Westerkerk, not the Bach pieces, but Buxtehude, Stanley and Böhm):
http://www.josvanderkooy.com/cd/cd02.htm
(Perfect Mixtures for Buxtehude. But for Bach, I'd really like to have something else. The first who
will record the complete organ works of Bach on a selection of Wagner, Trost, Wender and the only
Scheibe we still have (Zschopau) I shall be his first customer for the completel CD collection, full price).
Pierre
There are Bach recordings on the Treutmann organ in Grauhof, if one may count this one in (more: here )
It's a fabulous instrument.
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I know, but my point was that your statement is unsustainable, for the reasons I gave. There is something "more different from the baroque than the neo-baroque thinking" - the English and American symphonic organ!
Yes, but they are most particularly a Brabant/Dutch/North German feature, are they not? and not found to anything like the same extent in north-central Germany.
This is beside the point. We are debating chorus mixtures, not solo tierce ranks and the Cornet is something else entirely.
Unless, I suppose, you postulate that Bach's registration was French. I have seen speculation in the past that there may have been French elements in his registrations, but there is no evidence for it.
I keep reading that Silbermann organs are the organs for Bach, but why? Where did this idea come from? Is it another legacy of the neo-Baroque? The argument seems to run something like the following: both men were the leaders in their respective fields, so the music of the one must perforce be a perfect match for the organs of the other. For precisely this reason it was inevitable that the two men would come into close professional contact with each other. Is there any documentation that Silbermann's organs were to Bach's taste? We know he did not approve of the temperament Silbermann used.
In any case, as Prof Williams (again) has pointed out, there is no one organ on which all of Bach's works will sound ideal. Take the early A minor prelude and fugue, the one which closely follows the style and form of a typical Buxtehude Praeludium. Bach may have had to play it on a typical Thuringian organ, but do we seriously that this particular piece will sound better on such an organ than on the north German organs on which such pieces were usually played?
I even start to wonder if Bach's written organworks are ment for (his) performance, or if they're a means of study/development: for his pupils and/or for him self, to study and write down what were to / could be improvised 'live'.
Kerala J. Snyder writes about this for Buxtehude's organworks: there's probably no way he could ever have played his f-sharp minor prealudium on the organ, yet he DID write it down.
Is there any proof Bach actually ever played his own organ works (ie. from the number we still have) in public?
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Too late to book now, but Herman van Vliet from the Netherlands is playing Buxtehude at Ystym Colwyn Hall, Mid Wales on Saturday afternoon. I'm looking forward to it. Probably one of the best organs here to do the music. (OK, I'm prepared to be shot down in flames for that remark)
May be, but he's very much more a 'Widor man'.
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Don't ask Jack Frost about Mullet
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I must be about ten pages behind with this fascinating thread...
I remember the tuba profunda well from my days as a schoolboy attending Cathedral services, which I did both pre- and post the H&H rebuild. It and the 8ft extension were extraordinarily loud, probably too loud for general use. Harry Bramma would normally couple down the solo bombarde 16, eg in the Vierne Carillion, where it provided a very effective moto perpetuo.
The tuba profunda was wonderful for congregational accompaniment - no rousing final verse was complete without a thunderous bass line!
Incidentally, I always understood that the diaphones were not working by the seventies - I seem to remember Colin Beswick telling me they had not worked for several years. The Great Cathedral Organs recording (which I also have) was made in, I think, 1969, and it sounds to me like the tuba profunda that CR used in the Mendelssohn Sonata no. 3. That piece also features the solo orchestral trumpet - a scorching stop which I don't think survived the 1972 rebuild, at least, not in its original form. The double-tongued tuba was used for the reprise at the end of the first movement of the Mendelssohn. Like Captain Foulenough, it was asked to leave...
After 1972, the Solo was effective as a bombarde division - you got caught in the cross-fire if you were in the crossing when full organ was playing, as I once was for a memorable performance of the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony!
Confusing, are the diaphone pictures on AL's picasa site the diaphones or is it the tuba profunda we're looking at?
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Maybe it is just me, but I was distinctly underwhelmed by the Buxtehude.
I just thought it was the wrong organist, playing the wrong organ and the wrong music, as I sat stone-faced listening to it.
I was reminded of another well-known organist who shall remain nameless, playing the Bruhns G major on an organ which should have been perfect for the role. The notes, as ever, were faultless, but there was just no empathy with the music, or any real understanding of the "fantastic style," which should be about abrupt changes of emotion, rather than just alterations to the timing and registration. That recording was not even in the same artistic league as the recording I most like, played on the largely Schnitger organ of the Aa- kerk, Groningen by Peter Westerbrink; a name which I feel sure will be instantly recognised internationally.
With the death of Luciano Pavorotti, I was reminded of something said of him, (by whom I do not know), and which seems so absolutely right about music and musicians generally.
"Pavarotti was never the most accomplished vocal technician, but he WAS the greatest singer in the world."
That's because it came from the soul.
Buxtehude was a bit of a wild man who liked to party, and most British organists are not. Perhaps that is the bit that is frequently missing!
Sorry!
MM
As far as I know, 'stylus phantasticus' is a form of composition where the composer is 'free' of any pre-defined form/methods, not nessecarily 'about abrupt changes of emotion'.
Kerala J. Snyder writes interesting things about it in her (newest edition) Buxtehude book.
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An absolute gem.
A single Bourdon 8' could satisfy for hours there.
An though Frère Isnard worked with a deep sense
of economy of means; there is not a nail, not a wood
sheet too much there, the case is just a Facade, Pedal
and Résonnance share the same chest and pipes....But
it is built to last, and last, and last...Nobody would
dare touch that organ.
Pierre
As Einstein said: "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
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We have just spent the most sublime 2 weeks trogging through Burgundy and Provence and back to Burgundy (sorting out house purchase). On two chance occasions I heard the Cavaille Coll in the Cathedral on Aix on Provence. Prior to this I had a haircut in one of Aix' many clip joints in a vibrating chair - not an experience to be missed. Second only to the Cavaille Coll and the chair experience came a chance hearing of the organ at the basilica of St Maximin. Now this was a revalation - played for a wedding. I dashed in at 5.30pm (after a day on the beach at St Tropez) to collect a brochure on the organ. But damn - there was a priest busy blessing something - apparently a service, but the gift shop was still open. While clutching my brochure and a Xavier Darasse CD, the organ struck up, and I stopped moving - a Daquin Noel with all the force of goodness knows what! WOW what a sound - and all of this for the signing of the registers or photos. At the end of this THE wedding march by you-know-who - introduced by all the forces known to man, although I assume the famed Resonnance division, sounding like a chorus of orchestral trumpets. This could be heard down the street outside the basilica at the east end, so much, that I told my wife to get out of the car to listen, and she announced that she could already hear it through closed card windows!
Go and hear these organs - and preferably try the vibrating chair as well!
Hector (and Florence) in Burgundy
Oh yes! St.Maximin's Isnard
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Getting this right is a major technical progression; there is an old book (1920's ?) on pianotechnique (don't know at the moment who wrote it, must be here somewhere) on this matter.
FWIW, it's great help to me to LISTEN if notes are exactly together; listen, relax and concentrate on sound, don't focus on 'getting them exact'.
Good technique sits between your ears.
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Went to Cologne yesterday to hear Colin Walsh play french (iron) repertoire (Langlais, Frank, Tournemire, Dupre, Durufle, and Bridge).
Having arrived at the Dom half an hour before the concert, nearly all seats were taken, which seems to be 'immer so'; at 20.00 is was a full house (imagine the size ...), people even bringing there own chairs.
The whole ensemble is awesome, the 'vox balanae' is somewhat terrifying: like a major earthquake ...
Not sure which of the partyhorns was used, but the at the end of Durufle's 'Soissons-fugue' the used tuba sounded rather 'normal'; very loud, ok, but a civilised tone.
There's not much (audible) timelag between the organs, both organs were used much in tutti passages (and alternating, to great effect), but the tutti is in no sense 'unpleasant' to here; it is a very loud, very large sound, but no screechy mixtures or reeds, still rather 'polite'.
If you have a chance, go hear it.
Petr Eben Dies At 78
in The Organ
Posted
Czech composer Petr Eben, whose wide variety of music has been performed around the globe, has died. He was 78.
Eben died late Wednesday at his home in Prague, his son Marek told the CTK news agency Thursday. He was battling an unspecified long-term illness.
Born Jan. 22, 1929, Eben showed a musical talent at early age. He was able to play piano at age 6 and organ at 9. A year later, he composed his first musical pieces.
After World War II, when he was interned by the Nazis in the Buchenwald concentration camp, he studied piano and composition at Prague's Academy of Music, and taught at Prague's Charles University and the Academy of Performing Arts.
From 1977-78, Eben was teaching composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.
Throughout his career, he composed some 200 pieces, including works for organ and piano, orchestral and chamber compositions, masses, cantatas and music for children. Among them: the organ cycle "Job," the oratorio "Sacred Symbols" for the Salzburg Cathedral, "Windows" (4 movements according to Marc Chagall for trumpet and organ), and "Prague Te Deum."
He performed his music around the world, giving improvisational organ and piano concerts in such venues as Paris' Notre Dame, London's Royal Festival Hall and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.
He was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by France in 1991 and received a high Czech decoration, the Medal of Merit, in 2002.
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