nfortin

I think most British organists would agree that a 16' reed is more important to the typical "Full Swell" sound than a Clarion, I think the question is more to do with how many 8' reeds you would choose to have in preference to the 4'. Gloucester, for example, has three 8' reeds on the swell -Trumpet, Hautboy and Vox Humana, but as Paul has already said no clarion. Personally I've always found the Vox Humana to be a chocolate tea-cup and would much prefer to have the clarion.

That sounds vaguely familiar..... It certainly sounds good on the old recording with the Guilmant on. R <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am, of course much more familiar with the (late lamented) Worcester organ, but would suggest there's little comparison betweeen the two cases. I took my church choir to sing in Llandaff a year or two ago and tried out the organ (which was played for the service by Darren Hogg) and found it to be both undestinguished and unexciting. Few of the Worcester organ's detractors could argue that it did not have personality or the capacity to excite. I hope sensible use can be found for the Epstein case which is visually stunning. The cathedral as a whole is visually pleasing and deserves to be better known and regarded, although the acoustic is most unhelpful to choirs.

When I was a student in Worcester, the "Great Reeds on Solo" transfer so thoughtfully provided by H&H had the effect, when drawn, of causing the great reeds also to be unaffected by divisional thumb pistons. This to my mind was a near-essential aspect of the set up. If you were accompanying the choir in something that called for a solo trumpet, like Stanford in A or whatever, the Solo Trumpet (in the transept) was far too distant and so you really had to use the great Tromba (pre Woods-Wordsworth) or Posaune (WW). It meant that you could draw the reed with the transfer coupler before you started the piece, and then happily use the Great thumb pistons without needing to worry that the reed would get taken off. This behaviour ceased, I believe, with the Nicolson re-build, and I've rarely found it replicated on other organs. It makes the transfer much less useful if you can't draw the reed in advance in this way.

Definitely agree the stress needs to be on 'called', but personally would prefer:- ...when he | called . unto | him he | heard him. This is very much in the spirit of the Worcester Psalter which does, on the whole put the stress in the right places.

Couldn't agree more, Worcester certainly has some of the finest pointing ever published. For some years now, I suspect in keeping with a great many others, I've been "doing out" the psalms myself on my PC, with words and chants all on the page.

Well yes, I think you do. Whatever the reasons and causes for your seemingly swift departure from Wyvern I must say that I think the demo disk that you recorded at Arundel is a stunning achievement. Not all of the sounds are fully convincing but many are wonderful. The central (soft) section of the Whitlock for example is just ravishing and simply took my breath away when I first heard it. Your choice of repertoire also makes the disk very rewarding - and I'd very much like to know how to get hold of some of the more obscure pieces - like the Sowande for example. Out of the sample CD's that I was sent - admitedly not a fair way to judge - the Wyvern disk was in a league of its own. Makin's offering, Simon Lindley in Salford, is simply dreadful, what they hope to achieve by encouraging anyone to listen to this is beyond me, Copeman-Hart's rather old recording from Keble College is very poorly balanced with the recording absolutely swamped with pedal sound. In my own church we would love to have been able to commission and install a pipe organ to replace the truely awful Compton/Makin inflicted upon the church in the 1960's, but even if we had the half a million pounds necessary to achieve this there is no suitable location in the church, which dates from the 13th century, in which to site such an instrument. So lets welcome and embrace the advances in technology which allow us to have a wonderful and fully effective instrument in our church, at a incredibly low cost.

O come on, that's taking anti-digital predjudice just too far. Yes, we could fill in with a piano for a month or two during a rebuild, but its not really the right instrument to provide colourful accompaniment to our rich choral tradition and its hardly going to keep skilled organists satisfied for very long.

Yes, the pedal board is much less deeply recessed under the manuals than normal, this is what makes it so uncomfortable until you get used to it. Somebody told me that this was indeed to make room for trackers - but I've no idea if this is true. The console has retained the old gothic-arch woodwork, and also still uses very large stop knobs. We've discussed the HNB square pistons before, I'm not sure it matters what shape they are so long as they are comfortable to use and do the job. (I just can't abide double-touch pistons - invention of a lunatic as far as I'm concerned.) Gloucester still has square pistons and I've always found them very comfortable.

On one of the RSCM Cathedral Singers visits which I accompanied a couple of years ago, my daughter, who sings with the group, visited me in the loft when I was practising during the lunch break. "Listen to this" I said, coupling full great and full swell and playing a chord or two. "Daddy, stop it", or words to that effect, she said whilst putting her hands over her ears. It is, pardon my language, bloody loud. This is part of the problem. You just can't find quiet swell combinations for the psalms or whatever. Use of the mixture on the swell (during choral accompaniment) is more or less out of the question. It is, as I said in my previous posting, a very fine instrument, and if you can get comfortable with the peculiar console to pedal board dimensions, tremendous fun to play. But its certainly not subtle.

Fair enough, but would you really want to play a one-manual chamber organ, with all the limitations that imposed on repertoire, over an extended period of time. And what if there was a choir, this would seriously restrict the instrument's accompanimental possibilities. In my experience extension organs are poor. I believe I've said on a number of occasions that a good pipe organ is still way beyond the possibilities of any synthetic substitute, but the provision of a good, comprehensive pipe organ is just not a practical possibility in every situation today. I've played many poor electronic instruments, including some very recent ones, and can understand the scepticism, but whenever I go in to practice at Charlton Kings I stay longer than intended because the organ makes such sumptuous sounds its difficult to drag oneself away We are also now finding, in a town well equiped with large and well maintained pipe organs, that we are receiving an increasing number of requests from choral societies and groups wishing to use the church as a concert venue as our new organ is such a superb and versatile tool for accompaniment.

I don't think there can be much objection to replacing an old or ailing toaster with a newer and better one, or in making it clear that you're only interested in accepting a particular job on the understanding that serious consideration will be given to replacing a poor instrument. I did exactly this when I took my present appointment at St. Mary's, Charlton Kings, and some 18 months later our new custom Wyvern instrument was installed and has been a great success. We used Holy Trinity, Fareham as one of our reference sites - they have a 2-year old custom Makin installed there, which many of our PCC were very impressed by. I would also recommend you to take a trip up to Chobham to try the Wyvern in the parish church there. This shows what can be achieved in a small-ish building.

I too always enjoyed playing the instrument in its former state, however I would also agree that reconstructed organ is a very fine and exciting instrument. The old organ was, in my opinion, much better suited to choral accompaniment and english music generally, whereas the new organ not surprisingly is better as a germanic recital instrument.

Can't say I agree about the "New Folk Mass", or whatever its called, from NEH. I've been lumbered with it over extended periods and find it dull and unispired. Its clearly trying to be the "New Merbecke" or "New Martin Shaw" but, for me, fails miserably. I've yet to find a congregational setting of the series 3/rite A/common worship texts that I find very satistfying or compelling - but I can't claim to have heard or tried them all.

I used it on Saturday, I used one of the assistant organists divisionals memory channels which has the Octave Gamba 4', Stopped Diapason 8 & Open Diapason 8 on Great 3. To my ears the octave gamba was quite bright and not very stringy, more like a principal really.

I've just had a very enjoyable day accompanying choral evensong in Lichfield, an instrument I've not had the opportunity to play before. I don' recall it having cropped up much, if at all, in previous discussions of favourite instruments in this country, but it struck me as a very fine and coherent instrument, and a superb instrument on which to accompany a choral service. I'd be interested to hear other peoples views.

Its another area where the american toaster manufacturers fail to make playable instruments. Allen in particular used to make the supporting (bottom) edge of the music desk hollow so that it could contain an electric light. (I'm not sure if they're still doing this.) Not only was this a hopeless way of lighting a music desk but it also mad it more or less impossible to fit music hooks. I share the paranoia about switching off, but in my cases its not confined to organs. I have to check I've switched the iron off about three times every morning, and I also have a real thing about whether I've forgotten to lock up properly.

Goodness me what a sweeping, and in my experience, unjust remark. Copeman-Hart, Wyvern and even Makin put tremendous effort and skill into voicing their instruments. Its just not fair to group and compare the viscounts and eminents ("cathedral organs") in the same breath. On the original subject, regular readers will know that, whilst I accept the supremacy of a good pipe organ, I believe a top class digital instrument is preferable to a poor pipe instrument. However, I struggle to see the merits of the hybrid. I could imagine it would be possible to add a sympathetic double open wood, but the temptation in the sticks is to add upper work and reeds. My experience of a very nice 2-manual pipe organ locally, in Bredon parish church, digitally "enhanced" by a leading UK practictioner, would suggest that this is not a positive way forward.

Its such a huge question as the repertoire is so vast, covering everything from Dom Gregory Murray (not a personal favourite) up to B minor mass or missa solemnis. In terms of what I personally would most like to experience as a liturgical experience in a cathedral on a Sunday morning I think Vaughan-Williams in G minor takes a lot of beating, and Vierne's Messe Solennelle also works spectacularly well. Personally I think its a shame that the stalwart parish settings I grew up with, such as Darke in F, Sumsion in F, Ireland in C, have all but disappeared, although in the overall canon of mass settings they can't rank as great music. Whilst I enjoy classical masses as concert works I'm not convinced that the increasing trend to included these in the Sunday morning repertoire does a lot for the congregation & the service as a whole.

During the research prior to my church placing our order with Wyvern, I paid a visit to the Allen showrooms. My personal view, which is of course highly subjective, was that the showroom instruments sounded much like Allen organs have always sounded. I also found that the console layouts and stop control provisions made these instruments difficult to play. My choral society had a one-day hire of a 3-manual Allen when we did the Vierne Messe Solenelle and Saint-Saens Messe a quatre voix in Tewkesbury Abbey. Again a highly subjective view, it was adequate but rather 2-dimensional and lacking in character when compared to the Wyvern.

I don't dispute the fact that the Gloucester organ can play some of the French romatic repertoire adequately, although the strings and the diapasons are very far from french, the problem is that it cant play the standard anglican choral repertoire. I've just attended the gloucester RSCM area festival, where I must say Robert Hossart played the organ quite brilliantly, however not even he, with his considerable experience and absolute mastery of the instrument, could mask its short comings. This was most clearly demonstrated in "The Spirit of the Lord", from Elgar's Apostles. This was always going to be a challenge on the Gloucester organ. The effects you need to emulate include soft french horn (there's no enclosed soft reed) and combined trumpets and trombones (there are no solo reeds). Robert's performance was wonderful, he really coped with most of the challenges superbly well, but for anyone who knows the score, bars 3 & 4 after figure 4 in the novello score were just a disaster. The organ completely failed to reveal the brass theme transcribed as the left-hand part in the novello VS, and the whole effect was just a confusing mish-mash of sound. Those who love this instrument, and there are many, will tell you that, when you know it well, you can adapt to cover its shortcomings. My point is that you shouldn't have to. Just try playing "God is gone up" on the damn thing! This organ can not sensibly play the music of Stanford, Bairstow, Ireland, Howells, Elgar, Sumsion, Darke, et al. This is its "day job". Given the cathedral's strong links with such luminaries as Elgar, Sumsion, Howells, Brewer and Vaughan-Williams and Wesley this is criminal.

For myself, I'll match you on height, but in view of the increasing girth I'm not sure I can match your second claim. There is a (perhaps only to midgets) interesting side topic to this, in proportion to my less than imposing height I have very small hands. I may well find it difficult to be objective about this, but I really do believe a small hand size imposes its own technical limitations. I'm not for one moment suggesting that, had I bigger hands, I might otherwise have been the new Fernadno Germani, but it is none-the-less a practical limitation that some of the vertically challenged among us have to contend with.

Good God no, its Father Willis at his best

Once again this topic has failed to excite popular interest. What a shame, it bodes ill for this wonderful and unspoilt example of Willis's work that it is so little known of cared about. Anyone who visits perhaps performs in, the old college chapel will doubtless be left with the impressions that:- - the chapel itself is unloved and uncared for, a most cold and unwelcoming place - the organ has little chance of survival in this dire situation

I take it we're talking bodily by-products of the male bovine variety

Thanks for the stunning photos which I enjoyed seeing. As a short person this looks like a console where I would find the music desk uncomfortably high up, but more to the point, it looks to me as if it would be impossible for anyone to reach all of the stop knobs while seated on the organ bench. I'm not sure quite what the point is of a stop knob that can't be reached. Also its interesting to note that there are no labels for the different divisions on the stop jambs. All in all it looks like an instrument that could have been designed by our former american friend.