sbarber49
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Posts posted by sbarber49
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Whilst driving back from St Albans just now, and thinking about the recent rebuilt there, I started to ponder on cathedrals and larger churches which have recently added a 32' reed to the organ....
Off the top of my head:
St Albans, Exeter, Gloucester, St Davids, Sherborne Abbey, and soon-to-be Cirencester PC.
Also, I was thinking about Cathedrals which do not (yet) have 32' reeds......
Southwell (digital basses), Bradford, Carlisle, Truro, Bristol, Derby......and of course many RC cathedrals...
Can anyone add to the list?
Best wishes
Richard
Wells. (No 32 at all)
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I'd go further and say that the concluding organ voluntary should be seen as an integral part of the liturgy, a response to or a summing up of all that has gone before.
Peter
Although it can't be "part of the liturgy" if "Ita Missa est" has been proclaimed.
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I still don't think pride is an appropriate thing to take when dealing with the bereaved.
I certainly take pride in doing the best job I can.
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As to the Wesley System, I've a feeling I may be about to find out. Maybe it is a hologram of Wesley miming to a CD rather like a York Dungeon Museum interactive thingy.
It's the bee's knees: no difficult organists involved and no fees to pay. Nobody knows the difference. C'est la vie (no, wait a minute, it's the opposite, I suppose).
Don't know why it's called the "Wesley" system - definitely not S S., S, C or J.
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What I was a bit sorry about is that there are some really serious issues facing those who have to play (and conduct funerals) at crematoria. Organist-pay in many places is quite low, and the introduction of canned music and this new Wesley Music System which we are hearing about, seems to me quite a major threat to live crematorium organists. It occurs to me that if such a Society is needed it should be for tackling the issues that could put organists of work - and not be for dubious crematorium humour and talk of worthless hoods and other tat.
It happened some time ago at Peterborough Crematorium - the Wesley System replaced live organists and I was out of a job. (A job which I mostly enjoyed.)
The clergy weren't keen, but nobody seems bothered any more. I'm sure it will happen everywhere. The system is very efficient and can do everything an organist can do on an electronic, except bring music at the beginning to a close rather than just fade it out. Hymn accompaniments work okay, although I don't think the system can encourage people to sing in the way that a live organist often can.
Of course the vast majority of people would prefer to listen to the deceased's favourite music ripped from a CD than a Bach Chorale Prelude or anything else played on an organ. Those who prefer the real thing are more likely to have a service in church, anyway.
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St Patrick's Cathedral Dublin and Lincoln Cathedral are the only 2 that readily spring to mind without tierces. What you've said here has raised an important point. The balance of most Fr Willis tierce mixtures are different from the run of the mill English tradition Tierce mixtures. There are some exceptions, for example, I personally find the Sw III in St Pauls quite strong. I remember once adamantly wanting to put a Tierce mixture on the Gt of a late Fr Willis in place of some Dutch factory pipes c1971, and the organist telling me he would resign if I did. The mixture is there by the way. He was clearly listening with his mind and not his ears - neurologically speaking of course this does not hold up, but I think you know what I mean.
I think Fr Willis got them right, bright with a bit of zing, not thick and clanky.
AJS
St Patrick's Dublin is Henry II, of course.
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Hmm
Salisbury still has tierce mixtures and cone tuned as well as Truro, St Mary's Ipswich, Giggleswick School Chapel and no doubt the Ally Pally organ and many more I'm sure.
Do you know what irony is, Baldrick?
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SCOOOOP!!!!
For the first time -and since only a few days ago- there is an anthem of Samuel-Sebastian Wesley on Youtube:
Well PART of an anthem by Wesley, anyway.
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Has
been on? -
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... I think that's the highest compliment anyone's ever paid me!
All I know is that there's also one in Bratton, and that work is still being carried out under the name Keith Scudamore, by a son I think. I also know you should have gone an extra few miles to Tisbury, Heytesbury, Sutton Veny, Knook, Steeple Ashton and Westbury. Another day, perhaps.
from BIOS Reporter April 2004 (http://www.npor.org.uk/Reporter/apr04.pdf)
The Pipe Rack and the Tractarians (research notes by Paul Tindall)
..............Street’s activities with cases seem to have been inspired by his collaboration with the Revd John Baron, though he also provided £1000 worth of ‘casework’ at Salisbury Cathedral, a hideous non-design which still afflicts the building. Baron’s book sets out the Tractarian position very instructively. He makes a call for truthfulness of design and function (later to be a Modernist position), and applies the same reasoning to the arrangement of organs, arguing that medieval churches ought to have medieval-looking organs; precedents are sought in the positives depicted by Raphael and Giotto, among others. Having decided that organs in country churches should be reduced to their essential parts, he presents various simple but attractively detailed designs by Street, who restored his church at Upton Scudamore. The first organs were made by the local craftsman Nelson Hall; one dated 1860 survives at St Lawrence’s, Warminster. In 1858 Willis took up the idea, and several such instruments can be found in the area, for instance at Bratton, Teffont Evias, Tilshead (ex Edington Priory) and Old Burghclere..............
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The extra note that most congregations insert before the last note of the third line of Adeste Fideles also seems to be impossible to eradicate.
And the quaver passing notes in "Immortal, invisible"
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...which begs the question of what function they do then serve. Either we play them to enhance the worship experience, in which case they are effectively part of the service whatever the semantic arguments (and those who do not wish to use it to enhance their worship should have regard for those who do and bugger off in silence),
Only half in jest...
Certainly to enhance the worship - but not part of it. Actually I think people are much more inclined to sit and listen to voluntaries than they used to be. (Remember how Vaughan Williams defined a fugue).
In a church like mine the congregation needs to have the chance to talk to each other and there is nowhere for them to go except the back of the church. Nearly all come from outside the parish and this after-service fellowship is far more important than my voluntary.
If I was upset by this I would indeed have the option of not playing a voluntary.
I wonder if we should have a rule that choirs should not leave until the voluntary is over?
Off for a couple of days holiday now.
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There's only one arbiter.
Lucky someone has His ear.
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Just on a point of order, and an observation ...
a) the RSCM is hardly an arbiter on these matters
I wonder who is? Organists?
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So to that extent, if people find that they cannot worship during the sermon, or intercessions, perhaps they should feel free to have a coffee at the back and a chat!
The pre-service voluntary can be very helpful in setting the mood for the service and the voluntary after the service can send people off feeling joyful or possibly thoughtful during Lent or Passiontide. I take both seriously.
However, no-one but an organist would suggest the the voluntaries are actually part of the services - "Ita missa est" the mass is over! I would consider it very arrogant of me to suggest that members of the congregation should feel obliged to listen to me play after the service - if they wish to, great. But why should they have to - they've come to worship God, not the organist! (If I required them to listen I would play for no more than 90 seconds.)
The RSCM Sunday by Sunday gives ideas for organ music "Before", "During" and "After" the service.
From Common Worship, Order One:
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The ministers and people depart.
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Would you say the same for real families too, but as we know, the whole relationship of families has tantrums, confrontation and disagreements, it doesn't stop them being a family.
As for your comments about what actually happens, that doesn't make it right or what should happen. I'm not looking to have my ego smoothed, yes its nice when something says something, but when I decided to be an organist, it was because I wanted to serve God and the church. It is my way to worship.
Jonathan
I think that tantrums are best left to toddlers. (And confrontation - as opposed to discussion - to families in Eastenders!)
I accept that being an organist is your way to worship, but what about the rest of the congregation? Is it a case for them of "take it or leave it?"
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I don't for one second think its anything to get 'up ourselves' about, and I strongly believe that the voluntary IS part of the worship, and having been a Christian for most of my life, my playing IS and always IS done as an act of worship. Because I get paid for it does not make it any less. Do you say to clergy they are not worshipping God because they are paid, but just doing a job. If you make an argument that this isn't so after the Eucharist, because the liturgy finishes at 'Go in peace', then you have to make the argument that even the anthem at Evensong isn't part of the liturgy. The service of Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer liturgically finishes at the Collect for Peace, therefore the anthem is also fair game for announcements!
Jonathan
The Collect for Peace does not end with the instruction to go, so there is no parallel here. Like it or not, in the minds of the vast majority of the congregation, the voluntary comes at the end of the service. Why does the cathedral choir go out during the final voluntary if it's part of the service? How many organists ALWAYS listen SILENTLY to the voluntary when they're not playing it? If they don't, how can they justify their behaviour if they believe the service is still in progress? Come off it! The voluntary comes at the end, AFTER the service.
I try hard to play suitable voluntaries to fit the day's theme and I try hard to play them well and I am delighted when people listen and comment. As a matter of fact, where I play in the evenings they do stay. However I don't think that they should feel in any way obliged to do so. I expect in a cathedral that the playing of the voluntaries will be of as high a standard as the rest of the service - that's a matter of professional standards.
To be honest, I'm a bit horrified by the priorities that seem to be in evidence in this topic. Confrontation and tantrums (I know I'm exaggerating here) have no place in the Christian family that is a church. Disagreements, yes, but they should be talked over in a spirit of harmony. We are all there to worship God and maintain a Christian community that can spread the Gospel. We are not there to have our egos massaged.
If a voluntary is interrupted, get a bit cross, get over it and then talk to all concerned and resolve the issue amicably. If this sort of discussion were not possible, I personally would feel that I had failed badly and would move (after discussing it with the Vicar, of course).
I think, by the way, that the clergy on the forum are very placatory and softly spoken in relation to our inflated sense of self-importance - I'm sure that all organists are guilty of that at least some of the time. "I know I am" (To quote Alan Bennet's sermon from "Beyond the Fringe".)
Sorry if this sounds very priggish: I was brought up in a Vicarage and well remember my father's problems with organists - and a more appreciative and supportive incumbent you couldn't have found.
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I presume you think the same about a preacher who cleverly works a joke into his sermon.
No - don't see that as an analogy. However I wouldn't like the Eucharistic Prayer to be interrupted by jokes.
As far as I am concerned, the organ voluntary is either a serious offering to God and his worship OR a chance to have a bit of fun, but it can't be both.
Actually I haven't heard all that many jokes cleverly worked into any sermon and I could well do without all attempts at humour by preachers - but that's my problem!
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To be serious for a bit, this is the key to it, and I know we have gone into this on other threads before. The voluntary at the end, as much as the voluntary before are part of worship, and part of our worship in particular. Our gifts are as organists, and we offer these gifts (whether paid or not) as part of worship, and as a gift to God. For someone to then get up and destroy that gift is at the best insensitive and rude and at the worst an offence to God himself. As a people we are here to worship God, and this includes the voluntary!
Jonathan
I think it's very easy for us organists to get a bit "up ourselves" about the voluntary. The congregation may (or may not) appreciate a suitable piece setting the mood at the beginning but it's patently not true that the outgoing voluntary is "part of the service" for the vast majority of the congregation or even, more often than not, for organists who are not actually playing it. (I am talking about this country - I am aware that organ music is better appreciated in other countries.) In any case, surely after the words "Let us go forth in peace" the service is over and that the voluntary is only incidental music - which, indeed, may send people out with joy and which may be listened to appreciatively by those with the taste to appreciate good and carefully-prepared playing. The voluntary (I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate here) is a chance for the organist to show off/have fun/indulge his ego.
Let's stop deluding ourselves that the voluntary, after the Eucharist anyway, is part of the worship. I must say, I get a bit niggled when I read about organists cleverly working various tunes into improvisations as a joke - anyone who does this cannot (I think anyway) regard those as offerings of "gifts as part of worship".
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I was about 30 seconds into the final voluntary this morning when a member of the congregation came to the console as asked if I would stop playing whilst she gave out a notice. On similar previous occasions I have stopped playing, then resumed after the notice. This morning I did not resume playing, I switched off the blower and closed the console. In the vestry I made it very plain that should it happen again I would be prepared to stand up in the service and ask that I be allowed to play a voluntary. At least my point of view was acknowledged, together with an apology. I wonder what others on the forum would have done or have done in the past.
I would advise not overreacting to an annoyance like this. Those concerned acted through ignorance not malice (at least I assume so). By all means make it clear, politely but firmly, that it is an ill-mannered and unacceptable procedure, but not in the heat of the moment. (I would not expect it to happen twice.)
(Having said that, I'm afraid I would have said to the lady that I was sorry but she was too late and would have to wait until I'd finished.)
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It happened to me once at the last service to be taken by a priest who had been helping us out during an interregnum. I launched into Widor as I knew it was one of his favourites. A server came rushing up to say that I had to stop as there was going to be a presentation to him. I said, "Sorry, I'm not going to stop, they'll have to wait."
They did and the priest enjoyed the Widor (he thought it was quite funny.)
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Widor. Only ever gets played (other than weddings) at Easter. Congregation actually notice it and there was a smattering of applause (which is nice, even though I don't think it's appropriate.)
Tonight: Christ is arisen - Peeters.
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There are 3 PDF files here with details of the work and some photographs of the pipework in various stages of repair.
Indeed. See here!
Youtube
in General discussion
Posted
A Michael Jackson tribute!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-mxVexV8v0