Nicking

[Pierre Lauwers]

While studying the practices of the (to me!) interesting late-romantic german builder Gebrüder Link, which had a workshop here in Jambes-Namur from 1897 to 1914,

I was surprised their voicing practices relied heavily on nicking.

Each stop was nicked quite differently (places where nicking was applied, deep or shallow, large or small etc etc) in order to get individuality and blend from each stop.

 

This method gave astonishing results; A CD from the Link-organ of Mirepoix will testify for that about end of this year.

Rather than saying "we need to go back to this holy truth", I prefer to think this shows simply there are many ways to Rome, maybe even as much good techniques as there are good voicers.

It *seems* the nicking was introduced in France by John Abbey, while it was very probably already known in Germany.

It *could* actually have been invented in Italy.

Do we know if Samuel Green -apparently one of the inventors of the romantic voicing philosophy- already practised nicking? And William Hill later?

 

"Classic revival" advisers had nicking suppressed wherever they could, with a seldom commitment. Is it still "forbidded" nowadays?

 

Best wishes,

Pierre Lauwers.

[Guest Geoff McMahon]

Actually, there is enough evidence to suggest that Father Smith used fine nicking as well. It looks as if it has been done with a knife. Schnitger is also supposed to have used nicking.

 

John Pike mander