Youtube

[peter ellis]

Found a couple of American organists having a field day with Nicaea.........

[handsoff]

I did enjoy those - thank you. I have an organist's surplice but the chap in the first clip surely needs the equivalent jacket for his suit - what a stretch to the music desk. I did like his last verse harmonisation but have always loved a good meaty final verse alternative. It sems to have lost favour in this country. The turntable and lowering the console into a pit made me roar - a bit too much like a crematorium for some maybe...

[S_L]

2 hours ago, handsoff said:

I did enjoy those - thank you. I have an organist's surplice but the chap in the first clip surely needs the equivalent jacket for his suit - what a stretch to the music desk. I did like his last verse harmonisation but have always loved a good meaty final verse alternative. It sems to have lost favour in this country. The turntable and lowering the console into a pit made me roar - a bit too much like a crematorium for some maybe...

And in E flat too - much more satisfactory than in D - but I thought the re-harmonisation in the first clip was awful and anything but uplifting. Yes, there was a phase of organists providing an alternative harmony for a last verse but it was so often, like the first clip, so badly done that it fell out of favour. And some tunes don't need it because of their strong harmonic sense. 

In his edition of English Hymnal Vaughan Williams relegated the tune to, what he called his, 'Chamber of Horrors - where is appears in E. I'm not sure I agree about it deserving that accolade!

[peter ellis]

Apologies if this channel had been posted before - it is currently the organ channel presented in my feed by the mysterious algorithm. This player is all about the unknown composers - my jury is out as to whether some of them should remain unknown but Hugo Kaun seems worthy of further exploration. 

[S_L]

Hugo Kaun is an interesting man and quite a prolific composer. Born in Germany he emigrated to the US where he had a successful career, eventually, settling back in his home country. He was much in demand as a teacher but produced three symphonies, three piano concerti (although he refused to allow the first to be published), quite an amount of chamber music including four string quartets and four operas, one of which was premiered by the Dresden opera company. His 'Five 'cello pieces' Op. 124 have some difficult moments in them and bear some similarities to the 'cello works of Franz Schmidt, of whom, of course, he was a contemporary. 

Some of his music is available via IMSLP

[peterdoughty]

Here's a pleasing example of an organist taking a chance and populating the programme with several heavy hitters of the organ repertoire all at once. I rather enjoyed this recital for that respect of the audience's capacity in itself (and noted with interest, and a grin, the view of the very capacious and heavy-looking leather sofa in the loft towards the end). I've never heard the instrument in person, mind, so I've no sense of how this would sound in the building but it's good through headphones!

[innate]

10 hours ago, peterdoughty said:

This is a tremendous recital beautifully captured with multi-camera video. The Rieger organ sounds beautiful and entirely appropriate for all the repertoire from Bach to Reubke under the musical hands, feet and ears of Richard Moore who registers everything with imagination and authority.

[DaveHarries]

Following the recent post about the passing of the Finnish organist & composer Kalevi Kiviniemi - https://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/topic/5083-kalevi-kiviniemi-rip/ - here are a couple of videos featuring him.

Firstly an arrangement, presumably by Kiviniemi, of "Zug zum Münster" (Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral) from Richard Wagner's opera "Lohengrin". This clip is played on the Grönlund organ (2007, III+P/ 55) of the Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland and I very much like the effect given by the stop changes at 1:34 and again at 1:54. The Xylaphone (specification: http://www.gronlunds-orgelbyggeri.se/instrument/sibelius-talo/) goes well with this piece too at 3:13 which makes me wonder how the chimes or tubular bells of the Royal Albert Hall organ would sound in lieu for that bit. In my imagination the tubular bells would perhaps be better.

Next up is Kviniemi's "Toccata" on the main organ (one of three in the building) of Turku Cathedral (Veikko Virtanen Oy, 1979-1980; IV+P / 78). The organ has its own website which is at https://www.turkuorgan.fi/en/; the specification, under the "Organ" tab, shows that the swell and pedal sections both contain 7-rank Mixtures.

[b]Note:[/b] The clip does not appear here in the usual way that the one above does: embedding / playbaack on other websites has been disabled at the YouTube end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ki95-UbTeo

Another one from Turku but this time a fantasia, by Kiviniemi (I presume) on the well-known tune "When Johnny". The shots of the ship hanging from the cieling of the cathedral seem quite appropriate given that "When Johnny" is a tune with maritime origins.

 

A pity I never got to hear KK play live: may he rest in peace (or should that be "rest in piece"?)

Dave

[pwhodges]

The only solo recording of the old Willis/Harrison organ in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (apart from mine in the British Sound Archive, which even I cannot access) which I have been unable to get a copy of has popped up in the Archive of Recorded Organ Music on YouTube.

Played by Paul Morgan while organ scholar there.

 

Carillon - Herbert Murrill
Larghetto in F sharp minor - S.S. Wesley
Fugue in E flat ("St. Anne") - J.S. Bach

Sadly, the transcription has a lot of wow, and the end of the Wesley is missing.

(My recordings in the British Sound Archive are of Paul rehearsing for this release, and also some hymn accompaniments he recorded for a missionary to use in his church....)

Paul

[pwhodges]

I have processed the above to remove the wow, and made decent fades in and out.  Just that makes it a lot more listenable.  Note that there is effectively no bass - there is nothing below 50 Hz.

https://cassland.org/sounds/Christ Church, Oxford old organ (Paul Morgan)/

Paul

[Choir Man]

Released this week: John Challender's transcription of The Planets recorded at Salisbury. Good quality audio equipment a must. The cathedral chorister's contribution to Neptune is magical.

 

[DaveHarries]

In Bristol Cathedral the final hymn of the 10am Eucharist on Sunday 22nd September was no. 383 (Jesu, Lover Of My Soul) to Joseph Parry's tune "Aberystwyth". The voluntary at the end was by Stanford but the use of that hymn did make me think of the toccata on "Aberystwyth" by David Bednall (b. 1979, Choral Director of Clifton RC Cathedral, Bristol). For anybody who has never heard Bednall's toccata on "Aberystwyth" here it is played by Stephen Moore on the organ of Llandaff Cathedral.

Dave

[Choir Man]

It's very clever and interesting, but...

 

[innate]

Yes, an extraordinary feat of design, engineering and vision. What commitment to the organ as a developing musical instrument! I wouldn’t presume to make any predictions as to which innovations might gain a hold in the wider world.

The sub-semitones/microtones—is it just me or do they sound “out of tune” even when single notes are played on their own?

The three different kinds of touch available on the remote console are very thought-provoking for someone that might be involved in a new remote console instrument—I love Balint’s observation that the “proportional” touch might be suitable for pieces written for the German cone-chests. The three settings certainly put paid to the “once you’re using electric action for the console it all sounds the same” argument; to me the three different “actions” had clearly perceptible differences in sound.

[Colin Pykett]

1 hour ago, innate said:

The sub-semitones/microtones—is it just me or do they sound “out of tune” even when single notes are played on their own?

If I understand you correctly, I think what one is hearing is the newly-played single note beating transiently against the reverb of the previous one.  On the occasions when he held the note for longer, the reverb, and hence the beat, died away and thus so did the apparent out-of-tuneness.

[Peter Allison]

As I have mentioned a few times, I am a "non player" organ enthusiast. But I see a great design by a builder that does not stand still. A few great composers could write new musical possibilities for this organ, whether they are good to hear is up to the listener. Messiaen would have liked this organ am sure.  I saw this yesterday and posted it on FB, and a sound engineer friend/ composer (specializing in organs SACD's 95% of the time) just said "wow"

[innate]

20 hours ago, Colin Pykett said:

If I understand you correctly, I think what one is hearing is the newly-played single note beating transiently against the reverb of the previous one.  On the occasions when he held the note for longer, the reverb, and hence the beat, died away and thus so did the apparent out-of-tuneness.

That is a very likely explanation of what I am hearing, Colin. Thank you.

[John Robinson]

Fascinating instrument.  So many possibilities, though I'm not sure how much of this would be used in normal playing.
On the other hand, just think of the opportunities if you are playing along with a choir!  🤣

[SomeChap]

On 04/10/2024 at 17:46, Colin Pykett said:

If I understand you correctly, I think what one is hearing is the newly-played single note beating transiently against the reverb of the previous one.  On the occasions when he held the note for longer, the reverb, and hence the beat, died away and thus so did the apparent out-of-tuneness.

There's an interesting question around the perception of 'out-of-tuneness'.   I know the threshold where people* begin to describe two pitches as 'different notes' rather than out-of-tune versions of the same one is usually** cited as the syntonic comma (c21.5 cents, so less than half a 50-cent quarter-tone).  But I'm not sure I'm really capable of spotting a perfectly in-tune vs out-of-tune quarter-tone in practice! 

 I wish, when certain young children of my acquaintance were just starting out on woodwind instruments (with all the woes associated with reeds that entails), and would frequently play whole phrases so far out of tune that it wasn't possible to tell what notes they were trying to play and I wanted to scrape my own brain out from inside my cranium, that I'd had the presence of mind to whip out the tuning app on my phone to see just how far out they were! It might have been useful data...

The only musical use of quarter-tones I'm aware of (outside of the squeaky-gate contemporary sphere) is Jacob Collier's arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter (which is on youtube so I'm not off-topic, so there!). However he is justly tuning a series of jazzy chords which results in him modulating to G half sharp major.  Now, not personally being afflicted with perfect pitch, I can confidently say I've sung in many choirs where we achieved similar feats, often using considerably simpler harmony and not necessarily singing all the right notes even then; the difference seems to be that Mr Collier [claims that he] is doing it deliberately which sounds like very hard work, whereas we seemed just*** to manage it effortlessly.

SC

 

* that is, westerners accustomed to 12-tone equal temperament

** ie I'm not aware of any formal definition but I'm sure I've read it in quite a few places!

*** no pun intended

 

[SomeChap]

On 04/10/2024 at 15:45, innate said:

The three different kinds of touch available on the remote console are very thought-provoking ... certainly put paid to the “once you’re using electric action for the console it all sounds the same” argument; to me the three different “actions” had clearly perceptible differences in sound.

Agreed with this. I'm no expert but Balint Karosi's comments that the pipes seemed to speak better with the proportional action enabled chimes with comments I've heard from organ builders / voicers who say they often need to change the voicing of pipes when moving them from tracker to electric key action?

The system used by Rieger here seems quite an elaborate one, but I suspect simpler solutions might well be feasible. I recently had to dismantle and fix an ancient Yamaha Clavinova, and I found that the mechanism for detecting key pressure was surprisingly simple: there was one sensor that connected near the top of the key travel and another further down.  The clavinova was simply timing how long it took to get from one sensor to the other to work out how loudly to output the note. I can't help but feel there must be three-position valves out there (closed, partial, open) to put under a pipe; the first position - near the top of the key-travel - would admit a little wind into the pipe and the other - near the bottom - would open the valve fully.

This strikes me, purely theoretically of course, as perhaps a worthwhile but simple approximation of tracker action with the benefit of more natural pipe speech - and more naturally-varying pipe speech - and it might additionally alleviate one of my personal bug-bears of electric actions, that the pipe doesn't even start speaking until the key hits the key bed - way later than with tracker.

Interested to hear perspectives from those with practical experience!

SC

[Colin Pykett]

I wonder what the service life statistics of the action were designed to be in terms of MTBF (mean time between failures) and, indeed, total service life itself?  And whether any precautions have been incorporated to limit the effect of damage due to nearby lightning discharges?