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Holy Trinity Coventry


undamaris

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Do any members know what the state of play is here? Their website hasn't been updated in yonks and still states they hope to commission an organ from Kenneth Tickell - which strikes me as very odd, seeing as I emailed him regarding his plans for the new organ a couple of years before his untimely passing to which he replied that he knew nothing of the proposal for him to build a new organ for the church!

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The website has some old information on it but it does, also, have some update too!

 

They have an appeal going and a concert, tonight, in aid of the organ fund. In another place on the website there is mention of commissioning the late Kenneth Tickell to build an instrument but, in a different place, there is also this:

 

 

Holy Trinity Coventry, Organ Appeal

This great medieval parish church of Coventry with its lofty spire stands alongside the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey, reduced to rubble with remarkable haste during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Although Holy Trinity belonged to the Prior, it was left intact and was not engulfed in the adjacent destruction.

The neighbouring Cathedral Church of St Michael was destroyed by incendiary bombs during the Blitz of 1940. As the conflagration raged, Canon Clitheroe, Vicar of Holy Trinity, and his faithful church members, toiled through the night, battling to prevent Holy Trinity from succumbing to the same fate.

We give God thanks for the survival of our beautiful church in the heart of Coventry. It lives on to serve the city and its people into the 21st century.

Why do we need a new organ?

Inspiring and uplifting choral music is one of Holy Trinity’s strengths. Much of this relies totally on accompaniment by an organ with a wide range of tonal colours. The 19th century Forster & Andrews Organ which was buried deep in a chamber on the south side of the church was in a terminally poor state. Organists struggled weekly to maintain the quality we desire in our worship. Many of its functions were unreliable, many stops unusable. We were advised by several leading organ experts, that it had come to the end of its useful life. It was therefore dismantled and replaced with a temporary digital instrument.

Location of a new organ

The location of the old organ buried in a chamber in the south choir aisle inhibited its sound travelling to the West End of the church. Alternative locations for a new organ have been explored and all have proved problematic given the ‘long, thin’ shape of our building. Our glorious west end window prevents a traditional site for a West End Organ and we lack of a choir screen on which to mount an organ, which would in any event block the view from West to East and vice-versa. We are currently using the flexibility of our digital organ speakers to investigate the possibility of two organs, one to serve the chancel and one to serve the nave. Once our experiments are complete we will proceed to specifications for the instruments and talks with potential builders. It may be possible that one or both of the instruments comprises a project to re-site a redundant organ of suitable, proven quality.

 

Hope that answers, at least, a part of your question.

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