John Stanley Op 6 No 6 - Different Introduction

[preludefugue]

I wonder if someone can help me figure where this arrangement is from of Stanley's Op 6 No 6. I first heard it performed by Carlo Curley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw8O_7kWhm0

I have it on his "Toccata Organ Favourites" CD. In the CD booklet it says it is "Suite in D Stanley Op6/6 ed. Williams". There is only one edition that matches the title exactly and that is the one edited by Patrick Williams, published by Bosworth & Co. Off the back of that I purchased a copy and the introduction in it is not what Carlo played, it is the more common one that can be found in other books and on IMSLP.

Where has the introduction on the CD and the Youtube video come from, is it from another piece by Stanley? I've heard that George Thalben-Ball may have performed the version Carlo plays, so where did George get it from? Does anyone know who arranged it and whether it is published?

This chap also plays the Curley/Thalben Ball version too, but these three are the only ones that I know of who don't use the more common one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv8rDm-XIwE

...everyone else plays the introduction in this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XinBGqBHeb8

[Dafydd y Garreg Wen]

Intriguing.

Sounds like pastiche Handel to me.

Makes a certain amount of musical sense if you want to play the trumpet tune and feel it needs some sort of introduction, but you want something more dramatic than the demure eighteenth-century lead-in.

Wonder who wrote it.

[Martin Cooke]

10 hours ago, preludefugue said:

I wonder if someone can help me figure where this arrangement is from of Stanley's Op 6 No 6. I first heard it performed by Carlo Curley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw8O_7kWhm0

I'm afraid I have never heard that introduction before and it doesn't come from any of the Stanley voluntaries that I know. As Dafydd says, I think it's pastiche and I suspect that CO or GTB devised it. A possible avenue to explore might be with Ian Tracey, via his website. He undertook the transcription of some CO arrangements a couple of years ago but it's not amongst those that were published. Actually, IT has actually published his own transcription of this trumpet voluntary (Church Organ World) but it doesn't include any introduction at all. 

[Tony Newnham]

Hi

No idea about the introduction you're talking about.  I thoroughly dislike the usually overblown and bloated arrangements of early English organ music.  What's wrong with playing what the composer intended?  Using appropriate sounds (and if possible an appropriate organ) and careful phrasing brings the music to life.

Every Blessing

Tony

[Dafydd y Garreg Wen]

I can see a case for arrangements.

This repertoire sounds well (naturally) on instruments of the period, with their livelier voicing and the necessary stops.

But on romantic instruments with their smoother voicing it can sound thin and dull.

Is it therefore justifiable to try to put back something of the excitement that has been lost by arranging the original?

Don’t know ....

Then there are arrangements, and arrangements. C.H. Trevor’s are pretty chaste and restrained but others are, as Tony observes, overblown. Do you say, “If I am going to use an arrangement I’ve conceded the principle, so I might as well let my hair down”? Or do you go for a more middle-of-the-road approach à la Trevor?

 

[Martin Cooke]

1 hour ago, Tony Newnham said:

Hi

No idea about the introduction you're talking about.  I thoroughly dislike the usually overblown and bloated arrangements of early English organ music.  What's wrong with playing what the composer intended?  Using appropriate sounds (and if possible an appropriate organ) and careful phrasing brings the music to life.

Every Blessing

Tony

It's difficult not to agree with you, Tony, and some of the 'blown-up' arrangements from a past era sound quite wrong - but one or two of the trumpet movements do sound well and I have found them useful. The trumpet movement that starts on a high A - (TUM..... te tum te tum) works well as a concluding wedding march in the Coleman (?) OUP arrangement in way but would seem less convincing, to my mind, as writ in the 'proper' version. There's also a very good Maurice Greene trumpet voluntary in D which was a Cramer publication which is filled out, and another voluntary in C minor published by Novello. (Simon Johnson plays this in his Priory Records St Paul's DVD.)

Actually, there are less 'blown up' but 'pedals included' versions of some of the best known trumpet tunes and voluntary movements etc (Purcell, Clarke, Stanley) in the slender, blue covered OUP Ceremonial Music for Organ published in the 70's - they're arranged by Jackson, Hurford and Willcocks, and were all recorded by Christopher Dearnley. The volume and the recording includes Willocks' Gopsal, Hurford's Old 100th fanfares and the Jackson Archbishop's Fanfare. Volume 2 in the series (red cover with pic of St Paul's) is CHD's own volume of arrangements of odd bits and pieces including The Lord Mayor's Swan-Hopping Trumpet Tune.

[Vox Humana]

13 hours ago, Tony Newnham said:

Hi

No idea about the introduction you're talking about.  I thoroughly dislike the usually overblown and bloated arrangements of early English organ music.  What's wrong with playing what the composer intended?  Using appropriate sounds (and if possible an appropriate organ) and careful phrasing brings the music to life.

Every Blessing

Tony

I totally agree. My erstwhile lord and master said something characteristically trenchant somewhere about the pointlessness of arranging for the organ music actually written for the organ. He didn't believe in romanticising music that wasn't Romantic.  In any case, CC's introduction (if it is his), although enjoyable on its own terms, is over-cooked as an introduction to that Trumpet movement, which it turns into an anti-climax. Stanley's own introduction is a much better preparation - unsurprisingly.

Not that I have an opinion, you understand.