What is Worthy?

[father-willis]

Happy New Year to all members, old and, hopefully, new!!

New Year: New Thoughts.

Organ (building) news announced and "BANG!" we all pile in/on and criticise, negatively and positively, some putting thoughts into print. It would be interesting to read about members' own thoughts and reasoning. How about we highlight instruments that we would Restore - to its original state/a particular time in its history/leave alone, merely cleaning etc. and those that we consider worthy of Replacement - those instruments we consider beyond redemption. Lists are OK but it makes much more interesting reading if we include our reasoning behind our opinions. And, of course, let's keep it nice and respect everyone else's views.

I'll make a couple of suggestions:

Restore:

St Michael's Mount, Cornwall. https://npor.org.uk/survey/D05198  Investigate space for Gt Trumpet; provide new tracker action.

Holy Trinity, Ashton-Under-Lyne. https://npor.org.uk/survey/N10959  Clean and restore as is. Two stops prepared for completed with appropriate period pipework or new made to appropriate specifications.

Replace:
Well,I was going to add this https://npor.org.uk/survey/N05657  but I see that it has already gone! The console was horrid, the action noisy and the Cornopean could be heard in nearby Tewkesbury. It is some time since I played it but I do not remember much, if anything, that was pleasant about it. It was not a joy.

 

[John Robinson]

I agree completely with this.
On the Continent, sensible people have retained and maintained many historic organs.  In the UK, however, the trend has been to 'update' and improve our instruments.  I can see both points of view: one is to preserve history, the other is to change for the better.
I suppose that there are many more historic organs on the Continent, if we reserve 'historic' to be pre-20th century or even pre-19th century.
I suppose the argument is, do we want to keep working examples of original organs, which can never be replaced, or do we want organs which change according to the changing musical tastes?