Musette

[Guest Andrew Butler]

Can anyone enlighten me please as to the construction / sound of a Musette stop?

 

I see that there is one on the Swell at HT Hull, and on the Choir St Lawrence Jewry, London (at least there was...and I saw this described once as "synthesized")

[Pierre Lauwers]

This stop was frequent in early romantic belgian organs, where it was, according to Van Couwenbergh, a Regal of the Voix humaine kind, so with short resonators.

 

Pierre.

[Guest paul@trinitymusic.karoo.co.uk]

Can anyone enlighten me please as to the construction / sound of a Musette stop?

 

I see that there is one on the Swell at HT Hull, and on the Choir St Lawrence Jewry, London (at least there was...and I saw this described once as "synthesized")

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I'm pretty sure there is a Musette at The City Hall, Hull but afraid that there definitely isn't one at Holy Trinity. If my memory serves, I think the City Hall one is a thin-sounding reed. If I wanted to create a Musette sound, I think I'd go for skinny half length reed resonators pierced near the top. Some neo-baroque builders used to provide something similar under the title 'Rohr Schalmei'.

 

The Musette at St.Lawrence Jewry was a concoction of choir flutes at various pitches. It wasn't up to much - indeed I think some of the contituent parts were extended. The Mander organ there had a fine case and some worthy 19th century pipes, but it was more-or-less cobbled together after the war. For all that, I would rather listen to the old St.Lawrence chorus reeds rather than the new (Klais) ones. Sorry, but they all sound like Allen 'computer organ' stops to me!

 

A similar Mander rebuild at St.Pancras Parish Church (originally a very fine Gray and Davison) has a Mander Choir 'Clarinet' similarly derived from Flute pipes. It doesn't pass muster at all - though if one were too lazy to compose a Cornet out of the stops available on the Choir I suppose one could draw this and get to all intents and purposes the same effect.

[AJJ]

The not too pleasant Rushworth at St Michael's Basset in Southampton has some similarly nasty synthetic solo stops derived from extended mutations.

 

http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N11632

 

Some similar things on the Compton at Downside are also not the nicest noises around either.

 

AJJ

[Guest Andrew Butler]

I'm pretty sure there is a Musette at The City Hall, Hull but afraid that there definitely isn't one at Holy Trinity.  If my memory serves, I think the City Hall one is a thin-sounding reed.  If I wanted to create a Musette sound, I think I'd go for skinny half length reed resonators pierced near the top. Some neo-baroque builders used to provide something similar under the title 'Rohr Schalmei'.

 

The Musette at St.Lawrence Jewry was a concoction of choir flutes at various pitches. It wasn't up to much - indeed I think some of the contituent parts were extended.  The Mander organ there had a fine case and some worthy 19th century pipes, but it was more-or-less cobbled together after the war.  For all that, I would rather listen to the old St.Lawrence chorus reeds rather than the new (Klais) ones.  Sorry, but they all sound like Allen 'computer organ' stops to me!

 

A similar Mander rebuild at St.Pancras Parish Church (originally a very fine Gray and Davison) has a Mander Choir 'Clarinet' similarly derived from Flute pipes. It doesn't pass muster at all - though if one were too lazy to compose a Cornet out of the stops available on the Choir I suppose one could draw this and get to all intents and purposes the same effect.

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Oops - I meant City Hall, sorry. had just been looking at HT