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From:
Stephen Bicknell <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Stephen Bicknell <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 18 May 2005 00:05:27 +0100
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On 17 May 2005, at 21:47, Roger Firman wrote:

> Further to Stephen's message regarding scale, perhaps he could offer
> some similar thoughts as to organs appropriate for smaller spaces
> either
> church or domestic environments.

I don't think I would comment on the domestic environment because that
really is where the buyer is allowed total command. I have no problem
with someone putting 200 ranks in their own home. Let's just hope the
spouse enjoys a complementary activity. International Tanker Brokerage
perhaps. Anything, really.

I hardly need to comment on what is needed for what we Brits think of
as the typical American church - classical, brick or clapboard, with a
portico and tower - since the job has been done so beautifully already.
The ideals exist, whether they are the surviving Hooks and their
contemporaries from before the Civil War, the Tannenbergs, Dieffenbachs
and Feyrings of the more German school, or the Fisk at Old West in
Boston. What doesn't suit these beautiful spaces so well is organs
sprayed all over the west wall as if from a hosepipe attached to a
tanker, organs sprouting from flowerboxes in the chancel with the
mixtures out front (yechhhh, as it used to say in speech bubbles in MAD
magazine), organs hidden in chambers formed out of attics or voids over
vestries, or organs that speak a musical language so far removed from
'colonial' taste - whether that 'colonial' is genuinely historic or
later reproduction - that they have the effect of a symphony orchestra
playing in a phone box.

When it comes to solutions to the eternal problems, one of the
prettiest modern examples I have actually seen in an American church is
Fowkes & Richards opus 5 at St John's Lutheran Stamford CT,

http://www.richardsfowkes.com/pages/opus/opus05.shtml

which I enjoyed rather more than Rosales opus 15 in San Antonio TX
(also good) and Noack's opus 128 in Houston TX (the Hildebrandt copy).

What struck me as so brilliant about the Stamford organ was the way in
which a very versatile modern instrument had been built without
departing so very far from the partnership's principles of historic
inspiration. The organ is Northern European, with Ruckpositive and
Pedal towers, but that does not stop it from having a fine Swell Organ
built into the tower behind the main case. The adaptation of style and
scale to the architectural space is marvellous, to the point where the
organ is the making of the building both visually and spiritually. I
have a special vote for the pedal towers, where the largest display
pipe is 12' E (if I remember rightly, might even be F# or worse). The
lowest notes are provided by Haskells. I hated Haskell basses until I
saw these; all the ones I had heard were metal basses to metal stops
and they sounded coarse, hungry and ill matched. Here at Stamford the
Haskell bass pipes are open wood, with the internal tube of metal. The
wooden pipe has a rounder tone anyway; its match to the metal facade
pipes is made quite uncanny by placing the Haskells outside the pedal
case, facing backwards. That's two brilliant modern innovations; the
third thing I had never seen before was internal rollers to steady the
speech. I take my hat off.

Other memorable experiences of miracle organs for the 'ordinary' sized
space would include the Cavaille-Coll at Notre Dame de la Croix in the
20th district of Paris. Well, ordinary is not the word because the
building is virtually a Basilica and is the size and shape of a
well-to-do mediaeval abbey, though built in the 1870s. This was a poor
district and a new parish; Cavaillé-Coll, bless him, determined to
knock the building flat with an organ of only 26 stops.

http://orgue.free.fr/anglais/a20o3.html

GO 16 8 8 8 4 3 2 III-V 16 8 4
R 8 8 8 4 2 8 8 8
Ped 16 8 8 16 8 4
tracker

The GO and Pedale reeds are all independent ranks. You would not
believe the effectiveness and power generated by six ranks of
low-pressure trumpets where so many English and American builders would
have been satisfied with two extended ranks on three times the wind -
or, worse still, just one rank at all six pitches. I was with Carlo
Curley on that occasion: to prove the effectiveness of the scheme we
sat him down at the keys and got him to draw full organ and play the
biggest chord he could command. The result: a glorious musical roar, of
course. But when he added his second foot, to play the pedal in
octaves, the upper note sang out through full organ like an English
Tuba cuts through the soul of any true lover of music (and I choose my
words with care). Never did a small instrument so beautifully prove the
vanity, futility and waste of inflated schemes.

At the other end of the building, an equally astonishing one-manual by
Mutin (1900)

Manual (enclosed) 16 8 8 8 4 III 16 8 4
Pedal 16 (derived)

Built into an object the size of a very large wardrobe with a little
prie-dieu reversed console. Almost as loud as the thing at the other
end. Yes there was a good acoustic, but that has nothing to do with the
brilliance and effectiveness of these two instruments. In a duller
building the same things can be done, but few organ builders today
manage to combine style with bravura. It is exceptionally difficult to
make a really loud noise beautiful and musically useful; Cavaillé-Coll
and Thomas Lewis were very much better at the trick than Henry Willis,
who always delivered the goods but from pipes so extremely narrow in
scale (at least from 4' up) that the tension is almost unbearable: -
the fluework demands the addition of the reeds, the reeds make you long
to hear the fluework again, neither satisfies, and the bass is always
too loud anyway.

There are some little organs I know from recordings that have made my
heart jump.

One is the 1875 Witte in Rijswijk in the Netherlands. Witte (working
for the company known as Batz & Co) was another master of loud organs.
Dutch organs are often really very loud indeed: it is to do with
congregational accompaniment. Because they are designed to lead a
congregation they have to have 16' manual choruses. I know the Witte
style from visiting some larger instruments: everything is developed in
the treble of the flue choruses and the basses of the reeds, just as
with Cavaillé-Coll, but the tone is dark and horn-like, with rattling
broad posaunes rather than fiery trompettes, and a very distinctly
cornet quality in the upperwork. Sounds quite hair-raising at first, on
the edge of hysteria, but after a while you realise that it has
remarkable command and beauty at a level of power that most of us only
encounter *inside* the organ chamber or case.

The Rijswijk organ consists of:
Man I:
Bourdon 16
Prestant 8
Octaaf 4
Doublet I-III
Cornet I-II
Trumpet 8 (divided bass/treble)

Man II: (unenclosed)
Viola 8
Holfluit 8
Fluit 4

Ped:
Bourdon 16 (derived)

Check out that first manual again: pure big organ choruswork on only 6
sliders. You want pretty? You've got three stops on manual two for
that.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that this organ is primitive or
under-developed. This is the very height of sophistication; several
hundred years of tradition boiled down to a handful of essential stops.
This truly represents what an intelligent organist actually *needs* for
liturgical accompaniment. Everything else we pile on to our modern
organs is just for performance, for variety, for show. All liturgy
requires of us, in almost any denomination from the high to the low, is
that the organ can lead a congregation singing lustily with an
occasional change of stops, accompany smaller groups without drawing
attention to itself, and provide piano and mezzo noises of genuine
beauty for preluding. Who cares if the same three stops are heard in
the preludes every week? There are still seven different ways of
combining them! Who cares if the organ doesn't have the Voix Eolienne
specified here, or the Sept-none specified there, or a stop that sounds
like an ocean liner in the fog? This is worship we are talking about,
not a costume ball! You really *must* have a swell box? Well, then you
really must pay for it yourself.

Sorry, got carried away for a moment there. The last rhetorical
question is a quote from Ralph Downes.

The Rijswick organ is built at gallery floor level with the front pipes
breaking through the balcony and the keyboards at the end. Looks from
the photo to be 10' (3m) wide by 15' (4.5m) high and perhaps 6' (1.85m)
deep.

I want to go to Sweden. It is the one country I haven't done yet. The
recordings of old Swedish organs on the BIS label included some rather
mucky playing (Lena Jacobsen at Fredericksborg Castle was enough to
make you bring up your dinner and Hans Fagius was ... well .... Hans
Fagius). But the beauty of some of the old organs is quite
unforgettable.

Gammalkil, by Pehr Schiorlin 1805-7. A wooden church, so no acoustic
here. The style is ... either late classical or early romantic,
depending on your starting position. The organ was a personal favourite
of Albert Schweitzer.

Manual
Principal 16 (treble only)
Quintadena 16 (bass/treble)
Principal 8
Flauto doppio 8 (wood, two mouths)
Viola da gamba 8 (flared)
Octava 4
Rorfleut 4
Quinta 3
Octava 2
Mixtura IV (tierce all through, 3 1/5' from c37 up)
Trompet 8

Ofverwerk (with early swell device, now lost)
Principal 8 (treble only)
Gedact 8 (bass only)
Offenfleut 8 (treble only, wood, mouth on wide side)
Quintadena 8
Principal 4
Flackfleut 4 (tapered)
Gamba 4 (flared)
Spitsfleut 2
Scharf III (tierce all through, 3 1/5' from c37 up)
Trompet 8
Wox humana 8 (treble, more an oboe with a can on top)

Pedal
Principal 16 (wood)
Dubbel Subbass 16 (wood, two mouths)
Octava 8
Octava 4
Borflojt 1
Basun 16 (wood tubes)
Dulcian 8 (cylindrical)

This is a really lovely scheme, quite original and personal but still
close enough to the mainstream to cover a remarkable range. Just look
at a couple of personal touches, how the combination of Quintadena and
Gamba is available on both manuals but an octave apart. You want to
play a cantus firmus on the Pedal? Schiorlin asks you to accept that it
will come out at sopranino pitch, two octaves higher than you were
taught. Who is right?

Try it, you might even enjoy it.

Stephen Bicknell

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