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EDITORIALStephen Bicknell's editorial in the January issue of the Reporter was typically thoughtful and provocative. Mediocrity was central to his theme. The word does not imply inadequacy of execution, but it does exclude excellence. Outside the world of organs, the pursuit of excellence has been a national pastime for thirty years. Various forms of analysis, inspection, reporting, planning and promulgation of systems permeate legislation and the education and health services all in the name of guaranteeing success. It is salutary to refer to an essay in Objections to Christian Belief (Penguin Books, 1968) in which a warning was given about the employment of systems. The argument ran along the lines that exchanging one system for another apparently superior one solves nothing, but it does guarantee that anyone who has vision will be silenced. It is not too difficult to see similarities with the condition of the British organ and its music. The neo-Baroque movement forty years ago advocated mechanical action, lists of allegedly German stops and a voicing approach all of which were guaranteed to produce an organ suitable for playing Bach. The system was applied with all too familiar results. The eclectic organ is another such system - an unresponsive action, a motley if predictable stop-list which will provide sounds supposedly suitable for organ music of the last four centuries, and a battery of pistons and a sequencer. Applying vision to all this is truly difficult. Organ-builders and designers must not let the pursuit of technical excellence and craftsmanship become a goal in itself, essential though these qualities are. Much study and practice on the art of the organist will not guarantee that the music being played speaks with its authentic voice. Vision implies a degree of inspiration and risk. British musicians are not renowned for taking risks. The nineteenth-century experience in our cathedrals and universities was to react against the chromatic adventures of Wagner and German music and turn inwards into a solid, diatonic, academic style - the system produced worthy but mediocre music, and, surprisingly some organs which rose above the music they are required to play. The risk takers should be well known to us - Bach risked the wrath of organ-builders when he insisted that the wind-supply should meet his demands, not because he wanted to annoy them but because contemporary practice was not always good enough. Cavaillé-Coll not only sensed the emerging symphonic style in nineteenth-century France - he produced a new style of organ which actually nurtured the style. Ralph Downes took risks with his design for the Royal Festival Hall Organ; even if some aspects of the design would not be followed nowadays, the strength of his vision has had an enormous influence on British organ-building and performance. Stephen pointed us towards the Classical repertoire where he finds an integrity of style and content perfectly suited to the eighteenth-century native organ. There is much to be done and discovered in that field; we now need to apply Stephen's vision to the twenty-first century, not only to eschew the mistakes of the last century, but to move forward with organ design and its music. |