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NOTES & QUERIESBERNARD EDMONDSWho said this ? 1) It just one organ by Father Smith, Renatus Harris or the later Dallams had survived in its original state, what might have been done with it now for the revival of the musical traditions of Purcell, Blow, and Croft! It never occurred to anyone installing a new cathedral organ to put the old one aside in a disused transept as a memorial of its era. (1933) 2) What will some of us and our future members have to celebrate or regret in the year 2001, when BIOS will have its 25th anniversary...? will we have learnt that Father Smith cases do not adapt to recasting around four-manual organs? Will there be any Arthur Harrison pipework left to bring into line with modern tonal thinking, let alone an original scheme of one of his instruments ? Will we want to ensure that at least one of the British neo-baroque organs is preserved for curiosity value?(1982) 3) (Beware) Purism cocooned from reality. 4) There is certainly room for discussion as to precisely where the line should be drawn between instruments which should not be altered in any way, and cases where some change might be seen to be appropriate...... I would add the need at all times for a certain sense of humility.
SAFFRON HILL This has been said to have been a one-manual enlarged later. The William Hill contract, however, (in the church records) shows it to have been a two-manual, G compass, with short Swell and one octave xt unison pedal pipes, costing £5350, and this is confirmed by Sperling (1.108). The Mackeson Guide to London Churches 1889 notes enlargement by Hill in 1867. It was in the care of that firm at its destruction with the church, following damage in the Blitz - shortly after my visit. By then, though the specification of speaking stops was the same as in 1836: Compass C - g3 concave radiating pedalboard C-f The exigencies of the times curtailed my visit and removed the possibility of another, so my acquaintance with the light-pressure tones of this interesting Hill survival, sounding so well in this Commissioners church by Barry, was regrettably brief and remains a very distant memory. Over the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries one of the keenest of organ afficionados was Wlliam J. Ridley. Owing to a hand injury he could not play, but exercised his enthusiasm in becoming expert and critic on the subjects of construction, tone and workmanship, and an admirer of the work of the Willis firm. He had an aunt, widow of a rich Liverpool business man and music lover, James Barrow, and when she told him that she proposed to give £10,000 to the new Cathedral. He suggested that she give the organ. She agreed, and doubled her gift. The Organ Committee seems to have given him a free hand in drawing up a scheme, subject to its ultimate approval, and his friend Ernest Bryson records that they had many discussions together. He tells how they thought ot having a real 64ft on the Pedal, but decided that a stop inaudible in its lower reaches was rather a waste. They thought a 32ft reed in a swell-box was surely an innovation. His mammoth scheme was approved by the the Committee, and he specified Willis as builder as a condition of the gift. The work was to go ahead, though of course it was to be many years before the Cathedral would be in a fit condition for its installation. During that time, Ridley died. The Great War brought problems in the escalation of building costs and the necessity of making economies in the organ. Much work was being carded out in a local building, and this included the voicing of the big Tuba. It is recorded that a wind-trunk giving pressure to balance the action blew out, and all sixty-one notes cyphered at once! Not surprisingly, a local school registered a complaint.A large quantity of parts of the organ were stored in a local chapel, and were destroyed when the building collapsed. Economies included leaving the Echo Organ prepared for, and the introduction of extension and borrowing on the Pedal. The salient differences in the then published specification from Ridley's original ware recorded in Musical Opinion, November 1924, by Bryson, whose fears that it might have become no longer characteristic of its designer were largely laid to rest. Some oddments from my notebooks. Years ago I came across at Hodnet, Shropshire, a Nicholson & Lord, divided and with a detached console. The swell-box control was via a stout cable at ankle height, a nasty trap, though probably the regular man had got used to it. One coupler label read 'Sw. Sup. Oct. et Sw. Oct. to Gt.', somewhat unusual. At Burgh Castle in Suffolk the front plate of the soundboard is of glass and one can watch the pallets as one plays. Some queries - Who was Rest, of Rest(,) Cartwright & Son? Nobody; he was Cartwright's Christian name, short for Rest-in-the-Lord in the family's Puritan Baptist tradition. The comma after 'Rest' is a common mistake. The son was Geoffrey Booth Cartwright, who moved to Willis. Another enquiry is as to Kingsgate, linked with Davidson. Kingsgate House, a Baptist establishment in London, gave birth to the Kingsgate Musical Instrument Company, of which R.W. Davidson was Managing Director in 1921. Davidson told me he had been foreman to Hunter and had learned voicing from'Old Tunks'. In 1925 or so he branched out on his own, taking one Harding as partner and retaining Kingsgate in the title. The business was ultimately taken over by Rushworth & Dreaper in the 'sixties. I am asked about minor discrepancies between my paper on Taylor of Leicester in JBIOS 18, and Elvin's account in his last book. The names of the two brothers were Stephen Alfred Taylor and Geoffrey Lewin Taylor, as I stated. This is a small matter; but I am afraid that his usual standards of accuracy have slipped in several places in this book. On an 1853 Walker in Bermondsey - tonally the organ is excellent, lovely light pressure stuff. The organist has produced a scheme which would eventually transform it into a replica of the organ he plays on Saturday mornings at the 'Trocette', Elephant and Castle, and I am doing my best to jump on that. (Noel Mander, letter, 1952) About 1910 Gunther was N & B reed voicer. One day after mid-day lunch break he went around thef actory at St Stephen's Gate waving a pistol and demanding 'Where is Mr Herbert?' Fortunately my father, who always walked home for lunch, stayed in with a headache and so escaped what might have been tragic. That was Gunther's last job with N & B! Monk & Gunther were very prickly about any seeming critical references, and like Spurden Rutt were ever ready to go to law, or threaten it. (H.N.) Suppose that I were to obtain and set up machinery by which the organ - say in Westminster Abbey - could be played automatically. I imagine that you are are with me in that building, and I set the machinery going, and that you can hear the music resounding through the beautiful arches; then suppose that we all leave the building, lock the doors, and go quite away, what would happen? A child would reply, 'Why, the Abbey would be full of sound and music, although there would be nobody there to hear it.' Not so; there would be dead and complete silence in the building, notwithstanding the vigorous and successful working of the automatic machinery. Yes, dead silence!' J. Stainer, Essay on Music. Stainer is making the point that all sound is subjective, there is no such thing as sound-in-itself. Each hearer has sound only in his head, and no sound whatever exists between his head and the instruments or other causes of vibrations. The point is perhaps more philosophical than of immediately obvious relevance to the musician, and may recall to the more ancient among us the brain-teaser from Oxtord in the long-ago - would anything really exist if there were no-one to perceive it? (would there be anyone to mind?). This was encapsulated in two limericks, which buried the matter:
There once was a don who said
God must think it exceedingly odd
To find that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no-one about in the Quad.
Dear Sir, it is not at all odd
For I'm always about in the Quad;
And therefore this tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.
.........................................With which re-assuring thought let us conclude.Answers to Who said this? 1) The Times, Leader 9 June 1933 2) Dr.James Berrow, JBIOS 6, 4. 3) Peter Hurford, OrganBuilder 2. 3 4) Alan Thurlow, OrganBuilder 16 3.5 |
