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BERNARD EDMONDS_________________________________________________
NOTES & QUERIES
Who said this?
1. The unhappy result is ... to obscure rather than clarify the texture. This occurs, in part, because the mixture has been scaled and voiced as a colour aid rather than to fulfil the functional intent to reinforce the fundamental pitch. Music is basically intended to be heard at unison pitch, after all, and the harmonic series which is mimicked by the mixture strengthens that unison.
2. Matters relating to both performance and design seem to be discussed in the language of moral argument rather than musical debate. Rationality then flies out of the window and music, the Muse we should be maintaining, is crushed between the words.
3. At what point does historical sensibility become conservation fundamentalism?
4. Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Edgbaston began to develop towards the end of the eighteenth century, and the end of the Napoleonic Wars triggered a rapid expansion. The Gough family, Lords of the Manor, managed to exclude commercial and dense residential development, and the area was laid out spaciously with wide roads, large houses, and open spaces. There, leading Birmingham industrialists made their homes. At the 'country end', way out by Edgbaston Park, was the medieval parish church, St Bartholomew's, later to be considerably enlarged. Its 1857 organ we have already considered. But the Sperling notebooks, now on loan from the RCO to the British Library Manuscripts Department (79 9 1/5), have the following (3.27):
Edgebaston (sic) Parish Church
A small second hand organ presented to the church in 1837 by Lord Calthorp. One row of keys GG to F
Open Diapason
Stopt Diapason in halves
Principal
Fifteenth
Cremona to tenor C in small swell box
German pedals one octave. A good organ for its size.
Hill records show 14 August 1849, estimates addressed to 'Fiddian esq', but these were not taken up. To serve the 'city end' of the area, a Building Committee was set up to arrange for a church, and St George's was the result. The then landowner and Lord of the Manor of Edgbaston was George Gough-Calthorpe, third Baron Calthorpe, and he defrayed most of the cost of the original 1836-38 building; hence the dedication, St George. Here also magnates were interested in supplying an organ, and there are several letters in Hill's books 1838-39. There is nothing specific about the organ, and so far as the Hill records are concerned, St George's organ disappears into thin air until the enlargement of the church in 1890, when an estimate for a three-manual appears, not taken up. One letter is of more general interest:
J.F. Ledsam Esq. Sir, ... I have had an interview with Lord Calthorpe ... he came to no decision, but put several questions to me respecting Mr. Hollins' judgment on organs - whether he was a competent judge or not? to which I observed I could not allow him to judge between Bamfield (sic) and me - a man whom he had employed for the additions at St. Paul's. My organs must be tried by men higher in Profession before they leave my premises. ... I have no desire to enter competition with Mr.Bamfield, as my experience and the expenses of London workmanship cannot bear any proportion. ... William Hill.
George Hollins, though lame, was an excellent organist; a pupil of Thomas Munden, he succeeded his master as Town Hall organist - there was no 'City Organist' then - functioning in two of the Triennial Festivals in company with the Visitor, Mendelssohn. Organist at the Town Hall from 1837 until his death in 1841, he had also succeeded Munden at St Paul's, Ludgate Hill, Hockley, in Birmingham. This was evidently the family church, for there are memorials to several Hollins worthies, including the noted architect and his sculptor son.
C.J.B. Meacham, Mus.B. Cambridge, trained at Ely Cathedral; appointed organist of St Philip's, Birmingham, in 1871, he moved to St George's in 1888, staying until his death in 1900. In the Musical Times, May 1890, we find
'CHURCH ORGAN for SALE, by HILL and SON, containing 2 manuals, full compass of pedals, and 16 stops, now in St. George's Church, Edgbaston, where it may be seen by applying to Mr. Meacham, 9, Calthorpe Road, Birmingham.
At the moment, that is all we have of the elusive organ. It is not as informative as we could wish, and apart from the note about pedal compass, could easily be a twin of the 1857 Parish Church organ. It is a Hill, and the explanation of the lacuna in Hill's records is likely to be that it was made for another building, and transferred to St George's. That need not mean a 'throw-out', for such transfers have been made for several reasons. I have a recollection of seeing, many years ago, a note to that effect tucked away obscurely in Hill's books, but this has eluded re-discovery.
It was replaced in 1890 by a three-manual Brindley & Foster when the old church was enlarged to its present form. It has a fine case designed by W.A. Chatwin, architect for the church extension, and executed probably by Bridgeman of Lichfield who did most of the carving then. Some of the stops in Meacham's very complete specification were not executed until later, and there have been several enlargements and rebuilds up to the present time - but that is another story.
L.R. Fleming I got to know when he took over W.J. Bird of Birmingham and moved into John Holt's reed organ factory near my home. He had been local representative for Hill Norman & Beard and was a store of knowledge of organs in the area. Unfortunately he later burnt his fingers by taking over what was left of Nicholson & Lord of Walsall, and Mr. Lambert of Nicholson's came to the rescue. My later letters from Fleming have as sub-heading 'S.E. Lambert & Co. Ltd', so it was in effect a subsidiary of Nicholson's but did various organs and rebuilds under its own entity. In 1956 he wrote to me:
We re-open the organ at St George's this evening after fitting a new console and action. ... the organist when it was built was a Dr (sic) Meacham. His son, a retired ship's engineer and something of an eccentric, lives at Wootton Wawen and has his father's little old Hill organ in a large wooden shed at the back of his cottage. He is a nocturnal customer and sleeps during the day and is very much awake at night, practising the organ, say from 2 to 5 a.m.
I am indebted for help to David Bruce-Payne, organist, and Justin Pinkess, historian, of St George's; and Roland Keen, organist of St Bartholomew's. Now, as always, if anyone has any information which may be relevant, please send it along and I will forward it. Don't leave it to someone else, there may not be anyone.
As to 1864 we fear we cannot help you... (the writer) regrets to have to say that he took but little interest in musical matters at that time, but was more interested in steam engines as small boys often are, and probably made the very first model of a 'streamlined' locomotive in that year. It was made of sheet zinc and had an inverted boat's bow in front of the smoke box to cut through the air. 'Grown ups' were rather discouraging to children in those far off Victorian days. and when in answer to a question as to what use it was, he replied 'the train would go faster' he was told trains already went fast enough, this was countered by the assertion that coal would be saved. "Run away and play" was the next damper on the budding inventiveness of the little upstart!
(Letter from E.H. Suggate of Bishop & Son, to Bernard Edmonds, 5 March 1937)
Answers to Who said this?
1. & 2. Gillian Weir, The Organbuilder, vol 10 no. 2.
3. Hugh Dickinson, formerly Dean of Salisbury.
4. John Galsworthy.
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