NOTES & QUERIES

Who said this?

Please, look, a joke, then and now, yes very. But always, by God, never.

Dammed up energy - which finally explodes in the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist incapable of obtaining release. Describing what composition?

The fact that church attendance is diminishing in general, but stable or rising in almost any church you happen to visit, is one of the many mysteries of the Church of England.

From my postbag, ancient and modern.

I visited Cambridge last Wednesday and put my hands on King's. What a prodigious full organ is this! The Solo Tuba frightened me at the console, I only touched a few notes of it. ... The Tuba at Turvey is not as originally voiced by Hill. (N.A. Bonavia-Hunt, 1950)

My first post of organist, at the age of fourteen, was in a manorial church. In those days the congregation stood when the Lord of the Manor entered, and if he didn't approve of what was being said in the sermon, particularly with visiting clergy, he would say so, fortissimo, the church resounding with 'Rubbish' or on one occasion 'Who sent us this fool?' (F. 1995)

(Addison & Steele De Coverley Essays tells us much the same about Sir Roger de Coverley, 18th century.)

R. S-R. always interviewed the Trades Union Secretary, Collier, with a pistol on the desk. (N.1996)

I have just introduced the new edition of Hymns A. & M. ... The People's Warden got up at the last meeting of the P.C.C. and said he was deeply concerned about the omission of his favourite hymn, 'A few more years shall roll'!! It has not been sung here since the last incumbent but one. (20 years at least) ... I expect you know that 1 have been asked to take charge of the rebuild (at Armley) if and when the money is forthcoming - £2,000. New electric action & detached console in chancel & general renovation of pipework. Binns, Fitton & Haley are to do the work. (N.A. B-H again, 1950) (Another narrow squeak!)

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, there seems to have been a number of foreign organ-builders working in this country, on a smaller scale than the well-known ones, doing tuning and maintenance and occasional rebuilds, and perhaps some harpsichords. Amongst them were members of the Tolner family.

One of them took over the care of the organ at St Anne, Soho from Crang, keeping it until 1782, when the firm became Dodo, Tolner. They continued there until about 1794. This is all that seems to be known about that Tolner, and Dodo is even more of a mystery.

However, Heinrich Tolner migrated to Cambridge. An Episcopal Visitation of the Perse School in 1731 reported that only ten boys were being educated there, and that not in the School premises, which had just been assessed for rates on the grounds of being used for other than educational purposes. They had in fact been let 'sometime before that date' - I surmise about 1714 - to Heinrich Tolner, a German immigrant who later anglicised his name to Henry Turner.

He used the school hall as workshop and the Usher's house as residence. He was buried in St Edwards churchyard 9 September 1730, and was succeeded by his son Barnard (sic) who was organist at Christ's and St. John's Colleges. William Colt (Brit.Mus.Add.MS 2882) records how Barnard Turner continued to use the Perse School as a workshop.

In the schole I saw several of his organs, harpsichords, and spinets, the schole having been neglected there many years.

Henry and/or Bernard worked on the Great St Mary's organ, and elsewhere in the area, from 1714 to 1776. In that year Bernard died at his house in Free School Lane. His two sons took Holy Orders -one was educated at the Perse School and became a Fellow of St John's - so there was no one left to carry on the business. In view of recent enquiries and renewed interest, I have collated these notes from early Reporters.

In April 1884 at Blackwall 'in the presence of the representative of the Admiralty and the Trinity Brothers, a trial was made of an instrument - the invention of Mr. Bryceson the organ builder - for signalling the approach of a vessel in a fog. ... a powerful pipe on which, by aid of suitable gearing, loud or short (sic) blasts can be produced!! Messrs. Imhof & Mukle have just (1885) built for Lord Shrewsbury the largest self-acting organ which they have ever made ... Each cylinder is so heavy that it takes two men to lift it into its place. The same firm have lately supplied their instruments to ... several cafés in Paris, where they are said to be a great attraction, the motive power (a gas engine) being placed in the windows.'

From two bran-tub cuttings:

I am asked about the 'odd' method of marking couplers sometimes found, with plural, e.g., 'Great to Pedals'. Personally I would put it the other way round, and ask why the singular habit developed. As you will find on old consoles, some of which remain in use, couplers were labelled punctiliously with their actual function. To quote one I saw on a Gray & Davison of !864 - Swell Manual Octaves; Swell to Great Manual; Swell Manual to Pedals; Great Manual to Pedals. I suppose economy was a factor which led to the present shorthand method. The old one is useful for dating, though plural pedal couplers lingered longer.

Someone wants to know how best to alter the 'haphazard settings' on the mechanical combination pedals of his Victorian organ. Probably, don't. Remember Best's advice about not being lazy with your hands amongst the stops; and that it is easier to push stops in by hand than to pull them out. How haphazard actually is it? On 'my' first organ, one pedal threw out a block of stops which annoyed me, until I thought it out. Left column, Gamba, Clarabella, Wald Flute; right, Open, Dulciana, Principal. Push in the left three with the flat of your hand, and you get a clean Great; push in the right, a Choir ensemble results: And so on. It's simple and obvious really, but as a DOA I was surprised how some people couldn't see it and lusted for a battery of pistons; while many were quite oblivious of any deleterious effects of uneasy bedfellows for example, in the organ mentioned the Clarabella killed the brilliance of the Principal. (Pause to relieve Grandma of eggshells.)

Cedric Arold was 'smitten' when a boy at Bishops Stortford College, where a new organ was being installed by Mr Chadwick, foreman to Rest Caftwright. So he went to Cartwright as apprentice; and later Chadwick joined with Amold when he set up in business in Chelmsford in the 'twenties', and then in the old village school at Thaxted. At that time there was fio electricity supply in the village, but fortunately there was a local gas-works, built in 1840, so Cedric installed a gas engine for his machinery. Later he moved to larger premises, an old confectionery factory, and when Hill, Norman & Beard took over his business, they retained Arnold's premises as their own headquarters. Arnold latterly incorporated the Norfolk firm of Williamson & Hyatt. One who worked for Arnold for seven years up to 1955, 'a very happy period in my life', speaks of him as 'a wonderful craftsman'.

In the Binns organ from Dumbleton Hall which went to Dumbleton Church, the entire Great and one Pedal stop were attributed to Schulze on the stopknobs. I did not know this, and recourse to Freeman simply finds the same statement, so I could venture no information to an enquirer.

Couplers worked by hitch-pedals are familier to us. In the early Willis of 1857 at StJames, Holloway they were hitched down to take the couplers off Bevington used a steel casting bench with serrations for the large pipes. Hence the ribbed markings. They also added old type-metal to the mix, containing antimony which produced a somewhat hard metal.

When the Chester Cathedral organ was built in 1877, by the Chester firm of Whiteley Brothers, 'Some surprise was expressed, and not a little indignation, that a local firm of so recent establishment (1869) should have been entrusted with an instrument of such size and importance', as Freeman put it in The Organ XIII (1934), 129-139. Many years ago, I saw a more detailed statement which mentioned also 'the London builders' (whatever that meant), and stated that efforts were made to cripple Whiteleys by offering larger payments to their workers to entice them away. But as Whiteleys was a family firm they managed to overcome that. Can anyone tell me where that account was printed?

A remark about the rarity of the Terpodion stop and comment on the one 'by Schulze' at Doncaster, remind me of some notes made by Herbert Norman Senior following his 1910 work there. 'It was formerly', he said, 'a stringy cross between a Salicional and Geigen Principal but useless by its slow speech. It was altered by order of Organist and Churchwardens . Scale was enlarged, slotted and voiced with a bar - and a practical stop resulted'. He also commented on the Great and Swell mixtures as apparently being designed 'to provide a chorus for supporting and balancing a tutti in which the reed work was practically useless from middle of keyboard upwards!'. Those notes lent to me will be found in full in The Organ XXXVII (1958), 146.

Ralph Bootman tells me that the Gunther two-tone reeds at Enfield were not at St James, but at Jesus Church, Forty Hill. My information came via the bran-tub and I am glad to be able to correct it. I never knew either organ in the original form. Ralph says that as far as he remembers, the Comopean was a louder version of the Oboe. 'It was a daffy idea', said a master organ-builder to me. I am sure that the bluff Yorkshireman, Dickinson, would have had something to say if I did not correct a misprint in the last Reporter, page 26. What he wrote was 'I do think we can oust the electronic type sold today'. On the following page, the date of the Census re Hedgland was 1851. The Orford enquired about is the Suffolk one.

Who said this?

Ernst Ansermet at a rather unruly rehearsal.Beethoven's Ninth, first movement, as seen by an American feminist - who else? Susan McLary Feminine Endings.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham The Church Hesitant, a book mentioned before as one which all should certainly read.

Tailpiece

Hark, the herald Angles sin. (Winchester Cathedral service sheet)

Joe Bums, superintendent at the local crematorium, retired and was presented with a Barbecue set. (Accrington Observer)

... my jaded palette. (A record review ) Off colour, perhaps ?

A special welcome to the A ... family as they give thanks for the birth of their child during the morning service. (Ingatestone pew paper)

Irish Moss Peat and operatic compost £3.50 a bag: (Okehampton Times)

All women must inform their employer in writing at least 24 years before Maternity Leave begins. (Eastbourne Advertiser)

Mr. Longhurst then burst forth on the organ with that soul-inspiring and grand composition by Mendelssohn from the Messiah 'The March of the Priests'. (Kentish Gazette, 8 January 1897)

Pensioners wed - fifty years friendship ends at altar. (A local paper)

Dine in the visual splendour of the Babylonian Bistro. Experience the electric food and infectious wines. (Huddersfield Daily Examiner)

Wedding Dress, Classic design, size 12, never used owing to unexpected pregnancy. (Leicester Mercury)

Brass Band conductor. To teach any subject except music. (Rochdale Obseryer)

Father Christmas will be distributing sweets from the Council's horse-drawn dust cart. (Chesterfield Herald)

Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. Featuring experts from Orpheus in the Underworld. (Swindon Evening Advertiser)

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