Billed as a conference on current research, the papers given at Reading this year made up a mixed bunch of blossoms, both in content and presentation. However confident a speaker may be, it is surely not easy to read a paper in front of a small but critical audience which includes our charming but august chairman. Not many speakers can make a paper sound spontaneous enough to command interest, and indeed it might be doubted that a paper could ever be as absorbing to its audience as to its reader - and those who can speak well without notes for 45 minutes are not numerous. There is always a danger too that a less-than-confident presentation can mar what is otherwise an interesting approach to a subject and that confident presentation can mask poverty of content.

David Ponsford began the day with a cautious and partial opening of the Pandora's Box of notes inégales in late 17th-century French music, stressing that performers should be aware that the genre of music and its derivation might most helpfully indicate the use of this technique. For instance, music that is derived from vocal operatic airs would naturally lend itself to the keyboard player imitating the natural unequal inflection of the voice - which is indeed surely the origin of the practice? The chairman and the present writer pounced on his text afterwards, and a version of it will be included in the next edition of The Organ Yearbook. It is indeed much to be desired that organists should listen to intelligent singing, when they can find it, and imitate it - it would do a great deal to improve their style in not only French but also certainly in English and even German keyboard music.

Stylistically a million miles away, but still in France, an enthusiast for Charles Tournemire's music, Andrew Thomson, made a very good stab at selling this mystical-oriental and complex composer's work. Andrew was battling against the facts that this man had altered Cesar Franck's organ at Ste. Clothilde and that - like Karg-Elert and other organ composers - he had left behind a great multitude of notes without destroying a critical percentage of them. Nonetheless the musical examples he played were impressive, especially the first, recorded on an unnamed French organ. The second was interesting to those of us who had not previously heard the pioneering Walker-Downes organ at Buckfast Abbey, but the decidedly unmystical quality of this organ subjected Tournemire's music to rather more analytical strain than it would really bear.

The isolated setting of Old Radnor shown in photographs taken by the next speaker, Richard Morton, appropriately introduced an examination of some of the many remaining mysteries surrounding this instrument. Perhaps he could have probed more deeply into, for example, Sutton's pre-'restoration' drawing which apparently shows a soundboard still in position, and what that might imply, but we were at least able to have a few glimpses inside this interesting organ and now know better why it emerged as it did after Sutton's and Walker's work.

Substituting at the last moment for the scheduled player, David Knight tried to shine some light into a corner of the history of the organ at Westminster Abbey, by demolishing a few myths concerning the introduction of pedals and Cooke's Service in G. However, as so often happens when light is directed into the dusty corners of an organ loft, nothing very certain was found to be lurking there, and the exact correlation of the installation of a pedalboard and Benjamin Cooke's rather advanced musical tastes seemed to remain uncertain.

Dr. Christopher Kent very helpfully gave us a glimpse of the doings at the recent conference over the 1631 organ at Smithfield, Virginia, USA, and then went on to examine in a paper he had already given there the clues that the organ parts of consort music from that century might give in terms of possible pitch, registration and temperament.

Inevitably this concentrated on atypical writing in 'difficult' keys or chord sequences, and some in the audience were heard to mutter that Coprario, Jenkins and their contemporaries might have written 'strangely' within a given - perhaps meantone - system for deliberate and special effect, rather than that such music suggested a modified or even 'equal' temperament. For this writer, this was confirmed when Dr. Kent played a widely-modulating Verse of Four Parts on a not-very-well tuned equal-temperament small organ - the aural effect of the modulations being of course entirely lost. Is it not time for a conference around a well-tuned meantone organ to explore the supposed 'problems' and the undoubted benefits that this tuning produces in solo and concerted music?

Escaping as unscathed as one could from the excellent display of Positif Press goodies on offer at tea-time and braving Reading's one-way city-centre traffic maelstrom, most of us arrived at St. Giles's Church in time to hear a short recital played by Relf Clark on the Bishop / Walker/ Harrison organ there, now placed on a curvaceous new west gallery. Music offered to our 'innocent ears' (Relf was recklessly defying our powers of identification) included two composers all-too-recogniseable from their bad characteristics plus at least one - the recitalist himself - not yet to be found in a CD catalogue. From an organ-technical point of view, it was interesting that this organ was in fact larger, at three manuals, than its tonal palette suggested - was this because it is now placed in the open in a typically unhelpful English-church acoustic? It was also puzzling that some front pipes were coloured 'gold' and some were not. Notes inégales, perhaps?

BIOS - IBO JOINT CONFERENCE

John Hughes

This joint conference with members of the Institute of Organ Builders entitled 'Brush off the dust!' enabled BIOS to demonstrate the relevance and implications of its work, notably through the BOA and the NPOR, to the organ building trade.

The day began with a description of the Birmingham City Archives and its associated collections by the City Archivist, Sian Roberts. The difficulties of preserving organ-related documents became apparent, particularly more recent examples, where relat-ively modern paper is disintegrating. A necessarily time-consuming process of micro-filming documents is under way to enable the originals to be placed in permanent storage. The expertise, technical skills, and the specialised storage made available to BIOS by the Birmingham City Library and Archives, is quite remarkable, and BIOS certainly owes a great debt of gratitude for this generosity and the assistance of the staff involved, in particular Sian Roberts and Emma West.

David Wickens, former BIOS Archivist, outlined the origins of the BOA in the acquisition of the Jardine records by Michael Sayer. It seems David became Archivist because he was 'cornered by a gang of four or five Council members in long raincoats carrying big guns in violin cases'. David referred to the difficulty of handling the fragile Gray & Davison shopbooks and the process of making microfilm copies for back-up purposes off-site. Although the City Library can give researchers thirty minutes of their time to an enquiry, David emphasised the need for BIOS to engage research assistants for people unable to visit Birmingham.

Michael Sayers, NPOR Director, proved that using the NPOR 'on-line' was not only a highly productive research and information tool, with several hundred searches a week, but was also immense fun. Amid frequent laughter, Michael showed the delegates not only how to elicit information and illustrations from the NPOR, but how to avoid swamping the computer as the result of searching for references to such a stop as 'Open Diapason'.
In a short paper, Hilary Davdison dealt with written sources of information, few of which, if any, were complete in themselves. In pointing out that Britain lacks a law that all documents must be kept, he demonstrated how documents relating to organs can be found in strange contexts, such as estate accounts.

After the delegates had enjoyed an excellent buffet lunch and an opportunity to exchange views, David Wickens returned to the platform to illustrate how the BOA can be used. He showed the different and complementary types of information to be elicited from shopbooks, specification books, drawing books, and technical books, stressing that the totality of information available to the researcher is spread over several books. He concluded by pleading for organ builders to make available their templates and other archival material so that this totality of information can be preserved.

Christopher Gray, BIOS Casework and Conservation Officer, gave a forthright paper on the issues surrounding historic organ restorations, in which he defined the majority of such instruments as belonging to the period 1860-1910. Not only could there be difficulty in deciding to what date an organ should be restored, there was a need to apply a standard; to date, no organ builder has applied for accreditation to British Standards in regard to restoration work. Finding the date of an organ could be a problem where no builder's plate or marks were present; here Christopher gave a comprehensive, if somewhat overwhelming, list of sources which could be employed.

Courageously, Christopher opined that the contemplated Schulze restoration at Doncaster should remain true to the original conception. However, such an approach could not always be followed; there could well be cases where electrifying a pneumatic action could be the only economical way of saving an organ. The major problem is that there is no consensus on what should be done in dealing with an historic organ.

The final speaker was Jim Berrow, BIOS Secretary, who told the delegates that their motive in using the Archives should be financial. In dealing with sources, Jim advocated thoroughness and caution in checking the oral tradition, which might only be repeating a secondary source. As an example, he quoted a letter of Hope-Jones which showed a surprising recognition of the usefulness of a soft Swell mixture, casting illumination on the view that Hope-Jones showed little interest in anything other than unison tone. Scribbling and graffiti should be preserved, since they are archive material.

Similarly, much could be learnt from studying the history of workmen; in this respect, Jim recounted a harrowing tale whereby Noel Bonavia-Hunt was paid to write a critique of an organ; the outcome was that the voicer, who had previously had the temerity to ask for a pay rise, lost his job, which fact Bonavia-Hunt seemed not to regret, merely noting that he had been paid for his critique. Such history of the workmen and their reminiscences could supply much valuable information. Jim's final plea to the delegates was to respect the work of regional organ builders, whose individuality was most likely to suffer in the process of restoration or other work.
A lively question and answer session followed. John Rowntree suggested that organ builders should document their work, which prompted concern at the amount of paperwork this could involve; several delegates claimed it was not necessary.

This conference was a valuable opportunity for BIOS to address the organ building trade, not only to state its policy and views, but to show the wealth of information and expertise that it has to offer. That the conference was so successful was due in no small measure to the meticulous planning and organisation of Jim Berrow (the microphones, slide projector, overhead projector, and lighting alterations all worked properly first time), and the excellent choice of venue. Above all, the various speakers forcefully conveyed the impression that the work of BIOS is not only substantially informative and educative, but rewarding and enjoyable as well.

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