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A shortened version of the lecture delivered at BIOS' s Worcester Conference, September 8th, 1979 Andrew Freeman's work is drawn upon sooner or later by every researcher on the organ - he has become legendary. 'A parson with an organ hobby' is the picture sometimes painted. Yet he was a professional musician, B.Mus. Cambridge and F.R.C.O., and was not ordained until middle life. He told me that he was tired of strife with his clergy, and thought that if he could not beat them he would join them'. He was born in Newbury in l876, where his father had a business. This seems to have embraced small properties, including shops, of which at least two are still remembered. Grandfather seems to have achieved financial disaster, but father retrieved this, paid off the debts, and the business flourished. Andrew's school- boy diaries show that he wanted to be an organ builder, but in the event he went to Cambridge where he graduated in l895 and took his B.Mus. in 1903; and where, incidentally, he met his future wife. His first organ post was at Newbury Wesleyan Chapel from l892 to 1900; then he migrated to the Guildford Congregational!sts until 1902. While working for his B.Mus. and F.R.C.O. he acted as assistant to Dr Huntley at St Peter, Eaton Square, at which period he gave a series of recitals at St. Clement Danes. In 1903 he returned to Newbury, this time to the Congregationals, where he supervised the erection of a new organ - now in Essex - by Hunter. Speaking to him in later life about cases, I mentioned some of Hunter's as being reasonably good. 'Not too bad' he said, 'but with faults' - which he proceeded to enumerate. It was long after his death that I discovered that he was tne desig ner. While in Newbury he ran successful 'Penny' and 'Twopenny' Concerts, but in 1909 he moved to London and was organist at Immanuel, Streatham until 1915. Ordained in 1915 to a title at St.Margaret, Lee, he became Priest-Organist at Lambeth Parish Church in 1918, moving in 1924 to Standish-cum-Hardwicke. It was at this point in his life that writings on his researches came to the fore. His research had been prodigious and painstaking. Now, as vicar of two country parishes, with diocesan and wider duties also, and the usual restoration of buildings to boot, he was not quite so free for research as before. Yet he began to spend his holidays abroad, when that was not so easy to do as it is now. At first on cycles, by rail, by waterway; and later with a car, the Freeman family explored European organs, and the well-known series of articles began. His output was as prodigious as his research had been. He did all his own photo-graphic processing - and, by-the-by, his own bookbinding. All this he accomplished by staying up until all hours of the night. He was behind the launching of The Organ in its original form, and the guiding hand in the crystallising of organ matter in Musical Opinion into 'The Organ World' as we used to know it. A great deal of unsigned material was by him; and he hid behind 'Lethe' in 1897 and 'Mercurius Urbanus' of later years. Most of his writings you can read for yourself, but here are some bits you are unlikely to have seen. For a symposium on post-war churchbuilding, he wrote advocating smaller organs than customary, and said, "Especial care must be taken over proper placing and Jnore thoughtful stop schemes, so that neither volume nor quality may be muffled, and most of the stops chosen may make a definite contribution to the ensemble, avoiding needless duplications". About cases, he said, "Stopped Diapason, Stopped Flute, Fifteenth, Two-rank Mixture; have pulldowns a shifting movement to the upperwork; put the lot in a box, opened or shut by a stop-knob". And that was in the mid-twenties.' At the same period he wrote, concerning a book by an architect-organist, "He shows only one 'proper' case in all his pictorial, and this one he condemns though it is not one that can be unreservedly commended, it is at least a case and not a park-gate, or a pipe-rack, or a grille, or a brick fence that would look more in place in a Turkish seraglio than as an obstruction in front of a respectable organ -all of which Mr. A. approves. Some... recent... British cases are not always above reproach. If their show-pipes were removed, their frames would make excellent shop-fronts. This eventuality can hardly be imagi in connection with any of the best period cases; they were organ cases first and last, and nothing but organ cases. No sober person could ever approach on of them with any reasonable hope of buying a pound of butter or ordering a chair. If a 'design for an organ' would" (as Mr. A. had implied) "really be spoilt by the addition of so fine a case as that at Le Grand Andely, I should say 'so much the worse for the design. If the design cannot be improved up to the level of the case, may it never be carried out'." But we must resist the temptation to continue dipping into his letters and paper or the delicious entries in his schoolboy diaries. He died in the bitter winter of 1947, just before his ?1st birthday. And because a vicar lives in a tied cottage the family had to leave within a few weeks; the organalia were stored in sundry family attics, where- for various reasons -they remained under lock and key for nearly a quarter of a century. An S.O.S. a few years ago ('I don't know what to do with do with Dad's things') led to a visit to do some sorting out, and ultimately three vanloads descended upon my vicarage and were stored along the passages and up tthe stairs stairs anand wherever a cranny could be found. The disposition was arranged in consultation sultation with the family. His notebooks and negatives were entrusted to me; as the colossal quantity of loose papers, amassed magpie-fashion, which has been rather a problem to me ever since.' BIOS was not then a twinkle in anyone's eye; |