RECORDING THE ORGAN

BIOS DAY CONFERENCE
THE BRITISH LIBRARY CONFERENCE CENTRE
SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2002

Rarely can a BIOS day conference have enjoyed such an attractive venue as The British Library Conference Centre; the lecture theatre was not only comfortable, but enjoyed the latest technology in playing back sound recordings and in projection of images.
   Timothy Day of The British Library began the conference with an introduction to the material held in the National Sound Archives. David Knight then proceeded to examine various sources for recordings, including some off-air recordings of BBC Radio 3 (previously the Third Programme) which have been deposited recently at the Library.
   William McVicker explored the repertoire for the Royal Festival Hall organ in the 1950s and its dramatic shift towards music written exclusively for the organ, re-introducing the works of J.S. Bach to organ recitals. Ralph Downes's registration schemes were discussed and compared with the recordings by Downes showing his predilection for higher-pitched stops and the lack of duplication of lower pitches, even when it allowed upperwork to dominate.
   Timothy Day returned to give a fascinating and well-presented lecture entitled 'Adorning and beautifying the Chant'. Ten recorded extracts, dating from 1909 to 1991, illustrated the changes in style not only in the chanting, but also in accompanying psalms. While the choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor seemed intent in 1933 on mimicking Walford Davies's accent, the more recent examples were worrying. Organs roared, whistled, wept and shouted for joy; there must surely be a niche for the production of a directory of cathedral organ registrations for accompanying the psalms. Entries could be grouped as: Full Swell (box closed): the raging of the seas / lions roaring; Flute and Larigot: thou waterest the land / an exceeding high mountain; Double Open Wood 32': tread upon the asp and adder / out of the deep have I called. For all the stiff declamation of the 1909 example of the choir of St Andrew's, Wells Street, huddled around a recording horn with a harmonium for organ, there was none of the showmanship and kaleidoscopic cunning of the later examples.
   Peter Hurford's lecture 'Performers using Recordings' was a masterly perform-ance. He almost convinced this reviewer that a grand pianoforte was the perfect medium on which to play Bach; the 1928 recording by Myra Hess of Jesu, joy of man's desiring was nothing if not musical and lavished the utmost care on the notes; much the same could be said of Angela Hewitt's recording of the Duet in E minor, BWV 802. The lecture evolved into something of a personal confession, as Peter referred to recordings made at various stages of his career; registrations almost devoid of fundamental tone were decried, while the collaboration with John Williams in a guitar and organ version of a Bach allemande showed a willingness to consider Bach's music from a new perspective. To call the lecture 'Peter's Progress' would be to over- simplify its content, but it was a fascinating and valuable document in its own right.
   After the Annual General Meeting, Sverker Jullander gave a lecture on performance characteristics during the period of 78 r.p.m. recordings. Examples were shown and played of performers hurrying over phrases and beats, and, in particular, playing recapitulated passages much faster than in the exposition. Some unfamiliarity with the switches at the desk marred the lecture with misplaced examples, but, despite this, the recordings, while certainly displaying much waywardness, were open to alternative explanations. The variation in recording techniques, from using horns to different types of microphone, could have had a profound effect on the performer, while an anxious recording engineer pointing at his stop-watch could encourage a performer to race through the latter part of a recording. When a performer was confident of the medium, the performance tempo could be strict.
   Richard Morton concluded the day with a lecture on Albert Schweitzer. He dealt with Schweitzer's recordings of Bach's Canzona in D minor, BWV 588; his examination of the differences between the recordings was illustrated with extracts from Schweitzer's peforming scores, showing registration changes. Like his predecessor, Richard had some difficulty with the lecture desk controls; the video projection system did not help him either, since, rather surprisingly for such modern equipment, the screen display lacked the necessary resolution to display the scores clearly. However, despite these difficulties, it was noticeable that Schweitzer seemed prepared to add stops in curious places, rather than to underline the structure of the music. Richard's approach was most valuable in that it did not rely on aural comparison of recordings, but used supplementary documentary evidence; one felt instinctively that this method had potential.

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