FREDERICK ROTHWELL

Stephen Keeble's monograph on Frederick Rothwell, reprinted from his three articles in Organist's Review, is a model of its kind and essential to any modest collection of organ books and papers. It is well-written and illustrated; copious amounts of information are backed up by original research with the details in footnotes.
   Rothwell emerged from a Lancashire organ-building family. His father moved to London and made shallots for the trade; his brother George was a chorister at the Temple Church. These two elements contributed significantly to Frederick Rothwell's later career.
   Working for Gray & Davison in that company's declining years after Frederick Davison's retirement in the late 1880s, Rothwell came to be finishing the organ at St George's Chapel Windsor for Walter Parratt during the winter of 1887-8. Rothwell expressed his disgust at the work done by the on-site team to Frederick Davison's nephew, Charles. His accusations were extensive and completely free of any mollifying diplomacy. The row that developed ended in Rothwell's dismissal, allegedly for soliciting private work, and he set up on his own in 1890. The company lasted until 1961.
   Rothwell's work was made distinctive by his fine engineering. Examples of this remarkable skill could be found in the hydraulic blowing for the Temple Church, his self-locking lever swell pedals, his twin consoles at St George's Chapel Windsor, his 'jelly-bag' reservoirs and, of course, in the remarkable consoles with stop keys between the manuals. It is unlikely that many people who have not seen inside one of these would realise that the stop keys operate a complete set of miniature mechanical traces which run down the back of the console, where they are operated on by a miniature mechanical composition action. It is, indeed, extraordinary stuff.
   Despite the praise heaped on this system by Rothwell's patrons, it never took off. Not altogether surprising - it was so specific to the one builder that there was never any hope either that others would adopt the system or that the churches of the Empire would all buy organs by Rothwell.
   Which brings us to tonal matters. Rothwell was clearly an assiduous finisher. His original relationship with Parratt was testament to that skill, as was his later connection with Walford Davies. His own design for an Orchestral Trumpet (Temple, Windsor) suggests that he was capable of bravura, but one cannot help feeling that his sense of style is rooted in a fundamentally mid-Victorian organ type, rather self-effacing by nature and made even more retiring by smooth and perfect regulation. I have always felt that the Rothwell 'Aeolian' stop is an accurate indication of where his talents lay - in colours so polite and deferential that they fail make a strong impression. This is curious from a man who could speak his mind so forcefully - his private note on Henry Willis III is a very sharp pin poked accurately at an excessively puffed-up ego.

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