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BERNARD EDMONDS_________________________________________________
NOTES & QUERIES
Who said this?
1. Lovers of the organ seem blissfully unaware that by, musicians at large, their instrument is looked on as a noisy and inartistic abomination. The whole of the organ should obviously be enclosed in a swell-box. There can be little doubt that the principle of extension will one day be universal. It is economical both of money and space, it is what all musicians desire. Yet organ-builders with one accord seem to have set their faces against it. In very few organs is the number of 8' stops, in comparison with the total number, anything approaching adequate. ...in most instruments the presence of overtones is recognised and definite steps are taken to reduce them and keep them within bounds. The organ is an instrument where, owing to its sustaining power, overtones are specially numerous and offensive; but so far from trying to suppress them we add mixture stops (tuned, too, to unequal temperament whilst the rest of the organ is tuned to equal temperament) emphasise and exaggerate them. ... yet it is with great difficulty that any organ-builder can be persuaded to omit them.
2. I confess to a strong conviction in favour of the massive leathered Diapason and stops (in moderation) of the Tibia family as the ideal basis for the tonal scheme of an organ.
3. By 'Diapason tone' I do not mean that thick heavy fluty leathered-lip kind, of which I think one is more than enough.
Are there Sesquialtera stops in organs these days?' This question from my grandfather Bruce Edmonds when I told him I was taking up the organ led on to the information that as a youth, before sight troubles supervened, he had had organ lessons at Edgbaston Parish Church, St Bartholomew's. The name of his teacher, and the date, I did not ascertain, but the early 1870s would seem to fit, possibly even sooner. One week he was told that the following week neither organ nor teacher would be available 'but my son will give you a lesson at St George's'. Bruce was greeted there by a cheerful offer to demonstrate the organ, including 'a lovely Cremona', on which the organist gaily played Rick's my Lassie. In the course of this 'his reverence' was seen to enter the church, and the music was deftly modified and brought to a solemn ending.
'That's strange church music, Mr. Organist'.
'Yes, your reverence. They sell you queer stuff these days. But that one seems to end well, don't you think?'
No comment resulted!
What were these two organs? The article on the parish organ (The Organ vol. xxxviii no. 151) states that nothing is known about it. It is, however, specified in the Hill Letter Book 1, 162, as ordered 22 May 1857; and the following occurs in the Illustrated London News 12 December 1857:
NEW ORGAN, EDGBASTON. On Sunday week a new organ, built by Messrs. Hill and Co., of London, was opened in the parish church of Edgbaston. This instrument is the gift of Charles Ratcliff and Samuel Messenger, Esqrs. The compass of the great organ is CC to F in alt. The stops are, open diapason, 8 feet tone throughout; 2, dulciana, tenor C; 3, stop diapason; 4, principal; 5, twelfth; 6, fifteenth; 7, sesquialt, 3 ranks; 8, trumpet throughout. The swell organ is tenor C carried down to CC with stop diapason, with - l, open diapason; 2, stop diapason; 3, principal; 4, hautboy; 5, cornopean. There are two octaves and major third of open diapason, pedal pipes from CCC; two couplers for great to swell and for pedals to great. Mr. Chipp's performance on the instrument on Sunday evinced his thorough knowledge of church service, and his pedal execution after the service showed his masterLy command of the organ. The choir performed their parts well.
The Great stopped diapason had divided draws for treble and bass. The cost was £300. When the new Hill three-manual was installed in 1890-91, Hill allowed £100 for the old organ which was then, Bryan Hughes of Atherton, Manchester, tells me, acquired for St Michael and All Angels, Howe Bridge, Atherton. Local periodicals there recorded the specification just as the original. In 1925 it migrated to Blaengarw.
The 1890 Hill is described in The Organ article previously referred to. Information as to the action given me by Herbert Norman, at the 1957 rebuild when the action was replaced is worth noting. The console touchbox was a miniature slider soundboard, there was a separate hydraulic engine giving 14'' pressure for the action, the tubing was domestic lead piping, which ran direct to the pallet motors. We shall deal with St George's next time.
Schulze had an idea that there were 'humours in the body' that should have a means of exit and he always maintained a sort of running sore in his arm (with what was called a seton by the old surgeons, I believe). Old Jerry Rogers entertained most hospitably, the organ builder (and had quite enough of him before the organ was finished). Once or twice, Schulze didn't come home and they searched everywhere for him. He was found asleep on the bellows of the organ. Once he disappeared altogether, the town had to be searched (Doncaster) and he was found this time carousing in one of the lowest public houses in the place. (Letter from E.H. Suggate, 27 August 1931)
The following is unattributed and unguaranteed:
Hill 1843 built an all-enclosed organ at St. Paul's, Stalybridge. In an 1874 rebuild the old Great was used as the Swell. ... John Squire built a two-manual organ in the house of the organist of Barnsbury Independent Chapel which later went somewhere in Tenterden. ... An organ by Bolton of Liverpool was in Cudworth, near Birmingham, in 1981. ...An organ in Red House, Blakeney, by Stephen White 1790, went to Christ Church Oxford Choir School.
Snippets from the bran-tub
List of plate bequeathed by Lady Margaret Beaufort (ob.1509) to Christ's College, Cambridge, which she had founded 1502:
Item a payer of Organs, the pypis of wayndskott.
Item a lesser payr with pypes of Tynne.
Item an olde payer with an olde case.
(Camb. Antiq. Soc. Comm. 354)
St Paul's Cathedral. July 9 1709
Eliza Smith, Widow and Executor of Bernard Smith, Organ maker decd., for several additions to the Organ and alterations performed by the said Bernard Smith, over and above his contract and allowed to his said widow by Order of Commee 7 July 1708. £550.0.0.
(St Paul's and Old City Life,294, W.S.Sparrow, )
1566 a pair of organs at St. Edward's Church sold to Dr Hatches
for 4l.16s. (£4.16s)
(Alderman Newton's Diary, Downing Library
I am asked as to the artist and provenance of the picture of the interior of Ashridge Chapel from my collection which has been used in several publications recently. The artist is apparently not known. It is a photograph provided for me by Col. W. LeHardy, then County Archivist, some forty five years ago, from the only copy discovered - a plate inserted in a copy of Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, which had recently been bought from a Lancashire library. I have enquired of the Archives at Hertford County Hall. The reply was that no more information has come to light. There is no inscription on the plate itself. The book was too large to go in the photo-copying machine but a photograph could be supplied.
The arrival of the current issue of The Organ with its article about the history and future of the Royal Festival Hall organ alerted me with some startlement to the fact that I was the only survivor of the contributors to the 'Symposium' issued by Musical Opinion. I well remember the near-panic with which I received Laurence Swinyard's request to contribute in the company of such distinguished cognoscenti, and his soothing rejoinder 'Just write what you feel, that's what we want, you'll be all right'. It may be of interest that in my own copy I have stuck in some reactions
'Looking back now (1968)':
Hearing it a year or so after the opening I felt sure that a number of tonal alterations had been made. It sounded different. Also players had become more accustomed to it, and more selective in their registration. On last hearing it in 1967, I still found it a rather 'rusty' sound, but was no longer made cross by it. The acoustics are still the main villain. The resultants just cannot result. Finally, one's ear has had some years' more experience. And alongside the crudities of some doctrinaire avant-gardists, this organ sounds almost 'trad'.
Organ-builders have long been getting blame for the changes in organ tonality and chorus in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. They were, of course, subject to pressure by musicians - not the same as 'musical pressures'. The 'Who said this' quotations in this issue will correct this, and show where the blame really lies!
Answers to 'Who said this?'
1. Dr P.C. Buck, in Grove 1928, Organ Playing.
2. James Ingall Wedgwood, Musical Opinion, December 1905.
3. Arthur Harrison, letter 1904, JBIOS 18 (1994), 56.
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