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Nescit vox missa reverti The organ lives. With these words, Stephen Bicknell concluded what we hope can be described as the most recent of his contributions to this journal. That the organ does indeed live is evident from the organ builder advertisements that appeared in JBIOS 1 5. One of them relates to 'two famous pneumatic organs' recently restored by a well-known firm, and it reproduces a stop-list published in the 1920s (including a 1920s typographical-error) in which one can ze many of the features characteristic of the firm's work at that time. Twenty to thirty years ago, when British organists' thinking tended to be dominated by continental instruments, and by native ones such as those at the Royal Festival Hall and New College, Oxford, the very idea of restoring a British concert organ from the period l9th to 1939 would probably have been received with a lack of enthusiasm verging on hostility. There are and perhaps there always will be, those who Regard the typical British organ of this period as unpleasant and unmusical, catering for and encouraging a style of playing which am alien to them. Happily, however, it seems that such instruments can nowadays be viewed objectively, and that there exists general agreement that, both tonally and mechanically, they contain much that is admirable, and deserve to be properly restored and maintained. With an apparently increasing number of substantial nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century organs being carefully restored, and with exciting new instruments being built, there is now a richness and diversity in the work of British organ builders which gives cause for a certain amount of celebration. At the time of writing, one of our major Firms is about to export a new, four-manual organ of nearly seventy speaking stops, and it has some similarly impressive jobs lined up. Our leading builders, and not a few smaller ones, are producing work of an excellence which puts it at least in the same class as the best work of the master builders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which makes a good deal of what was produced in the 19505 and l960s seem by comparison merely cheap and nasty. Yet everywhere them seems to bc gloom - gloom generated by the pipe-versus-el electronic argument, gloom generated by the sometimes craven and undignified antics of the clergy, gloom generated by poor attendances at 'organ recitals, etc. There is no reason to be complacent, but perhaps matters are not as bad as we tend to think; and although in the October editorial we ex expressed view that all of us have a duty to engage in the pipe-versus-electronic debate, on reflection, that no longer seems right. Certainly, Diocesan Organ Advisers must make it their business to bc well informed in these matters, however much that may go against the grain; but perhaps BIOS has now done enough in this direction, and in our view there are several reasons why thee debate ought to be either abandoned altogether or postponed for a very long time. Firstly, it has become boring, and BIOS must stimulate and not stupefy. The arguments have been heard over and over again, and no useful purpose is likely to be served by allowing them to rumble on and on. Secondly, there is the danger not only; that BIOS will inadvertently give valuable some publicity to the manufacturers of electronic organs but also that it will give a platform to eccentric, ill- informed opinion. Thirdly, there are lessons in history from which we ought to be taking comfort. Remember the Hope-Jones Electric Organ Company Limited? Around 1900, builders of conventional instruments were so worried about Hope-Jones and the effect that he was having on their clients' tastes, that they dropped their customary aloofness and planned a meeting to decide what was to bc done about him (read Herbert Norman's article in JBIOS 10). Their fears proved groundless, and the threat of a diaphonic revolution fizzled out quite quickly. Hope-Jones's case is not on all fours, but there are striking parallels. Traditional materials and methods seem to have a habit of re-asserting their inherent supremacy, and solid-grounds are beginning to appear for rejecting the notion that electronics are here to stay. * * * So let us concentrate on pleasanter matters. Of course it is depressing to learn that an organ has been replaced with an electronic device, but the debate is to do with music and economics, not morality. It is wrong to regard every pipe organ as a masterpiece and its loss a tragedy; and to regard the debate in terms of Good and Evil is to invest it with an inappropriate solemnity. There are bad, boring and indifferent organs, and BIOS will do its cause no harm by acknowledging that. Remember Fr. Edmonds's story about the lengths of garden hose-pipe? * * * Organists sometimes have only themselves to blame for poor attendances at organ recitals. If recitalists cannot reach as sympathetic a figure as the co-editor of this journal, what chance do they stand with the musical non-organist wandering in by chance. Part of the problem appears to be that organists do not know the repertoire as well as they should. Reger's Benedictus is not the only work he wrote for the organ. Liszt wrote a great deal for the instrument in addition to the well-known work on the letters of Bach 's name. Mendelssohn wrote a good deal for the organ in addition to the sonatas. Brahms wrote eleven chorale preludes, not half a dozen, and much besides: why do organists no longer play his Prelude and Fugue in G minor? If the works of the Severn Bore have to be played, the third psalm prelude of the first set and the second rhapsody would make a'change. Sweelinck wrote a good deal in addition to the well-known set of variations. Why is Franck's first Choral played so often and his lovely Prelude hardly ever? Is it necessary to make recitals a chronological journey through the repertoire, starting in the Stone Age and ending with a blaze of twentieth-century dissonance? The trouble either started or got appreciably worse in the l960s, when organists began to approach recitals with a quasi-musicological solemnity, forgetting that people tend to go to not to be educated but for enjoyment (not that being educated and enjoying oneself are incompatible.) The public is bored and wearied by the inward-looking antics and tramline thinking of organists, we cannot reasonably expect it to support schemes for the restoration of historic instruments, or to view with much favour the activities generally of BIOS and its associated bodies. It is unfair, of course, to draw parallels with Best and Lemare, who did not have radio, television and Michael Jackson to compete with, but certain present-day organists seem to able to draw large audiences without resorting unduly or at all to vulgar practices, and their examples should be studied and if possible followed. Organists must improve their knowledge of the repertoire, they must brush up their technique and their presentation, and above all they must try to put themselves in the shoes of the musical non-organist. And they must learn to be more imaginative: some of the most delightful experiences of last summer were seemingly unlikely alliances of music and machine, ag., the A major Allein Gott trio at St. Mary Redcliffe (Gordon Stewart); Stanford's Intermezzo founded upon an Irish air at Kingston Parish Church (David Sanger); and John Mcleod's The Seven Sacraments of Poussin at Westminster Cathedral (Philip Sawyer). When faced with a Romantic organ, the possibility of Bach and pre-Bach composers, or of contemporary music, should not be dismissed; conversely, Romantic music can work surprisingly well on modem instruments. * * * Hard on the heels of the October editorial, with its reflections on the usefulness of quiet foundation stops, came details of the new organ at St.Teresa's Roman Catholic Church, Beaconsfield Bucks (Roger Pulham, 1992). A synopsis of the Great organ (8 8 8 4 2 III 8) almost suggests something from the 1890s, yet this is an organ very much in the Classical mould. The third unison stop is a tapered Salicional, 'probably the most frequently used stop on the instrument'. One can well believe that that is true. Are 'we right to detect a gradual move away from the 'nouvelle cuisine' tonal designs of the l960s and 1970s, when the only permissible unison flue stop was sometimes a Stopped Diapason (sorry, Gedakt) voiced, as someone wittily remarked, to provide the consonants missing from sloppily-performed vocal music? |