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    Frederik Magle
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Bach

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Hello Mr. Dressler,

Strange that you should ask if I was on this forum with a different name. Golly gee, I must have an alter-ego that mimics me. :confused::confused::confused: Anyway, this forumsite is so friendly that it is contagious - maybe my bubbly self took liberties which I shouldn't have by being so informal towards a professional musician like yourself and which caused you great consternation.

If so, please accept my most humble apologies for being so disrespectful. :cry:

Humbly,

Corno Dolce
 

Mahlon

New member
Hey everyone, I would just like to mention that Bach is my all time favorite composer. I'm sure I'll discover other composers that I love, and ofcourse I do..(Beethoven, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff.) to name a few, but I know that for me, at least right now in my life, I view Bach as the ultimate in music making.
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
thomas - the thought of you in a black cape sinking your teeth into recalcitrant congregationers makes me smile ... you wouldn't bite too hard, would you? :)

Also you mention a double fugue in F ... can you let me know the BWV number?
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
Mahlon - I adore Bach so deeply, so committedly that I own all his music and all of that in recording: every sonata, every cantata, every little song with harpsichord accompaniment ... AND whatsmore, it was cheap! (The music I have in PDF for about $80 (comes on a DVD)) and the CDs were from an unknown label to me: Brilliant Classics, which are all on my iPod now. I think I'm the only person on earth with all Bach's music on an iPod ... (sound files that is)
 

NEB

New member
Well I can't disagree - Bach sure takes some beating. The problem and danger is that cronologically speaking you get up to Bach and get stuck. Nothing much after that registers at all. And that becomes especially true if you are playing a relatively small organ with limited stop lists and no registration aids. Perhaps you might have a crude swell box, but without a balanced pedal.

So that rules out virtually everthing written after Bach since the stop changes, demands on the swell organ simply can not be met.

I have to say I do get bored with Baroque music from time to time. But probably less so than any other era...
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
NEB do you think it really matters? Playing French Romantic organ music on a smallish organ works, I remember the organist at St. John's Mudgee (small three manual) played the Widor Toccata, it was fine. I admit I did miss the thundering 32' reeds in the pedal.
 

NEB

New member
Well - some things like the Widor work on even a 1 man with just a few stops. In fact many of those toccatas come out OK. they really only require stops adding or subtracting in a predifined sequence and with just 9 stops 1 mnaual and 30 pedals they work. In fact I've even made the Widor sound decent with q 27 note pedal board - just a bit of shifting the octaves. I get my eldest to stand in as page turner and stop mover when I've got no aids to help me and even then she quite happily pushes buttons for me :)

The problem is when you re trying to do a lot of the more involved works that really need 3 manuals and some nifty stop changes at that you just hvae a complete nightmare on your hands because of the instrument limitations.

MY local church the Boellman toccata from suite gothique sounds superb even though we've got only a 16' bourdon and a man-ped coupler. Still works really well. You just work up from the dulciana through the flutes into the diapason/principal and add the 2' as you come back to the main theme towards the end. The pedal tune still comes through nicely not least since working in octaves reinforces the pedal sound anyway, and the shrillness of the chorus to 2' compliments and runs down into the pedals to reinforce that as well. That particular organ doesn't even have good lungs, so when you work into the principal chorus up to 2' you need to be romving the dulciana along the way and the stopped flues 8' & 4' or you'll get that dreaded dipping in the wind pressure when you hit a chord.

A little common sense solves it. But these types of toccata wihich are really very straightforward (the caellerts is another - the Gigout works too) you can manage because they work around block sound rather than more sophistcated methods of expression. So just like the Baroque where it was characterised by using blocks of sound and mnaual switch to another block of sound (actually not unlike a 2 manual harpsichord) pretty much anything else qritting in that way, prividing the stop changes aren't frequent or onerous can be managed there.

(helps that they have one of the best acoustics around so a small organ sounds wonderful)
 
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