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    Frederik Magle
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Organ birthing process ...

NEB

New member
Nice photos. I'd love to spend time at a builders firm but probably not to be... (sadly)
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
yeah - I've been fortunate enough to have crawled around inside the Sydney Town Hall monster. That was a life affirming experience for me at least.
 

NEB

New member
yeah - I've been fortunate enough to have crawled around inside the Sydney Town Hall monster. That was a life affirming experience for me at least.

I'll bet that was fun. You don't often get the opportunity to tour inside the behemoths...
 
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methodistgirl

New member
I loved it! I wouldn't began to start building a pipe organ. I would do well
to put a harmonica together.:grin:
judy tooley
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Wonderful tour of the 'bowels' of the organ. One can clearly see why most organ technicians are not 6'5" tall and portly ... :rolleyes:
 

NEB

New member
I've been reflecting on this ever since seeing those photos, and I've come to the conclusions that to be an organ builder you need to be a craftsman of a very different kind to the musicians who will eventually play the instruments.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
That's very true, NEB ... and complicated by the fact that in more cases than not, the musicians who conceived the original stoplist tend to move on to other things years later. The pipe organ will always stand in perpetuity for centuries, whereas those who play these great instruments don't.
 

NEB

New member
Yes indeed. I sometimes think that giving the builders a rough brief and telling them to come up with something excellent for the job might be a better way than trying to satisfy eclectic desires of and individual organsit at any time.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Bingo ... and there are some organists who are very insistent about something being part of the organ - a favorite stop of theirs or how some control operates something ... then the next lackey comes along and wonders in amazement what the heck the former dude was thinking.

The other thing is non-standardization of building practices from one country to another. When I played the organ at The Vatican in Rome, the expression shoes positions were just the opposite (shoe fully open = shades closed), and the crescendo roller was precisely that, a roller bar instead of a traditional shoe as I'm used to in the US. The other organs I played (like in Budapest) were similar to what I was used to.

There are American builders who install organs in Europe and vice versa, so that in itself also adds to the complications of the builder.
 

NEB

New member
You got to play at the Vatican?!?!?!?

How on earth did you manage to pull that one off?

and I've heard tell before that they have some very very strange instruments there.
 

NEB

New member
On the other hand, sometimes there is merit in organists being involved in the ongoing developement of instruments. For example, I'm still very involved in a rebuild project in another church, where the organ is being 'enlarged' by a combination of methods from cleverly borrowing ranks, to additions of more ranks.

This has the effect of greatly increasing the flexibility of the organ and how effectively it can be used. It can take the impetus an organist gives for something like that to happen, since only the organist really has any idea about the instrument and the rest are 'lay people' to whom and organ is an organ and beyond that it's all greek.

Equally there are arguments that suggest that organists should have nothing to do with the developement since organists are pretty adept at going into a new place and working with the instruments available to get results as good as possible.

Both arguments are valid???????? surely???????
 
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