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Digital Organ Choice

FelixLowe

New member
Here is a video with reasonably good recording quality for you to briefly assess the Allen organ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctzinTnq41w. Do you think the one playing the Christmas hymn sounds English or German, or the middle way? I think it leans towards South German Baroque. But the thing is, the organ lacks chiff. If the chiff volumes are turned up, then it would sound even more like German Baroque. This shouldn't be too difficult because Allen claims that every single note of its organs can have all its parameters adjusted in any degree.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
For home practice, it is possible to play a digital organ module without connecting it to loudspeakers. Use a professional audio headphone instead, if you don't want to invest in a set of louspeakers with subwoofer. In the past, I paid about US$147 for a very durable Austrian-made 600-ohms K240 AKG Monitor headset. For this amount, you'll be able to hear the full spectrum of the audio output from 16hz to 24khz of the organ module. The headset is now over 11 years old and is still working in excellent condition.

The only setback of using a headphone for practice is that some of the lower harmonics appear to be more thinly expressed than what would have come from the loudspeakers, while you could say this promotes clarity of the audio, giving a more discerning refinement of the audio output as a whole. Another is that wearing a headset over two to three hours could cause pain to the ear lobes.

Remember, the organ module works quite differently from your mini-Hi-fi system with regards to the way their earphone outputs work. Ordinary Hi-fi systems would cut out any audio output to the loudspeakers the moment you insert the headphone jack into the socket. But the sound modules, at least those I own, don't work in this way. The two outputs are independent and can work at the same time -- so you could listen with your headphone on, while the outputs to the loudspeakers remain unaffected.

Today's K240 MKII Headphones, Semi-Open, Dynamic, boasts capability of expression of 15Hz-25kHz:


 
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Clarion

New member
Here is a video with reasonably good recording quality for you to briefly assess the Allen organ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctzinTnq41w. Do you think the one playing the Christmas hymn sounds English or German, or the middle way? I think it leans towards South German Baroque. But the thing is, the organ lacks chiff. If the chiff volumes are turned up, then it would sound even more like German Baroque. This shouldn't be too difficult because Allen claims that every single note of its organs can have all its parameters adjusted in any degree.

From the brief sound samples, it sounds like a typical American/English blah organ. The fact that that the chiff can be turned up, doesn't mean it's a very good or acceptable idea. If you desire chiffy baroque, then far better to start out with the appropriate sampling from the outset. You can probably munge a diapason into sounding like an oboe, but that's not really an idea way to create an oboe rank.

Keep in mind, that while companies like Allen and Rodgers advertise the wonders of the ability of their products to be modified in the ways you have mentioned, and more; the reality is, that most of the software for modifying these organs, is not available to customers; it's only available to dealers. Even obtaining the simple software available to customers make simple changes in voices assigned to stops, be prepared for the: "Oops! Didn't anyone mention to you?: That will cost you another $500!! :clap:"

My experience with Phoenix was entirely different. A couple of weeks after installation of organ, Don Anderson came again to my home, and installed both the Voicing and Configuration software on my computer; and then spent and hour or two showing me how to use it. No "Surpise, that will cost you an extra . . . .!" The software is merely an integral part of the overall organ. The Voicing software, provides the customer with a host of options ranging from merely exchanging stop assignments for different voices on the sound cards, to controlling every individual note, including volume, tuning, timbre, channel assignment, and yup, even chiff. :trp: Then there's the rather fascinating Configuration software that allows you to pretty much rewire the entire organ, re-assigning and plugging in various functions to tabs/drawknobs. Just an all round fun system to play with. :)

Just "because Allen claims that every single note of its organs can have all its parameters adjusted in any degree"; doesn't mean squat if they won't provide you with, or even allow you to possess the tools needed to do that. :nut:
 

FelixLowe

New member
The problem is what samples we want, we sometimes don't know the tonal quality just by seeing a list of names of the stops. Different periods feature rather different sounds even under the same names. I have discovered a really detailed article today to help me solve some mysteries regarding deciding on the tonal design and disposition of the stop list. The following article is almost a must-read for any organ enthusaists, be it digital or pipe. It is an essential primer to further studies in individual areas in the studies in tone. And another issue is the deployment of what kinds of stops which are tuned and voiced properly in proportion to the size of the hall, with the available tonal resources at hand. For example in this Diane Bish's performance of the John Stanley's Trumpet Voluntary, neither sets of the trumpets employed sounds excessive or overbearing in a huge space filled to the full by audience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl3eZk9J3xQ&feature=related. So tuning an organ is also an acoustical consideration of a wide range of factors. When I had my two Ahlborn Archive Modules, I often wondered what db should be employed to turn up the sheer volume of each stop, as some of the stops seemed conspicuously weak, like the Gemshorn 8, and the related Gemshorn Celeste. Also, on my Romantic module, all the English Horn, the French Horn and Clarinet were too soft, even when efforts were made to increase the dbs by adjusting them in the tuning menu.

The best of all seems to be the Festival Trumpet from the Classic module, which has a very closely similar English counterpart called the Tuba Mirabilis on the Romantic module. The difference between the two is a matter of the degree of silvery quality. The Festival Trumpet is slightly brighter. However I disagree with certain remarks that say that the Ahlborn reeds sound fake. This is not true. I also had another called En Chamade from the Allen module. That one is the strongest and most sonorous one. It has both the highest degree of brightness, as well as a good imitation of an ebulliant flow of air through the trumpets through the subtlety of rattling buzz in it. It is definitely one of the centrepieces in the module. It is the most stately of all the trumpets and reeds I have. It sounds exactly like what you hear at the beginning of Bish playing the voluntary. But mine was of 8 feet.

The Allen module, the MDS Expander II, doesn't provide any function to allow adjustments to the tonal parameters of its 100 or so voices. But the advantage of having it is that it contains some of the rarest voices of reeds from the North German school of organ buildings of the Rennaisance period: the Barpfeife, Musette, Schalmei, Krummhorn, Cromorne, Dulzian, so at least one could experience and experiment with these sounds. Other than that, I find not many occasions to call for their tonal appointment for playing the Baroque or classical music, except perhaps the Krummhorn/Cromorne and the Dulzian. But one aspect of satisfaction comes from its available Viole 4', which I used to synthesise the Octave 4' by combining it with the Flute Octaviante 4' on the Great of the Ahlborn Classic module. The problem with my organ is that it lacks a vital Octave 4'. The Classic Module from Ahlborn is not too surprising when it features only an Octaviante Flute 4' instead of the Prestant 4', though, because in many pre-Classical French organs, they hadn't got the Prestant 4'. The Octaviante Flute took its place.

Happy reading!


A Brief Look At The French Classical Organ, Its Origins and German Counterpart

by Lawrence Phelps

Although the organ has its origins deep in antiquity and is known to have played an important role in the ceremonial life of the people in Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and Babylon, the instrument as we know it today - the "modern" organ - took shape in the Gothic period, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries. The organ builders of the lowland countries, especially those of Brabant, made the most significant contribution to the evolution of the instrument during this period and also throughout the next two centuries, as it changed from the ungainly multipipe noisemaker requiring as many as 70 men to maintain its wind supply, with enormous fist sized keys and presided over by "organbeaters" (viz. the 12th century monsters at Winchester and Halberstat), to the precise polyphonic instrument that inspired Bach and the colour-rich instrument that shaped the works of many generations of French Classical masters. Today, the clear polyphonic texture of the North German instruments seems so vastly different from the colour conscious scheme that became virtually a standard for well over 100 years in France, that it is difficult for us to believe that these two schools of organbuilding sprang from the same source. Nevertheless, both these contrasting concepts were evolved by builders from the lowlands working in Northern Germany and in France, particularly Paris.

During the 15th century in the tiny Flemish region known as Brabant, there developed two distinct schools of organbuilders. Conveniently they divided themselves geographically, so if we do not take these titles too literally with reference to the actual political divisions of the Duchy of Brabant, we may refer to them as the North Brabant builders and the South Brabant builders. The northerners were notably slow in introducing innovations. The Gothic organ customarily had a main division (called a "Blockwerk") which usually had 10 to 12 ranks sounding together for each note, but in large instruments the number of pipes per note was 40 to 50 or sometimes more, and these could not be separated into ranks to allow any of the pipes to be sounded individually.


Historical map of the duchy of Brabant and of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (1477).

You have been reading A Brief Look at the French Classical Organ, its Origins and German Counterpart, Article for the ARGO division of the Decca Record Co. Ltd., accompanying Gillian Weir's recording, “Couperin - Pièces d'Orgue”, ARGO STEREO 4BBA 1011/2, April 1973.

To read on, visit this link: http://lawrencephelps.com/Documents/Articles/Phelps/abrieflook.shtml.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
In this part of the world, where it has been a British-owned Crown land for over 166 years, carol singing normally makes one conjure up the soft yet bright sound an English/American church or Cathedral organ. This kind of instrument is cleverly voiced to allow its principal tones to sound Romantic but features somewhat English/German Baroque mixtures and the German Cymbel. This is why sometimes it is not so clear-cut and easy to classify the voicing of the modern English Cathedral instrument. These smart instruments are in fact a product of Eclecticism. Of course normally in the larger ones, there would be a Principal and an Open Diapason also to allow differentiation in order for the organist to adapt to the playing of German Baroque preludes and fugues, or whether to accompany the choir or the congregation. The clever use of Romantic Diapason gives a singing, melodious and gentle effect. I would think because the people living in those parts of the world were so used to the sound made by the harmoniums, which were extensively employed, gradually they got used to the non-chiffy voicing of the pipe organs inherited from the mood and tradition of that time.

In the following musical excerpt taken from the Nine Lessons and Carols of 2004, that features "Once in a Royal David's City":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RC34N1TfCQ, you can appreciate the richness of tone by, I guess, combining the more Romantic Diapason with the German-flavoured Mixtures and Cymbel. But because of distance from which the mic was placed, the result is a rather soft dazzle of sound. But I do think the Cymbel is more the like German thing. The last verse cleverly features the Posaune from the pedal to create a thunderous atmosphere at the beginning of the verse.

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The History of Christmas Carols
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Carols were first sung in Europe thousands of years ago, but these were not Christmas Carols. They were pagan songs, sung at the Winter Solstice celebrations as people danced round stone circles. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, usually taking place around the 22nd December. The word Carol actually means dance or a song of praise and joy! Carols used to be written and sung during all four seasons, but only the tradition of singing them at Christmas has really survived!

Early Christians took over the pagan solstice celebrations for Christmas and gave people Christian songs to sing instead of pagan ones. In AD 129, a Roman Bishop said that a song called 'Angel's Hymn' should be sung at a Christmas service in Rome. Another famous early Christmas Hymn was written, in 760AD, by Comas of Jerusalem for the Greek Orthodox Church. Soon after this many composers all over Europe started to write carols. However, not many people liked them as they were all written and sung in Latin, a language that the normal people couldn't understand. By the time of the Middles Ages (the 1200s), most people had lost interest in celebrating Christmas altogether.


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This was changed by St. Francis of Assisi when, in 1223, he started his Nativity Plays in Italy. The people in the plays sang songs or 'canticles' that told the story during the plays. Sometimes, the choruses of these new carols were in Latin; but normally they were all in a language that the people watching the play could understand and join in! The new carols spread to France, Spain, Germany and other European countries.

The earliest carol, like this, was written in 1410. Sadly only a very small fragment of it still exists. The carol was about Mary and Jesus meeting different people in Bethlehem. Most Carols from this time and the Elizabethan period are untrue stories, very loosely based on the Christmas story, about the holy family and were seen as entertaining rather than religious songs. They were usually sung in homes rather than in churches! Traveling singers or Minstrels started singing these carols and the words were changed for the local people wherever they were traveling. One carols that changed like this is 'I Saw Three Ships'.

When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England in 1647, the celebration of Christmas and singing carols was stopped. However, the carols survived as people still sang them in secret. Carols remained mainly unsung until Victorian times, when two men called William Sandys and Davis Gilbert collected lots of old Christmas music from villages in England.

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Before carol singing in public became popular, there were sometimes official carol singers called 'Waits'. These were bands of people led by important local leaders (such as council leaders) who had the only power in the towns and villages to take money from the public (If others did this, they were sometimes charged as beggars!). They were called 'Waits' because they only sang on Christmas Eve (This was sometimes known as 'watchnight' or 'waitnight' because of the shepherds were watching their sheep when the angels appeared to them.), when the Christmas celebrations began.

Also, at this time, many orchestras and choirs were being set up in the cities of England and people wanted Christmas songs to sing, so carols once again became popular. Many new carols,such as 'Good King Wenceslas', were also written .

carolsing01.gif



New carols services were created and became popular, as did the custom of singing carols in the streets. Both of these customs are still popular today! One of the most popular types of Carols services are Carols by Candlelight services. At this service, the church is only lit by candlelight and it feels very Christmassy! Carols by Candlelight services are held in countries all over the world.

Perhaps the most famous carol service, is the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge, UK. This service takes place on Christmas Eve and is broadcast live on BBC Radio (and all over the world). In my house, we listen to it and it means Christmas has really started!! The Service was first performed in 1918 as a way of the college celebrating the end of the First World War. It is always started with a single choir boy singing a solo of the first verse of the Carol 'Once in Royal David's City'. Sing along to Once in Royal David's City! A service of Nine Lessons and Carols, has nine bible readings (or lessons!) that tell the Christmas story with one or two carols between each lesson. Sometimes you get carol services which are a combination of nine lessons and carols and carols by candlelight! So you have nine lessons and carols by candlelight!

Source: http://www.whychristmas.com/customs/carols_history.shtml
 
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FelixLowe

New member
If you want to know the more about the instrumentarium of your organ, visit this site to learn about what the actual instruments of some of the organ stops look like and see a description of their sounds in words: http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html.


Above: The Gemshorn. By mid sixteenth century the instrument had fallen out of use. It has survived in the organ stop of the same name.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
Ah yes, the Gemshorn aka Cor de Chamois = Goats horn

Rauschpfeife = Raunch-pipe :grin:


But the organ Gemshorn is nothing that sounds like the Renaissance Gemshorn. The essay in the link I attached above says it has stronger fifth-sounding partial in it. I think immediately of the Quinteton 8' more than the Gemshorn in this regard. The one in the picture above, as its MP3 suggests, emits a voice reminiscent of tribal or ethnic music. It is not the same one on the organ. Perhaps the organ is made as an impressionistic interpretation of the real instrument. The Gemshorn is nothing as pastoral in character on the organ. Rauschfeife II as an organ stop is also not quite like the actual instrument. The real Rauschfeife is more like the organ Schalmei or Barpfeife in their form as organ stops.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
Check out this presentation of O Come, All Ye Faithful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trpNL2347Ho. Excellent rendition of the hymn on a Casavant. The one posting the message on Youtube says the model is a North German Style. Well, the stop list disposition may well be it (but we haven't seen it yet), but the voicing is not. It is the Austrian/ South German style found in Catholic Germany in the Baroque era. If you like this kind of voicing, then the digital equivalent is the Ahlborn Galanti. Also check out this version by the King's College Choir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLI...41152FAA&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19.
Another famous English carol, The First Noel, the Angels did say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbbagyVukSE&feature=related.

Full8312.jpg
 
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Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Hi FelixLowe,

Yep, the 'Gems' is nothing like the real McCoy in Renaissance music and the 'rausch', as you say is quite mundane, although it means 'rustling' pipe. Organstop nomenclature can be entertaining in the short-term but it quickly becomes just a "window into the organbuilder's mind" what he/she approximates the sound. Even then it becomes quite subjective depending upon the 'space' in which the organ is built.

Cheerio,

CD :):):)
 

FelixLowe

New member
Yep, the 'Gems' is nothing like the real McCoy in Renaissance music and the 'rausch', as you say is quite mundane, although it means 'rustling' pipe. Organstop nomenclature can be entertaining in the short-term but it quickly becomes just a "window into the organbuilder's mind" what he/she approximates the sound. Even then it becomes quite subjective depending upon the 'space' in which the organ is built.

A window into the organbuilder's mind? I think you could put an "s" there. The organbuilders' minds.

Not only that, but fashion and tastes also changed as times changed. And don't forget about the wars that raged every now and again. Utimately, even given the same names of stops remaining on the console, the old pipes could have been completely removed to make way for new ones to fit the new reality and tonal paradigm. Thus, as you might have read a previously posted article about the origin of the German and French schools of organ building in this thread, the French Cornet had taken a process of becoming muffled as if the analogue treble knob was turned completely down as the principal pipes lost their places in its stop composition after 1650, utimately the all-flute stop composition becoming a new standard in the French classical organ disposition.

Also for the Salicional, I have heard various intensities of its incisive quality from different organs -- some resembling the Gamba more while others are more flutey and muted. Also, the metal ingredients of the pipes of any stop in them are a factor -- whether they have more tin and how much lead is used.

Just the day before I was perusing an old old document about German organbuilding in Bach's time. It details what stops were advised to be installed by Bach, and the philosophy underpinning the office of tonal appointment of those stops, but only in sketchy terms. What startled me most is that the writer describes how the manual keyboards of the organs of that time were played would also affect how the pipes sounded. He seems to suggest that unlike today's pipe organs or digital organs, the touch and the intensity or depth of pushing down the keys at that time could affect the volume of the wind's entry into the pipes, and the volume of wind could thus be manipulated for effects of great subtlety. This is completely contrary to what we would learn from organ lessons of today.
 
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Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
I am perplexed as to the statement by some wag that wrote about organbuilding at Bach's time, stating a nonsensical premise about varying dynamics by how far the key is depressed - utter rubbish imo - Maybe wishful thinking but hardly practical.
 

FelixLowe

New member
So much about Content organ has been praised for its North German Baroque voicing, but another organ company Allen has also featured a series of North German Baroque digital organs of between 36 to 80 stops, that boast Arp Schnitger sampling. However, the company does not seem to have uploaded its sound samples onto its portal yet. Traditionally, Arp Schnitger built organs of a wide variety of tonal qualities; there was not always an easily identifiable Arp Schnitger voicing, as the organ builder is said to have integrated his new works into extant organs of his times.

Arp Schnitger is considered the most important organbuilder of the Baroque period in Northern Europe. His instruments in the churches of Northern Germany and Holland were the largest of his time. Some instruments were exported even to Russia, England, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. No other organ-builder of the past has had so much influence on organ building in the 20th Century as Arp Schnitger. The North German structure of spatially separated, tonally independent works (Rückpositif, Hauptwerk, Brustpositif, Oberwerk and Pedal) have become a determining factor in the organ building methods over the last sixty years. Schnitger took over these principles from his predecessors, developing them to their utmost consequences. Fantasy, artistic principles and logic merged in Schnitger's instruments on the highest level relating to craftsmanship.

The greatest fascination, however, is the sound of the Schnitger organs. Schnitger integrated the rich tradition of Renaissance and Early Baroque organ building into his own style. In many cases he integrated stops from a former instrument into his new masterpiece and achieved a sound which enables us today to perform the North German organ repertoire of the entire 17th century and the first decades of the 18th century in an ideal way.

Schnitger succeeded, by his concept of brilliant mixtures and (full-length) grounding reeds in fulfilling the novel 17th century organ task of accompanying the congregation. The sound of the full organ, the plenum, was stronger, fuller and firmer than its predecessors'. Schnitger's success was connected with the homophonic quality of his plenum sound, which was quite suitable for the accompaniment of the congregation's singing. The polyphonic quality of the separate stops remained. His style influenced other organ-builders and his influence was visible throughout the 18th century and even far into the 19th. If you want to read more about the history of Arp Schnitger, visit here: http://www.arpschnitger.nl/schnintro.html.

You can also hear a performance of BWV 592 on an actual Schnitger in Groningen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_LOlhI9B0&feature=related.

groningen_martinikerk_schnitger_lg.jpg

Above: Schnitger in Groningen.


As for the 80-stop Allen Arp Schnitger, the disposition is as follows: http://www.allenorgan.com/www/products/db390/db390stopas1.html.

HAUPTWERK
• 16 Principal
• 16 Rohrflöht
• 8 Octava
• 8 Spitzflöht
• 8 Holzflöht
• 8 Viol da Gamba
• 4 Octava
• 4 Rohrflöht
• 2-2/3 Quinte
• 2 Superoctav
• 2 Flachflöht
• Scharff VI-VIII
• Rausch Pfeife II
• 16 Trommet
• 8 Trommet
• Chimes
• Tremulant

OBERWERK
• 16 Rohrflöht
• 8 Principal
• 8 Rohrflöht
• 8 Flöht Celeste II
• 8 Salicional
• 8 Voix Celeste
• 4 Octava
• 4 Spitzflöht
• 2-2/3 Nasat
• 2 Nachthorn
• 1-3/5 Terz
• Scharff IV-VI
• 16 Trommet
• 8 Trommet
• 8 Trecter Regal
• 8 Vox Humana
• 4 Trommet
• Celesta (SO)
• Harpsichord (SO)
• Tremulant

RUCKPOSITIV
• 16 Contra Salicional
• 8 Gedackt
• 8 Gambe
• 8 Gambe Celeste
• 4 Gambe Celeste II
• 4 Octava
• 4 Blockflöht
• 2 Octava
• 1-1/3 Siffloit
• Scharff VI-VIII
• 16 Dulcian
• 8 Bahrpfeiffe
• Tremulant

SOLO
• 16 Gamba Celeste II
• 8 Flauto Mirabilis
• 8 Solo Gamba
• 8 Gamba Celeste
• 4 Gambette Celeste II
• 16 Trompeta Real
• 8 Trompeta Real
• 8 Corno di Bassetto
• 8 French Horn
• 8 Cor Anglais
• 4 Trompeta Real
• Celesta
• Harpsichord
• Tremulant

PEDAL
• 64 Resultant
• 32 Untersatz
• 32 Principal
• 16 Octava
• 16 Rohrflöht (OB)
• 16 Subbass
• 16 Principal
• 16 Contra Gamba (SO)
• 8 Flöht
• 8 Octava
• 8 Gamba (SO)
• 4 Octava
• 4 Flöht
• Mixture VI-VIII
• 32 Posaune
• 32 Trommet (HW)
• 16 Posaune
• 16 Trommet (HW)
• 8 Trommet
• 4 Trommet
 
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FelixLowe

New member
I would like to post to you a very nicely written page of an ad about Makin and Johannus organs taken from their UK website.

After reading it, I still feel doubtful whether or not true pipe-by-pipe sampling is used for their organs. This detailed way of obtaining samples has been boasted for more than a decade by certain major digital organ manufacturers. But now, Makin is kind of saying that they had lied in the past, but Makin the actual one now doing pipe-by-pipe sampling.

Also, while I appreciate that separate stop amplification is necessary to process sounds better, what the article fails to mention is that after the amplification process, how many speakers will these stops be channeled to. Do they have a speaker for every four stops, when they say every four stops share an amplifier? Ultimately it is the speaker/stop ratio that is pivtol -- which is the smaller the better. Since distortion takes place when the sound is uttered through the cones and coils, more than the stops suffer chances of a failure in the amplification process. It is hardly convincing, therefore, that undistorted pipe simulation will be acheived maximally even by the maximisation of amplification channels, if those channels all end up with the one same speaker, all mixed up in the same cone and tweeter and subwoofer again.

The following is the nice bit of writing by Makin, but you can hear their organ in this performance on Vierne's Carillon de Longpont:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOraEe4s2uU. Also here this concert hall recital of symphonic Finale from Vierne on a Johannus organ in its classical French style of voicing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E51hPC2Ssokhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOraEe4s2uU.

Technologies


For a number of years sampling technology has been viewed as the best available technology and sound in the digital organ world; indeed, to the average church goer, more or less indistinguishable from a good pipe organ. Put very simply, with this technology a number of notes from a pipe organ are ‘sampled’ (i.e. recorded) and then digitised and stored on the onboard organ computer for playback from its memory when requested.

Prior to the advent of sampling, the technology now used by most manufacturers of digital organs, tone generation was by way of artificially synthesised sounds, with the technology of choice usually being the ‘Bradford System’ developed in the late 1970s. There are still a few companies who use this technology today which is, to say the least, interesting, since it is now more than 30 years old and hasn’t really been developed nor has kept up with software and computer enhancements in general. Whilst there remain a few die-hard supporters of this system, who simply do not believe that sampled sound is better than artificially generated sound, they are very much a dying breed.

Of course, as you would expect, with sampled sound there is great variation in the quality, with much being determined by the original quality and length of the recording and the amount of computer processing subsequently involved. In essence, the longer the sample the better, with as little computer processing in use as possible. Makin and Johannus have very much led the way in developments in this area and customers have watched how year on year the sound quality is enhanced.

With both a pipe organ and sampled organs there are three definite phases to the sound: the start of the note, the holding of the note, and the release of the note. In each phase there are definite sound characterises which play a part in providing a realistic sound, and indeed this is a very complex subject where many nuances can be taken into account, such as fast repetition of notes where wind is already available in the pipe. Makin and Johannus have very much dealt with this particular aspect of sound generation and realism in recent years with many technological advances

However, perhaps the most important aspect to date is that a ‘loop’ of the sample is required for when a note is held. Sample loops are very varied with cheap and cheerful organs only having a sample loop of a second or so, which as you can imagine become very wearing on the ear. For sometime now with the Monarch technology used in Westmorland Custom organs our sample loops have been a minimum of five and in some cases ten seconds. Such samples provide incredible realism and thankfully, since computer memory is now much cheaper, are now within the financial reach of our customers.

Makin organs do not share samples between different stops, indeed for our mixtures we have separate samples for each rank! In the pipe organ world, unless it was an extension organ, you would not expect the Swell Open Diapason to use the same pipes as the Great No 2 Diapason. Therefore, if it is not usually the case in the pipe world, why should it be done in the digital organ world? The answer, of course, is that this will save the manufacturer some money; hence this practice may be found at the cheaper end of the market. But it is the customer that loses out since two different ranks of similar pipes, such as the Diapasons, should not be voiced alike!

One other dubious practice sometimes employed by certain organ manufacturers is to use computer algorithm to convert the sample of one stop to another, for example a Dulciana into a Gemshorn. This can be used to fill in the gaps where a company doesn’t have good pipe samples of a particular stop, rather than taking more samples of the right stop which is expensive to do. From the customer’s point of view this is very much a false economy, since it is so difficult to achieve a convincing sound this way, and a well trained ear will easily be able to spot this.

One subject that is not mentioned by most manufacturers is how many samples are actually used for each individual stop. The reality is that, in most cases, for a 61 note stop such as an Open Diapason, there are only one or two individual notes sampled per octave; so the 61 notes of a rank are probably made up of only 10 or so actual samples, with the other notes being generated by computer algorithm. In the past this was seen as an adequate solution to providing a good sampled sound. However, with the advent of very cheap computer memory, this is perhaps one cost-cutting short cut that is no longer needed; and indeed its removal would dramatically enhance the realism of the overall sound.



Amplification
In a digital organ, the sound produced is heard by the listener through a number of speakers, each of which is connected to its own amplifier. Each amplifier-speaker link is often referred to as a “channel” of sound, the obvious example being a normal stereo system which has two channels, left and right. With an organ producing a great deal of sound, the relationship between the number of stops and the number of channels will have an effect on the quality of the sound. The rationale is therefore very simple: the more amplifiers and speakers you have, the better the sound.

At Makin Organs, individual stops on an instrument are assigned to specific amplifiers, the aim being to have as few stops per amplifier as possible. For example, the Westmorland Jubilee II organ has 35 stops spread over 7 amplifiers, creating a ratio of 5:1, while with the Westmorland Village organ the ratio is even better at 4:1 with the 20 stops spread over 5 amplifiers. Compared with some instruments available from other suppliers, where sometimes over 30 stops are offered on only two channels, a Makin has an excellent overall sound. Moreover, on our Westmorland Custom organs the ratio is improved further with even more amplifiers offered for a given number of stops, with our largest public instrument at Inverness Cathedral having only 2 stops per amplifier.

Finally, Makin’s full-range speaker units are built with 3 or 6 drivers (or cones) in each to spread the sound still further for the realistic “feel” of a pipe organ, and the optimum sound quality. For example, the Village organ mentioned above uses 4 full-range and 1 bass speaker, which means that the sound is actually heard through at least 13 individual drivers.


MultiSamples
Now, in contrast to such shortcomings found elsewhere, in a revolutionary “leap forward” in tonal reproduction, Makin and Johannus have introduced new “note-by-note” sampling. This means every single note of every single stop has a separate sound sample. This is unique in the digital organ industry since in the past the maximum number of samples per 61 note stop has been between 4 and 10.

You can certainly hear the difference, and of course the organ does not become tiring upon the ear as has often been the case in the past. The major benefit is that, since minor differences between the individual pipes are all captured in the sampling process (rather than the computer of the standard system “smoothing out” irregularities) the sound is even more life-like than was previously the case. We use these samples on our Westmorland Custom range of instruments.

Use the Best Speakers
A promising organ on paper can be disappointing if the correct speakers are not used in an attempt to save money and potentially cut corners. This is a false economy. As a company Makin always suggests the best speaker system for its organs. Indeed if budget becomes an issue we look to reduce costs by for example reducing the overall specification rather than reducing either the number of channels of amplification or by suggesting an inferior speaker system. Getting the right ratio between the number of stops and channels is critical in getting the most out of an instrument.


Makin don't use Hi-Fi speakers. In anything but the smallest chapel or building, Makin recommends the use of our UL speaker system which contains a range of speakers designed to cover all organ sound frequencies from the lowest 32’ C through to the top C of a 2' stop and beyond. After many years of research and development, these speakers work hand in hand with our organs to provide simply the best in sound with all the associated warmth of a pipe organ.

Our speakers have multiple drivers per speaker, meaning that whilst an organ may have 13 channels of amplification, with a UL speaker system there will be upwards of 36 individual speaker drivers.

All these factors together give a Makin organ the warmth of sound through all frequencies that you get from a pipe organ.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
It's been a long while since I last heard the Prince of Denmark's March by Jeremiah Clarke. I just saw a great video on Youtube featuring Diane Bish playing it in a mesmerising manner on the Ruffati organ. She seems to have brought out all due flavours from this piece by showing extremely exquisite contrasts in between the passages in it: the gentleness and the magnificence of the trumpet choruses in the appropriate places. This song is named after the Prince of Denmark, George, the husband of the British sovereign Lord, Queen Anne. Ah!

The organ, however, seems to have been built under the principle of the acoustical space inside a Roman Catholic abbey setting, as I was able to glance through parts of the stop consoles, that say "antiphonal". There is also a special "Trompeteria", featuring a several kinds of trumpet. Bish says the organ was built in Italy, but it does not occur to my ears to be particularly continental in its voicing, though. It is more like an Anglo-American neo-Baroque, with eclectic instruments.

I hope you'll have fun watching Diane Bish blow the whistle and enjoy her virtuosic performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpmMb2RTDU4.
 
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FelixLowe

New member
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Above: Marcussen and Son's organ.

This performance of BWV 552 Prelude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji-FsTrWfXo was recorded from a small Marcussen and Son's.

About the Marcussen and Son's organs, the company issues its own biography, as follows:

The organbuilding firm was founded in 1806 by Jürgen Marcussen and has been located since 1830 in the small town Aabenraa in the Southern part of Denmark. In 1848 the founder's son, Jürgen Andreas Marcussen, joined the firm and after this the firm bears the name Marcussen & Søn.

In the first decades many pipeorgans were built for churches in Denmark, Sweden, Germany etc., of which several are still in use today, including the oldest from 1820. In 1902, Johannes L. Zachariassen, a grandson of the founder's daughter took over the firm. To begin with the firms activities were still under influence of the baroque organbuilding tradition. Then a change towards organs with more fundamental tone took place, and about 1900 the development moreover was characterized by inventions as pneumatics and electricity.

In comprehension that organbuilding by this had taken up a wrong direction, the firm Marcussen & Søn - under influence of the German organ movement - as early as 1930 went back to the classic North-European organ with wide sound spectrum, reliable slider windchests, and simple mechanical action with precise function.

The central figure in this remarkable process of development was Sybrand Zachariassen (1900-1960). At the age of 21 he took over the management of the old organ-building firm and within a few decades the instruments of the firm achieved international reputation, and they have particularly contributed to the basis for the mechanical pipeorgan of our time.

These activities proceeded when S. Jürgen Zachariassen 1960 became president of the firm, with several organs delivered for European countries, and now for overseas countries as well, e.g. Japan and The United States of America, where the Marcussen-organs also were installed in concert halls. Today the total number of organs built has grown to about 1125.

In line with the considerably growing interest for preservation of historic organs, Marcussen & Søn has also been entrusted important restorations, e.g. in Holland (St. Bavo Kerk, Haarlem and Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam). In Denmark the restoration/reconstruction of the organ in Roskilde Cathedral (which is included in UNESCO's Heritage List) and Helsingør Sct. Mariæ Church, where Diderich Buxtehude was organist 1660-1668, are widely recognized.

In 1994/95 the firm was converted into a family-owned limited company and Claudia Zachariassen - 7. generation in the family Marcussen/Zachariassen - joined the firm, and since 2002 she is president for the company. Marcussen & Søn, makes all the component part of each individual organ in it's own workshops, including all such activities as carpentry, metalwork, in addition to the casting of the metal needed for the pipes, reed making and eventually the voicing.

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All this talk of German organs is making me want to get one! Clarion, you've talked about how much you've enjoyed the German stoplist on your Phoenix - do you think it would be a good choice for congregational singing in a church? I was talking to Don Anderson yesterday about the possibility of an organ for my current church, which is saddled with an old Viscount analog. While I'd originally asked about Hauptwerk, Don mentioned that he has been working on a similar system that uses jOrgan to front his own samples. The cost he was looking at, with 6 speakers and a subwoofer, was almost $11,000 less than Classic wanted for a similar HW. Both thought they could re-use the old console, and perhaps the pedalboard.

My questions, then, are these. How will the Phoenix samples hold up against, say, a HW Silbermann sample set? Is jOrgan a good interface? Is there enough difference between the Phoenix and HW to justify the price difference for a congregation? I know I'd be able to tell the difference, but I wonder about the average person. Compared to what they have, even a low lever Rodgers would destroy it. I love the HW samples, and I'd buy Walker again in a heartbeat, but I have to consider the considerable budget limitations of the church, and the Phoenix sounds like a hell of a deal. Any thoughts?
 

FelixLowe

New member
Of course, some people would much prefer to own and play the real thing than a digital equivlent when it comes to pipe organs, such as the writer in the article attached below. But with today's digital innovation that enables rather realistic imitation of organ voices, it is only a matter of the budget and space available, when it comes to making a decision. However, as I wrote in an earlier message, it is possible to make many stops out of relatively fewer pipes these days with the Classic Organ Works technology that enables extensive intra- and inter-rank borrowing, to create even mutation stops and mixtures. Even I myself was shocked to discover that I had designed, albeit on paper, a very rationalised disposition of a compact practice organ featuring 37 stops just with under 400 pipes, assuming the use of Classic Organ Work's technology!

The following article, albeit with a strongly biased view against digital imitations, does give an inspiring view from a scholastic viewpoint with regards to the socio-cultural context of the organ in the past and at present.

Happy Reading!

Pipe Organs as Metaphors:
Voices of Times and Traditions

Agnes Armstrong

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Metaphor is a rhetorical term defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness or analogy between them (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1956). In metaphor, one thing represents another. Metaphors help us to better understand our surroundings. By comparing the characteristics of familiar objects or ideas with similarities and differences of other objects and concepts, we are able to make more sense of the world around us.

Shapes and forms of artistic expression inform our perceptions of a particular era, of a particular culture. Because each of these perceptions relies directly or by extrapolation on the senses of each perceiver, there is no one reality. There is, however, a shared reality - a reality existing only as it is shared with others - and this accounts for widely-held perceptions, opinions and ideas, along with our communal acceptance of metaphors as concepts. Investigating what kind of metaphors are evoked by the musical instruments of a certain culture may prove useful to those attempting to understand both the culture and its musical expression, because every musical instrument is a representation of and thus a metaphor for the society in which it is created.

In our western world, music is a highly textualized culture. Written texts are perceived as archetypes, asserting the correctness of the society in which they are produced. Our culture relies heavily on written histories and literature to proclaim our truths and exchange æsthetic information. Organ metaphors abound in literature from many periods and traditions.

Seventeenth-century English poet John Milton used the organ as a symbol of the cosmos in his "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," and himself was later likened to the organ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson - nineteenth-century British Poet Laureate - in an eponymous poem written in 1863 ("Milton - Alcaics"). Another nineteenth-century writer, Robert Browning, portrayed organs as "huge houses of sounds" ("Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842). All these and many more literary organ references may be found at "The Organ in Literature" section of the marvelous "Dream Organ" website created by the late and greatly-lamented Julian Rhodes. Julian's frequent and welcomed contributions to PIPORG-L showed evidence of a brilliant mind as well as a deep passion for the pipe organ.

Pipe organs serve as metaphors on a number of levels. In a basic way, the instrument can be seen as a metaphor for the people who design and build it. The very structure of a pipe organ is a representation of a human being, with scores of moving parts and a wind-breathing system, all integrated into a complex machine. Producing sounds organized in several dimensions, it speaks a musical language which communicates with its auditors. The bellows are the lungs of the instrument. The pipes themselves are referred to in anatomical terms, their components being labeled as body, foot, mouth, and lip.

As for the tonal aspect of the organ, just contemplate the plethora of pipes - pipes of every size and kind, of every shape and color - tall or small, slender or wide, from booming diapasons to lilting flutes to brilliant trumpets - "families" of pipes. Organ pipes are a metaphor for humanity. Pipes in a newly-constructed organ must "settle in" and "make their own community" - large organs in large cities, smaller organs in towns and villages. While great organs - as great cities - offer rich and extensive opportunities for both player and listener, less elaborate instruments suggest the limitations of small towns everywhere.

More importantly, each pipe organ is a metaphor of the particular society and culture in which it is created. From the hydraulii of ancient Greek and Roman times, through the Neo-Classic instruments of a retrospective twentieth century, to the electronic and digital imitations rife in our own generation, the pipe organ embodies cultural history. Designs of pipe organs are analogous to those cultures in which they are built and are therefore paradigms of the societies which produce them. Thus each instrument is a representation of the society or segment of society in which and for which it is created. What is there about a French pipe organ that is inherently French? What do the brilliant trumpets on classic Spanish organs represent? Why are certain theatre organ timbres so distinctively different from the tones typical of church organs? In each period of time, in each society, each culture, each pipe organ is a reflection of the people who created it and the people for whom it was created.

European traditions of organ building are very old, and through centuries of evolution their individual styles have been distilled and refined. Diversities of organbuilding traditions mirror the diversities of indigenous European and European-derived societies historically as well as geographically. Every musical instrument represents the technology of its time. Pipe organs have survived through centuries of change, of being adapted to every current style and taste, every new technology. Yet the organ is the organ. It has changed, grown, accommodated, and still retained its character - the mark, I submit, of a true classic.

Perhaps it will be easier for most readers of this essay to see the point of cultural relevance by looking at organs built in America. In the development of structural principles, some consistency of design seems to have been considered a desirable trait. The great drive toward standardization in an increasingly mechanized society since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has resulted in such phenomena as the adoption of the AGO console standards. We often hear criticism of American builders' naïveté in the choice of stop names, even in the spelling (misspelling) of names taken from European sources. It's not at all unusual to find within one American organ an assortment of stops with French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English names. Yet, what is more typically American than such eclecticism? If America is truly "the great melting pot" of cultures, isn't it appropriate that her pipe organs reflect that point?

Pipe organ builders are not mass-production industrialists. They are artists, architects of sound, dreamers, creators. In medieval times, a builder would move his workers and often his entire family to the site of his next organ. They might even take up residence inside the cathedral being built around them, sometimes for a year or more. There they would be devotedly occupied with building the organ, constructing "a kind of building within a building" (H. Heathcote Statham, The Organ and Its Position in Musical Art, London 1909).
Pipe organ players are artists, too. Moved by the power of great sounds and the visceral sense of the surrounding acoustic, with all the resources of the instrument at their finger- (and toe-)tips, they create order out of chaos, eloquence out of uproar, music out of noise. Awesome or unassuming, vigorous or delicate, organ music is capable of affecting its listeners in countless ways.

Consider the semiotics (the study of signs and symbols, what they mean, and how they relate to the things or ideas to which they refer) of religious institutions endowed with grand pipe organs, instruments which speak often unseen from above and behind, diffusing loud booming tones into vast acoustic spaces, and producing palpable vibrations designed to transport the listener beyond everyday indifference into the realms of time and place. Such impressions are mystical, indeed. A valued musical instrument with potent spiritual connotations, the pipe organ carries strong references, conveying messages and meaning to its beholders.

Pipe organs are complicated and expensive machines. At the same time, throughout their long history they have been considered highly desirable possessions. Inexpensive alternatives to the costly custom-built pipe organ have not always been easily realized. In the nineteenth century it was the harmonium and the American reed organ which warmed the heart of every underfunded vestryman. Even the poorest parish could have one or two of these in chancels and choir lofts, in rooms far too small to house large pipe organs. Although recognized as substitutes, these instruments didn't pretend to be the same thing as pipe organs, but viable substitutes. In the twentieth century, with the expansion of electrical and electronic applications, the advent of recording and digital sampling technologies coincided with the communications explosion. The increasingly slick advertising by which manufacturers of electronic instruments now make inflated claims to sell their wares cause the traditionalists among us to cringe in horror.

Yet for good or evil, this too, is a mark of the society in which musical instruments are produced. Consider the twentieth-century development of man-made materials - especially plastics - which enabled the mass production and distribution of goods: but at what price? Many would argue that such mass dissemination of mediocre merchandise is done at the sacrifice of quality and æsthetics. A Tupperware™ container is inexpensive, durable, and useful. Every home can have one - more than one. It's not beautiful - but then, it's really not pretending to be. It doesn't have the same feel in your hands as an exquisite handmade porcelain Limoges tureen. A plastic container is utilitarian, not decorative.

From this point of view, it is hardly surprising that cheap imitations of art objects abound - "knock-offs" we call them - those inferior replications of highly-priced designer jewelry, scarves, leather goods appearing for sale on the corner of the very street where the exclusive department store carrying the originals is located. So we should not be astonished at the proliferation of electronic instruments which call themselves "organs" but which are in fact nothing more than imitations of pipe organs. Even though the digital revolution which employs sampling of actual pipe sounds has brought the two genres closer and closer together, the fact remains that electronic instruments are merely imitations, just as the "genuine Bolex watch" being sold on the street corner is an imitation of the high-priced one from the famous Rolex company being sold inside the fashionable department store.

We live in a time when widespread distribution of merchandise to consumers is a commendable enterprise. It is a time of egalitarian merchandising on a broad scale. Everyone must be provided an opportunity to own everything. Quality seems not to matter so much as quantity. We want more for our money, not better. Is it any surprise then, that relatively inexpensive substitutes for musical instruments are so prevalent?

It is not only the pipe organ whose very existence is threatened. Symphony orchestras are slowly being replaced in film and theatrical productions by synthesizers and previously-recorded sound. Cheap electronic toy keyboards kept in a child's bedroom (so as not to disturb anyone else) are replacing yesterday's familiar piano of the living room. Modern families gather around television sets and DVD players or home computers, not pianos or parlor reed organs.

How many churches have cast-bell carillons in their towers? How many thousands more have machines from one of several companies which manufacture specialized tape players with sophisticated timing mechanisms that cause "bells" to play at certain hours? Recorded on-site at some of the world's most famous carillon towers, hymns and other tunes ring out from the even the most modest of steeples. For only a few hundred dollars, any little village church can deluge its neighborhood with the sounds of carillons containing 25 bells and more. Few passersby ever stop to think that these bells cannot possibly exist in that tiny spire.

Not so long ago, the "carillons" produced by such firms as Schulmerich consisted of cast metal tone bars struck by tiny hammers. The resulting sounds - amplified by microphone pick-ups - were broadcast through speaker systems into sanctuaries and out into the street. Attached keyboards allowed players to perform hymns and other tunes in real time. If today's digitally recorded tapes are carillon substitutes, the bell sounds emanating from them are illusions of carillons. In much the same way, where analogue systems once produced imitations of pipe organs, digitally-sampled organs now produce illusions of pipe organs.

Do we not live in an age of virtual reality? The public's ability to differentiate - or even it's interest in doing so - is being constantly challenged by clever imitations of familiar objects. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the music world. To many folks more occupied with the other aspects of their busy daily lives, it matters little whether the instrument is authentic or electronic, or whether the sound is acoustically or digitally produced. In our time we are bombarded by sound from every side, constant and continual sounds of every kind. Much of it is considered noise. Only when sounds are organized in particular ways is music the end result. How sound - or even music - is produced is of minor interest to most of the population. We have become numb to sounds and insensitive to the sources of them. Our language has even developed a vocabulary to describe the phenomenon. We say we have "tuned out."





All this brings us to the larger question: whither goes the pipe organ?
  1. From the point of view of the listener, by what values are we judging our music and the instruments on which it is produced? By what values do we judge the musicians who perform the music? What is the "magic mix" that says to a critic, to a listener, to a performer, to a composer that the music is "good" - that it has value? What makes the musician good - the composition good - the musical instrument good?
  2. From the point of view of the musician, how can we effectively communicate to an audience what we have learned to feel - what we have accomplished intellectually, spiritually - in living with the music we play and living closely with our instruments day-to-day?
  3. From the point of view of the organbuilder, how can we keep our work relevant in a constantly-changing society? How can we design and construct instruments for the future, and not only reproduce relics of the historical past?
All these things are judged by those values considered most worthy by that society in that time and in that place in which they are being judged. Such problems are not unlike those experienced by some earnest clergyman who studies in depth the sacred scriptures, who lives close to his God on a daily basis, but who must come down off the mountaintop on Sunday mornings to speak to those who don't. Philosophers and scholars know the problem, too. Our attempt to put answers to these questions, to understand the undercurrent, is expanded by the use of metaphor.

In our time, music is an omnipresent commodity in ways that it has never been before in the entire history of the world. If music is truly food for the millions, how can those millions possibly understand what musicians feel, what musicians know? How can they know what musicians or organbuilders are doing - why or even how they are doing it? These are problems on which many musicians reflect, and to which few know an answer. For most of us, the only solution seems to be to keep on doing what we are doing, to keep on feeling what we are feeling, to keep on knowing what we are knowing, and hope that a few crumbs will drop by the wayside and be picked up by those souls hungry enough to want to be part of the experience.

Whither goes the pipe organ? We might as well ask, whither goes the world? About the author: Agnes Armstrong holds advanced degrees in music from the State University of New York, the College of Saint Rose, and New York University, where her dissertation explores historical performance practice. Known for her research on nineteenth-century organists and organ music, she has published a commemorative calendar of the life of Alexandre Guilmant, an edition of the organ works of Ernest Chausson, a bilingual book on organist Joseph Bonnet, and numerous articles. She concertizes on famous pipe organs and lectures at symposia throughout the United States and in Europe, and performs at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. Her compact discs are available from the Organ Historical Society. She has taught at five Pipe Organ Encounters for young organ students. She was elected President of the International Reed Organ Society in 1995, continuing for three terms. She is presently organist and choir director at both Saint John's Lutheran Church in Altamont and Helderberg Reformed Church in Guilderland, New York.

The article you were reading was taken from:
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Clarion

New member
All this talk of German organs is making me want to get one! Clarion, you've talked about how much you've enjoyed the German stoplist on your Phoenix - do you think it would be a good choice for congregational singing in a church?

Absolutely!!!!!!! But that's only my opinion. :rolleyes: Notwithstanding that all Phoenix organs are set up with grand ole English Romantic Anglican as the default organ. While not going all out in an effort to capture the strident ugliness of 16th century offerings, I couldn't be more enamoured with the somewhat more romantic neo-baroque samples from the absolutely beautiful St. Mark's German Hallmark samples! :clap: Most of my time at the keyboard these days concentrates upon liturgical oriented repertoire; and for me, the (neo) Baroque organ is definitely the way to go. While the default English Romantic spec would definitely garner the affection of any Anglican congregation, the Baroque spec just kicks the whole effort up another notch with it's most wonderfully superior articulation, without becoming ugly or strident.

I was talking to Don Anderson yesterday about the possibility of an organ for my current church, which is saddled with an old Viscount analog. While I'd originally asked about Hauptwerk, Don mentioned that he has been working on a similar system that uses jOrgan to front his own samples. The cost he was looking at, with 6 speakers and a subwoofer, was almost $11,000 less than Classic wanted for a similar HW. Both thought they could re-use the old console, and perhaps the pedalboard.

While I find the Phoenix's most recent venture into HW-land somewhat fascinating; and to that end I opted for a full range of midi options on my organ; after a somewhat more than satisfying experience with my 1.5 year old instrument, I can't imagine any kind of modification that could possibly augment the intial setup.

My questions, then, are these. How will the Phoenix samples hold up against, say, a HW Silbermann sample set? Is jOrgan a good interface? Is there enough difference between the Phoenix and HW to justify the price difference for a congregation?

In all fairness, I am not in a position to compare the Phoenix resident samples to HW stuff. The resident Phoenix voices are ever so wonderfully complete and satisfiying, that I've never been impelled to seek anything better.

I know I'd be able to tell the difference, but I wonder about the average person. Compared to what they have, even a low lever Rodgers would destroy it. I love the HW samples,

With fully available midi oportunities, I still remain less than convinced that HW stuff offers any benefit over my current Phoenix installaton. Phoenix voicing is already so great, that even if there is something better out there, I can't envision any need for such.

and I'd buy Walker again in a heartbeat, but I have to consider the considerable budget limitations of the church, and the Phoenix sounds like a hell of a deal. Any thoughts?

Yeah! Dunno about you, but from very close to the outset, Phoenix sounded like "a hell of a deal!!"
 
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FelixLowe

New member
If my future budget permits, I am really thinking of building a pipe one instead of a digital equivalent, since I have designed a 37-stop organ, with extensive use of regals instead of full-length reeds. This is to make it so compact that it doesm't have tooccupy excessive space in the home and can fit nicely into the cabinet of the organ. The key to building a North German Baroque pipe organ with Classic Organ Works' Pipe Control Computer (PCC), whereby pipes can be borrowed within and in between ranks. I am thinking of maybe Marcussen's pipework. This is really the magic of today's digital technology, to make what was not possible in the era of tracker action a fantastic reality. If this organ is built, a midi-out can be prepared for to enable plugging in a Content sound module for practice, either the out-of-the-box one or a custom-made one, so as not to wear out the leather on the reservoir and the relays on the soundboard too quickly. The only problem with using regals is that they may get to be tuned quite often. The Bible Regals in the old days in the German Courts certainly needed tuning quite frequently, from what I have read about how even weather changes would render them out of tunes. But I don't know about Messingregal and Holzregal, certainly two regal stops I am quite in favour of using just by seeing their description in Audsley's book titled "Organ-Stops and Artistic Registration" by George Ashdown Audsley, published by Warner Bros. The reason is that their small sizes can be better fitted into a compact cabinet. I am also planning on using Holzregal 16' for the bass, instead of Rankett 16 or Sordun 16' normally found on practice organs. If the Holzregal is not satisfactory, then, one may have to fall back on Rankett 16'. For the Holzregal 16', I feel it can work with Bourdon 8' and the choralbass 4'. When three are drawn, I guess it should be sufficient for the purpose of home practice.

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Above: an example of a set of Holzregal pipes, which I guess, may be a substitute for the Oboe and Clairon stops for the swell.


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Above: The short reeds are a kind of Trompetenregal or perhaps Messingregal, which may be used to substitute for Double Trumpet 16' and Trumpet 8', or even Posaune 16' for the pedal.

When one is constructing the organ of fewer pipes but for a maximisation of stops, it is essential that one should look for possibilities of downward and upward extensions of a rank. Also, as I gave an example before, a contiguous rank of principal pipes of about 84 pipes can yield not only the three octave stops, but also the Twelfth and the Sesquialtera, as well as Mixture III. We are talking about six stops with a mere 84 pipes! If you think about it, for a tight budget and crammed space, that configuration does work wonders.

Classic Organ Works PCC is described in his way on the company's website: http://www.organworks.com/Web/produ...&categoryid=4&category=Pipe Chamber Products: "The Pipe Control Computer (PCC) is normally installed in the pipe chamber replacing Pipe organ relays while providing Pipe organ keying functionality using solid state switching. It receives stop, expression, miscellaneous and coupled-key data from the Console Control Computer (CCC) and performs all stop control, borrowing and unification functions for any number of ranks. The computer can easily be programmed to control any combination of unit chests, multi-rank divisional chests, offset chests, etc., as well as stop actions, tremolo controls, swell engines , etc. A rank may be played at any pitch including mutations. A stop may control a single stop-action magnet, a pitch on a unified rank, a compound stop or mixture made from one or more pipe ranks, etc."

"The computer can directly connect to as many as 24 Pipe Driver Boards each of which is capable of controlling up to 96 chest magnets. It can also connect to other driver boards such as PDB, SAMDB, CDB to control swell engines, zimbelsterns, tremolos, chimes, and other chamber equipment . Multiple PCCs may be connected to the same organ console . MIDI out for driving "sound expanders" and alternative applications is also included. Two LEDs are included on the board to aid in diagnostics. One indicates that power is present. The other flashes to indicate that valid data is being received from the Console Control Computer.

"The PCC is available in two types with three versions each. The two types are PCC-1C and PCC-2 (which incorporates dual-console support without the need for an add-on circuit board). The three versions are PCC/16 which has 16 outputs to drive PDBs, PCC/24 which has 24 outputs, and PCC/RS which has 24 outputs of which outputs 21-24 are duplicated in "RS-422" (balanced-line) form, to allow up to four PDBs to be situated a long distance from the PCC.

"Features
  • Each PCC controls up to 24 Pipe Driver Boards each driving 96 outputs.
  • Programmable to control any combination of unit chests, multi-rank divisional chests, offset chests, stop actions, tremolo controls, swell engines, etc.
  • Allows a stop to control a single stop action magnet, a pitch on a unified rank, a compound stop, or mixture made from one or more pipe ranks, etc.
  • Additional PCCs can be added as required, in larger organs.
  • Support for multiple Pipe Driver Boards in remote locations through RS422 serial-data links.
  • MIDI in/out for expander and alternative applications.
  • Diagnostic LEDs to indicate receiving data and power.
  • Power: 8-15V (5V Regulator on board.)
  • Dimensions: 4" x 14" "
 
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