Digital Organ Choice

[Ntalikeris666]

My ideal organ for the home is of course a compact real pipe one with sufficient basic tonal resources, enabled by high-tech, and regarding the drawknobs, it is really a matter of personal taste. Some like it quaint-looking to go with classical furniture of the home. And the feel of playing it gives it a personal touch about the era of the music. In fact, while Content organ has a good North German accent, its Japanese-inspired minimalist style is not really my choice. However this is a matter of carpentry to give you the Baroque flower and leafy moulding and carving, and if you are willing to pay, they won't deny finding you a good craftsman. To me Content's drawknobs look just fine.

Nicholas, I wonder if Content can do a digitally controlled pipe organ, since I saw somewhere on their website that they might have done a combined digital and pipe organ for a church, or something like that. When you went to Holland, did you see any real pipe instruments in their shop? Or did they mention that they could also make a pipe organ?

Yes, Content can do combined hybrid as called, organs, which are half real half digital (through Midi) . But Content does not make real pipe organs, even though you can order facades with real pipes ETC.

 

[FelixLowe]

Yes, Content can do combined hybrid as called, organs, which are half real half digital (through Midi) . But Content does not make real pipe organs, even though you can order facades with real pipes ETC.

If they can do a hybrid one, they can build a digitally controlled pipe organ. I guess what you're saying is that that they don't make the metal or wooden pipes. But let's say if I buy readily built windchests from pipe organ companies, I guess Content can mount them onto their digital facilities? But the thing is how far can they do the inter- and intra-rank borrowing? I guess this is what must be found out first.

 

[Clarion]

I have heard a few clips on the Phoenix on Youtube . . . . Hear this edition of Phoenix Organs playing Wachet Auf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOVntzOoVzA&feature=related

Felix, that Wachet Auf recording is absolutely awful! If you want to hear some reasonably decent recordings of Phoenix Organs, then go to the Phoenix North Ireland website, containing a couple hours of music played and recorded by Stephen Hamill. He is one of the organists/engineers who originally developed the Phoenix system.

The organ voices used in his organs were probably all sampled by him; and some of the reed samples at the top of the page are his latest and greatest efforts to provide a bit more life to the reeds. The Irish samples are unique to organs in that area. All of the samples in Canadian organs were sampled by Phoenix Canada. While Ireland might now have the advantage with reed stops, I believe Canada has the best flutes and diapasons. :clap:

 

[Ntalikeris666]

If they can do a hybrid one, they can build a digitally controlled pipe organ. I guess what you're saying is that that they don't make the metal or wooden pipes. But let's say if I buy readily built windchests from pipe organ companies, I guess Content can mount them onto their digital facilities? But the thing is how far can they do the inter- and intra-rank borrowing? I guess this is what must be found out first.

I am almost sure that they are able to do all these, but because i have not searched it myself, i cannot be sure. If you want, i can give you their E-Mail Address so you can ask for yourself if you want.

 

[FelixLowe]

I am almost sure that they are able to do all these, but because i have not searched it myself, i cannot be sure. If you want, i can give you their E-Mail Address so you can ask for yourself if you want.

I've got their e-mail address, the general one. But it would be a good idea if you have a chance to talk to them again, I wonder if you can mention this to see if they can or want to do it. Since I am not doing it now, so I just guess you might like to casually enquire about that for me if you have a chance to talk to them, say, when they deliver your organ, etc. It is not urgent.

 

[FelixLowe]

Just today when I was surfing the net, I discovered an American guy having built an organ, whose 4' and 2' stops are a fair bit of borrowing from many 8' stops. The borrowing is particularly heavy on the pedal. Apart from 12 original Subbasse pipes, all the rest of the pedal stops are borrowed from the two manuals. Click here to see the stop list and the figures of the pipes listed:http://www.steveodland.com/Specifications_1.html.

The low numbers that you see refer to the small number of additional pipes required to create those stops of 4' and 2'.

Listen to three pieces of music played on this organ during his Christmas party in 2006: http://www.steveodland.com/Music_1.html . They seem to sound fine.

http://www.steveodland.com/Beginnings_1.html records the story about the building process.

The guy provides a series of links, which may help people who want to source their materials and tools for constructing their project. The following are direct quotes from his webpage:

JF Nordlie Organ Builders - Worked with me through every aspect of the project. They built my new windchests, the oak case and have done all the voicing on the organ.


PARTS:
Organ Supply Industries - extensive catalog and suppliers of parts to builders and hobbyists from whole consoles, windchests and pipes to hardware located in Erie, PA

International Organ Supply - sells nice stainless steel tuning slides that fit well and don't corrode. the slides also have a nice flare at the bottom for easy adjustment with the tuning knife. International Organ Supply, P.O. Box 401, Riverside, IL 60546. 800/660-6360. FAX 708/447-0702.

Matters Inc. - makes the chest magnets and solid state relay that I used in the organ, they also make organ pipes out of Aluminum. Matters Inc., HCR 89, Box 184, Hermosa, SD 57744. FAX 605/255-4187.

Solid State Organ Systems - Manufactures control systems for organs. I purchased a Powerlight power supply for 12 volt power and Krone blocks that we used on the relay boards. the Krone blocks are European made and allowed us to make the wire connections from the chest magnets to the relay without soldering.

Arndt Organ Supply - located in Ankeny, IA did all my engraving and stop tabs, does a large business in the theatre organ world with hard to find parts as well as parts for church organs

Peterson Electro-Musical - I purchased my stop tab assemblies for the combination action and pedal contacts from Peterson, Alsip, IL

Harris Technical Products - I visited their shop in Los Angeles for a tour and ordered my crescendo pedal, toe levers and toe pistons. They specialize in custom components for consoles, including entire consoles. When I was visiting I saw the incredible 5 manual console Harris was building for St. Batholomew's Church in New York City. Some of the components made at Harris are keyboards, drawknob assemblies, tilting tablet assemblies, toe levers & pistons and crescendo/expression pedals. The toe levers and wooden toe pistons made of Pau Ferro, I used, are available in many variations of wood and felt trim.

Columbia Organ Leathers - Supplier of leather for use in organ building. I ordered new leather gasket strips to use between the top/bottom boards and the windchest. They were helpful in cutting the leather to the length and width that I needed so it only had to be glued in place.

Klaus Knochel-Lichttechnik - German company that creates music lights for the organ in many styles and finishes. The lights can be ordered with a 12 volt ballast that runs off the console power supply.

Laukhuff GmbH - German supplier of organ parts from consoles to pipes and manufacturer of the Ventus organ blower. The catalog, available on line, is a great reference.

Marc Vogel Tuners - German TLA electronic tuners that are very accurate, have a wide tonal range for tuning organs and both pre-programmed and programmable temperaments.

Newark InOne - Huge catalog with everything you could want in the area of electronics, wire, connectors etc.
PIPES

Eastern Organ Pipes - Located in Hagerstown, MD of many former Moller organ employees. They melt the standard mixtures of tin, lead and other metals to create organ pipes from scratch. They are making my Oboe rank(85 pipes) this fall that I hope to have installed this Spring. Eastern Organ Pipes, PO Box 2388, Hagerstown, MD 21741-2388. 301/797-7922. Fax 301/797-7978.

Gebruder Kas - Bonn, Germany made my Principal and mixture pipes. Pictures from their shop are in the pipework section.

 

[Ntalikeris666]

I've got their e-mail address, the general one. But it would be a good idea if you have a chance to talk to them again, I wonder if you can mention this to see if they can or want to do it. Since I am not doing it now, so I just guess you might like to casually enquire about that for me if you have a chance to talk to them, say, when they deliver your organ, etc. It is not urgent.

Alright i see.
No problem at all, next time i contact them i will ask them.

 

[FelixLowe]

About 13 years ago, a friend of mine presented to me a CD on East German organs as a gift. I think it was titled East German Revolution: Historic Organs of the German Democratic Republic. That CD was released to celebrate the removal of the Berlin Wall. There were five songs on it only. That was the first CD on pipe organ music I have ever owned.

The CD is a collection of monumental works. But one of the most monumental of all is Toccata in d-moll BuxWV 155 composed by Dietrich Buxtehude. It is a truly awe-inspiring, mystical rendition of a masterpiece.

In the past couple of days, I'd been reviewing many available versions on Youtube. This version, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4T1qdYmmaM, played by Lorenzo Antinori, as well as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYsRzdhue2Q&feature=related sound closest to the version that I first heard, which was performed on a German Ladegast. It seems to the best amongst those found on Youtube so far. The first link featuring the organ playing was made by an Italian brand named Pinchi back in 1993. Pinchi is currently said to supply pipes to Rodgers for the latter's hybrid organs.

Although I have lauded the voicing the the North German Baroque organs, as a matter of fact, most of the concert hall organs, particularly the ubiquitous Austrian-made Rieger, all have a "neutral" South German Baroque accent, which I believe, is not very much different from the Italian accent.

However, most of the available digital brands, I've found, can hardly emulate the true sound of the Mixture of the South German Baroque school. The digital mixture is mostly depicted as a thin golden voice, that leaves too many holes in the ensemble. The true South German mixture, when mingled with the principal tone ensemble, is a rich voice of stereophonic quality with a great multi-dimensional body of timbres, that conjures up mental images in the listener fine, subtle nuances of a rich melange of complex shades and colour hues of capricious tonal dullness and brightness all blended in the glowing, haunting image of the voice, as the music proceeds.

 

[LastCorpseStanding]

I've finally figured out how to YouTube some stuff, so I've put together a couple things with the St. George's organ is the background. The pics are just standard Windows samples. Sorry. New computer without any media stored on it yet. Here are the links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSfYjTorLN8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHIaL0KC9Mk

I'll try to get more going too.

 

[FelixLowe]

Have you seen a design whereby a swell box is set within a swell box within another swell box? Well, a company in the US producing German Romantic organs has a new idea of organ expression, that looks like that in the picture. They call it the Schoenstein System.

A good expression box when fully open should not rob the pipes of clear projection and presence to any great degree, but when closed should reduce loudness from at least ff to p. To achieve this, a box must be reasonably sound-proof (with adequate density to control leakage of bass) and must be well sealed when closed; gaps are anathema to good expression-box control. The shades cannot be too thick; their bulk will not permit a full use of the opening. Shades should be able to open nearly 90°. They must be fast-acting and silent. Achieving smooth, continuous expression control is one of the greatest challenges in organ-building. View a Double Expression illustration.

To achieve a continuous dynamic range from fff to ppp we have developed a system of double expression, placing a box within a box. The inner box is placed at the rear of the outer main box so that there is a large air space between the two sets of shades. When both sets of shades are closed, the space contained between them provides a very effective sound-trap. We place the softest and most powerful sounds inside the inner box of the division: for example, a pair of ethereal strings and the Vox Humana; the high-pressure chorus reeds and a mixture. A balanced expression pedal is provided at the console for each box.

On large instruments a switching system allows the organist to select conveniently which shades are to be assigned to each balanced pedal. With the shades not quite fully open, the stops under the inner box are at a normal volume level to balance the rest of the division. With both sets of shades fully closed, the soft stops in the inner box are reduced to near-inaudibility and the chorus reeds are reduced to the level of color reeds. With all shades fully open, the chorus reeds and mixture are slightly louder than those of the Great. The Vox Humana usually has its own shades with a console switch to shift from pp to mf. There are many expressive possibilities with this system. For example, a crescendo may be started using the ethereal strings with both boxes closed, opening the inner box until the level is equal to the soft stops in the outer box, which are then added. The outer box is opened, adding stops in the normal manner while closing the inner box. The chorus reeds and mixture are drawn and the inner box re-opened to complete the crescendo. This is done with ease after a bit of practice.

Organs with double expression can be played in the traditional manner simply by disengaging the double expression feature.

Info source: http://www.schoenstein.com/double-expression.html

You can also visit this site to hear a few pieces of music played on a Schoenstein organ:http://stpaulsivy.org/music/podcasts/.

 

[FelixLowe]

New Wines, Old Skins
Planning and Building a New Organ
on the Threshold of the 21st Century

by Barry Jordan

A new organ! Is there anything more exciting? But then the trouble begins. There you sit, sharpened pencil in your hand and virgin piece of paper on the table in front of you. And now? How many manuals, how many stops: that's the easy bit, assuming you have a budget. But hold on: what do we want to play on this organ? And how do we want to play it?

The fact is: whatever we build or plan nowadays, someone will hate it, either because it's historically based or because it isn't, because it's tuned in equal temperament or because it isn't, because it has three swells or none at all, because it has a mechanical action or because it has a sequencer.

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. The great Brabanter organ builders of the 17th century, those who influenced Fritsche and Scherer, built huge pedal departments for which there was absolutely no use in the literature of the time. It didn't take long before virtuosic pedal solos were a sine qua non of every respectable praeludium. Composers, who were of course mostly organists themselves, took (in a spirit of pure Darwinism - adapt or die!) to these new opportunities for showing off like the proverbial ducks to water. The centre of flashy organ playing had by this time moved from Holland to Hanseatic north Germany. Still, it was all very much a local phenomenon; well into the 19th century, organ builders in specific regions were still working within their own local traditions, and the idea of an "AGO standard" would have seem so far-fetched as to be absurd; Cliquot, Father Smith or any of the Austrian bilders would not have understood why anybody would want all those pedal stops, or even all those pedal keys, if any at all. The odd accident, like Gottfried Silbermann's apprenticeship with his frenchified brother Andreas, is the exception which proves the rule.

To cut a long discourse tolerably short, what does this mean for us today? And what has changed, to make our organ planning so extremely difficult, such a matter of conflict, even of conscience?

First of all, it means that no historically based instrument which takes as its model an organ of any period up to the middle of the 19th century (at least) is going to be the appropriate instrument for more than a tiny segment of the available literature. This does not of course mean that no other music is playable; indeed, music which only partly suits an instrument can sound charming, even in some way revelatory. I have heard a Ritter sonata on the Trost organ in Waltershausen (pretty, if rather too elegant), but also the Reubke sonata on the great Schnitger in Norden - which was torture. But the fact is that Bach is just as inappropriate to that instrument as Reubke is - we just don't hear it anymore. Baroque is baroque, we tend to imagine. North German mixtures are simply useless for Bach's complicated polyphony. What did the great man play in Hamburg when he sat for hours at Reinken's great Schitger in St. Catherine's church? He improvised for over two hours on "An Wasserflüssen Babylon". We may guess that it was probably more in the style of the Hanseatic fantasia than of his own late fugues. We know that the polyphonic episodes of the Hanseatic praeludia were not played with mixtures, which were reserved for the sections in Stilo fantastico. We might even draw some conclusions, right or wrong, about the Toccata in d minor (538), reportedly written for the trial of the St. Martin's organ in Kassel, and its Stilo antico fugue, or similarly about the F major Toccata.

Looking at Bach's organ schemes today, we often think, "What in the world did he use that for?", and the same feeling assails us when sitting at many a restored historic instrument. Why this and not that, what did Joachim Wagner mean me to do with this Tertia?

We do something today which is historically fairly new - we play old music. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach commented admiringly and with a certain undisguised astonishment in his necrology for his father that, amongst all the rest, he had written six sonatas for the organ that were composed in a manner so galant that they "even today" manage to sound quite decent. Bach's own interest in other music, extensive though it was, was largely confined to his contemporaries; newness was a supreme virtue.

When Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion he did so in a manner which hardly conforms to our idea of stylistic purity, but even so it was regarded as a rather peculiar thing to want to do. Bach especially was thought of as being the stodgiest of all dead composers, Handel being rather more everyone's cup of tea, for obvious reasons - much less counterpoint, for a start. But no one even thought that it might be a good idea to perform this music with anything less than the mighty forces generally reckoned with for the music of the day; the tenor of the time was an uncompromising belief in the utter superiority of the contemporary. Not to be convinced of this was pure affectation, one of the things on W.S. Gilbert's little list: "The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, all centuries but this, and every country but his own". A wonderful early 20th century poster for the performance of a Handel oratorio advertises it as "as improved by Mr. Prout".

Today we are stuck with the extreme choice between building organs which allow us to perform old music "authentically," or building organs for which there may be no literature but which allow the organ builder to retain his status as a creative artist in his own right. In between, there is an enormous gray area - how old is old? How authentic is authentic? Obviously, an organ which is designed "to play Bach" (I have used the quotation marks because even the question of what a Bach organ really is is by no means simple) will not play Messiaen; less obviously, it will also not play Buxtehude properly.

The creative crisis in organ building in the 20th century was analogous, at least to a certain extent, with the violent reaction of the composers of the time to late romanticism. With a certain amount of imagination, one could equate neo-classicism with the "Orgelbewegung" and serialism with that reinventing of the wheel evinced by specifications such as (although one shouldn't push this too far, obviously):

Unterwerk:
Rohrgedeckt 8'
Prinzipal 4'
Flûte à pavillon 2'
Oktave 1'
Scharff I III-IV
Scharff II I-II
Quinte 8/3'
Terz 8/5'
Septime 8/7'
Kubische Pfeife 8' ("cubic pipe")
Viola di Gamba 4'
Holzstabklinger II ("wooden stick sound")
Trichterflöte 8' (undulating)
Krummhorn 8'
(Walcker, 1958, St. Matthäus-Kirche, Berlin. Disposition by K. Th. Kühn and Herbert Schulze)

The Hauptwerk and pedal of this organ are more conventional, their peculiarities being limited to the pitch nomenclature of the Quinte and Terz (16/5' and 16/7' repectively) and the inclusion of a three-rank "Schreipfeife" (literally "screaming pipe") - all Hauptwerk - and a "Mollterz" or minor third at a pitch of 128/77' in the pedal .

(Incidentally, it's more the inner logic of the scheme that is remarkable than some of the strange stops - these can be found throughout the history of organ building, whether it's the nightingales and cuckoos of Bavaria or Praetorius' "Hölzerne Glechter", the meaning of which is not quite clear but is probably "wooden laugh")

One is too inclined to dismiss nearly all organ building of the mid-20th century as "neo-baroque",
but this is too easy. Witness Johann Nepomuk David's scheme for St. Eberhard's cathedral in Suttgart:

I. Deutsches Werk
Quintadena 16'
Principle 8'
Oktave 4'
Oktave 2'
Mixtur V 1 1/3'
Scharff IV 1/2'
Terzzimbel III 1/6'
Rohrflote 8'
Schweizerpfeife 2'
Blockflote 4'
Trompete 16'
Tromete 8'
Trompete 4'

II Romisches Werk
a) Engchor - narrow scaled stops
Prinzipal 16'
Oktave 8'
Quinta decima 4'
Vigesima secunda 2'
Quinta 1 1/3'
Vigesima secunda 1'
b0 Weitchor - wide scaled stops
Prinzipalflote 8'
Oktavflote 4'
Quintflote 2 2/3'
Terzflote 1 3/5'
Septflote 1 1/7'
None 8/9'
Gedekt 8'
Flote 4'
Tremulant

III Organo di Legno (Swell)
Gedeckt 8'
Prinzipal 4'
Flote 4'
Mixtur 2'
Zimbelflote 2/3' + 1/2'
Oktave 2'
Tremulant

The pedal is much what one might expect, containing principals at 16', 8' and 4' pitches, quieter flues from 16' to 2' (just one stop at each pitch), two mixtures, a five rank mixture beginning at 2' pitch and a six rank Rauschwerk at 5 1/3, as well as reeds from 16' to 2'.

This is not "neo-baroque" at all. What it does attempt to be, is genuinely "modern", which in this case has meant attempting to stow as many disparate elements as possible in one organ case; that such a scheme is almost certainly doomed to failure is obvious, however, because it is simply too eccentric and combines too many elements to be seminal. It is (or was) unique, generated no literature, and was never copied. Indeed, any further instruments in this manner would have seemed uncreative, since the gestures made are too unsubtle to be copyable, in the same way as every organ piece in which the wind is switched off while a chord or cluster is held remind us very forcibly of "Volumina".

Perhaps the time has come to recognise that, under normal circumstances ("normal" meaning that a church or hall is likely to have only one organ, and that there are no very good reasons for attempting a reconstruction or copy of a lost instrument), the eclectic approach to organ building practised by most builders in the latter half of the 20th century was not such a bad idea after all. How well the artistic problems arising from the attempt to combine only partially reconcilable elements was solved is another matter entirely, but it should be admitted that some very fine instruments were created in the process (some of the best Beckeraths, for example), as well as some staggeringly bad ones.

Contemporary American builders have adopted a number of imaginative approaches to the problem of an authentically modern organ. Most of these are firmly grounded in the past, and that is good. Indeed, the need which was felt in organ building as well as composition to turn the clock back or make a radically new start, to ignore centuries of experience, was the cause of a lot of the problems experienced in these arts in the last centuries. But what builders like Paul Fritts, whose PLU organ is certainly one of the most remarkable instruments I have ever played, are doing is not in any sense simply recreative, as the copying or reconstruction of a lost, or even still preserved, organ might be. That is to say: if a builder determines to find out why that Silbermann principal sounds so wonderful, measures it, analyses all its parameters, and then uses the knowledge he has gained to make his own beautiful principal, then he is being truly creative; if he copies a whole organ as well as he can, then he is like an student copying the Mona Lisa -- certainly, he is developing his technique, but he is not adding to the world's store of original art.

Fritts's shop methods approach the mediaeval; what comes out of it has a strong personal voice and real conviction. The same applies to Manuel Rosales, whose methods are almost industrial; he routinely orders his pipes from supply houses (stipulating all parameters extremely carefully), and is at his happiest when able to concentrate his strongly creative mind on the sound of the instrument and not on its construction. Both however resist categorising as builders of "romantic" or "baroque" organs, and both have contributed masterpieces of contemporary organ building which are surprisingly versatile.

In Europe, particularly in Germany, the tendency to think in narrowly defined categories is far stronger and the resistance to the genuinely new or progressive greater. Perhaps one should say that the anxiety before the solecism is more crushing. In our own new organ project here in Magdeburg, there was strong pressure from many quarters for a number of possible alternatives: - the reconstruction of the Compenius organ of 1608 - the construction of the "ultimate late Schnitger organ" - the cathedral never had a Schnitger organ, but there were 8 organs by the master in the city - the reconstruction of the Reubke organ, which had quite an interesting specification, but which never worked properly - the construction of a "proper" Cavaillé-Coll organ.

It is interesting to note that all of these alternatives fall back into the safety-net of historical precedent; interesting also that the reconstruction of the monumental Röver organ of 1906, destroyed by a bomb in 1945, was not propagated by anyone.

A number of factors were of importance in the planning of this organ. First of all, perhaps, the huge cathedral and its long reverberation mean that the music of Bach or his Saxon or Thuringian circle, however well suited the organ might be to it, must always play a subordinate role, if any at all. Secondly, the cathedral will always have at least three instruments: the west organ, which is the one of which we are now speaking, a choir organ, and one or possibly two in the winter church or "Remter". A planned new organ for the Remter, which has ideal acoustics for the Bach style, will deal with that portion of the repertoire. Finally, the liturgical requirements of the (Lutheran) cathedral are not at all typically Protestant, so that the organ needs a wide variety of wafting sounds as well as considerable power for the 120-meter-long church.

It was felt strongly that the concentration on the Cavaillé-Coll style alone would ignore too much contemporary literature. Expanding the resources of the organ to deal with later French composers (Messiaen, Alain, Langlais) poses no particular problem, but every attempt to cast the geographical net wider leads to more difficult questions. Most particularly, French-style reeds are not very much at home in German romantic literature, since they dominate without providing the reedy cloudiness characteristic of the German sound, but there are real differences in the characteristics of the labial stops as well.

Simply attempting to combine stops of divergent pedigree would be one way of dealing with the problem, but probably not a particularly fruitful one; the result would, in the end, be different only in degree and type, not in principle, from the Stuttgart organ discussed above. What is needed is a creative handling of disparate influences, a willingness to learn, and, more than anything else, a liberation from the idea of "authenticity."

A recent review in an English periodical of a CD of French romantic works recorded on a new organ by a Dutch builder in Sweden criticised the instrument for "not really sounding like a Cavaillé-Coll." Indeed it doesn't, but that is really irrelevant; builders of our time may not approach Cavaillé-Coll's genius, or they may (heretical thought) even surpass it; what they shouldn't be doing is copying it, as Beethoven did not copy Haydn. The recording industry has a lot to answer for, as the close allying of certain works with certain instruments means that, for example, a new recording of a Widor symphony made on any instrument other than a Cavaillé-Coll is likely to get a critical reception which is less than ecstatic, if a company can be found to produce it in the first place. (The movement towards "authenticity" in music making has reaped rich harvests, but there are some shadows too. Most particularly, a certain over-emphasis on the sound itself has resulted in a narrowing of literature considered "appropriate"; so that we now need different orchestras with different instruments for Bach, Mozart, Schumann, and everything since.)

It is unlikely that a new organ could be planned to meet all the requirements of all composers ever, even if a Gamba were a Gamba were a Gamba. Interesting that in a recent interview with Oliver Latry on the subject of his Messiaen recording on the vast Notre-Dame organ, he enthused about the possibilities of the computerised action of the instrument for playing any stops from any division, enabling him to fulfil exactly Messiaen's registrational requirements - requirements deriving from the composer's own, much smaller but very individual instrument. This of course still leaves open the question of how closely the actual sounds in the actual buildings really resemble one another. The law kills, the spirit gives life...

One should perhaps not forget that Messiaen himself was always very enthusiastic about Almut Rössler's interpretation of his music on the Beckerath organ of St. John's church in Düsseldorf, an organ which might be thought to be less than ideal.

Genuinely modern organ building must result from a consideration of all valid parameters and a creative response to them. Organists must free themselves from the obsession with "correctness," and instead concern themselves more with musicality, freedom and joy. The old saw, "Bach would have loved (insert favourite stop)" is less false than unprovable, but so is its opposite; such assertions are valueless and not conducive to good argument. More pertinent are considerations like, "I can hear all the polyphony really well if I play the piece like this on that organ". No organ can do everything equally well, nor must it do so. But to build it so that it excels at a tiny corner of the repertoire and fails at everything else is probably, except in those few cases where a copy or a reconstruction would seem really sensible, even essential, is surely a mistake. The modern instrument does not have to contain anything really new, although it may do so, which is why Jean Guillou's outré specifications will probably never be very influential (even though they essentially warm over the ideas of the Abbé Vogler), but it should be a result of vision, adventurousness, courage, and above all, art.

About the author: Barry Jordan was born into an unmusical but church-going family in 1957 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He was recruited from Sunday School into the church choir at the age of 10 and soon discovered a love of, and possibly aptitude for, music, which his parents indulged as far as they could. At 13 he found himself substituting on the organ bench, from which he has been unable to escape for the last thirty years. He studied in Cape Town, Vienna and Lübeck and is now cathedral organist in the central German town of Magdeburg.

 

[Clarion]

Oops! I mentioned the mp3s available on Phoenix Northern Ireland sit but omitted providing the web address:

http://www.phoenix-organs.co.uk/audio.html

 

[FelixLowe]

The phoenix organ music page is a bit disappointing. I heard the BWV 545 there http://www.organ.dnet.co.uk/phoenix/011jsb545.mp3 before. I am not sure whether they were playing it on the Baroque mode. Honestly I think the rendition there is bit weak. They should really demonstrate the music with the proper mode and stops if they want to show how good their organs are.

Hopefully, it can sound similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBJlqGNpWbE at least in a small space, even without the use of a large bright Mixture, although the organist had employed the Sesquialtera II.

Honestly if you say the organ firm is presided over by an organist, I am a bit surprised by a demo CD in this way. I ain't saying it is very bad, but certainly the stop selections should be improved upon. The left hand cannot be heard clearly enough in BWV 545 Prelude -- maybe it should be helped by a soft reed or something. The pedal is clouding the manual playing and almost drowning anything else. The Fugue is slightly better in terms of articulation for some reasons. Anyway, the overall presentation is still a bit dreamy and unarticulated, rather than exalting and dignified and swanky in certain sections. I assume if carried out in a bigger Cathedral environment, the performance can be said to be unsuccessful. It would be a bit like Alice in the Wonderland and little bit too full of suspense.

Still I dare not say Phoenix is a bad organ, but maybe the producer of the CD has problems.

 

[FelixLowe]

It seems to me that when it comes to the emulation of South German Baroque voicing, Ahlborn Galanti is still almost the first choice. It has a lot of potential. It seems that if the amplification and speaker system can produce higher hertz, such as 25khz, there is a chance of hearing the Ahlborn produce Mixtures closer to the real thing in a South German Baroque organ. The problem with Ahlborn is that it isn't able to produce enough treble and the stops don't speak as fast as the real South German Organs, whose mixtures are as sharp as clanging and cluttering cleavers or swords chopping around against one another. Ahlborn lacks the umph that is still able for one to discern its unauthentic quality in a live environment. It should increase the quality of speakers and definitely maximise the number of speakers for sound channelling. I think this will be a major improvement approach. No doubt it has pretty authentic sound samplings already. It may seem a luxury yet absolute necessity to adopt channels in excess of 15 or so. I guess it will be a real challenge to most other brands if Ahlborn is willing to adopt 20 channels and speakers for sound projection. This is because Ahlborn still lacks stereophonic quality which distinguishes a digital organ from a real pipe organ. Whereas Content's Classic Mondri's series has adopted a number of speakers, up to 18, it seems this is a real cutting edge feature to vye in the digital market.

Also, the reeds of Ahlborn are not sufficiently sonorously buzzy for contrast against the flues, as is the case with a real South German Baroque pipe instrument. But this may be resolved once the maximisation of sound channeling to allocate reed channels to special horn tweeters.

Here are four pieces of music played on Ahlborn organs:

Bruce Steane: Evensong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_C4BnFJCU&feature=PlayList&p=39809AC8AA4FC77A&index=0&playnext=1

Alexandre Guilmant: Marche de Procession
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW6f...8AA4FC77A&index=1&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL

Dedicato Al mio Organum III Ahlborn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYf0Iv_C7_Q&feature=related

Trumpet Tune Purcell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaoDKTRh5P4&feature=related

 

[Ntalikeris666]

I think this thread is one of the most discussed ones right now:grin:

 

[FelixLowe]

I think this thread is one of the most discussed ones right now:grin:

How did you know that? I haven't discovered much comment posted on the articles I wrote or pasted from some other sources!!! Maybe you should write more to comment as you have been playing a real instrument at a concert hall!

 

[LastCorpseStanding]

Felix, I found Barry Jordan's article most interesting. I think a lot of North American organs these days, and this is especially true of the digitals, try to do everything reasonably well, but nothing superbly, with the enivitable sacrifice of a few pieces that have no hope of being done justice. I've played many such instruments in the Toronto area, and even the largest of them sacrifice something.

At the other end of the scale, there are organs like the Casavant at Deer Park United in Toronto. I remember talking to William Wright one time about the design of the organ. By the time the church stopped screwing around, he had to sacrifice a couple of stops because of cost increases. Overall, this is an organ that, to my recollection, is really suited to Bach, Buxtehude, and generally what we would call 'early' organ music. It tends to lack the lushness needed for most of the romantic music. Altogether, it was a fun instrument to play as long as you chose the right music.

Bill Wright is one of Canada's foremost organists, and I would say is probably better educated about the earlier organ music than most others.

Going even further to an extreme, I'll mention again the Wolff organ in Knox College, U of Toronto. It's about as close to a niche organ as I've ever played, although still a joy to experience.

Reflecting on Barry's article, I find it hard to decide which is really better - to have an organ that does a few things in spectacular fashion, or an organ that does many things either well, or just ok as the case may be.

 

[LastCorpseStanding]

It may seem a luxury yet absolute necessity to adopt channels in excess of 15 or so. I guess it will be a real challenge to most other brands if Ahlborn is willing to adopt 20 channels and speakers for sound projection.

You're right on a number of levels here. Yes, 18 channels or so is a bit of a luxury, but yes, it is also a necessity if you want a much cleaner sound. I agree that it could be a challenge to other builders if they standardize a much larger audio component, but the real challenge, as I see it right now, is Hauptwerk. It is growing rather rapidly, and I wouldn't be surprised to see appearing in churches, not just homes, in the very near future.

Apparently, Allen is in some trouble and had to lay off a number of staff in June, and now their organs are being assembled mostly by managers. Rodgers has been, for some time, lagging behind, and Ahlborn-Galanti is fighting off rumours of having gone bankrupt. (I've tried to follow the story here, but it seems rather confusing and hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction.) Phoenix seems to be doing alright for themselves. From what i can tell, they offer a real bang for the buck. I think you can pick up a reasonably good organ with decent audio for around $20,000. They certainly seem to have many fans. When I get around to playing an installation of theirs near me in Ottawa, I'll let you know.

BTW, St. George's featured 18 channels, and two 800 watt earthquake cubes. We had discussed 24, but it wasn't in the budget.

 

[Corno Dolce]

Hi FelixLowe,

Thanx for sharing an article by Barry Jordan. He does certainly add to organological/organographical research. Mention was made of a new instrument in Sweden by a Dutch builder. Two quite recent instruments "a la Cavaille-Coll", namely St. Katarina's Church in Stockholm, Sweden by Van Den Heuvel and St. Nikolai Church in Halmstad, Sweden by Pels & Van Leeuwen are close approximations to C-C.

Van Den Heuvel has made alot of noise about how they have extensively studied C-C organbuilding praxis. The organ at St. Katarina's Church is only an approximation of the real McCoy. The founder of Pels & Van Leeuwen had worked in C-C's shop and had acquired copies of C-C's tomes regarding pipe building, scaling, wind-pressure/quantity, and voicing. Still, their organs are not C-C but are reasonable facsimiles. A somewhat mean-toned wag once wrote of their impression of the dedicatory recital of St. Katarina's Church organ: "sounded like the din of a bomb going off in a chicken coop!"

The founder of the Swedish organbuilding firm of Akerman & Lund had also worked with C-C in Paris and also acquired technical material. The old St. Katarina Church organ by Akerman & Lund(1973) which was completely annihilated by a horrific fire which also consumed the Church building in 1990 was an even closer approximation to C-C. The reeds of that organ had all of the elan of C-C, the flutes had that wonderful quality only known to C-C, the Montres had that honey-golden amber warmth and sweetness that we all know from C-C originals and the strings were ethereal.

C-C is gone but his memory will be Eternal. I don't know if I would like a new pipe organ with the same exact sounds as C-C(if that would be possible at all).

Sorry for getting off the topic matter of this column but Barry Jordan's thoughts got me going...:grin::smirk:

Cheers,

CD :tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:

 

[FelixLowe]

Felix, I found Barry Jordan's article most interesting. I think a lot of North American organs these days, and this is especially true of the digitals, try to do everything reasonably well, but nothing superbly, with the enivitable sacrifice of a few pieces that have no hope of being done justice. I've played many such instruments in the Toronto area, and even the largest of them sacrifice something.

At the other end of the scale, there are organs like the Casavant at Deer Park United in Toronto. I remember talking to William Wright one time about the design of the organ. By the time the church stopped screwing around, he had to sacrifice a couple of stops because of cost increases. Overall, this is an organ that, to my recollection, is really suited to Bach, Buxtehude, and generally what we would call 'early' organ music. It tends to lack the lushness needed for most of the romantic music. Altogether, it was a fun instrument to play as long as you chose the right music.

Bill Wright is one of Canada's foremost organists, and I would say is probably better educated about the earlier organ music than most others.

Going even further to an extreme, I'll mention again the Wolff organ in Knox College, U of Toronto. It's about as close to a niche organ as I've ever played, although still a joy to experience.

Reflecting on Barry's article, I find it hard to decide which is really better - to have an organ that does a few things in spectacular fashion, or an organ that does many things either well, or just ok as the case may be.

First of all, I don't think Barry Jordan is suggesting any proclivity and taste in organ building to the reader. He seems in his conclusion to be saying that an organ should handle a few musical styles, but not just one style. However, he stops short of spelling out how many periods or styles should an organ be able to play. But I feel that this is all to do with affordability. Most concert organs can play nearly all periods of music, but can a ordinary individual afford a 90-stop organ? When he mentioned the "cube" pipes, I think it might have been just Holzgedackt. I believe the organs of Bach's time sounded familiar to ours, but just the stops were under different names, except perhaps the "wooden stick" stop. I even read about actual string instruments attached to the organ console in early times. But they fell out of favour quickly because the string frets needed tuning too frequently. So there were certain things that do not exist in today's organs.

Here in this part of the world, when I was attending an organ professor's seminar on worship and church music a few years ago, she seemed to be lauding the Kleuker organ she often played at a congregationalist church. The organ was a rather small one, with about 15 stops, I guess. I'd never walked near the organ to see its stop list. But through another Kleuker that was built during the same period at the CUHK, whose stop list I managed to take a glance at, I roughly knew what sort of stops the congregationalist church had. Still Kleuker in that church was two-storey high. The professor was highlighting its characteristics in the class of how each stop had its proper office of tonal appointment, (me using Audsley's wording to try to rephrase what she wanted to say). She said that any stop that was drawn added a fresh new audible presence to the ensemble or solo voice. I guess the point she was making is that the proper appointment of those stops minimised the need for too many other stops, in order to colour all liturgical needs necessary for that church. I still remember one simile she used in class, that said "a stop should not be drawn to sound as if a drop of water had fallen into a bucket of water unnoticeably to become part of the whole", and that "the fresh tone colour must readily be heard by the congregation."

That organ didn't have a grandiose set of State Trumpet or anything like that. I suspect it didn't even have a Gamba stop because I had never heard it used. Otherwise, the organists would have showcased it during Passion. The professor was American-educated. There was also another British-trained organist playing. The differences between their styles are quite obvious: the American-trained (Yale) one never used the Sesquialtera, and seldom the trumpet, too, in her playing for the congregation to sing. The British-trained one (Royal College), used both frequently in congregational singing. The American-trained one kept the shutters open to the fullest and never touched the swell shoe throughout all the verses of a song. But the British-trained one often meddled with the swell shoe, which I felt, did not add to the volume control audible to the congregation. I could only see the shutters open to the fullest or ajar sometimes. I suppose those sights communicated what the organist expected in terms of singing softly or loudly. But I don't think the congregation bothered to look when they were concentrating on the lyrics on the hymnbook. Unlike the old Anglican "Ancient and Modern" hymnal, the bilingual hymbooks here do not give dynamics marking like, p, pp, or mf, etc.

The Kleuker organ at the congregationalist church in the British Crown Land of Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

Also the American-trained one also liked to write her own reharmonisations and showcased them. She managed, on one occasion, to sound extremely impressive when a sad verse in the middle of a hymn was completely reharmonised with many minor and diminished chords to sound another mood quite appropriately for that occasion, I would say, provided that the Soprano remained the same song. The British-trained one did also introduce variations not infrequently in hymns, without the least sign of incompetency in this regard. However, it was the American-trained one who adopted the pop-style rendition by playing an interlude between the penultimate verse and the final, sometimes even introducing transposition of a tone higher for the final verse.

But even without the Tuba, with its ordinary trumpet and oboe the organists there successfully created the elan of a solo voice that sounded like a reasonably dignified solo trumpet blasts for Purcell or Clarke, etc.

The thing is, it was not a terribly big cathedral there. So 15 stops were reasonable.