Don't listen to dogmatic ideologues and fanatics, donr. You will not likely be playing one instrument for life, but over time, a variety of them. They all have their good and bad points. Find one you like and are happy with for now. You can always play something else, later. It is good to be able to play whatever organ you find yourself with, and if you move from one church to another, you will be prepared.

Please stop personalizing the conflicts.

We don't need insults like "fanatic".

And we don't need talk such as "you have little to say". If someone's argument doesn't reflect a scholarly point that you think is important, cite the scholarly point and make your own argument. Criticize arguments, not people.

Please note: Forum Etiquette Guidelines

There is no need for unkind comments. The only things that get fed up are hogs before slaughter. It's an unfortunate turn of phrase...for the hogs.

All that has been established in this discussion is that:

Trackers cost more and what you get is a very subtle momentary alteration in attack solely for the enjoyment of the organist and an organ that may, when built by a major, experienced tracker builder last more than 100 years...often in a buildings that will be gone long before then.

Electropneumatic organs cost less, but will need releathered in 50 years, more or less...about the typical lifespan of a modern church building for a variety of reasons.

Electric action organs cost less and the action will not need releathered ever, though there will be a bit of releathering needed on reservoirs - which is quite affordable.

With the knowledge that church buildings are not constructed today to last 100 years, this brings up one very important issue - tracker pipe organs are all in one piece. If the church closes, the tracker can only go to a church that can house it...either have the exact space with any structural quirks involved in the original installations or a new building with space built exactly to accept it.

[before anyone doubts this, there is a 28' wide Johnson in storage in Knoxville, storage paid monthly by a guy who decided to rescue it from Boston...and no church here has the width for it AND the money to have the building prepare and it installed. I was offered it (26' wide loft, plenty of depth) and CharlesW was as well...and others have....]

Elecropneumatic organs are not difficult to move and install in another building, Electric actions even better for that....

Now, let's find out who the true believers are. No one has mentioned that organs may be built with tracker action and remote consoles of electric action. The best of both worlds. Who can convince a pastor to build one organ with two consoles just for performance purposes.

Palestrina - Are you going to argue the point or argue the person?

The way I see it, you're going to descend to an ad-hominum argument over any credentials that I may put forward

I played the organ for my first mass at the age of 9. I've played the organ for a number of parishes (some on a more regular basis than others) and I've had the experience of playing Pipe organs from several builders.

There are tracker organs around, there are electric action organs around and there are digital organs around. If you want paid work, you can't afford to turn your nose up at an instrument. I'm playing a clapped-out Hammond C3 at the moment, but a few places where I play for cheap or free have beautiful organs that I love to come and play and in places that I know can't afford to pay (one is still paying off the organ!) I waive my usual fee, on condition that I have a say in the music program.

I wouldn't turn down playing for a funeral if the flowers have come from the mourners' gardens they're burying Mum or Dad in a pine box because they can't afford anything else.

Noel, tracker action is not 'solely for the enjoyment of the organist'. One again, I ask whether you have read through Van Oortmerssen's book on the subject or not. Respectfully, neither you nor CharlesW seem to understand what tracker technique really is.

Tracker organs are sensitive and they last. I've seen far too many electric action organs with all sorts of problems at the console or chests because of wiring, pneumatics etc. I'd rather build for a few centuries and built a fine musical instrument than build something which contributes to our disposable culture.

hartleymartin, there are plenty of people on this forum that play organs regularly. That by itself, as I've pointed out repeatedly, does not qualify one to advise on instruments. Additionally, that you can afford to waive your fees indicates that you don't rely on your playing for a living, which suggests that you have not actually studied organ to a professional level. This isn't a personal attack: it's an observation.

I think we're running into the same issue that seems to trip us up all the time. Palestrina is saying, "Trackers are the best musical option." CharlesW is saying, "Don't be so unyielding, because it's not possible, for practical reasons, to replace the organ at my parish."

These are apples and oranges, gentlemen. a) Trackers are best. b) Sometimes, for good reasons, the best isn't possible or even advisable. There is no reason in the world these can't both be true statements, and about many things besides tracker action.

CharlesW,

Believe me, I know reality.

I also believe that what Palestrina is talking about is not "a quest for arcane and obscure knowledge." He is talking about music.

Yes, Catholics are backwards on this stuff, and why wouldn't we be, considering the middling quality promoted by the professional organizations? Are you suggesting that we dumb down the CMAA, to keep pace?

It's part of the skill spread for parish work. Why not be specific? We're specific about different things on different threads.

I really just think this is a case of not mistaking ideals for mandates. Of course no parish can do everything, for hundreds of different reasons. But that doesn't change the musical ideal.

What is being left out of the debate on tracker touch is that much of human perception of sound is determined by the attack of the sound one hears. It is common knowledge that many instruments are only able to be differentiated by hearing the beginning of the sound along with the waveform itself. So the "milliseconds" of attack on an organ pipe DO have a massive effect upon the sound produced. I've also studied organ in France, and was told that to play French music properly, I need to learn what my teacher called "the attack of the reeds". It matters how the key is depressed.

I'm not going to exalt tracker action as the only or best way to build an instrument. There are advantages to it. For me, I tend to prefer a more romantically-disposed instrument, for which electric action is more common. It doesn't bother me, and in fact I find it easier to play well - though the end result may be superior on the tracker instrument.

CharlesW, respectfully, given how long it has been since you studied the organ, I think that you've missed out on a few more recent developments. How do I know this? I know this because I was brought up using old systems of teaching trackers and so on. It is only in the past few years, having moved somewhere that other teachers are available, that I have learned more about it. Your answers to my points have consistently demonstrated that you haven't engaged with the newer material. This isn't me being personal (as you seem to have been in your last response to me): I am simply pointing out that there is material out there with which you're quite clearly unfamiliar. So when you say that the difference is negligible, I disagree strongly. I disagree on the basis of the most recent research and performance outputs from some of the leading musicians in the field. If you had read the material, you would have mentioned a few key things that you simply haven't. I can see that Kirchenmusik has read it because of some points earlier on about aspects of technique. So you can keep attacking me personally, or perhaps you can pause, consider that somebody younger than you does have something to say, and see what developments have happened in the field since you graduated many moons ago. None of us like screaming neo-Baroque organs and less still those stupid instruments that tried to be both Classical and Romantic and were neither. In your world, anything Baroque seems to be equated with something shrill and unmusical. Have you ever played a Schnitger? I have. Your descriptions of North German Baroque organs, frankly, are very wide of the mark.

Kathy, thank you for your wisdom - You have summed up what I was trying to say beautifully. I can recognise that there are certain circumstances in which a tracker organ will be nigh-on impossible. I just think that they're a lot rarer than some people seem to think: Having a tracker organ could mean having a smaller specification, which some organists don't seem to be comfortable with. If it's a choice between a smaller tracker and a larger electric action organ, the choice is quite obvious to me, but others would disagree.

Getting back to the cost of instruments, I would like to make a point about what the business world calls 'myopic behaviour' in organisations. Sure, an organ with electric action could be the cheapest option now. It is not, however, the cheapest option in the long term. The wires WILL need replacing and pneumatics WILL need re-leathering. A small and simple tracker, while probably having a higher up-front cost, however, will be less expensive in the long term. Sure, the church may not be there in 100 years, but is that the way that we're going to build from now on? Don't bother with a marble altar, a gold tabernacle, good stained glass - they all might go to the tip in the end? I don't think so! The organ is a "plant" item in a church. From a financial standpoint, it should be treated in this way.

By way of a postscript... Pipe organs haven't become more expensive: we've just become stingy. A world authority on organs in the Baroque era has done the numbers, and it turns out that it cost seven times as much money to build an organ in the eighteenth century as it does now.

I haven't tried to answer any of your points because they seemed to me to be too much pontifications from on high. Granted, writing on a forum is far less effective than talking in person, so perhaps you are not as anointed to save us all from our errors as some of those posts seemed to convey. And you know, sometimes scholars can't see the forest for the trees.

I do read some scholarship, but don't always agree with it. Just recently, a young organist told me his teacher had decided, based on his "scholarship" that Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland needed to be played quite fast, because we all had it wrong. You know, I suspect a few centuries of teachers handing down interpretations to students is more accurate than what some supposed modern scholar has come up with. To be sure, I tend to read more that is related to French Baroque and Romantic practices, but that is where my interests are. I was never so much interested in German composers or organs, although I will listen to them if that is what is being played where I happen to be. I have no burning desire to rush home and play those works myself. Of course I know that if I were to play the French Baroque that I much love, anywhere near how the composers played it, I would need a very different instrument. Not going to happen!

Before anyone gets the idea that these special techniques used only on trackers are a waste of time learning and understanding if you are not playing a tracker, the special techniques required to play a harpsichord end up positively influencing the way that you play an EP or DE organ...so these special tracker organ techniques should as well improve playing all organs.

Also, DE organs are much more like trackers in response than EP organs in most cases.

The argument that when an organist studied determines how little or much they know about historic organ playing technique is silly.

Organists back in Baroque times had their own special techniques. Those techniques, and all organ techniques currently in use, are historic. Unlike Casals, who revolutionized cello technique, there is nothing new in organ technique.

So, organists are not being instructed in new, undiscovered ways to play, rather they are being instructed in what their teacher has learned and uncovered and likes about organ technique back then.

Anyone can go back to the documents from back then and "discover the true way to..." but that's not discovering, it is uncovering...there are always new fads in organ playing and they are not new, but just the current fad that teachers are following

If you really want an argument, mention finger crossing at the time of Bach and use of the thumb. Organists did not use the thumbs when playing for a long time. Try playing a hymn with fingers only.

I think that's a bit of a rough generalisation, to be honest, but anyway... You recognise a connection between harpsichord (or, better still clavichord) technique and organ technique. Many nineteenth-century organists were pianists. Wouldn't it be remiss to consider the impact of piano technique on organ for their repertoire, including that of touch? Van Oortmerssen does actually discuss this.

Who could have been around Liszt and not been affected by piano technique?

Well, CharlesW, that's where it gets tricky again. Remember the division between the Romantic progressives and conservatives. The former followed Liszt/Wagner and the latter followed Brahms. Serious consequences for technique/interpretation.

I believe the AGO article was by Beverly Jerold and she established from documentation that Bach actually used heels. I have that article somewhere, but going through my "archives" can be quite time consuming.

You know, it is all greatly compromised by the fact that the original musicians are all dead and not communicating with anyone, isn't it? LOL.

I find that I am able to adapt many works by the French romantic and baroque composers to many organs of different sizes. I love the works of Louis-Claude Daquin and I have played his music on organs that didn't have a very French tonal design at all but I still made a good performance out of it. Basic musicianship goes a long way, which is something I think we all have here. Granted I'd love to play those works at St Gervais or some other famous French instruments!

Exactly. I was at a workshop with Michael Corzine some years ago when Gleason pedal technique was all the craze. Corzine indicated he no longer used Gleason and although he previously did not use heels in Baroque literature, he now did without giving it too much thought. That's the essence of what he said and is not a quote.

P, that Beverly Jerold article may have been, "Pedal Technique in Early Music," American Organist, Oct. 2000. I haven't found the article yet, just the cite. I will keep looking.

Basset horns were wonderful instruments until PETA banned them...

Palestrina:

Schnitger. Where and what specs?

Okay, one more to go for the record-
I'm setting you all up-
Ready, set, gun shot!

FROGMAN NOEL JONES, Come on down!
Uh one an a two an a three:
"Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel!
Here stands the king of the pedals and Swell!"