"If you live next to an organ-playing scaffolder who has recently built a large extension and has been behaving suspiciously, please contact the college."
Organ-playing scaffolder is way too specific for satire. This is a real story. Nothing absurd here at all.
Cambridge does this every year. The jokes are funny, but not quite believable. Kind of like the Vatican saying, "we are going to restore traditional liturgy and music this year."
An entire organ that size would be hard to conceal. However, truth stranger than fiction on a smaller scale can happen. A local college had a rebuild of their pipe organ. Several antiphonal ranks disappeared and if anyone knows who took them, they are not talking.
If you worked the politics correctly, it would not be impossible to heist an organ, especially in a very large organization, and especially one that has shut it down expecting a rebuild
My predecessor is from Bristol. I texted to him the link. He replied "Thank you for alerting me" I replied "I have a rank" He replied "I'll be right there"
The April The American Organist has an article about joke stops and an alleged portrait of Giovanni Confeddi. Someone must have expected it to arrive a bit earlier than today's mail.
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