Fine Tracker Pipe Organ - appears to be redundant and available fast.
-
M. Jackson Osborn May 6
Posts: 1,225
Hartley -
When are you building your new chapel?
Is it possible that you could put this organ in storage?
I have played and had experience with Bedient organs.
They are good. They sound good. They are well made.
In fact, if I were the Bedient people, I would take the organ back and find a home for it. This is a trashy calumny.
1.) If someone makes a huge donation, we'll start next year. Otherwise, most optimistic projections are for 5-10 years from now.
2.) I seriously doubt it, we don't even have enough storage for what we have now, let alone putting a pipe organ in as well!
I'll forward an advert to a friend. The Blessed Sacrament Chapel of our Cathedral Church is in need of an organ to replace the clapped out electronic piece of junk we currently have (we have a lovely 3/37 Norman and Beard of 1898 in the main cathedral, Deo gratias!) -
Having played the instrument, I would encourage you to call the Bedient people about the question. Gene retired from the company some years ago but still serves on the board.
It is a lovely instrument and fills that room nicely. Changing the wind pressure would also necessitate re-voicing the organ. At the time I knew Gene he was a most meticulous voicer. I confess I checked into the instrument also, but I suspect there are so many people who want it that money will enter into the picture. But I continue my hunt for a home organ as I have a building that I want to use for an organ studio behind my house ( a former garage turned into a room.) -
An esteemed friend of mine refered, above, to the Bedient under discussion here as more or less representative of 'an unfortunate period in organ building'. I respectfully suggest that such an assessment is greatly unworthy of such an highly intelligent scholar and artist who does treasure the gamut of organ period styles and genres. Perhaps this was not actually a thoroughly considered assertion. At least, I hope that it wasn't. On the other hand, there are, in fact, periods of organ building which I consider 'unfortunate'; they might be summed up in the current romantic revivalist work of Schoenstein. By a hair, we got the Pasi Opus XIX at the co-cathedral in Houston when Schoenstein had all but gotten the nod. We thank Dr Crista Miller for drawing victory from the jaws of death. There is nothing 'unfortunate' about Classical, Baroque, or Renaissance organ building. These are the foundation on which all wise systems are built. And, anyone who suggests that they are not 'liturgical instruments' is speaking of what he knows not.
All that said, let us hope that this Bedient finds a good home, and that Georgetown's chapel will aquire a truly fine instrument that will be more to their liking. And, that their music program will continue to flourish in all its eclectic glory.... with a fine new organ as its centrepiece. -
The thing that was unfortunate about that period of organ building was archaeologism, or as someone wiser has called its equivalent in the Church, "Liturgical Modernism." It has done the same for organ building that it has done for Catholic liturgy. It harkens back to a supposedly ideal time when heaven existed on earth, which has now been defiled and corrupted. Some of those organs are period pieces that do the music of those periods well. Unfortunately, they don't do so well with the wealth of music written since then. Those instruments and the so-called organ reformers who advocate them, are modern day Puritans (using the term loosely, since Puritans hated organs). The organs are based on historical Calvinist and Lutheran models, and have little to do with Catholic models. Not having either a Calvinist or Lutheran background, I have little appreciation for those instruments or the theologies and cultures that inspired them.
Referring back to Gavin's statement, the thing I find unfortunate is that it is sometimes difficult to find good service instruments in many places. To add a bit after the original post, shouldn't church organs be first and foremost service instruments? Churches are not concert halls for the performance of ancient organ literature.
Now if all those people trained during the "organ reform" would just die off, perhaps it might be possible to get audiences back for recitals on instruments non-purists can stand to listen to. Of course, if the liturgical modernists would die off, too ... maybe there would be heaven on earth. ;-) -
Funny, I spent major portions of my weekend being involved (as a sackbut player) in the dedication of Richards, Fowkes & Co. Op. XIX at Church of the Covenant in Cleveland (http://www.covenantweb.org/). It's a Baroque organ at A415 in 1/5 comma meantone, and a very lovely instrument, and one that served well for congregational singing. One wouldn't do the romantics on it, but then, they don't have to. Including the 2 chamber organs they brought in to do Schütz, there were 4 organs present... an act of expiation for all the organs trashed by earlier Calvinists.
-
We have two Richards, Fowkes organs in my city. One is in a very unforgiving building and the organ sounds harsh and is so loud it drowns out the choir. The other, is in a better space and it sounds much better.
Not all the Calvinists trashed organs. The Dutch seemed to do as they pleased and kept theirs. But haven't they always?Thanked by 1Jeffrey Quick -
We have two Richards, Fowkes organs in my city. One is in a very unforgiving building and the organ sounds harsh and is so loud it drowns out the choir.
Charles
I don't believe "organs drown out choirs"; ORGANISTS do by their lack of sensitivity to registration and balance (and often times an ego that wants to be prominent) -
Could be, Francis. There is something odd about the ceiling in that church that gives a harshness to all sound. The organ is in front. Some AGO members have said it is best to sit in the back balcony which tones the harshness of the instrument down. Evidently, if you get far enough away from it, it sounds better.
-
-
if all the organists agreed upon exactly what an organ should sound like, there'd be only one builder and organ music would be awfully boring.
It's extremely difficult financially for any organ builder to take an organ back, since they can be virtually impossible to sell to another church that wants an organ to match their acoustics, musical demands and physical structure.
Trackers are their own worst enemies, being almost impossible to reconfigure. There's a large historic tracker in storage in Knoxville someplace from Boston that someone bought to give to a church 12 years ago. Twice they had the facade alone sold and that fell through. I'm pretty sure it was offered to CharlesW's church, too...
-
Very little sounds soft on that organ. The ceiling design is unusual. It's hard to describe, but it has many small indented squares. The building is all hard surfaces - stone floor, what appears to be concrete ceiling and is essentially a rectangular box. All of it together adds a harshness to music. I heard a pianist there once, and the effect was the same. I suspect the tone I find unpleasant is more a fault of the building than the organ. As I mentioned, there is another of that brand in town, and it sounds quite different.
-
The historical inspiration for the Georgetown Bedient was not the neo-Baroque (a label with which none of the aforementioned builders...Fritts, Taylor & Boody, Pasi, Richards & Fowkes...or Bedient are usually tagged by organologists). In fact, all of those builders represent a generation of post-Organ Reform builders who have eschewed the neo-Baroque aesthetic, which itself wasn't based the real historical record.
The historical inspiration for the Georgetown Bedient was late-19th Century German-American organ building in the Midwest, exemplified by the work of William Schuelke. How well the concept was realized, I cannot say, having only seen but never heard or played the instrument. It was never the less a legitimate path for the organ builder to take at a prominent Catholic university where musical practice was likely to be eclectic.
There may be many possible reasons for removing an instrument like this. The argument of utility is specious, however, betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of the organ as a musical instrument. To paraphrase Smithsonian curator John Fesperman, the only requirements of an organ as a musical instrument are formal integrity and its ability to realize the musical ideas of the composer (organist) who understands the instrument.
Kevin Vogt -
Very, very interesting! Thanks for some good information.
My issue with many of the "organ reform" instruments is the same that I have with the products of the liturgical reformers. Both effectively killed organic development in organs and liturgy by reverting to historical but abandoned models. Is that a good thing? I would say no, but I realize others disagree.
I have been listening to Bedient instruments on You Tube - not the same as hearing in person, I know, but there are no Bedient instruments in my area. The recordings sound pretty good, however. -
I've heard and played almost a dozen Bedient instruments over the years. They're well-made, enjoyable to play, and very beautifully voiced. Remember that the purchaser determines many of the characteristics of an organ. When the (beautiful) Baroque-style organ at my current church was installed, the then-organist wanted no full-length pedal 16' stops or any chorus reeds on the manuals--on a 50-some-rank instrument! The 16' pedal reed was made full-length 47 years after the organ was installed. (There's no swell division or string stop, either.) So, if an organ isn't everything that you'd want it to be for a particular setting or use, don't assume that it's 100% the builder's prefered solution.
-
That's very true. There is a Casavant in my city, installed in the infamous sixties, that even the builder wanted to revoice and balance out. The organist objected. It also has a Salicional Celeste - if you can imagine anything possibly sounding worse, let me know. LOL. That, too, was to humor the organist. When the organ was rebuilt in the 90s (not by Casavant) the voicing stayed the same, but they added 100 channels of memory for a 50-rank organ - at the new organist's request. None of the above was the builder's fault.Thanked by 1Gavin
-
Advocatus,
Can you provide any citations or anything like that for what you have said, not because I doubt you, but because I'd like to learn more? -
This organ will soon have a new home. More details to come.
-
Reading some of the posts here, I have to say just how disappointed I am in the attitude towards Baroque revival instruments. Although it is very(!) fair to say that there are many, many revival instruments that are a mere caricature of their models, there are also some that are nothing short of stunning. You have two particularly fine examples in the USA: one at Rochester and the other at Cornell, both the fruit of collaborative projects with the world-class GoArt Centre at the University of Gothenburg.
There is simply NO way of understanding early music (and that extends as far as Bach) without understanding the instruments for which it was composed. Go to Europe. Play a Silbermann. Better still, play something earlier. Listen to how your articulation changes, and to how the entire piece takes on a different life, and a different sound. This is especially true of the French classical repertoire, which simply cannot be divorced from French classical instruments.
The idea that a true classical revival in some way parallels the liturgical movement and its archaeologicism is an awful analogy and simply untrue. The classical revival is to organs, what the Solesmes reform was to plainchant. Both have been fraught with difficulties, and both are maturing with time, reflection and further scholarly insights.
Finally, a point on electric action: I have stopped playing instruments with electric action, because I find them wholly unmusical. Articulation becomes binary: either that pallet is open, or it is closed. I can't control the rate of opening or closing at all, whereas a tracker instrument, when played properly, when understood for all its potential, can provide a sensitivity and nuance that brings the music to life. Listen to William Porter, Pieter van Dijk, Jacques van Oortmerssen, Hans Davidsson and many others, and you will hear the difference. It is huge.
No instrument will do the entire repertoire. Give me an instrument that is small, but exquisitely voiced, scaled and has a very sensitive playing action. That instrument will do far more, from a musical standpoint, then some kind of choir-accompanying buffet that is spread across half a dozen different locations in the church. -
I am going to disagree with you across the board. I think the analogy does hold true. In music and liturgy, a group of know-it-alls has set out to restore what they think has been lost, and return to those heavenly days of supposed perfection. Nothing was lost. Organs and liturgy have changed over time because of organic development. So has the music written for them. At least they did develop organically until the organ reform and Paul VI brought that development to a screeching halt. I have wondered why those neo-Baroque purists don't go the whole way, and reject electricity, cars, central heating, and hire a serf to pump the bellows. Now that is genuine authenticity.
Solesmes may have done as much harm as good, so some say. But I leave the pros and cons of that disagreement to others.
Although I don't care so much for Bach, I would agree that period instruments are needed to accurately play music composed for them. No problem with that. My biggest objection is to instruments that are good period concert instruments, but terrible church service instruments. However, I recently heard an organist play Franck on one of those North German reproductions. It sounded horrible, of course. When I go around town, I find too many period instruments reflecting essentially one period. Silbermanns don't sound so bad, but I could do without the Schnitger clones.
We are going to have to agree to disagree. -
Charles, I'd much rather have flexible winding, for a start, and lower wind pressures.
The caricatures of neo-Baroque organs and their proponents are a bit offensive. Shouldn't an advocate of Romantic organs also reject most of the things that you have proposed? It is not merely a matter of 'authenticity' which is a musicological can of worms anyway - Nobody can agree on the nature of an 'authentic' performance, so let's not go down that rabbit hole. Your perspective seems to be based on the assumption that organ building goes in 'one' direction only. Quasi teleological and not true! And it's about as constructive as the debate raging between the proponents of gothic and roman vestments as to who has a greater claim to 'authenticity'. One group frames roman vestments as a corruption of historical practices, the other frames them as an organic development.
What constitutes a good 'church service instrument'? In the Catholic liturgy, how much is supposed to be accompanied anyway? As far as I can see, until Vatican II, most vocal music was unaccompanied, or a simple plenum on the main manual and a flute on the upper provide all that is required. What has a far longer history is the corpus of alternatim settings, organ Masses etc. Simply put, Catholics do not need large, Victorian instruments with the kinds of specifications that are ideal for accompanying evensong (unless you happen to be a member of the Ordinariate, in which case, go for it!). Really, we have more in common with our Lutheran friends than we'd like to admit, and it's because their repertoire stems from a common tradition. Look at Scheidemann and Praetorius's settings and that becomes very clear, very quickly.
As I mentioned in my initial post, no instrument will do the entire repertoire. Why an organist chose to do Franck on an instrument that won't do Franck is inexplicable! A mark of a good recitalist (and indeed a good church musician) is to choose repertoire that fits within the constraints of the organ/choir/liturgy etc. Another organist could complain that Lubeck, Bohm, Bruhns and friends won't work on a Skinner octopod, so it cuts both ways!!
Go with whatever voicing you like, as far as I'm concerned. What is more important is that the instrument, as a whole, has integrity. Fine voicing, scaling, a very sensitive action. In short, a proper musical instrument in its own right: not merely a hymn machine, nor something for accompanying choirs. A fine instrument, in the hands of a knowledgeable player, will do many, many things. The problem is when you get organists who don't understand the instrument, don't understand how to use it properly and decide that it needs an extra 5 stops of whatever type. Organ as musical lego is a really unsavory concept, to my mind... -
I prefer a non-tracker because I don't want to be buried in the instrument. I can't really hear what the congregation is hearing with them. I have played some where it is even difficult to hear the choir.
I agree on the integrity of instruments, but can assure you I have nothing in common with Lutheran friends. I don't do the EF, and my OF masses follow more of an Anglican model with French organ pieces mixed in. There are badly built Romantic instruments as well as badly built Baroque reproductions. The quality of an instrument is a matter of the skills of voicers, materials, and building architects. Sometimes they don't quite come together right. -
Gavin, I don't see your point. I have already readily conceded that there is a type of Neo-Baroque that is horrendous. My point is that Baroque instruments, properly built, are useful liturgically. I'm not about to get into an argument over aberrations. I'm also not about to concede that large neo-Romantic instruments with either electric or "token tracker" (ie. the thing is operated mechanically, but you can't actually do anything with it that you should be able to) action are preferable.
-
Having played both types of action, I concluded long ago that much of the "control" from the tracker is in the mind of the organist. It isn't so apparent to anyone else in the building. Some instruments can just be unwieldy, for lack of a better word to use. I have played electro-pneumatics, all electric actions, and trackers that were simply difficult and unwieldy to play.
Gavin, I have joked for years about playing an air for zimbelstern and scharff at my upcoming all Distler recital. (It will never happen). -
-
I, like Palestrina, am rather puzzled and genuinely disappointed in much of the negative energy directed towards instruments built on (a variety of) historical models. As I remarked somewhere up above, all these historical instruments were 'church instruments'; they were (and quite a few still are) liturgical instruments which played cantus firmus and alternatim literature for the liturgy for hundreds of years. Others played quite utilitarian organ chorals as part of Lutheran worship. Whether Catholic or Protestant, these instruments graced the liturgy with church-specific hymn accompaniments and preludes, or supplied ricercars, canzonas and the like for Catholic worship, in addition to playing antiphonally (alternatim) with a wide variety of office hymns, canticles, and ordinaries, plus grand ornamental offertoires. To blithely assert that these are/were not liturgical instruments requires a suspension of logic and a determined sweeping of reality under the rug to arrive at a peremptory falsification, i.e., these organs are concert organs and are only good for recitals of concert literature. And, of couse, we don't want a concert organ, we want a liturgical organ. This begs the question: what is the difference! A fully appointed organ by many reputable builders of today is capable of playing a reasonable portion of 'the literature' of sacred organ music past and present. Because it can do this, it is, I assert, a 'liturgical organ' (on which [it just so happens] one could play a recital [concert] if he or she wished). BUT, an organ that is not fit for the above can hardly be called an adequate 'church organ': for reason: it can't play the old and new liturgical literature, and it hath not the colour and variety to really play the liturgy with imagination and in an inspiring way. In short, the types of instruments being subjected to denigrance here are deserving of an higher estimation as liturgical instruments than some are wont to grant them. The true 'not a church organ' and the true 'not a liturgical instrument' is that species of late XIX and well into the XX century organs which had (still have!) 2 to 4 pedal stops, half a dozen diapasons and melodias in 8 & 4, maybe a nazard or tierce, some even had 2' stops(!), often a foggy sounding oboe (if not a synthetic one), plus, the all too often generous use of unification. In short, an organ that was/is incapable of playing ANY liturgical organ literature of any period or style, or accompany singing in anything except the boring monotone tone palette so typical of this 'unfortunate period of organbuilding'. I would never have dreamed that I would read the sentiments about organs that are appearing in this topical conversation. And Gavin: you own my respect: as a friend, as an advancing artist, as a scholar, and as a growing church musician... this makes it even more perplexing when you, who are priviledged to play the likes of Houston's new Fritts (one of our new crown jewels), seem to join the chorus of detractors of such masterful organ building.
-
As I mentioned earlier, there are badly built instruments from every period. That can result from many reasons such as placement, temperaments, materials used, specifications, and on and on. Some instruments seem to reflect the quirkiness and idiosyncrasies of the church organist rather than the builder. Some instruments are simply better than others and seem timeless in what they can do. I heard a recording of Diane Bish playing a Dubois piece on a Silbermann. That old organ did French Romantic literature quite well, along with some earlier music she also played.
I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of North German Baroque organs or the literature produced for use in the German Lutheran church. Did anything good ever come from that religion? My interests are chiefly in French organ literature, both Baroque and Romantic. I am biased, as are most in one way or another.
When it comes to the organ reform movement, organists seem to either endorse it, or like myself view it as similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I have seen too many lovely instruments destroyed only to be replaced by museum pieces fitting the current ideology of some crazy organist. Given that it is difficult to convince congregations to invest huge sums of money in a pipe organ to begin with, it doesn't make sense to throw out usable instruments to fit ideology. Ideology can go out of fashion pretty fast. The crazy organist may be gone in 4-5 years, but the congregation is stuck with both the instrument and likely the still unpaid bill.
A note on an instrument in a city approximately 25 miles away. An Episcopal church had an organist - now dead from his tobacco consumption - who directed the design of a new pipe organ. I talked with the builder who said he doesn't normally build what he called Lutheran instruments, but followed the directions of the church organist. That's what the church has, and it is completely unsuited to Anglican worship or literature. They certainly can not afford to throw it out and put in something more suitable. It hasn't been that long since it was installed. They are stuck with it.
-
Charles, In what way is it unsuited to Anglican liturgy and literature? I may be somewhat ignorant, but the Episcopalians I know play Bach, Buxtehude, Reger, Vierne, Guilmont, and many others. And their liturgies are quite similar to ours - in fact the local Episcopal cathedral used Haugen's Mass of Creation a few weeks ago for their ordinary!
I just can't imagine ANY instrument being "unsuitable." If what you have excels at Bach but doesn't do Messian well, than don't do Messian! Likewise in reverse.
How bad could it be? -
Charles, your last post wasn't biased: it was downright bigoted! "Did anything good ever come from that religion? " Plenty! I'll leave it for the other members of this forum to share their favourite pieces from an exquisite repertoire. I will simply remind members of the number of Lutheran chorale melodies that are derived from chant melodies (e.g. Komm Heiliger Geist, Nun Komm etc), and how fitting these are in our own liturgy. Then, of course, there are the parallels in the structure of Lutheran and Catholic services, and the potential for embellishment in one to be fitting in the other. If you think that the break was clean and absolute, you are kidding yourself: at a conference several months ago, I heard all about how Lutherans in one area continued to use Josquin's 'Missa Pange Lingua'(!!) in their services, and also about professional church musicians who straddled the confessional divide. Breslau is probably ripe for more research, given the nature of religious tolerance in that city during the eighteenth century. I can handle somebody saying that they prefer one type of repertoire over another, but to be so dismissive of a repertoire simply because it isn't to one's taste is simply not on.
The rhetoric comparing the replacement of organs of one type with organs of another to the Chinese Revolution is really out of place. If you wanted to argue, as Taruskin does, that the early music movement (at least in its infancy) was about advancing a modernist aesthetic agenda (compare Stravinsky's 'classicism' with Brahms's), then I could understand. I could also understand if you wanted to construct a parallel between architecture and organs ie. modernism as an extreme reaction against the excessive and decadent embellishment of the Victorian era, and neo-classical organs as a form of rebellion against the bloated tonal schemes of the preceding century. Every organ contains an implicit set of values (ie. ideology). You are simply privileging a 19th-century ideology above a 20th-century one. You are right about ideology going out of fashion, and unfortunately, we are stuck with many instruments of the type identified by M. Jackson Osborn as a result of a ruling ideology in which the organ was considered some kind of hymn machine. Why the slurs? The "crazy" organist? Why is he crazy? It seems to me that he was probably quite sane, but had a different tonal concept to one that you find acceptable.
I think that what bewilders me the most is that you claim to be interested in Classical French repertoire, yet you do not understand tracker instruments. How can you possibly get the ornamentation right on an electric action organ? They're just not sensitive enough!! A fast trill will turn into something that sounds like a mashed second!!!
Finally, a comment on an instrument "completely unsuited to Anglican worship or literature." Perhaps it would have been better to say, "completely unsuited to Anglican worship or literature of the past century". I'm sure that a neo-classical instrument would cope with the demands of Byrd, Tallis, Purcell, Locke et al much better than a larger Romantic organ. The Anglican tradition is often reduced to musical developments of the past century or so. This is very much to its detriment.
I would like to think that I can appreciate fine organs of every period, and would hope that others would recognise that no instrument can do it all, but there is much to be said for churches developing their own 'musical culture' in a certain direction. I honestly believe that 'eclecticism' is overrated: why would anybody want to do a range of things in a half-hearted way, when they could do a more specific set of repertoires beautifully? -
As I mentioned, I have heard good instruments from every period. Some of the better built ones seem able to do a wide range of literature. That is still true today.
The Anglican music more familiar to me is somewhat free of Germanic influences, and more English in origin. So are their instruments. Granted the local Episcopal cathedral is more like the Scottish church than any high Anglican church, but others in the area not so much. I realize it varies. Many Anglican churches, like Catholic ones, try to be all things to all people. But if you walk like a Lutheran, play instruments like a Lutheran, and quack like a Lutheran, then become a Lutheran.
I stand by my remarks on Lutheranism. It is regrettable that Charles V did not kill Luther before he spread his errors. But that was a political decision, not a religious one.
One of my professors in my younger days as a student, said in so many words that music tends toward excess over time. I didn't understand him at the time, but I suppose he may have been right. Each time period seems to generate its own excess, which the next generation attempts to correct, not always successfully. Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. -
CharlesW:
"Having played both types of action, I concluded long ago that much of the "control" from the tracker is in the mind of the organist."
Dead wrong. It is possible to crescendo and decrescendo, and to bring out individual lines in a polyphonic texture, through touch with a good tracker instrument. Someone who has mastered the instrument can do this. A lot of organists can blow through the repertoire technically, but have never mastered touch. They will sound about the same on an electro-pneumatic or on a tracker.
That said, even die-hard tracker advocates will usually admit that some electro-pneumatic instruments are better than some trackers, just because of build and voicing quality, etc. That does not discount the fact that a good tracker is better than a good electro-pneumatic in terms of control.
And as for suitability, a great many composed works by the French Romantic school are for concert rather than liturgical use (symphonies, sonatas, chorales). They would only work for a liturgy if an EF organ mass was being played, allowing almost continuous organ music interrupted by a few prayers. The French Romantic school was all about improvising in the liturgy, and then composing bigger virtuosic works for concerts/postludes. So the repertoire as a whole is clearly no more suitable for Mass than Bach. In both French Romantic and German Baroque repertoires, pieces can be found that are short enough to work well in the liturgy. Abstract pieces (symphonies, preludes and fugues, etc) can also be found that do not work as well.
If I was going to pick a whole repertoire and say that it's categorically 'more liturgically suitable', it would be Spanish 16th-17th century, or Italian 17th century. Certainly not French Romantic.
Finally, to suggest that a neo-Baroque instrument is unsuitable for the Mass is silly. These instruments are actually very well-suited to hymn-playing, which like it or not is what most of us do most of the time. If you are at a more enlightened place that does Propers, then you certainly do not need organ accompaniment for those anyway. These organs are well-suited to playing short pieces or improvisations during the liturgy. They are excellent for chant-based repertoire - however, the considerable German Baroque school of chant rep (and improvisations based on that school), not the French Romantic. One weakness is the lack of a swell pedal, which makes accompanying choral rep more difficult. I will grant that much.
Many, many parishes would be taking a huge leap forward to purchase something like this unloved Bedient. They should be encouraged to take such a path.
-
Listen, I would be the first to say the Spanish literature is not as well known as it deserves to be. It is really beautiful music! I play it and it works well during mass. Of course, Schantz has never built an instrument that sounds like the Spanish organs, so that's a bit of a limitation that I work with.
French Romantic? Love it. Much of it is concert literature, some of it can be used during masses. I like the French instruments, too, Baroque and Romantic. Anyone with a spare Cavaille-Coll they want to be rid of can call me anytime - or the Harrison at Coventry. I will take that one, too (and then move mass into the church yard, since little space will be left for the congregation.) ;-)
Swell pedals are good and useful. Trackers? You can have them if you prefer them. I don't like them and never did or will.
It is also possible to play with half-open sliders - I heard that once at a concert. Sounded awful. I heard someone make the statement that may prove to be the distinctive sound of mid to late 20th-century organ composition. Just because you can play a certain way doesn't mean you should.
In short, there is no perfect instrument. What works for you may not be suitable for me in my situation. -
It was said above that for our organ there had been found a home. Where is it? What are the details of its architectural, acoustical, and appreciative environment? Who is the fortunate person who will be priviledged to play it? What is your vision of integrating it into choir and congregational music for the liturgy? I'm curious- did you get it for a nominal cost? Do you have a clue as to what they envision putting in its place at Georgetown?
-
"The Diapason" arrived today, and on page 11 is an artist's rendering for the new organ, by Shoenstein & Co. The drawing looks like the pipes are in front. It will have three manuals and 19 ranks located in two matching cases on either side of the sanctuary. No mention of where the console will be placed. See the article for more details.
-
M. Jackson Osborn,
I'm actually dying to provide you with answers to every question that you asked, but I feel like I can't until contracts are signed and all is "official" ... and there's still the matter of the loft being certified as being able to hold 15,000 lbs.
So, rest assured, as soon as it's a "done deal," I'll be posting in this thread about all of those issues. -
I believe that the console on the new Shoenstein will be movable, but will mostly be in the front near the choir for mass use.
-
CharlesW,It is also possible to play with half-open sliders - I heard that once at a concert. Sounded awful.
Sounds like you were you present for my junior recital in college back in 1977! The organ was a Flentrop with mechanical key and stop action. On one of the movements of Charles Ives' "Variations on America," I used the 8' Roerfluit on the Hoofdwerk, and coupled to it the 8' Gedekt from the Borstwerk with the sliders only partly-open for a celeste effect. I think Ives might have been OK with it, but the problem was that the pipes did not celeste at the same rate!
I wouldn't recommend the practice, except in unusual circumstances!
Welcome to the MusicaSacra Forum!
To participate in the discussions on Catholic church music, sign in or register as a forum member, The forum is a project of the Church Music Association of America.
Categories
- All Discussions21,097
- General Music Discussion7,589
- Job Openings1,300
- Management of Music Programs833
- Choral Matters519
- Church Documents and Rubrics503
- CMAA Notes291
- Events651
- For Newcomers: Read First23
- Sacred Polyphony528
- Hymnody821
- Gregorian Chant: General2,582
- ↳ Graduale Romanum and Liber Usualis354
- ↳ Graduale Simplex55
- ↳ Semiology57
- Vernacular Plainsong671
- Anglican Use and Anglican Chant66
- Organ, Other Instruments and Repertoire414
- New Composition/Works in Progress1,208
- Recordings222
- Music for Hispanic Ministry151
- Music Education: Children205
- Music Education: General214
- News Items242
- Positions Wanted58
- General Discussion: Catholicism723
- Amusements170
- General Discussion1,000
- Opinions113