?? !!

MaryAnn

Yes. I have to chalk up the tendency of American Catholic musicians to treat the Anglican tradition as the most relevant benchmark as a function of the broader American tangle with British culture as well as a result of selection bias formed by the domination of taste via recordings. Tell people that there are other choral traditions, and ones that are even far older (measured in centuries) than the English collegiate choir tradition, and they will often be shocked. That's not to say the Anglican tradition is not wonderful. It simply should not be automatically viewed as normative.

Liam. Exactly my thoughts.

Yes! They didn't drop the graduale, and there's lots for organ lovers.

The videos did show use of Chimes but I still like them.
Wish I had even a tiny bit of that skill level displayed.
And that every parish could be Saint Sulpice.

I have chimes on my organ. I think I have purposely used it for exactly one piece (the end of Richard Purvis' "Greensleeves" during Christmas). I've pulled it a couple of times by accident, though - let's just say the results were far from pretty.

I once worked in a church that had a Celesta on the organ. It was an interesting novelty.

I'd be interested in that, too, FWIW

The response of member from this group was not surprising. This group's answers were almost exclusively negative. This sort of reflects the same issue that people have had with the videos from France of ND. Here it is, in many cases, almost a crime for the organ in a Catholic church to be allowed to bring attention to itself.

Pipechat and the Facebook Organists group were surprisingly in favor, with a very few responding against the use of chimes. I am not sure how many participate in Pipechat, but it is nowhere near the size of Facebook Organists with 9,000+ members. I am guessing under 1,000 for Pipechat which has always been larger than Pip-org.

This was interesting because almost the exact same number of people responded from these two groups. And the Facebook Organist group also had few who did not like chimes. I am sure that many from the FB group play organs in Europe that did not have chimes so there was little reason of them to respond.

Very few people had much in the way of music for organ and chimes, many just used the chimes in place of an organ solo stop at times.

Few had to chime the hour...this used to be very common and a matter of contention about exactly when to chime the hour...at the hour or when the priest/preacher finally got ready to enter.

Thank you all, this is in preparation for releasing collections of playable music for organ & carillon, chimes or handbells...on two staves. Almost all the music for organ and chimes is written to include pedals, which makes it easier to write. It's a lot trickier I discovered to restrict the arrangements to just two hands. Having done two books of arrangements of hymns with two parts in the right hand and one in the left, this was exactly the opposite.

There are two books of Catholic hymns included in the series of 8 books, which include handbell parts for solo ringers or beginning choirs for each piece.

Responses to the survey have helped confirmed our promotion plans. Thank you!

Chimes or carillon. I arranged a few hymn tunes for carillon and played a few of them on a 23-bell instrument before moving back to Wisconsin. Here are a couple of sound files (they are synthesized, as I wasn't able to make recordings of them). There are others (Salzburg, Salve Feste Dies, Ellacombe).

glad I was able to chime in on this issue.

Rings a bell with me.

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley

Probably the Sunday before taxes were due.

...getting... out of here!

Wise move.
And you shouldn't waste any chime doing so.

Our second favorite punch line for a nonexistent shaggy dog story: Chimes against you, manatee.

When will we end these chimes against humanity?

Only a chimeleon could produce such a variety of chimer's sins against chimees.
Does anyone have a bottle of chim-ex that we could borrow?

MBW said, "The Petit and Fritsen type are best as they imitate the change ringing tone which MJO refers to. The Schulmerich type are tuned for melody and harmony playing and are usually less musically satisfying, largely because of what one is tempted or coerced into playing on them."

As a change ringer of almost 40 years experience, including hand bells, this is exactly backwards. P&F handbells are tuned to simulate continental carillon bells, and have much too prominent overtones. While I'm not a fan of Mallmark or Schulmerich, their hand bells are tuned in the style of English bells, and are MUCH more pleasant to ring changes on. IOW, I would hope never to hear, MUCH LESS PERFORM changes on P&F bells!

From chimes to accordion. This discussion has certainly gone to perdition.

In the proper hands, an accordion is essentially a reed organ - no zydeco at mass, please. LOL. Many of the smaller churches in pre-electronic days had reed organs. Those by certain builders were respectable instruments. Pipe instruments were not affordable for the average small church even then.

I have told you about the large-busted lady accordionist from my youth, haven't I? Her FFF passages were a glimpse of heaven on earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP98jH9sEcY

Of course, these are all tracker action.

You can see that the RH buttons are coupled at times, just as they are on tracker.

What incredible musicianship.

This is my ALL TIME FAVORITE! Thank you for posting!

Our reason at Frog Music Press for posting the chimes question initially was to evaluate the interest in books that we were considering publishing.

Reviewing the books of chime music that we have, we discovered that many, if not most of the compositions, were of medium to hard difficulty. And all, without exception required that the organist play the pedals.

Easier music would seem to be attractive to make it possible for new-to-the-organ pianists to add the tone colors of chimes to registrations. Once they are up to speed at this easier music, then they can take on more difficult pieces.

All of this has the possibility of drawing more people’s attention to the organ. There are many organists playing the same stops every week after week…and wondering why people don’t think the organ is important.

The more variety we can bring to our registrations, the more we stop being just “elevator music “ at church.

Thank you to all who responded to the survey questions, you helped us immensely in the preparation of this music. In fact, the decision to add handbell parts came out of the survey. All the music in these books can be rung by a beginning choir or a solo ringer…and may come in handy when there are absent members on a Sunday morning when more difficult music is planned, but cannot be played.

This is a link to the chime music we now have available. A wedding book is due to be released within a week.