And every week I play a II/30 1890 tracker that isn’t “exactly right” for Buxtehude or Messiaen or Vierne or Reger, but plays the heck out of all of them, because 1) every stop contributes something to the chorus, 2) nothing is voiced to an extreme (the trumpet isn’t faux-French or a horizontal death horn), 3) there was no agenda to it to be either “historic” or “eclectic”, 4) the 8s are neither puny nor woofy, and each plays a distinct part in the very warm jeux des fonds, and 5) there is enough wind for each pipe to sing, not manifest signs of COPD like most 50s/60s/70s jobs.

So much was lost with each step into the future...

There is an argument promoted by some of my organbuilding colleagues that a few select specimens of '60s neo-classic extremism should be preserved, if only to show future generations how crazy things got, how bad these instruments were, and how NOT to build organs in the future. - ;-)

Gaudete in Domino Semper!

...argument promoted...

Whilst we are preserving (and rightly so) examples of those old tubs with the utterly boring tones of all their 8' stops, with (maybe) a mutation here and there (though certainly not a larigot!) and their colourless reeds (if any) and lack of mixtures on which no real literature, baroque, romantic, or otherwise, could rightly be played, - well it's not altogether preposterous that we should preserve some early examples of the neo-baroque movement which didn't quite 'get it right', but were more exciting to play than the old tubs. The early neo-baroque failures are no more (and perhaps less) awful than the dull and hooty old tubs they replaced. They paved the way for Mander, Pasi, Fritts, and all the other fine builders we have today.

There seem to be those who love to wail and rail against the neo-baroque examples that weren't particularly good. This is hardly wise or fair. All of them were not bad. As some would hasten to point out, there are fads in the tonal design of organs, and each has its own cultural validity. Some of all should be preserved. The beauty of our own times is that we have romantic revival organs of great integrity, and we have baroque revival organs of great integrity. Being who we are, it is fortuitous for us that we live when we do and can have and hear whatever we prefer. Once upon a time there were no choices - just tubs for a milieu who never heard of or cared about Frescobaldi, Titelouze, or Bruhns - or even Franck or Tournemire.
________________________________________________

It gladdens me that Pasi was chosen to expand this Holtkamp. Pasi is an artist. It will surely be carried out with a conscientious respect for Holtkamp's work whilst resulting in a work that has tonal integrity and artful beauty. I know of another historic Holtkamp (here in Houston) which was much less fortunate in being recently 'renovated' by the reuter company, who (to the tune of $800,000) destroyed the instrument.

But dontcha know, dropping one Harmonic Flute into a specification makes it “versatile and eminently suited for French Romantic Music”....


I really think cost/cheapness has a lot to do with it. We can’t have good Germanic instruments with just a rohrflote and principal at 8 and a stopped 16’ flute, because 8s and 16s cost money....never mind that the notable 18th century organs all had their plenum founded on a 16 open and several 8s.

We won’t have anything that sounds like Cavaille-Coille until we have an understanding that his chorus depends on harmonic cornets AND mixtures AND reeds that are actually double-length and overblowing pipes, sitting above at least 4 8’ flies per manual, on fairly high wind, necessitating a Barker-type assisted key action. But that’s all very expensive; harmonic=2x as much metal, so we have these big “French” organs with American dinnerfork mixtures and no coherence at all....

We won’t have the Eton College Hill because it’s always better to waste money on a floating Allen string division and chimes and MIDI and an antiphonal mess than to do something coherent with itself and meticulously voiced and in a good useful case.

/rant

Regarding Cavaille-Coll:

Well, his instruments were never exactly "mixture heavy", so it is possible.

That is actually very interesting, as I've never heard that opinion being explicitly attributed to him, and on reflection, it now makes me want to revisit just about every one of his specs.

Regarding the money issue: One thing Cavaille-Coll definitely did not like was leaving instruments incomplete, or to put it another way, he did not like failing to have a job "done right". As a result he frequently took financial losses on instruments, spending more than the client paid, which is why he was always on the edge of bankruptcy. His masterpiece at Saint-Ouen in Rouen is a perfect case in point. The church paid (I think) 90,000 francs, but it ultimately cost 108,000 to build. Ol' Aristede's devotion to fine artistry, while leaving us with some of the world's most glorious instruments, guaranteed he'd never get rich in organ business!

Gaudete in Domino Semper!

Yes, I know a builder in Texas, that when an organ,was finished, decided to add a complete principal in the swell at entirely his own cost.

Church committees and folks in general don't understand how organs are priced to begin with. There's a good article in the current, "The Diapason," on that. It notes that while a Larigot may cost less than a thousand, a 32' open diapason is a $400,000. plus stop which adds a few tons to the organ's weight. The common error is taking the organ's total cost, dividing by the number of ranks, and concluding the organ cost so many dollars per rank. If you have a builder who adds a flute at his own expense, that's one thing. If he adds an oboe, that involves far more expense to the builder.

I recommend the article to anyone interested in such things.