Dr Carol Williams at the Spreckels Organ, San Diego

December 31st this year will mark the 100th Anniversary of the outdoor organ in San Diego where Carol Williams is Civic Organist.  A festive programme has been planned, including a composition by Carol to show off the newly-installed Centennial Tuba stop.  The programme will be streamed live on the internet – visit the Spreckels Organ website for more information.

The Centennial Tuba isn’t the only new rank to be dedicated on New Year’s Eve – the Organ Society recently raised $135,000 to add a Gamba and a Gamba Celeste as well as the Tuba, along with a battery of percussion effects to make the organ more versatile in accompanying silent movies.  And they’re not stopping there.   The organ’s curator, Lyle Blackinton, has plans for four more ranks – a Geigen Celeste, and a Violina Celeste (134 more pipes) and a Vox Humana and Crumhorn (146 more pipes).   This will take the Spreckels up to a grand total of 5,005 pipes making it, finally, the largest outdoor organ in the world (beating the Heroes Organ in Kufstein, Austria, with 4,948).   Size isn’t everything of course – but the Spreckels Organ is a source of great civic pride, and bravo the Spreckels Organ Society, who seem to take this kind of impressive fund raising completely in their stride.

The December 31st dedication concert will be an extravaganza including bagpipers, brass ensemble, and contributions from Gina Seashore, official Carillonist for Balboa Park’s California Tower, and Civic Organists emeriti Jared Jacobsen and Robert Plimpton.   Parts of the programme will replicate the original 1915 dedication.

More on Carol and the Spreckels Organ here.

Carol Williams has just released Freedom Op12 for organ, which she wrote for Frank Gehry and the 10th Anniversary of the Disney Hall organ, and performed on 23rd November this year at Disney Hall, Los Angeles.  All her works are published by Melcot Music Publishing, and you can see and hear more at www.melcot.com.

Five questions for…Carol Williams

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The Harrison & Harrison 2010/11 rebuild of the original Hill & Son 1912 organ at Methodist Central Hall, in Westminster, London

Purists might shudder at the new vogue for including LED fairylights in organ rebuilds, but I think they are very much in the tradition of the confident Victorian organ builder, determined to uphold civic pride by including every gizmo going.  LEDs are quite clever and discreet – I don’t think you could accuse them of making a fine instrument look like a downmarket fairground attraction, though you may disagree. (They don’t have to be on all the time, of course.)

I have Gerard Brooks to thank for sending me pictures of the Methodist Central Hall organ in various lighting moods, after its rebuild in 2011 – here it is all dressed up in blue.

Meeting with giants – Gerard Brooks and the organ of Westminster Hall

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The 1746 Hildebrandt organ in St Wenzel, Naumburg – restored in 2000, and played by Bach

This month’s pin-up is the wonderfully frilly Hildebrandt Organ at St Wenzel, Naumburg, Germany.   Many thanks to Andrew Benson-Wilson for sending me this picture, after he played the organ on a trip earlier this year.

Andrew told me “Bach and Silbermann approved the organ, running up an enormous bill for food, alcohol and tobacco during their five-day stay in Naumburg.  The stops knobs are original, along with their central paper stop names (which Bach must have touched), but organists are obviously discouraged from touching the paper.   It is a remarkable instrument, and can teach us a lot about the sort of organ that Bach would have liked to have played in Leipzig.  In particular, the ability to combine different stops (for example, variations of all four 8′ stops on the Ruckpositive), typical of Central German registrations at the time of Bach.  One fascinating stop added by Hildebrandt to the contracted specification is the Princ.und.mar on the Hauptwerk which beats with the Principal.”

More information, and the specification, here.

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Lionel Rogg plays Bach: the Goldberg Variations

A Walcker and a Father Willis

A Dobson organ from Iowa comes to Merton College, Oxford

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The Mander 1989 organ at St Andrew, Holborn, London

I am building up a big picture library,  and I thought some of them should get an airing, rather than lurk unseen on my hard drive.   So this month’s calendar girl is the gorgeous Mander organ at St Andrew, Holborn, London  EC4.  See  National Pipe Organ Register entry for details.

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Organ mirror on a stand – St Giles Cripplegate in the Barbican, London

I try to control the trainspotter* tendencies in my personality, but I do like taking pictures of organ mirrors (wait for my fully-illustrated coffee table book Organ Mirrors of the World, Part 1 - it’s going to be a wow)  because they are often a makeshift and inappropriate afterthought to the case design.   However this one is pure genius.  The Chancel Organ at St Giles Cripplegate is awkwardly placed (so what’s new, I hear you mutter) and for services on the Summer Course we are often conducted by a relay of Course Tutors, which is little unnerving (though naturally they are very good at it).

Since last year someone has commissioned this impressive mirror on a stand.  I think you can see how it was made – you could even make your own!  You have to get used to looking downwards, rather than upwards, but hey, we’re organists, we adapt.

This is probably a silly request, but if you have any organ mirror pictures, please send them in – to theladyorganist@gmail.com.  If (when) they are published, you will get full credit – unless you are too embarrassed, of course.

*For non-UK readers who may be baffled by this term, trainspotters are men (almost always) in anoraks, clutching thermos flasks, who stand in bunches at the end of railway platforms, recording the identification numbers of the engines that pass.  That’s it.

Jingle Bells and an Oliphant

RCO Summer Course – name that pipe

A Big Name at Bloomsbury Central

RCO Summer School 2014 – our feet go marching on

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The Pedal pipe that you show is the Sub Bass 32.  It is called a polyphone pipe, and gives 8 notes of the bottom octave down to E, then the bottom 4 notes play the E.    There are wooden chambers, which open with large valves to give the different notes.  It was from an organ by Compton.  If the pipe were to go down to bottom C, the pipe would have to be enormous.

So now you know!

A Big Name at Bloomsbury Central

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Simon Williams directs a masterclass at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on the RCO Summer Course this year

At first glance, the organ at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church looks rather ordinary, but many of the big names in organ music like to play here, and today we joined them on the RCO Summer Course, and found out why.   After Simon Williams had finished a masterclass, I had the organ all to myself for half an hour, so it was my turn to be a Big Name.   I can understand why people are almost falling over themselves to play it – it’s versatile, sounds good, and has some interesting pedal reeds (including a 32′ Sackbut which sounds EXACTLY like a road drill when played on its own).  And it’s also friendly – by which I mean you generally feel it is on your side, and won’t play you up.  You know what I mean?

The organ includes many ranks of pipes from redundant Binns organs, and the current build was undertaken by B C Shepherd and Sons, who still maintain it.  The organ had to be shoe-horned into the back of the gallery, and there’s not a lot of height for the pipework.   What on first glance looks like an odd storage cupboard under the rose window (see below) is actually the biggest of the pedal pipes (can’t remember which rank – must ask Eric Shepherd!),  folded up on itself and lying on its side. ( More on the organ and its specification here.)

Not a radiator, or a storage box, but the largest of the pedal pipes, folded up

Another reason that organists like being part of the concert season here has to be the unique atmosphere created by Philip Luke, Director of Music, and other members of the team that run the church.   I do recommend these concerts  – on the last Saturday of each month at 4pm –  if only for the splendid buffet afterwards, and general organist chatter.

RCO Summer Course – name that pipe

RCO Summer School 2014 – our feet go marching on

Five questions for…..Jennifer Bate

Five questions for…Simon Williams

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Eglise Notre Dame de France, just off Leicester Square in London’s theatreland

Eric Shepherd has just drawn my attention to a fascinating recital coming up, in a fascinating place.  Eglise Notre Dame de France is an unassuming post-War building in a side street off London’s Leicester Square – an area known for its slightly seedy nightlife, with Chinatown to the north and Theatreland all around.  The church is run by the Marist Fathers for the Roman Catholic francophone community in the West End of London, looking after refugees and the homeless in particular:  when I visited yesterday there were a quite a few weary people using the church as an opportunity for rest away from the hustle and glitz outside.   However of particular interest to us is the organ – as Eric told me “There will be a rather special organ recital at Eglise Notre Dame de France on Wednesday 9th July.  It will be given by Thomas Monnet from Saint-Maurice de Becon, near Paris, and it will be the first time for nine years that there has been an organ recital at the church, and the first recital after our work on the organ in 2011.”

This organ happens to be the first organ built by August Gern (in 1868) after he left the employ of Cavaille-Coll, and it was an inspiration to Ralph Downes when he visited it in the 1930s as he formulated his theories of organ design – which culminated in the Royal Festival Hall organ and ultimately the British Organ Reform movement.   Sadly both the church and organ were badly damaged by bombing during the War – bits of the organ were rescued, and the current organ is a mixture of original pipework and secondhand French stops (including some Cavaille-Coll) – all voiced in the French style. The work referred to is BC Shepherd & Son‘s latest refurbishment – read more about it, and see the specification of the organ here:

BC Shepherd Notre Dame de France

RECITAL DETAILS:

Eglise Notre Dame de France, (The French Catholic Church in London), 5 Leicester Place, Leicester Square, London WC2H 7BX
Wednesday 9th July, at 7.30pm

Thomas Monnet (Saint-Maurice de Becon, near Paris)
Programme:  In Memoriam Jean-Louis Florentz 1947-2004, and will comprise his complete organ works.

Thomas Monnet

(Thomas appears on the Genius of Cavaille-Coll DVD set issued by Fugue State Films)

Detail from the Annunciation/ Jean Cocteau/ Notre Dame de France

Notre Dame de France also houses some extraordinary artworks – including murals by Jean Cocteau dating from the restoration of the church in the 1950s after the bombing – well worth a a visit if you are around Leicester Square.  (If you’re interested, Niall McDevitt writes on some of the wilder theories behind the symbolism in Cocteau’s murals – Da Vinci Code and all - here.)

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Ralph Downes and the Royal Festival Hall organ

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The 1723 Hildebrandt organ in the Kreuzkirche, Stormthal. The opening recital on this organ was given by J S Bach / Andrew Benson-Wilson

Andrew Benson-Wilson is giving a recital in Leipzig next weekend on an organ where Bach gave the opening recital.  The 1723 Hildebrandt organ is in the village of Stormthal – Andrew sent me some photos and I thought you would like them.  The pedalboard is interesting! – and the bench Bach sat on for that recital is still in the church.

The organ has one manual and 14 stops – and a pedalboard which poses an interesting challenge to modern organists  /Andrew Benson-Wilson

Recital details:

Sunday 22 June 2014, 5pm
Kreuzkirche, Störmthal, near Leipzig, Germany
Andrew Benson-Wilson plays English music from c1690-1740 by Blow, Purcell, Croft and Handel on the famous 1723 Hildebrandt organ in the village of Störmthal.   Details (in German) here

Bach sat on this bench to play the opening recital  /Andrew Benson-Wilson

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