I wish I’d met Ralph Downes. His autobographical book Baroque Tricks, subtitled Adventures with the Organ Builders, is difficult to get hold of now* but gives a vivid impression of the man, and his battles with the organ establishment of the 30s and 40s.  Much of the book is taken up with his account of the design and build of the Royal Festival Hall Organ at the Southbank in London, and we will hear the organ tonight in the (sell-out) Inaugural Concert after its extensive rebuild.

Downes’ key gripe against the English organ of the time was that it was not balanced.  With strident trebles, an indistinct tenor and muffled ponderous bass, the performance of a Bach fugue with the normal registration of the time (including the use of Great to Pedal Coupler) resulted in a “loud soprano melody with occasional bursts of alto and various mumblings below.”   The use of octave couplers on reeds and mixtures was deemed sufficiently ‘flashy’ treatment to do justice to the French style, and full Great plus Tuba was distinguished mainly by bulk or even sheer din – the lack of vitality compensated for by high wind pressures – and so “only loud and rather vulgar in actual effect” according to Downes.

His visit to the Cavaille-Coll at Notre Dame de France in Leicester Square London in 1937 was a revelation.  He comments on the “warm but clear, plump, easy speech” of the basses, compared with the sluggish “throttled” sound of English reeds of the time.  He tinkered with the organs at the Brompton Oratory (where he was Organist from 1936-77) and Buckfast Abbey, dropping wind pressures, and removing weights on reed tongues, but didn’t have a chance to implement his theories of voicing and winding properly until 1948, when he was invited to be the consultant for the design of an organ for the new concert hall to be built on the South Bank of the Thames – target date the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Initial design was for an organ banished by the Acoustics team into the roof space over the orchestra – happily the Executive Architect at County Hall, Edwin Williams, suggested that the organ be totally visible and accepted as a decorative feature of the hall.

A long series of vacillations followed regarding the organ specification, not helped by the sudden appearance of a large orchestral canopy.   Even the finished width of the opening into the organ recess was an issue that remained unresolved until 1952. Numerous sketches went backwards and forwards – the Hall’s interior designers didn’t like the “gothic” appearance of all the pipes on show – each change of  aesthetic appearance necessitating a rethink of the organ specification by Downes.

The reactions of the organ building firms asked to tender varied from “enthusiastic desire to co-operate, courteously amused incredulity, and severely admonitory correction”.  Harrison & Harrison were chosen (the most expensive) “not because I liked their recently built organs” said Downes “neither did I foresee they would easily adapt to my tonal conception – I know they would not” but because he had “observed their execution of trivial detail (which nobody but the tuner would ever see) in a manner that plainly spelt Perfectionism, no less”.  Downes’ confidence in Harrison’s as builders for this project was upheld – in the end, he said,  “everything in the new organ was an exemplary model of proud craftsmanship.”

By 1949 the stop list was still conceived largely in a vacuum, since no decision had emerged as to the organ’s front design.   A total grille was even being mooted, so the organ could be constructed on “normal good organ-building lines” behind it.  Luckily the Leader of the Council, Isaac Hayward, was incensed and indignantly remarked “We are paying for all these expensive pipes and we want to see them as a decorative feature of the Hall.”  (The symbolic frontispiece of dummy pipes that then appeared in front of the organ, although approved of by Downes, has been removed in the modern rebuild.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who found it rather twee and unsatisfactory.)  (Update 18 March: They changed their minds! See my next post.)

The first acoustic tests appalled Downes.  The hall had no perceptive ambience whatsoever.  A trial orchestral concert by students from the Guildhall School of Music was “dire” – timpany sounding like biscuit tins – though some of the natural reverberation of the hall was recovered by filling up cavities and removal of absorbents.   Downes glumly concluded that “at its best, dryness would have to remain a characteristic of the hall’s acoustic properties.”

Downes supervised the tuning, insisting on his own methods being used – it was a struggle as the results at first were “like a direct hit by an aerial bomb on a large farmyard” at his own confession.  No one actually said “I told you so” but he knew it was not far off.  He persevered – and gradually the organ sound came together –  but he always found it dispiriting that the “lovely full resonant tones of the pipes” as they were voiced in the reverberant lobby were “transformed into thin astringency” when restored to the hall’s ambience.

On all the controversy and comment that has followed the Royal Festival Hall organ down the years, Downes said that much of people’s criticism was based on prejudice, and I’m sure there’s a strong element of truth there.   He insisted that the Royal Festival Hall organ was not intended by him to set a new fashion – it was a one-off, and he is generous in his praise of everyone involved in a unique project.   He did set a new fashion though, kicking off the Organ Reform Movement of the second half of the twentieth century.

And what has the rebuild done for both the hall and the organ?  We shall see this evening.

My favourite picture, from the back of his book – Downes holds forth about some aspect of tuning, while Harrison’s tuner at the time barely contains his exasperation.

*I’ve quoted Downes here from the book, which is out of print, but occasionally pops up on the secondhand book listings on the Internet.   I borrowed my copy from the RCO library.  The details are:

Baroque Tricks
Adventures with the Organ Builders
Ralph Downes
Positif Press 1999 (first published 1983)
ISBN 0906894263

Update 19 March 2014:  The book is not listed on Amazon, but I noticed Foyles bookshop were selling (new) copies on a stand in the foyer of the Festival Hall at the Gala last night, so perhaps there’s been a welcome reprint.

You can read Downes obituary from The Independent newspaper of January 1994 here

The Southbank’s PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS Festival celebrating the organ rebuild continues until June 2014.

The Royal Festival Hall Organ – one week on

The RFH organ restoration – time for the 32 foot pipes

The RFH organ restoration – last pipe delivered by bicycle

A 50s revival – the London Royal Festival Hall organ

The post Ralph Downes and the Royal Festival Hall organ appeared first on The Lady Organist.

I am sure no readers of this blog would stoop so low, so here’s a listing of forums which may be of interest.

*Information from Judith Barger’s book, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth Century England.  Needless to say, some of the sniping was at Lady Organists.

The post Some forums for organists appeared first on The Lady Organist.

The listing is part of the RSCM’s Sunday by Sunday worship planner.  Most of the music can be ordered through RSCM Music Direct.

Download the listing from their website, or at the link below:

listing copyright of the RSCM

Further manuals-only repertoire here:

• Manuals-only repertoire 2
• Manuals-only repertoire

The post More manuals-only repertoire – from the Royal School of Church Music appeared first on The Lady Organist.

NB This code of practice refers to UK law

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The post Music copyright from the Music Publishers Association appeared first on The Lady Organist.

And here’s more detail of the lawsuit and the evidence stacked against Warner/Chappell, from BoingBoing.net

The post Happy Birthday to You appeared first on The Lady Organist.

* ie no longer protected by copyright and can be freely distributed.

The post Copyright made simple appeared first on The Lady Organist.

There’s another page of pedals-only in production, just as soon as I’ve sorted out all the links.

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Something more dramatic for the feet

Joyce Jones – queen of the pedals

The post Focus on feet…pedals-only repertoire appeared first on The Lady Organist.

Here’s an example of conventional notation:

And here’s the same piece of music  in Hummingbird:

Here’s the notation in essence:

And here’s a video, courtesy of Blake and Mike, which explains it in more detail.

Hummingbird Music Notation Intro from Blake West on Vimeo.

The Hummingbird website has more, and you can download example songs for free.  They’re building open-source software at the moment so you can translate music XML files into Hummingbird sheet music, and if you’re a music teacher, they are happy to translate specific songs into Hummingbird if it helps.

I don’t teach children myself, but I would be very interested in the comments of teachers out there who do.  What do you think?

The post Hummingbird – a fresh take on music notation appeared first on The Lady Organist.

Sight-Read the Pedals!
Richard Ellis
Published by atticbooks January 2013
Price £9.95 (to be confirmed) including postage.  Discounts to teachers for multiple copies
Will be in stock by major mail-order music shops in due course – in the meantime contact publisher Mark Ellis direct: atticbooks@ntlworld.com

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Sight-reading resources

The post Sight read the pedals appeared first on The Lady Organist.

Carey Beebe – Australian harpsichord maker, restorer and maintainer      /pic Ron Jones

Carey Beebe is a globe-trotting harpsichord maker, based in Sydney Australia, and I recommend his website to organists if they really, really want to get to grips with tuning and temperaments.   He explains the Pythagorean comma before launching into a discussion of no fewer than 18 different temperaments, with instructions of how to tune each one.

So now I understand Pythagorean, Kirnberger and Werckmeister and Valotti – the latter a popular temperament for late Baroque and early Classical ensemble music apparently, though considered a little down-market by some musicians because of its all-purpose nature.   Temperament snobbery isn’t new –  Johann Georg Neidhardt, a early 18th century German temperament freak, went so far as to name which were suitable for a village, a small city, a large city, or the Court itself (the latter apparently favouring Equal Temperament).

The link to the temperaments FAQ and more on Carey Beebe’s website is here.

On the way, you might get diverted by the Mould Gallery (very worrying pictures for instrument owners in the tropics), or his Klop continuo organ for hire complete with its own wooden flight case.

You can follow Carey Beebe on Twitter as he sets off on his international maintenance tours – next up is one of his regular trips around Asia/Pacific coast.  CBH Carey Beebe @hpschdnu

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The post The low-down on temperaments from Carey Beebe appeared first on The Lady Organist.