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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You can follow Calgary Philharmonic on Twitter, which is where they posted these pictures @CalgaryPhil

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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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Me and a pony called Friday – on a freezing Welsh moor in April

Stable Girls are expected to turn out morning and evening, in all weathers, to perform repetitive tasks for dismal amounts of money – sounds familiar?

This winter I’ve discovered a whole untapped aspect of my wardrobe, perfect for winter organ playing – my horse-riding gear. I’m not talking boots, bits and bridles here*  but the sort of clothing that riders throw on every morning before they stump down to the stables for another round of mucking out and dressage practice.

So girls, visit your local Tack Store rather than the High Street for warm, practical, and inexpensive clothes for playing in.   The gilets and padded waistcoats are particularly good, as are the fleeces designed to keep your neck nice and warm along with the rest of you, and thermal trousers and undergarments for that desperate sub-zero church practice slot.

I have a black quilted gilet from Shires which I think is very smart – more Star Trek than Stable Girl actually.  I am slightly tempted even to play in my sticky-bum jodphurs (designed to keep you in the saddle, and possibly also from sliding off the organ bench?) but I think that’s probably going too far.

Colourwise, you’ll probably want to steer clear of the sea of bubble gum pink aimed at the younger rider – too garish even for the third Sunday in Advent.  You’ll find most grown-up Stable Girl Style clothes are in sober colours (to cope with mud, and what are euphemistically called stable stains) and wash like a dream (same reason).

Also check carefully for inappropriate slogans  – playing next Sunday with “Frisky Filly” in large letters across your back might send the wrong message to elderly male members of the congregation.

*Sorry about that.  I have noticed that some non-riders’ eyes light up at the mere mention of horsey gear, thinking that the riding fraternity always have something kinky going on.  And if you don’t believe me, try leaving a pair of  riding boots and a training whip in the back of your car, and clock the reaction of the next guy who helps you load your purchases from the DIY store or wherever.

What the well-dressed lady organist is wearing this winter

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Theophania Cecil (1782-1879) – opening page of Voluntary 1

Great importance is attached to the fact that both Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams played regularly on the Thaxted Lincoln organ, and this was one of the selling points for its recent restoration.   All very worthy of course, but the organ’s significance for me is that it was originally the instrument of Theophania Cecil, in the early 19th century, when it was installed at St John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, in London.

It was Christopher Kent who first drew my attention to Theophania Cecil – he thought I would be interested in another Lady Organist, and he mentioned a set of voluntaries by her that he once found in a pile of music heading for the bin.   Enquiries revealed these existed in the Royal College of Organists library – not only that, but the RCO were planning to digitise her Twelve Voluntaries for Organ, from 1810, and make them available on their website, as part of a new project to make the library’s contents more available.

The voluntaries are classical in style, and Cecil makes full use of pedals and the available stops.  Very appropriately, Anne Page played Cecil’s Voluntary 12 as part of the dedication recital on the restored Thaxted organ a few days ago.  Some of the chromatic complexities of this piece certainly tested the Sixth Comma Meantone tuning* – interesting, as this was suggested by restorers Goetze & Gwynn as the original temperament of the organ in Cecil’s day.

RCO members can download the full set of Cecil Voluntaries here, free of charge.  (Non-RCO members can download Voluntary 1.)  Both non-members and members can also download an excellent preface to Theophania Cecil and the Voluntaries, summarising her life, in as much as we know it.   Cecil is revealed as being not pleased with the Lincoln organ, or its maker – but this seems to be because she didn’t get a backhander out of the purchase money.  For shame, Theophania! – but perhaps this little custom was fairly standard practice at the time.

*also known as Silberman

Anne Page plays the Thaxted Lincoln organ for the dedication recital on 25 September 2014, after its restoration

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Getting ready for an organ lesson – over the internet

Organ lessons can sometimes be like doctor’s appointments – you have your allotted time, and leave with half a dozen questions still hanging in your head.  When Neil Cockburn, Head of Organ Studies at Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, Canada, offered an experiment with distance learning to students at the RCO Summer Course in August, I thought it was fun in principle, and wanted to try it.  What I didn’t expect to find was that as a learning method, it had advantages over an ordinary organ lesson.  I had time to shape my questions, and think through exactly what I wanted to know.  There was less pressure.   And at the end I had a permanent record of Neil’s advice to refer to, like a personal YouTube Channel, rather than trying to remember exactly what my teacher said from a few scrawled notes.

Neil is looking to offer teaching from Calgary to more students – as he says “You may have a specific question about registration or another feature of your own instrument, and your teacher can’t make the journey to advise in person – or teachers may be unavailable where you live.  We have all these wonderful resources here in Calgary – but are a long way from everyone.  Learning via the internet is the obvious answer.   At the moment we are trouble-shooting the technology and testing the ideas – eventually we would like to offer two-way distance learning, at the organ.”

The process is in theory simple – you record yourself playing.  You send the recording to your teacher, along perhaps with scans of the relevant bars of music.  Then you have a video conference at a mutually suitable time to discuss it.  Your teacher then can email instructions and videos back.

 We are on the brink of technology that will let you get a link from anywhere. So if you are 4000 miles apart, it no longer matters.

Of course, persuading the technology to do what you have in mind can be a bit of a digital wrestling match, first time round, and you have have to stay cheerful about this*.   I made a test recording first off**, and sent it to Neil, to make sure the iPad was going to work as a recording device.   He was happy with both sound and vision, and here’s my lesson video for real – a few bars of Matthew Locke’s Voluntary in A from Melothesia, one of the ARCO set pieces.  I wanted Neil’s advice on the ornaments, and the outbursts of  of demi-semi quavers from bar 34 onwards (like how do you make them secure for an exam?)

When we had our conference call it was 10.30pm in the UK, and 3pm in Calgary, but it was as if the miles didn’t exist.   Neil had recorded some videos to help me with the scale passages – here’s one:

video © Neil Cockburn/Mount Royal University Conservatory

Possibly the best bit for me was solving the vexing issue of the final cadence in the Locke – which in the Faber edition is bizarre and ambiguous.  A few clicks at either end of our conversation and we both had a facsimile of the original manuscript on our screens, courtesy of a link Neil sent me from Petrucci Music Library.  With his help I translated the 17th century original…as a straightforward 4-3 suspension, of course!   A neat bit of scholarship, accomplished in seconds, even though teacher and pupil were 4000 miles apart.

If you would like to know more about this project, you can contact Neil at ncockburn@mtroyal.ca.

Ultimately he is suggesting that distance learning on these lines would cost about the same as a lesson in person – say 90 minutes (taking into account the background work) at the usual hourly teaching rate.

*What I used:  The filming was the most straightforward part.  Smart phones and tablets are good at making the most of interior lighting, even in organ lofts.  I recorded myself on my iPad, propped on hymn books on the edge of the organ balcony.  With more time you could probably devise something better: stands and tripod mounts for tablets are available – though this is another expense for a student, and something else to cart around along with shoes, music, and other organist clobber.  A digital camera would be just fine of course, and Neil suggests a laptop lid with built-in camera would also be good option. 

Neil and I set up a shared Dropbox folder to exchange the videos.  I wanted to see if I could do the whole process just using a mobile device,  but trying to upload the videos to Dropbox at the church over 3G was an expensive use of data and very slow (a wireless connection in a church is kind of rare in the UK)  so I had to wait until I got home to a decent broadband connection. 

We had our conference using Facetime as we both had Mac devices, but Skype would have worked just as well.  Email, of course, kept the ball rolling, especially as a secondary communication channel during our video conference.

** NB Girls, check your camera angles.  If you wear a skirt, and are in the habit of nonchalantly kicking your heels up over the organ bench to dismount, don’t do it towards the lens.   Not a good look.

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Five questions for…Neil Cockburn

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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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Daniel Moult

I’ve attended some memorable workshops given by Dan Moult.  He is excellent on practice and performance psychology, and I now try and stick to his insistence on total discipline right from the start of learning a piece – because his own playing is so wonderfully virtuosic and convincing.   Born in Manchester, he studied at Oxford (gaining his Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists with three of the top playing prizes, plus the joint award of the University’s John Betts Organ Scholarship ,while he was there).  Among his subsequent posts he spend seven years as Organist and Assistant Director of Coventry Cathedral, and five years as the Artistic Director of the London Organ Day.   He is much sought after as an educator: publishing several music editions for students, and writing frequently in the music press.  As a concert artist he performs around the world, and has many recordings to his credit – visit his website for lots more details and clips of Daniel in performance.

Dan’s next London recital is on 29th November 2014 at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.   Full details below – in the meantime here are his answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?

I’m learning two new, lighter pieces as “fillers” for some 2015/16 concerts – Harold Britton’s variations on I’ve got rhythm and Ad Wammes’ Toccata chromatica.  I’ll soon start to learn the formidable toccata by Patrick Gowers, as well as resurrect some of my core concert pieces for upcoming events.

What has been your best experience as an organist?

That’s very difficult indeed! A recent very enjoyable experience – and perhaps the strangest, too – was to get an invite to play in the town of Moult! After checking that the email invitation was not a friend’s practical joke, I went to give a concert on a beautifully restored small eighteenth century French organ. They even laid on a reception in the town hall afterwards, with some delicious local calvados!

What has been your worst experience as an organist?

Again, there’s a lot of competition for this one! I think it was probably a lightning strike during the organ voluntary of a live Radio 3 choral evensong a few years’ back. The blowers were not affected, but the sequencer reset itself (going back to zero). I had a few minutes of extreme stress trying to work out how to get back to my carefully laid plans, whilst being conscious of the red light in the console mirror… Horrific!

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher? (and who was it?)

I’m so grateful to all my organ teachers, all of whom offered wonderful advice and insights at different stages of my progress. Perhaps the best was offered both by Jacques van Oortmerssen and Gordon Stewart – speeding something up really is the easy bit (for the most part): truly perfecting something at very slow practice speeds is where success lies.

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?

Further to Jacques and Gordon’s advice, I might add that when you practice slowly, it’s not just about achieving right notes: you must be constantly reviewing your physical and mental relaxation, too. I would also urge student organists to keep an open mind musically, at all times!

Daniel’s next London recital:

BLOOMSBURY CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH,  235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2 8EP
SATURDAY, 29th NOVEMBER at 4:00pm

Programme:

J.S. BACH (1685-1750)
Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C (BWV 564)

CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS (1835-1921)
Benediction Nuptionale

JULIUS REUBKE (1834-1858)
Sonata on the 94th Psalm

CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS (arr. Guilmant)
Le Cygne

AD WAMMES (b.1953)
Toccata Chromatica

IAN FARRINGTON (b. 1977)
Live Wire

Admission free – retiring collection.   Organ concerts at Bloomsbury are always followed by an excellent buffet afterwards.

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A Big Name at Bloomsbury Central

The art of concentration with Daniel Moult

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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

The post Living the dream – a Father Willis in the garden shed appeared first on The Lady Organist.

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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