[LAU] And even more organ music

[Jonathan Gazeley]

On 27/12/10 14:04, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>> But I found if you couple them - only tried it once for
>> >  fun -, that the respective keys on the manual get depressed as well as
>> >  the pedal.
> that's how most if not all mechanical couplers work, same for
> manual-to-manual couplers (which can be quite straining to play).

Agreed. The organ I learnt on is a 1908 English model, with two manuals 
and around 20 stops. With all stops, great- coupler, swell-great 
coupler, and swell-great octave coupler engaged, it was almost too stiff 
to play a large chord. By the end of a hymn, my forearms would be burning.

A quick calculation shows that a large final chord might engage over 200 
pipes.

The organ was fully mechanical, with the keys pulling strings that 
flowed over a series of pulleys to work the valves that opened the 
pipes. This action was supposed to be balanced with counterweights to 
make it light, but the weights hadn't been adjusted for a long time. The 
age of the organ meant that the strings, pulleys and wooden joints were 
stiffer than they once were, so the action of the keys was very heavy. 
Playing hymns was hard, playing fast scales in Bach was much harder.

Many of the air pipes in the organ were made of leather, which also 
began to split with age. Some of the reeds on reeded stops cracked, so 
the clarinet and oboe stops would buzz instead of speaking normally.

Unfortunately, in 2008 the church was faced with a 
multi-hundred-thousand-pound overhaul bill for the organ. They didn't 
have much money and decided to donate the organ to a church in France 
after 100 years of use, and raised a much lower sum to cover the cost of 
a digital organ. It's a nice digital organ and it sounds quite 
realistic, not to mention being much more reliable. It's perfectly 
acceptable for church use, and has many more stops, but it's not the 
same as a real antique instrument.

I realise this is all a bit OT for a Linux mailing list but maybe 
somebody will find it interesting :)

Cheers,
Jonathan

-- 
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Jonathan Gazeley
Systems Support Specialist
ResNet | Wireless & VPN Team
Information Services
University of Bristol
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