Posted by: James Nerstheimer October 29 French terrace consoles. - TopicsExpress

Posted by: James Nerstheimer October 29 French terrace consoles. What is the attraction other than appearance. It cant be convenience. Id take a stock Schlicker breadbox console with nice ivory boards and all the stops in front of me (such as one Chicago parish used to have), over a fancie FT with the knob faces NOT angled in and divisions divided left and right, any Sunday! Like · Share Manuel Rosales, Matt Gerhard and 6 others like this. John Lauter Any drawknob console is ergonomically backwards, except with todays modern multi-level combination action they work fine, as you rarely have to bring on or off large groups of stops by hand. October 29 at 9:17am · Like · 3 Joe Josephs Agree... October 29 at 9:42am · Like John Ourensma It does have a lot to do with the modern combination actions, I think. Although builders still prefer to layout the stops in logical fashion. The finer consoles of this style will have the knobs turn obliquely and each of them is clearly visible to the player and also within reach. And, also, from my experience at Dobson, the new generation drawknobs are so quiet compared to the Schlicker style or other electric action stop tab designs. But there is something to be said for having everything right in front of you. I played a large Holtkamp in Toledo for a while, and what I could do by hand amazed me. October 29 at 9:59am · Like · 2 Thomas Spacht I *think* the attraction originally was to make it possible to see over the console, especially in situations in a rear gallery in French cathedrals or large churches. Most American organs from the time of Hook, Steere & Turner, etc. had terraced drawknob keydesks, especially if attached directly to the organ case - or am I wrong? October 29 at 10:07am · Unlike · 6 Michael Visser If an organist has spent any considerable amount of time at a console, the locations of stops, and the ability to see them all is a mute point. Most of these organs also have multi-level combination actions that also make this a non-issue.. The ability to see over the console in most churches, the choir, and rest of the church far outweighs the ability of an organist to see what is where on the console... I like both designs personally... October 29 at 10:16am · Like · 2 David Schroth Jr. I like the newer low profile terraced drawknob consoles. Well proportioned, handsome, and very functional, especially with a sequencer. October 29 at 11:05am · Like · 1 John Ourensma Its still nice to see stops grouped logically so one can size the organ up more efficiently, set Pistons, whatever. I think the point of lower profile consoles is good, and likely has driven the FT style all along. October 29 at 11:12am · Unlike · 3 John Gouwens The low profile makes sense, and actually, having the knobs of a division in one horizontal row tends to suggest a more intuitive arrangement of stops than you ever can come up with for vertical columns of drawknobs. (By that I mean Flues in ascending pitch, all the 16s, then the 8s, etc/ up through Mixtures, then Reeds in ascending pitches, then Tremolos and couplers.) One can have a low profile with shorter vertical columns as well. Ive heard it said (actually, a comment by my former teacher Clyde Holloway) that rocker tabs (Schlicker, many medium to small Casavants, many smaller Mollers) tend to be easier when you are reaching for groups of stops, and knobs are easier to deal with when you are going for a single stop. Of course, either is assuming theres a good logic to how they are arranged! Casavants from the first couple of decades of the 20th Century often had terraced consoles, with the terraced jambs angled toward the player a bit, making everything easy to see and easy to reach. Theyve gone back to that in some of their larger organs. There is also an appeal, though, to having the console resemble the consoles Franck, Widor, and Vierne knew. That said, when you carry this a step further, with the curved, terraced console in amphitheatre arrangement, you get something that is very impractial - hard to get in and out of it, and its never the case that you have so many more stops on the division at the top tier than you would at the bottom tier, so inevitably, some divisions are scattered across more than one tier. (This is indeed the case at Saint-Sulpice, and was also the case at Notre-Dame.) It looks pretty, but its downright silly. Actually, I had a much older rant in here, long ago, in which I criticized the amphitheatre consoles. Ive played on a couple of Dobsons with straight terraced consoles, and will vouch for how well they are laid out. They were trackers, though, so there wasnt the profusion of special controls and couplers that you have to contend with on an organ like the one I play. (Or course, one can put a row of knobs above the top manual for all that, as they did in the Fisk-Rosales at Rice University (which is, I admit, a pretty comfortable execution of the amphitheatre type). October 29 at 11:39am · Like · 2 John Gouwens Years ago, Henry Willis III wrote a column for E.M. Skinners Stop, Open, and Reed magazine about his trip to the US. He commented on how many different layouts of console there were, and he asked Lynnwood Farnam (definitely Americas foremost recitalist at the time) if that bothered him. Farnams reply was, Not a bit, as long as they work. October 29 at 11:41am · Like · 6 John Gouwens Now in this example (Casavant), the tiers arent that long, so divisions are on more than one tier, and there are some gaps where the division doesnt fill a level. https://flickr/photos/pandora-no-hako/5022192182/ FLICKR.COM October 29 at 2:21pm · Like · Remove Preview David Schroth Jr. I have to say that the above console is mammoth. I have sat there many-a-time, and though Im sure they did the best they could, individual stops are impossible to pick out quickly. October 29 at 2:24pm · Like David Schroth Jr. I also heard Gerre Hancock play there, and he used the sequencer for everything except for a couple hand-pulls during his improvisation. October 29 at 2:25pm · Like John Lauter Give me a stop tablet console any day. In a horseshoe configuration. please. October 29 at 2:25pm · Like · 4 John Gouwens Granted, that console doesnt offer a low profile - at all! Another problem in that particular console (not that visible in the picture) is that the division labels on the stop jambs are tiny, and hard to read. It does, however, put all the stops in relatively easy reach - once you know where they are. I submit that when youre dealing with a 90-rank organ, any layout is going to take awhile to get to know. October 29 at 2:27pm · Like Thomas Spacht I would suspect with any organ this large one simply sets up the registrations and then uses the sequencer otherwise it would take far too much time. But I suppose there are always those who insist on kaleidescopic registration changes no matter what the literature and of course theyll never be satisfied with any system. I know one organist who when visiting a so-called historically informed organ complained that the stop names were on the organ case above the drawknobs (mechanical organ) despite the fact that said labels were larger and easier to read. Sometimes if its not what Im accustomed to, it must be wrong! haha. October 29 at 3:02pm · Like · 1 James Lally Be open minded!! Go and try organs with different layouts, designs etc. Learn the reasons for the instrument being built the way it is but do avoid being stuck in the mud. Then try and play an Arp Schnitger organ, that can be tricky but so rewarding. As I said at the start of this message, be open minded and enjoy the differences. November 20 at 10:59am · Like Roger Barton As mentioned elsewhere, there are differences between concert organs and those used to accompany a choir. This should apply to the console as well as to the scaling, planning, and voicing of the pipes. A church organs console should be low-profile for conducting from the console when the organist and director are the same person. For my money, the most convenient design has tightly slanted panels with EITHER drawknobs or tabs, to each side of the manuals, and as low a profile as possible. Its not all that visually striking, possibly, but its efficient and it works well in almost any arrangement. Direct eye contact is always better than a rear-view mirror, and a mirror is always better than guesswork (or a tiny CCTV screen, which works out to the same thing in most cases). November 22 at 7:57am · Edited · Like · 1 John Gouwens As for the comment about lettering above the knobs on some Wooden Shoe Organ, I understand the appeal of having the console look like the antique, but most often, that labeling is also in a fancy script, and its still not as easy to spot as lettering directly on the knobs. Also, in many of those organs, it isnt at all clear which stops belong to which division. A console like that isnt designed with practicality in mind at all. Of course, I have other rants here (in the filessection) about Rip van Winkel organs that pretend organ technology hasnt improved since 1700 or so. You want it to look like a Schnitger or a Cavaille-Col console? Great, but if you arent restoring a historic organ, theres no excuse for not offering a combination action, grouping the knobs clearly by division, and labeling everything clearly (even if its in a fancy style). . November 22 at 8:06am · Like · 3 Roger Barton for any practical performance venue, I concur heartily. For a historic replica for educational purposes, there can be a benefit from building exactly to the period (including the bellows, the short-octave manuals, and the pedal compass). November 22 at 8:09am · Like John Gouwens My concern about training organists at schools where the main concert instrument is a Rip van Winkel organ is that it can foster an obsession on the part of the organ students, who may later be motivated to persuade their church to order such an organ as the sole instrument. On the other hand, the nearest university program like that (Notre Dame). The students often have to go to other venues to do contest recordings and such, since the (admittedly excellent) Wooden Shoe organ in their concert hall is seriously limited for music written any later than, say, 1830. They are just ordering a larger Fritts for the church on campus. Lets hope that one is designed to handle broader range of repertoire - more like the Columbus, Ohio Fritts (which is a truly wonderful organ). November 22 at 8:15am · Like · 2 Roger Barton true, the main instument should be able to accommodate all styles reasonably well. November 22 at 8:23am · Like · 1 John Gouwens As an example of the problem I refer to above, take the case of St. Marks Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids. Their organist was obsessed with getting a strict French Classic organ, complete with the toes-only pedalboard, Rip van Winkel all the way, put up in the back balcony of an acoustically dead church. They kept the old organ up front for the choir accompaniment and for much else, with the organist parading up to the balcony for the organ voluntaries. That organ was soon recognized for the white elephant it is, and was removed. (It is now in a university setting - see my concern above about that.) Eventually, St. Marks put an eclectic J.W. Walker tracker up front, with pistons, swell boxes, and the like, but what a pile of money they blew on that one organists indulgence! Taking another example, the same builder built an organ for an Episcopal cathedral in Kentucky that was supposedly built in Cavaille-Coll style. That would be perhaps capable of a broader range of music, but it was fitted with a hitch-down Swell pedal, mechanical stop action, and was apparently not an effective rendition of the style, tonally. That organ was sold off and replaced by something far less exotic, but ultimately much more practical. That organ was sold to another church, and within very few years, that church in turn sold it to another church. Really a sad mess! November 22 at 8:31am · Like · 3 Roger Barton Must be nice to have money. We have to do two more major fundraising efforts just to finish the prepared stops for our Reuter. Itll be nice, and very versatile, when complete... but for now its a 12-rank unit with a brand-new 3-manual console. November 22 at 8:34am · Like · 1 John Gouwens It certainly is possible to build an organ that caters to one niche style well, but to include enough features and enough variety so that it will do a whole lot more well. Im no friend of the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none style of organbuilding, which tends to produce uniform mediocrity in all repertoire. It is, admittedly, hard to make an extra-versatile small organ in a niche style unless its pretty large, of course. The organ at St. Josephs Cathedral in Columbus, OH is a Fritts that favors North German style, and does that to a T, but it also includes some French-friendly chorus and solo reeds, a couple of celestes, and even en chamade trumpets (which, fortunately, are still within the case, not the tromba erectus you so often see). Sure, it will have an unusual accent when you play Franck or Sowerby, but it is so elegant and musical that it will still make great music. The same may be said of the Fisk-Rosales at Rice University, which is designed to emulate a Cavaille-Coll with additional French classic elements. It features full-compass keyboards, two enclosed divisions (which, by the way, are called for in some Widor, and surprisingly often in Tournemire). Both organs sport modern combination actions, the Rice instrument being especially versatile. It is, though, possible to adapt a smaller organ design to serve a variety or repertoire. That would perhaps be better put in a separate discussion. (I think Ill start one!) November 22 at 8:39am · Like Stephen Morris As much as I love historic organ design and really like the look of the nicely calligraphic labels above beautifully turned stop knobs - that is a pain in the you-know-what if you dont really know the instrument November 22 at 7:19pm · Unlike · 2 John Gouwens Im waiting for someone to build a Spanish-style organ with the pitch designations stated in hands, as is the case with the Cavaille-Coll organs in the Basque region of Spain (Azpeitia, Azkoitia, San Sebastien). November 22 at 7:54pm · Like · 1 Stephen Morris Surely some pinhead has done this... November 23 at 12:42am · Unlike · 2 John Gouwens Odds are. Bill Elliott, ,maybe? November 24 at 1:19am · Edited · Like Stephen Morris There was a short-lived music director at an Episcopal Church of my acquaintance who had plans to replace the organ (which desperately needs to be done) and felt it was important to include an Orlos. That would be important for all the Howells works that call for the Orlos. November 23 at 12:50am · Unlike · 1 John Gouwens I take it that sort of thinking was typical of his logic, and led to a swift demise at that church? November 23 at 12:53am · Like Stephen Morris That actually was one of his saner moments. November 23 at 12:55am · Like · 1 Stephen Morris They now have a fine choral person and a fine organ person in place and have plans to replace the current dismal instrument with something appropriate. November 23 at 12:55am · Like · 1 James R. McCarty I am familiar with the Grand Rapids instrument, now residing in an auditorium at the University of North Texas. It is a magnificent instrument for its purpose--I heard Davitt Moroney play a concert of Louis Couperin on it--but unfortunately, it still is in a dead room with an air conditioning system loud enough to wake the dead, so its light is somewhat under a bushel. It is, appropriately, not the primary teaching organ at the University, but I think it is a good thing for students to be exposed to it. I also think organ and piano students should have to take harpsichord lessons, but thats another thread. December 7 at 8:50pm · Like Stephen Morris I can confirm everything James R. McCarty said. I will go farther and say that ALL keyboard majors should be conversant with the other keyboard instruments. December 7 at 9:34pm · Like · 2 Roger Barton Stephen, in that you are in full agreement with Dr. Gleason and many other great educators (past, if not necessarily present)... not to mention CPE Bach himself. December 8 at 8:29am · Like David Schroth Jr. I get my chest designs from the PDQ Bach manuscript. December 8 at 8:31am · Like Roger Barton In the infamous 70s, in fact, that was a requirement at San Francisco Conservatory, which is one of the many things that convinced me to go there instead of one of the big-name schools. Id already had it up to here with organists who couldnt play piano and didnt even know the basic literature. December 8 at 8:32am · Like · 1