Organ mattters - Organs matter!

Organs needing an immediate rescue!

A place to raise a "heads up" on any instrument that is not being used, is in a derelict building or one being demolished, or at risk of ill advised modification or replacement

Do you want an organ? A house organ? Or an instrument for a Church or Concert Hall? Do you want a pipe organ? If so, posting what you're looking for could inspire people to come forward with available instruments that need rescue or organ builders with inspired suggestions. Do you want an electronic? Someone might have just the electronic you're looking for or one that you might modify just using the console. Do you want to replace a pipe organ by an electronic? Then if you are brave enough to post here, someone might come forward with a way to rescue your pipe organ for you or elsewhere, persuade you that it's going to be ever so much temporary fun or that you're making a big mistake . . . but in any event it will enable proper debate among informed and knowledgable people who can give helpful advice and possibly avoid your church being clocked up by the electronic manufacturers' trophy hunter webpages listing pipe organs that they have succeeded in killing.

Restoration: ideas, techniques and principles - restoration vs conservation - do building conservation principles apply, that any work should preserve the integrity of the original instrument and any new work should be identifiable, not confusable with the old?

Choosing the right stops can be a challenge and there are always confusing alternatives. Different instruments of different eras require different approaches.

Please post details of any exciting organ courses coming up . . .

What is the most inspirational instrument you know of?

At the root of organ building, Dom Bedos' text set the scene for two of the most exciting instruments ever built. Returning to Albi and St Maximin can influence how we play, and how we build new instruments to give maximum inspiration and enjoyment

As one listens more to Bach and earlier in Unequal Temperament one gets bored of equal temperament. In Equal Temperament musicians have to work in expression that is built into the key and the music in Unequal Temperament. What repertoire is excluded by specifying unequal temperaments for pipe organs? Users of Hauptwerk can contribute significantly with experimentation and others with temperament enabled instruments, please let others know the results of your experiments. Temperament can make classical music more interesting.

Harpsichords have always been an option for organ practice at home. Easy to tune, they can be an experimental breadboard to try the effects of temperament as well as getting into the spirit of the Baroque. Sometimes with the Claviorganum, an organ was incorporated . . . truly divine.

The nuts and bolts . . . construction and design

New Organs being built and inaugurations

Exciting organ recitals coming up . . . Do look at http://www.organrecitals.com as well . . . Are you giving a concert? Tell us about it here - why you love the programme you're doing and why you have chosen to do it on a particular instrument . . .

Exciting organ recitals coming up by young musicians under the age of 25 . . . Are you giving a concert? Tell us about it here - why you love the programme you're doing and why you have chosen to do it on a particular instrument . . .

From home made to respected pipe organ builders, house organs are an important genre and enable organists to practice and, in some cases, to perform at home such as the example formerly at Glyndebourne. Often home made instruments are the subject of experimentation and this can often be extremely interesting. Should house organs always be small or can they strive to being grand? Can small organs be made to be more interesting or versatile? Purely electronic instruments are not to be covered here as there is a specific category for them.

From toasters to Hauptwerk - electronic organs serve their purpose for practice at home and occasionally doing a turn temporarily in a bigger place. There are two golden rules of electronics organs, as with all consumer items - one's own instrument is always the best, until a better model comes out, and everyone else's toy is a crass mere reproduction of the real thing . . . except when one finds something that's really amazing! This is a good place for EOCS members http://www.eocs.org.uk to keep in touch

The EOCS is a great meeting place for people building instruments from Hauptwerk or other digital or analogue technologies for use at home or larger venues, or adding pipes to electronics. EOCS members are often involved in pipe organ building and restoration projects and major pipe organ electronic control systems have been designed with EOCS member expertise.

Wurlitzer, Christie, Compton, Gavioli - names evocative of a bygone age of light music and great jollity. Hope-Jones and brilliant perverse genius.

The unsung heroes of the organ world, loved by Liszt and providing opportunities for organ practice at home before the days of electronics as well as doing a turn in smaller chapels and churches. French instruments differ from English instruments and American Organs and some instruments with two manuals and pedals are far removed from folding portable instruments that presumably arrived with missions in India and which have become a mainstay of indigenous Indian idiom.

Many instruments are hampered by bad acoustics, short reverberation times and carpeted spaces. Can they be improved, naturally and or electronically? Meanwhile instrument cases have their own acoustics and speak into their spaces in different ways . . .

Miscellaneous & Suggestions

If you make a posting which gives a link to a site about an organ or organ builder please can you duplicate the link here as a central resource?

Organs tend to be in religious places . . . and so atheists tend not to like organs at all . . . and after all it's quite appropriate to reject the idea of god as a big daddy sitting on a cloud. Sadly many people never get beyond that rejection . . . so this section is for atheists to see if the concept of god really should be rejected.