« Rambling round the houses .... | Main | A timely warning? »

January 31, 2004

More musical musings ....

In this day and age when more and more churches struggle with the argument of organ versus guitars, many have difficulty finding an organist. Equally many fine organs are slowly falling apart because there is not the money to restore them. The photo is of Tewkesbury Abbey's "spare" organ. This is the Grove Organ, built for the Great Exhibition in 1880 and subsequently bought by a wealthy benefactor who gave it to the Abbey.

Those who have read Pratchett's Men at Arms and are familiar with the description of the Unseen University's organ in the Great Hall, could probably recognise the inspiration if they heard this instrument played at full voice. It lacks the Vox Dei and Vox Diablo stops as also the Assorted Farmyard Noises stop, but its got just about everything else! The largest pipes are just visible in the photo right at the back and on the right. The Verger's refer to these as the Earthquake and Thunder pipes - 32 foot Diapason for the cogniscenti!

Dscf0016.jpg
Click on image for larger picture

It is quite a beast and our organist loves to play it, but lately it has been unwell. The problem is that it was very innovative when built originally - it uses a combination of mechanical and pneumatic linkages to operate the valves for the pipes (some 4,000 plus of them) and it is very difficult to maintain. It had a partial rebuild in 1981 (pipe organs need to be rebuilt about every 100 years or so if properly maintained!) but this was done on what they call "conservation" lines. In other words nothing that did not need to be replaced at the time was replaced. Some bits weren't even touched because to reach them would have required a major dismantling and then reconstruction.

The conservationists insisted then (and are insisting now!) that it must remain exactly "as built" and refuse to acknowledge that there needs to be some rather radical surgery to replace pneumatic piping that is crumbling and even some of the valves need to be rebuilt. It is still playable - but only just! This is, of course, where conservation often falls down badly. If something is not usable in the state it has reached, people stop using it. This in turn leads to further decay and by the time someone actually makes a decision to save it - its too late.

With the Grove the problem is compounded by the fact that a conservation rebuild could cost in the region of £1 million, but this is after all, only a parish church and we simply do not have that kind of cash! Not for a spare organ anyway.

That said, there is no intention to simply let this go. Efforts are being made to find a way to restore the organ and put it back into concert use so that Carleton and Ben, our organists can once more startle and amaze audiences and congregations alike with the magnificence and brilliance of this wonderful organs range and sound.

Posted by The Gray Monk at January 31, 2004 05:52 PM

Comments

Conservationists are a blot on ALL landscapes, regardless of topic !!

Posted by: MommaBear at January 31, 2004 11:37 PM

I agree - the gap between conserving something and trying to turn it into an unusable timecapsule is very narrow indeed.

Posted by: The Gray Monk at February 1, 2004 05:55 PM