Page 44 - BBC Music (January 2020)

Tall storeys:
Coventry’s organ
Great sounds
Six vital English organs
The Wetheringsett Organ
(Goetze & Gwynn, 2001)
This fascinating
reconstruction (see main
feature) tours around the
UK and is a window onto
the Tudor soundworld.
Adlington Hall, Cheshire
(Anon, c1680)
Played by Handel, this
instrument is as close
as we can get to a post-
Restoration experience for
the music of Purcell and
his generation.
Christ Church, Spitalfields,
London (Bridge, 1735)
This impressive, elegant
organ, restored in 2015 by
William Drake, epitomises
the 18th century. Ideal for
Handel and Stanley.
Truro Cathedral (Willis, 1887)
From a seemingly different
musical universe, the
confidence and engineering
prowess of the 19th
century is abundantly clear
in this excellent organ.
The Caird Hall, Dundee
(Harrison & Harrison, 1923)
Instruments reached their
apogee in the 19th-century
orchestral style of organ,
such as the fine example
in this imposing city hall.
Coventry Cathedral
(Harrison & Harrison, 1962)
Coventry Cathedral’s
acclaimed organ is the
musical godfather of post-
war British organ design.
46 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Golden tones:
the 1855 Henry
Willis in Liverpool’s
St George’s Hall
Englishness influenced by the French fashions
of court life. Inevitably perhaps, with different
musical expectations, pitch standards and the
like, earlier 16th-century organs were neglected
and replaced with something more fashionable.
The 18th century saw a move to a more refined
and understated tone, along with an extra
dynamic flexibility in small ‘swell’ divisions,
but essentially the English organ did not notably
change in its conception and basic elements
until the 1840s. Hints of what were to come can
be found in the fine 1829 Bishop organ of St
James’s, Bermondsey, London (then the largest
church organ in England): there are some aids to
changing the stops while playing, a broadening
of the tonal palette and a slight loudening of
the sound. And its pedals – viewed with either
disinterest or suspicion by many of the English
organ fraternity of the time – were duplicated by
an extra manual at the side, allowing for a second
player to perform the pedal line.
But why? The discovery of JS Bach’s organ
works was quickly changing English organ
culture as his music required a full pedal
division. As early as 1809, composer Samuel
Wesley had collaborated with Charles Frederick
Horn in editing and publishing Bach’s six
organ trio sonatas (the first time all six had
been published anywhere, albeit for piano
duet/three hands). This new appetite for Bach
was ignited further by Mendelssohn’s long
visits to Britain, starting in 1829. The lawyer-
musician Henry John Gauntlett, along with
the organ builder William Hill, spearheaded
a revolution to provide new organs with the
‘German’ compass (ie a full pedal division and
an abandonment of the old English extended low
notes on the manuals). Despite the arrival of such
instruments, English organists were still reticent
to use the pedals. It was only in the latter decades
of the century (thanks to the likes of WT Best
and Sir John Stainer) that pedalling was widely
regarded as an essential part of organ technique.
The stage was set for the emergence of an
organ builder who moulded the English style into
something bolder, louder and more distinctive:
the great craftsman and engineer Henry Willis.
After his impressive debut at the Great Exhibition
of 1851, resulting in an important contract
at St George’s Hall, Liverpool, Willis built
significant organs in major English cathedrals,
concert rooms and town halls. The Victorian
organist entertained large audiences with
orchestral transcriptions, extracts of Bach and
the occasional original piece of Mendelssohn,
Smart or Parry, while towns and cities saw the
commissioning of a large, new organ as a matter
of civic pride. The English organ was reaching
the public in ways not seen since Handel’s organ
concertos mesmerised London theatre goers and
Vauxhall promenaders a century earlier.
It was perhaps inevitable that this orchestral
bent was to drive the English organ to its next
stage, of ever-closer imitation of orchestral