DISCLAIMER
DREAM ORGANS
Armchair organ-building is an unfashionable pastime. It is regarded on a level with the
collecting of train numbers and beer-mats. As you peruse my imaginary organs you may find
several things to perturb you. Let me try to anticipate your thoughts.
With a few exceptions, the stoplists which are based on historical models do not aim to be
strict pastiches. They therefore include inauthentic details but, I hope, details which
grow naturally from the historical context. They are interpretations rather than strict
re-creations. So there is no need to worry that Father Willis never made a 16' Contra
Spitzflöte, or that the French classical organ never had a register called 'Grand Jeu'.
Secondly, many of these imaginary organs depart radically from today's new
instruments inasmuch as they are not designed to give authentic accounts of
the repertoire. In this sense they are musically anti-historical. Now,
this quality - that a stoplist looks pretty on paper, but is not suitable for
the demands of the repertoire - is one of the most serious charges (along with
megalomania) aimed at the armchair organ-designer, who is rarely a
skilled, professional organist. To this I would raise two points: firstly, that
schools of composition can be inspired (and indeed pre-dated) by instrumental
developments - witness Cavaillé-Coll and the French symphonic school; and secondly,
that these stoplists are the work of one who is indeed a busy performer on the organ.
Anti-historical they may be, but I do not think they are musically impractical.
Good wishes,
Julian Rhodes
Gentle Reader,
