JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS

AN ORGAN RAMBLE IN SOUTH LONDON

The Organ Club meeting, 11 December 1999

Yesterday afternoon a group of some fifty players, organ-builders and enthusiasts visited five churches about a mile south of London Bridge in the Borough of Southwark (local pronunciation: "Suvvuk"). The Organ Club meetings are a long-standing tradition, and an extremely useful means of getting to visit many little-known churches, and sometimes to discover surprisingly good organs.

The second venue in yesterday's itinerary was a typically interesting find. St. John's, Walworth (local pronunciation: "Worwuf") is tucked away down one of the small side-streets which proliferate in this maze-like area of London. The interior of the church (1860) is a characterful mixture of a plain, decrepit room with some outrageously high-church paraphernalia. The organ was rebuilt 'as new' in 1897-8 by Hele & Co. (Plymouth, Devon) whose reputation for solid provincial work never brought them the prestige of the more high-profile builders. It has the following stops:

Great: 8.8.8.4.4.2 2/3.2.8
Swell: 16.8.8.8.8.4.II.8
Pedal: 16.16
Tracker action; space left at console for prepared Choir division.

An entirely predictable complement of stops - but what gems they are. Judging by its sound, the organ could have been built in the 1870s. The Great chorus has a youthful, unforced brilliance; the ringing 12th and 15th give more than a hint of a mixture. More surprisingly, the flutes are all stopped; the plum is the Great 4ft, a luminous, bell-like chimney flute. The two conservative, low-pressure chorus reeds fill their offices well. The one tonal concession to modernity is the swell strings, a keen, rich-toned pair of the kind for which Hele was to become well known. Mechanically the organ is in need of serious attention. Most inner-city parishes in south London are not rich, and this church needs to raise 㿔,000 for a thorough renovation of the organ.

The day had begun with the most recently-built organ, a Willis 3 of 1958 at St. Mary, Newington. Here was a post-war church, its low brick lines crouching behind the west tower and arches of the former building bombed in World War II. The long-serving organist shared his memories of Henry Willis and the genesis of the present instrument before giving a brief demonstration. The stoplist is as follows:

Great: 16.8.8.8.4.4.2 2/3.2
Swell:  8.8.8.8.4.III.16.8
Pedal: 32.16.16.16.8.8.4.4.16

The organ seemed to echo the church building in character: clean, inoffensive and not terribly memorable, despite an impressive 16ft. metal pipefront and some charming individual registers. The main ensembles failed to arouse much enthusiasm or generate any real vitality. Here was a well-built, extremely competent organ with an unexceptionable, typically British church sound which stopped short of acheiving real distinction. It shows, perhaps, why the Willis aesthetic was to become increasingly marginalised over the next ten years.

The main points of interest for me were the solidly-made, comfortable console, with its row of 35 grinning stop-key teeth, plethora of pistons and pleasing tracker-touch; and the little Cornet Mixture (12.15.17) on the Swell. Willis pioneered these stops in the 1930s and commentators at the time were enthusiastic about their versatility and effectiveness. Owing to their careful planning and voicing, you really can use them to top the great chorus or the full swell, as part of a solo combination, or for avant-garde effects. A compromise stop, yes; but a very clever one.

Our third port of call was the Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs, Walworth, built in 1903. Here was a cavernous and gloomy building; serried figures of life-size and disconcertingly life-like saints gazed down at us with pitying eyes and furrowed brows from the walls of the nave. Surely such a place demands an organ with rich, sudued sonorities; perhaps something after Hope-Jones, or a turn-of-the-century Walker with its warm, pervasive diapasons. Instead a little two-manual Holdich organ sat modestly on one side of the west gallery. It is undated - perhaps c.1885? - and appears to be in original condition. Its fifteen stops were pleasant but unremarkable, and we soon moved on.

St. Peter's, Walworth, is a building designed by Sir John Soane, most famous for his Bank of England, best known to London's visitors for his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, now a museum crammed with architectural, archaeological and artistic bric-a-brac, including the alabaster sarcophagus of pharaoh Seti I. (But I digress.) Our meeting notes mentioned "Soane's spare, streamlined, idiosyncratic classicism... there is a curiously modern feel even today to his deceptively simple geometry". The impression is indeed of a very relaxed classicism, or perhaps an ascetic modernism. The organ was rebuilt by Mander in the early 1950s, years before the company had risen to its present illustrious position. It is said to contain some pipes from the Lincoln organ of 1824, but I wouldn't have known this from the sound. It is an unremarkable two-manual job of 17 stops, very much a British church workhorse which could have been built at any time during the previous twenty years. Most memorable was the resident organist's performance of a sequence of unhurried, warm pieces; the effect of the slowly changing sound-shapes and sound-colours moving round the gentle planes and surfaces of Soane's architecture had a haunting appeal.

The last church of the day was St. Giles, Camberwell, Sir Gilbert Scott's definitive 1844 statement of Victorian gothic, which set the pattern for hundreds of new church buildings throughout the country. St. Giles is also famous for its large 1844 organ by J.C. Bishop (hereafter JCB); I think I am correct in saying that it is by far the largest British organ from before the 1860s to survive substantially unaltered. I had long known it by repute, and my anticipation was whetted by the stoplist. How about this for an interesting statement?

GREAT                                  SWELL
 8    Open Diapason                     16   Double Diapason (1-12)
 8    Open Diapason                     16   Bourdon (tc)
 8    Stopped Diapason                   8   Open Diapason
 8    Clarabella                         8   Open Diapason
 4    Principal                          8   Stopped Diapason
 4    Principal                          8   Viol di Gamba*
2 2/3 Twelfth                            4   Principal
 2    Fifteenth                          2   Fifteenth
 1    Doublette                         III  Sesquialtera 17.19.22
III   Sesquialtera 17.19.22              8   Hautboy
III   Furniture 24.26.29                 8   Horn
II    Mixture 26.29                      8   Trumpet
 8    Trumpet                            4   Clarion
 4    Clarion                                * = 1885, replacing
                                                 II Mixture
CHOIR
 8    Open Diapason                     PEDAL
 8    Stopped Diapason                  16   Open Diapason (wood)
 8    Clarabella (mid.C)                16   Bourdon (added 1885)
 8    Dulciana                           8   Principal (metal)
 4    Principal                          8   Flute (part from Great)
 4    Flute                             16   Trombone (wood)
 2    Fifteenth
II    Mixture 19.22
 8    Bassoon (19 notes)
 8    Cremona (tc)
 
Wind pressures:  Great, Swell & Choir 2 1/2in.
                 Pedal 3 3/8in.

The 1885 alteration on Swell was unfortunate; the Viol is a pretty undistinguished stop, and JCB's mixture scheme was thereby upset. When the organ was restored in 1960-2 the original 13 composition pedals were removed (unfortunately, for JCB was the inventor of this mechanism and few of his examples survive), a balanced pedal was fitted to the Swell, and electro-pneumatic action was applied to the Pedal registers, 18 new foot pistons and the stop action. New drawstops were provided on angled jambs, so the console has retained little of its original feel. But for 1960s Britain this was an unusually non-invasive restoration; the wind-pressures were unaltered, no tonal changes were made, and the manual tracker action was retained.

So what does it sound like? The organ is on a shallow platform in the north transept, and we sat opposite in the south transept while it was put through its paces in a recital by William McVicker. His programme showed off individual stops including the plaintive Choir Cremona, the Great Clarabella (JCB invented this stop in about 1820), the gentle, unforced Open Diapasons and the mellifluous, retiring stopped flutes. Music by Buxtehude and Bach used contrasting bright, small choruses; Rheinberger and Widor revealed some of the organ's latent romanticism; and Janacek coupled the three manual tuttis for a final grand slam. Actually, that's not really accurate, for this organ does anything but slam. There are no dramatic effects or ear-tickling tone colours; its sound is silvery but not excessively bright, and it travels surprisingly poorly through the building. What it has in plenty is a richness and complexity of sound which suggests a much larger instrument, particularly in the full Great fluework. The duplication of ranks contributes to this: note the two principals and the independent 1ft. In the octave above middle C the full Great flues comprise the following, allowing for mixture breaks:

1 1 8 8 12 12 15 15 15 15 17 19 22 22 22

which is a cunningly designed assortment of ranks. All the mixtures are unassertive, adding as much richness as brightness, while the tierces give a welcome tinge of colour. The lack of a 16ft. register is not noticed at all; there is fullness in plenty. The Great reeds are good, free-toned stops. Hearing the Great fluework built up from piano to forte it was difficult to decide which stops were being added, for everything blends wonderfully. Of course, the number of permutations is almost limitless, though their differences are subtle. This is a most elegant, aristocratic chorus.

The Choir division is that rarity, an historic British Positive. On Swell, the vigorous reed and mixture effect of the full swell is excellent; a double reed is not missed, owing largely to the good Double Diapason/Bourdon. The presence of two Open Diapasons and two 8ft. chorus reeds on Swell is unusual; they differ more in quality than in power. The best Pedal stop is the Trombone, retaining its original thin wooden tubes and fierily underpinning the Great chorus without asserting itself. The Open Diapason is the typical British pedal Tibia, showing that by the 1840s these registers were already surprisingly pervasive in effect.

At the console the organ sounded louder and more vigorous. It was a joy to play the 'Choral Song' by S.S. Wesley, who was responsible for the 1844 stoplist of the organ (and for some of its more unusual features such as the duplication of stops and the idiosyncratic Great chorus). Altogether, it is an interesting mixture of the traditional and the tentatively innovative. Towards the end of his life JCB was seen as something of a has-been in the organ world, which was beguiled firstly by the avant-garde statements of William Hill and then by the confident boldness of Henry Willis's first major instruments. The St. Giles organ could not compete with these on any but its own terms; and on those terms I think it is a triumphant success.

The day had been cold and damp; we finished it perfectly with a chilli-spiced visit to the Camberwell Tandoori. This ramble round some of London's churches was a wonderfully stimulating way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and left me looking forward to the next Organ Club meeting.

Julian Rhodes
12 December 1999