JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS

DIFFERENT LIVES

The Organ Club meeting, 22 January 2000

Yesterday's Organ Club meeting included three venues in central London. We finished at BBC Broadcasting House, having visited two churches which provided a sobering contrast to each other. Geographically only half a mile apart, they occupied utterly different social and economic worlds.

First was St. Mary Magdelene, Munster Square NW1. It was built between 1849 and 1852 of grey stone, and the dim, lofty interior spoke of decades of refined high-church worship. Some plain wooden chairs stood on the tiled floor of the nave, ready for the Sunday service; the dimensions of the building perhaps made them look fewer than they were. Does 'Munster Square, London' sound like a desirable address? Outside the church we gazed upon rows of bleak concrete council flats and tower blocks, incongruous next to the Victorian dignity of St. Mary Magdelene's.

The organ was built by Walker in 1910. A position in the chapel on the south side of the chancel was decided upon. The church authorities, anxious lest the instrument should obscure the chapel's east window, decreed that it should be placed high upon the south wall, where it occupies a broad but shallow position. The pedal pipes were stacked horizontally at ground level behind a curtain. In 1927 the instrument was rebuilt by the original builders; a new pipe-screen was provided for the main organ, and modest tonal additions made. The curtain has since been replaced by a wooden reredos with small grilles to let out the sound of the pedal pipes, and the Great/Choir Trumpet which migrated to floor-level in 1927. No further alterations have been made, and the instrument retains its tubular-pneumatic action and plain but comfortable 1910 console.

The synoptic stoplist is as follows:

Great: 16.8.8.8.4.4.2.8
Swell:  8.8.8.8.4.16.8
Choir:  8.8.4.8.8
Pedal: 16.16.8.8.16.16

It was difficult to form a full and accurate impression of the organ, for age has taken its toll most severely. Most of the Choir stops and several Pedal notes were inoperative, as was the Trumpet and its 16ft. Pedal extension. But the famous round, leisurely tone of the Walker diapasons was still impressive, as was the beguiling 8ft. Wald Flute. The embryonic Swell choruses were mellifluous and pleasant, though the strings were less happy. The Echo Gamba has a quiet but gratingly thin tone, and its Celeste was tuned 'dead' shortly after the organ was built, reputedly because the undulant effect was considered inappropriate for the austerity of the services favoured at the church.

The resident organist would dearly love to have the instrument restored, but money is in short supply and is spent on repairing the roof and walls of the building. One can only hope that no-one is kind enough to donate an electronic substitute to the church, which would almost inevitably lead to the organ being left unplayed and deteriorating further.

We left the chilly interior of St. Mary Magdelene's and, crossing the Marylebone Road, strolled less than half a mile south to the next venue. Different lives! The church of All Souls, Langham Place stands next to BBC Broadcasting House at the top of Regent Street, a stone's throw from Oxford Circus and the heart of the busy West End shopping district. To some extent it seemed that the slick presentation and business-like efficiency of its surroundings was reflected inside the church itself: comfortably carpeted, with neat rows of padded seats and a pen on every chair for the congregation to complete a written response sheet at the following day's service.

All Souls church was designed by John Nash in 1824 as part of his Regent Street development. The facade combines a columned portico with a small Gothic spire which has been described as a "quaint colonnaded spike". The interior appears roomy though the church is not large; the galleries have been retained, and a white and gold decorative scheme applied to columns and mouldings. The rather Roccoco feel is enhanced by the large painting behind the altar, from which a sub-Murillo Christ gazes out wanly at the congregation.

The first organ was installed by J.C. Bishop in 1824; the pretty west-gallery case-front by Nash survives, an innocuous screen for the large instrument which lurks in a chamber behind it. Hunter (1913/31), Willis (1951) and Harrison (1976) have all enlarged and altered the organ; it now has 73 stops on four manuals. There is a mobile four-manual console on the sanctuary platform and a three-manual console on the west gallery. The synoptic stoplist is:

Great:  16.8.8.8.4.4.2 2/3.2.IV-V.IV.16.8.4
Swell:  8.8.8.8.4.4.2.1 1/3.III.16.8.16.8.4
Positive:  8.4.4.2.2.1 1/3.II.III.V.16.8.4.8
Solo:  16.8.8.8.8.4.2 2/3.2.1 3/5.1.8.8.8.8
Pedal:  32.16.16.16.16.16.8.8.4.4.2.IV.32.16.16.16.8.4.4

Colin Goulden has been curator-organist at All Souls for many years. He led us through a useful stop-by-stop demonstration of the organ before Gerard Brooks, the resident organist, gave a short recital. The most striking work was 'Judex Crederis' by Alexandre Pierre Francois Boely (1785-1858). This proved to be a storm-piece in religious disguise, complete with pastoral pipes, the sounding of last trumpet, and the groans of the damned souls. The final section - all hell unleashed - was unintentionally hilarious, an example - as Gerard Brooks said - of silent film music written a century too early.

What of the organ? The expected quality and finish of a Harrison instrument is fully evident, not least at the aristocratic console. The tutti is an impressive sound, effectively underpinned by the earthy 32ft. Contra Trombone (retained from the 1951 Willis rebuild), and despite the almost entirely dead acoustic. Colin Goulden pointed out that the main choruses are none too loud to accompany the singing of the usual 1000-plus attendants at the main Sunday services. The smaller principal choruses are articulate, though the lack of contrast between Great and Positive is slightly disappointing, paper stoplist notwithstanding. The organ's ability to build seamlessly from 1970s clarity to romantic grandeur is impressive. I found the individual diapasons competent but rather bland, and there is a certain similarity between the flutes on Great, Swell and Positive. The reeds are all excellent: the mournfully woody 8ft. Corno di Bassetto on Solo is outstandingly beautiful, while the so-called 8ft. Regal is a fine Vox Humana hiding under a neo-baroque pseudonym.

My lasting impression is of a versatile liturgical and concert organ, completely without pretensions despite its size. It is an instrument which plays a wide range of repertoire effectively without making a definitive artistic statement on its own behalf. Perhaps the message is simply that, yes, all this is possible within the middle-of-the-road British tradition.

After an hour and a half at All Souls we adjourned to some of the nearby restaurants and cafes. An Italian eaterie tempted me with its array of filled Ciabatta breads, but I eventually opted for a generous portion of home-made risotto, an ideal gastronomic pit-stop before the evening event.

BBC Broadcasting House is an essay in massive grey stone art deco built between 1929 and 1932. Deep in its heart lies the Radio Theatre, designed specially for broadcasting. There is seating only for about 225 (originally 550), and though the floor-area is not large, the room reaches upwards to an unexpected height, including a balcony and, above, the producer's booth. It was formerly the BBC Concert Hall, in which many classical music programmes were recorded.

There is no proscenium or wings, and the 'front' wall contains an irregularly shaped cavity "full of corners and angles, representing simply the space which was left over when all kinds of building exigencies had been provided for" (Filson Young 1932). This space is roughly 40ft. wide by 30ft. high, and only 6ft. from front to back; it opens into the theatre via a central ornamental grille about 15ft. square. This was the location in which the John Compton Organ Company installed an extension concert organ in 1933. There are 33 ranks, 123 stops and 2,478 pipes.

An unpromising site? Yes, but it must have presented little challenge to Compton, who, four years previously, had built an organ at Bournemouth Pavilion in truly bizarre circumstances.

"On either side of the stage a narrow shaft reaches from the basement floor to the beginning of the curved ceiling. These shafts are about 48ft. in height and about 5ft. wide. It sounds almost incredible, but Mr. Compton has built his enormous organ in these two chambers, and the really extraordinary thing is that the tone seems to suffer in no way whatever."
     (from an article by Huskisson Stubington in 'The Organ', July 1929)

These two shafts had openings only at the top for the sound to escape. The pipework was necessarily blown hard on 6in., 10in. and 20in. wind. But to Compton this was no obstacle to obtaining an array of apparently unforced and naturally singing voices, as the BBC Radio Theatre organ also proves. Here, the sound merely has to find its way round corners, while some of the reed and flue basses are mounted horizontally in the upper part of the chamber and mitred to speak downwards.

Except for these few basses, the pipes of the BBC organ are enclosed in three expression chambers - Great, Swell and Choir. The Solo manual largely draws on ranks from the other three divisions, which is a useful feature if you happen to decide, for example, that the perfect accompaniment for the Choir Clarinet is the Choir flutes. Pedal basses are duplexed or extended from the manual ranks with the exception of the 32ft. flue which is a Compton 'Polyphone' - a large-scale stopped pipe which speaks a series of pitches as additional sealed chambers within it are opened. I think that the BBC organ derives ten notes of the 32ft. octave from two Polyphone pipes giving five notes each. Its sound is clearly not as good as an open 32ft. but quite as effective as many 32ft. bourdons, and when space is severely limited its utility is obvious. The BBC example - like the 'real' 32ft. Sub Bourdon at All Souls - seemed almost to disappear on some notes; but the 32ft. octave of stopped pipes is notoriously unpredictable, and very dependent on the building.

For the full stoplist, click here.

The organ was shown off in a technically fluent and musically sensitive recital by Jeremy Filsell. We heard an unusual programme of works by York Bowen, Dom Sebastian Wolff, Pierre Cochereau (two transcribed improvisations, one completed only a week previously) and Widor. My companion, a devotee of the baroque and classical idioms, writhed in anguish throughout this feast of late- and post-romantic chromaticism.

It was fun to watch a Compton 1930s luminous console at work; inclined jambs contain stop-shaped push-buttons which light up when the stop is on. With the sliderless chests this means that the combination action is practically silent in operation, a boon for broadcasting. A rapid series of piston changes produces a display like Christmas lights in a shop window.

The organ speaks with great clarity and vigour. Every voice is effectively at the front of the chamber as there are separate windchests for each rank, mounted one above the other and side-by-side like shelves on a wall. Acoustically the hall is practically dead which adds to the immediate effect of the instrument. On these terms it compares extremely well with other installations which lack the blending and mellowing effects of reverberation. There is nothing crude about the effect, and the sheer quality of Compton's voicing prevails. The diapasons are mellow and round, building up surprisingly bright choruses with ample mixture-work. There is little of the dreaded 'flat' chorus effect so familiar in some extension organs. The string celestes (complete with 16ft. and 4ft. octaves) are luxuriant, while the flutes include some of the most airy, entrancing sounds I have experienced. The chorus reeds are scarlet in tone and the big pedal basses very substantial. The large effects - complete with trombas, tubas and 32ft. reed - are notable for their combination of grandeur and clarity, while their variety is increased manifold by the complete enclosure of the Great.

After richly deserved and prolonged applause for Jeremy Filsell's programme, it was 'open console'. I had a few minutes to explore some of the smaller effects, including the beautifully muted timbre of the (French) Horn, and the intriguing 'synthetic reeds' made from pure-toned flute mutations. Then it was time to catch the train back to the south coast.

As we emerged into the night from Broadcasting House I turned back for a final glimpse of its lofty floodlit facade, with the spire of All Souls church nestling in its shadow; a memorable end to an unusually interesting day.

Julian Rhodes
24 January 2000