The organ

[AdamSmith]

I can tell that you are trying to milk this autocorrect for all the humour that you can!

Only 'trying'?

 

I would think Succeeding!

[AdamSmith]

Well, it is coming, like it or not -- the evolution of 'smart products' and 'smart connected products' is now all the rage in engineering design, across many different industries. Already the typical car contains about 100 million lines of software code (compared with about 10 million in a typical passenger aircraft).

 

And the arguments pro and con cut both ways. Professionally I happen to know personally Chris Urmson and Sebastian Thrun, two of the leading developers of automonous-vehicle technology. Both are fixated on safety as their first through fifth priorities. I trust their judgments about how a vehicle should operate almost infinitely more than I trust the judgment, and reflexes, of Joe Average Driver. Slashing casualties from road accidents is the prime, I think very sound, argument for self-driving cars.

 

Of course there are right and wrong ways to do it. The recent crash of a Tesla in self-driving mode happened very precisely because Tesla, to save on costs, chose to omit one essential type of sensor: a LIDAR, or 3D laser scanner (specifically from this company, the industry standard: http://www.velodynelidar.com/). That device would have detected that white truck up ahead, which Tesla's radar and camera-based stereovision failed to see.

P.S. Urmson believes that the intermediate step of ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, is a grave mistake that the auto industry went for. Because, lulled into complacency, drivers who have put their vehicle on autopilot will frequently not be able to resume control, when needed, quickly enough to avert an accident.

[+ quoththeraven]

Well, it is coming, like it or not -- the evolution of 'smart products' and 'smart connected products' is now all the rage in engineering design, across many different industries. Already the typical car contains about 100 million lines of software code (compared with about 10 million in a typical passenger aircraft).

 

And the arguments pro and con cut both ways. Professionally I happen to know personally Chris Urmson and Sebastian Thrun, two of the leading developers of automonous-vehicle technology. Both are fixated on safety as their first through fifth priorities. I trust their judgments about how a vehicle should operate almost infinitely more than I trust the judgment, and reflexes, of Joe Average Driver. Slashing casualties from road accidents is the prime, I think very sound, argument for self-driving cars.

 

Of course there are right and wrong ways to do it. The recent crash of a Tesla in self-driving mode happened very precisely because Tesla, to save on costs, chose to omit one essential type of sensor: a LIDAR, or 3D laser scanner (specifically from this company, the industry standard: http://www.velodynelidar.com/). That device would have detected that white truck up ahead, which Tesla's radar and camera-based stereovision failed to see.

 

I was reacting to the lack of choice implicit in the spellcheck example you posited. Nevertheless, as the daughter of an engineer who remained skeptical of and critical about most things, including the quality of the color TVs made by the company for which he worked, I tend to want to wait until a new technology or product is definitively proven effective and safe (and comes down in price) before buying it.

 

The only new tech I remember him buying early was a calculator.

[AdamSmith]

I was reacting to the lack of choice implicit in the spellcheck example you posited.

Ah! Understood.

 

Of course the spellcheck example shows the effects of lack of choice when the technology is crappy. An opposite example would be aircraft autopilot technology, which is checked and rechecked and certified every way from Sunday because of its mission-critical status. Ditto medical devices, etc.

 

There is an argument that, once self-driving car technology reaches the point of reliability where it is consistently measurably safer than human driving (and reaches the point of broad affordability), it should be made mandatory by law.

[adriano46]

I have to confess to one of my guilty pleasures - I like to listen to Diane Bish's videos on Youtube - "the first lady of the organ." The thing that first got me interested in her was the weird outfits she wore while performing.

 

Here's one of her weirdest outfits::

 

Rudynate, I too used to watch every program that I could find with Diane Bish (and before her, E. Power Biggs), both for the sound of the organ, but also because of their flamboyant and joyous pleasure playing the organ to full effect.

[Rudynate]

Rudynate, I too used to watch every program that I could find with Diane Bish (and before her, E. Power Biggs), both for the sound of the organ, but also because of their flamboyant and joyous pleasure playing the organ to full effect.

 

As an early adolescent, I had a mad crush on E. Power Biggs - he was sort of a refined, suave silver daddy.

[adriano46]

Just a word of thanks to so many contributors to this thread! I played for many years this King of Instruments, and was often surprised at how many people misunderstood the genre(hated even?).Many years have gone by since I last sat at an organ keyboard and played but this thread has brought back so many memories, joys, recitals (I had a "bucket list" of organs in to hear in Germany and France before bucket lists were even invented!). I thoroughly enjoyed hearing again the works I was so familier with, and to hear such great masters, especially at the thrilling organ of Saint-Sulplice. And yes, I learned in my young adult years playing how really undisciplined E. Power Biggs was, but it was him who first interested me (and many of my generation) in the organ.

 

A SPECIAL THANKS for re-introducing me to Jehan Alain's works. It has been a long time since I heard "Litanies," and despite the distraction in the first recording by the mannerisms of the organist, the beauty of that piece has had me repeat the video 5 or 6 times and now rushing off to get a good recording of it on iTunes. Thanks again.

 

[AdamSmith]

A SPECIAL THANKS for re-introducing me to Jehan Alain's works. It has been a long time since I heard "Litanies," and despite the distraction in the first recording by the mannerisms of the organist, the beauty of that piece has had me repeat the video 5 or 6 times and now rushing off to get a good recording of it on iTunes. Thanks again.

 

A great pleasure! I love Jehan Alain's compositions. First time I heard Litanies was in live performance, a graduate recital program by a music student at a local college (Meredith here in Raleigh, not Duke, but still with a good enough instrument). It was electrifying.

 

And if I love Alain, it would be fair to say I worship Max Reger. Here his monumental Phantasie und Fuge über B-A-C-H.

 

[AdamSmith]

And yes, I learned in my young adult years playing how really undisciplined E. Power Biggs was, but it was him who first interested me (and many of my generation) in the organ.

Poor old Edward P. Biggs. As long as we're piling on, may as well add that his notions about registration were no less primitive than the other aspects of his musicianship. He never met a pedal stop he didn't like and was prone to over-registration in general. On the Harvard Busch Hall Flentrop, the damage he could do that way was at least somewhat limited by the comparatively modest size of the instrument. But when he sat down at one of the big beasts, he had little restraint.

[AdamSmith]

The business above about self-driving cars led me to recall that famous self-playing organ, Mälzel's Panharmonicon. Well, not an organ, actually, but self-playing anyway.

[AdamSmith]

Chapuis performing Bach's Prelude in E Minor, BWV 548.

 

 

This may be my most favorite of all Bach's organ works.

[AdamSmith]

And the accompanying great 'Wedge' fugue.

 

[AdamSmith]

The technical difficulties of performance of both the above pieces are legend. The Prelude is almost impossible to register in fittingly grand (even to my mind apocalyptic) manner, and yet keep the articulation clear. Many performances -- if they attempt the heights -- melt into large blocks of undifferentiated sound.

 

And the accompanying so-called Wedge fugue is equally devilish. Together they are considered possibly the most difficult of all JSB's organ works to perform.

 

Just learning the impossibly demanding manual lines and then adding in the (slightly) less troublesome pedal is hard. Yet another example of Bach, as some say, indulging a private amusement of composing something that only he himself would be capable of performing.

[AdamSmith]

And there is a follow-on thought that another part of Chapuis' genius was (is) to seek out the most appropriate instruments for individual pieces. I will look it up & report back with documentation on the five (I think) different organs around the world on which he recorded his definitive Bach cycle for Telefunken.

[+ quoththeraven]

And there is a follow-on thought that another part of Chapuis' genius was (is) to seek out the most appropriate instruments for individual pieces. I will look it up & report back with documentation on the five (I think) different organs around the world on which he recorded his definitive Bach cycle for Telefunken.

 

Mr. Smith, you are truly as obsessed as M. Chapuis.

[AdamSmith]

Mr. Smith, you are truly as obsessed as M. Chapuis.

That cums as highest compliment.

[whipped guy]

My all time favotite Bach transcription, a Vivaldi Concerto for Two Violins... BWB 593... I think it improves on the original, or perhaps because I am used hearing it on the organ. I just love the motive that occurs in the final movement that ultimately concludes the piece.

 

Two different versions:

 

 

 

Michel Chapuis: (for Adam Smith!)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6KkcFJF28E

 

Plus I could not resist!

 

[adriano46]

Not only are these all interesting takes on the same piece, but I enjoyed Whipped Guy your irony at the end... why not add in our friend E.P. Biggs.... banging away at a pedaled harpsichord!!!! (Getting THAT tinny sound out of my mind will take alcohol).

[AdamSmith]

Not only are these all interesting takes on the same piece, but I enjoyed Whipped Guy your irony at the end... why not add in our friend E.P. Biggs.... banging away at a pedaled harpsichord!!!! (Getting THAT tinny sound out of my mind will take alcohol).

TINNY! (Monty Python corrects E. Power Biggs )

 

[AdamSmith]

Yet another example of Bach, as some say, indulging a private amusement of composing something that only he himself would be capable of performing.

The other thing he did like this was to compose pieces specifically designed to test out new organs, especially their keyboard responsiveness and adequacy of wind supply. His Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, widely beloved by hoi polloi , was reportedly his favorite piece for this purpose. He himself regarded it as of no great musical worth, but a good technical challenge for the instrument.

[AdamSmith]

Not only are these all interesting takes on the same piece, but I enjoyed Whipped Guy your irony at the end... why not add in our friend E.P. Biggs.... banging away at a pedaled harpsichord!!!! (Getting THAT tinny sound out of my mind will take alcohol).

P.S. You will need several draughts of flamed absinthe I think to get away from this one.

 

[whipped guy]

Well another Bach/Joplin connection! In college we were all obsessed with Joshua Rifkin playing Joplin Rags... Then he turned into a Bach scholar! Who woulda thunk!

 

 

I'm not sure if I agree with his one person to a part concept, so I chose a solo cantata with only one part possible! BWV 51

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guTUGnWgYJc

[adriano46]

I almost gargled with the absinthe as recommended, and then was continuing my search of what I consider the best sounding of the recordings ot Jehan Alain's Litanies and settled finally on this version played by Jean-Baptiste Robin. He has an earlier recording at a different organ, but here, at the organ in the magnificent Saint-Eustace in Paris, he brings a whole new sound (and I enjoy how he moves - discreetly - to the rhythm of the piece). He also does a fantastic job with Durufle's Prelude et Fugue sur le nom di A.L.A.I.N. in the same concert at Saint-Eustace

 

 

[AdamSmith]

François Couperin is another of the great progenitors of the literature. Here his Messe pour l'usage des Paroisses (he wrote a parallel Mass for use by the Convents, who for who knows what subterranean psychosexual reasons had to have their own one).

 

[AdamSmith]

Browsing the Wikipedia entry on Cavaillé-Coll, noticed this tidbit: "He introduced divided windchests which were controlled by ventils. These allowed the use of higher wind pressures and for each manual's anches (reed stops) to be added or subtracted as a group by means of a pedal."

 

The Duke Flentrop includes just such a jeux d'anches foot pedal, which lets the performer -- having, before starting to play, already pulled the reed stops that the pedal will activate -- then, when he gets to the point in the score where it is needed, activate them all as a group by means of this pedal, without the pause in performance that having to pull a bunch of stops by hand would necessitate.

 

Repeating from the Harpsichord thread, it was the genius (both scholarly and persuasive) of Prof. Fenner Douglass guiding, with the Flentrop shop, the architecture of the Duke organ that let him embed, inside this high North German Baroque instrument, a series of pipe ranks and other technical capabilities that would let it also perform with fidelity the great 19th-century French literature. Without fucking up the original intent.

 

Another technical thing to this end is that the wind supply in that organ includes, just before the wind trunk enters the wind chests, small bellows that are normally locked immobile (non-functioning) for performance of the Baroque repertoire, where one rank pulling (robbing from) the wind supply of another and thus inducing modulations in pitch was an expected phenomenon, anticipated by composers and part of the aesthetics of the era.

 

But by unlocking those bellows -- that is, enabling them to operate -- they act to stabilize the wind supply so it can deliver the rock-steadiness of pitch that the 19th-century French literature was written in expectation of.

 

Those bellows are called winkers. Occurs I don't know who invented them.