I’ve recently subscribed to Choir & Organ magazine, mainly on the strength of a few sample articles written by Chris Bragg, a Scottish organist who has contributed to that publication for some years. The annual subscription includes access to the entire thirty-year archive of the magazine, and though my journey through the back issues has so far spanned only the last seven years, within that span I have found Bragg to be the most consistently incisive writer on organs among the publication’s contributors. Some common threads run through his writing that bespeak, if only piecemeal as befits the format and audience, a whole philosophy of the organ that is worth drawing out, particularly as his treatment of these threads in the context of specific instruments (though unfortunately not possible, in the given format, to tie to specific pieces of music) puts some flesh on the kinds of more abstract declarations once commonly found in the organ press. It’s a welcome experience to see these lines of thinking continued today by someone of (I presume) roughly my generation, at a time when the organ news in this country seems largely to concern relocations of devices of a hundred years ago which embody the utter antithesis, the dis-integration, of the organ.

What is this philosophy? Bragg points out, across a range of articles chronicling new organs, restorations and reconstructions, and organbuilders, nothing less than the critical and ideally inherent connections among all aspects of organbuilding and organ-playing: size, appearance, location, pitch, volume, and the whole space; compass, action, dimensions, pedalboard type, means of registration, and the kind of playing, kind of literature, and kind of sound proposed and fostered thereby; all aspects of pipe timbre, winding, temperament as expressive elements; and more. 

At Peterhouse, Cambridge, for example, the two consoles provided for a reconstructed Snetzler organ highlight the relationship between the ‘point of interface’ and the ‘tonal nature’ of an organ: a happy one in the case of the keydesk reconstructed in eighteenth-century style and a more difficult one in the case of the modern console, whose terraced stopjambs, concave-radiating pedalboard, balanced swell pedal, and modern combination action invite a style of playing at odds with the sounding result. (Bragg suggests that nineteenth-century keydesks with mechanical combination pedals might have proven a more interesting and aesthetically consistent point of reference.) At Chelsea Old Church, London, too, though many aspects of the new Drake organ are well integrated, ‘provision of 61-note manual compasses, demanded by the client, is incongruous to the organ’s tonal identity’ (which draws upon eighteenth- and some early-to-mid-nineteenth-century influences), ‘as is the provision of such a full range of accessories: the organ is never going to provide the smooth crescendi and diminuendi the gadgetry suggests’. 

Elsewhere, the expectations set up by keyboard materials and decorative details, and the touch as well, are either fulfilled or thwarted by the actual tonal style or thrust or results of the instrument: they are slightly mismatched in the expansion of the Metzler/Edskes choir organ at St Joriskerk, Amersfoort (elegant keydesk details belie the still essentially modernist [neo-Baroque] character of the Hoofdwerk), while being all of a piece in the Van Eeken restoration of the Hinsz organ at Meeden, where the original keyboards and action remain in place (‘demanding a highly sophisticated touch vocabulary’ – sadly a term I have never encountered anywhere else). Even bench height is a factor: the very high bench of the Aubertin organ at St Birinus, Dorchester-on-Thames, requires a ‘classical sitting position “against” the bench, and indeed... is consistent with the playing technique the instrument implies’ – though it is admittedly prohibitive for those of smaller stature.

Bragg enumerates (with regard to the Utopa Baroque Organ at the Orgelpark, Amsterdam, and elsewhere) ‘initial speech, fundamental sound and background sound’ of flue pipe timbre as ‘expressive elements’ which interact, vary, and determine character and color (and which ‘prompt’ speech might subvert [Van Eeken]), and proposes that ‘linear perfection might, on occasion, be said to stifle expression’ (the Edskes recreation of a Schnitger organ in the Lutherse Kerk, Groningen): the plena of the Utopa Baroque Organ are ‘not simply brilliant and well balanced but also rough-hewn, complex, challenging’; in the Vater organ at St Johannes, Wiefelstede (restored by Van Eeken), the ‘raw edge’ and ‘variety of initial speech’ ‘add... to, rather than detract... from, the listening experience’. Joris Potvlieghe’s recreation of a Contius organ at Wondelgem (Ghent) boasts choruses with ‘a slightly “wild” quality, highly attractive’. Aubertin’s organs, too, are known at their best for ‘challenging and engaging listener and player in equal measure’, for being ‘highly stimulating for the player’. These elements can be overemphasized, however, as in part of one stop at St Birinus: ‘such an exaggerated (and for the time being inconsistent) initial transient comes at a cost [of any ability to play quickly]’; the plenum is ‘very wild at present’; it is unclear whether Bragg finds ‘an array of secondary sounds in the holding note’ to be a good thing or not. 

Winding and temperament, too, play – or, at St Joriskerk, Amersfoort, do not play, by virtue of their absolute regularity – ‘a role in the organ’s expression’. At Chelsea Old Church, ‘critical to the degree by which both player and listener are seduced is the expressive role played by the winding... the resulting flexibility renders the organ eminently friendly without ever being intrusive, the frisson as the pedal trombone takes a moment to find its speech subtly but tellingly thrilling’. This kind of detail is the sort of thing real organs are about, I should think. 

Bragg even touches, in reviewing the Edskes organ at the Lutherse Kerk, Groningen, upon the seemingly fussy detail of the relationship between case dimensions and pitch: that is, not simply the more fundamental matter of the Principal bases of the various divisions, but also the implied visual–physical difference between an organ pitched at high Chorton and one at Kammerton. Actually this article does deal with the issue of Principal bases, obliquely questioning the choice to diverge from the original organ in this respect in both manual divisions as well as in the replacement of Schnitger’s standard 8' Vox humana with a 16' Fagot. (An article by another writer in Choir & Organ quotes the organ designer Georges Lhôte: ‘The last thing we will discuss is the stop-list: first is the appropriate prospect pipe length; after that – and only when all other factors, such as space, architecture and function are considered – comes the stop-list.’)

This brings us to the larger relationship between organ and room: an obviously crucial one, though one not always elucidated in articles about organs (I for one would always like to know the basic three dimensions of a space, reverberation time, seating capacity, average congregation size, musical program or repertory, manner of leading congregational singing... details of which tend to be provided only spottily). Aubertin at St Birinus is physically tailored within a hair’s breadth to its tiny surroundings, but is (at least when first installed) overbearingly loud; Drake at Chelsea Old Church is somewhat oversized for the room thanks to fruitful fundraising efforts, but set at a more appropriate volume level. The former boasts a light, precise, intuitive suspended action ‘ideal for the scale of the organ and the space’; likewise, in the latter case, ‘The legitimate and appropriate speech control inherent in the English tradition of voicing is ideally suited to a space as intimate as this’, according to the builders. And in the same organ, a swell box ‘hardly of the mass to facilitate “slam-dunk” effects’ nevertheless has a ‘dynamic potential... appropriate to both instrument and room’. 

Finally, Bragg’s reviews of Peterhouse and Chelsea Old Church – the only English organs among those mentioned above – occasion questions regarding the organ’s role vis-à-vis the choir. (It would be useful to know whether any of the continental instruments mentioned above are ever used with choirs, and if so, in what ways.) At Peterhouse, Bragg refreshingly and quite reasonably asks, ‘Might the organ itself, and indeed the physical and acoustic environment in which it resides, not also influence a place’s musical point of orientation?’ (that is, in addition or opposition to the ‘affectations’ [= mannerisms?] of ‘the late-Romantic-centricity of the prevailing Anglican accompanimental style’) and suggests that the pervasive question ‘But can you accompany with it?’ reflects a ‘dully utilitarian view of the instrument as a whole, not to mention a perspective of accompaniment devoid of historical objectivity’. 

This whole cluster of ideas – that an organ should should be of a piece in all aspects of itself and with its surroundings, should challenge or teach or indeed constrain the player, should embrace (if not necessarily pursue) imperfection; that, furthermore, there is more to the organ and its liturgical role(s) than what is familiar and often unquestioned from the long aftermath of the Industrial Revolution; and that ‘expressiveness’ in the organ can be found in places and means other than Swell effects – directly confronts the American so-called ‘organ’ culture known to me. It is nothing less or other than a view of the organ as a truly musical instrument on the same terms as any other classical (i.e. acoustic, self-contained, handmade, directly interfaced) instrument.

Bragg praises the Aubertin organ at St Birinus for ‘embodying a genuinely creative concept which engages meaningfully with pre-1800 modes of musicking’. The phrase ‘pre-1800 modes of musicking’ should, I think, be seen not as suggesting the exclusive employment of an antique musical repertory, but as espousing an approach to musical performance, composition, and instrument-making – to musical craft – that resists industrialization,* standardization, commodification, perhaps sensationalization and bourgeoisification (though one which should, I think, be fully cognizant of structures of patronage and other problematics of ‘musicking’ in earlier eras). In a world (and a Church) that often sees music as a product – a drug, dispensed at the push of a button – by which to be thrilled, buzzed, or numbed, this is a welcome, indeed the only valid, approach.

*  It’s interesting that it is in an article about Aubertin, the ultra-artisanal builder, that Bragg calls the organbuilder’s work a ‘product’ that exists in a ‘market’. Is this a corrective to the ‘romance’ which Bragg notes is attached to Aubertin’s working methods and environment?