Very informative thank you @EdwardBattingOrganist. I admire the agility of the tuners, l am glad l only play the instrument! The console looks well-placed to appreciate the balance between the divisions.
as a Compton organ enthusiast I am very pleased to hear this instrument will be restored. I had the thrill of playing this instrument a few years ago and have the pleasure of having a Compton (an electrone) at home
Hi Chris. Yes I've seen your video and I remember you coming, as I recall it was a swelteringly hot day so it may not have been the best in tune it could possibly have been! It is a wonderful instrument and even after 25+ years playing it, it never ceases to thrill. I also have to say your website was very useful when we were discussing adding the pedal harmonics with the relevant authorities, I was able to give the a comprehensive list of other Comptons with this installed. Lucky you to have your very own Compton at home!
I was assistant organist at St Albans in 1979-80 when Michael Foley was there. Manders were looking after this organ at the time, but they went out of business. I look forward to seeing a video of the restored organ. I am relieved to know that you will be conservative in the matter of keeping the instrument more or less as it is.
Well having been there for some time now, I know the organ is very fine and capable of doing pretty much anything, I saw no reason to alter it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it as they say! When I took over, Rushworth & Dreaper were looking after it, as they took over Compton's pipe organ side of things, they have subsequently gone under, Manders were in business until the pandemic so if they were looking after it in the late seventies, it can't have been going out of business that made them stop. Manders used to leave a small II/P organ in the church periodically when I was there initially, but we have our own small organ now which we're using while the Compton is out of action.
It is always good news to hear that an old organ, especially a Compton, is near its restoration! Very interesting to hear about the planned tonal changes as well. Has the appeal started yet?
Nicely done, Edward! We are in the midst of creating this kind of communication with the general public on an 1859 Matthias Schwab 2-manual/full pedalboard in Covington KY. Your organization in "chapters" helps both organist and complete novice alike. Best wishes!
That's very kind, thank you. I did try and pitch it so that enthusiasts and novices could get something out of it, so it's very good to hear. I wish you all the best with your project too, sounds like a venerable instrument!
Great video, thanks. I must have been lucky as at every service I've been to at St Alban's the organist has been very sensitive (never too loud). Crompton also installed the organ in Great Yarmouth Parsh Church in 1961 (the consoles are very similar). For a number of years (in the 1980s) the Additional Curates Society held their London Festival at St Alban's. A professional choir with trumpets and drums and grand organ playing. The Norwich Branch of the Society of Mary provided the choir for the AGM of the society (Evensong and Benediction). The organ was perfect for supporting plainsong. Quite an honour (for me) to be part of the choir! Great Yarmouth has the Crompton's 32' polyphonic pedal stop. Someone described it as a concertina that went 'fuff fuff fuff'. It never convinced me it was a 32' stop! I think that the organ in St Francis Church, Isleworth might be a Crompton extension organ. It went out of tune very quickly (mainly the 2') - the organ tuner told me that tuning it was a compromise - it had to be in tune with itself and (being an extension organ) not every pipe could be tuned to every other pipe!?
Well if it was after 1998 it would have been me! You have to be careful with it, full organ is very loud and I rarely use it for hymns, only really on special occasions (eg Easter Day when we have an orchestra) Great to fifteenth is more than sufficient with Full Swell as the maximum I use for hymns as a matter of routine. Accompanying the choir needs even more caution, but you can still get a lovely range of colours from it at a quieter dynamic. In my, perhaps limited experience, polyphones can vary, ours, as you will have seen, is currently pretty ineffective, but I have played others which are really excellent, so fingers crossed ours will improve when it's relocated. Certainly on this organ the extended ranks don't suffer unduly from poor tuning, we just have the commonplace issue of reeds/fluework tuning.
I worshipped at S. Alban's in the early 1970s. I seem to recall a mixture being added by Mander, possibly not officially! (Fr. Priest, the vicar, and Michael Foley, the organist, were very keen to develop the instrument.) This might explain the 5 rank mixture with a 3 rank designation. I rescued a Compton Miniatura from a defunct prep. school and installed it in the church where I was incumbent. Built in the early 1930s, it is still going strong. There were two stoppered 'acoustic cubes' which only produced an indistinct rumble. People have mentioned cinema organs. Do the choir still sing "The Filsham Mass"? Written for the church by a London cinema organist (Shaw). I have an EP recording.
The Great mixture remains something of a mystery as to why it's III on the stop head but goes to a V in reality. When it was altered and by whom I simply do not know. I have the EP of the Filsham Mass, it's certainly fun, but we don't have copies of it, I think the copies were lost at some stage (before I started there)
A very informative presentation Edward, best of luck with the refurbishment. As you say, it is a testament to the workmanship and ingenuity of John Compton that the organ is still working (sort of!). It looks like the chambers are quite generous space wise, unlike some instruments where you have to be a contortionist or very small to avoid damage to the pipework. Hopefully you will be able to record the progress and demonstrate the instrument when the works are complete.
Thank you. Yes we're very fortunate in that everything is very spacious. The church is a very large building. The old church had the organ in the sanctuary but now it's high on a gallery at the West end, which is the part of the church that survived the best following war damage. I have no idea whether the chambers the organ sits in were purpose built by the architect but it was either a very good job or a happy coincidence! I certainly do hope to provide more information of the restoration as it happens, though I suspect I might have to invest in some more advanced recording equipment when it comes to playing the instrument. My mobile phone simply doesn't do the job, and anything above mp becomes distorted.
It's nice to see inside this historically ( in organ building terms) instrument but as an ex organ builder I deplore the fact that the organist is allowed inside the instrument! There is so much that can be damaged and not just pipe work inside an instrument. Clearly this organist knows his way around the place and unlike most organists can actually identify correctly the different ranks of pipes. Back in 1971 I think it was some of the purse action motor boards came into our workshop to be re-leathered ( N.P. Mander Ltd.). I don't know for what reason they needed re- leathering, being only three years old. But it certainly was the Compton organ at St Alban's High Holborn. The only other Compton organ we had anything to do with was the BBC organ at the Maida Vale studios which we used to tune. ( I went there as a first year apprentice I think within four or five weeks of starting at Mander's, put as a tuner's boy as I knew my way around a keyboard and organ console prior to starting my apprenticeship. Let's hope the organ gets the care and attention it deserves during its " Wash 'n brush up" as we used to call a cleaning and restoration in the trade.
Hi. Thanks for your comments. I certainly don't make a habit of walking around the organ, and on the rare occasions I do, I'm always extremely careful not to touch anything other than the light switch! The chambers are pretty spacious so the risk of collisions is pretty minimal. I thought it a nice idea to see inside the organ so people can see what needs doing. I tried to pitch the video so that organ buffs and people that don't know that much about the instrument in general could get something out of it, so I think showing the pipework demystifies the instrument a little. It's not often you can get up close and personal with a polyphone! In 1971 the organ would have been 10 years old, it having been completed in 1961, but that's still a pretty short time to have to have things releathered.
Thank you for such an interesting and engaging video. You've inspired me to put together an explanatory video for a similarly-scaled project I'm going to be facing at my own church. I've seen a few Compton organs and every time I've been struck by the impressive integrity and innovation of the builder. It's therefore a surprise at St Alban's that the Polyphone is so acoustically unsuccessful. I wonder to what extent it was muffled in 1990 by that new set of Pedal Principal pipes in the arch in front of it? I've seen cases where relatively small barriers in an arch can have a surprisingly large effect on the sound of the pipework behind. I remember popping into St Alban's mid-week about 35 (eek!) years ago and a passing curate very kindly agreed to let me have a play. But when we got to the loft we found that the blower had been left on, apparently since the preceding Sunday. So we agreed that the best thing was to turn it off pronto! Maybe I'll get to have that little play after the restoration? Anyway, thank you again for your fascinating and inspiring video.
Thank you that's very kind, I wish you luck with your own project. It's hard to say why the polyphone is so ineffective. I wasn't in post when the pedal principal was installed (it was 1990) so I can't say whether the polyphone was more effective before those pipes were there. My instinct is to say that I don't think they're the problem. Owing to the clip all being done on my phone, it probably doesn't show up well when I go down underneath it, but the sound isn't bad there, so I think the sound mostly travels downwards, so it doesn't send its sound upwards into the chamber, so I don't think there's much sound for the pipes to obstruct in the first place. Everyone I've spoken to over the years has more or less said that they need to be on the floor to get the best results out of them, and ours isn't. Our plan A is to take it out of the pedal chamber and put in on the floor of the gallery, so if the principal pipes are an impediment, that problem won't exist anymore. I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to play those years ago (it certainly wasn't me who carelessly left the blower running!!) hopefully next time!
I admire the work of Compton but particularly his wonderful 4-manual instrument in Hull Minster, completed in 1939 and largely untouched since. Now unplayable and awaiting funds and a complete restoration.
Very interesting and well delivered. But I must challenge something you said, that Compton was the only builder to make both classical and cinema organs. What about Hill, Norman and Beard, and their Christie cinema organs? The polyphone is fascinating, I believe it was also called a "Compton Cube".
Hi, thank you for your kind comments. I wasn't aware that HNB built such instruments, so I stand corrected. Every day is a school day! I'm not sure that the polyphone and the 'Compton Cube' are exactly the same thing, (though I think they were very similar in concept) maybe some with more knowledge could enlighten me!
The Contra Posaune is the name of an organ stop. It plays at 16ft pitch, ie one octave below concert pitch. Every organ sounds different but they generally will sound 'kind of' like a trombone. We have 3 16ft reeds on this organ, the Contra Posaune is the quietest, I suppose somewhere between a bassoon and trombone in sound.
Hi. The work will be carried out by Shepherd's. They've been looking after the instrument for a while now, and have a lot of experience with Compton organs
@@EdwardBattingOrganistthis is excellent news. Eric and John are real experts rather than some of the swivel-eyed Compton ‘gate-keeping’ types who fetishise the old relays (insisting they are restored at all costs) and obsess over diaphones. I wonder if it has the sliderless chests with envelope motors as at St Bride’s Fleet Street, this would explain some of the missing notes.
@@EdwardBattingOrganist Fantastic news! The Shepherd Bros are outstanding, great work at Burnt Oak, the Marist Church, Surbiton, etc. Not a better small firm in Britain frankly.
What a great video which is so informative. I am so glad that this organ will be given a rebuild without too many changes. I played this organ many times in the 80’s and absolutely adored it. I played many Organs in the City of London at the time and this instrument comes very high on my list of the best instruments as well as the Compton in St. Bride’s Fleet Street. I can’t wait to hear her after the restoration and if you are looking for recitalists to give concerts on her, could I please be asked? I give many recitals including one every Friday at the Cathedral of St. Gilbert in Lincoln, so have a large repertoire which would demonstrate the many qualities of the instrument. Very good luck with the renovation.
