I actually LOVE pipe organs - when well played!!  We have an amazing organist in our church who really plays it to its max. 

 

This is a great video - I can't even imagine what it must feel like to sit down & actually MAKE that sound!! 

Very nice!  We don't have an organist at church...just CDs.  :(

Every year at Halloween we are treated to this as the postlude ... 

 

Love 'em when they are played well. Too many organists assumed "played well" means "played until the audience is deaf". My father is to blame. He was a huge fan of great organists like E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox so we had plenty of organ music around the house on vinyl and, later, CD. He was also project lead when our church bought a new pipe organ (and it was a beauty). One of my favorites from his collection was Virgil Fox's organ settings of Wagner. Ride of the Walkyries on a huge pipe organ almost beats the orchestral original. 

 

Carolla, I love the Bach T&F but to reallly give an organist a work out, you need the Toccata (Fifth Movement) from Widor's Organ Symphony. The organist who was our church music director in the late eighties played it as the postlude on Easter Sunday. Must look him up. He left us to do a doctorate in the US after he finished his M.Mus at Western.

 

 

Mendalla

 

Who says that pipe organ music is dead, boring, outdated?   Both these tunes are amazing.

Every year our organize and choir treat us to the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.  It never fails to send chills down my back.  Beautiful.

 

All three tunes are amazing - Mendalla posted his while I was composing my post.

 

Love pipe organs, well-played, and the Star Wars video above is amazing.

Will watch the other videos when I have more time.

 

A little story....

Several years ago, 1999 to be exact, I was doing a walking tour of St. John's, NL, on a Sunday morning.  Walking past Gower Street UC, I heard the distinctive music of a pipe organ through the open front doors.  Drawn to the music, I crossed the street and stuck my head in the door to better listen.  An usher saw me, and immediately invited me to the service which was about to begin.  I said, "I don't think so", apologizing for my attire, cargo pants, T-shirt, casual shirt, sandals, etc., knowing this was a more sophisticated church.  "No problem", said the usher, but if you are uncomfortable, go to the balcony and likely no one will see you.  I did so, and enjoyed a wonderful service, with beautiful music and a guest choir from South Africa, there for Festival 500.

When I tried to inconspicuously depart, same usher caught me, and insisted I sign the guest book.  To my surprise, a couple of weeks later, after I had arrived home, I received a personal note from the minister thanking me for my visit.  

The minister at that time, Rev. Marion Pardy.

 

Bach's organ music, well played on a good pipe organ, in a church with good acoustics, is a heavenly treat indeed!

 

 

That is a massive piece of music Mendalla!  

 

Great story gecko!  Gotta love Marion Pardy sending you a note :-) 

 

Thanks for this thread. Wonderful music, brilliantly played on fantastic instruments.  I too LOVE pipe organs.

 

I have a cd with Bach's Toccata and Fugue on it that sounds a lot like the one posted above.  My version is played by Zsigmond Szathmary.

It would be interesting to see how many young people attend churhces that have massive organs, and make them a major part of their services.....

good show, Jobam!

 

good tunes, folks

 

i'm the type of person that stays right by the pipe organ.  i want to close my eyes and feel myself uplifted by the music.  if i could, i would rise up uP UP!

 

one of my favourite video games, Gyruss, did a version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor...so the reward for the game, for me, was I get to listen to more of the song, screw the points...

 

 

for me, pipe organ music is a bridge between this world and the divine; for a few moments, all is one, all is well...

 

i also love it when the organ's music is low enough that my organs quiver

 

 

"for me, pipe organ music is a bridge between this world and the divine; for a few moments, all is one, all is well...

 

i also love it when the organ's music is low enough that my organs quiver"

 

Interesting, Inanna, because that's how I feel listening to a great pipe organ.  One of my all time favourites is "Phantom of the Opera".  Gives me goose bumps....feel so alive...

 

 

There are some songs that should not be played on organs, doncha think?

Hmm. Like Gangnam Style maybe? I'd be fun to hear it attempted! You're right though, not all songs would sound good. I'm not really a fan of pipe organs. They're too ominous sounding. They remind me of Dracula. I love the sound of harp in a big old church. But I do admire the talent it takes to play pipe organ, regardless.

oh, those dike pluggers

 

 

Yes, definitely. Many songs are not suited to be played on pipe organ.

 

Ever hear of the Great Stalactite Organ?

 

 

Oh, agreed. Heartily. One time when I was doing lay pulpit supply, one of the hymns was "Lord of the Dance" and the organist (the one I raved about upthread) used the organ instead of switching to the piano.

 

*shakes head*

 

One of the United churches that I have been to in London could stand with more piano and less organ, too.

 

Mendalla

 

Lord of the Dance, when played on the organ by a competent organist, is just fine.

It has nothing to do with competence , it has to do with instruments.DKS

some of the UCC like playing with their organs?

 

i KNEW the UCC was progressive :3

Waterfall - thanks for that video of the stalagpipe organ!  A good many years ago my family visited Luray Caverns on a trip through that part of the US - I had forgotten all about the organ that we heard there!  It is an extraordinary place!   What a job that would be - playing an organ underground all day! 

 As I said, Lord of the Dance played on a pipe organ by a competent organist can be superb. I have heard it many, many times.

 

I have used pipe organs as guests on my Rogers TV show. They were incredibly popular. The key was a versatile and skilled organist who knew how to draw the best out of the instrument.

 

It has nothing to do with competence, DKS. This organist could play rings around almost any other church organist that I have known. That's why we lost him. We were too small to retain someone of that calibre (he worked for us while he was a grad student). Also, too liberal. He had a bit of a fundamentalist streak in him.

 

Lord of the Dance is a light, bouncy, danceable tune. Yes, you can probably do it well on an organ but that would never be my first choice as an instrument. Organ has a power and ponderousness to it that even great organists often cannot overcome, which I think is what CH is alluding to. To be honest, while I prefer piano to organ for LotD, it's not my first choice either. The Irish Rovers did it on traditional Irish instruments back in the seventies and that's my preferred version. However, few churches have Irish folk musicians handy, though I could see an acoustic guitar being a good substitute. In the end, DKS, this is a taste issue so I'm inclined to leave it having said my piece. I won't convince you and you won't convince me.

 

Mendalla

 

 

*groan*

 

Mendalla

 

 A pipe organ can voice light bouncy music in an acceptable way. It all depends on who is at the keyboard. We do a lot of organ/sax and organ/clarinet pieces, as we have a great sax player and the First Clarinet of our symphony in the congregation as well as a great organist. Not combinations you would think went together, but they do. We also have organ/piano duets, as well.

Can you hear the other instruments above the sound of a pipe organ? I've never heard anything combined with it that I remember. It always struck me as a solo kind of instrument.

 

A lot of baroque music uses smaller organs alongside chamber ensembles. Camille Saint-Saens wrote a symphony that has an organ playing with a full orchestra. We used to use brass ensembles for Easter and other "event" services (we didn't have a trumpet stop on the organ at that time, I think that has been remedied).

 

Mendalla

 

 

Agreed. Part of the problem in our case was likely that the organist, while extremely good, was very much a "classical" organist and was likely much more comfortable with Widor and Bach than lighter material.

 

We saw that with one of the pianists at our fellowship, too. He played Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and such very well and was fantastic at accompanying his soprano wife when she sang opera and other classical material (we rarely heard her, though, as she was vocal scholar at a large United Church). When presented with lighter or more contemporary material (eg. some of the original UU hymns and hymns based on gospel music and spirituals), he tended to be a bit stiff. He got it, eventually, and even played accompaniment for a popular local gospel singer at a couple services. Then they moved to Calgary. *sigh*

 

Mendalla

 

Enjoying this thread and learning a great deal.  One to share....love the sounds.

 

So, the organ (non-electric) is a wind instrument and piano is a string instrument- just popped to mind. I'd never stopped to consider it that way before (although I knew the piano was a string instrument- it's a relative of a dulcimer which I'd love to learn one day.)

Are you an organ grinder too Inanna? Here is some good tunes being played on an organ.

This thread pulled one of my ancient memory strings, and made me smile.  When I was a girl of eight or nine I used to quietly sneak into a nearby church so I could listen to the organist practising.  I always though it was my own personal secret until I met him seveal years later.  He knew who I was right away and said how much he had enjoyed watching me creep in to listen.  Until then I hadn't thought that my presence might add to his pleasure!

Cute story Kay.  That sounds like something I might have done, given the opportunity. 

He probably watched for you to come - and hoped that you would slip in.

 

oh that's lovely kay!  I bet it made his practice time much more wonderful, knowing a child was there to take it in.

 

I was touring a grand cathedral in Oslo some years ago, and more recently one in Reykjavik, Iceland and had the good fortune to catch a bit of organ practice too!  Serendipity. 

Lord of the dance on an organ. No thanks. Many newer tunes/hymns sound aweful on a pipe organ. Now saying that, it does depend on the organ and the musician. My mother used to say that if the piece being played on the organ sounded choppy, or something you might hear at a circus, then it was something a person shouldn't play on an organ.

I stay away from churches that have massive organs, as the worship service tends to be designed around them. Usually older style worship services thus not interested. However, I have been to church's that have matured and use these instruments tastefully and not made to be the center of attention.

My mother was blessed with the ability to play the pipe organ well. I have a love hate relationship with them. I can play them but my love is a piano, you can feel what you are doing on the instrument, it responds to your touch. A relationship with a pipe organ is truly different.

It's a dying art. Rythym can be a hard thing to imitate on smaller chuch organs, thus many of the newer tunes in V.U. Sound/feel better on a keyboard.

I have yet to see a modern church with a real pipe organ. It's not an instrument that many in the younger generation can identify with. Sad, perhaps but a reality.

I know someone who's about 40, a musician composer who composed a piece specifically for pipe organ but he has yet to find someone to play it! He plays various instruments but I don't think he's ever actually played a pipe organ.

 

How modern are you talking? My family church in Kitchener was built in 1956'ish and installed the pipe organ in the late 1980's (the original organ was nothing special and died on us). It's a tracker (purely mechanical) organ, too, not an electro-pneumatic.

 

Siloam United here in London has a small electropneumatic but I think it has some electronic enhancements, too. Their current church building dates to the mid-1980s even though the congregation is quite old (the original was the first Methodist church in London, IIRC).

 

So, people are still building and installing them in churches where cost and time allow but you are right, the heyday of the pipe organ in churches is rather behind us now.

 

Mendalla

 

For those who are not organ geeks, an explanation of my last post:

 

Tracker (or mechanical) organs are the traditional mechanism for pipe organs and go back to the origins of the instrument. Bach played one. When you press a key, it moves a rod that pulls a lever that opens a valve (or something like that). The organist has somewhat finer grained control (you can open a valve partway by only pressing a key partway) but the console has to be right with, or very close to, the pipes so it is less flexible design-wise.

 

Electro-pneumatic organs are a more modern innovation. Pressing a key closes an electrical switch allowing current to flow to a mechanism (an electro-magnet I think) that opens the valve. This is how they can build an organ where the pipes are looming over the chancel, but the console is tucked down in the choir and that sort of thing. As long as you can run wires from the console to the pipes, you can put the pipes anywhere you like relative to the console. You lose some of that fine-grained control when playing, though.

 

There are also electronic pipe organs that synthesize the sound and various hybrids of electro-pneumatic and tracker mechanisms.

 

Mendalla

 

And possibly my favorite use of a pipe organ in contemporary music, "Intervention" by Arcade Fire.

 

 

Forget which church they used for the session, just know that it is in Montreal or thereabouts.

 

Mendalla

 

Incredible music and interesting video, Mendalla.

 

Like when the organ can imitate other sounds...here the pan flute of The Lonely Shepherd.

 

 

 

I think our church organ would be of the electro-pneumatic type - it's a Casavant 3 manual.  This winter we had a prolonged power outage & the sanctuary was very cold for a few days - and the poor organ suffered - unhappy with the extreme fluctuation.  Once back in use after sufficient time to warm up, it seemed okay, but during the next service, one pipe just refused to shut down ... emitting a long droning humm well into the sermon!   The organist quickly changed to the grand piano for subsequent music & improvised well!  

The skill, artistry and dexterity required to play a pipe organ boggles my mind.

 

On a recent Cosmos episode, I heard part of Carmina Burana played on a pipe organ. Great!

 

 

Just watched it last night. That was gorgeous. Now that I've heard it on an organ, I am surprised I have never come across an organ recording of O Fortuna! before. It works so well. And that organ was a beauty, too.

 

Mendalla

 

Yes, I too never heard Carmina Burana, or that rousing O Fortuna part of it, played on pipe organ before. I might have thought it would not be suitable. But it was!

 

 

 

 

Did you note Neil's comment that the abbey where they played was the very one where the manuscript of medieval songs that Orff used was found? Nothing like bringing a classic back home.

 

Mendalla

 

No, I missed that one. Very interesting!