Bedford, England
8th April 1952
Dear Mr. Kolbinson,
Your kind, friendly letter came as a very pleasant surprise. As you say, I get a lot of letters from organ enthusiasts and welcome them. I can see you are tremendously keen and possess some practical knowledge of the subject, which knowledge is exceedingly rare among the fraternity outside the professional building industry. In my own case I have had to do work that an organ builder either would not or could not do to my satisfaction or at the price I could afford to pay. So I just had to find out how things were done. Many treatises on organ building have been written by authors equipped with secondhand information. I do not think that even G.A. Audsley ever did any voicing - in fact he told me so - nor any constructional work. J.W. Hinton and Elliston were both practical men.
I am glad you found something useful in my latest book, though the "Organ Reed," published by J. Fischer ___ of New York, gives more detailed hints on voicing these pipes. Fischer would like me to do a companion treatise on the flue pipe, but are waiting to see how "The Organ Reed" sells before launching out again. It is a pity everything is so expensive now.
The type of chest shown in Fig. 37 is quite common and still made. I have several in my own organ and they are quite excellent for flutes and strings, not for diapasons and reeds (except the non-chorus type). Compton still eschews the barred chest, and Harrison & Harrison of Durham alone use it over here.
The great point about this chest question is "attack." If you strike a chord sharply, and as sharply take your hands off the keys, you won't get the full tone. Try it and see. The great advantage of the 17th century organ was just this - the tracker action and the barred chest gave what your fingers sought, all of it and not the fraction we get from a modern organ. The Barker lever did it about as well, because the pallet motors were above the chest and the wind was not being made to operate in contrary motion through the pallet being drawn down by the inside motor and the wind at the same time flowing up into the pipe. The chest should only have to supply wind to the pipe and nothing else. With the tracker action this was so. Direct-electric action also allows the wind to do this, BUT the magnet has to be constant and it takes its time, so attack is not perfect. If you want the best tonal results you must either have the barred chest or else, a chest like Homer's with the pallet over the supply hole instead of under it. You don't want the struck note or chord to come late and you don't want it to come in a fraction of its whole self. In many organs, it is both late and fractional - in very, very, very few is it neither.
I hope you will soon succeed in getting your own house organ. What a lot of people are building their own organs in their homes! It is a pity everything is so expensive. Secondhand stuff is the only solution, if it can be got and is reliable.
I am sorry I don't take in The American Organist, only The Diapason - it is such a business sending dollars over - so I have missed your article, alas.
Very sincerely yours,
Noel Bonavia-Hunt
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Bedford
England
June 12 1952
My dear Mr. Kolbinson,
How very kind of you to donate me a year's supply of issues of T.A.O. I am amazed by your generous act and cannot adequately express my feelings of grateful appreciation. I hope to see articles from your pen. I did some time ago send an article in to the Editor but have not been able to ascertain whether he accepted it or not. Probably not! I feel inclined to push in another on the subject of reed voicing, if acceptable; but I naturally don't want to waste time and postage on something never to appear in print. I imagine that electric actions are reasonably reliable in the States, but over here they are not, if my own personal experience is of any moment. They are all right if serviced weekly but you cannot leave them for months on end like tubular pneumatics, and in country districts servicing is a real problem. I refer more particularly to key action and couplers. I have a set of electric reversible pistons which so far give no trouble at all. I expect Reisner's action is very reliable. Again, thanking you a thousand times for your splendid gift.
Very sincerely,
Noel Bonavia Hunt
PS I am having a visit here from Mr. Whiting of Los Angeles: he will try my organ.
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Bedford
June 28th 1952
Dear Mr. Kolbinson,
Your very welcome letter reached me today, and very much have I enjoyed reading it. I think the best way to answer your queries is seriative.
Slider versus pitman chests.
Yes! There are indeed the two viewpoints to be given fair consideration; those two viewpoints are tonal on the one side and mechanical on the other. Tonally, the slider chest wins hands down, because the "supply curve" to the pipe mouth is:
The modern Willis reed is not voiced exactly as Fr. Willis voiced it because of the pitman chests now: the tongues have to be modified in curve to allow for slower wind supply from the "pallet" (if you can thus term it.) No one is going to persuade me that the resulting quality is the same, though I say nothing about good or bad. It's different.
But what does TONE matter if it is felt necessary to recurve the pipes more readily controllable at the key? There's the argument on the other side. Yet Harrison & Harrison of Durham still make slider chests and their electro-pneumatic action at Westminster Abbey is good enough for any organist. It means, however, higher prices per stop, O H. of H. get them. (Hounds of Hell) (eg Royal Festival Concert Hall, London, and Colston Hall, Bristol). Personally, I'd sooner have half the number of stops and pipes on barred chests than double the number in barless. Sliders are not essential for all stops, of course.
2. Slider s'board containing more than say 10 or 12 ranks of pipes.
Well, that was common enough in Queen Victoria's reign over here. Christ Church, Spitalfield organ had 16 stops all on one Great soundboard, and numbers of organs had 12 to 15 stops. Ch Ch, Newgate St. Great s'board had 13 stops and I had the revoicing of some of them. (When Dr. Lloyd Webbe was the organist and called me in.) Of course, the pipes below 4 ft pitch were planted off with the exception of stopped wood pipes, but the largest was 4 ft stopped.
The grooves were wide to compensate for limited length, but even so the wind pressure taken at the back end of the s'board dropped by at least one inch at Newgate St. and St. Luke's Chelsea (which has 14 ranks, some of which I revoiced for John Ireland, the then(?) organist.) No wonder the reeds - usually Trumpet 8 ft. and Clarion 4 ft sound so harsh, rarely in tune, being placed at the back of the s'board over the "______________ Cloth."
But old Schnitger knew better. He used un-nicked flue pipes which were able to speak promptly on any pressure from ¾" to 2 ½", so that it did not matter two hoots whether they got their full supply or not!! In fact, they didn't and the wind supply to these large soundboards was very unsteady. Again, the large number of ranks of 1 ft and less in pitch would take very little depth of space in his soundboard.s so that when we read a list of 15 or more ranks we have to allow for a large number of quite small pipes occupying very little room really. Furthermore, the reeds were regals and regals didn't require more than a small input of wind, far less than a diapason 8 ft. I understand that the upperwork pipes were tuned with all stops drawn, to allow for robbings. They certainly had to be so tuned at Newgate St. and Chelsea, as I know. You could not play full Great otherwise even if you excluded the flute stops.
As to the "Bach organ" of 27 ranks on Great, I don't think there were 27 ranks, but that some of these drew in two halves - bass and treble, though I may be wrong. All the same, no slider s'board ought to have more than eight ranks if the wind supply is to be evenly distributed to each rank when all are played simultaneously.
Electric action and reliability factor.
The climate over here is humid, and the hygrometric conditions militate against reliability of magnet contacts where these are operated in mass per key. My cousin at _________ told me that the climatic conditions there are very different from here. Metals are definitely affected by the moist condition of the air in Gt. Britain. I don't know of a single organ over here with electric action that can be left to take care of itself as in Canada and USA. My own organ has only six electric reversible pistons (à la Compton) and these so far have not had to be serviced. The pneumatics are also quite reliable; but the tracker key action occasionally requires readjustment owing to the "stretching" of the tapped wires when the temperature changes from 70º to 30º! I should never have electric key action here because I know that I should have to waste a lot of time getting the action to work for next Sunday. If only ONE note is off - and it is mostly "off" not "on" that occurs over here - the poor organist is "up agin' it" at Service time. The humid climate even upsets the working of fan blowers over here - both my own blower and that at the neighbouring church have "packed up" for one reason or another and had to be "serviced." (this is because they are in country churches where temperatures vary very suddenly and also hygrometric conditions.) I never recommended a detached electric console unless the builders can guarantee a regular servicing maintenance and the church committee are willing to pay for it.
I have tried to answer your questions, and you may or may not agree with all I have said. That does not matter! It is the interest in the subject that matters. I realise I am not infallible--- glad I am not. With very best wishes and renewed thanks for your generous gift,
Very sincerely,
Noel Bonavia Hunt
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Benenden
Cranbrook
Kent
October 1st, 1957
Dear Mr. Kolbinson,
I was delighted to receive your long and interesting letter. As you will see, I have settled in this lovely part of England, having purchased a beautiful bungalow and garden. I only came here last September 18th! After leaving Stagsden in 1955 I built a bungalow 2 miles away, but sold it last month and migrated here. I'd done a fair amount of organ voicing in Bedfordshire, but fear that is now at an end, though I expect to act as a "consultant" to two Dioceses. Your two Casavants are certainly big jobs, and doubtless typical specifications. I do not know how you will enliven the choruses unless you can add or substitute NEW pipework of the requisite type scaling and voicing. This of course costs money, but otherwise is quite easy to do. If the Great can have a new set of 4 ft Principal pipes from middle C up, Scale 1 in. at 1 ft pipe with 2/7 mouth-voiced up until sounding like "sleigh bells"! Ditto the 2 ft and mixture, 19, 22, (no 17th). The Choir 4 ft 1/4 of 2 ft flutes can be replaced by Salicet 4 ft and Salicetina 2 ft of small scale and with 1/4 mouths (Say 1 ft pipe = ¾"). This would be a good start-off anyway.
I still remember your very kind gift of the T.A.O., which the new Editor, Ray Berry, now sends me gratis in return for my contributions.
With my most cordial regards
Yours as ever,
Noel Bonavia-Hunt
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