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From: LeliaLoban@aol.com
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:01:50 EDT
Subject: Heavy Organ (was Re: Lelia's Uncle Bill!)
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.comJim Katz wrote,
>My own first organ experience was a Virgil Fox concert on in a large church
in Brockton, Mass. I remember the impressive look of the instrument, the
sounds of the various sections of the organ coming from all parts of the
church, and even some of the repertoire (which also leaned heavily on Bach.)
I was four years old.>Heliconman talked of his recent visits to Methuen Memorial Hall with that
great historic organ, and wrote,
>>I was lucky to have seen Virgil Fox's "Heavy Organ" tour here in Boston,
complete with light show, dancing laser images and smoke machines. His
opening phrase? "I like Bach!!!" he says VERY emphatically. He encouraged
people to dance in the aisles....>>Heliconman also wrote about waking up to an E. Power Biggs recording he
called his "morning Wedge" and playing with his high school band in the
Melrose, MA, Memorial Hall, where,
>the pipe organ had such great volume that a spike had to be put under the
volume pedal to prevent blowing out any more windows....[snip] and the great
volume made me just a bit nervous.>Massachusetts is paradise for anyone who loves organ music. Boston must
house more than its share of the country's best pipe organs. I wish Uncle
Bill were around to read all this. He was a great fan of both Fox and Biggs,
both champions of Bach, although they were as different as possible.While I was doing the research for Passacaglia and Fugue, I had a long talk
with Jack Staley, now proprietor of Barnwood Books in Hagerstown, MD. He'd
been one of my favorite used book pushers for years before I bought some
technical manuals about pipe organs from him and learned that he's not only a
professional organist but an organ technician, a retired career employee of
the organ builder M.P. Moller, Inc.. He'd worked with Virgil Fox extensively
and told me that organ professionals have the highest respect for Fox.That's the same thing Uncle Bill said when I told him that back around 1970
or so, I went to one of Fox's "Heavy Organ" tour recitals, at a big rock 'n'
roll hall (I think Winterland; it might have been the Fillmore) in San
Francisco. Fox played an electronic organ from a remote console, the better
to display his showmanship. No hiding in a loft for him!People who never saw Fox's tour can get an idea of it from his "Heavy Organ
at Carnegie Hall" CD (recorded in 1973, released as an LP on RCA Victor Gold
Seal and reissued as BMG Classics 09026-63316-2 in 1997), where he's yelling
like a tent revival preacher to whip up the crowd. My memory of the evening
is fuzzy (unlike our Commander in Chief, I inhaled), but I loved Fox's
psychedelic light show, his satin jackets and the rhinestones on his heels
that made his footwork glitter as the audience hollered for more. Part of
his weird charm came from his tone-deafness to pop culture even as he tried
to adapt to it, because in California, by the end of the 1960s, "groovy" had
died the dinosaur death, and so had at least 7/8 of Fox's ersatz hippie
vocabulary, by the time he started smooshing it together indiscriminately
with Lawrence Welk-ish kitsch. Still, he laid on quite a show, though I got
a small frisson of anxiety that after it seemed he'd finished, he might come
galloping back out on stage and perform some snake-handling as an encore. (He
didn't. Damn!) But despite the Velvet Elvis ambience, Fox was absolutely
for real as an organist, a spectacular, blood-and-thunder virtuoso of the old
Romantic school. I thoroughly enjoyed him.This is getting kind of long, so maybe I'll tell the E. Power Biggs story
some other time.Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now."
--Bob Dylan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---------------------------------------------------------Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:14:42 -0400
From: jim and joyce <lande@erols.com>
Subject: monster instrumentation
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.comLelia writes about a sona. I wonder if this is the same
instrument that I picked up in San Francisco last summer. The Chinese
government had rented a warehouse on the docks and and were staging an
exhibition of chinese culture. Like most folks, we breezed on by the
not too showy warehouse a couple times while we were visiting. However,
at one point we were standing in line a half block away and heard a very
loud double reed sounding instrument. Getting closer, I could also hear
drums. I expected to see some something large and electrified. I was
amazed to see this guy playing an instrument the size of a recorder.
His backup band consisted of several drummers who clearly ran the risk
of going deaf if they strayed in front of him. The guy played very
fast with lots of grace notes.The reeds are very short, perhaps a half inch. As Lelia says,
the instrument has no keys but does have six finger holes plus the left
hand thumb hole. The musician covered the top holes not with his finger
tips, but rather with the fleshy pads on the second joints of his
fingers. He could vary the tone at least a full pitch by changing lip
pressure (and maybe air pressure, but I think this thing requires a
hundred P.S.I to make any noise at all.) I believe the body is conical,
but not more than an inch and a half in diameter at the bottom. It is
made of some sort of very dark wood with a pretty, fairly open, curly
grain. Most interestingly, the wood was turned so that it was thinner
where the holes were placed. I don't know whether or not this would
affect tone. I was told that you could get plastic versions. The bell
fits very loosely at the end and slips off for storage.Through the interpreter, he said that the instrument was called a
sua na (pronounced, approximately Su-ah Nah.) I offered to buy the
instrument and paid $100 cash. It gives me a headache to blow on that
thing. Imagine how bad my head would hurt if I could get sound out,
too.A few weeks ago I cleaned up my workroom. Not enough to actually
make the place clean or even to look neat. (Sort of the fire break
approach to cleaning.) I don't know where the sua na ended up. I
suppose I will have to look. Lelia and I live just a few miles from
each other. We could sit in our respective back yards and play duets.
A contrabass sua na? Not in the Washington D.C. area. They scramble
jets for things that make that sort of noise.jim lande
---------------------------------------------------------
From: Heliconman@aol.com
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 01:46:29 EDT
Subject: Re: Heavy Organ (was Re: Lelia's Uncle Bill!)
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.comIn a message dated 8/19/99 9:02:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
LeliaLoban@aol.com writes:> This is getting kind of long, so maybe I'll tell the E. Power Biggs story
> some other time.
>
> LeliaThen let me give you a little nudge. The closest I got to actually SEEING E.
Power Biggs was at his Memorial Concert at Harvard University. The church
bells tolled in Harvard Yard (you cahn't even DRIVE in Hahvahd Yahd, nevah
mind PAHK they-ah!) I took my seat in the balcony and the sound of the bells
faded out in a very musical fashion as the doors to the halls were closed.
Impressive. There was his casket. The Boston Symphony Chamber Ensemble played
beautifully, his brother spoke. That's about all I remember without digging
out the program. I know I tucked it in one of his albums, but I'm a bit
disorganized at the moment, preparing for a six week cruise gig on a Carnival
Cruise ship. My first cruise! I'm psyched. I may be able to check in once in
a while from a rental 'puter, but otherwise I'll be away from 8/28 to about
10/15 in Key West, Cozumel and the Grand Caymans. Good timing, too! My gigs
were starting to drop off. November I'll have to get a day job. Hmmmph. Maybe
I'll go apprentice with an organ repair guy I met a while back!!
Cheers!
Heliconman@aol.com
---------------------------------------------------------From: Heliconman@aol.com
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 01:51:53 EDT
Subject: Re: monster instrumentation
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.comIn a message dated 8/19/99 9:13:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lande@erols.com
writes:> Lelia writes about a sona. I wonder if this is the same
> instrument that I picked up in San Francisco last summer. The Chinese
> government had rented a warehouse on the docks and and were staging an
> exhibition of chinese culture. Like most folks, we breezed on by the
> not too showy warehouse a couple times while we were visiting. However,
> at one point we were standing in line a half block away and heard a very
> loud double reed sounding instrument. Getting closer, I could also hear
> drums. I expected to see some something large and electrified. I was
> amazed to see this guy playing an instrument the size of a recorder.
> His backup band consisted of several drummers who clearly ran the risk
> of going deaf if they strayed in front of him. The guy played very
> fast with lots of grace notes.
>
> The reeds are very short, perhaps a half inch. As Lelia says,
> the instrument has no keys but does have six finger holes plus the left
> hand thumb hole. The musician covered the top holes not with his finger
> tips, but rather with the fleshy pads on the second joints of his
> fingers. He could vary the tone at least a full pitch by changing lip
> pressure (and maybe air pressure, but I think this thing requires a
> hundred P.S.I to make any noise at all.) I believe the body is conical,
> but not more than an inch and a half in diameter at the bottom. It is
> made of some sort of very dark wood with a pretty, fairly open, curly
> grain. Most interestingly, the wood was turned so that it was thinner
> where the holes were placed. I don't know whether or not this would
> affect tone. I was told that you could get plastic versions. The bell
> fits very loosely at the end and slips off for storage.
>
> Through the interpreter, he said that the instrument was called a
> sua na (pronounced, approximately Su-ah Nah.) I offered to buy the
> instrument and paid $100 cash. It gives me a headache to blow on that
> thing. Imagine how bad my head would hurt if I could get sound out,
> too.
>
> A few weeks ago I cleaned up my workroom. Not enough to actually
> make the place clean or even to look neat. (Sort of the fire break
> approach to cleaning.) I don't know where the sua na ended up. I
> suppose I will have to look. Lelia and I live just a few miles from
> each other. We could sit in our respective back yards and play duets.
> A contrabass sua na? Not in the Washington D.C. area. They scramble
> jets for things that make that sort of noise.
>
> jim lande
>Sounds like the instruments played by the Shriners' Chinese Band from one of
their New Hampshire temples. Very loud and wonderfully obnoxious. I've
considered getting one for a while.
Cheers!
Heliconman@aol.com
---------------------------------------------------------Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 09:45:05 -0700
From: Grant Green <gdgreen@contrabass.com>
Subject: Re: monster instrumentation
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.com> The reeds are very short, perhaps a half inch. As Lelia says,
>the instrument has no keys but does have six finger holes plus the left
>hand thumb hole. The musician covered the top holes not with his finger
>tips, but rather with the fleshy pads on the second joints of his
>fingers. He could vary the tone at least a full pitch by changing lip
>pressure (and maybe air pressure, but I think this thing requires a
>hundred P.S.I to make any noise at all.) I believe the body is conical,
>but not more than an inch and a half in diameter at the bottom. It is
>made of some sort of very dark wood with a pretty, fairly open, curly
>grain. Most interestingly, the wood was turned so that it was thinner
>where the holes were placed. I don't know whether or not this would
>affect tone. I was told that you could get plastic versions. The bell
>fits very loosely at the end and slips off for storage.Lark in the Morning carries these: you can see a picture of one on their
website at http://www.larkinam.com/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/china.
I tried playing one once when I was at their shop in Mendocino: it is a
lot like playing a bagpipe without the bag, and with the sound source that
much closer to your ears. All conversation in the store stops if you
manage to force out a few notes ;-) The reed is very short, and very
thick: I was surprised that it would vibrate at all. The Bretton bombards
they had were very similar, but a little more refined in appearance. Just
appearance...Enjoy!
Grant
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grant Green gdgreen@contrabass.com
http://www.contrabass.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------------------------------------------------Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 14:41:50 -0700
From: "Timothy J. Tikker" <timjt@awod.com>
Subject: Distinctive woodwinds for large ensemble
Reply-To: contrabass@contrabass.comRather than renaissance shawms or Rauschpfeifen, I vote for adding Catalonian shawms, the type used in the saradana cobla bands.
These are a treble (tiple), in F, written range from tenor A sounding middle D, and a tenor in Bb, range like the soprano saxophone except for a lower entension to written tenor F# (sounding E).
They are loud enough to keep up with trumpets in volume, but can play softly as well. Plus, they have modern key systems so can play easliy in all keys, unlike renaissance winds.
These are described briefly in Baines' Woodwind Instruments and their History.
- Timothy Tikker
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