From: Rich Holmes
Date: 30 Jun 2005
23:20:28 -0400
Subject: Octavin (and
intro)
How's this for a delayed response? Googling for
'octavin' I found
this old message:
Author: A Myers
Date: 1/9/97 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: Contrabass-L, No. 72
Mats 0ljare asks (8.1.97):
> Does anyone know more about
the old octavin??It appears in every music
> dictoniary there is,but noone
has ever seen one.
[...]
It has a folded air-column in manner of bassoon, with
descending and
ascending portions bored parallel in single block.
Out-turned metal
bell, silver-plated. Tone-holes are not long tunnels like
bassoon, but
relatively short passages like clarinet. Wooden single-reed
mouthpiece
with silver-plated ligature and cap.
And no known repertoire !
Arnold Myers
Nearly five years later there was a thread dealing with a straight
octavin up for auction on eBay, which corrects one of the above
points.
Now here's correction (or update) of another:
<http://cinematone.net/cinematone/Page_1x.html>
"The Music of Franklin
Stover" makes mysterious reference to "Works for tarogato &
octavin";
and
<http://www.moviemusicuk.us/gallery-ab.htm>
"Movie Music UK - Composer
Gallery AB" -- entry for Jeff Britting includes, 'Other notable
achievements include composing "Sonatina for Octavin", a score
commissioned by composer and American rare instrument specialist,
Franklin H. Stover...'
As far as I can tell these haven't been mentioned here before -- I
apologize if they have.
As this is my first post here I suppose I should introduce myself.
I'm here as a contrabass wannabe, never having played any real
below-the-bass-clef instruments; the closest I've come was sitting
next to the contra-alto clarinetist in our high school band, a
thousand years ago -- I played bass clarinet back then. (To
low Eb.)
These days the lowest instrument I own -- synths excepted, of course
-- is an alto clarinet I just bought on eBay, which I'm intending to
fix up. And the one instrument on which I consider myself to
have
more than minimal skill (barely) is the diatonic button accordion,
a.k.a. melodeon.
So I'll probably just sit over in this corner listening quietly for
the most part.
- Rich Holmes
=================================================================================
From: "Gregg Bailey"
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005
09:56:11 -0500
Subject: [CB] "Octavin"
as an organ stop
Has Mr. Tikker or anyone else mentioned the fact that many
pipe organs have a stop called "Octavin"? It sounds like
there must be no relation to the real instrument,
though. The organ stop version is a high flutey stop pitched
at 2', meaning that the speaking length of the longest pipe is only 2',
and the whole stop sounds two octaves above normal pitch.
-Gregg
=================================================================================
From: "Chuck Guzis"
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005
10:46:01 -0700
Subject: Re: [CB]
"Octavin" as an organ stop
On 7/1/2005, Gregg Bailey wrote:
>*Has Mr. Tikker or anyone else mentioned the fact that many pipe
organs
>have a stop called "Octavin"? It sounds like there must
be no relation
>to the real instrument, though.
Doesn't the French "octavin" term imply the same as the Italian
"ottavino"; i.e. something which sounds at the
octave? Ottavino can
mean a small spinet, piccolo (flute) or any other of a variety of
high-pitched instruments. Audsley isn't very clear about the
exact
nature of the octavin voice as used in organs, but apparently, the
notion of this simply being a high-pitched flute voice isn't too far
off:
http://www.organstops.org/h/Hellflote.html
Best regards,
Chuck
=================================================================================
From: "Gregg Bailey"
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005
14:38:28 -0500
Subject: [CB] Octavin
stop
Well, here is the link for the page actually talking about
the Octavin
organ stop:
http://www.organstops.org/o/Octavin.html
***End of Contrabass Digest***