Russell Collection of Early
Keyboard Instruments

St Cecilia's Hall, Niddry Street, Cowgate, Edinburgh EH1 1LJ

The Enharmonic Chamber Organ by Thomas Parker
at St Cecilia's Hall

Dominic Gwynn

Contents

• Thomas Parker's Chamber Organs
• Thomas Parker
• The Enharmonic Organ: History
• Specification
• The 1997 Restoration
• Enharmonic Shifting Movement

This paper examines questions of attribution and context, the authenticity of the organ's sound and discusses the enharmonic mechanism and its operation.

THOMAS PARKER'S CHAMBER ORGANS

Thomas Parker is traditionally supposed to have been apprenticed to Richard Bridge, and to have been succeeded by Hugh Russell. It is always difficult to discover where these traditions come from, how they are transmitted, and how close to the truth they are. In the case of this organ, there is a precise stylistic connection with Thomas Parker's work at Great Packington in Warwickshire (which is signed in pencil on the back of the Great key slip), and Richard Bridge's late work at St Leonard Shoreditch, in what was Middlesex.

This latter organ, a large three manual, was made in 1756 (again, the sources are not contemporary). The style of the pipes and the pipe maker's pitch markings show that they were made by more than one person. The stopped metal pipes were made by the same person who made the stopped metal pipes at Great Packington, i.e. somebody connected with Richard Bridge and Thomas Parker.

Internal stylistic evidence, including pipe markings, shows that two chamber organs were made by the Richard Bridge workshop. These are now at Liss URC and St Ethelbert Falkenham. Their original home is unknown. Bridge is also known to have made an organ with an elaborate case for the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Clerks in the City. It is likely the organ now at Duror in Appin, which has a case sharing characteristics with these three, is also from the same workshop.

The enharmonic organ is very similar to these earlier chamber organs. There are obvious differences in the case design, but also residual similarities, and the layout, the style of the pipes and actions are very similar. The organ is also close cousin to a small group of chamber organs, at Merton College Oxford, at Beeleigh Abbey in Essex, and at Eastcote Methodist in Middlesex (though the last has probably been destroyed). The Beeleigh Abbey organ is traditionally supposed to have come from the Foundling Hospital (and is therefore known as 'Handel's Largo organ'). The enharmonic organ also has an obvious connection with the large organ which Thomas Parker made for the Foundling Hospital, since the principle of the enharmonic system on that organ is the same.

The organ at Great Packington is marked 'this Organ was made by Ths⁰ Parker London'. Unfortunately it is undated, but it does have a well-known history, unlike the other chamber organs. It was originally made for Charles Jennens, and installed at Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire. It was moved to the Hall at Great Packington in 1773 and to the church in the late l9th century. On 30 Sept. 1749, Handel wrote to Charles Jennens, recommending Richard Bridge, and suggesting a stoplist. The fact that the organ was actually made by Parker, and that the stoplist of the original organ is somewhat different from that recommended in the letter, does not diminish the value of the organ from a musical viewpoint. Its importance from the point of view of this enharmonic organ is that it confirms the attribution to Parker, and the association with Handel. It is a remarkably complete example of the period, with seven stops on the Great and three on the Choir organ. The only changes from the original are the replacement of two stops in 1792, and the loss of the pitch and tuning system in 1958.

THOMAS PARKER

Parker lived and worked "at the lower end of Gray's Inn Road, Houlborne". He was recommended by John Arnold in his 'Compleate Psalmodist (1761), as being "very eminent in his profession". In this case particularly for making 'Box organs of a very small structure... likewise of the machinery kind, at ten to fourteen guineas. "Tunes of your own chusing" (sic). No surviving specimen of a small organ is known.

Parker made church organs at All Hallows the Great, Thames Street in 1749, at Barnsley in 1761, and at the Foundling Hospital in 1768-9. He rebuilt the organs at Whitchurch in Shropshire in 1755, at Great St Mary's in Cambridge in 1766 (with his son Joseph), and at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1767. Apart from the surviving chamber organ and the reference to box and barrel organs, that is almost all we know about his activities.

It is a meagre opus list for a builder of more than ordinary competence. It may be that he spent much of his earlier career subcontracting, as at St Leonard Shoreditch. Nonetheless, he did not succeed to Bridge's business, presumably because he was already operating on his own account, and with his own family. Traditionally, George England is supposed to have married Bridge's daughter and succeeded to his business, but his organs do not have the same exact similarity in manufacturing style to Bridge's organs that Parker's do.

The connection of Parker with Hugh Russell I know little about, but Russell's son William was Foundling Hospital organist from 1801 till his death in 1813. He was an original composer as well as a celebrated organist.

THE ENHARMONIC ORGAN: HISTORY

The active period of Parker's life is set by work in 1749 and 1769. We know that Robert Smith published his observations on the Kirkman harpsichord in 1762, and that it was made 'about five years before'. Smith died in 1768. These dates suggest a building date for this organ in the 1760s. It is most unlikely to date from before 1762, as Smith would have mentioned it along with the harpsichord. It is unlikely to date from after 1768, for it may have been a prototype for the Foundling Hospital; there are signs that the production of the shifting movement for the enharmonic notes in this organ was not completely successful.

In recent years the organ has belonged to

Nicholas Plumley (purchased 1979),
Mary Verney (inherited 1976),
Mary Fanshawe of Combe Court in Surrey,
her mother Morforwyn Fanshawe, painted standing in front of the organ in about 1900,
her father Sir George Lloyd Verney of Clochfaen near Llangurig in Powys,
and presumably Verneys before him

It may be that there is a connection between Thomas Parker and Smith, for Parker worked at Trinity and at the University Church in 1766 and 1767, at a time when Smith was President of Trinity and Vice-Chancellor of the University. Smith discussed his ideas with Mr Turner, who was organist at the University Church, and with the Revd William Ludlam, a fellow academic who recommended the two organs as ideals in an open letter published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1772. The circle goes wider to include a Handel fanatic or two. I am sure that the early history of the organ is embedded somewhere in the connection between these men, but I have not yet unearthed it.

SPECIFICATION

The organ has four stops:

Stopped Diapason, all wood
Open Diapason (from c⁰), all metal
Principal, GG to D wood, the rest metal
Fifteenth, all metal

There was a shifting movement, reducing the registration to the two Diapasons (if drawn). The bar frame of the wind chest was made in two halves, with a vertical slider between the two halves of the chest. The slider isolated the front half of the chest from the back, on which the Diapason pipes stand. Because of this, the pallet box is at the back of the organ, whereas it is usually at the front; this makes the entry of the wind trunk into the pallet box difficult. The shifting movement was fixed in place and the movement removed, perhaps quite early in the organ's history; the delicate state of the chest would make it very difficult to restore.

The compass is GG AA C D to e³. With four extra pipes in each octave, throughout the compass, there are considerably more pipes than in the other chamber organs (from 54 to 71), and the organ is wider as a result. The case proportions of the Beeleigh Abbey organ, for instance, are rather pleasanter for being taller and narrower.

The pitch of Parker's organs was the usual 18th century consort pitch of about a' = 422.5Hz. This organ may have had a higher pitch, for it was already a' = 450Hz by 1984. The pipes have been cut down, perhaps in 1894. In 1984 they were re-tuned to an unequal tuning, but not re-pitched. The choice of a' = 440 in 1997, and tuning slides, was a compromise, taking into account the fragile condition of the pipes, our ignorance of the original pitch, and the facility for using different tuning systems for demonstration purposes. One or two organs of the period apparently had a pitch close to this, a pitch used by Father Smith. Parker himself lowered the pitch of the University organ by at least a semitone, and the Trinity organ, at the behest of Robert Smith, by at least two semitones.

THE 1997 RESTORATION

The object of the restoration was to leave the organ as left by the 1984 restoration, but to restore the enharmonic mechanism and to revive the original voicing as far as possible. It became obvious that the chest would have to substantially repaired, but otherwise the rather tatty support frame, and mechanism have been left as they are. The player is not really conscious of the heterogeneous nature of the work inside the organ. For the restorer, it would be almost impossible to decide how much should be restored to original condition, without leaving to firm an imprint on the history of the organ.

The sound of the organ has been brought back to somewhere close to the original, though the pipes have suffered grievously over the last hundred years. They were re-voiced in 1894, with a higher wind pressure, deeper nicking and smaller toeholes, but fortunately the mouth heights have remained intact. In 1984 the pipes were left as found, apart from extensive repairs. In 1976, the organ was involved in a fire, and then stood in a brewhouse for a year or so. The wooden pipes have suffered from rot, as well as from failed joints. The metal pipes, already quite fragile, and been bashed about, as if stored in a dustbin.

In 1997 the pipes were repaired and the 1894 nicking rubbed out as far as possible. The best and least altered pipes were chosen as models for the flues, lip alignment, etc. The wind pressure was reduced from 2 1/2" (63mm) firstly to 58mm and then to 2" (5 1mm), and the toeholes were opened up as much as possible, without aggravating the speech or the stability of the tone. The original pitch may have been 58mm, but the fragility of the pipes and the irregularity of the mouths made a lower pressure advisable. The effect of reducing the nicking, lowering the pressure and opening the toeholes is to bring the life and harmonic interest back to the pipes. It is unrecognisable from the rather quiet, dull organ that we first heard.

ENHARMONIC SHIFTING MOVEMENT

The main purpose of the 1997 restoration was to replace the missing enharmonic tuning system, with its missing pipes and slider mechanism. Of the original, only traces remain. There are three stop action sliders for each stop, one for the c-d and d-e pipes, the second for g-a, a-b, and the third for the rest. These sliders have holes in which dowels would have been placed when drilling the holes through to the channels (they are in line in the stop action sliders but would have been staggered on the enharmonic shifting movement sliders). The stop jambs had 5mm from the front surface replaced with a veneer in 1894, but the remaining wood shows the slot for the enharmonic shifting movement lever. The pipes for the enharmonic notes d and d, a and a, have been removed, but occasionally it was the mean tone pipes which were removed.

The mechanism was replaced using the Beeleigh Abbey shifting as a model for the missing parts. New sliders were made, and, following the organ at Liss, a false upperboard was placed between the two sets of sliders (in later 18th century chamber organs the second set of sliders lies directly on the first). The foot holes in the upperboards had been covered with parchment or leather patches; these were all opened up. All the holes on the upperboards and rackboards were marked in ink, though not all are now legible. Rackboards were extended and repaired to support the existing pipes.

It was assumed from the start that the system would replicate that recorded for the Foundling Hospital, i.e. as follows:

        C     C     D             A     G     G
        D     E     E              B     B     A

This was transmitted by F.G.Edwardes in an article in the Musical Times (1.5.1902), as he says 'copied from a manuscript account made early in the last century by William Russell, the fifth organist of the Foundling Hospital'. Although there are numerous errors in the article, and in the extract quoted from Hopkins, there is no reason to doubt the diagrams; a published letter by Russell in 1809 mentions the four extra pipes and the levers.

That this system was originally intended in the Edinburgh organ is supported by the indications of three notches in the lever slot in the stop jambs, and by the three dowel positions in the ends of the sliders containing the holes for the enhannonic pipes.

The first difference is that g and b are controlled on the bass side, and c and e on the treble side. The sliders are connected at the ends, the three for each stop with blocks screwed to the sliders (moved by the stop action lever), and the four for each enharmonic position with roller arms. There are notches in the underside of the upperboards to give clearance to these arms where they project through the slider, which shows clearly which side is which.

More disconcerting was the impossibility of spacing the slider holes in such a way as to give three positions. It is perfectly possible with the bass and tenor octaves, but the spacing of the middle and treble octaves is different, and the channels are closer together. That means that one can have one 'on' or 'open' position for an enharmonic pipe hole, and one 'off or 'shut' position, but the second 'off or 'shut' position, although 'off in the lower octaves, is 'on' in the higher. The assumption is that at the Foundling Hospital, the spacing of all the bars and the pattern of the holes for table, sliders and soundboard, were the same for each octave, or that there was more than one slider hole for each table hole, for which in a large organ there would have been space.

The choice of which two positions was obvious; one position for sharp keys and the other for flats. That is acceptable for major keys, but as a controversy early in the next century chewed over ad nauseam (see Philip Olleson's articles in BIOS Journal 20 and 21), there are problems with commonly used minor keys, for which ordinary mean tone has to be available. The organ therefore cannot represent Smith's tuning completely; it does not do what it purports to do. That suggests that this organ is a prototype, with the kind of basic blunder from which even 'very eminent' organ builders are not immune.

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