 
THE CATHEDRAL ORGANS
The Cathedral Organ was installed by J W Walker & Sons, in 1967. It has four manuals, 88 speaking stops and 4565 pipes. The action is electro-pneumatic and the console is situated at the nave level. Built as an integral part of the new Cathedral, the architect Sir Fredrick Gibberd saw the casework as part of his brief and so designed the striking front to the organ. Using little decorative woodwork, Gibberd was inspired by the innovative use of the pipes as had been precedented at Coventry Cathedral and the Royal Festival Hall and so arranged the shiny zinc pipes and brass trumpets en chamade to contrast strikingly with concrete pillars which surround it.
In 1991 a new chamber organ was commissioned, with generous support from the Cathedral Choir Association. The one-manual organ of three stops was built by Kenneth Tickell. It has been designed for use as a solo and accompanying instrument, played regularly for smaller masses in the Cathedral´s Blessed Sacrament Chapel and as a continuo instrument for the Orchestral Masses sung liturgically throughout the year in the Cathedral.
The Crypt Organ
The Crypt Chapel houses an organ originally built by Rushworths about 1900 and transferred from the redundant Church of St Patrick, Widnes in 1999. It has a two manual tracker action with speaking stops.
PIPE DREAMS
One cold morning at the end of October 1966 saw me standing outside the nearly completed Cathedral awaiting a lorry bringing the first parts of the new organ for the Cathedral. The organ had slowly been taking shape in the factory of J W Walker & Sons of Ruislip over the previous eighteen months and I had paid a number of visits there to see what was going on. One of the most exciting was to see the new console, even if it wasn´t actually connected to anything else! Week by week I visited the Cathedral to see the latest progress. Once all the pipes had been installed, the delicate process of ‘voicing´ began. This work needs complete quiet and the only time that it could go on was at night.
Denis Thurlow was the man who did this and his initials are inscribed on the middle C pipe of the Great Organ Octave stop. The inscription also includes the works number of the organ – 4094 and 261 cps at 60oF. Denis worked with his overcoat on wrapped up in a polythene bag to keep out the cold, as some of the windows were not in place and there was, of course, no heating. One other occasional problem he had to put up with was the guard dogs. If these Dobermans were upset by strange noises, they would bark loudly and in the echoes of the Cathedral, sounded like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Denis also got the fright of his life when he turned round to see in the gloom a white-clad ghost at the High Altar: it turned out to be the Sister Sacristan trying out the new altar cloths !
I remember particularly arriving on the day that the organ made its first sounds to find a very long-faced Denis. He was horrified because the organ sounded very puny. The next day he was more cheerful after he discovered, by climbing up the scaffolding on the opposite side of the building, that the organ sounded about 60% louder at the lower ring beam level. Reflector boards were then installed above the pipes in order to deflect the sounds downwards.
When it came to the installation of the console, a row broke out with the architect. The original design of the building featured a dished floor, which was later changed to be flat. The console was to have been sunken into the floor so that the organist could see the choirmaster over the top, immediately in front of him. I think they had overlooked the implications of the flattening of the floor and when drawings of the choir were produced, the console had been rotated 180 degrees so that the organist had his back to the choirmaster, who stood about twelve inches behind him, so that it would have been quite impossible to see his arm movements without a very large mirror. Eventually it was finally decided, after much wrangling, to site the console where it is today.
Work on the organ actually finished in the evening of Friday 12 May; on Sunday 14 May the Cathedral was formally opened. The time left for practice on the new organ between completion and use at this major service was, to put it mildly, at a premium, and for the previous week I had been arriving at the Cathedral at about 5.00am before the workers arrived in order to get to know the wonderful new instrument in my care. Prior to this, I had had a drawing of the console in a prominent place of honour at home so that I could learn where the stops were. There had been neither a service nor a congregation in the new building until the Pentecost Sunday service and no-one knew what the acoustic was going to be like with 2000 guests present. At the service there were three organ builders placed strategically inside the organ, and a fourth next to me at the console in case of teething problems – fortunately there were none! And so, about 30 minutes before 3.00pm, I began to play…
The opening service was a great success and at its conclusion the first organ voluntary was Bach´s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor. I remember this especially, since one of the choirboys, Stephen Walker, whose voice had just broken, turned over the pages for me. He was wearing a cassock and surplice and part way through the immensely complicated fugue, to my horror I found myself playing with my right hand inside the sleeve of his surplice. From that day, page turners wearing surplices were viewed with suspicion!!
During the ensuing week, services took place each day for different diocesan groups. The inaugural organ recital was given by Flor Peeters of Malines Cathedral, Belgium, a week after the opening and the following weeks saw recitals by Fernando Germani, Jeanne Demessieux and Noel Rawsthorne. It was my pleasure to assist all three. Another memorable event was the first concert given jointly by the two Cathedral Choirs, directed by Ronald Woan and Philip Duffy, and accompanied by Noel Rawsthorne and myself.
Terence Duffy, Cathedral Organist 1963 - 1993 |
