Last
revised: 26 June 2008
Below
will be found many mp3 audio recordings of Prog Organ with a total playing time
over an hour and representing nine different organs. It is rather a hostage to fortune to include them on a
website, as the quality of reproduction depends so much on the equipment
available and mp3 coding is not ideal anyway. Therefore you may not find all of them
attractive, and of course your own tastes are so important as well. However despite the dangers,
most digital organ manufacturers now offer recordings of their instruments on
their websites, and in this case they should enable you to get at least some idea
of what the system is capable of. If recordings are not made
available these days it makes one wonder what the makers want to hide and why
they have so little self-confidence!
For
these clips, the ambience is on the "dry" side rather than "wet",
adjusted to approximate the ambience of the original
buildings. Do not expect the 10 seconds worth of St Paul's cathedral type
of reverberation washing around your ears which manufacturers impose so often on
their audio samples - they do this to hide the details of the noises their
organs make, and it is unnatural to the point of being ridiculous. What
you will hear here is the sound of accurately-simulated pipes in a realistic
acoustic.
The
best reproduction will be obtained in a normal listening position with a pair of
high quality hi-fi speakers, fed by an appropriate stereo amplifier.
Alternatively, good stereo headphones can be used (e.g. Sennheiser HD 650). With anything much less
than either of these options you will simply be listening to the inadequacies of
your system, and these will make it difficult to form judgements about the
organs themselves. A good computer sound card (e.g. the Audigy
range, X-fi, etc) is also essential - onboard sound chips are not as
good.
All
the clips were recorded in real time in a single take by real players at a real
console, warts and all, not merely invented by somebody pratting around off line
with a MIDI sequencer as is so often done. The warts are effective
watermarks!
In most cases the
sub-headings below are links which will take you to other articles on this site,
where you can also access the same clips as well as
read more about the simulated organs they were recorded on.
1. Small
Digital Organ
This recording was made using
the classically-voiced 'Small Digital Organ' SoundFonts which are part of the
Prog Organ software package. More details of this organ, including the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
Romance
(H F Watling) - 2.1 MB/2m 17s
2. Theatre
Organ
These recordings were made using
theatre style SoundFonts based on real Wurlitzer pipe samples - a fully unified
Wurlitzer
virtual theatre pipe organ in two simulated pipe chambers. Click on the
link above for its tonal analysis.
Always in My Heart - 2.51 MB/2m 40s
Holsworthy
Church Bells (S S Wesley
arr. Pykett) - 3.45 MB/3m 46s
3. St
George's Church, Dunster
These recordings were
made on a simulation of the Hill, Norman and Beard organ of 1962 at Dunster
church in Somerset. More details of this organ, including the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
A
Memorial Piece (Parry) - 1.80 MB/1m 59s
Sortie in E flat (extract - Lefébure-Wély)
- 2.27 MB/2m 29s
4. St
Mary's Church, Pilton
This
recording was made on a
simulation of Robert Hope-Jones's organ of 1898 which still exists at Pilton church in Devon.
More details of this organ, including the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
Melody
for the Organ (Fox) - 1.72MB/1m 53s
5. Bellahouston
Parish Church, Glasgow
These recordings were made on a
digital re-creation of the Cavaillé-Coll organ installed here in 1874 but
long since lost. More details of this organ, including the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
Choral
No. 1 in E (extract - Franck) - 5.9MB/6m 31s
Prière
à Notre-Dame (Boellmann) - 3.22MB/3m 31s
Élévation ou Communion (Saint-Saëns)
- 4.01MB/4m 23s
6.
Protestant Church, Romanswiller, Wasselone, France
This
much-modified organ was built originally by Stiehr-Mockers in 1843, and you can
download its history here. These Prog Organ-compatible SoundFonts were derived from Joseph
Basquin's original font which contains some exquisite sounds (downloadable
as jeuxdorgues21.rar from www.jeuxdorgues.com).
It is sometimes refreshing to
listen to a non-Cavaillé-Coll organ!
Song
Without Words ( M Moskowski)
- 2.25 MB/2m 27s
I have
re-looped and de-noised most of the original samples, and the SoundFonts thus
modified should also be available from J Basquin.
7. Dorfkirche,
Fraureuth
These recordings were made on
two versions of a
re-creation of Gottfried Silbermann's village organ of 1742 at Fraureuth, Saxony.
More details of this organ, including the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
8. Neue
Kirche, Arnstadt
These recordings were made on a
re-creation of J F Wender's organ of 1703 at Arnstadt, where the turbulent teenage Bach
was appointed as its first organist. More details of this organ, including
the stop list, can be seen if you click
on the link above.
9.
St Peter-und-Paul-Kirche, Cappel
These
recordings were made on a re-creation of Arp Schnitger's organ of 1680,
originally in the monastery chapel of St John in Hamburg but now at
Cappel. This was one of the organs used in the 1950's by Helmut Walcha for
his series of Bach recordings. More details of this organ, including the stop list,
can be seen if you click
on the link above.
Mein junges Leben hat ein End.
(extracts - Sweelinck) - 3.8 MB/4m 9s (about
1/2 minute from each movement)
Prelude in D major. BuxWV139. (Buxtehude) –
4.57 MB/4m 59s
Heut' triumphiret Gottes Sohn. BWV 630. (Bach)
- 1.47 MB/1m 36s
Komm, Gott, Schöpfer, heiliger Geist. BWV 631. (Bach)
- 882 KB/56s
Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier. BWV 633. (Bach) - 1.68 MB/1m
50s
Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr
Jesu Christ. BWV 639. (Bach) - 2.06 MB/2m 5s
Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr'. BWV 677. (Bach)
-
1.04 MB/1m 8s
