A comprehensive dictionary of organ stops - Allen Organ Studio of ...

X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
the classical examples of Continental organ building ; and in William Hill
he found a man of progressive ideas, who blended the newer methods with
the best traditions of English organ building. Thus, so far as English
organ building was concerned, were laid the foundations of the new
science of tonal design. For the first time, broadly speaking, the English
organ took shape :
scientific design, albeit of a rudimentary character,
replaced chaotic empiricism. One has only to contrast the average
English organ of that period with the Continental instruments with their
C compass, adequate pedal organ, subunisonal foundation and well built
up chorus and mutation woik, and then turn to the outcome of Camidge's
and Hill's joint labour in the shape of the York and Birmingham Town
Hall organs, to perceive the great significance of this epoch in the annals
of English organ building.
The next step was heralded by the Exhibition of 185 1, promoted by the
Prince Consort, at which English builders gained the opportunity of studying
representative French and German organs at first hand. Henry Willis, the
brothers Bryceson, and others, introduced much that was valuable of French
methods. In some few respects, on the contrary— particularly as regards
the practice of slotting and the gradual disuse of wood manual pipes
the entente cordiale with the builders across the Channel proved a veritable
fons et origo ma/i, from the dire effects of which we have but recently
reached the convalescent stage. Fully compensating for this, however,
came the introduction of string voicing, harmonic flue and reed voicing,
and the French system of reed voicing on the basis of which Willis reared
and developed his own unrivalled work—though the subsequent development
of this system belongs more properly to our third epoch of progress.
Edmund Schulze's Exhibition organ attracted so much attention that he
secured a commission for the large Doncaster organ, and thereafter for
several other instruments. His work influenced English voicing very
considerably, and although 'from our present day point of view seriously
imperfect in many respects, both of detail and design, it nevertheless
remains a monument to his genius and to the perfection of the German
style, exceptionally noteworthy for its period
The third great stream of progress is associated primarily, I consider,
with the names of Henry Willis and Robert Hope-Jones. The well-known
" word of reproach," that a prophet is not without honour save in his own
country, is true of prophetic epochs equally as of prophetic personalities.
Alive as I am to the tendency of the fascination of the hour to glamour
one into investing contemporary events with undue importance, I shall not
seem extravagant, perhaps, when I suggest that conceivably this third
epoch will rank in the judgment of posterity as considerably the most
important of the three, as the epoch fraught with the most decisive issues
so far as the subsequent development of the organ is concerned. Its main
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