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The Viscount Prestige Organ, Woodsetts HouseThe electronic organ still incites scorn for the purist. And yet if we look at the technical advances that have taken place over the last thirty years it will be conceded that the facility for sound reproduction has eclipsed anything that could be imagined at the time: the ease and relative cheapness is truly striking. Any instrument, especially the organ, depends on its environment, its acoustic property; and the instrument and the acoustic are one; they interact. The first weak link is the microphone that captures the sound and the skill of the producer who sites these in a great building. Modern devices are remarkably accurate, and have been for a long time. Latterly the analogue signal can be converted to digital form and thereafter the computer can manipulate without distortion and then store it without fear of loss or degradation. It can distribute the recording in any form. Of all electronic organs, I have found the Viscount Prestige the most rewarding to play. It retails at a little over £13,000 for a large 3 manual instrument with a simulated tracker action and drawstops! Several international organists have sat at it and remarked at it’s extraordinary qualities. The Viscount has been happily sitting in my home for the last twelve months and is voiced using various samples from North German organs. To do this, the pipework, the building and every rank recorded, is stored in digital form, which retains the natural qualities of the pipe organ and its environment: the interaction between the two, the blending of individual stops and the tonal "inaccuracies" that render the pipe organ truly musical. The intentional inaccuracies intentionally create a slight out-of-tuneness that convert what would otherwise be a dead electronic voice; the singer and the violin create such inaccuracies deliberately in the creation of beautiful sound; it is as if the listener can empathise with the frailties of the performance. The Viscount Prestige is not perfect in every respect - nothing is! No doubt the developers of this extraordinary instrument will strive over the years and produce further improvements. Thus, while single stops are very nearly perfect, the interaction between them is sometimes not always successful which creates problems for the registrant of an important piece of music but that is equally so with a large pipe organ. I am not electronically literate but I have assumed that the stops were recorded individually and that blending takes place in the sophisticated digital circuitry and then passed on to the amplifier and the loudspeakers. The quality of this last stage is crucial for convincing reproduction. The attack in 16’ or 32’ pedal is sometimes slow - but so it is in a large building with a regular pipe organ; and makes it difficult to articulate accurately with the keyboard. But, these criticisms are eclipsed by the overall quality of the music that can be produced, no doubt more ably by the greater exponents of the organ repertoire. From the player’s perspective, the touch of the keyboards is of especial pleasure: the keys on many electronic instruments are simply switches and you are never quite sure when the contact is going to be made as you press them down. In the Viscount Prestige there is a mechanical feel, like a tracker or mechanical organ, which enables accuracy and inspires confidence in a most satisfying way. In general, the pipe organ relatively, is not the most popular instrument. Most people enjoy the grandeur of the sound in the big church with all its evocations. However the repertoire for most music lovers is not widely recognised; organists tend to produce compact disks for organists. The reasons are manifold: the seats are hard and often cold while the performer is normally invisible to the listener; the latter is being increasingly solved by television link, this being in no way a cheap gimmick but a necessary bridge between the audience and the performer; everyone enjoys the spectacle of the orchestra or the singer - why not the organist? Also, the large acoustic of the cathedral, while enhancing the grandeur, potentially muddies the sound, making it advisable for the listener to know the work before hearing it in this grand form. I have tried to balance the echo with the sound and preserve an appropriate balance. More modern works than by the nineteenth century Mendelssohn require more effort in this respect. For the foreseeable future the pipe organ in an acoustically responsive building will remain the source of the best organ sound; but the cost of these instruments of quality is enormous relative to an electronic instrument like the Viscount Prestige. However, the availability of the large organ as processed by a quality electronic instrument makes it possible for the concert hall or smaller church to benefit from the parent source and spread the organ repertoire to a wider audience; in this respect the Viscount Prestige is extraordinarily successful.
The Organ of Woodsetts House, Great Britain
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