This should have
been a fascinating release. It’s surely indicative of the
frustrating nature of British organ culture than one of its
most interesting truly historic instruments, now nearly 200
years old, is also just about the country’s least accessible
organ. Housed in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace, one would
require a royal invitation to be able to play it.
The organ was
built in 1818 by Henry Lincoln (1788/9-1864). Let’s just stop
a moment and put that into context. Friedrich Ladegast was
born in the same year. Thirteen years later, Bätz built
his organ in the Dom in Utrecht. It would be more than twenty
years before Cavaillé-Coll would explode into the organ-building
world. In English terms this organ is almost pre-historic.
Of course there are older organs in the UK, much older. But
this organ represents an important ‘missing link’, with its
full compass pedal, three manuals, and extended bass compasses
(to GG) on both the Great and Choir.
Who was Henry
Lincoln? He was a London organ builder who trained with Flight
and Robson, who were primarily active building barrel organs.
Lincoln’s father was also an organ builder, and after his
apprenticeship, Henry went to work for the family firm. During
his tenure the company produced a steady stream of instruments
of all sizes. The organ featured on the present CD was in
fact built for the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. When Queen
Victoria ceased to use the Pavilion as a residence, the organ
was, at her insistence, brought in no fewer than 56 crates
to Buckingham Palace, where it was kept in storage until the
completion of the ballroom in 1855. The 1826 inventory of
the Brighton Pavilion mentions the organ as being "celebrated both for great powers and peculiar delicacy
of tone”. It fell silent, due to neglect, during the 1920s,
was subsequently vandalised, and was finally restored by William
Drake in 2002. It sounds extraordinary.
Unfortunately,
most of the above information is gleaned from considerable
searching of the internet, and in particular to the archives
of PIPORG-L, and an excellent essay on the Lincoln organ at
Thaxted (1821, an organ played by Holst, and now in shocking
condition) by the Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Thistlethwaite. The
history of the organ in the CD booklet runs to precisely 58
words. The biography of organist Joseph Nolan runs to 11 paragraphs
- curiously failing to mention his participation in a promotional
DVD for a well-known Dutch electronic organ manufacturer.
Unfortunately this is symptomatic of how seriously this project
seems to have been taken. Quite apart from the extensive photographic
documentation which should accompany such a CD - think of
the wonderful examples by JAV among others - there are enormous
gaps in the organ’s story which simply aren’t filled in. For
example, when Gray and Davison moved and re-installed the
organ in 1855, how much did they change? The National Pipe
Organ Register quotes Gray and Davison’s ledger as having
stated that they “completed Lincoln's contract”. Some pipework is presumably by them. How much
did William Drake reconstruct? This basic information is
clumsily omitted.
The
great challenge for the player of historic organs, wherever
they happen to be, is that of identifying, and embracing,
the minefield of information they offer about specific corners
of the literature. The Buckingham Palace organ is more relevant than most in this context, offering
as it does fascinating information about the performance of
a whole tradition of English organ composition, throughout
the 18th century, and into the 19th.
Much of this music, all but forgotten, is conceived for the
type of organ being produced in London at the time, of which this is an extremely rare survival,
and much also requires the long compasses offered by this
organ. Again, a little context seems necessary here. There
are around half a dozen substantial (more than one manual)
GG (or FF) compass organs from this period, surviving in the
UK.
Of the three really sizeable organs, Thaxted is, as mentioned,
in desperate need of restoration and the Bridge organ of Christ
Church Spitalfields, is, as far as I know, still in storage
awaiting restoration.
This
leaves just the palace organ as potentially the ideal instrument
for the music of William Russell, Samuel Wesley, John Keeble,
and perhaps Thomas Adams. My knowledge of this literature
is shamefully limited, but then the chances of playing or
hearing it on the kind of organ for which it was intended
are practically none. As the late Stephen Bicknell commented
in 2001: “Even if one can locate the music, there are effectively
no English organs on which to perform it. The full scale voluntary
requires an instrument with three manuals, and the full potential
cannot be realised without the contra-notes GG, AA, AA# and
BB on Great and Choir and, presumably, the highly expressive
and very tightly-enclosed short-compass Swell Organ [such
as at Buckingham Palace] that dominated English organ building
from its introduction in 1712 through to the mid nineteenth
century. The music of Russell is written with a GG-compass
pedal board in mind, [At the Palace, the Great to Pedal is
a sub-octave coupler, with additional pipes on separate soundboards
to complete compass of certain stops] and a manual compass
that goes up to f'''. These are not easy demands to meet -
and of the organs of the period we only have fragmentary remains.
The recent restoration of the Lincoln / Gray & Davison
organ in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace is a significant
step.”.
Let
me stress that this is the first recording of this
extraordinary organ. A cursory glance at Joseph Nolan’s programme
shows, unfortunately, an almost complete disregard for the
nature of the instrument, and for the importance of the release.
Only the Mendelssohn fits into the equation, and it must be
said that Nolan judges the tricky accelerando in the first
movement very well. Mendelssohn is known to have played duets
on another organ at Buckingham Palace with his former
schoolmate Prince Albert. It won’t surprise you to know that this link isn’t mentioned
in the programme notes. With carefully argued reasoning, the
Bach Passacaglia might also have been justifiable. The rest
of the programme is, simply, miles off the mark, and Rawsthorne’s
Dance Suite isn’t even worth recording.
Readers of my
reviews will know of my endless frustration when the aesthetic
links between music and instrument haven’t been properly considered.
This is a particularly bad example. While Nolan’s playing
is perfectly acceptable, the concept of the CD, reducing
the first recording of such an important instrument to commercially
acceptable gift-shop fodder, is indefensible.
Chris Bragg
Joseph Nolan
(organ) 
