Perhaps the most disappointing of all writers on the organ was Dr Charles Burney (1726-1814), who travelled extensively in France, Germany, Austria and Italy. He saw and heard many notable instruments but gave the scrappiest of descriptions, often limited to a comment on a single solo stop. His work fell far short of that of his daughter, Fanny – an actress – whose lively writing inspired Jane Austen. Unfortunately, she had no interest in organs.
Someone who had was Anna Maria Fay, who spent a year (1851-52) at Ludlow, in Burney’s native county of Shropshire. Letters to her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, comment on many matters, including the music at St Laurence’s church. The organ “built by the very man who built the old one at Christ Church of our Cambridge *,Snetzler”, interested her particularly and she noted down the stop-list.
Would that Dr Burney and others has been as meticulous. In the days before mass transport and an extensive press, few musicians knew much of instruments outside their own immediate area and many of the greatest organs in Europe had purely local reputations.
Picture 1 shows the Ludlow organ as it is to-day and much as it was when Miss Fay saw it. In 1860, eight years after her visit, the then well-known firm of Gray and Davison removed it from its gallery and placed it in the North transept. Fourteen ranks of Snetzler’s work were retained in the otherwise new 4-manual instrument within the old case.
Sometime about that year of 1860, someone at Gray & Davison’s seems to have discovered reed pipes placed en-chamade: these were then little known outside the Iberian peninsula. At least three of the firm’s instruments of that date were so equipped. Llandaff Cathedral’s new organ was given this treatment – it is now in Usk (Gwent) parish church. The consultant here was Sir FA Gore-Ouseley, whose opinion was later sought at Christchurch Anglican cathedral.
St Lawrence Jewry, in the City of London, was given a Fanfare Trumpet (picture 2). This looks quite happy on the case designed by Grinling Gibbons for Renatus Harris in 1686. Several instruments have succeeded that of Gray & Davison within the case; all have retained the visible trumpets.
Ludlow was less fortunate – picture 3. The new “Spanish tubas” were undoubtedly impressive but the case was butchered to accommodate them. Snetzler’s characteristic “double-curve” top rails between the towers were replaced with straight ones. Disastrously, this required the (non-speaking) display pipes in the top flats to be made all of the same length, with mouths and tops parallel. Also, the open metal pipes that were allowed to protrude above the side towers did nothing to enhance the composition.
When the organ was overhauled in 1980, the case was returned to the original condition, in which Miss Fay had known it. Space was found within for the tubas and the obtruding flues. If the tuba pipes had been placed at impost level, as at Llandaff/Usk, would they have been allowed to remain?
* Footnote: (added December 2006)
Orpha Ochese in her History of the Organ in the United States remarks (p.90) " Christ Church, Cambride ... acquired an organ built by Snetzler in 1761 or 1764. George Washington attended a service on New Year's Day 1776 but since some pipes had been melted to make bullets [the organ could not be used ]..... what was left of the organ was restored and used until 1845. ...... none of the pipes of this organ are to be found at Christ Church now."
David Bridgeman-Sutton, 2005
Anna Maria Fay’s letters were published by Mifflin Houghton (1923) as Victorian Days in England and reprinted by The Dog Rose Press, Ludlow, England in 2002.
Many thanks for the use of pictures to:-
1. the late Ran Ogston*
2. English Heritage NMR
3. Richard Francis.
* who is believed to have owned the copyright of this picture:
e-mail David
