“The action consists of various combinations of Tubular Pneumatics…The great difficulty in the Sydney Organ was to connect by tubular action the soundboards of each row under various pressures…...Some of the action is on the compression system…some on the exhaust and some a combination of the two”
Thus Arthur Hill described some of the problems faced by his firm in building the Sydney Town Hall organ. Especial difficulty arose at the console, where the provision of inter-departmental and octave couplers for five manual and pedal departments would have resulted in something of a plumber’s nightmare.
Carrying the pneumatics from soundboards to touch-boxes behind the console and operating these from the keys entirely by tracker action solved this dilemma. Coupling is achieved by mechanical means throughout.
Even with the relatively short runs of tracker action involved, there is considerable resistance at the keys when several couplers are in use. To reduce this inconvenience, Barker lever was introduced at the console for the Great – perhaps the only instance in which this mechanism has been employed to activate tubular-pneumatic action. Carey Moore’s diagram (figure 1) shows the arrangement.
This has led many to believe that the action is tracker throughout. In recent years a well-known and well-respected authority stated “Sydney Town Hall only uses tubular pneumatics for the Pedal: the manuals are pneumatic [Barker] lever or tracker.” This misunderstanding almost certainly led to action in an organ in another continent and by a different builder being dated wrongly.
The action remains in an organ singularly untouched by time. It was retuned to concert pitch (A=440Hz) in 1939. At the 1982 restoration this was retained “A return to the original [high] pitch would have rendered the combining of the organ with other instruments almost impossible.”
Fig 2
Sydney Town Hall organ console
(Click on image to enlarge)
Compare this with events at Reading Town Hall, England (Pic 3) when the Father Willis of 1864/1882 was restored in 1998 with funds from the Heritage Fund. “Not only was it a proviso that the pitch should be sharpened to its original [higher than concert] pitch but also that the [balanced] Swell pedal should be…….replaced by a lever pedal.” One of the justifications for this latter was that it gives a capacity for “sudden sforzandi”!!!!! (musical opposites of gradual explosions?). Surely smooth crescendi are required far more often?
The result is an unsociable organ that cannot be used with brass or woodwind – unless, as champions of the change suggest, specially constructed instruments are acquired! The role of the organ in music making, especially with amateurs, becomes marginal with the instrument a museum piece, of interest only to musicologists. This seems entirely contrary to the spirit in which Town Halls were built. Organ tone at concert pitch must now be provided by an electronic substitute. It is not hard to imagine the use that will to future critics of the space and money required by the pipe organ.
Over the years, many fine instruments have fallen victim to various fads; in the latter part of last century it was neo-classicism. Has the pendulum swung too far in the direction of “authenticity”? Nightmare visions arise of small groups of organ historians squeaking with delight round organs they have rendered useless to practical musicians.
The diagram of the tracker/tubular-pneumatic action is by Carey Moore
The photograph of Sydney Town Hall organ is by Jenny Setchell.
The photograph of Reading Town Hall is by the late CRA Davies.
The Sydney quotations from Robert Ampt’s The Sydney Town Hall Organ ISBN 1 875956 42 5 (Burralee 1999). That concerning Reading from Stephen Bicknell The Willis Organ in Reading Town Hall (Organists’ Review Feb. 2005).
