From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!death Newsgroups: net.music Title: Re: Organs worth a visit Article-I.D.: yale-com.524 Posted: Tue May 18 10:01:08 1982 Received: Thu May 20 02:11:50 1982 Of special note is the Newberry Memorie,Organ at Yale, the largest instrument on campus & one of the nicest I have encountered in the country. It was installed around (I think) the beginning of the 1900's, and upgraded around 1928 by Aeolian-Skinner. It is a very lush romantic instrument, in a very live hall (nothing besides organ really works that well in Woolsey because of the reverberation). It has 8 divisions (great, swell, solo, choir, orchestral, string, echo & pedal); the orchestral, string and echo organs are multiplexed to "float" between manuals, and the echo division is underneath the floor in the rear of the hall. There are 166 stops, four manuals, and more than 16,600 pipes in the organ, ranging from the echo voix celeste to the 32' contrabombarde in the pedal. The solo division includes a harmonic trumpet and tuba mirabilis at 25" pressure, for those of us who like volume, and a 64' resultant countrabourdon in the pedal division which literally rattles the windows. The only drawback to the instrument, from a performers standpoint, is of course the placement of the console. The organ forms the back wall of a 3+story hall; a stage juts out from this, and over the e dge of the stage on the floor is the organ console. When playing the instrument the sound sort of goes over and past you, so you only hear yourself coming off the ceiling, or the back wall, or wherever. I have had to stick pencils in the keys and walk to the middle of the hall to check registrations at times; but despite thi s it is a true thrill to play and to hear the instrument. There is a Sunday Evening series presented through the school year, so if anybody is ever through then it might be worth checking out. On a totally unrelated note, a plea for correspondence: are there any percussionists out there interested in swapping stories/information? Mail away! ==bob decvax!yale-comix!death