Sir, Further to Robert Gower’s letter (July 6), Malcom Bowden also forgets the recent developments in organ building, organ restoration and in the general popularity of the organ and organ music.
In addition to the modern music now being written for the organ, more and more secular classical concert venues (eg, Albert Hall, Hull City Hall, Birmingham City Hall and the Usher Hall) have or are restoring their Victorian and post-Victorian pipe organs.
Other organs (eg Ely Cathedral) that had been modified in the neo-Baroque fashion in the 1950s are being restored to something like their original state. Happily, the “dead hand” and “the monster” in Malcom Bowden’s imagination are both alive and well and increasing in popularity.
Also, before arguing that organ music “ceased to be in the mainstream of classical organ music with the death of J. S. Bach”, some consideration needs to be taken of the modern organs to be found in the many new essentially classical concert halls that have installed them, most spectacularly, the giant “flower-like” Gehry organ in Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles, and also our own Symphony Hall in Birmingham and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.
The myth that all worthwhile classical organ music is confined to that of Bach and his contemporaries certainly managed to stifle the popularity of the organ for a brief while, but it has not been able to prevent the resurgence of romantic organ music or indeed the continuing composition of many new works and the building of many new instruments.
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Finally, I would remind Mr Bowden that Classic FM regularly plays items, such as the Saint-Sa?ns Organ Symphony and the Widor Toccata, from the postBach classical mainstream to very large audiences indeed and that, while not be yet universally the case, many classical organ concerts and recitals play little or no Bach and play to full houses. The “full house” at a recent classical organ recital (summer 2006) in Cologne Cathedral must have been more than 2,000 people, with the late arrivals bringing in their garden chairs to sit on.
DR PETER CHATFIELD, Hon Secretary, Newcastle and District Society of Organists, advisory member of council to the Incorporated Association of Organists, Newcastle upon Tyne