Wollaton Hall Organ, 18th March 2024

[@untersatz32]

Sublime! A national treasure!

[@robertmdaniels]

Delightful sound but I was wondering why the organ needs to be tuned to the modern ears?

[@ralphwortley1206]

I agree. I did history of music in a BA and had an LP with Home Sweet Home played in many tunings. The Buckingham Palace organ was also vandalised to the currently fashionable tuning. Soon, no-one will know that there were other tunings. Certain tunings used up to the late 19th Century meant that there was an audible reason for writing in Eflat rather than in E or C. Now they are merely higher or lower.

[@wendybarbarasmith]

The organ isn’t tuned to equal temperament, it’s tuned to a meantone temperament which we call the ‘Wollaton temperament’. To quote Dr Charles Padgham, “ The Wollaton tuning is statistically close to 1/6 Pythagorean comma meantone (Silbermann tuning) and to 1/5th Syntonic comma meantone. These two temperaments being so close that the random errors in the measurements do not enable a distinction between them … the instability of the tuning due to the slightly unsteady wind supply gives sufficient fluctuations to blur any fine distinction between 1/5th and 1(6th comma tunings.” We are determined to keep the organ as close to its original state as possible!

[@Engineer9736]

While listening to it I thought to myself "it still needs some proper tuning" 😅

[@wendybarbarasmith]

The organ now has its own page on the Wollaton Hall website: wollatonhall.org.uk/wollaton-hall-organ-demonstrations/

[@michaelcleo6624]

No sound ????

[@wendybarbarasmith]

The only sound is on a couple of video clips of the organ being tuned and at the end when I played it. It has been difficult to make a good recording due to the split in the bellows and also because Wollaton Hall is always full of visitors, making the great hall noisy. The video was made to thank the donors who had contributed towards the tuning and I didn’t want to include sound just for the sake of having background music. Please check the Wollaton Hall social media pages to find out the dates when the organ will be demonstrated.

[@alistairkirk3264]

@@wendybarbarasmith Fully agree with not including background muzak for the sake of it. I've never heard the Wollaton Hall organ before, but had heard of it; very pleased to hear it's had a little TLC this year!