Diapason muddle


Diapason muddle

Now which diapason is which? 

My friends claim to know some facts about my lovely open diapasons, but seem to be totally confused about which one is which and from where

My friends, do try and keep up and remember I know the answers to all of this, but you have just got to try and work it out for yourselves

Fact 1.  Mr William put an open diapason on the great (middle) keyboard in 1911.  Fact 2.  The second (smaller) diapason was not installed at that time  -  it was one of the stops left off because the money seemed to run out.  Fact 3.  A second diapason was eventually installed in 1937 (?) by Mr William’s successor company, Messrs HNB (Hill Norman and Beard)

Now that all sounds very straightforward doesn’t it

But this is where it gets complicated

A few years ago, a national organ expert working for a company with a name similar to a well-known sweet shop, spotted that one of the lovely diapason rank of pipes had been stamped with the job number 2369, not 2412 which is my signature number.  2369 is known to be a 1908 job intended for a church in Nottingham, a job cancelled and never completed.  Not only are these diapason pipes stamped 2369 but also “Solo” even though the Nottingham organ was not meant to have a 4th keyboard

Then Mr Gary noticed that 2369 had been scratched out and another number 3489 lightly scratched on.  No-one knows why but 3489 would have been a 1935 job.  Mr Gary has also found out that the pipes numbered 2369 are actually not the 1911 pipes, but were actually installed in the 1930s  -  maybe in 1935!!  The original 1911 pipes are stamped 2412 along with the rest of the pipes Mr William installed in 1911

Are you keeping up?

The second open diapason installed by Messrs HNB was larger in scale than the 1911 one, so hitherto was to be called the no 1 diapason, and the original no 1 renamed no 2.  The incomers are big and beefy and in fact so much so, that someone has at some stage added some metal at the mouth to make them less woffly and woolly.

What makes all of this even more confusing is in the 1930s work, the original diapason pipes were left where they were originally installed, rather than being moved into the no 2 slot on the windchest.  The larger rank of pipes,  now called the no 1 diapason, were actually placed in the slot Mr William intended for the missing no 2 stop. 

But why was it done this way, and what had happened to the 2369 pipes between Mr William making them in 1908 and their arriving in the Abbey in the 1930s.  Where were they used as a “solo” stop?

This is all for you to find out, and the best brains around (Mr Gary’s and others) are scratching around, researching on something called “ In Ternet” to try and find answers.  But I do remember exactly what happened…………………………




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