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Henry Willis 1886/9 & Undated
These two small instruments both by Father Willis remain in an unaltered state apart from the later provision of an electric blower and normal tuning. Richard Seal; for many years the organist at Salisbury Cathedral described one of them as sounding exactly like Salisbury before it was altered in latter years. It is interesting to study their specifications and examine the logic behind each one since such a limited amount of stops on either means that everything has to count because there just isn't any room for "surplus" registers.
Although they are somewhat limited in what they can actually accomplish, some remarkable effects can be produced and both possess a musicality that cannot be denied. The only Father Willis instruments that are smaller tend to be the ultimate cut down "Scudamore" models and at their most basic, these consist of just one stop only.
The smaller of the two organs was built for a private chapel attached to a manor house with a sizeable demesne. At just eight stops including the ubiquitous pedal Bourdon, the instrument has a small Great diapason chorus up to a Fifteenth with an 8' Lieblich Gedeckt and a Swell organ consisting merely of 8' and 4' diapasons both of which are slightly stringy. The 4' is labelled as a Gemshorn although the pipes are standard cylindrical as opposed to tapered. The remaining stop is a Cornopean 8'. The pipework is of high quality and mostly of spotted metal.
This smaller instrument has an absolutely identical specification to the instrument at St Bartholomew's, Groton in East Anglia (by Lavender Audio) and is from exactly the same period. Apart from the added mixture on the great it also has an identical specification to the famous "Willis on Wheels" at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. There are most likely to be a number of other identical instruments in various parts of the UK. Our instrument has the addition of octave and sub-cotave couplers to the Swell organ which are not present in the real organ together with a Pedal bass and Swell Melody stop. The only other main difference is that we sampled at 48k and 24 bit as opposed to 44.1k and 16 bit. However, I doubt that David Butcher would have had to contend with the constantly cooing pigeons whilst sampling his instrument.
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The larger organ is situated in a small local parish church and gains the addition of a Dulciana 8' on the Great. The Swell differs from the first instrument in that there is a Violin Diapason and a Salicional 8' plus a Flauto Traverso 4'. The reed stop is an Oboe 8'. The pipework is not quite of such high quality as the first instrument being mainly of a more plain metal. I play this instrument on occasion for special services such as Christmas and Remembrance.
Both instruments are more than adequate to accompany the typical congregation capacity and the type of liturgical music that would be expected to be found in such a case. Both instruments are also very typical of the smaller instruments made by Father Willis. Countless examples can be found in small parish churches throughout the UK and often differ only in the addition or subtraction of one or two stops. Sometime the Oboe is replaced by the Cornopean and vice versa and sometimes some stops will be voiced slightly differently to fit the particular building. In the latter case, it may be that the stops are voiced to be slightly more or less flute toned in the case of the Diapasons and this is sometimes reflected in the stop nomenclature so that something like a Principal 4' may be labelled Principal Flute 4'. As is common in father Willis instruments things aren't always what they seem and a typical example of this would be the common Flageolet 2' in other instruments which should be a flute according to the stop label but which is more usually a diapason stop as in an Octave or Fifteenth.
The first of these instruments is now ready for release apart from completion of the graphics and is really quite fine. Personally, I don't think that the Lieblich Gedeckt on the Great is as good as some of the others that I have sampled from other instruments but this is a facsimile instrument and despite its somewhat mundane character, it still serves the instrument well. This is one of the reasons why I favour a composite approach since a better replacement from another very similar organ would normally be used. The remainder represents good examples of typical Father Willis work.
The latter instrument still requires a revisit to sample the rest of the instrument since currently I only have fairly rough trial samples available. Once the Covid restrictions are lifted, I will be able to do this since the church is only a couple of miles away from where we live.
