Adlington Hall Sample set - Oldest Playable English Organ

Today, I wish to introduce a Very Special Sample Set for the Hauptwerk software to you. It is the virtual model of the oldest playable English instrument: the organ of the Adlington Hall (Cheshire).

The instrument is one of the earliest British organs surviving in near original condition. The instrument was attributed to "Father" Bernard Smith, but the authorship remains enigmatic. It was built probably in 1693. One of the top composers of the time, George Frederick Händel, used to be a guest of the Legh family, visiting them in their Adlington home and playing the organ. Technical details and the specification of the instrument is displayed on my web pages dedicated to the Adlington sample set.

The sample set can be used in Hauptwerk version 4.2 and any higher version (incl. HW 7). It is available in a surround 6-channel variant (direct, diffuse, rear perspectives). The listening position can be varied via a built-in mixer. The sample set is offered in plain wave format, no dongle encryption was used.

The demo sample set is given for free, it features 6 ranks of the organ in all the perspectives.

The relatively unfiltered realism is wonderful!

I didn't catch on right away that you need to order the free demo along with the paid full instrument to get volumes 0 and 1. Yes, it says so on the Order page...

I couldn't help buying this one before the introductory price expires, we've been waiting for a proper Georgian organ for a long time! It sounds quite delightful. Thanks!

After spending a bit of time with this organ, one thing that strikes me is how good it sounds in meantone. Whenever I have changed the temperament of any other English organ I have to quarter comma meantone, it has sounded hideous (all of them Victorian, of course!), but this one sounds quite good in its current tuning. I had not actually read much about what temperament we would expect English organs to be in the 1690's, so I did a bit of an internet search. I found this thesis by John Meffen from 1973 which is very interesting:

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10096/1/10096_6890.PDF

He makes a very good argument that at the time, basically every organ, harpsichord and other instrument were probably tuned to quarter comma meantone. The one piece that seems like the gnat in this theory's eye is John Bull's Chromatic Fantasia, which he argues was written for a specific instrument that had 19 keys to the octave (since all 19 keys are called for and necessary for it to sound good, and John Bull probably encountered that instrument through his connection to Antwerp). So, this tuning for the instrument is probably the closest to what it was designed for. He also argues pretty convincingly that based on the music that was to be sung at church it is likely all organs at this time were meantone, and also very likely that virginals/harpsichords, etc. prior to the civil war were likely all meantone.

Of course, Bach's well tempered clavier came out in 1722, and in Europe by then there was starting to be some interest in many of the different well tempered schemes including Werkmeister's. However, at the time of this instrument's construction, there wasn't really any English keyboard music written that would really have made use of any of these well temperaments, and Meffen describes how even though equal temperament was known about, it was considered rather distasteful. England had just emerged from the civil war, when practically every organ in England had been destroyed, and the English organ building traditions had mostly been forgotten. When the first German organ builders arrived and tried to make instruments as close to the old "English" tradition as they could, they would have still been accustomed to meantone instruments back in Germany (starting after the restoration in the 1660's).

So it would seem, at least at this early date, meantone would have been the way to go, and no wonder it sounds so good in it! Now, it would be lovely to have more English Georgian Hauptwerk instruments to compare to!

Just a late night, unimportant quibble. Wasn't 1693 in the Stuart era, with Georgian starting in 1714?

Yes, it sounds good in 1/4 comma meantone!

Haha, yes you are right! I wouldn't mind more Stewart or Georgian organs!