Interview, Daniel Moult on The English Organ

In addition to an extensive career as a soloist, organist Daniel Moult has quite a substantial filmography - more than most organists, it's probably safe to say.

His passion for introducing not just organ music but the instrument itself to a wider audience is undoubtedly the driving force behind this, and in particular behind his latest film – a magisterial overview of the history of the organ in England, interspersed liberally with music, conversations with fellow experts, and stunning visuals of organs and their surroundings.

It's an incredible documentary, both in scope and in the level of detailed expertise Moult displays at every turn; it functions both as a look at the organ itself and also as a kind of social history of England, with historical trends reflected in the gradual evolution of the instrument's nature and role.

Daniel was kind enough to share some of his thoughts about this fascinating and absorbing production - which is also a Gramophone Editor's Choice for June.

This is a huge undertaking, combining documentary and performance into a comprehensive survey of the instrument’s history. Where did the idea first come from to put a project like this together?

Fugue State Films and I made a film back in 2010, The Elusive English Organ. This ran from Byrd to Samuel Wesley (roughly), and we were so engrossed in the story and instruments that we decided to revisit it at some point. And so we did – ten years later, The English Organ is the result!

In the earlier section of the documentary, you allude to the paucity of surviving organs from the Tudor and Renaissance periods. How far do you think it’s possible for us to fill in the gaps today: is some knowledge truly irretrievably lost, or could most of it be reproduced with sufficient scholarship?

I think that the reconstructed (Wetheringsett) organ is probably the closest that we can reproduce an earlier Tudor organ, given the surviving evidence – although you’d have to ask its creator, Dominic Gwynn, for a fuller opinion! Inevitably, various aspects, not least the final sound and ‘voicing’ of the pipes, have to remain conjectural in part…

Much of the reason we lack surviving historical organs is because they have been overhauled, sometimes repeatedly, to keep up with more ‘modern’ tastes. Is the interest in recreating their older incarnations comparable to recent efforts to revive other ‘obsolete’ instruments as part of the early music movement?

Yes – I think that all our collective efforts in recreating the musical past grow out of the early music revival, ultimately. The early music revival itself was in itself, we might argue, a hangover of late Romanticism and its yearning for the past. The fervour of those pioneering days of the early music movement have abated, but we still have a different and more conservationist approach to organs (and older instruments at large) than our pre-World War Two forebears.

Equally, given the inexorable evolution of musical fashions (with renovations often acting as the stimuli for reassessments of priorities), can any organ ever be said to be a finished, fixed entity, or are they always a work in progress?

I think that most artisan organ builders of different ages (and no doubt plenty of ‘factory’ builders too, of which there were a plethora in Victorian times) would conceive of their instruments as finished products. Changing musical tastes and consequent rebuilding over the centuries have affected the integrity of many organs – it is generally cheaper to rebuild than replace, hence the evolution of many an instrument. One of the challenges of our project was finding ‘pure’ organ examples of different eras, even if that meant sacrificing the inclusion of otherwise very fine instruments.

Compared to their Continental counterparts, English organs were slow to acquire pedal-boards. Why do you think this innovation, offering so much potential for excitingly expanded sounds, took so long to establish itself in English organ building?

I think the slow arrival of proper pedal divisions to the English organ scene was a consequence of musicians rather than organ builders. It was Northern Europe where the pedals were a crucial feature of organ culture, and such influence only reached our shores with the JS Bach revival of the early nineteenth century onwards.

How much do you think the various technological developments – pedal-boards, high-pressure reeds, pistons and such – drove changes in how composers wrote for the organ? Or, indeed, is the reverse true – did the needs of composers and performers push the technology onwards?

It’s sometimes a ‘chicken and egg’ situation as to whether the music drove changes in the organ technology, or vice versa! I think it’s fair to say that the musical tastes for greater dynamic flexibility and more orchestral colours led English organ builders to innovate.

You refer to the organ having been a secular instrument as much as a sacred one for significant parts of its history, which by and large is much less the case today. How did the organ end up being ‘confined’ to the church to such a significant degree?

I think that the perception of the English organ as a primarily ‘sacred’ instrument is a relatively recent one. Perhaps the decline in town hall concerts (with some notable exceptions still in the UK) and a diminishing of our musical culture over the last fifty years or so has narrowed the central role of the organ in national musical life.

Organists often look back with horror on the colossal Romantic organs that strove to emulate the sound of a full Wagnerian orchestra, and sigh with relief that sanity and decorum eventually returned. Given that the church organist has outlived their civic counterpart, is this partly a case of the winners writing history?

There was a reaction against the heroic, large orchestral organs of the late Romantic era, which was a rather pious part of the early music revival post-World War Two. The pendulum has, it strikes me, swung again, and there is a happy acceptance now of all organ types to serve many different repertoires. There is a wider cross section of organ repertoire currently being performed and taught than at any other time in history!

We tend to see the history of the organ as quite insular – indeed, many devotees of classical orchestral, vocal and chamber music overlook it almost entirely. Do you think the development of the organ and its music have exerted an outward influence on other idioms over the course of its history?

The organ was very much at the heart of European musical life and thinking right up til the middle of the nineteenth century (and arguably for some time beyond then). I think the perception of insularity – a not wholly unfair one – dates from the twentieth century, where the organ was less at the heart of things. Up to that point, I would suggest that there was a happy cross-fertilisation between all musical genres, the organ included.

Scholars famously argue over whether the sweep of history is spurred by a few great individuals, or responds to more grassroots trends. How much credit do you think we should assign the big-name organ-builders – Willis, Cavaillé-Coll and so on – for steering the organ’s development?

I think that various ‘big’ names propelled the development of the English organ forward – from Smith and Harris in the seventeenth century, to Willis and Lewis in the Victorian era, and then Hope-Jones and Arthur Harrison beyond that. But there was much external influence too, notably French organ builders in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to German traditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

With so many past approaches to organ-building and organ music, some people feel that it’s impossible to have 'one instrument to rule them all', a single hybrid organ on which any style can be played reasonably convincingly. Do you think this is fair – should we be doing more to preserve (or recreate) specialist organs for playing specific kinds of music?

Without wishing to dodge the question (!), I think that there is room for both pastiche recreations of specific organ types and eclectic organs. It’s mostly a question of function: many concert venues and larger churches find an eclectic organ appealing because it can fulfil different musical expectations, whereas recreations of historic organ types are useful for conservatoires and universities to give students a more focused and specialised education. Sadly, eclecticism can often mean bland in terms of organ sound – it is critical to have a musical and tonal concept when commissioning or rebuilding an organ.

You’ve surveyed various ebbs and flows of fashions and influences on the English organ over decades and centuries, from Renaissance Italian voicings up to the Mighty Wurlitzer; what trends do you see affecting how organs are built (and rebuilt) in our own era?

As we live in a pluralist musical world, I think that we are likely to see a continuation of the current trend. Eclectic organs will probably continue to be the norm for venues that need to cater for a very varied musical diet. Style-specific instruments, on the other hand, with few (or even no) compromises will still be preferred by many educational institutions and venues with a more particular focus.

The closing section of your documentary featured various commentators offering views on the future of the organ, ranging from optimistic to pessimistic. Where would you say you fall on that spectrum yourself?

It was interesting hearing such a range of views from the well-informed commentators that we were privileged to include. I remain cautiously optimistic: the classical music fraternity at large has many challenges to face, but the determination, passion and creativity of all of us to share our art will win through. The organ still needs to make new friends in musical circles and beyond, and my hunch (shared by some colleagues) is that the organ’s future will have something of a more secular flavour.