Pipe Organs of England - Pipedreams - American Public Media

PAGE 32SATURDAY, 12 MAYWestminster AbbeyThe Organist: Robert QuinneyThe Organ: 1937 Harrison & Harrison, V/109The organ in this most famous of buildings is primarily the workof Arthur Harrison, retaining parts of an earlier instrument by Hill,and first used at the coronation of King George VI – the father ofQueen Elizabeth II – in 1937. Arthur Harrison died before workwas completed. The 1937 console provided stop knobs for thesubstantial Hill Celestial Organ, which still slumbers in a distantpart of the triforium. Major work in the 1980s did little to alter the fundamentalcharacter of the organ, but did add a number of new sonorities, the mostnotable (noticeable?!) of which being the Bombarde organ, designed to increasethe impact of sound in the Nave. The south case houses the Great and some ofthe Pedal, the Swell being situated in the triforium above. In the two bays eastof this are the Solo, and more of the Pedal organ. The Choir organ, on two levelsand partially enclosed, is in the north case. The Bombarde fluework is above thisin the triforium, with the reeds slightly west over the first bay of the nave.The ChurchThe Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster, popularly known as WestminsterAbbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster. It is thetraditional place of coronation and burial site for monarchs of the Commonwealthrealms. The abbey is a Royal Peculiar - a church responsible directly tothe Sovereign, rather than to a diocesan bishop - and briefly held the status of acathedral from 1540 to 1550. Westminster Abbey is a collegiate church governedby the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. The oldest parts of the churchwere completed in 1090 in theRomanesque style. Henry III rebuiltthe abbey in the 13th centuryin the Anglo-French Gothic style,work that continued into the 16thcentury. The abbey suffered damageduring the turbulent 1640s, when it was attacked by Puritan iconoclasts, butwas again protected by its close ties to the state during the Commonwealth period.Oliver Cromwell was given an elaborate funeral here in 1658, only to be disinterredin January 1661 and posthumously hanged from a nearby gibbet. The Abbey’s twowestern towers were built between 1722 and 1745 constructed from Portland stoneto an early example of a Gothic Revival design. Until the 19th century, Westminsterwas the third seat of learning in England, after Oxford and Cambridge. It was herethat the first third of the King James Bible Old Testament and the last half of the NewTestament were translated. The New English Bible was also put together here in the20th century. Westminster suffered minor damage during the Blitz on 15 November1940.