Scotch College

Pipe Dreams in the Memorial Hall

The new organ taking shape in the Memorial Hall

March 2004 will see the realisation of a Pipe Dream. In fact it will be the realisation of a Pipe Dream 2500 times over - because that's the number of pipes involved! The dream started in 1996 when the Memorial Hall organ was clearly needing some renovation. Around the same time school Organist and Choir Master of the day, Andrew Bainbridge, was told of an organ in Sydney by organ restorer and builder, Peter Jewkes. The organ was located in the Presbyterian Assembly Hall, Scots Church, Margaret Street, Sydney, and, if it was to be preserved at all, would need a new home urgently because the building that housed it was falling down and due for demolition. Such was the interest, that Bursar Neil Roberts, Organist Andrew Bainbridge, and I flew to Sydney to look at the organ and to meet Peter Jewkes and representatives from the Presbyterian Church. There was good news and bad news. The bad news was that the organ had been sadly neglected, but the good news was that it had not been modernised or damaged by shoddy repair work - it had indeed been 'preserved by neglect'.

It is in fact a magnificent instrument built by Hill Norman and Beard in 1930. It has three manuals and fifty stops (not counting couplers and other linkages which are all part of secret organists' business). Arrangements were made to remove the organ from Sydney and for Peter Jewkes' company to commence restoration. It was around this time that the worthy workforce of Jewkes Proprietary Limited decided that this project was 2500 pipes too many, and felt it was time to stop dabbling with diapasons, and modifying mixtures, and that it was an ideal moment to retire! A new workforce had to be found, and, acting in conjunction with our Organ Consultant, John Maidment AOM (Chairman of the Organ Historical Trust of Australia), wisely brought on board at an early stage, it was decided to engage the services of the South Island Organ Company of Timaru, New Zealand. The organ was duly freighted and flat packed and wished bon voyage.

One could be forgiven for wondering why there is so much fuss about a 70-year-old organ. Historically the organ is really quite significant. The English Organ Builders, William Hill & Son, and Norman & Beard Limited have origins dating back to 1755 - just 5 years after the death of Bach. They amalgamated in 1916 and during the 1920s were managed by John Christie, founder of the Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex. In 1927 Hill Norman & Beard opened a subsidiary in Clifton Hill to assist in the building of the Melbourne Town Hall Organ, and for the next 47 years completed more than 800 contracts, including St Andrews Cathedral Sydney, St Johns Cathedral Brisbane and St Johns Camberwell.

Our own organ was built in 1949 by Hill Norman & Beard (Australia) for Wellington College in New Zealand and installed in 1956. Intended for a smaller venue, it was never really adequate to support the singing of 1300 boys thrice weekly, and it has now been sold to a grateful buyer with a more suitable sized venue. The organ currently being restored and built into the Memorial Hall has caused great excitement and interest in the organ world, and it is quite wonderful that Scotch has undertaken to save this beautiful and historic instrument.

So, back to the future, and the culmination of the Pipe Dream, some 6 years in the making. It would clearly need a very special event to celebrate the climax of this remarkable project. I happened to be visiting Eton while on leave last year and I heard of a young Old Etonian who had won the Calgary Organ Competition (the most prestigious organ competition in the world) and was regarded as someone very special in the international swell box of organists. This young man, Clive Driskill-Smith, is now Sub-Organist at Christ Church College Oxford, and when I heard him play I was most impressed and an invitation was duly issued to him to come to Melbourne and run a project from Monday 29 March to Thursday April 1, 2004, with a view to presenting the opening Public Recital on Tuesday, March 30th at 7.45pm in the Memorial Hall. During the week that Clive is with us, he will give master classes, recitals and work with boys with a view to kindling a renewed interest in the King of Instruments. It is even proposed that a physics project be amalgamated to the event so that full analyses can be made of pipe lengths, air speeds and the various materials involved. The Public Recital will include part of the Organ Symphony by Saint-Saens and a Handel organ concerto, plus plenty of exciting works for organ alone. While this organ will be enjoyed by the whole of the Scotch community, and many boys will enjoy playing it, it should certainly be recorded that the project would not have gone ahead without the personal enthusiasm of Neil Roberts, surely one of the more appreciative and musical of the Bursars' fraternity.

He deserves full credit for his Pipe Dream of saving this organ and the enhancement it will bring to worship and music at Scotch for generations.

John Ferguson - Director of Music