New 4-manual Allen organ designed by Rudy Lucente

[AllenAnalog]

I saw a post on the Allen organ owners Facebook page that Rudy Lucente has designed a new 4-manual organ for Allen as an expansion of his 3-manual signature series instrument. It has 24 audio channels. He said it was inspired by the E.M. Skinner organ at Girard College in Philadelphia. That organ certainly is an amazing instrument tonally. I've heard it multiple times but still cannot get used to the music "falling down out of the ceiling like raindrops." My ears still prefer pipe chambers/speakers in front of me for stereo location.

https://pipeorgandatabase.org/OrganD...p?OrganID=9032

[davidecasteel]

Well, it's certainly a large and interesting Stop List. It has very few Mixtures and Mutations, though. I would perhaps have expected the Choir to have at least 2 2/3', 1 3/5', and 1 1/3' Mutations, and maybe a Sesquiatera in the Choir or Great. The Pedal has enough 32' stops to make an Aliquot 10 2/3' mostly redundant (but our Klais has one). Not criticizing, just making an observation.

David

[myorgan]

I'm with David. It appears the organ is designed more about a theatre stoplist than classical. However, that's not such a surprise, considering Mr. Lucente's background in theatre. I also noticed a fair number of 16', 8', and 4' stops with little upperwork (perhaps one stop representing each pitch), The sub-, and super-couplers are also reminiscent of theatre organs vs. classical.

I'm not sure of the goal here, but I'm sure they hit it.

Michael

[AllenAnalog]

I agree that the stoplist seems rather lacking in mutations and mixtures. A lot more E.M. Skinner influence than we are used to seeing today.

I am not familiar with Rudy's theater work, Are you confusing him with Lance Luce? I only know him as a Catholic church organist, Wanamaker organist and Philadelphia Organ Quartet organist. He does a lot of field voicing for Allen. He does play a lot of romantic/symphonic instruments.

Lots of older church pipe organs had sub and super octave intramanual couplers. At least the old ones I played did. But they certainly have fallen out of favor. I have a cover photo of a book that was on *bay a while back with the title "The Rise and Fall of Octave Couplers." Too bad I was outbid on it since it would have made interesting reading.

I must say that the RL Signature organ in this YT performance certainly sounds quite nice to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4toMvGwrzU

[myorgan]

Larry,

You're absolutely right. Sorry, when it comes to that crowd (Luce, Lucente, Hazelton, Conte, etc.), I tend to get them all mixed up because I became familiar with them all at the same time, rather than in detail, one-at-a-time.

Regarding sub- and super-couplers, I've never liked them on any organ I play because the super-couplers tend to be a bit on the shrill side because they're not scaled properly when pulled from the same rank, and the sub-couplers tend to allow organists to couple too gravelly a registration than should be used in manuals (i.e. 16' sub-coupled becomes 32'),

I believe I have a copy of that book, "The Rise and Fall of Octave Couplers." IIRC, it was published by Allen to support their use of unison couplers only-then they violated their own rule in the MDS era.

Michael

[Leisesturm]

Well, it's certainly a large and interesting Stop List. It has very few Mixtures and Mutations, though. I would perhaps have expected the Choir to have at least 2 2/3', 1 3/5', and 1 1/3' Mutations, and maybe a Sesquiatera in the Choir or Great. The Pedal has enough 32' stops to make an Aliquot 10 2/3' mostly redundant (but our Klais has one). Not criticizing, just making an observation.

David

The Choir on the Rodgers I play has all those mutations. I never use them. Obviously neither does Lucente. I mean, unless you are building up a Cornet V from the decompose to use in a Bach Chorale Prelude ... why? You've got plenty of color stops and the Genisys gives you access to tons more. I like how he thinks. At my last church position and another part time one I had at the same time the Selection Committee gave me a list of stops, in writing, that were never to be used. All the mixtures, reeds and 2' stops were on that list. A mixture in each Division works pretty well for balancing the Plenum. I bet that instrument sounds amazing all coupled up and roaring! Sub and super couplers really only make sense when the ranks have 96 notes so you don't get a dead octave at the top or bottom of the range. Classic organs are rarely built that way. My Rodgers has no sub or super couplers. It's a more honest representation of what you can do with the instrument.

[myorgan]

You've got plenty of color stops and the Genisys gives you access to tons more.

Good point, Leisesturm. I had forgotten about the Genesis voices. The next question is whether or not the Genesis voices will blend appropriately no matter which manual, on which they are used.

Michael

[Admin]

Larry,
I believe I have a copy of that book, "The Rise and Fall of Octave Couplers." IIRC, it was published by Allen to support their use of unison couplers only-then they violated their own rule in the MDS era.
Michael

Allen avoided couplers in the MOS and ADC era due to limited polyphony on those models. Nice spin.

[voet]

...the Selection Committee gave me a list of stops, in writing, that were never to be used. All the mixtures, reeds and 2' stops were on that list.

That would be a reason for me to turn down the job. Did they tell the Priest/Rector/Pastor which topics to avoid in sermons?

[toodles]

The MDS sub & super couplers were actually independent voices rather than coupled voices--usually Allen limited sub & super to the swell voices, so there were actually 3 independent voices each stop, except where it didn't make musical sense. The approach avoids the problem of screeching treble and tubby bass when using couplers. I don't know if the current technology follows the same approach.

[AllenAnalog]

It would be interesting to compare this new model with the stop list for the Hector Olivera HO-85 model. That one has a floating solo division instead of a 4th manual and has 85 stops plus 8 Genisys Voices.

https://www.allenorgandc.com/ho-85-church-organ

[Organkeys Jones]

I think Hector has a new 4-manual version also.

[davidecasteel]

the Selection Committee gave me a list of stops, in writing, that were never to be used. All the mixtures, reeds and 2' stops were on that list

That would take all the life out of the instrument! They might as well have a Harmonium.

David

[AllenAnalog]

I had a few minutes after dinner tonight to do a spreadsheet comparison of the RL-90 and the HO-85. Allen cheats a bit with the stop count on the RL-90 since it includes borrowed stops in the pedal and the Genisys Voices, whereas the HO-85 has no borrowed stops and would be an HO-93 if you count the GV's. The solo divisions are certainly radically different beasts but that is no great surprise given the heritage of each stoplist.

There may be a typo or two in the lists I used to compile this so all entries are SIC [spelling in context]. The only copy of the HO-85 stoplist that I could find was on a dealer website; it is not published on the Allen company website. It's interesting that here we see many of the stop names dating from the ADC era but some interesting new ones. Of course some may be recycled voices with fancy new names.

RL-90 and HO-85 compared.pdf

[davidecasteel]

AA, I looked at your comparison list and would probably have paired some of the stops differently (and am somewhat surprised at how you did it). Not that it really matters, I guess. I can only read pdf files, so can't perpare a version with the changes I'd make. Having done some Stop List comparisons in the past, myself, (Excel) I can recognize the amount of work involved. Good job.

[AllenAnalog]

David, you give me way too much credit. I just took the stops in the order they were listed in the two documents and then put some spaces in where there were obvious matches in name. If you'd like to make this a proper comparison, send a PM to me with your email addy and I'll forward the spreadsheet to you for your modifications. At least the data entry part will be done and you will just need to move things around.

Larry

[radagast]

I used to be in another group that Mr. Lucente was also in. He said he hated using mixtures. He also said he was a big fan of the Father Willis British organ sound.

[myorgan]

That explains a lot!

Michael