St Mary's and St Peter's Church, Montrose

The Organ
(by James Bremner, Organist of St Mary's & St Peter's)


In the 1920s a young boy who was born in St Cyrus, a few miles from Montrose, but educated in boarding schools in England, was brought to services occasionally at this church and soon found he was fascinated by the sound of the organ and by the sight of the organist playing it by "remote control" across the chancel.   Thus it was here that the seeds of Maurice Forsyth-Grant's lifelong interest in organs were planted.   Forty years later he was to rebuild the first organ he had ever heard, the result being an instrument which ranks as one of the finest in Scotland outside the famous cathedrals, abbeys and public halls.

The organ was built in 1904 by the Newcastle-based firm of Blackett & Howden for St Mary's Church - the building diagonally across the road from the church, which is now the Day Care Centre.   The design of organs, having reached high points on the Continent in the mid 18th century and in English-speaking countries in the mid 19th, gradually deteriorated and reached a low point in the early years of the 20th century.   Many organs of that period, although mechanically excellent and possessing individually beautiful stops, lacked cohesion and "presence," sounding dull when played softly and simply "noisy" when played loudly.    Earlier instruments were characterised by clarity and sparkle at all dynamic levels.

Organ builders were, of course, producing the type of instrument that players wanted, and what players wanted was determined by the type of music they wanted to play.   The great organ music of earlier centuries, typified by the works of J S Bach and his predecessors and immediate successors, had yielded to orchestral transcriptions, arrangements of vocal choruses and piously sentimental meanderings.   Concentration on accompanying choirs also encouraged a profusion of bland unison effects instead of the multi-pitched choruses needed to support the singing of a congregation.

The 1904 instrument was typical of its period, and many thousands of instruments like it survive up and down the country.   It contained the following stops:

GREAT: Bourdon 16, Large Open Diapason 8, Small Open Diapason 8, Clarabella 8, Dulciana 8, Principal 4, Harmonic Flute 4, Fifteenth 2.

SWELL: Diapason 8, Rohr Flute 8, Viol d'Orchestre 8,Viol Céleste 8, Principal 4, Oboe 8, Horn 8.

PEDAL: Open Wood 16, Bourdon 16, Principal 8, Bass Flute 8.

When the congregations of St Mary's and St Peter's united in the 1920s the organ was moved, with minor changes, into the former St Peter's Church, which was rebuilt and renamed.    The organ was placed where it still stands, in a chamber with openings into both nave and chancel, allowing the sound to get well into the church.   The console was placed among the choir stalls opposite the organ, the action being tubular-pneumatic.   In this form it gave reliable service for 40 years.

As the 20th century progressed, renewed interest in the music of the classical period showed up the shortcomings of turn-of-the-century organs, and gradually designers and builders began to look back to the 17th and 18th centuries for inspiration.   In the English-speaking world one factor was servicemen sent to the Continent during the two world wars coming across virtually unspoiled ancient instruments in remote villages.   They were thus able to hear, for the first time, organ music of the classical period played on instruments of the type it was written for.   The world wars and the difficult economic environment of the 1930s put a brake on organ building so, in Britain at least, it was not until the 1950s that the new - or, rather, rediscovered - ideas began to have much of an impact, and a long time before they received general acceptance.

Maurice Forsyth-Grant, who trained and worked as an electrical engineer, eventually retiring from Racal Electronics in 1978, began building organs, more or less as a hobby, in the 1930s.    In the late 1950s he decided to sponsor a new small company along with builders from a large company whose business was declining.   His firm was known successively as Degens & Rippin; Grant, Degens & Rippin; and Grant, Degens & Bradbeer and operated from 1960 to 1981.

He had been influenced by the revival of clasical organ design and even in the Degens & Rippin period, when the work consisted of rebuilds, he produced instruments on which a wide range of organ music could be played satisfyingly.   The rebuild here, Opus 6 of Degens & Rippin, is an example of this and was at the "leading edge" of organ design, as far advanced as the taste of the 1960s would allow.   In its later incarnations the firm built new organs of strictly classical design, its "magnum opus" being the New College, Oxford, instrument of 1969.

The work here, in consultation with the then organist, Mr Randall Bowen, developed from a rebuild into a substantial enlargement gifted to the church in memory of Maurice Forsyth-Grant's cousin Rosa, who had recently died.   All the existing pipework was used - sometimes in a different guise - and the major changes were the addition of a Choir, the provision of the higher-pitched stops lacking in the Great and Swell, and the use of extension and duplexing to provide a vastly enlarged Pedal with the independence needed for classical organ music.    The action was electrified and a new stop-key console was built in the shell of the old console.    The resulting stoplist is:

CHOIR: Double Dulciana 16 (A), Gedecktpommer 8, Dulciana 8 (A),Prestant 4, Quintadena 4, Octave Dulciana 4 (A), Blockflute 2, Sesquialtera 2 ranks, Krummhorn 8, Harmonic Trumpet 8 (B).

GREAT: Bourdon 16, Open Diapason 8, Claribel Flute 8, Principal 4, Harmonic Flute 4, Nasat 2˛/3;, Fifteenth 2, Mixture 4 ranks, Harmonic Trumpet 8 (B).

SWELL: Geigen diapason 8, Chimney Flute 8, Viole 8, Viole Céleste 8, Principal 4, Fifteenth 2, Mixture 3 ranks, Contra Fagotto 16 (C), Oboe 8, Trumpet 8, Clarion 4.

PEDAL: Open Wood 16 (D), Subbass 16 (E), Principal 8 (F), Octave Wood 8 (D), Bass flute 8 (E), Choral Bass 4 (F), Mixture 4 ranks (E & F), Fagotto 16(C), Bombarde 16 (B), Trumpet 8 (B), Clarion 4 (B).
(The letters in brackets refer to duplexed or extended ranks of pipes.)

COMPASSES: Manuals C-a (58 notes); Pedal C-f (30 notes)
COUPLERS: Gt-Ch; Sw-Ch; Sw-Gt; Ch-Pe; Gt-Pe; Sw-Pe.
PISTONS: 4 each to Ch, Gt, Sw, Pe; 3 generals (duplicated by toe studs) affecting all stops and couplers; all pistons adjustable at a setter board behind the music desk.   Reversibles (duplicated by toe studs) to Gt-Ch, Sw-Gt and Gt-Pe. General Cancel.
Double touch cancelling to all stop keys; balanced expression pedal to Sw.

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