BIOS Reporter – Volume 17, No.4 – October 1993

The May 1993 issue of Organists’ Review provides further evidence of an increasing interest in foundation stops, and an increasing rejection of the type of upperwork considered desirable in the 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Geoffrey Coffin, in an article on the recent work at York Minster, seems to have been at pains to stress the difference between the upperwork (or parts of it) as it is now, and as it was. There is a “new and gentler [our emphasis]” three-rank mixture on the Choir (p. 114); the new, four-rank “Cymbel” (on the Great) is “higher pitched [than the existing upperwork], though gentle [again, our emphasis]” (p. 114); and the 1960 Tertian, 26- 31 (sic) has been done away with and a Sesquiáltera, 12-17 put in its place…