organ188
Organs
organ 188
February 2018
3 manuals
33 speaking stops
Click here for full spec
St John's College
Oxford
Builders
Aubertin, 2008
Weblinks:
Pass your mouse over a photo
for a brief description
Click on the photo to obtain
a full-size image
Click here for
Organ of the Month archive
(contains over 180 organs)
Matthew Martin
On the last day of the IAO's Oxford Festival, we visited The Queen's College (see Organ of the Month 136) and later St John's College, where Matthew Martin (director of music at Keble College) gave a recital of music by Bach and De Grigny - music for which this relatively new addition to the organs of Oxford by the French firm of Bernard Aubertin was ideally suited. Its design draws particularly on the French Classical school.
The organ is located on a west end gallery with the Récit above the Grand Orgue and some Pedale stops behind. Two Pedale towers and two Positif cases occupy the front of the gallery, allowing the player seated at the console to be seen from the chapel below (see central photo). The console has flat jambs with square wooden stop shanks. The stops are hand-labelled with different coloured inks used for each division. Tuning uses Thomas Young's temperament dating from 1800. All this contributes to making the instrument of great interest, being in many ways unique in this country.
You can hear a demonstration of various stops of this instrument as February 18's Music of the Month.