Wyton House Compton 4/16

Organ Information

This sample set was recorded by Carl Heslop, assisted by Paul Turner. Sample processing and noise reduction by Graham Goode. Graphics and Hauptwerk programming by Olivia Nagioff, assisted by Stephen Ades. We are very grateful to Liz Palmer, the organ’s current owner, for permission to produce this sample set.

Ram requirements:

• 24-bit : 6.8 Gigs

• 16-bit: 3.8 GIgs

Go to the Compton sets order form page to fill in your information, and we will send you an invoice for your download link of the sample set.

The Wyton House Compton started life as John Compton Organ Company’s Opus A293, and was built for the 2,750-seater Astoria Cinema in Southend, UK. John Compton was already highly regarded as an innovative builder of classical organs when the cinema organ craze hit the UK. He was the first UK builder to produce unified organs and the John Compton Organ Company built more than half of the cinema organs in the UK. In 1930 they were installing three cinema organs a month, at the same time as producing some notable classical instruments.

With John Compton's background he wanted to produce instruments that would do justice to music in diverse styles and his larger instruments are equally at home playing cinema organ classics or large symphonic works such as Berlioz's Hungarian March and Widor's Toccata. Over the years, Compton organ owners have also benefited from his classically influenced mechanisms, which are simpler and more durable and reliable than those of other builders.

Audio Demos: Listen to the sounds of this virtual cinema organ - see the Audio Demos page!

Compton's Opus A293 was played on the Astoria cinema’s opening night in 1935. The console was mounted on a lift in the centre of the orchestra pit. As was popular in the UK, it had a colour changing art deco-style illuminated surround. The organ was classified as 4c/10, having 4 manuals and 11 ranks in 10 units. The original two chambers contained:

Main

• Diapason

• Violoncello

• Stopped Flute

• Strings (2 ranks)

• Vibraphone

• Traps

Solo

• Tibia

• Concert Flute

• Vox Humana

• Clarinet

• Tuba

• Trumpet

• Glockenspiel/Orchestral Bells

• Xylophone

• Chimes

The organ also had an enclosed upright piano, a melotone, and a mechanical cello (this being a single-stringed instrument with mechanical vibrato which played the top note of a chord). The voicing of the organ and the layout of the console followed the Compton ‘Paramount Special’ style. The top manual is a coupler manual. The ranks are well suited to both light music and symphonic music.

In 1970 the cinema was converted into dual screens above a supermarket and the organ was removed. It was bought by Peter Palmer who built a small auditorium for it behind his farmhouse, Wyton House near Huntingdon, UK. The organ was opened there in 1982 and was subsequently played by many leading organists and broadcast by the BBC. The organ was enlarged as part of the new installation by the addition of

• a second Vox Humana and a second Tibia in the main chamber, played from the accompaniment manual

• two new reeds in the solo chamber; a French Horn and a Krummet

The illuminated surround was lost to another organ but many years later the frame was reunited with A293, minus its top section and glass. It was fitted with colour changing LEDs and perspex panels. This sample set has buttons that allow you to change the surround colour. By using a MIDI sequencer you can also mimic the self-changing colour sequence. The upright piano and mechanical cello were also lost. A fine Bechstein grand piano originally from the Ritz Ipswich Wurlitzer was attached at Wyton House.

Although the piano has a Wurlitzer expression mechanism, the console has no expression control for it (the original piano being enclosed) so that currently the only way to alter its volume is to raise and lower the lid! This feature has been mimicked in this sample set. The melotone was initially installed at Wyton House, but the organ’s new owners did not take to it – Compton’s melotones have always sharply divided the opinions of cinema organ fans. So the melotone was sold and fitted to another Compton organ. In its place a new Solo String rank was added, with a range of synthetic stops derived from it to match the compound voices available from the melotone. Another change

was addition of a Chrysoglot stop, in fact produced by playing on the Vibraphone without its fans turning. More recently a pair of ‘Blackpool’ mutation couplers have been added to the coupler manual, substantially adding to the tone colours available on the organ.

Go to the Compton sets order form page to fill in your information, and we will send you an invoice for your download link of the sample set.