Talk:Robert Hope-Jones

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I have created a page for Robert Hope-Jones, inventor of the theatre organ. More information and expansion of this article is welcome. Erzahler 21:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes- a fascinating man- inventive, even in the manner of his suicide.Saxophobia 00:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments from article (moved to talk page)

I removed the following unsourced and POV section from the article, as well as the commentary that follows it. --Esprqii 00:06, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Organ builders had actually been imitating musical instruments for hundreds of years and Hope-Jones' attempts were probably among the least successful. His tonal designs were ludicrous, reducing the entire organ to a fat, opaque mass of unisons and octaves. He attempted to build some church organs but the kind of stops he made were only of use in the theatre organ and he ended up working for Wurlitzer. The diaphone was arguably his most useful invention as, even though its unblending tone is of no use whatever in a proper organ chorus, diaphonic reeds have been used successfully to make foghorns.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.151.139.15 (talk • contribs) 08:24, May 8, 2007

The item above seems thoroughly biased and unfair to an English inventor.

For instance in almost direct contradiction, here is the blurb of a book advertised on the Organ Historical Society website

http://www.ohscatalog.com/robhop.html

padRobert Hope-Jones by David H. Fox

Obsessed with invention, Robert Hope-Jones struck a pathway that led to the fabulous Wurlitzer theatre organs. David Fox surveys Hope-Jones’ many careers: as a builder of church and cathedral organs in England, as an inventor of organ devices and pipes that are still widely used, as a church musician, and as the impetus for the name Wurlitzer to reign supreme as the most widely admired theatre organ. Mystery, scandal, genius, great ambition for the organ, and both enmity and loyalty among his peers marked Hope-Jones’ life as told in this major biography. Included are stoplists of 103 organs built 1887-1911, a compiled opus list of 246 Hope-Jones organs, a list of 122 Hope-Jones employees, and illustrated discussions of the organ devices invented by Hope-Jones and patented in the United States and/or England. 300 pages, hardbound, many photographs.

Also, the American Theatre Organ Society :

http://www.atos.org/Pages/Journal/HopeJones/hopejones_1.html A quotation :

Robert Hope-Jones did everything he could to make each rank a thing of great beauty. He thought in terms of ranks, not whole divisions. He placed many ranks on separate windchests with just the right pressure to bring out a style of tone and to make pipes sound efficiently. There is, after all, a direct relation of tonal results between wind pressure and size and shape of the air column as a thing in itself. Some ranks sat high up on stilts, others were right behind the shades, and still others were buried deep in concrete chambers, usually with shades high up on top, not always on the sides. He understood the reflection patterns that sound waves follow. In one organ, he made use of a masonry wall of great thickness to reflect sound upward against a wide, curved wooden roof. Here even the soft Dulciana Celeste could be heard in the last row seats -- and with the swell shades closed!

Because his thinking was thoroughly orchestral, he built some of his later instruments so that strings could fade or dissolve into horn tone, and trombas and tubas could overwhelm diapasons. No one fabricated a dulciana more silvery than his, an orchestral oboe that sizzled with more high overtones, or a muted violin that showed off more "rosin." Yet he loved all sorts of diapasons and other purely organ tones. He experimented with many sizes and dimensions of chimneys in order to make all sorts of combinations of odd- and even-numbered harmonics, just from one stop. However, like most imitative stops in the organ, his were much louder than their counterparts in the orchestra. This was knowingly done so that under expression, a clarinet, for example, could sound like four ranks or a mere whisper of reedy timbre. Thus every stop might be a melody voice.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.94.74 (talk • contribs) 19:21, August 26, 2007

How did he commit suicide ?

http://www.esm.rochester.edu/organ/PDF/Resonance5.pdf

Page 16. : quote :

... wonderfully colorful history of Robert Hope-Jones, himself a very colorful man, and his developments in organ building. Of particular interest to us was the end of his life. In 1914, depressed and frustrated by his new association with the Wurlitzer company, Hope-Jones traveled to Rochester to commit suicide. He planned to gas himself using the gas lamp behind the console at the Universalist church, but arrived only to find the church had switched to electric lighting. Not to be thwarted, Bethards recounted, Hope-Jones rented an apartment nearby and performed the deed there.

Somebody might consider it necessary to check that the photograph of Robert Hope-Jones is not copyrighted. The appearance of it suggests that it was lifted from the website at http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/hope-jones_at_the_college_of_organists.htm. This image as it appears on this site was scanned from a copy of a magazine whose publishers had given written permission to use it, and even the random striations thereby included on the image have been reproduced here. To the best of my knowledge this edition of the magazine appeared several years after 1927.

I add an entire post made to Piporg-L which includes a reference to Hope-Jones' suicide. Perhaps the writer (Mr Gluck) knows something about the suicide, since he says it was 'meticulously engineered' and 'shockingly gruesome'. Doesn't sound like breathing in gas to me. {Quotation below:---}

I risk the consternation of the list authorities by quoting a portion from one of my own articles regarding Robert Hope-Jones. It appeared in The Tracker, in which a couple of segments of my upcoming book on The American Synagogue Organ: 1825 to the Present, were printed as "teasers" prior to publication. It is my hope that it encapsulates the misunderstandings regarding Hope-Jones, and its intent is neither laud nor criticize, but to observe and set forth:

INNOVATION OR REGRESSION? The importance of Robert Hope-Jones (1859–1914) still has not been fully realized or understood. The festival of ignorance that surrounds his contributions, staged by both his fanatics and his assailants, must draw to a close if we are to achieve a balanced appreciation of what he did, which was to offer for consideration a radically new vision of what the pipe organ could be and do. American organists most associate Hope-Jones with his tumultuous relationship with The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company that began in 1910, his high-pressure “Unit Orchestras” that provided scores for films until they began to speak for themselves in 1926, and his meticulously engineered, shockingly gruesome suicide in 1914. He continues to be employed as a scapegoat for all missteps of tonal history, without any acknowledgment of the complicity of those musicians and institutions who embraced his ideas, paid for his instruments, and praised his work in overwrought testimonials.

Notwithstanding these salient features of his career, Hope-Jones’ prior work on pipe organs in the British Isles encompassed the straightforward rebuilding of conservative church instruments and the electrification of pneumatic actions, as well as the type of meddling that at the time was viewed as improvement, and today as egocentric destruction. During the last years of the 19th century, both his industrial and organ-related inventions became more numerous, as his tonal palette thickened and the unit or extension concept began its aggressive march into the modern age.

In 1908, Hope-Jones secured his place in the history books with the design and construction of his four-manual instruments for The Great Auditorium of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association at Ocean Grove, NJ and Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Buffalo, NY. This pair of showy giants eclipsed his 1909 II/10 instrument for Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, LA. His sole installation in a Jewish house of worship, it is nonetheless pivotal because it is the first synagogue organ designed and built in this style.

The Touro organ’s four ferrocement swell boxes, each dedicated to a class of tone, took up residence within a much larger general expression enclosure. Touro’s staid specification and the placid resources from which it was derived reveal nothing vulgar or outré: Two pairs of undulating strings, keen and muted; two flutes, stopped and open; two 16’ reeds, brass and woodwind; and two de rigeur “organ voices,” the Diapason and the Vox Humana. Although it heralded the theatre organ style in synagogue organbuilding, which would continue to weave a consistent but insubstantial thread until 1931, we must not miscontextualize it. Except for the 16’ Clarinet, it was a non-adventurous design built in an extraordinarily adventurous way, its sensibilities responsorial rather than cinematic.

Sebastian M. Gluck

New York City

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.71.8.52 (talk) 17:19, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

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