St. Peter and St. Paul, Cudham

About

The church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Cudham, Greater London, dates from the 11th century, when the Normans built the nave, though a Saxon document refers to an earlier church here in AD 982.

The organ was built by William Sweetland in 1894, stands in the chancel, and appears to be entirely tonally unaltered. It is a fine example of his work and also of Victorian organ building. In the latter half of the 20th century, as Baroque music grew in popularity, the ‘organ reform’ movement led to many smaller Victorian instruments like this being tonally altered – often replacing 8ft stops with higher-pitched ones so that contrapuntal music would sound clearer. Thankfully, this organ escaped such changes, and its abundance of 8ft tone is wonderful. Despite the Great not having a 2ft Fifteenth, the Principal 4ft is voiced brightly in the treble, almost giving the effect of a 2ft. With some thought to registration, this organ can become extremely versatile – ‘less is more’ absolutely applies to this instrument.

The manual action is fully mechanical and the pedal division is on pneumatic action, which may have been a later addition to accommodate an 8ft Bass Flute extension. The pedal action needs restoration, as around half the pedal pipes do not speak because of worn-out leather motors. In the sample set, these pipes were replaced with neighbouring pipes from the same rank, repitched.

The Swell tremulant could not be sampled because conditions during recording were unfavourable, so Hauptwerk’s default tremulant model is used instead.

Technical Information

• Sample and bit rate: 48kHz, 24 Bit
• 6 Channels (3 Perspectives — Close, Main, Rear)
• Software required: Hauptwerk v4.2+
• Manual Compass C–g³
• Pedal Compass C–f¹

Memory Requirements (Compressed)

• 24 Bit: 9.7 GB
• 20 Bit: 7.6 GB
• 16 Bit: 5.6 GB

Allow approximately 5 GB on top of these figures for minimum computer RAM requirements.