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"That’s the nasty four-letter word I did want to avoid, but now it’s out in the open …  \n  \n\n  \nI’m not quite sure about this. I think the overall concept is not aiming at one, but at several ensembles. If all Chamades together upset the overall balance, well, it’s evident what not to do then, isn’t it? I do like the new ones copied from Saint-Sernin, they have a singing quality that the Boisseau Chamades lacked, in my ears. As to the mixtures, I was under the impression that the redistribution left the separate choruses basically intact, reinstating C-C’s exciting GO choruses and moving the neoclassical ones to other divisions. I once was lucky enough to have Olivier Latry sitting opposite of me in a Berlin Hotel, with an MD device on the table and him explaining the origin of the resources and how they are distributed over the organ since 1991. It was admirable how clearly he had mapped that monstrous, to the visitor even chaotic, organ in his mind. \n  \nAs to the mutations once more, is there, in the background, maybe a possibility that liking or not liking them might have to do with national organbuilding traditions? The English tradition never really cherished single-rank mutations, except for composite stops and the chorus Twelfth. Flutey mutations came up with the neo-classical Positives that suddenly sprouted out of the gaps between high-pressure chests of Edwardian cathedral organs. What else could they be than whim, in that context? Who really needed them? It was Claribels against Cromornes, and it rarely worked out, or did it? \n  \nIn the French tradition, as we all know, that was very much different. Mutations were, apart from the choruses, the bread-and-butter of French organ sound almost all the time. There were one or two decades in mid-to-late 19th century, when even Cavaillé-Coll abandoned mutations. He took them up for Notre-Dame again, and not out of a folly, but because he had done extensive research on them and was convinced that they were essentially instrumental in order to make the Notre-Dame organ work in that space. Later French builders saw, or re-discovered, the advantages of mutations as well. \n  \nBest, \nFriedrich "
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