Noel Percy Mander

Noel Percy Mander , MBE (* 19th March 1912 in Crouch in the county of Kent ; † 18th September 2005 ) was a British organ builders .

Life

Mander was born near Wrotham , the son of the publisher Percy Mander and his wife Constance Emmily, nee Pike . At the beginning of the First World War , the family moved to Brockley in south London . Here he entered the choir of St. Peter's Church and received lessons in organ playing. His mother took organ lessons from Frederick Bridge, the organist at Westminster Abbey . In 1925 the family moved again and Mander attended Haberdashers' Aske's School in Hatcham. Since he found the premises there to be cramped, he left them quickly and looked for a job at the publishing house A & C Black . Office life didn't appeal to him either, so he looked around for another field of activity. He soon found something that sparked his passion, the organs of the Anglican churches. I first joined the organ retaurator Ivor R. Davies, before going into business for himself in 1936. For this he founded the "N. P. Mander Ltd. ”on the premises of a church in Stepney , from where he began to restore organs. In particular, he repaired the organs of St. Peter's and the Bethnal Green district .

In the first wave of bombing on the city of London in World War II , the church in which he had his workshop was destroyed, so that in October 1940 he joined the Royal Artillery and was deployed in North Africa . During his military service, Mander restored two organs in Algiers and Trani in southern Italy . From 1946 he was active again in England, where there was more than enough to do due to the war damage. In the following years he made a name for himself as a restorer rather than as an organ builder.

Mander first had a new workshop in north London, and in 1946 moved it to the school building in Bethnal Green. In 1947 he married Enid Watson, with whom he had three sons and two daughters. An example of his work is a 17th century organ in Adlington Hall in Cheshire , which he restored between 1958 and 1959. He restored some of John Snetzler's organs , including the one in the Peterhouse in Cambridge . He maintained contacts with foreign organ builders such as Dirk Flentrop and Rudolf von Beckerath, his son John Mander completed an apprenticeship in his company Rudolf von Beckerath Organ Builder from 1969 to 1973, which enabled him to find out about the latest developments abroad. In the 1970s, Mander was commissioned to rebuild the organ in St. Paul's Cathedral , a project that lasted almost five years and was completed in time for Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee in 1977. In 1978 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire . When Mander retired in 1983, his son John took over his company, which, among other things, did major repairs to the Royal Albert Hall organ from 2002 to 2004 . In addition to organ building, Mander was also interested in history, watchmaking, archeology and literature. For example, he was a member of the Society of Antiquaries and was actively involved in the Council of Christians and Jews .

Works (selection)

Proven work

• 1959: Cheshire (Adlington Hall) repair
• 1959: Rotherhithe (St. Mary's) repair and extension of the organ by John Byfield from 1765
• 1963: Peterhouse , Cambridge (repair of a Snetzler organ)
• 1969: Fulton , Missouri, USA (replica of a Wren organ)
• 1973: Aberdeen (St. Machar's Cathedral) rebuilding of the Willis organ
• 1978: Chelsea (St. John's Cathedral)
• 1978: Clerkenwell (St. John's) restoration
• 1979: Cambridge ( Pembroke College ) new building
• 1981: London ( St. Paul's Cathedral ). The new building was first heard on the occasion of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana .

Fonts

• A short account of the organs of St. Vedast, alias Foster, Forster lane…. London circa 1962, OCLC 24397491 .
• with Cecil Clutton, Bernard Smith, Henry Willis: The organ in St. Paul's cathedral. London 1977, OCLC 24458832 .

literature

• Paul Foster: Mander, Noel Percy. in: Lawrence Goldman: Oxford dictionary of national biography, 2005–2008. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-198-61412-8 . ( P. 744, online )
• Mander, Noel Percy. In: Peter Murray, Linda Murray, Tom Devonshire Jones: The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art & Architecture. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-199-68027-6 .

Web links

• Douglas Martin: Noel Mander, Organ Maker, Is Dead at 93. in The New York Times . dated September 24, 2005 (obituary, English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Lawrence Goldman: Mander, Noel Percy. in: Oxford dictionary of national biography, 2005–2008. P. 744.
2. ↑ Noel Mander in: The Guardian . dated September 29, 2005.