St. Mary's Warwick, Kingston Parish Church, and Tonbridge School might all have been far more attractive for being smaller and more individually characterful. They are all different from each other, and yet none of them can be said truthfully to have had quite the special impact on the public that their grandiose stop-lists would seem to have anticipated. The law of diminishing returns has been demonstrated with some force. Any attempt to be eclectic brings a risk, because it puts the stop list of the organ at the head of the list of priorities. This is simply not the right thing to do, for no stop can be placed successfully in an organ without consideration of its position and its mechanism, and of its contribution to an artistic whole.
Eclecticism is the enemy of style and automatically the enemy of Art and Music.
We have your recordings at home, alongside many others. We know what the real French jeu de tierce sounds like, what the choruses at Alkmaar sound like, what a real Spanish Trompeta sounds like. We do not want cheap imitations of these effects in every new organ. Such organs are being built today, in different parts of the world, and their individual qualities are gradually being appreciated. Far from being over, Organ Reform is still alive and is a profoundly active force.