(Fr. cabinet d’orgue, orgue de chambre, orgue de salon; Ger. Hausorgel, Kammerorgel; Dutch huisorgel).
A term generally used to denote an organ intended for domestic use. Such instruments, developed from the 16th-century Positive, were popular in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries in England and were also found throughout the Continent, particularly in Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as in the USA during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The typical chamber organ is housed in a compact furniture-quality cabinet, often of hardwood and sometimes elaborately ornamented, of a size suitable to the scale of domestic rooms (see illustration). It commonly has one manual and no pedals (although an additional manual and/or pedals are sometimes found on larger specimens), and is blown using bellows operated by the player’s foot. The commonest blowing arrangement consists of a single wedge-shaped feeder below a weighted reservoir, which may be either wedge-shaped or horizontal. Occasionally one finds a two-feeder system, sometimes referred to as ‘cuckoo feeders’, but still activated by a single pedal, attached to a rocking bar. Double blowing pedals of the Reed organ type are occasionally encountered in late continental examples.
Chamber organ action is usually of the ‘pin’ type (see Organ, fig.4), in which a sticker below the key pushes down directly on the pallet, although some larger examples may have a more complex action similar to the normal tracker action of a large organ. The stop action is often of the trundle type, with drawknobs, and one finds many ingenious variations of this made for space-saving reasons, especially in late Dutch and American examples. In very early (17th-century) instruments, stop control may be by levers located at either side of the keyboard.
Chamber organs were often made to resemble other pieces of furniture; that described by Mace (Musick’s Monument, 1676) was in the form of a large table, around which singers and instrumentalists might sit to perform ensemble music. In the 18th century, chamber organs in the form of bureaux and desks were popular, and Snetzler is known to have made several of these. A desk organ by Adcock & Pether (c1760) is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and an unusual Avery organ (c1800), resembling a sideboard, is in the County Museum, Truro, Cornwall. Dutch chamber organs also sometimes took this form, and a good example is found in the collection of D.A. Flentrop, Zaandam, the Netherlands. The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, owns a fine bureau organ (c1815) by the Boston builder Ebenezer Goodrich.
Stoplists of chamber organs varied, but a typical early disposition is that of the fine instrument attributed to ‘Father’ Smith (c1670), now in the possession of N.P. Mander, London: Stopt Diapason (8'); Principal (4'); Fifteenth (2'); Mixture (12th–17th). The compass is 49 notes, C–c'''. The case is of oak, with speaking front pipes, and doors. Organs of this size often had only dummy front pipes, or a front of carving or cloth. A slightly larger, but also typical, scheme is that of the organ by Snetzler (1761) now in the Smithsonian Institution: Stopt Diapason (8'); Open Diapason (8', treble, from c'); Flute (4'); Fifteenth (2'); Sesquialtera (II, 19th–22nd, bottom two octaves); Cornet (II, 12th–17th, from c'). Most of the 18th- and 19th-century chamber organs had divided stops and some were entirely divided. Many also had a foot-operated Machine stop to silence the compound stop and often also the 2' stop. These two features made the chamber organ surprisingly flexible, permitting both right-hand and left-hand solos as well as echo effects. Some late chamber organs also had swell mechanisms of various sorts, including a simple raised lid over the case, or compact sliding shutters.
While chamber organs are, by definition, instruments designed for domestic use, many have survived through being moved to small churches or chapels; today there are probably more such instruments in museums or private collections than anywhere else. In the 18th and 19th centuries the chamber organ had several uses: as a solo instrument, as an accompaniment to the voice (Mendelssohn’s correspondence describes accompanying Queen Victoria on a large chamber organ in Buckingham Palace) and in chamber music. In this latter role, large chamber organs were also found in 18th-century concert rooms, pleasure gardens and theatres; the organ concertos of Handel, Stanley, Felton and others are meant for this type of instrument (rather than the larger church or concert-hall organ) and lose much of their charm and delicate character when performed on large organs and with large orchestras. The chamber organ was also often used as a Continuo instrument in the Italianate concerto grosso popular in the 18th century. It was, indeed, a most versatile instrument, doubtless the reason for its great popularity in the 18th century.
Outside England, centres of chamber organ making existed in the central and northern Netherlands, in the Toggenberg region of Switzerland (where the chamber organ was virtually an indigenous folk instrument) and in Boston and southern New Hampshire in the USA. Simple chamber organs were made in rural New England as late as the 1850s, when they were superseded by the smaller and less expensive reed organ.
Variants of the chamber organ, particularly in England and the USA, included the Claviorgan, in which a basic chamber organ was united with a harpsichord or fortepiano, usually to be played from the same keyboard, and the ‘key and finger’ Barrel organ, essentially a chamber organ fitted with a self-playing mechanism. Used in both homes and churches, it was less popular than either the pure chamber organ or the keyless barrel organ.
The renewal of interest in such instruments as the harpsichord, virginal and clavichord has encouraged a revival of the chamber organ. Old instruments are being restored for private domestic use and for public performance, and new ones are being built. While these latter are more often than not simply very small practice organs, with two manuals and pedal, a reproduction of a Dutch chamber organ was made during the 1970s by the Flentrop firm. Available in ‘kit’ form as well as fully assembled, it has proved useful both as a domestic instrument and for ensemble performance.
A. Freeman: Father Smith, otherwise Bernard Schmidt, being an Account of a Seventeenth-Century Organ Maker (London, 1926, enlarged 2/1977 by J. Rowntree)
C. Clutton and W.J.A. Niland: The British Organ (London, 1963)
F. Jakob: ‘Der Hausorgelbau im Toggenburg’, Musik und Gottesdienst, xxi (1967), 147–57
M.I. Wilson: The English Chamber Organ: History and Development, 1650–1850 (Oxford, 1968)
J.T. Fesperman: A Snetzler Chamber Organ of 1761 (Washington DC, 1970)
A.J. Gierveld: Het Nederlandse huisorgel in de 17de en 18de eeuw (Utrecht, 1977)
B. Owen: The Organ in New England: an Account of its Use and Manufacture to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Raleigh, NC, 1979)
F. Jakob: ‘Der Hausorgel in der Schweiz’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor Martin Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 363–78
J.A. Gierveld: The Flentrop Collection of Chamber Organs (Raleigh, NC, 1983)
A. Barnes: Historic Organs in Historic Places: the Eighteenth-Century Chamber Organ in Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire (Atherstone, 1990)
BARBARA OWEN