(from Fr. battre la chamade: ‘to sound a parley’).
A phrase indicating a rank of pipes (usually reeds or regals) placed horizontally in the case front of an organ, e.g. ‘trompette en chamade’. (See Clarìn, Dulcayna, Orlos and Trompeta in Organ stop.) Although before the end of the 18th century Iberian organs had such reeds and regals, the phrase was used by neither Spanish nor Portuguese builders. It first appears in Isnard’s contract of 1772 at Saint Maximin-la-Ste-Baume, Provence, for horizontal reeds imitating military trumpet-calls, like the vertical Feldtrompeten (sometimes placed in the case front) and Clarìns del mar of 17th-century organs in Germany and Spain. The phrase was popularized in the 19th century by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll to describe the reeds he heard as a boy in the southern borderlands, and which Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, his grandfather, had used in the organs he built in Catalonia; Aristide imitated them in his formative organ at St Sulpice, Paris. 20th-century reeds en chamade in England, Germany, Holland etc. rarely have the particular élan of the Spanish models, replacing resonance with power; also, on Spanish organs, external horizontal reeds and regals were always supplementary to interior vertical reeds.
The advantages of such stops en chamade are their clear, penetrating sound (cf the common direction ‘Schalltrichter auf!’ for orchestral trumpets); their easy access for tuning; their sheer contrast with the soft, singing flue stops of Spanish organs; their safety from dust; a convincing imitation of (or replacement for) real trumpets in cathedral music from about 1650; and an extravagant appearance. (See Organ, figs.39, 40 and 41.)
PETER WILLIAMS/R