(Fr. anches; Ger. Zungen).
The reed stops of an organ collectively (as distinct from Flue-work), i.e. those in which sound is produced in each pipe by the wind exciting an elastic metal blade or tongue. The small metal tube cut away longitudinally against which the tongue ‘beats’ is properly called the reed or ‘shallot’. Reed-work refers to the Trumpet family of flaring pipes, the Krummhorn family of cylindrical pipes, others of short, fanciful, stopped, half-stopped pipes and all varieties of metal and wooden stops other than those of the flue-work. The term also encompasses the many types of regal and ‘free reed’ or harmonium stops (see Organ, §III, 2–3; Reed and Free reed).
James Talbot (MS treatise, GB-Och Music 1187, c1695) called the shallot ‘reed’, but described the reed stops in general as ‘Regal stops’. Occasionally ‘reed pipe’ (ryetpijpen) was used in the Netherlands (Michaelskerk, Zwolle, 1505) and hence, probably, in England; certainly ‘rede’ was used in a sense of ‘reed instrument’ by Chaucer (House of Fame, 1380) and John Gower (Confessio amantis, c1390). It is older than the term ‘flue stop’ by about two centuries. Burney (BurneyGN) used the phrase ‘reed-work’ of the organ in Ulm Cathedral.
PETER WILLIAMS/MARTIN RENSHAW