A generic term for those keyboard instruments whose sound is produced by freely vibrating reed tongues (usually without individual resonators; see Free reed) and activated by air under either pressure (fig.1a) or suction (fig.1b). Common names for such instruments include harmonium (commonly used in Europe), melodeon, vocalion, seraphine, orgue expressif, cabinet organ or American organ, the latter term generally used in Europe to distinguish suction from pressure instruments. Particularly during the 19th century, an increasing number of patents were taken out for various types of reed organ under such names as Aeolina, Euphonion, Mélodiflute, Organochordium and Physharmonika. Other members of the reed organ family include such portable instruments as the Accordionand Concertina. Reed organs range in size from compact single-manual instruments with one set of reeds, powered by one or two foot treadles, to large two-manual (rarely three) and pedal instruments having several sets of reeds of differing colours and pitches, and powered by a separate blowing lever or an electric motor, as in pipe organs. The commonest types had two to five sets of reeds, one manual and such accessories as octave couplers and tremulant. These instruments vied with the piano for popularity as domestic instruments for much of the 19th century (hence the use of such terms as ‘cottage’ or ‘parlour’ organ) and were used extensively in small churches or chapels as an inexpensive substitute for the pipe organ.
See also Reed and Reed instruments.
BARBARA OWEN
The principle of producing musical sound from freely vibrating reeds (as opposed to reeds vibrating against a fixed surface, as in the reed stops of pipe organs) dates from prehistoric times; the earliest instruments using this principle were hollow straws with a flap cut in the side. A much more sophisticated version of the principle is applied to the Sheng, in which several reed-driven pipes of varying lengths are controlled by one player. Such instruments were first documented around 1100 bc.
The first use of the reed principle in keyboard instruments was in pipe organs, where beating-reed pipes with resonators of varying lengths and thin metal tongues appeared in the 15th century and possibly earlier (see Organ, §III); the portable Regals, with (usually) one set of beating reeds, also dates from the 15th century. A free-reed instrument based on the regals and called ‘organino’ is said to have been made by the Italian instrument maker Filippo Testa in 1700, but no example of it remains. Testa’s instrument ushered in a century of experimentation with free-reed keyboard instruments. An instrument of this type is said to have been used in the mid-18th century by the St Petersburg musician Johann Wilde, prompting Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, a physicist from Copenhagen, and later his compatriot the organ builder Kirschnigk, to experiment with free-reed keyboard instruments. Between 1782 and 1789 Kirschnigk built a kind of claviorgan called the Organochordium, in which free reeds were combined with a pianoforte. Kirschnigk’s work came to the attention of g.j. Vogler (1749–1814), who was intrigued by the expressive possibilities of the free reed, and commissioned the Swedish organ builder Rackwitz, a former associate of Kirschnigk, to make a set of free-reed pipes (probably with resonators) for a portable organ which he called the Orchestrion (not to be confused with the self-playing instrument of the same name popular in the late 19th century). This is said to have inspired J.N. Maelzel of Vienna to include one or more free-reed stops with the flue pipes, beating reeds and percussion of his complex barrel organ which he called the Panharmonicon.
It was not until the early 19th century, however, that free-reed instruments recognizable as true reed organs were made. As is often the case, these began to appear independently in various countries. In Germany Bernard Eschenbach (1769–1852) of Königshofen, with his cousin the organ builder J.C. Schlimbach, built his Aeoline (c1810), a keyboard instrument with reeds fashioned in the manner of a jew’s harp and activated by air under pressure from a knee-operated bellows (the name was derived from the Aeolian harp, which it was intended to imitate). J.H. Förstner, an organ builder of Mannheim, is also said to have experimented with free reeds at about this time.
In the USA the Boston organ builder Ebenezer Goodrich (1782–1841) made a reed organ, possibly as early as 1809, for the artist Gilbert Stuart. His inspiration is said to have come from a sheng which Stuart had imported as a curiosity, but it may also have come from the free reeds in the Maelzel Panharmonicon exhibited by his brother William Goodrich in 1811–12. Goodrich is known to have combined free reeds with pipes in some of his chamber organs. One of these, dating from 1815, is in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, but without its reed stop, which was apparently of the resonatorless type. The first American reed-organ patent was issued to Aaron Merrill Peasley of Boston in 1818; this contains what is probably the first reference to the possibility of activating the reeds by suction instead of pressure.
In France a development along slightly different lines began in 1810, when Gabriel-Joseph Grenié (1757–1837) of Bordeaux built his orgue expressif. This resembled a small pipe organ, with a typical windchest and action, but its pipes were free reeds with resonators. Grenié’s most significant contribution was a double bellows and reservoir system which permitted dynamic variation through control of wind pressure by the player’s feet on the blowing treadles. This is possible only with free reeds, since their pitch, unlike that of flue pipes and beating reeds, is relatively unaffected by variations in wind pressure.
Grenié was ahead of his time, for while reed-organ experimentation continued in France, it was not until 1830 that a more practical, compact and resonatorless orgue expressif was developed in the form of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s Poïkilorgue(fig.2). It is this instrument, rather than that of Grenié, which was the true precursor of the French harmonium as it later developed. The first poïkilorgue (made by Cavaillé-Coll in Toulouse, when he was working with his father) attracted the attention of Rossini, who scored a part for it in Robert le diable and was responsible for the young instrument maker going to Paris in 1833. The poïkilorgue was small and portable, having originally only one set of reeds and a variant of Grenié’s blowing system. In his early years in Paris, Cavaillé-Coll built several other poïkilorgues. One was exhibited in Paris in 1834, and others were sold for use as choir organs in churches as late as 1841 and 1842. Shortly afterwards, in order to devote himself wholly to pipe organs, he turned over the manufacture of the instrument to Alphonse Mustel.
The first significant developments in England are noted in 1828 and 1829, when Charles Wheatstone patented reed organs under the names Aeolina and Symphonium (see also Concertina). Around 1830 John Green of London built an instrument which he called the Royal Seraphine. In Green’s Concise Instructions for Performance on the Royal Seraphine or Organ (London, 1833) the instrument is sufficiently described to identify it as a true reed organ of the pressure type. Its original features included a crude swell, achieved by raising the top panel of the case with a pedal, and a means of colouring the tone quality by placing strips of differing materials over the reeds. No reed-organ industry comparable to that of France, Germany or the USA ever developed in England, but reed organs were made there throughout the 19th century and in the early 20th. W. Dawes of London patented a ‘melody attachment’ in 1864 and later a ‘pedal bass’. Some sources attribute the invention of the ‘double touch’ (later employed by Mustel) to the English inventor Augustus L. Tamplin.
Much experimental activity was also going on in Germany and Austria in the first half of the 19th century. In 1821 Anton Haeckl of Vienna made a compact instrument of four octaves with the reeds directly beneath the keyboard; he named this the Physharmonika, a term which would later be applied to free-reed stops in pipe organs. The Stuttgart piano maker J.L. Schiedmayer patented the Euphonion, apparently a true reed organ, in 1816, but that firm’s entry into the actual manufacture of reed organs did not occur until more than 30 years later. An instrument similar to Haeckl’s was made in Paris by J.C. Dietz in 1828, but with an improvement in the form of a resonance chamber over the reeds. A patent was taken out by one Voit for the Aeolodikon in 1820, and a few years later Friedrich Sturm (1797–1883) of Suhl in Thuringia built an orgue expressif which aroused the interest of the composer Spontini, and to which he gave the same name. Sturm appears to have been the first to add a set of reeds at 4' pitch, but in 1838 J.B. Napoléon Fourneaux (1808–46) of Paris made a two-manual reed organ which included a set at 16' pitch.
In 1840 François Debain (1809–77) of Paris patented a single-bellows reed organ under the name Harmonium. This would appear to be the first use of the term which later became virtually universal in Europe for reed organs activated by pressure. Debain’s first instruments were small and rather delicate in appearance with only one set of reeds. By 1842 he was making a larger model, with four sets of reeds divided between bass and treble and a sub-octave coupler. While Debain attempted to retain sole use of the name ‘harmonium’, it was soon used to refer to the instruments of two serious competitors whose work was ultimately to eclipse Debain’s (because of Debain, they at first used the term orgue expressif in their advertising). These were Jacob Alexandre (1804–76), who had been making free reed instruments since 1829, and Victor Mustel (1815–90), to whom Cavaillé-Coll had turned over the rights to the poïkilorgue in the 1840s. Louis-Pierre-Alexandre Marlin, a member of the Alexandre family firm, invented a percussion device acting directly on the reed tongues in 1841 and later a sustaining device called prolongement, both of which were later widely used by European harmonium makers. Mustel’s firm, too, made some significant improvements, including the double expression, forte expressif and harpe éolienne, all first introduced in 1854; and Victor’s son Charles invented the Métaphone in 1878. Mustel and Alexandre may be regarded as jointly responsible for bringing the harmonium to a high level of sophistication.
Despite all of the early experimentation in Germany, the first firm to undertake the mass production of reed organs in that country was founded by Julius and Paul Schiedmayer (see Schiedmayer). Trained in the workshops of Alexandre and Debain, they returned to Stuttgart in 1853 to begin the manufacture of a modified version of the French harmonium, patented in 1851. They too made significant contributions to the development and popularity of the instrument; towards the end of the century they produced some instruments of considerable size, used not only in churches but for concerts. In 1881 a Russian musician named Hlavatch was giving recitals on a 24-stop Schiedmayer ‘Concert Harmonium’ in St Petersburg, and a Herr Poenitz gave several concerts on Schiedmayer instruments in Berlin in the 1890s. Music played in such concerts consisted of both original works and transcriptions. As in America and elsewhere, some piano makers, including Hildebrand of Halle, added harmoniums to their wares, as did such organ builders as Steinmeyer of Oettingen. In 1913 no fewer than 55 firms are listed as making reed organs within the boundaries of Germany, but of these Schiedmayer unquestionably had the largest output.
While European builders were perfecting the pressure reed organ with its expressive possibilities, American makers, early turning towards the suction type, followed a largely independent course. As in Europe, progress during the early 19th century was slow and experimental. In 1832 Lewis Zwahlen of New York, who may have been an immigrant, was issued a patent for a ‘Seraphina or harmonicon organ’, about which nothing further is known. An American variant of the reed organ popular in the early and mid-19th century was the ‘rocking melodeon’ or ‘lap organ’, a miniature portable instrument of short compass (three octaves or less), originally played by a button keyboard like an accordion, although later examples have normal keyboards. The wind is supplied by a double-wedge bellows located underneath the case containing the keyboard and reeds, with an internal return spring. The player places the instrument on the lap or on a table, rocking it back and forth with the heels of the hands or elbow to activate the bellows while playing. The inventor of this instrument appears to have been James A. Bazin, an immigrant from the island of Jersey who settled in Canton, Massachusetts, in 1778. His design was later adopted by the New Hampshire instrument maker Abraham Prescott who in 1836 began manufacturing a three-octave lap organ with a normal keyboard in Concord, an early centre of reed-organ manufacture.
After 1840 the making of reed organs accelerated in the eastern USA; 39 patents for reed organs and reed-organ improvements were issued by the US Patent Office between 1840 and 1858. The most significant of these was that granted in 1846 to Jeremiah Carhart of Buffalo, New York, for the exhaust (or suction) bellows. Such bellows had been attempted before, in both Europe and America, but, because a fire a decade earlier had destroyed many patent records, it was at first thought that Carhart was the first to patent the idea. It was immediately licensed to Carhart’s then employer, George A. Prince, and later to others, but during the ensuing years Carhart was frequently embroiled in litigation over the use of the exhaust bellows. In the 1850s one such lawsuit unearthed evidence, including Peasley’s mention of a suction bellows in his 1818 patent, which caused Carhart’s patent to be declared void, and henceforth the suction system was almost universally employed in America. Its advantage over the pressure system was stability, although at the sacrifice of the expressive properties so valued by the French.
The second half of the 19th century could well be called the era of the reed organ in America. At least 247 companies have been recorded as having made these instruments, many of them small. Prescott, Prince and Carhart, as well as Carpenter of Brattleboro and Shoninger of New Haven, were pioneers; but after the middle of the century several firms began to eclipse them. Led by the firm of Estey in Brattleboro, Vermont, they also included Riley Burditt (later Burdett) of Brattleboro, Chicago and Erie, Daniel F. Beatty of New Jersey, the Fort Wayne Organ Co., founded by I.T. Packard, Story & Clark of Chicago, and S.D. & H.W. Smith of Boston, makers of the ‘Smith American Organ’. But the two firms which vied with Estey for volume and popularity were those of W.W. Kimball of Chicago, which by the end of its reed organ production in 1922 had manufactured 403,390 such instruments, and Mason & Hamlin of Boston. This firm was responsible for a number of improvements, including the double bellows and knee swell.
Something of a latecomer was the Vocalion, a pressure-type instrument developed by a Briton, James Baillie Hamilton, who began manufacture in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1886. This instrument was unique in its use of unusually wide reed tongues, which gave it a smoother, more organ-like tone which made it popular for use in churches. Hamilton sold his interest in the Vocalion to the New York Church Organ Co. in 1888. Vocalions were later made by Mason & Risch of Worcester, Massachusetts, and as late as 1910 were still being made by the Aeolian firm.
The instruments made by these firms in the first half of the 19th century had a single manual and usually only one set of reeds. They were most commonly called melodeons, but the term ‘seraphine’ was also used, and occasionally other names were applied to instruments of this class, such as the Aeolodeon patented by Rufus Nutting in 1848, and said to be more pleasing and less nasal in quality than other melodeons. These early reed organs had the appearance of a square piano, sometimes with ‘lyre’ legs. The number of stops increased in the 1850s and 1860s; instruments of two manuals were made, and the ‘square piano’ and ‘lyre leg’ styles gave way to the more continental-looking boxy ‘flat-top’ model, with its two large treadles. The more familiar ‘gingerbread’ type of parlour organ, often sporting ornamental lamp stands, bric-a-brac shelves and mirrors, began to appear in the 1870s and 1880s (fig.4). By this time reed organs were being made in all possible sizes, from Mason & Hamlin’s portable ‘Baby’ organ, introduced in 1881, to large church instruments such as Estey’s Phonorium of the 1890s, with two manuals and pedals and a façade of dummy organ pipes.
It is interesting to contrast the use of the reed organ in various countries. The French orgue expressif reached a high degree of mechanical and musical sophistication in the late 19th century and was treated with respect by serious composers and musicians. Because pedalling had to be carefully coordinated with playing, it was not an easy instrument to master, and for the novice it was necessary to provide a mechanism allowing it to be winded from a fixed-pressure reservoir as well as directly from the blowing treadles. Harmonium playing was taught in conservatories, and the instrument developed a considerable literature. The Germans made suction as well as pressure instruments, a good proportion of which were fixed-pressure instruments intended for supporting congregational singing in village churches. French harmoniums were used in churches as well, but usually as supplementary choir organs for liturgical use. The British also used reed organs in homes and small chapels; but domestic production was never on a par with other countries, and instruments were imported from the USA, Germany and France. By 1877 sufficient French harmoniums were in use in England to prompt the organist John Hiles to publish an instruction manual for their proper use.
American reed organs, made with few exceptions on the exhaust principle, were of simpler construction if less musical sophistication. As early as 1856 Carhart patented a machine to mass-produce reed cells, and it was not long before large factories were being established to mass-produce low-cost reed organs; Estey even surrounded theirs with a ‘mill village’ of workers’ houses. Because of its simple construction, low price and ability to stay in tune, the reed organ actually exceeded the piano in use as a domestic instrument for more than a half century. The smaller, lighter versions were the first keyboard instruments taken to the west by the pioneers. As small new churches sprang up, their first instrument was usually a reed organ, and larger churches with pipe organs in their main auditoriums used reed organs in Sunday schools and chapels. It was a popular instrument with such travelling evangelists as Moody and Sankey, and was taken abroad by missionaries. This resulted in its introduction to Japan, one of the few countries where reed organs are still manufactured, and India, where its integration resulted in the small, portable harmoniums still made there. At the height of their popularity American reed organs could be found throughout the world; in Europe they were even copied by such builders as Mannborg of Saxony and others in Scandinavia.
Interest in the reed organ began to wane in the first decades of the 20th century. Mass-production techniques had been applied to piano making, lowering the cost of pianos and increasing their availability and desirability as domestic instruments. Pioneer churches were prospering and buying pipe organs, and attempts to introduce reed organs for use in theatres met with little success. Around 1911 Story & Clark, Shoninger and many others sold their reed-organ interests and concentrated on pianos. Estey and Kimball diversified, adding pianos and pipe organs while slowly phasing out reed organs; Estey continued to make them until after World War II, their output including a Government Issue folding ‘chaplain’s organ’ and an amplified electrified reed organ. Mason & Hamlin sold their reed-organ interests outright to the Aeolian Co., which shortly afterwards began marketing the Orchestrelle, a large player reed organ in an elaborate case, which enjoyed a brief vogue. The idea of a self-playing reed organ was not new, however (see Organette). Before the turn of the century small table-top ‘roller organs’ with such names as ‘Mechanical Orguinette’ and ‘Chautauqua Organ’ were popular. Operation was by a hand crank which operated both the small bellows and the pinned wooden player roll. In Europe Schiedmayer continued to make both pressure and suction reed organs into the 20th century, but Alexandre ceased business and Mustel increased production of the Celesta, which they had invented. Before the mid-20th century electronic instruments had taken over the domestic market, and reed organs were often discarded or converted into desks; eventually they became collectors’ items.
The sound-producing element in all reed organs is the free reed, a unit, usually entirely of brass, in which a thin tongue vibrates freely in an aperture when excited by air under suction or pressure (see Reed instruments, fig.1b). Length of the reed tongue determines pitch, and timbre is determined by several factors, chiefly its width and thickness, although a slight twisting of the tongue also has an effect on tone quality. Reeds are tuned by scraping or filing either on the end (to sharpen) or at the base (to flatten); to prevent possible damage to the tongue, this is usually done with a thin piece of brass (reed slip) placed between the tongue and its mounting. Reeds are removed from their cells with a special tool called a reed hook, which fits a notch cut into one end of the unit.
In the pressure type of reed organ (fig.1a), wind is supplied by two feeder-bellows, which fill a spring-loaded reservoir above. Wind then flows from this reservoir into the valve-box of a windchest not unlike that of a pipe organ. Stop-valves admit air into channels above, one for each set of reeds. When a key is depressed, opening a valve above all reeds of that note, air will exhaust through the reeds from any channel which has been pressurized by drawing a stop-knob, causing them to sound.
In the orgue expressif, a stop-knob labelled ‘E’ or Expression allows a mode of operation in which the reservoir is bypassed, opening a set of valves which feed air to the reed chest directly from the feeder bellows. Because the pressure in the feeders can be increased or decreased by the action of the player’s feet on the treadles, a wide and controllable dynamic range can be achieved. This requires skill on the part of the player in order to keep the wind supply smooth.
In the suction type of reed organ (fig.1b), foot treadles (one in early organs; two in most later ones) operate suction bellows which exhaust a spring-loaded vacuum reservoir of wedge shape. Use of the exhaust system simplifies the construction of the windchest (or ‘pan’), which consists simply of a shallow box with a single note-valve for each note in the top board, depressed by a sticker pushed down by the key. The reed units are above the valves, each in its own ‘cell’ routed into a covering board. The stop action opens or closes the apertures of a given set of cells, so that when a key depresses its valve, only those reeds sound whose cells are open, allowing air to be drawn down through them by the vacuum. In two-manual organs the chest for the upper manual is usually in an upside-down position, so that the key-stickers are pushed up from the key tails, rather than down from the key fronts. When there is a pedal keyboard, its chest is usually located in the bottom or at the back of the case.
The pitch of reed organ stops parallels that of pipe organs, with 8' pitch the basic or normal level, but with the possibility of additional stops of 16', 4' and, occasionally, 32' and 2' pitch. In most single-manual reed organs, both American and European, the stops are divided usually at c', requiring a ‘treble’ and a ‘bass’ knob to activate the entire stop. Swell or Forte mechanisms are also usually divided to enhance possibilities for playing and accompanying solos on a single manual, and in some French harmoniums it is also possible to apply varying pressures to the treble and bass, providing further flexibility and shading possibilities. In American reed organs the knee-operated swell is used for shading.
French reed organs were fairly standardized in specification, although varying in size. The standardization of stop-names and their location on the stop-jamb above the keyboard made it possible for composers and publishers of harmonium music to indicate registrations in a kind of shorthand (in parentheses in Table 1) which could be applied to instruments of most major makers.
A typical medium-sized instrument was Mustel’s Model 2–A, with seven sets of reeds and speaking stops as shown in Table 1. It also had the following accessory stops: Prolongement (‘Pr’), a device operated by a small lever near the player’s left heel which causes any note depressed in the lowest octave to be held until the next note is played (in some larger models it acts on the entire keyboard); Métaphone (‘Met’), a kind of mute which, by almost completely closing the reed cell apertures, softens and subdues a normally bright reed tone; and Forte expressif (‘O’), a simple swell-shutter device above the reeds (called Forte in other makes), but in Mustel’s instrument operated by a pneumatic device which responds to changes in wind pressure when the Expression knob (‘E’ or ‘Ex’; see above) is drawn. In addition (1P) provides stop (1) with a percussion effect caused by actually striking the reed tongues with small hammers. The Harpe éolienne and Voix celeste both consist of two sets of reeds, one tuned slightly sharp and the other slightly flat to produce a gentle undulating effect.
Debain, Alexandre and others made models of similar resources, though without some of Mustel’s patents; thus Alexandre’s Forte (‘O’) was a simple shutter which was either open or closed, with no gradations, and their undulating stops had only one set of reeds, tuned to beat slightly sharp with the other stops. Many instruments also had Grand jeu (‘G’), a pleno stop which brought on all stops except the undulating ones. The basic style was copied in other countries, and a Viennese version (c1875) by Peter Titz uses French stop nomenclature and the usual shorthand symbols, including Sourdine (‘S’), a mute for the Cor anglais, and Tremblant (‘T’), a stop not as common on European reed organs as it later was on American ones. Like Mustel and some others, Titz divided his keyboards between e' and f' rather than between b and c'. In the hands of a knowledgeable player, organs such as these are capable of a wide range of effects both subtle and dramatic.
American reed organs also achieved a certain amount of standardization, although on a less official level than in Europe, and without the registration symbols. A typical parlour organ would have two to four sets of reeds, usually divided at c'. A Smith American Organ of the 1870s, a fairly typical example, has the resources shown in Table 2. The two reed sets were a Diapason 8' and a Principal 4', the other two stops on each side being softer versions produced by closing a muting shutter over the reed cell unit. The only accessory is a pair of knee-levers which allow these shutters to be opened or closed independently, and with gradation.
A slightly larger instrument was Estey’s Model 38, with three full sets of reeds plus a 12-note Sub Bass extension (for specification, see Table 3). This instrument also has a Forte knob which opens the shutters (or mutes) and a Tremolo. This latter, sometimes also called Vox humana, was a simple device consisting of a suction-activated rotating dowel fitted with two vanes of metal, pasteboard or thin wood, and placed near enough to the reed cell openings to produce an undulation. The Vox jubilante is a loud stop, analogous to the Diapason, and in some organs had two sets of reeds; the Dulciana is a muted Diapason, although in larger organs there is occasionally an independent set of reeds with this name.
Despite many patents taken out by Americans on reed organs, these usually concerned improvements in construction or production methods. American instruments generally lack some of the more esoteric mechanical devices found in European ones, but they include such oddities as reed organs combined with sewing machines, writing desks or pianos; chime or bell stops of steel bars (perhaps inspired by Mustel’s Orgue-celesta); and a pure example of Yankee ingenuity in Kimball’s ‘safety pedal’, which folded up in such a way as to prevent mice from entering the cabinet.
The larger the instrument, the more it attempted to emulate a pipe organ. A fairly typical example is the Schiedmayer two-manual-and-pedal suction model of about 1900 (see Table 4), which was quite capable of supporting the singing of a congregation of 100 or more with all Forte stops and couplers drawn. In addition, there is a Manual Koppel operated by both a knob and a foot lever, and a Volles Werk foot lever which brings on all but the Dolce stops, which are only mutes, and the Aeolsharfe, which is an undulating stop with two sets of reeds.
Many American makers built instruments similar to this example, Estey going so far as to make a ‘Student organ’ model, in which the cumbersome reed box under the lower manual was eliminated to make the key-desk proportions as close to those of a pipe organ as possible. The English firms of John Holt and Rushworth & Dreaper went a step further in the early 20th century, making two-manual-and-pedal instruments modelled closely after a standard pipe organ console. Alexandre and some of the Americans even made a few instruments (not totally successful because of tuning problems) combining pipes and reeds, and Alexandre also made a powerful instrument expressly for church use enclosed in an organ-type swellbox. Some of the larger vocalions were, internally, hardly distinguishable from a small tracker-action pipe organ. In the 20th century Estey and others made a small number of reed organs operated by electric action, on the principle of a unit organ, and the Everett piano firm for a short time made a reed organ with electrostatic transducers, the Orgatron. These instruments failed to compete successfully with fully electronic instruments, although some of the older mechanical-action reed organs of this type remain in use as church and practice organs.
During the late 19th century in Europe the reed organ was regarded as a serious instrument for serious musicians, and harmonium courses were taught at the Paris Conservatoire, at one time by César Franck. Numerous harmonium tutors were published, and such composers as Franck, Louis and René Vierne, Guilmant, Dubois, Lemmens, Loret, Merkel, Lefèbure-Wely, Leybach, Karg-Elert and Reger wrote original works for harmonium. Catalogues of the period are also filled with transcriptions for harmonium from operas, oratorios and orchestral, piano and organ works. In America the literature tended to be simpler, although reputable composers including Buck, Zundel, Clarke and Bird wrote tutors and original compositions, as did Pearce and Rimbault in England. American reed organ books in general, however, are aimed at the amateur performer. Secular music, particularly operatic transcriptions, folksongs, popular songs, marches and dances make up the bulk of such collections, as well as a few hymns and voluntaries for church use.
In Europe there was less emphasis on the ‘home amateur’. Franck’s two volumes entitled L’organiste (published 1896–1900) and Louis Vierne’s 24 pièces en style Libre (1913) are examples of serious harmonium music that is still performed, although usually on the pipe organ. Karg-Elert’s output for the harmonium was extensive, including two tutors (Die Kunst des Registrierens, op.91 and Gradus et Parnassum, op.95), many small pieces and some of the longest and most technically exacting works ever written for the instrument. The reed organ was used extensively for ensemble music on the Continent, especially with violin, cello, flute and piano (Franck even arranged some of his own organ works for harmonium and piano), and one catalogue of around 1900 lists music ‘for three or four hands’. Reed organs were also used extensively in salon orchestras as a substitute for brass and woodwind instruments. Many transcriptions, ranging from Strauss waltzes to Mozart overtures, were made for these ensembles, including some transcribed by Schoenberg.
The harmonium was also extensively used to accompany voices; Rossini and others scored for it in some of their operatic and church music. Perhaps one of the last instances of such use is in the original score of Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper (1928). In America, perhaps because of the virtual absence of a serious literature and limited expressive properties, the reed organ was unable to compete with the piano or organ as a concert instrument, although it was widely used to accompany voices, and sometimes used for this purpose in small concert halls possessing no pipe organ. After 1900 American composers took little interest in the reed organ with the exception of Bird, commissioned to write some harmonium pieces by a German firm, and possibly Ives, who may have intended accompaniments to such songs as Serenity (1919) for reed organ. In France, however, serious music continued to be written throughout the 20th century by major composers such as Vierne, Tournemire, Litaize and Langlais. As recently as 1988 Langlais and his pupil Naji Hakim collaborated on a collection of 30 pieces for harmonium entitled Expressions for Organ.
In the later 20th century interest in the reed organ and its music was renewed, albeit from an antiquarian standpoint. Well-restored reed organs of all kinds now are being acquired for public and private instrument collections, and research into the literature and the desire for authenticity in performance have resulted in the occasional appearance of reed organs in concerts and on recordings. They are also being restored for use in chapels and small churches at the insistence of musicians who prefer them to electronic substitutes, and because they are more durable. In 1981 the Reed Organ Society was formed; in addition to encouraging the collection and preservation of reed organs, it has been instrumental in reawakening interest in the instrument’s repertory.
C. Dietz: ‘Sur l’aerephone, nouvel instrument inventé par M. Dietz’, Revue musicale, vi (1830), 536–7
J. Promberger: Theoretische-praktische Anleitung zur Kenntnis und Behandlung der Physharmonika (Berlin, 1830)
Historique du procès en contrefacon des harmoniums-Debain (Paris, 1845)
J. Turgan: Les grandes usines: l’orgue expressif de MM Alexandre, père et fils (Paris, 1846)
J.-L.N. Fourneaux: Petit traité sur l’orgue-expressif (Paris, 1854)
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