Organ
(Fr.
orgue, orgues; Dutch, Ger. Orgel; It., Sp. organo;
Dan. Orglet; from Gk. organon via Lat. organum).
A
wind instrument consisting of one or more scale-like rows of individual pipes
of graded size which are made to sound by air under pressure directed from a
wind-raising device and admitted to the pipes by means of valves operated from
a keyboard. Although this definition could include such instruments as the Regals, Portative, Positive and Claviorgan, this article is concerned
with the larger organ proper.
The
organ is, together with the clock, the most complex of all mechanical
instruments developed before the Industrial Revolution. Among musical
instruments its history is the most involved and wide-ranging, and its extant
repertory the oldest and largest (see Keyboard music, §§I–II; see also Continuo). Despite its essentially
indirect and therefore relatively inflexible production of sound, no other
instrument has inspired such avowed respect as the organ, ‘that great triumph
of human skill … the most perfect musical instrument’ (Grove1), ‘in my
eyes and ears … the king of instruments’ (Mozart, letter to his father, 17–18
October 1777).
I. Word origin
II. Construction
III. Pipework
IV. The classical and
medieval organ
V. The organ,
1450–1800
VI. Some developments,
1800–1930
VII. The Organ
Revival, 1930–70
VIII. The organ at the
close of the 20th century
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARBARA OWEN, PETER WILLIAMS (I–IV, V; 1–7, 9–13;
VI–VII), STEPHEN BICKNELL (V, 8)
Organ
I. Word origin
Plato
(Laws) and Aristotle (Politics) both used the term ‘organon’ to
denote a tool or instrument in a general sense: something with which to do a
job of work (ergon, from root uerğ-; cf Werk,
‘work’). Plato (Republic) and later authors also used it to denote any
kind or all kinds of musical instrument or contrivance. No Greek author used it
to mean ‘pipe organ’, and even in the term ‘hydraulic organ’ (1st century ce) used by Hero of Alexandria ‘organ’ has the sense of tool,
so that the whole term properly indicates ‘an aulos-like device or instrument,
operated by water’. (In this context, moreover, ‘aulos’ may indicate not the
musical wind instrument of that name but ‘pipe’, ‘conduit’ etc.; thus
‘hydraulic’ refers to the water and air conduits.) Classical and patristic
Latin show a fairly clear evolution of the terms ‘organum’, ‘organa’, ‘organis’
from a general to a specific sense, and a musical connection is often clear
from the context, more consistently so than in Greek. 9th- and 10th-century
Arabic had its own versions of the Greek, for example hedhrula
(‘hydraulis’) and urghanon (‘organon’). The use of ‘organum’ to denote a
kind of polyphony is of course post-classical (see Organum).
In
his commentary on Psalm cl St Augustine correctly explained the Vulgate word
‘organum’ as derived from ‘a Greek term’, and thought it unlikely to be correct
in this psalm. He defined it as follows (the English translation is by John of
Trevisa, 1398): ‘Organum is a generall name of all Instrumentes of Musyk: and
is nethelesse specyally apropryte to the Instrument that is made of many pipes;
and blowen wyth belowes’. In one sentence St Augustine used the singular organum
and the plural organa for the same object, thus foreshadowing late
medieval usage of the plural in English and in Old High German (Notker Labeo's diu
organâ and orglun) and present-day usage in Slavonic languages, (varhany,
orgány: plural). The English derivatives of ‘organ’ (‘organic’,
‘organize’) are mostly post-medieval terms, and are sometimes found first in
the musical sense (i.e. ‘organic’: ‘like organs’), sometimes first in the
non-musical sense: ‘organize’, ‘to give an orderly structure to’, appears in
the 17th century, while ‘organize’, ‘to supply one or more sets of organ pipes
to’ a harpsichord or piano, appears in the 18th century, probably from French
usage (e.g. clavecin organisé). The plural ‘organs’ denoting a single
object (e.g. orgues/ogres, Orgenen/Orgeln in 12th-century French
and German verse) belongs to the musical use of the term. In some languages,
notably French, the singular orgue seems much the later term, but
documents are inconsistent (e.g. ‘money paied to the organe maker for the
orgonis’, 14th century). A ‘pair of organs’ was a phrase used in 17th-century
England generally to denote an organ of any size. During the 16th century,
particularly in documents prepared by non-musicians, a ‘pair of organs or
virginals’ may perhaps have indicated an instrument with longer than average
compass, but more probably meant merely an ‘instrument of many pipes or
strings’ (cf a ‘pair of stairs’ in 15th-century French and English). By 1613
the new two-manual organ of Worcester Cathedral was called ‘Double Organ’, and
it is this kind of instrument that was normally meant both in 17th-century
contracts (e.g. those of Durham, Wells and Canterbury, all 1662) and in the
voluntaries for Double organ popular from around 1640. The agreement from
Canterbury is explicit: ‘A Double Organ, viz a great Organ and a Chaire Organ’
(see Double organ). Biblical use of ‘organ’ in English
translations is unreliable. Septuagint Greek uses organon most often in
its general sense of ‘tool’; Old Testament Hebrew uses ûgab on four
occasions, apparently to indicate some kind of wind instrument, perhaps a
vertical flute; Vulgate Latin uses organum indiscriminately for both.
‘Organ’,
‘orgue’ and ‘organo’ are also used in the sense of Werk to denote
individual manual or pedal departments of the whole instrument. Before about
1675 such terms applied only to departments built into separate organ cases. In
England, Echoes and Swells were not usually called ‘Swell Organ’ before about
1800, although by about 1850 all departments of an organ were referred to as
‘organs’.
Organ
II. Construction
There
are three main parts to the construction of an organ: the wind-raising device,
the chest with its pipes, and the (keyboard and valve) mechanism admitting wind
to the pipes. These three parts are common to any pipe organ; it is in their
precise nature that essential differences lie – from the small hydraulic organ
of the 3rd century bce; to the monster electric organ of
the 1920s. At different points in history builders have tended to develop
different parts of the instrument, while at other times (c1400 and c1850)
all parts saw intense development.
1. Hydraulic organ.
2. A medieval chest.
3. A positive (or
chamber) organ action.
4. Details of medieval
and Renaissance chests.
5. Mechanical action.
6. A north European
organ.
7. Barker-lever
action.
8. Cone-chest
9. Tubular-pneumatic
action.
10. Electric actions.
11. Wind supply.
Organ, §II:
Construction
1. Hydraulic organ.
Said
to have been invented by the Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius, this most
primitive form of organ, which was known from Greco-Roman times through
numerous descriptions and iconography, differed from later versions in that the
wind supply to the pipes was regulated by water-pressure rather than by
weighted bellows. The number of pipes and compass of keys were small, and it
was frequently used outdoors, and in various secular ceremonial functions. For
a full discussion and illustrations of its construction, see Hydraulis and see also §IV, 1 below. It
is not to be confused with the later Water organ, a normal pneumatic organ in which the
bellows were operated by water power.
Organ, §II:
Construction
2. A medieval chest.
Fig.1 shows how in Theophilus's organ (11th
century) the wind, raised by two or more bellows operated by the blowers'
body-weight, is admitted to the several ranks of pipes when a perforated
hand-slider is pulled out until its hole is aligned with the vertical channel
between the wind-chest and the pipe-foot; to obtain a ‘clean’ sound, the slider
must be operated as quickly as possible. To stop the sound, the slider is pushed
back. The whole chest could be made of wood or moulded metal.
Other
medieval chests differed significantly. According to the description in the
Berne Codex (11th century), the wind did not pass to the two ranks of pipes
from one duct but each pipe had its own duct from the wind-chamber below; thus
the hand-slider required as many holes to be aligned as there were ranks. Also
the ‘key’ was (like that of the hydraulis) a pivoted square which, when
depressed, would push the slider into sounding position, while a spring pulled
it back afterwards to its blocking position. Early medieval positives and
portatives probably worked by one or other of such systems, which do not of
themselves presuppose any particular size.
Organ, §II:
Construction
3. A positive (or chamber) organ action.
In
the ‘pin action’ portrayed in fig.2, wind accumulated in the lower chamber
or pallet box is admitted to each upper chamber or groove when the
corresponding key depresses the hinged pallet. The new, crucial device in this
system is the pallet and its groove or channel, both of unknown origin,
although well established by the 14th century. The effectiveness and
versatility of the resulting chest construction promoted the development of the
Renaissance organ. In theory and (many organists and builders believe) in
practice, the grooved or ‘barred’ chest facilitates tonal blend between the
several pipes belonging to each key. Later medieval positives probably had a
similar action, in most cases to fewer (and often sliderless) ranks of pipes;
later medieval portatives also probably worked from a similar (though simpler
and more compact) pin action, whatever the shape and size of the keys.
Organ, §II:
Construction
4. Details of medieval and Renaissance chests.
Fig.3a shows a medieval block-chest (or Blockwerk): the opened pallet admits
wind to all the pipes on one groove or channel (i.e. all those belonging to one
key) and the player is unable to separate the ranks of pipes. To obtain variety
of sound some organs had grooves divided into two parts, each with its own
pallet; each resulting ‘half-chest’ could have its wind blocked off with a
valve somewhere between bellows and pallet box, though in practice the front
half-chest (whose pipes were those of the case front or Open and perhaps
Stopped Diapasons) played all the time. Each key in such a double chest
operated two pallets. The reliability and wind-saving virtues of this system
gave it some popularity in the Netherlands during the 15th century.
In
the slider-chest (? late 15th century) shown in fig.3b, the opened pallet admits wind to each
single or multi-rank ‘stop’ by means of a perforated slip of wood (‘slider’)
running longitudinally in the board between the pipe-foot and the groove on the
upper level of the chest. The slider can be aligned either to allow wind to
pass through (‘stop drawn’) or to prevent it passing through (‘stop pushed
in’). By means of rods, trundles and levers, the sliders can also be operated
by a ‘stop-knob’ near the player (below and in front of the chest itself).
Sliders were known first in small organs, perhaps as early as 1400, but were
not much used in larger ones (or the larger departments of two-manual organs)
until the 16th century.
Fig.3c shows a spring-chest (early 16th
century) in which the opened pallet admits wind to each single or multi-rank
stop by means of a secondary pallet or ‘groove-valve’ for each, which is
operated by the stop-lever bar. The spring acting on the secondary pallet also
causes the bar to spring back to the ‘off’ position unless prevented (i.e.
unless the player notches the stop-lever at the keyboard into the ‘on’
position).
Other
spring-chests differed significantly. Many Italian ones from the late 15th
century onwards had their secondary pallets placed vertically rather than
horizontally, with the result that the bar moved horizontally. Because brass
springs lose their flexibility in time, some builders in 16th-century Italy and
17th-century Germany designed the chest so that all the secondary pallets
belonging to one groove could on occasion be pulled out in one strip (looking
like a long, narrow drawer) and the faulty spring replaced without dismantling
the pallet box.
The
spring-chest is troublesome to make, as 17th-century theorists such as Mersenne
and Werckmeister noted; it also takes up more room than a slider-chest. But it
is said that spring-chests last longer, and (although no results of controlled
experiments have been published) cause the pipes to speak better. Since there
could be no loss of wind through shrinking or warping of sliders, spring-chests
probably contributed to greater stability of tuning, although their complexity
would be likely to make them more sensitive to the extremes of humidity and
dryness found in modern, centrally heated churches. While the spaciousness of
the chests dictated by the spatial requirements of the ‘groove-valves’ makes
pipes and action more accessible for tuning and repair, it also requires that
the main key pallets be made larger, making the touch heavier and less
sensitive than that of slider-chest organs. This may be why the spring-chest
was abandoned in the north, where higher wind pressures complicated this
situation.
Organ, §II:
Construction
5. Mechanical action.
Fig.4 depicts the side and front elevation of
a single-manual organ with suspended action. Organs of this simple construction
have been built since at least the 15th century; larger and more sophisticated
instruments of this type were being built in Spain, Italy and Central America
as late as the 19th century, and there was a revival in the use of this action
during the late 20th century.
In
this action, shown in exploded detail in fig.5, all motion is in the same (downward)
direction. A tracker attached to the centre of a key which is hinged at the
back end descends when the key is depressed. As the width of the chest is
greater than that of the keyboard, the action is intercepted by a roller, which
transfers the motion horizontally to another tracker, which in turn pulls down
the pallet in the chest, admitting wind to the groove under the pipe. Very
small or very primitive organs can be found in which the rollerboard is
eliminated and the trackers simply fanned or splayed to correct the discrepancy
between key-scale and chest-scale.
Fig.6 depicts the so-called balanced action
which originated in north-western Europe in the 17th century, was adopted in
England shortly before the beginning of the 18th century and was widely used in
the 19th century. This action, which allows for more flexibility in the
location and number of chests, involves a transfer of motion direction. Fig.6a illustrates how the key, when depressed,
pushes up one end of the balanced backfall, causing the opposite end to
descend, pulling down the tracker attached to the pallet; in this simple
arrangement the backfalls must be splayed to compensate for the difference
between key-scale and chest-scale, but it is also possible for them to remain
key-scale and communicate with a rollerboard, as shown in fig.6b. Fig.6c shows another variant (illustrated here
in the pedal department, although the mechanism may also be applied to the
manuals) in which motion is transferred by means of a rocking square.
Regardless
of the type of key action (suspended or balanced), the stop action usually
operates in the manner depicted in fig.5. The stop-knob is attached to a rod
which is attached either to a rotating trundle (as shown), or, by means of
squares, to a rocking arm, which in turn draws or retires the slider associated
with a particular rank of pipes on the chest.
Organ, §II:
Construction
6. A north European organ.
Fig.7 shows a four-manual instrument in cross-section; only a
selection of pipe-ranks is indicated. In this design, the pedal-chests may be
to the left and right of the main case or (with less immediacy of sound) behind
it. The space between bench and Chair Organ was often enlarged in Roman
Catholic countries to accommodate a choir and orchestra; special stops
(cornet), chests (echo chests), and toy stops could be conducted off the main
wind-trunks; one or more departments could be enclosed in a Swell box;
Tremulants could be fixed in the main trunk, a subsidiary department trunk, or
the trunk of an isolated stop (seeTremulant).
Organ, §II:
Construction
7. Barker-lever action.
Fig.8 illustrates the principles of
a mechanism invented in the mid-19th century byCharles Spackman
Barker and
constantly redesigned and patented by countless other builders. When a key is
depressed, air under pressure from the main bellows is admitted through a
pallet-like valve to inflate small bellows (one for each key) which, in moving,
travel sufficiently to pull a tracker connected with the pipe-chest pallet. On
release the exhaust valve at the top allows the small bellows to deflate
immediately. In this way, average light finger pressure on the key brings into
play a wind-power sufficient to operate pallets at some distance from the
player, especially those of large-scale pipes and on chests working under high
wind pressure (e.g. Solo organ). The pneumatic unit, or ‘Barker lever’, is
placed inside the organ, near the keyboard, at a point where the tracker rises
vertically from the keys and merely intercepts an otherwise traditional
mechanical action. Perhaps one of its most important applications is to
inter-manual couplers, allowing additional manuals to be coupled to the main
manual without significantly increasing key resistance. This type of assisted
action was used extensively in France during the second half of the 19th
century, and generally used for larger organs in the USA and Britain during the
same period.
Organ, §II:
Construction
8. Cone-chest
(Kegellade).
The cone-chest, or ventil-chest with cone-shaped valves, is found particularly
in 19th-century German organs (fig.9 shows a mid-century example) and was one of several chests
developed between 1775 and 1875 in the interests of mechanical reliability.
Though bulky, the cone-chest avoided some of the faults to which a working
slider-chest was subject, but was more inclined to be affected by extremes of
humidity. In the cone-chest all the pipes belonging to a rank are mounted on
one channel running the length of the chest; to the whole of this channel wind
is admitted when the stop-knob is drawn. There are no lateral key-channels or
grooves in such ‘barless chests’. Each key activates a series of cone-shaped
valves, one for each pipe; thus although only one stop may be required by the
organist, all the other valves move. The valves need not be cone-shaped; they
may even be replaced by little discs operated by small bellows-like pneumatic
motors.
Organ, §II:
Construction
9. Tubular-pneumatic action.
This
type of action, shown in fig.10a and b, was developed in the late 19th century,
and could be applied either to slider-chests or to the newer individual
pipe-valve chests. Two forms of tubular-pneumatic action are illustrated here:
in fig.10a, when a key is depressed, air under
pressure in the touch-box above the key is admitted along the lead or copper
tubing to the bellows-like ‘primary’ pneumatic motor which opens, forcing a
valve to rise (hence the name ‘pressure-pneumatic action’). This in turn
releases air from the pallet box that was held under a secondary motor. The
secondary motor collapses under pressure from the wind in the pallet box,
pulling open the pallet. ‘Exhaust-pneumatic action’ (shown in fig.10b) is that in which the air under pressure
is contained in a box underneath the pipe-chest pallet box, pushing the pallet
shut via the secondary motor when at rest; when depressed, the key opens a
valve that allows this wind to escape along the lead tubing away from the
pallet, collapsing the primary and secondary motors, thus pulling open the
pallet. Pressure-pneumatic action never became popular in France, and in
England and North America many builders preferred exhaust-pneumatic, believing
it to be more prompt, silent and durable. Tubular-pneumatic action continued to
be extensively used by builders in Australia and New Zealand until the 1940s.
Organ, §II:
Construction
10. Electric actions.
From
the final years of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century,
electricity was used in a variety of ways by different organ builders and in
different countries. The basic premise is that the key (or stop control) closes
a switch which sends a low-voltage impulse to a mechanism in the chest. One of
the simplest forms, utilizing the traditional slider-chest, is shown in fig.11. An electro-magnet is activated when the
key is depressed and its circuit completed. The armature acts as a valve,
rising to the magnet and thus allowing the wind to escape from the primary
pneumatic motor (previously filled with wind from the pallet box) which in turn
collapses, opening the port below the secondary pneumatic motor and thus
allowing its wind to escape. On collapsing, the secondary motor pulls down the
pallet. On the release of the key, the circuit is broken, the magnet drops the
armature valve and wind is restored to the small pneumatic motor, while the
external spring closes the port under the main pneumatic motor which inflates
and, assisted by the pallet spring, pushes up the pallet.
Electric
action is most commonly used in conjunction with various types of ‘individual
pipe-valve’ chests, in which there is a separate valve for each pipe. An early
type, also used in conjunction with tubular-pneumatic action, is the ventil
chest (fig.12). In this chest, also called a ‘membrane
chest’, channels isolate the stops, and a stop is activated by releasing wind
into its channel. Felt and leather discs attched to thin leather pneumatic
pouches replace the larger wedge-shaped pneumatic motors, since less effort is
required to open a small pipe-valve. The electro-magnet is activated by an
impulse from the key, exhausting a small channel to the primary pouch. This is
pushed in by pressure in the action-box, pulling open a larger exhaust port;
this in turn causes the valves under the pipes for a given note to be pulled
open, admitting wind from the stop-channels into the pipes.
More
complex but very efficient is the so-called ‘pitman’ chest, particularly
popular in America, which uses a similar principle to open the pipe-valves.
Other kinds of electric action include the Austin type, in which a trace
attached to a single pneumatic motor opens all pipe-valves of a given note that
have not been disengaged by the stop mechanism, and the ‘direct electric’ or
‘electro-mechanical’ type, in which each pipe-valve has its own magnet,
directly energized by the key contact, and stop-control is by means of
switching mechanisms. For detailed diagrams and descriptions of various chest
actions and other electrical mechanisms, see Audsley (B1905), W. and T. Lewis
(B1911), Whitworth (B1930) or W.H. Barnes (D(xxxv)1930). Electric actions allow
divisions of the organ to be separated and the console to be placed at a
distance from the pipes if required. Since electricity takes the place of a
direct mechanical connection, however, control over pipe-speech is sacrificed.
Organ, §II:
Construction
11. Wind supply.
(i) A medieval bellows.
In fig.13,
derived from Theophilus's organ (see §II, 2 above), air is fed in turn by three
‘feeder bellows’ through channels meeting inside the conflatorium to
make one central duct (the inner construction is shown with dotted lines);
before the channels meet, the wind passes through a copper valve which flaps
open as the bellows send out air and flaps closed as soon as they are emptied.
The collected wind is then directed along a trunk curving up to the pipe-chest.
There may be more than one conflatorium, and the bellows can be in pairs
or larger sets.
(ii) Wedge-bellows.
The
late medieval bellows (Ger. Spanbalg) was wedge-shaped, consisting of
upper (movable) and lower (fixed) boards hinged at one end, and wooden ribs
hinged with leather. They could be of any size, depending on the size of the
organ. They could be single-fold (fig.14a) or multifold (14b); during the 17th and 18th centuries the
former was favoured in northern European countries, and the latter in France
and southern European countries. The number of bellows in an organ varied with
the size, from the small single-bellows portative to large cathedral organs
with eight or more; the average church organ usually had two to four. Methods
of operation varied, but all were based on the principle of mechanically
raising the weighted upper board of the bellows and then allowing it to ‘rest
on the wind’; by the time one bellows had been exhausted, another would have
been filled, thus assuring a continuous supply. A system of one-way check-valves
allowed only the filled bellows to deliver wind to the wind-chests of the
organ.
The
commonest means of filling the bellows were either by treading (hence the
German term Balgetreter) on one end of a lever which pushed up the upper
board (fig.14a), or by pulling down on a lever which
pulled up the upper board (fig.14b). In some instrances, especially if the
bellows were located above the organ, a system of ropes and pulleys was
employed, but in all cases the motive power was the organ-blower's body weight
and muscle. Small or medium-sized instruments could be blown by a single
person, but larger ones often required several.
(iii) Reservoir and feeder-bellows.
The
wedge-bellows system was universally in use until the 18th century. Although effective,
it was bulky, because a minimum of two bellows was needed to provide an
uninterrupted supply of wind to the chests of the organ, and even in quite
small organs a separate person was required to operate them. Early in
18th-century England a more compact arrangement appeared, perhaps orginally
devised for chamber organs, in which a single wedge-bellows affixed to the
underside of a board fed wind into a second, weighted wedge-bellows above,
which in turn delivered it to the wind-chest. Continuous operation of the lower
(feeder) bellows assured that the upper (reservoir) bellows would always
contain sufficient wind. In chamber organs, this allowed the player to provide
the wind by operating a foot-lever connected to the feeder-bellows; when
applied to larger organs, the feeder would still have to be operated by a
second person.
An
improvement on this system was the replacement, in the late 18th century, of
the upper wedge (reservoir) with a horizontal reservoir having usually two sets
of ribs with a floating-frame between, expandable on all four sides, which
afforded greater capacity within the same space and allowed the entire
wind-supply system to be located in the base of the organ-case (fig.15).
This reservoir is continuously supplied with wind by two wedge-feeders below
it, operated by a rocking lever which opened one while it closed the other. By
this means a single person could supply adequate wind to a fairly large
instrument, although as larger organs were built in the early 19th century,
more than one reservoir (and thus more than one organ-blower) was required.
By
the 19th century this system was in universal use in England and America, and
was soon adopted in France and elsewhere. Early in the 19th century the English
builder Benjamin Flight, noting that a slight pressure-rise occurred as the
typical double-fold reservoir collapsed, reversed the fold of the upper set of
ribs to help equalize the pressure (see fig.15). This system was widely used in
England thereafter, although not adopted in America until the 1880s and rarely
employed on the Continent save by the French who, following Cavaillé-Coll,
devised complex wind systems involving multiple reservoirs of this type, often
supplying differing wind pressures. In the 20th century, with the advent of the
electric fan-blower, builders elsewhere often adopted this kind of
multiple-reservoir, multiple wind-pressure system.
In
the mid-20th century, some builders replaced the smaller regulating reservoirs
with a spring-loaded ‘floating’ plate, attached by a rubber-cloth membrane to
the bottom of the wind-box of the soundboard. While useful in saving space in
small organs, these devices (called ‘Schwimmer’ by the German builders, a term
also adopted by many English-speaking builders) often produced undesirable wind
characteristics such as oscillation and pressure-drop unless carefully designed
and adjusted.
(iv) Other types of bellows.
During
the 17th century a type of square, multifold bellows appeared in France, called
soufflets à lanterne because of their resemblance to multifold paper or
parchment (‘Chinese’) lanterns. The weighted top board was raised by a rope and
pulley and allowed to collapse, sending wind to the organ; as with the
wedge-bellows, more than one was needed for a continuous supply. In
19th-century Germany, the box-bellows (Kastenbalg) appeared. It operated
on the same principle as a gasometer, in that a weighted smaller box, fitting
snugly into a larger one, was raised by a pulley and allowed to drop, forcing
wind into the organ. Neither became widely accepted, probably because the
former was more fragile than its wedge-shaped counterpart, and the latter,
being made of wood, was liable to get out of order owing to atmospheric
changes.
(v) Organ blowing.
Until
the middle of the 19th century, manpower was the only means of operating the
feeders, even in large organs, although in these one sometimes found
alternative systems such as a crank-and-flywheel operating three feeders from a
camshaft. During the second half of the 19th century, while manpower still
sufficed for most smaller church organs, advancing technology offered
alternatives for the larger ones. English builders such as Hill and Willis favoured
steam power, by which steam-driven pistons supplied the wind in place of the
feeders; such a system was employed in the Royal Albert Hall, London, from 1871
to 1920. In America, water power from the mains was preferred, especially by
city churches, which were exempt from water taxes. These water motors were
quite simple, the principle being a reciprocating piston which was attached to
the lever operating the feeders. At the turn of the century, the electrically
operated centrifugal fan blower came into use, eliminating the necessity of
feeders, and is now almost universally employed.
With
the advent of the unlimited mechanical wind supply brought by the fan blower
and by the use of multiple small reservoirs, a fashion for ‘rock-steady’ wind
supply emerged, particularly in connection with the ‘monster’ organs of the
early 20th century. Study of the wind characteristics of pre-20th-century
organs during the 1970s and 80s began to cast doubt on the musical efficacy of
an inflexible wind system. Although this inevitably caused some controversy
among both players and builders, by the end of the 20th century many had
accepted that a wind system with a carefully calculated amount of natural
‘give’ is of musical value, especially in organs designed to emulate historical
tonal principles. Many of these eschew modern wind systems for reproductions of
older types, sometimes with both electric and manual blowing options.
Organ
III. Pipework
There
are several classes of organ pipes, the two oldest and most integral to the
development of the organ being flue pipes and reed pipes. More common by far,
though not necessarily more varied, are flue pipes. Both types operate on the
coupled-air system of sound production common to flutes, recorders, oboes,
clarinets etc.
1. Flue pipes.
2. Reed pipes.
3. Free reeds.
4. Diaphones (valvular
reeds).
Organ, §III: Pipework
1. Flue pipes.
Air
under pressure from the chest passes through the foot-hole (bore) at the base
of the pipe-foot (fig.16) and so through the flue or windway, to
issue in a flat sheet of wind striking the edge of the upper lip; the refracted
wind causes eddies to form at the mouth, first on one side of the upper lip,
then on the other. The natural frequency of the pipe’s body is coupled to the
note of the ‘edge tones’ produced at the upper lip and gives to the eddies a
rate of production that becomes the frequency of the note produced. Thus the
effective length of the pipe is the principal factor in the pitch of the note.
Pitch
and timbre are affected by several other factors, few of which, however, are
variable outside narrow limits. A narrow pipe, to produce a certain pitch, must
be longer than a wide one; a conical one must likewise be longer if it narrows
towards the top, but shorter if it tapers outwards. Such variations in shape,
however, are generally more important for their effect on a pipe’s timbre than
on its pitch. A cylindrical pipe stopped at the end will sound approximately an
octave lower than if it were open; for a conical pipe the difference is not
quite so great. A half-stopped cylindrical pipe (i.e. with its cap pierced and
usually a tube passing through the hole) speaks at a somewhat higher pitch than
a stopped pipe.
The
narrower the mouth or the smaller the flue, then the smaller the volume of air
(at any given pressure) striking the upper lip and the softer the sound; the
higher the mouth in relation to its width (i.e. the greater the ‘cut-up’), then
the rounder, duller or more flute-like the tone (hence the designation ‘flute
stops’); the narrower the pipe as a whole, the richer the harmonic spectrum and
the more string-like the tone (hence ‘string stops’). It was said at one time
that the harder the metal, the richer the harmonic spectrum; or the more lead
contained in the pipe-alloy, the ‘duller’ the sound. But Backus and Hundley (C1966)
established from theoretical and experimental evidence that ‘the steady tone of
a pipe does not depend on the material of the pipewall. The belief that the use
of tin in constructing pipes gives a better tone appears to be a myth
unsupported by the evidence’. Experienced voicers, however, will aver that the
composition of pipe metal does affect tone quality, and that it is impossible
to match exactly the tone quality of two otherwise identical pipes made of very
different alloys. More to the point, perhaps, is that tin-lead alloys are easy
to work and shape, thus allowing the builder a high degree of adjustment at the
parts of the pipe crucial to voicing processes.
Most
of these factors can be used only to a certain degree: a point is soon reached
when a pipe will not speak at all, even when other factors are altered, e.g.
increasing or decreasing the wind pressure. Consequently the various
interrelated factors involved in voicing a pipe require pragmatic expertise in
their manipulation.
In
addition to its more general usage, the term ‘scale’ can refer to a pipe’s
diameter in relation to a norm (‘wide’ or ‘narrow’ scale), and the relationship
or ratio between one pipe’s diameter and that of its octave below in the same
rank (3:5 etc.; see Scaling). One well-known norm is the Normprinzipal
suggested at the German Organ Reform (Orgelbewegung) conferences in the
1920s; this norm is ‘one pipe larger’ than the Normalmensur promulgated
by J.G. Töpfer about 1845 (thus the diameter of Töpfer’s C pipe is that
of the Normprinzipal C
). G.A. Sorge had been the first to use
logarithms to find constant scalings for organ pipes (c1760),
calculating pipe diameter, pipe length, mouth width and mouth height by this
method. Other 17th- and 18th-century theorists (such as Mersenne and Bédos de
Celles) suggested scaling-figures by means of tables culled from practical
experience and from the empiricism of organ builders themselves. Only two
generations after Sorge did Töpfer develop the idea of arithmetical calculation
for pipes (with immense influence on builders of his time): he calculated the
cross-sectional area of a pipe an octave higher than the given pipe by applying
the ratio 1:√8. Thus a pipe with half the diameter of a given pipe is not
an octave (12 pipes) above but 16 or 17 pipes above. Such a factor as
1:√8 was itself reasonable, and many older builders had worked more or
less to it, though empirically and not rigidly; indeed, Töpfer’s formula can be
deplored for the encouragement it gave to 19th-century ‘organ-factory builders’
who applied a constant scale irrespective of the acoustics of the church or
indeed any other variable of importance to organ tone. The Orgelbewegung’s
Normprinzipal was similarly abused by some of the less imaginative
builders of the neo-Baroque era in the early 20th century.
Fig.17 shows some flue-pipe shapes and is
scaled to indicate the relative sizes of different types all producing the same
C. (The Normprinzipal diameter of the C pipe at a pitch
standard of a' = 435 is 155·5 mm; at a pitch standard of a' =
440, the diameter for C would be reduced to 154·17 mm – a fine point of
difference since variations in temperature will change the pitch this much).
Most historic types of English Open Diapason, French Montre and Venetian
Principale have been wider in scale than the Normprinzipal, and for many
builders it remains merely one of the possible norms. It must also be
remembered that the diagram does not refer to factors other than scaling, such
as wind pressure. Mouth widths are usually expressed as proportions of the
circumference, and those ordinarily used range from 2:7 down to 1:6, though 1:4
remains common for Principal pipes, and further extremes have been used for
special effects. The cut-up is expressed as a fraction of the mouth width,
‘quarter cut-up’ indicating that the mouth is a quarter as high as it is wide.
Wooden
pipes are either stopped (most commonly 8', then 16' and 4') or open (16', 8',
4', 2'); sometimes half-stopped wooden pipes (i.e. with a pierced stopper) of
the Rohrflöte (Chimney Flute) type are found, especially in small organs. Metal
or wood conical pipes narrowing towards the top have been found in the largest
Dutch, German and Spanish organs since about 1540. Metal pipes with ‘pavilions’
or ‘bells’ (inverted conical caps) were made especially by French and English
builders for about a century from about 1840, both on the flute and string side
of tone-colour, as well as in Principals. Overblowing pipes have also been
popular in large organs and in special instruments made for colourful secular
use; the most common during the period c1600–1800 was the narrow-scaled,
narrow-mouthed open cylindrical pipe, overblowing to the 2nd partial or ‘at the
octave’ above. Such pipes require to be twice as long as the pitch length (8'
for 4' pitch). Stopped pipes overblow to the 3rd partial or ‘at the 12th’
above, and require to be three times as long as the normal stopped length (6'
for 4' pitch); they are fairly rare. Overblowing flute pipes (Flûte harmonique,
etc.) became widely used after the middle of the 19th century, having been
developed to a high degree in France. Such pipes are of double length but of
the scale of a normal-length open flute, and are pierced at the node
(approximately halfway up from the mouth) with one or two small holes. Given
full wind, such pipes will overblow, giving a strong, sweet and rather
fundamental tone not unlike that of the modern orchestral flute, but are not
usually found below 13/5' e' in pitch, the lower part of the stop
consisting of wide-scaled open pipes of normal length. Alternatively, to
prevent overblowing in narrow-scaled string-toned pipes, or to aid tuning at
the mouth of stopped pipes, ‘ears’ or ‘beards’ are often added: these are short
metal plates or rods of metal or wood soldered or held to the sides of (and
sometimes below) the mouth, protruding from it and helping to direct the
vortices of wind on to the edge of the upper lip.
Organ, §III: Pipework
2. Reed pipes.
Air
under pressure from the chest passes through the bore into the boot and so
through the opening in the shallot (fig.18); in so doing the wind sets the thin, flexible brass
reed-tongue into vibration against the shallot; this in turn sets the air
column in the pipe or resonator into vibration, producing a coupled system. The
frequency of the note produced is determined by the length of the air column in
the resonator and by the length, mass and stiffness of the reed-tongue.
The
pitch and tone of the pipe are affected by many factors; if all the factors are
constant, then the longer the reed-tongue and shallot, the lower the pitch. To
produce a required pitch in reed pipes with either cylindrical or conical
resonators, the resonator must be shorter the longer the tongue. But in
practice this property is used within only a small margin, as the tone is more
immediately and strikingly affected by a change in the relationship between
tongue length and resonator length. Natural ‘full-length’ (‘harmonic-length’)
cylindrical resonators correspond roughly in length to stopped pipes of the
same pitch; for natural ‘full-length’ conical resonators the ‘resonance length’
is as little as three-quarters of the pitch length (i.e. 6' or 7' for an 8'
Trumpet). A reed pipe will speak (although weakly and without fundamental)
without its resonator, whose purpose is to reinforce certain partials, to ‘give
tone’ to the pipe. But in a reed with a resonator a point is soon reached, if
the reed-resonator relationship is altered, when the pipe will either fly off
its speech or not speak at all. This is particularly true of double-cone reeds
such as Oboes and Schalmeys.
The
thinner the tongue, the richer the harmonics in the tone it produces; the
thicker the tongue, the smoother and more fundamental the tone. Wider
resonators produce stronger tone; conical resonators have a ‘thicker’
partial-content than cylindrical ones. The resonator gives its air column its
own natural frequency; when this is greater than that of the tongue (i.e. when
the pipe is shorter than the tongue requires for both to respond naturally to
the same pitch) the tone becomes brighter, richer in partials. The more open
the shallot, the louder and richer the tone; to obtain brilliance from partly
closed shallots, higher wind pressure is required; to obtain a rounder, more
horn-like tone, 19th-century builders placed the opening higher on the face of
the shallot, the curved tongue thus closing the opening before its travel was
complete. As in the case of flue pipes, it has been established recently that
the hardness of the resonator material (this can be, in order of decreasing
hardness, brass, tin, lead or wood) is unlikely to influence the tone –
tradition and hearsay notwithstanding. However, the hardness of the tongue
material is a definite factor in tone quality. The commonest material used by
modern builders is what is known as ‘half-hard’ brass, but soft brass, hard
brass and even (the very hard) phosphor bronze are also used in certain
instances. The thickness of the tongue likewise has an effect on tone.
Reeds
with very short resonators (whatever their shape), and usually of small scale,
are called Regal stops and were known from at least about 1475. In practice,
most Regals are either predominantly conical in shape or predominantly
cylindrical; they also exhibit an inconstant scale (i.e. relative to the
reed-tongues, the resonators in the treble are progressively longer than in the
bass). Reed stops with resonators of twice or even four times natural length
were sometimes made in the later 19th century, especially by French and English
builders, and became equivalent to overblowing flue pipes, although such
overlength resonators are generally used only above the pitch of 2' c'.
19th-century builders, particularly in those two countries, very often placed
their reeds on higher wind pressure than the flue stops (18 cm upwards) by
means of divided windboxes and double pallets, in the chest. The desire to
supply ‘carrying power’ by such means, particularly in the treble, had grown in
France from about the second third of the 18th century onwards.
Fig.19 shows models of some of the more popular
reeds of the early 17th century (PraetoriusSM, ii; fig.19a) and the late 19th (Audsley, B1905; fig.19b). A great deal depends on the use of
various shapes and proportions of shallots, and these, like the tube, block and
boot, may be made of wood (though this is more often a feature of low-pitched
pedal reeds than a general alternative).
Organ, §III: Pipework
3. Free reeds.
Free
reeds were developed in Europe (probably after the Asian sheng) towards
the end of the 18th century in several areas around the Baltic (see Free
reed), and
offered the first radically different type of organ pipe since flues and reeds
had been perfected. Instead of a shallot with an orifice against which the
tongue beats when wind excites it, a thick, oblong plate of brass is perforated
with a narrow opening through which vibrates the close-fitting brass tongue (fig.20). It swings freely, hence ‘free reed’. The boot needs to be
larger than that of a corresponding reed stop to allow copious winding. When
made by German builders about 1825 and French builders about 1850, free reeds
had resonators of various types and tone-colour, thus being legitimate ranks of
organ pipes. However, some stops, such as the Physharmonika, had instead of individual
pipe-resonators one resonating chamber common to all notes of the rank, thus
taking less room on the chest. It was such pipeless free reeds that led to the
various kinds of harmonium, or Reed organ, of the 19th century. Free reeds could
be mass-produced more easily than the so-called beating-reed stops, although in
itself the workmanship was not inferior. The best builders by no means regarded
them as easy alternatives to beating reeds, and the best examples, especially
when used at 16' pitch in the pedal, could sound deceptively like beating
reeds.
Though
less incisive in articulation and weaker in volume than the beating reed, the
free reed had a quality highly favoured by its period: it could be made ‘expressive’.
On admitting more wind to a free reed, the amplitude, but not the frequency, of
the swinging tongue is increased; it can thus produce a louder tone without
rising in pitch, like a more or less excited tuning-fork but unlike a beating
reed. When the free reed was a separate stop in a large organ, however, this
property could not easily be exploited. Rarely outside the period 1810–1910,
and then most often only in parts of northern France, central Germany and
northern Italy, did the free reed achieve much popularity.
Organ, §III: Pipework
4. Diaphones (valvular reeds).
In
1894 Robert Hope-Jones took out a patent for a pipe, making use of the fact
that any device allowing puffs of compressed air to be projected into a tube or
resonating box (i.e. into a chamber holding a column of non-pressurized air)
will create a sound if the frequency becomes audible (fig.21). On activation from the
keyboard, air under pressure is admitted through the bore and sets the thin
‘vibrator’ into motion, whereupon the pallet-like disc attached to its free end
admits a rapid and regular succession of puffs of air into the resonator (i.e.
the pipe standing above). As with the free reed, the tone increases in volume
but not in frequency as the wind pressure is increased; but, as is not the case
with the free reed, greater wind pressure can make for much power. The tone
itself is smooth and powerful, but always ‘unblending’ and useful only in
organs (chiefly cinema organs) conceived on ideals current in a few areas of
Europe and the USA between 1900 and 1930. The most enduring application of the
diaphone principle has been fog-signalling, and many lighthouse diaphones were
in regular use in the USA and elsewhere until late in the 20th century.
See also Organ stop.
Organ
IV. The classical and medieval organ
Since
the 3rd century bce it has been possible to regard the
organ as an instrument composed of four elements: (i) a wind-raising device
operated by lever, pulley or other mechanism, directing air under pressure to
(ii) a ‘chest’ in which the wind is stored until admitted by (iii) a mechanism
operated by some kind of keyboard to (iv) one or more rows of pipes (see
Rank).
The absence of any one of these elements prevents an instrument from being
properly considered an organ. But other instruments could well have presented
models or given ideas to early organ makers, particularly those in east
Mediterranean countries. It is unlikely that at any single period the hydraulic
organ was so firmly established that builders were indifferent to the influence
of such wind instruments as the Syrinx, the Magrepha or the Bagpipe.
The
most comprehensive recent surveys of archaeological and documentary evidence
relating to classical and medieval organs are the studies by Jean Perrot
(D(i)1965), K.-J. Sachs (C1970–80) and Peter Williams (D(i)1993).
1. Greek and Roman
antiquity.
2. The Byzantine
organ.
3. The organ of the
Arabs.
4. Early church
organs.
5. Medieval organ
theorists.
6. The church organ,
1100–1450.
7. The 15th-century
positive and portative.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
1. Greek and Roman antiquity.
No
evidence, literary, iconographical, archaeological or even mythological,
suggests that the pipe organ existed before the Hellenistic period or originated
in any other than the Hellenistic sphere of influence. Later texts such as
Athenaeus's The Sophists at Dinner (c200 ce)
and Vitruvius's De a architectura (1st century ce)
accredit the invention of the Hydraulis to one man, Ctesibius, an Alexandrian
engineer and practical theoretician of the 3rd century bce.
Curt Sachs's assessment (SachsH) of Ctesibius's achievement as uniting a
mechanically raised and constant wind supply to a set of panpipes is not a totally
unreasonable conjecture; but the surviving accounts of his work (written after
his time) make it clear that he had also incorporated a wind-chest and even
some kind of keyboard. Thus the hydraulis has the essential features of an
organ. That Ctesibius was also said by Vitruvius to have invented a water clock
offers an interesting parallel to the makers of organs and clocks in the
medieval cathedrals of western Europe: such makers were, in effect, specialists
in complex machinery. (See also Water organ.)
The
principle of the water-pump is shown in..\Frames/F002781.htmlHydraulis, fig.2. But forge bellows were known
much earlier, and their power potential had already been described in the Iliad.
Bellows could have provided wind either directly to a regulator-chest under a
row of pipes, or indirectly via the cistern of a water organ. But there is no
evidence that either of these was done before the 2nd century ce,
and it is possible that the organ was indeed born as a kind of engineering
model, demonstrating the efficiency of Ctesibius's wind-raising and
wind-stabilizing equipment. Hero of Alexandria's account (in On Pneumatics)
gives no details of the pipes (whether flue or reed, open or stopped) or what
the material, size, compass, tuning, pitch or voicing were.
Vitruvius's
musical interests are more obvious than Hero's. The ranks of his organ were
made to play separately by means of a specially constructed chest in which a
channel ran lengthways under each row of pipes, wind being admitted to the
channel through a valve operated by an iron handle. The keys are returned to
position by an iron spring. As the key was set immediately under its pipes,
either the close-set pipes or (more likely) the keys may have been unequally
spaced.
The
oldest reference to organ playing is a century and a half after Ctesibius: the
‘Delphic inscription’ (90 bce), full of implication about
the organ's fame. Cicero, Lucretius, Petronius and other authors also wrote of
its powers. By the 2nd century ce the Roman organ was
heard in some of the more important theatres, games, amphitheatres, circuses,
banquets and perhaps processions; a 3rd-century Greek inscription at Rhodes
even suggests that it was played in Dionysian festivals. But the cylinder-pump
water organ had so many disadvantages – requiring precision engineering and
good metal, yet difficult to maintain, move and keep from corrosion – that it
is easy to imagine bellows being applied over the years. Eventually, they
replaced both pump and cistern, but it is not known when, where and how. Even
in the later Roman Empire, however, organs were to be heard, and such poets as
Claudian (c400) show organ playing to have accompanied celebrations
attending accessions to a consulate, weddings and banquets during a period when
‘the singer has thrust out the philosopher’ (Ammianus Marcellinus, c350).
Inscriptions found in several provinces far from Rome (Arles, Colchester,
Budapest, Asia Minor) make it clear that organ playing was heard in gladiator
contests (fig.22).
The
few 5th- and 6th-century references include one or two by early Church Fathers,
particularly those on the south and east coasts of the Mediterranean. But
whether it was from personal experience that such writers as Boethius wrote of
hydraulic organs, or Cassiodorus of a bellows-organ with wooden keys, is not
certain; nor has 20th-century research shown what music the organ played, much
less whether it played polyphony. Much can be tentatively conjectured from the
iconographical evidence (see Hydraulis, §§2 and 3).
Parts
of two Roman organs are said still to exist: fragments from Pompeii (now in the
Museo Nazionale, Naples) and major remnants of a small organ found in Aquincum,
Hungary (now in the Aquincum Museum, Budapest; fig.23).
But the Pompeii fragments, which seem to belong to two different instruments,
may not be parts of an organ, although their pipes are of cast metal, like
those of an organ. The Aquincum organ has a plaque dated 228 ce;
its ‘reconstruction’ in 1959 somewhat hampers more recent study of its parts.
It has four rows of 13 cast bronze pipes, one open and three stopped, and a
wooden wind-chest, lined inside and out with bronze. Wooden keys operate
perforated sliders rather than pallets. E.L. Szonntagh's analysis (D(xvii)1981)
appears to confirm that, although the wind-raising mechanism is missing, the
Aquincum organ was a hydraulis, rather than a bellows-blown organ. Each set of
pipes can be played separately from the others, and Walcker-Mayer (D(i)1970)
theorizes that the four ranks of pipes were tuned according to four separate
modes. Further research on this theory is necessary, but if the four registers
of the Aquincum organ did in fact produce modal scales based on different
pitches, the knowledge will have significant impact upon the understanding of
the later development of modes, scales and keyboards.
Reconstructions
of the hydraulis suggest that it might have had a wind pressure anywhere
between 7·5 cm and 30 cm; also unknown is whether the pipework was always flue
and, if so, whether the diameters were constant. While written sources give no
firm evidence, iconography seems to suggest that: the pipes were usually flue;
their diameter was constant; the tuning (in the more complete examples) was
probably multiple, providing a choice of modes for rather less than an octave;
and multi-rank chests may have provided different timbres with or without
octave and 5th-sounding ranks. But none of these conclusions is reliable. The
Aquincum organ supports the case for flue pipes, contradicts the suggestion
that the diameter was constant, and leaves the tuning and timbre uncertain.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
2. The Byzantine organ.
By
the end of the 5th century the new Roman Empire of the east, with its base at
Constantinople, had achieved a character of its own, intellectually
conservative and favouring a world of abstract thought far removed from the
practical technology of ancient Alexandria and Rome. Although the old Greek
treatises were preserved in Byzantine copies and hence known to the Arabs,
engineering projects like organ making remained undeveloped for a millennium.
But by the 8th century western Europe itself no longer knew such masterpieces
of Roman engineering as the Vitruvian hydraulis. All the sources suggest that
the European 9th- and 10th-century ‘organ revival’ came about because the
instrument was reintroduced from Byzantium.
Despite
some hints in the sources, the organ was certainly not used in the Byzantine
Church itself (and indeed is still not except occasionally in churches in the
USA). But at least two facts seem to be clear: that most references relate to
bellows-organs, and that the instrument continued to be part of the secular,
courtly pomp in the capital city. In the first connection, a 10th-century
Arabic source suggests that three (or two) bellows fed air into a large
reservoir below the pipe-chest; in the second, it was no doubt because of their
use at banquets, chariot races, weddings, processions and the like that organs
were decked out in gold and costly decoration. Both the ‘blue’ and ‘green’
factions at court had an organ, but the instrument otherwise remained a rarity.
At his palace the emperor had both automata (the famous ‘golden tree’ with
moving, whistling birds activated by bellows; fig.24)
and true organs in which at least one emperor (Theophilus, 9th century) took an
interest. Nothing is known of the pipework, sound, compass, precise function or
repertory of the organ in the Great Reception Room, or indeed anywhere else,
though one 9th-century source does refer to ‘60 copper pipes’ in what appears
to have been a large table-organ.
Organs
became objects of visual and aural show, eliciting wonder and respect as
diplomatic gifts or signs of royal power. In 757 a famous diplomatic instrument
was sent to Pepin, King of the Franks, at Compiègne. A monk of St Gallen
(possibly Notker Balbulus) reported that the ‘King of Constantinople’ also sent
an organ to Charlemagne in 812, with bronze pipes, ‘bellows of bull leather’
and three sound effects (rumbling thunder, trembling lyre, tinkling cymbali)
possibly suggesting pleno, flutes and little bells; but the source is
doubtful, the language being somewhat hyperbolic (or possibly psalmodic). In
any case such instruments were not church organs but extravagant gifts, like
the 13th-century organ of 90 pipes sent from one Arab court to the Emperor of
China.
An
event of evident importance in the 9th-century chronicles was the arrival at
Aachen in 826 of Georgius, a Venetian priest who undertook to construct a
hydraulis. According to a poem glorifying Charlemagne's son Louis, Georgius's
organ was a kind of royal or national symbol of power: ‘The organ, not seen in
France before, a subject of pride for the Greeks, the only reason the people of
Constantinople felt themselves your master: even the organ is now represented
in Aachen’. Its intricate technology must have been the justification for such
respect. The Aachen organ was used for occasions of pomp, not for chapel
services; the Utrecht Psalter (compiled in France, perhaps near Reims) depicts,
with little understanding, a hydraulis taking part in an ensemble illustrating
Psalm cxlix (see fig.25); this too has little to do with
church services, being merely symbolic, or perhaps depicting some sort of ‘signalling’
organ.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
3. The organ of the Arabs.
The
high level of Arabic and Islamic culture from the 8th century to the 10th gave
theorists and craftsmen the opportunity to work on bellows-organs; theorists in
particular knew of such ‘instruments’ but seem rarely, if ever, to have seen
one. A famous source, the Epistle to (or from) Muristus, describes two organs,
one of which is a kind of siren or signal-organ; the sources containing
Muristus's writings are also interesting in that two of them (in Beirut and in
the British Library) show how a diagrammatic plan can become, under the
scribe's hand, an unintelligible pattern of abstract design.
Nothing
is known of Muristus, and the graphic similarity of his name in Arabic to
Qatasibiyus (Ctesibius) was pointed out by Farmer (D(i)1931); Muristus appears
to have been a Greek (or Byzantine), and in any case derived his descriptions
of instruments directly from Ctesibius's Commentaries. But neither of
them is a true organ. The first contains a chest of 12 pipes fed with wind from
the lungs of four men blowing through tubes into a regulator; the weight of the
pipes compresses the wind; the pipes themselves appear to be reeds, all of the
same length but of varying diameter and requiring different volumes of wind;
the wind is admitted to each pipe through a valve, presumably one worked by
some kind of key. This seems to be the instrument of ‘formidable power’
referred to in the ‘Letter to Dardanus’ once attributed to St Jerome. The
second or ‘Great’ organ is a signal-organ perhaps not unlike the (smaller) magrepha
and containing a siren pipe or pipes blown at great pressure, used in battle by
the Greeks, according to Muristus, or for similar purposes by other Middle
Eastern peoples. The siren worked on the same principle as the hydraulis, four
pumps or cylindrical bellows providing wind pressurized by water in a cistern.
There
is no evidence that the organ became known again in western Europe through the
cultural activities of the Arab caliphate of Córdoba in Spain. But the
possibility that this might have been the case adds further importance to any
work undertaken on this period in Iberian musical history, for links may
perhaps be discovered between Spanish–Arab instrument making and 9th-century
Benedictine musical life. In the eastern caliphates organs seem to have
developed into mere ingenious automata; but even in that state the Eastern
organ seems not to have survived the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
4. Early church organs.
The
gift organs of the 8th and 9th centuries were Byzantine organs, called
‘organum’ in the chronicles and still perhaps regarded as an ‘engineering
contrivance’ rather than musical instruments. The fanciful clock given to
Charlemagne in 807 by an envoy of the Persian king was Arabic; the Venetian
priest Georgius, sent to Aachen in 826, was possibly trained in Byzantium.
Several Western writers from the 8th century to the 13th knew of the
Greco-Roman organ but in most cases from vague written sources from which even
the more astute authors got the impression that the pipes were made to sound by
water rather than by air – an idea sustained by the Jesuit amateur physicists
of a later century. The well-known picture in the Utrecht Psalter (fig.25) of a hydraulic organ with two players and four
alternating pump blowers is also based on a misunderstanding of the
Mediterranean hydraulis. Many of the early church writers refer to organs in
such hyperbolic or apparently unreal terms that their sources of ‘information’
must have been in most cases literary. It is even possible that such references
to organs with 100 pipes, like that of St Aldhelm, were mistaken allusions to hydra,
the 100-headed monster whose name is the same as a documented abbreviation for
the hydraulis. All ecclesiastical references to organs before the 10th century
are to be treated with caution, and even scepticism.
All
these organs were secular. One of the great unsolved puzzles of music history
is how and why the organ came to be almost exclusively a church instrument in
western Europe from about 900 to about 1200. The early church was subject to
two particular influences against any instrument in church, and especially in
the liturgy: the liturgy's origins in the Jewish synagogue, and Patristic
resistance to anything of profane or luxurious association. By the 9th century,
however, the intellectual and liturgical style of the church had changed. Like
sung organum, the instrument owed a great deal to Benedictine cultural centres,
not only in their literacy and scholarship but also in the opportunities which
their large churches gave to the advancement of music. The monastic revival in
the late 10th century must itself have been a factor in the appearance of
organs, which had become ingenious objects for the use of the clergy, not the
people. The organ was never officially approved or even acknowledged in any known
papal or pontifical document despite the traditional legend that Pope Vitalian
(657–72) introduced it. Nor, for one reason or another, are any of the
references to organs placed or used in church before the 9th century at all
reliable.
Organs,
like tower bells later, were one of the irrelevances complained of by the new
reformed order of the Cistercians, judging by remarks made by St Aelred, abbot
of Rievaulx in 1166; his reference to the sound of the bellows, the tinkling of
bells and the harmony of organ pipes is highly reminiscent of older reports. St
Aelred also referred to the crowd of people watching this display as if in a
theatre, ‘not a place of worship’, which suggests that organs were placed
inside buildings, perhaps for example a large Benedictine church. But all this
does not necessarily indicate that an organ was used during the service, nor
even before or after the service. Perhaps it was rather an object of curiosity,
like a cathedral almanac clock. Other 12th-century sources imply more clearly
that an organ was used in some way during the services, perhaps for signalling
purposes, like bells at the Elevation.
Whether
organs were used liturgically is not clear from the many 9th- and 10th-century
references to them. The notice describing the consecration in 972 of the
Benedictine abbey of Bages, Spain, for example, makes it clear that an organ
played near the entrance, ‘praising and blessing the Lord’; but to surmise more
is conjecture. Much the same could be said for the archiepiscopal coronation at
Cologne Cathedral in 950. Pope John VIII (872–82) wrote of an organ required
‘for the purpose of teaching the science of music’, for which it remained
useful to scribes writing about and teaching musical proportions, for example
at Benedictine centres such as Fleury and St Gallen. The practical function of
organs set up by, or in memory of, great abbots or landowners is unknown;
reference to organs used on feast days (e.g. in the Life of St Oswald, 925–92)
suggests if anything that they were extra-liturgical, a kind of church carnival
object. The Benedictine abbot Gerbert (Archbishop of Reims, 991–5) was said by
William of Malmesbury to have had a hydraulic organ put into the cathedral: an
object of mechanical ingenuity, once again coupled with a clock in the written
account. Gerbert may have learnt the principles of the hydraulic organ from the
Arabs in Córdoba, where he lived for a time, since Benedictine manuscripts of
the period do not suggest any practical familiarity with the writings of Hero or
Vitruvius. Nothing is known of other 10th-century organs, such as that set up
in Halberstadt Cathedral under its Benedictine bishop Hildeward; nor are
contemporary references such as those of Notker Balbulus (d 912) helpful
towards an understanding of the nature and purpose of organs. So many of these
writers were merely indulging in metaphor.
One
detail of the Bages consecration of 972 was that the organ music ‘could be
heard from afar’, which may or may not imply that the organ was outside the
church. But a large number of references, second-hand or glossed though many
must be, suggest that the organ was a loud instrument by standards of the day.
Is it possible to see the famous late 10th-century organ in Winchester
Cathedral as a signal-organ, used on feast days to summon the congregation or
overawe them (perhaps before or after services)? This does not preclude its
having keys and some musical potential; ‘signal-organ’ simply describes its
loud tone. If the Winchester organ was placed near the west or south door
(stone screens were not known until the next century, and at Winchester only
the nave may have been capacious enough) its use could hardly have been
liturgical. Nor is it easy to see how an organ could have been liturgical in a
much partitioned church of the type known to the later Cistercians.
The
Winchester organ was built by about 990, some decades after the Benedictines
were fully established there and later than modern commentators have said.
Details of it appear in a fanciful verse letter written shortly afterwards by
the monk Wulfstan. Much quoted, much translated and much misunderstood, the
poem speaks of 26 bellows and 400 pipes in ten ranks, with the 40 notes
arranged as two sets of 20 keys played by ‘two brethren of concordant spirit’ (see
BicknellH for an up-to-date interpretation). Each key was a perforated
slider pushed in and probably pulled out – hence the need for two or more
players. Clearly some kind of organ did exist; but there are good reasons for
distrusting Wulfstan's account: despite the fanciful references by St Aldhelm
to what appear to be 100- and 1000-pipe organs, there are no other firm details
extant of such large organs, at Winchester or anywhere else; the numbers given
for bellows, blowers (70), pipes, ranks and keys are not plausible, whatever
the diameter of the pipes and however the wind was raised (even the number of
players smacks of literary tradition or at least of the poorly drawn hydraulis
in the Utrecht Psalter); the general style and character of Wulfstan's poem are
those of an impressionable layman not concerned with technical accuracy (for
further details see McKinnon, D(xii)1974).
Three
11th-century sources are rather more practical than many later medieval
manuscripts (see §5 below). De diversis artibus, a large encyclopedia
written in the first half of the century by the German monk Theophilus,
describes techniques used in making church objects – glass blowing, painting,
gilding, metal forging, bell casting and organ making. The sources of his
treatise leave its authenticity uncertain, the last part of it probably being a
later compilation. A second 11th-century treatise is the anonymous Berne Codex,
a manuscript possibly originating at the Benedictine abbey of Fleury; a third
is a note by Aribo on pipe making.
Theophilus's
organ (see fig.1) could be mounted within a recess in an
interior wall, presumably at gallery level, with only its chest and pipes
visible from the church and these indeed covered by a cloth ‘tent’ when not in
use. Later 13th-century screen organs would have been equally well placed, in
some cases better placed, when they came to serve as alternatim instruments
in the liturgy. Many details of Theophilus's organ are unclear, not least its
function in the church. Theophilus first advised his reader to obtain a
treatise on pipe measurement (lectio mensurae), which would presumably
contain a table of concrete values or actual pipe-scales, rather than mere
Pythagorean ratios. The copper for the pipes was first to be beaten very thin,
then shaped around a gently conical mandrel, which suggests that foot and
resonator would be all of one piece, having the shape of a modern Trumpet
resonator; pipes of this shape are in fact depicted in some iconographic
sources (see figs.26 and 27). The
Berne Codex seems to suggest a more familiar type of pipe-foot, and gives
‘almost 4'’ as the longest pipe, but does not indicate the length of the foot
unit. Theophilus's pipes are equal in diameter, which may not be unreasonable
in an organ of less than two octaves. In the 1980s Louis Huivenaar and Jan de
Bruijn constructed conical pipes of the kind described by Theophilus, placing them
on a chest based on Zarlino's 1558 description of a chest from Grado, Venice,
believed to date from the 11th century, having 15 keys, two ranks of pipes, and
spade-shaped keys not unlike those in fig.27. This
experiment suggests that the conical pipes had a strong and complex overtone
content, producing an extraordinary vocal quality and seemingly well suited for
playing a chant melody.
In
his section on forging Theophilus described bellows, and from other sources of
the period it seems that such bellows were large, capacious, and planned to
compensate for leaks between feeder and pipe. The feeders direct wind into a conflatorium
or receiver, shown in some 11th- or 12th-century miniatures such as the Harding
Bible (fig.26) and Cambridge Psalter. In the Berne Codex
the valve preventing the return of wind when the bellows are refilled is placed
in the collector, while Theophilus's valve is in the head of each bellows. The
main duct can be curved or straight (but perhaps not mitred) and is usually
shown as generously proportioned. The keys of the Berne Codex organ closely
resemble Hero's, consisting of a ‘square’ depressed at one end, pushing in a
perforated slider (to which it is attached) at the other, and pulled back by a
horn-spring to which it is tied. By the 13th century, according to a miniature
in the Belvoir Castle Psalter (fig.27), organists were
using their fingers separately (and rather elegantly) to depress the keys,
which in this miniature were broader and more substantial than some
reproductions of it suggest.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
5. Medieval organ theorists.
In
the absence of any known organ remains between the 3rd-century organ of
Aquincum and the (?) late 14th-century positives of Sweden (see §6 below),
historians must turn to the body of ‘medieval organ pipe theory’, readings of
which have led to some misleading ideas about medieval organs. The many sources
have been seen as ‘treatises on organ building’ (Frotscher, D(i), 1968;
Mahrenholz, C1938; Fellerer, D(i)1929) or ‘treatises on pipe measurement’
(Perrot, D(i)1965); but after 1966 researches into the now completely collated
texts (see K.-J. Sachs, C1970–80) have led to a new assessment of their
purposes.
The
texts, in some cases only a few sentences in clerical Latin, fall into three
main categories. The largest group (about 30 texts in 155 sources from the 10th
century onwards) are those concerned with the length of organ pipes calculated
by ratios from an ‘initial’ pipe, itself of no specified length; most of the
length measurements take account of End correction which, in the case of a row of pipes of
the same width and mouth shape, is constant. A smaller group of texts (11, in
11 sources) is concerned with the width or diameter of organ pipes, ignoring
end correction in calculating the length; some of these discuss the
relationship of mouth width, cut-up and foot-hole to the pipe diameter; none
dates from before the 14th century. Neither of these two groups covers the
whole subject, since in fact variable pipe-widths and quasi-Pythagorean
demonstration of end correction are mutually exclusive. The third group of
texts (three only, all 11th-century) deals with technical pipe making. These
texts are Theophilus's De diversis artibus (bk 3, pp.81ff), Cuprum
purissimum (the Berne Codex), and the section ‘Sicut fistulae’ on pipe
making from Aribo's De musica. Some aspects of the organs described in
this last group of sources have received attention in §4 above.
The
‘pipe-length treatises’ rarely offer concrete usable measurements, nor do they
outline any pattern of values in which practical experience may have had a
hand. Instead, the scalings concern proportional values corresponding to the
Pythagorean ratios known from monochord theory. On the one hand, it is
obviously possible to make an organ without determining the acoustical
phenomenon of pipes; on the other, no careful measuring of pipes leads to
usable pitches without proper tuning. Many treatises so resemble the numerous
scaling texts for the monochord and cymbala that the significance of
their pipe-scalings should not be interpreted in isolation; for pipes, strings
and bells might have been cited primarily as examples of Pythagorean ratios
according to which a pipe approximately half as long as another will sound the
octave above, one approximately two-thirds as long the 5th above, and so on.
Comprehensive instruction treatises covering such matters include the works of
Notker Labeo, Aribo, Engelbert of Admont, Hieronymus de Moravia, Walter
Odington and Giorgio Anselmi; an important branch in the tradition was the
widely known Scolica enchiriadis of the late 9th century. In no way were
such sources recipes for making instruments; rather, they outlined the kind of
number theory which theorists since Boethius had applied to music.
Both
Theophilus and the writer of the Berne Codex were dependent on ancient
accounts, namely those of Vitruvius and Hero. Aribo's account probably refers
back to a manuscript tradition around the uncertain figure of Wilhelm of
Hirsau, who seems indeed to have been concerned with actual pipe measurement.
Most of the copies of a text ascribed to him are provided with drawings showing
the scale of the first pipe (not unlike the measure line in Schlick's Spiegel,
1511). But in other writers, end correction, the very factor ‘disturbing’ the
neat theory of Pythagorean ratios, was itself determined proportionally,
calculated as a fraction of the diameter. For such calculation the diameter was
assumed to be constant; hence the frequently repeated conclusion that the
medieval organ builder made a rank of pipes all to the same diameter.
Optimistically interpreted iconography has been seen to support this idea. But
it should be remembered that the general medieval approach to making things
(i.e. before print technology brought craftsmen gradually to depend on visual
models) weighs against the practical significance of written-down treatises.
Only two of the texts cover organ building as such, and they are partly derived
or even (in the case of Theophilus) the result of a compilation. Moreover,
practical details such as the remark in the Berne Codex that pipes follow the
modern diatonic genus (‘si … sit diatonicum genus quo maxime decurrent moderne
cantilene’) do not necessarily indicate an actual organ such as might be used
in liturgical music. The Sélestat manuscript (11th century) and the Berne Codex
describe pipe-chests of seven notes, and the former seems to make it clear that
its three ranks are unison, octave, unison; at the same time, an 11th- or
12th-century miniature, in the Harding Bible, shows a keyboard of C, D, E, F,
G, A, B
, B
, a set of keys showing
one each of the known notes (see fig.26). But it is not
known whether these treatises and miniatures reflect more than certain
literate, second-hand and even non-empirical traditions passed on, perhaps
indirectly, to their scribal ‘authors’.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
6. The church organ, 1100–1450.
Rarely
in music history is conjecture taken more confidently as fact than in this
area. Despite bold and apparently plausible modern assertions that playing in
4ths and 5ths was known by 9th-century clerical organists, that alternatim
chants were known in the Mass during the 11th century, or that large organs
played the puncti organici (and even the quicker upper parts or voces
organales) in the Île-de-France organa of the 13th century, there is no
irrefutable evidence to support them. It may be reasonable to assume that in
the larger Benedictine abbeys (St Gallen, Metz, Benevento) polyphony, organ
playing and troping of plainchant were all linked; but it is not known during
which century the more cosmopolitan of the abbeys may have begun to use the
organ more integrally during Mass than they were ever to use their other expensive
mechanical equipment such as bells or clocks. Nor are technical matters
concerning the structure of organs any more certain. There is no evidence that,
between the 10th and the 12th centuries, octave- and 5th-speaking ranks were
used in abundance, or that reed and stopped pipes were also known, as more than
one modern writer has claimed. Much later still, basic assumptions are
unreliable. Iconography by no means establishes that organists had to use all
of each hand to thump the keys, at this or any point in organ history. Nor are
archives less equivocal; church accounts do not prove that the ‘little organs’
sometimes mentioned from about 1390 onwards were second manuals of large organs
or that, if so, such manuals were placed together or had the same pitch. The
use of multiple organs in large churches is well documented from this period
onward, and the ‘little organs’ usually prove to be separate instruments from
the ‘great organs’. Possibly the second keyboard, up until at least the time of
the Innsbruck Hofkirche organ (1550; the oldest extant two-manual organ),
should be seen rather as an extension to the compass of the first. Organ
research from about 1960 has been directed towards a circumspect interpretation
of the evidence, and a new period of re-examination concerning the evolution of
the organ is inevitable.
Certainly
the period 1100–1450 was one of great activity. During the 11th century more
organs are known to have been in monastic churches throughout western Europe;
they were played at ceremonies (probably outside the liturgy) and succumbed to
the fires that frequently swept medieval cathedrals (Canterbury 1114, Freising
1158, Merseburg 1199) – which suggests perhaps that they were fixed in place.
Some literary sources imply that the organ was played during Mass, for instance
the Roman de brut (c1155, Normandy):
Quant
li messe fu commensie …
Mout oissiés orgues sonner
Et clercs chanter et orguener
–
but such references are vague and merely image-evoking; poets’ sources were
usually other poets. More authentic sources of the 9th and 10th centuries
suggest, however, that sequences as well as the Te Deum were the most
open to polyphonic vocal treatment, just as later they were the movements most
closely associated with the organ. A small portative and a psaltery are shown
in a 12th-century miniature but no ecclesiastical function is implied, any more
than for the portatives illustrating psalms in earlier psalters (e.g. the small
organs hanging on willow trees at Psalm cxxxvii in the Stuttgart Psalter, 10th
century). But by the 13th century all instruments other than the organ were
excluded from various churches in Spain, Italy and France. The phrase ‘great
organs’ is found in church documents (e.g. Erfurt Peterskirche, 1291), and by
1296 one French bishop referred to the organ sounding five times in connection
with the Sanctus – perhaps as a signal rather than for music as such. There is
no evidence that it played the tenor in Sanctus movements or in any motet
following at that point during Mass. But by the end of the 13th century secular
cathedrals from Exeter to Prague, Barcelona to Lübeck, were as likely to have
organs as the larger abbey churches. Whether erected on screens (as in England)
or hanging on an upper wall of nave or quire, the organs were usually located
near the cantores, i.e. no longer near the west or south entrances nor
specifically near the main altar. It is not known, however, when large organs
were fixed in Theophilus's manner, and illustrations for psalm texts usually
show much smaller organs in ensemble. The phenomenon of the smaller fixed organ
attached to, associated with, and in some cases paid for by specially
bequeathed chapels belongs to the 15th rather than the 13th century.
The
large organ seems to have been an exclusively ecclesiastical instrument from
the 9th-century Western Church to 17th-century Italy. Probably by the late 13th
century the cathedral or abbey organ was occasionally used in alternatim
music with the cantores, though presumably not with the congregation itself.
Jovannes de Florentia referred (c1350) to performance ‘partim organo
partim modulatis per concentum vocibus’. Early 15th-century keyboard repertory
extant in the Faenza Codex (I-FZc 117; see Sources
of keyboard music to 1660, §2(i)) complements such explicit references as the
mid-15th-century Castilian rubric ‘the organs played one verse and the clerics
sang the other’. 14th-century documents usually suggest that whatever the organ
played, it did so on traditional church or local feast days, for example at
Halberstadt Cathedral on Christmas Day, for Easter Week, Sunday after Easter, Kreuzerfindung,
Reliques of St Stephen, Ascension, St Peter and St Paul, Dispersal of the
Apostles, Mary Magdalene, St Stephen and St Sixtus, Assumption, Patron,
Nativity of Mary, St Michael, St Gall, All Saints and 12 other feast days
including Trinity and Annunciation. For three centuries organs were used only
on feast days. But by the end of the 13th century some churches had decreed
against other instruments (Milan, 1287); by the 14th, alternatim
performances took place, especially in the Office; by the early 15th, many
areas, such as the Upper Rhineland, north-central Germany, some English and
Italian cities, and the stretch from Rouen to Utrecht, had organs in most of
their larger churches, and the future of the instrument was completely assured.
It
is impossible to trace this history step by step, despite a certain amount of
archival, musical and iconographical evidence. But certain general points can
be made about the 14th and early 15th centuries. Organs became known in
cathedrals less as an exception and more as a norm; by 1425 the large positive
(with front pipes arranged from left to right) was usually distinct from the
fixed church organ (with front pipes in mitre form with a set of larger pipes
to each side, thus requiring a rollerboard). All the evidence suggests that
only open metal flue pipes were known, though some commentators have seen such
references as ‘plom … per las horguenas’ (church of the Cordeliers, Avignon,
1372) as evidence that lead pipes were used for distinctive tone-colour; lead
was in fact the most common pipe metal in all countries during this period.
Larger organs in certain areas (Normandy and later the Netherlands, possibly
England also) occasionally had Trompes during the period 1390–1450 (i.e. a set
of ten or so large open metal Bourdon pipes, possibly played by a separate
manual or pedal keyboard and placed to one side, or both sides, of the main
organ). Presumably they also had a Blockwerk, although apart from the number of pipes
in a few famous examples (e.g. 2000 at Amiens in 1429) little is known in this
regard before 1450. Presumably the pitch of their compass, whether from
(apparent) B or any other note, was roughly equivalent to men's voices,
the total compass perhaps divided up and distributed over more than one
keyboard. However, so many significant unknowns are raised by such summaries
that describing the church organ before its more clearly defined types of 1450
is mostly a matter of citing facts about individual instruments.
The
organ at Sion, Switzerland, is usually dated about 1380 (although it may in
fact be later) and has been much rebuilt. Despite opinions expressed on its
tone, and although some of the original pipework seems to be incorporated in
the present organ, nothing is certain of its original sound, disposition,
compass, pitch, voicing, pressure, bellows, position, purpose or provenance.
Nevertheless, its case (fig.28) shows interesting
elements: it has the typical shape for such instruments, with the central mitre
lines (like Arnaut de Zwolle's organ at Salins); the castellated ‘towers’ to
left and right overhang the sides; and the wings (painted and perhaps made
about 1434–7) enclose the pipes completely. At Bartenstein in East Prussia
parts of an organ dated about 1395 existed before World War II. The organ had a
large chest for 27 keys (?FGA–a') with three divisions for a large
chorus of nine (bass) to 21 (treble) ranks, case-pipes of 16', and Principals
8' + 4'. An ingenious reconstruction of the chest was sketched by Karl Bormann
(D(xv)1966) but little is certain, particularly the stop mechanism whereby wind
was admitted to chorus and principals at will; perhaps the device was made not
in 1395 but one or two centuries later. The organ at Norrlanda (c1380),
now pipeless and in the State Historical Museum, Stockholm, is a large positive
with a putative Blockwerk of three to six ranks. A set of 12 rollers
conveys not only both pedal and manual key-travel to the larger pipes held in
small side towers but also the action of certain pairs of keys (C/c, D/d, F/f, G/g) to a single pallet. This is so sophisticated an
arrangement, not least in its resulting chromatic keyboard of nearly two
octaves (C–a or c–a'; fig.29; for a
close-up view of the keyboard, see Keyboard, fig.1), that doubts too must arise
about the age of the organ – which in any case appears to have case-work
constructed out of panels from some older choir stalls. An organ of
surprisingly similar appearance is depicted in the mid-15th-century stained
glass of the Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary's, Warwick.
Extant
12th- and 13th-century church accounts merely record the presence of an organ;
about many areas of Europe, curiously little is known. Only during the 15th
century were the great Gothic churches of some areas constructed (e.g. in the
Netherlands), but many were immediately provided with an organ as part of the
regular furniture. The first real details of church organs occur in such
documents as builders' contracts from about 1390 onwards, when for reference
purposes the anonymous scribe would distinguish the ‘opus maius’ from the
‘parvum opus organum’ (Utrecht Cathedral, suggesting either two separate organs
or an organ with a Rückpositiv) or the ‘principaulx’ pipes from the
Bourdons (Rouen Cathedral, suggesting Trompes and other major Fourniture
ranks), or even by 1420 ‘cinch tirants’, suggesting five separate stops in a
large positive (Aragonese royal chapel). Otherwise it was enough for an organ
to be entrusted to the craftsmen concerned, who had merely to see that it was
‘decent, good and to the honour’ of the church (S Giovanni Evangelista, Venice,
1430).
Henri
Arnaut de Zwolle, writing in the 1440s, described several organs he knew,
including those at Salins (c1400, Blockwerk of 6–15 ranks) and
Dijon (c1350, 8–24 ranks); an account of his treatise is given below
(§V, 1). The most famous 14th-century organ is that of Halberstadt Cathedral (c1361,
rebuilt 1495), described in some detail by Praetorius (Syntagma musicum,
2/1619). The four keyboards were as follows: I, called Diskant by
Praetorius, playing the plenum (case pipes + Hintersatz Mixture; see
Full organ), B–c' (14 keys); II, also called Diskant, playing
case pipes (Prinzipal) only, same compass; III, called Bassklavier, B–a
(12 keys, long protruding levers perhaps worked by the knee, playing the 12
large bass pipes); IV, pedal keyboard, same compass as III, used with (perhaps
pulling down the keys of) the top manual. The largest rank of pipes was at the
equivalent of 32' pitch, the total number about 1192, from 16 ranks at pedal B
to 56 at top manual a'.
Praetorius
by no means understood the historical nature of such old organs, nor is it
clear from his report what in the Halberstadt organ dated from 1361, what from
1495. But it is probable from his account that the Blockwerk had
multiple ranks of octaves and 5ths such that the manual disposition was
approximately as shown in Table 1. From the details
given, the pitch level seems to have been a' = c505. Praetorius also
described the sound of this Blockwerk (see Blockwerk). 20 bellows supplied the
wind, all presumably needing to be operated for the plenum, though his
drawing shows only two operators (see Keyboard, fig.2).
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Praetorius
gave other details about organs he described as old, and his suggestions could
be the starting-point for organ historians. For example, he guessed that
semitones appeared in keyboard compass from about 1200 and pedals from about
1220, that by 1450 only open pipes were known, but that spring-chests had been
built by about 1400 and separate stops by about 1250. The first date is late by
two centuries if it is a question of B only, perhaps a reasonable guess if intended to refer
to the first ficta semitone (i.e. other than B), but early by at least one century if all
five semitones were meant. The date for pedals must be about a century too
early. The date for open pipes is probably correct, and that for spring-chests
could be correct but is probably a little early. The date for separate stops
seems early by at least two centuries if it refers to a full-size church Orgelwerk.
Other details given by Praetorius are more certain, for example that some keys
were as broad as about 60 mm, that some keyboards had a compass of B–f'
or c–a' (diatonic only) and the curious-seeming statement that some early
pedals played only the bass notes. Obvious though the last may appear, the
large Bourdons or ‘teneurs’ (Notre Dame, Rouen, 1382) may in fact often have
been operated by a keyboard played by the hands or even by the knees. The term
‘teneur’ is evocative, but what it signifies is uncertain; perhaps the keys
played the long notes of a vocal composition or an Intavolierung;
perhaps ‘teneurs’ meant merely large pipes as distinct from small (‘menus’ at
Rouen, 1382, ‘Diskant’ in Praetorius). Certainly the playing of a cantus firmus
en taille on the pedals is a later speciality of the 16th century. But
whatever ‘teneurs’ was meant to imply, builders of the period knew well how to
fashion pipes of various sizes and scale, according to Praetorius.
At
the end of the 14th century, then, a large organ within the area
Rouen–Utrecht–Magdeburg–Orvieto might be presumed to have had a Blockwerk
of anything up to 80 or more ranks with open cylindrical pipes of metal, played
by a broad-keyed manual of 16 to 22 notes, possibly with a further keyboard
playing Trompes with or without their own chorus mixture, and exceptionally
with a second smaller organ in some way connected with the first. Smaller but
independent organs may have had, by custom, a longer compass, smaller keys, and
a Blockwerk of fewer ranks. Not enough is yet known for generalizations
to be made about the organ of about 1390 outside the region specified above.
Organ, §IV: The
classical and medieval organ
7. The 15th-century positive and portative.
Although
the Positive and the Portative each form virtually separate subjects,
they offer a useful gloss on organ history at this point because each
demonstrates a striking uniformity unknown to the larger fixed organ, and each
demonstrates the limitations of iconographical evidence. Portatives were small
portable organs blown by bellows (often single but sometimes a pair) operated by
one of the player's hands (usually the left), and played by his other hand on a
keyboard of up to two octaves, composed often of touch-buttons; the instrument
would have one rank of pipes arranged in one or two (very rarely three)
apparent rows. Such are the highly detailed and prettily finished portatives
depicted by such painters as Memling (three examples, that at Bruges being the
clearest: for illustration see Portative) and the Master of St
Barthélemy (two examples). Positives were blown by a pair of larger bellows
operated by a second person (fig.31), and were played by both of the
organist’s hands on a more or less chromatic keyboard exceeding two octaves
(usually beginning at B) and composed of short finger-keys; two rows of
pipes would form one complete rank, often with Bourdon (or drone) pipes pitched
in the bass, perhaps an octave below. Some portatives also had (shorter)
Bourdon pipes. In all known cases the pipes were open and of metal; the scaling
is progressive and the diameters diminish, at least in the better depictions;
cut-ups often appear low and the scale narrow; unless chords of more than two
notes were played, the wind supplied by the hand bellows must have been quite
adequate, though presumably low in pressure.
That
paintings always leave problems of interpretation may be demonstrated by one of
the best-known of all organ paintings, the Van Eyck altarpiece at Ghent (1432).
Despite the beauty and apparent precision of the picture, the pertinent section
of which is reproduced in fig.32, there are several
puzzles. The front pipes, though painted well, are not placed naturally; the
tips of the feet rest right at the front of the chest top-board, while each
pipe corpus, whatever its diameter, passes behind the supporting brace, itself,
however, of constant thickness. The feet of the inner row of pipes are placed
almost without depth of perspective, all exactly in the middle of those of the
first row – despite the latter's perspective. Unless the keyboard ran no higher
than appears (blocked by the player's hand and arm) the two rows of pipes must
produce only one rank; yet if the keyboard continued up symmetrically (as far
to the right as the bass goes to the left) the organ would have at least 35
keys, implying a unique pipework of two non-chromatic ranks. The line made by
the pipe-tops corresponds neither quite to a diatonic nor to a chromatic
tuning, and the pipes in the bass seem unnaturally narrow in scale. Apart from
these problems of depiction, the painting gives no information at all on
certain points, such as the purpose of the latch-key on the lower left; if it
is for a Tremulant, one might expect other evidence of the period for such
stops; if it is a stop mechanism operating a valve to the rear chest, one must
assume that there are other pipes not seen but making up the second rank; if it
is a key to operate Bourdon or drone pipes, the pipes should be in evidence.
Such questions can be answered plausibly enough, but only by conjecture, for
comparisons with other instruments are too distant to be useful.
Organ
V. The organ, 1450–1800
While
much research remains to be done for the beginning of this period, especially
on developments in German organs of the area Mainz–Nuremberg–Innsbruck–Basle, a
provisional historical sketch can be derived from Henri Arnaut’s treatise and
from certain documents relating to church contracts concerning organs of about
1450. From the 17th century onwards much more complete documentation is
available.
1. The treatise of
Henri Arnaut de Zwolle.
2. Developments,
1450–1500.
3. Arnolt Schlick’s
‘Spiegel der Orgelmacher’.
4. The new potential
of the 16th century.
5. Structural
developments c1600.
6. The Werkprinzip
organ.
7. The French
classical organ.
8. The English organ.
9. The Baroque organ
in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.
10. The 18th-century
Italian organ.
11. The organ of J.S.
Bach.
12. Splendours of
Europe, 1650–1800.
13. Organs in the Americas.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
1. The treatise of Henri Arnaut de Zwolle.
Although
concerned primarily with small organs, Arnaut’s treatise (F-Pn lat.7295;
ed. and facs. in Le Cerf and Labande, B1932) throws much light on the potential
which organs were seen to have by 1450. The treatise was written in Dijon
between 1436 and 1454, partly by Arnaut, a Dutch polymath at the Burgundian
court of Philip the Good, and partly by two other authors or scribes. It
reflects a lively cultural exchange between Burgundy, Paris and the Low
Countries. Arnaut’s remarks are more practical than those of any treatise since
the 11th century. His description of an organ pipe is empirical and systematic;
details suggest a scale some ten semitones narrower than Normalmensur at
bass B but some seven semitones wider than Normalmensur at a
hypothetical treble b''. The mouth width is about a quarter of the
circumference (2/7 for bigger-toned pipes), the cut-up a quarter of the mouth
width; the foot-hole diameter of a quarter of the pipe width was large, though
easily reducible. From the measurements it is unclear whether Arnaut was
working from two pitches of a' = c395 and a' = c435
or from a mean tonus cori of a' = c415. Two portative or
positive chests (‘ciste portivorum’) are drawn and described. In one, a single
rank of pipes for the compass b–g'''a''' is arranged ‘ad modum mitre
episcopalis’ (i.e. like a bishop's mitre, tallest pipes in the middle); in the
other, a rank for the compass b–f''' is arranged in the chromatic
manner, tallest to left, shortest to right (‘ciste communis’ or ‘the usual
chest’). Arnaut also drew the front of a standard larger organ of the Sion
type, probably the instrument at Salins (Salin, formerly in Burgundy), whose 4'
Blockwerk he later specified as B (6 ranks)–f'' (21
ranks).
On
f.127 of Arnaut’s manuscript occurs the first incontrovertible reference in
organ building to reed stops. On a page of scarcely 20 words (and ten figures)
apropos the ‘scales … of the pipes in the church of the Dei custodientes’
occurs the phrase ‘l’anche de F’, which apparently refers to the reed and block
of a reed pipe. Arnaut seems to be saying that a rank of such pipes from B
to b' needs eight different sizes of block but gives no other details.
Of
the organ of about 1350 in Notre Dame, Dijon, Arnaut noted that the pipes (B–a'')
are already old and corroded; the pipe mouths were generally about half an
octave too narrow, in his opinion. The Fourniture is mentioned, apparently the
only separable part of the plenum. The total number of pipes in the
organ was 768; the leather bellows (?c1350, ?c1440) had three
folds and measured c160 cm by c70 cm. Arnaut also gave in tabular
form the disposition of four different Blockwerke, one of F (8 ranks)–e'''
(21 ranks), two of B'–f'' (6 to 21 and 6 to 15 ranks respectively) and
one of B'(10 ranks)–a'b' (26 ranks). The first has three
categories (Principal, Cymbale, Fourniture), suggesting ‘stops’ made to play
separately by two manuals or perhaps by some mechanical device (possibly a
divided chest operated by a Sperrventil). The Principal 8' has four
ranks at the top and the Fourniture 14 (making
8.8.8.51/3.51/3.4.4.4.4.4.4.4.4.4); the Cymbale is nothing less than a
three-rank Terzzimbel, indeed the first documented mixture containing a
Tierce rank. The Cymbale repeats (i.e. breaks back to lower pitches), 29.31.33
at B, 8.10.15 at e'''.
One
of the other three organs was apparently that at Salins, which had a
long-compass 4' Blockwerk of:Even more important, perhaps, is that
Arnaut’s Fourniture is not an accumulative Blockwerk but a Mixture that
breaks back to lower pitches in the upper octaves.
Arnaut
referred also to the 12 ‘fistula[e] tenoris’ at St Cyr (probably Nevers
Cathedral), i.e. 12 Trompes or bass pipes, half as long again as the lowest
ranks of the chorus. Unlike the other Principal pipes, these pipes had no
accompanying Fourniture pipes of their own, and were thus presumably played
from a separate keyboard and chests. At the church of the Cordeliers (?Dijon),
the ten ‘subdupla tenoris’ pipes had a separate keyboard which could couple
with that of the chorus, thus affording three effects: the usual chorus, the
chorus + tenor or Bourdon pipes, or tenor pipes played by the
left hand while the right hand played the chorus or discantus. It is
unclear what Arnaut meant by ‘double Principals’ (‘duplicia principalia’); did
this mean that only the 8' stop was doubled (two open ranks, or one open and
one stopped rank), or that all ranks of the principal chorus were doubled? The
reference to ‘double principals’ in the 1519 contract at All Hallows,
Barking-by-the-Tower, London, is similarly obscure, although the recent
discovery of two early 16th-century English soundboard fragments (analysed in BicknellH),
strongly suggests the latter. If this is so, then ‘Principal’ in this context
simply meant chorus or plenum – a hold-over from the earlier period when
it referred to the Blockwerk (as at St Sebaldus, Nuremberg) – but with
the exception of the ‘bassys or diapasons’ (corresponding to Arnaut's tenor,
or the Flemish Trompes). The ‘simplicia principalia’ of the Dijon court chapel
organ was described by Arnaut as ‘in duo divisa’, which may mean either one
halved rank (with treble and bass stops) or the usual paired Principals
separated off, perhaps by a slider. Two quints and an octave gave the organ a
total of five registers, possibly with five push–pull slider-ends.
Further
light is thrown on Chair organs (‘tergali positivo’). Arnaut described one with
195 pipes, FG–f'' at 4' pitch and a four- to seven-rank Blockwerk
of octave ranks only. The front pipes were of tin, the others of lead; the
measurements of neither the mouths nor the foot-holes were systematic or
regular in the particular Chair organ Arnaut was referring to, and he was
puzzled as to why it nevertheless sounded well.
Though
never completed, and although it appears to be more indebted to earlier
writings than was previously thought, Arnaut’s draft treatise stands as
something unique in organ building, not least in its description of certain Blockwerk
or plein jeu choruses. During the whole of the next century no source
was to describe in such detail how an organ builder could plan his chorus.
Contemporary documents, like modern histories, prefer to dwell on the new
colour stops and other, essentially secondary, effects.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
2. Developments, 1450–1500.
Not
only do Arnaut’s remarks give a partial picture of the organ at this period,
but contracts and other documents from other areas of Europe give corroborating
details. Thus the organ at St Sebaldus, Nuremberg (by Heinrich Traxdorf,
1440–41), had Principal, Fourniture and Cymbale, perhaps of the type described
by Arnaut. Such a division of the chorus became a kind of norm, not only at
Nuremberg but also at the Florinskirche, Coblenz (1467), St Georges, Haguenau
(1491), Weimar (1492), St Peter, Basle (1496), Leuven (1522) and in organs
farther west. Yet it seems that the instrument of 1474–83 in S Petronio,
Bologna, already had a large-scale, 50-note complement of nine single-rank
stops (smaller in all respects than the organ as it now is), thus presenting a
quite different tradition of organ building in the south.
Clearly
the crucial questions are: how were stops separated, giving the organ different
colours or effects, and why did builders of some areas give an organ several
manuals while those in others concentrated on one manual? As to the second
question, it can only be conjectured that southern builders learnt earlier than
northern how to obtain musical variety from an organ with one keyboard,
separate ranks and a long compass (e.g. the 53 or 54 notes at S Martino, Lucca,
in 1473); and that northern builders, requiring only a few different effects
(Diapasons alone, or the plenum), found that two or even three shorter
or unequal keyboards with one or two registrations each were more useful and
probably more powerful. Division of an organ into several chests was practical
from the point of view of wind supply. As to the first question of how stops
were separated, the situation is clearer. Several documents from the mid-15th
century onwards refer to the varieties of sound achieved by a particular organ:
Arnaut used ‘registra’; references in church archives include ‘registros’
(Treviso, 1436), ‘tirans’ (Aragon, 1420; Barcelona, 1480), ‘division de veus’
(Perpignan, 1516), ‘dreen gelueden’ (‘three sounds’, Grote Kerk, Zwolle, 1447)
and even ‘a la moderna cum registri sei’ (‘with six stops in the modern
manner’, Catarro, 1488). How were these varieties achieved? ‘Registers’ and
‘tirants’ (even five ‘registres sive tirans’ at Avignon in 1539) certainly
suggest slider-chests (see fig.3b). After all, the Roman organ of Aquincum
had latitudinal sliders, and its keys admitted wind to the pipes by these
means. Longitudinal sliders running the whole length of a rank of pipes were
different only in application, not in principle. However, when and where
stop-sliders were first made is not known; no doubt they first appeared on
small organs. A further system, the spring-chest (seefig.3c), was reintroduced in the Netherlands
about 1520 to give greater reliability in larger organs, but was already known
in Italy during the previous century: Orvieto Cathedral is said to have had an
organ in 1480 with two spring-stops and two slider-stops. The most common
15th-century arrangement, particularly in the area from Rouen to Zwolle, was
the ‘double chest’, useful especially for Chair organs. In such a chest the
channels were divided into two parts, front (case pipes) and back (Mixture or
Hintersatz), each with its wind box, the back one of which was provided with a
shut-off valve allowing the Mixture to be taken off. Evidence for such chests
is fairly clear from several Dutch contracts of the period (Zwolle, 1447; The
Hague, 1487).
Much
less clear is the origin of stopped pipes, although it is thought that the
‘double Principal’ of late 15th-century organs could imply an inner rank of
stopped pipes sounding with the open case pipes, as well as multiple doubled
ranks. ‘Coppel’ was a name used at first probably for case pipes (Limburg,
1471), later for stopped unison pipes (Bienne, Switzerland, 1517). Much the
same may be said about the term ‘Flotwerck’ (Bassevelde, 1481). The ‘lead
pipes’ for inner ranks referred to in contracts of many languages and areas
have also often been assumed to be stopped pipes, but both documentary evidence
and surviving Gothic pipework suggest that in many organs all interior
pipework, including open pipes, was of lead. The Quintadena is a stopped metal rank
sometimes referred to as Schallpfeifen early in the next century; it is
possible that the emphasis on new organ colours at this later period was
responsible for stopped pipes in general. Thus the stopped wooden Holpyp is
authenticated from about 1500, but hardly before. Schlick (B1511) was still
ambiguous about stopped pipes; even Flute stops at that period (e.g. Bordeaux,
1510) were open, as indeed they remained in Italian organs of a later century.
To
sum up, in 1500 the average organ in northern Italy or southern France could be
expected to have a chorus of ten or so separate stops, probably achieved with a
spring-chest if the organ was somewhat large, with sliders if smaller; the
upper ranks may have been duplicated here and there. Spain, at least in cities
influenced by Flemish or ‘German’ builders (Barcelona, Valencia), followed more
the transalpine organ. The bigger instruments of the Netherlands and Rhineland
had two or even three manual departments, in most cases each with its own
keyboard but all at the same (or octave) pitch. The English organ, judging by
the All Hallows document of 1519–20 (see §8 below), was of the smaller Flemish
kind: although it is possible that in secular or aristocratic circles Italian
organs were known, all evidence points to the major influence in England being
Flemish.
Some
examples of organ schemes at their best before the turn of the century are
shown inTables 1, 2 and3. That such schemes were distinctly regional can be seen in a
1000-pipe instrument built by the German Bernhard Dilmano at Milan in 1464–6,
probably a large northern organ of Principal, Mixture, Zimbel etc. The
instrument was updated in 1487 but still had only eight separate stop-levers in
1508. However, it is not known how many ranks of a native Italian organ of 1475
would be separate (as in later Italian organs). As to the sound of such organs,
only conjectures can be made, even when much of the original material still
exists, as it does at S Petronio, Bologna (conservatively restored in 1982).
Although some contracts make it clear that specific sweetness or strength of
tone was often required, much – perhaps too much – can be read into the use of
words like ‘lieblich’ or ‘süss’ in early documentation.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
3. Arnolt Schlick’s ‘Spiegel der Orgelmacher’.
Against
the background of the special effects demanded of new organs and promised to
their clients by the builders, for example the Schwiegel, Waldhorn, Quintadena
(Scheelpipen), Trumpets, Shawms, Zinks, Rauschpipe, Drums and ‘other
unusual stops’ promised by Hans Suys at Antwerp Cathedral in 1509, Arnolt
Schlick wrote a splendid, forthright little book on organs, publishing it in
1511 under imperial auspices and indeed apparently intending it as a kind of
standard code of practice for organ builders in Maximilian’s empire. Schlick
lived in the central Palatinate court town of Heidelberg, and no doubt his
influence was wide. The organ described in his Spiegel contained about
15 stops, ‘not too many of the same type’, as shown inTable 4. Schlick said that, in addition, the Hauptwerk might
contain a Krummhorn and the pedal a Klein Octaff and Zymmel, but that the
latter two do not belong there. All stops should be playable separately so that
the pedal if required could take the cantus firmus. The Hintersatz should not
contain the very low ranks of the ‘large Mixture’ (by which he may have meant
the old Blockwerk), nor the ‘low-pitched 3rds and 5ths’ sometimes met
with. There is little point in making separate 51/3' stops, while the addition
of various little chests such as Brustwerke merely increases cost and
produces ‘much sauce for little fish’. Reeds are not unreliable if properly
made, and Schlick thought a competent organist could soon learn how to make the
necessary minor adjustments to them. Stop-levers (preferably not push-pull)
should be conveniently placed, not too long or too heavy to work from the
keyboards.
Thus
Schlick knew an organ of Principals, Mixtures, flutes and reeds; two manuals
and pedal; probably a manual coupler; different open metal pipe scalings
(circumference to length 1:5, 1:6 or 1:7); and conical metal pipes, but not,
evidently, stopped pipes or wooden ones. He recommended a compass of F–a''
and a pitch level about a tone lower than that of today (his a' = c374–92,
depending on the diameter of the pipe). The pipe metal was pure (or mostly
pure) tin and the Principal was doubled (two open metal ranks of different
scale). While recommending an irregular tuning with an A that could also serve (if ornamented) as G in a cadence on A,
Schlick recognized that some preferred a regular mean-tone temperament (with
major 3rds slightly larger than pure), but saw little use for split sharps as a
means of dealing with problems of temperament.
Some
of Schlick’s general attitudes to organs are informative. He felt that eight or
nine stops in the Great were all that were needed; they should be clearly
different in tone; and the second manual was to be regarded as a kind of small
positive, in no sense a match for the Great. The organ was used in connection
with the liturgy, he observed; the priest at the altar was given notes for most
mass movements from the Gloria onwards. And since the organ had a particular
part to play in such music as sequences, it was placed near the choir for
convenience. The pedal may have been transmitted from the Great; certainly it
should have stops of the same pitch as the main manual. The pedal must have
separable stops like the Great; it should not be made up only of suboctave
stops, as it then inverts the harmony. (This must presumably be a double
reference to organs with extra large pedal pipes always sounded by the pedal
keyboard, and to the practice, then probably rather new, of using the pedals to
play inner tenor or cantus firmus lines.) Reed stops can be made well (some are
mentioned that sounded new though nine years old). As to Mixtures, neither
those consisting of 5ths and octaves nor those of 3rds and 5ths should contain
low-pitched ranks. The full chorus should be able to play chords (that is, the
5th ranks in Mixtures should not produce too dissonant a sound when the 5th C–G
or the 3rd C–E is played); at the same time, the precise number of ranks in a
Mixture depends on the size of the church. Manual keys should not be too long
or short, too wide or narrow, nor spaced too far or too near; the given measurements
suggest relatively stubby keys with an octave span about the same as on modern
instruments.
Some
of Schlick’s own music in Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang (1512) is
contrapuntal in a way that closely anticipates later organ chorales which use
the theme imitatively in three or four parts; in such pieces the pedal took the
tune when it appeared in the bass. Schlick also knew pedal playing in two,
three and even four parts, as well as pedal runs; for none of these functions
would the old Trompes have been useful. The inner-voice cantus firmus
technique, however, apparently requiring pedals for music from the Buxheim
Organbook onwards, should not necessarily be taken at face value: such organ
‘scores’ must often have been open to various interpretations or playing
methods, and what appear to be third-staff pedal parts in the Buxheim Organbook
may (at least in some instances) simply be an easy way of avoiding
part-crossing problems.
The
largest chapters of the Spiegel are concerned with tuning (see Temperaments,
§3), the
making of chests, and the bellows. Schlick’s advice is always very practical;
for example, the wind must be generous (presumably for homophonic textures on
full organ), the organ constantly played (even during Advent and Lent), and
only the best and most experienced builders trusted. The little book thus
surveys the whole field of organ activity – building, playing, composing – and
even the long chapters on chests and tuning are full of good, pithy advice. For
its size and single purpose, the Spiegel has never been bettered.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
4. The new potential of the 16th century.
Soon
after 1500 organs could produce a greater variety of colour and tonal effects
than ever before because they had separate stops or several keyboards, or both.
Many new stops (above all flutes and reeds) were invented, and one or two
extant documents of the period indicate how they were used. About 1510 in both
the Rhineland (Worms) and southern France (Bordeaux), such documents contained
advice (perhaps from the builder) about registration. Plena were
mentioned, of course, but more interesting in view of Baroque registration were
the two- or three-stop combinations; the list inTable 5 can be inferred from the instruction pour le jeu d’orgue
appended to the contract for an organ built by Loys Gaudet for St Michel,
Bordeaux. This organ was a southern-style instrument of nine separate
single-rank stops, and within a small spectrum such ranks would yield many
combinations. More instructive still are the German registrations (St Andreas,
Worms; Table 6), since they concern an organ with pedal
and multi-rank stops. Schlick too wanted stops drawn in different combinations,
and registrations changed.
Particularly
important in the documents concerning such new organs as that of Daniel Van der
Distelen in Antwerp Cathedral (1505) was the implied distribution of sounds
into distinct groups: principals, flutes, reeds and mixtures. From then on,
such families were to be paramount. Single-rank mutations, whether scaled as
principals or flutes, belonged more to southern organs at that period; but at
Antwerp there were at least four reeds, all for specific colour imitations
(Cornett, Bagpipe-Regal, Trumpet and Krummhorn/Dulzian). Such imitations became
so important during the 16th century that both reed pipes and combinations of
flue stops were used to give the desired effects; often it is not clear from a
document which of the two a certain Zink, Cornet, Nachthorn or Rauschpipe was.
Trumpets and Krummhorns, however, were always imitated by reed stops. It is
also unclear from the documents of about 1510 whether the many kinds of flute
pipes mentioned were open or stopped. In most cases it could well be that they
were open and that stopped pipes were reserved for special colour stops like
the Quintadena or perhaps for the second ranks backing the Open Diapasons of
the case front. In 1518 Sager promised in his contract with St Mary Magdalene,
Basle, that ‘the stopped pipes shall be bold and sweet [tapferer und liblich]
so that they are not too puerile [nit zu kindlich] but audible
throughout the church’.
During
the period from 1500 to 1550 Flemish, north German, north French and Spanish
organs had much in common. The Netherlanders in particular developed a mature
organ of archaic features, described in Vente’s Die Brabanter Orgel
(D(xxi)1958). In 1510, however, the organ of the Upper Rhineland may have been
the most advanced of Europe, having (in addition to principal and mixture
stops) wide flutes, narrow stopped pipes, several reeds and smaller Brustwerk
chests as at Bozen (1495). As so often, very little real connection between
this type of organ and the music supposedly written for it can be demonstrated;
it is even difficult to understand the relation between Schlick’s own music and
the organ he prescribed. The connections seen by many modern writers between a
south German organ of about 1520 and the group of south German tablature
sources of the same period are only speculative. In fact there was in about
1510 so much international activity between builders that national types are
difficult to distinguish. Flemish builders in particular could be found working
throughout Europe during the 16th century.
The
early 16th-century organ was full of colour: manual reeds, regals in the
Positive departments (Rückpositiv, Brustwerk), pedal reeds;
Gedackt, Quintadena, Rohrflöte stops (Alkmaar, Laurenskerk, small organ, 1511);
Gemshorn and Hohlflöte; Sifflöte, Schwegel 11/3' and other flute mutations. The
last are very significant, often uncertain in documents but usually associated
with some special colour effect and even special etymology (‘Nasard’,
‘Larigot’). Tremulants, toy stops (drums, bird calls, bells) and moving
statuary were known by the end of the 15th century. The structural developments
were very important, particularly the Netherlands builders’ division of the
Great organ into two departments (each often with its own manual): Principal
chorus and trumpets on the Hauptwerk, or main manual, and flutes, Gedackts
and mutations on the Oberwerk, or upper chest. This separation ensured
good wind supply, greater freedom of registration, safer chest construction and
better acoustical dispersal from shallower cases. The Oberwerk was to
influence, even create, the special potential in the next century of the north
German Werkprinzip organ, in which each ‘department’, or Werk
(i.e. a keyboard with its chest or chests), had a separate structure. Some
examples typifying the schemes of about 1550 at their best, organs to which the
previous developments were leading, are given inTables 7, 8, 9 and10.
In
the Iberian Peninsula, organs were generally built by Italians (e.g. Évora
Cathedral, 1562) or Netherlanders (El Escorial, c1580); there were
scarcely distinct Iberian characteristics. Yet Évora had more Mixtures than an
Italian organ, and El Escorial had its secondary manual in the form of an
internal Positive (Cadireta interior) rather than a Dutch-Flemish Rückpositiv.
In England organs appear to have remained single-manual instruments until the
late 16th or early 17th century, although some of these, particularly in large
monastic foundations, may have reached a fairly good size before the
Reformation. While early 17th-century English organs had the southern
characteristic of single, individually available ranks at unison and quint
pitches, early 16th-century organs were more Flemish in style and appear to
have had the partly divided Blockwerk scheme of north-west continental
organs of about 1500. Wooden pipes, and even organs with wooden pipes only,
were known in the 16th century, but there is no evidence of reed pipes having
been incorporated into large church organs until the late 17th century,
although small regals containing both reed (short-length) and flue pipes were
much in evidence and are described in some detail in an inventory of Henry
VIII’s household furnishings (see §8 below). Early in the 16th century the
English organ acquired a slightly larger key compass than the organs of
northern Europe, a characteristic maintained into the 18th century. The double
organ with Great and Chair (Rückpositiv) division is documented from the
beginning of the 17th century, and inspired the writing of a type of voluntary
in which solo passages were played by the left hand on the Great against an
accompaniment on the Chair, both hands usually going to the Great in the final
section – the so-called ‘double voluntary’.
As
the 16th-century Italian organs in Innsbruck and Brescia still exist, various
subjective descriptions of their tone have been made. At Brescia (see Table 9) the average to narrow scalings (apparently untransposed)
and the low pressure give a mild tone, round, rich and singing. Low pressure
may also explain the absence of reed stops in such organs, or vice versa. The
downward compass of Italian organs varied with the size of the church: the
larger the church, the lower the compass. The top note was almost always a'',
the bottom c, G or F (positives), C, G', F'
or even C' (full-size organs). The 15th-century organ at S Petronio,
Bologna, went to F' or G' at 16' pitch (i.e. into the 32'
octave). When pedal-boards were added later to such organs, they were thought
of as mechanical conveniences for pulling down the bass keys; pedal parts
(beyond pedal points and cadential chord roots) do not appear in Italian or
Iberian music until the 19th century. As for the pipework, only open metal
pipes were included. The ranks of the separated high stops break back no higher
than the pipe sounding c'''''; that is the top treble of the compass has an
accumulation of ranks usually no higher than Principale 2', resulting in a kind
of circumscribed, if fully divided, Blockwerk. The lower ranks are
sometimes divided between b and c'. Musically, such organs had a
distinct function and character. Costanzo Antegnati’s rules for registration
(1608) show timbre, musical style and liturgical function to have been
intimately connected; for example, the ripieno or tutti was drawn
for sustained music of the durezze e ligature style, which was itself
applied to such pieces as toccatas at the end of the ‘Deo gratias’. Flute stops
of all pitches were da concerto (i.e. ‘for solo use’), not for
accompanying motets or filling out the ripieno. The undulating Fiffaro (or Voce
umana), a principal-toned rank, was drawn with the Principale alone and played
slow music ‘as smoothly and legato as possible’, often with melodic snatches in
the right hand (as in Frescobaldi’s toccatas), and is frequently recommended
for playing in the Elevation. Some useful combinations were those shown inTable 11. At the same time, as Diruta showed, some keys (i.e.
ecclesiastical tones) were associated with particular moods and hence
particular registrations. He recommended 16' with Flauto 8' for the
mournfulness of E minor (Phrygian); but for D minor (Dorian, full and grave) he
added as alternative suggestions 16.8 and 16.16. For F major (Lydian,
moderately gay) he recommended 8.4 with Flauto 4; but for G major (Mixolydian,
mild and lively), 8.4.2. Equally important is that three is the largest number
of stops drawn in many such lists of registrations, apart from the various big ripieni
used only once or twice in a service. It is never certain how far or wide such
rules apply, but much Italian music of about 1620 can be seen in terms of the
older Antegnati organ, more modest though the organs of Rome, Naples and
elsewhere seem to have been. The greatest developments in Italian organ
building between 1475 and 1575 were rather in the design of the cases (Gothic
to Renaissance; see fig.33) than in the technical or
musical sphere, where there is an unusual conformity.
The
1551–61 Ebert organ at Innsbruck (see Table 8
and fig.34) is very strong in tone, neither manual
proving useful for accompanying a choir. The cases are shallow (Rückpositiv
less than 50 cm), the chests spacious, the organs contained in resonant wooden
boxes. Since all the Chair organ (Rückpositiv) stops have close
equivalents in the Great organ (Hauptwerk), yet at only 4' pitch (as so
often during the 16th century and the late 15th), the two manuals can be
regarded partly as extensions of each other in different directions. Indeed,
the Innsbruck organ puts in a new light the perennial question of the purpose
of second manuals (a question rarely admitting of any obvious answer, despite
common assumptions). The stopped pipes at Innsbruck are very strong in tone,
with a big mouth and a tone-colour ranging from wide, vague flute sound in the
bass to strong, breathy treble colour. The two Hörnli stops are very keen,
repeating Terzzimbeln. Throughout the organ there is a distinct change of
tone-quality from bass to treble, enabling the Hauptwerk bass keys to
produce a different quality of sound from right-hand solo lines in the treble.
The
organ of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (see Table
7) was that
known to Sweelinck and shows the ‘Brabant organ’ at its most characteristic:
big Principal chorus, large flute stops on an Oberwerk chest, smaller
stops but yet greater variety in the Rückpositiv, and the pedals playing
the Hauptwerk chorus for plenum registrations and also having a
pair of high-pitched, strong-toned solo stops for (presumably) cantus firmus
music. The sheer variety in the manuals would alone have encouraged variations
on psalm tunes and folk melodies over the next century or so, even had there
been no tradition for weekday organ recitals occasioned by the prohibition of
the use of the organ in the Reformed liturgy until after the middle of the 17th
century. From surviving examples of Niehoff pipework, it seems that the inner
parts were of thick, hammered lead of good quality; the principals were narrow
in the bass, wider in the treble; and the whole had a mild-voiced, singing
quality quite different from the organ of the later Baroque period. Flutes were
wide to very wide; reeds penetrating, particularly in the bass. The
spring-chests were considered an advance on the slider-chests already known for
smaller organs (Alkmaar small organ, extant slider-chest of 1511) or for the
Chair organs of larger instruments; and in some areas (north Italy, Westphalia)
spring-chests of different types remained popular for well-spaced, large-scaled
organs after they had fallen out of fashion in the north. The Amsterdam organ
was evidently of a very high class, and its concept and musical repertory were
known in Brabant, the Netherlands, Cologne, Würzburg, Lüneburg and much further
east. Some examples had big Pedal divisions, resulting during the period
1575–1600 in an organ type known from Groningen to Danzig, Frederiksborg to
Prague, and passed on by a group of composers directly or indirectly under
Sweelinck’s influence.
The
musical position of the 1580 Barbier organ at Gisors (see Table 10) is less certain, as indeed is that of all French organs
before about 1660. The French organ of 1520–75 often had a wide array of
colour, whether of the Bordeaux-Italian type in the south, or the southern
Flemish variety of reeds and compound stops in the north. Reeds of 16', 8' and
4' could be expected in a larger organ of about 1575; so could one or more
Quint mutations; 8', 4' and possibly 16' ranks of stopped (often wooden) pipes;
a few ‘obsolescent’ stops like the 1' Principal; and even a mounted Cornet,
often called ‘Flemish horn’ (see Organ stop, under ‘Cornet’). In many
respects the Gisors organ was Flemish: the Positiv construction (in
French instruments the Chair organ had become temporarily uncommon), the
spring-chests, the CD–c''' compass, the Quint flutes of 11/3', the 8'
pedal stops, and the grand ravalement for the pedal reed. In sound, no
doubt the instrument was nearer to the Netherlands organs of Niehoff than to
the late classical French organs of F.-H. Clicquot.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
5. Structural developments c1600.
From
the many enormous and apparently amorphous organ specifications given by
Praetorius it could be reasonably thought that many central German builders of
the late 16th century did not have clear control of the organs that their
technology enabled them to build. The number of stops and stop types listed by
Praetorius is evidence of his attempt to give order to a somewhat embarrassing
luxury of choice. The number of 4' solo Flutes alone, for instance – narrow,
wide, open, stopped, chimney, spindle, narrow-stopped, narrow-conical and
overblowing–narrow-stopped – contrasts strongly with the 17th- and 18th-century
systematized French organ of average size, where there was probably only one
plain Bourdon 8' or Flûte 4', and that with a very specific function. Some of
the biggest organs, such as those in Prague and Danzig, are scarcely credible:
the Týn Church in Prague appears to have had a four-manual, 70-stop organ built
between 1556 and 1588, but it is possible that it was a conglomerate
instrument, finished in part, but perhaps never all playable or ready at once.
More
important was the potential opened up by new mechanical skill in disposing
multiple chests – giving the Pedal, for example, a pair of back or side chests
for the large pipes, using front chests for middle Principals and a Brustwerk
chest or two for smaller-scaled solo stops. Each pedal key then connected with
two or even three pallets. The first such ‘multiple action’ may have been built
earlier in the century in the central Netherlands (Antwerp Cathedral, 1505; St
Zwysen, Diest, 1523), but the evidence is inconclusive. By the end of the
century extravagant court chapel organs were built with some of the richest
mechanical layouts ever known before pneumatic action, allowing an immense
array of stop combinations. If the simple organ of 1563 for the Dresden court
chapel allowed 77 manual combinations with its 13 stops and Tremulant, as
stated in a contemporary document, then hundreds were no doubt possible on the
famous Groningen court chapel organ of 1592–6 (Table 12). Whether there was enough fish for all this sauce might
have been doubted by Schlick.
Clearly
the Groningen organ offered many colourful effects, particularly those of two
or three stops only; indeed, the number of stops normally drawn at once by
organists of that time cannot be assumed from modern practices. With the
exception of three Principal choruses of four or five stops, the registrations
at Dresden (referred to above) were all of three stops or less. Quite apart
from what this fact might imply about the state of contemporary wind-raising
techniques, it suggests that organs of the period were geared towards subtle
colour and musical variety. As to the ‘multiple chests’ themselves, a very
plausible attempt to describe their complex action, double pallets,
transmission and extension system has been made by Bunjes (D(xv)1966). The most
useful arrangement was the most traditional and long-lived, namely the multiple
pedal division in which the biggest bass pipes would take one or two chests,
and the cantus firmus and other high stops another chest. Wind could be
prevented by a Sperrventil from entering any chest not immediately
needed; and a low pressure could be the better sustained if no chest was above
a certain size.
A
circumspect reading of Praetorius reveals three main types of complex layout,
two of them multiple action: (i) the double action enabling two or more chests
to be played by one keyboard (e.g. Brustwerk and Oberwerk from Oberwerk
keys only); (ii) the transmission chest (with two pallets), enabling one or
more ranks of pipes to be played by two keyboards (usually the bigger stops of
the Oberwerk played by pedal keys); (iii) octave and even quint
transmission or ‘extension’, that is, a chest construction enabling a rank of
pipes to be played at unison, quint or octave pitches. The third was very rare,
but important in view of later developments. Since couplers were also much to
the fore in organs using complex action, and since the Sperrventil
increased the registration possibilities (by making drawn stops inoperative
until required), it can be seen that an important musical aim was maximum
variety for a given number of ranks. But such aids had the potentially bad
effect of overemphasizing the main Oberwerk chest to the detriment of
true secondary manuals, weakening the independence of the pedal, and
encouraging the cultivation of intricate workmanship as an end in itself. But
the Chair organ remained an independent department in the major organs, and as
such helped to provide the right conditions for most idiomatic organ music of
17th-century Germany, as it also did in France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia
and England.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
6. The Werkprinzip organ.
The
Chair organ was indeed the manual that supplied the true balanced chorus to the
Great; but in areas or periods in which second manuals were required for simple
echo effects or soft background colours (Spain and Italy during the whole
period, France during the 16th century, England after 1700) or in smaller
churches where expense had to be avoided, the Chair organ was dispensed with
and smaller chests were incorporated in the main case.
The
visual characteristics of the Werkprinzip organ (the term is a modern one, coined
by the 20th-century reformers) – the single main case, the Chair organ, the
separate pedal towers – were all known by the 15th century. But by the time of
Praetorius, owing to the range of available organ colour and the widespread
mechanical skill in making good actions, builders were able to develop a type
of instrument using such features put to new, unified purpose. Scheidt’s
remarks in his Tabulatura nova (1624) imply a sophisticated and codified
practice for organs and their music, and show the instrument to have developed
well along the lines laid down by Schlick and beyond recognition of those laid
down by Arnaut. Indeed, it is a mistake to relate the Werkprinzip Chair
organ and (even more so) its pedal towers to the organ of Arnaut’s period. It
is often very uncertain whether in about 1450 the Chair organ of a large
instrument had the same pitch as the Great or its keys aligned with it; nor was
two-manual playing necessarily known outside Schlick’s area and period.
Similarly, although side towers or trompes held bass pipes, they were
not necessarily played by pedal keys; in any case, a vital function of Werkprinzip
pedal towers is that they hold cantus firmus solo stops near the Protestant
congregation in or below the gallery. No doubt the larger instruments of about
1550 might have had pedal towers combining both characteristics; but the Werkprinzip
organ flourished many hundreds of kilometres north-east of the areas knowing
the old trompes, and did not become fully developed until after the
Reformation.
One
of the attractions of the Werkprinzip was that an organ could be altered
and its potential enlarged simply by adding a new department to the old. While
the Totentanz organ of the Marienkirche, Lübeck (destroyed in 1942), is much
less understood than modern references to it suggest, it is certain that its
four departments expressed the ideals of four quite different periods: the Hauptwerk,
the late 15th century; the Rückpositiv, the mid-16th century; the Brustwerk,
the early 17th; and the completed Pedal organ, the early 18th. Many famous
organs of this type in northern Europe (e.g. Jakobikirche, Lübeck;
Johanniskirche, Lüneburg) are in fact composite instruments (quite apart from
modern rebuilds), accumulations of Werke constantly altered in compass,
specification, tuning and no doubt voicing by builder after builder. The
smaller Jakobikirche organ, restored in the 1980s to the form given it in 1636
by Stellwagen, still contains part of its late 15th-century Principal chorus,
the pipes made of nearly pure lead. The big organs of the Niehoffs, the
Scherers, and the Compenius and Fritzsche families were like living organisms;
except for the large chamber organ in the chapel of Frederiksborg Castle,
Denmark, none remains in anything like its original state.
Organ
historians are often tempted to trace the organ’s evolution in terms of the
best-known builders. Frequently, however, contributions are attributed to a
builder on the basis of mere conjecture or even fable. Probably not a single
item in the list of innovations commonly attributed to Gottfried Fritzsche, for
instance, is specifically his: inclusion of a fourth manual; more systematic
use of 32' and 16' reeds to written C; introduction to north Germany of
rare stops, both flue (Viol, Schwiegel, imitative flutes) and reed (Sordun,
Ranket); contrast between narrow ‘male’ and wide ‘female’ stops (e.g. Nasat
22/3' and Quinte 22/3' on the same manual); reduction of the big Brabant Scharf
Mixture to a high repeating two-rank Zimbel; greater use of tin in the pipe
metal, and also of wooden pipes (reeds, flues, stopped, open); and systematic
adherence to C compass, sometimes with split keys (d/e etc.). But they certainly belong to
his period. Such a list, taken with the provincialisms running through Praetorius’s
Syntagma musicum, ii (2/1619), does lead to a distinct kind of organ.
The chief musical characteristics of the Werkprinzip thus emerging in a
purer form in the north were: the contrast between a full, round Hauptwerk
and a thin, piercing, more variable Rückpositiv; the versatile pedal;
and the clarity of the whole in average parish churches with little
reverberation. In most cases it was the Rückpositiv that was understood
to be the ‘solo manual’, and as such it performed an important function in the
chorale-based literature of the 17th century. The idiom was clearly defined for
organists, who seem to have been in little need of registration hints either
from composers or from builders. (Balanced contrast could easily be achieved
between two manuals if the same number of stops was drawn in each.) Explicit
and firm registration rules have been formulated only in areas and at periods
in which organs were more uniform (e.g. in northern Italy c1600, France c1700
and England c1750).
The
Hamburg Werkprinzip organ reached maturity and indeed satiation in the
work of Arp Schnitger, famous in his day far and wide, the possessor of many
privileges, and, with Gottfried Silbermann (whose organs were quite different
in many ways), the inspiration for the German Organ Reform (Orgelbewegung)
of the 1920s. Despite work in progress, surprisingly little is certain about
Schnitger – how responsible he was for his individual instruments (his workshop
was large and active), what his scaling policy was (scales vary hugely,
depending on the church, the pitch, the value of the old pipework he re-used,
etc.), what his pitch and temperament were, why he usually changed small
multifold bellows to large single-fold bellows in his rebuilds, why he dropped
the Rückpositiv in his late work around Berlin, who designed his cases (fig.35), etc. Research has established that his wind pressures
varied between about 94 mm or higher (the large organs in Hamburg) and about 67
mm, an average being about 85 mm (Nikolaikirche, Flensburg).Table 13 gives the stop list of his first four-manual organ, in the
Nikolaikirche, Hamburg (destroyed in 1842). Such very large organs give a kind
of highest common factor of instruments known to such composers as Buxtehude,
Lübeck and Bruhns and on which toccatas and chorales of the older composers
(Scheidemann, Weckmann, Tunder and others) were still played. In some areas of
the Netherlands, north Germany and Scandinavia, such an organ remained the
model until 1850 or so, and the Werkprinzip can be recognized behind
later organs very different in sound and appearance from the Hamburg
Nikolaikirche.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
7. The French classical organ.
In
northern Italy the ‘classical Brescian organ’ of the late 16th century remained
a norm to which the occasional 17th-century two-manual organ was an exception
(and probably built by a foreign builder); it was only in the mid-17th century
that the French organ achieved its classical form, intimately bound up with
music of a distinct and well-characterized idiom. The very number of livres
d’orgue published following the publication of the Caeremoniale
parisiense (1662; see Organ mass) suggests a remarkably unified ‘organ
school’. Every stop in a French organ of about 1700 came to have an appointed
purpose, and the livres d'orgue from Nivers (1665) to Marchand (c1715)
and beyond, several of which contain registration tables, give the impression
that late 17th-century Paris had shaken off outside influences past and
present.
But
Flemish influence had originally been paramount in northern France as Italian
and Spanish had been in parts of southern France. Titelouze’s plenum was
much the same as that of a Dutch composer. Even the Cornet was Netherlandish,
from the time of the organ in Antwerp (1565) onwards. Yet while many details in
Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636–7) may point to northern
influences like Praetorius, important moves towards the organ of the livres
d’orgue were made at this period, above all in Paris. Narrow- and
wide-scaled Tierces soon became common (narrow at St Nicolas-des-Champs, 1618;
wide at St Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, 1631) and with them a general change
towards mutation colour (e.g. more 13/5' ranks, fewer 1'). Mersenne knew
Tierces as ranks used both in the plein jeu and for solo combinations.
More important still were the new short-compass keyboards of solo or quasi-solo
character: the 25-note Cornet manual (i.e. a Récit) at St Séverin, Paris
(1610), set a new fashion, though intended at first only as a little keyboard
giving the raised Cornet chest a second row of keys. Were the little extra
chest to be placed below the Grand orgue it would be called Echo
and probably have a shorter keyboard and more ranks. By 1660 a large organ
could be expected to have four manuals (including two treble halves): two
supplying classical Great–Chair organ contrast (Grand orgue and Positiv)
and two right-hand solo manuals (Echo and Récit) for music
influenced by the monodic récit dramatique of the ballet de cour.
The
organ played by Nicolas Lebègue (Table
14), one of
the organists to Louis XIV, shows the French scheme of the period at its best.
Rarely can an organ have been so closely related to the music of its period as
such an instrument to the works of Lebègue, Raison, Grigny, Couperin and
others. Standardization was one of the chief aims. To obtain the Plein
jeu for those
movements in the Mass that required it, for example, the organist drew the
Principals 16', 8', 4', 2', then added the Fourniture, whose composition was
probably something like: and then finally the Cymbale: which, if it was a large
four-rank Cymbale, included the 26th as well. Such schemes were recorded by
Bédos de Celles (B1766–78) at the end of the great period but can be taken as
typical; thus, for instance, his specification of 1766 (for the case design,
see fig.36) is almost indistinguishable from that
of the 1674 organ at Le Petit Andely. Important points about the French chorus
(which also, through his brother Johann Andreas in Alsace, influenced Gottfried
Silbermann in Saxony) are that the Cymbale broke back more often than the
Fourniture but generally duplicated the Fourniture in the treble; no rank is
higher than 2' at c''' (i.e. 28 mm long); and doubled ranks did not
occur in either Mixture. The plein jeu was rarely brilliant, never
shrill; it was rather a further ‘colour’ of the organ.
Pitch,
at least from about 1680, was about a semitone below a' = 440. Pipe
metal was hammered, including the lead pipes for flute stops. The keyboards
were always pivoted at the end, and the mechanism suspended from the chests
above, trackers passing straight from the Grand orgue keyboard to the
pallet box ranged vertically above the keys (fig.37). The Positif stickers connect
with a lever which raises the pallet placed above the channel-end. Such systems
were simple and logical, providing the player with a very sensitive action
facilitating, among other things, the playing of ornaments.
To
obtain the Grand jeu, the organist drew a varying combination
of reeds, Cornet, Principals 8' and 4' and Tierces, but no mixtures. The reeds
supplied volume and brilliance; the Cornet boosted the thin reed trebles; the
Tierces encouraged the overtone level that gave prominence; and the Principal
4' strengthened the basic tone. Fugues were often played on such registrations,
and other fugal colours, such as Tierce combinations with Tremulant, give an
impression quite different from that of Italian or German fugues of the period
1650–1750. On larger organs, a pair of Trompettes on the Grand orgue
after about 1750 gave a timbre peculiar to the bass depth and brilliance of
French reeds. Late in the period a Trompette was also put on the Positif,
and following the organ at Notre Dame, Paris (Thierry, 1730–33), Bombarde
manuals were also very occasionally included – keyboards coupled to the Grand
orgue and playing the large-scaled Bombarde 16', perhaps with other large
reeds; at Notre Dame the Bombarde division could also be played from the Pedal.
The chief purpose of this was to give the ranks their own chest and wind
supply, which was often experimentally high by the end of the classical period.
Similarly, it was the treble ‘boosting’ supplied by the Cornet that led
eventually to higher pressures and double-length harmonic resonators during the
next century. The reed basses, however, remained the chief glory, encouraging
composers to write special basse de trompette music from about 1650
onwards. De grosse taille (‘of large scale’) is a phrase often applied
in 17th-century contracts to the Trompette.
Even
in plein jeu registrations (in which the mixtures replaced the reeds for
brilliance), the French organ was not overdrawn. Only a handful of stops was
involved in any of the characteristic French registrations, and all the
codified ingenuity was geared towards clearly marked colours. Thus the texture
of a piece marked Tierce en taille, one of the most beautiful effects
known to organists, would consist of the following elements: (i) left hand on Positif,
Bourdon 8' + Prestant 4' + Doublette 2' + Nasard + Tierce (perhaps + Larigot),
playing a free, singing melody in the middle of the texture, gamba-like; (ii)
right hand on Grand orgue, Bourdons 16' + 8' + 4' (jeux doux),
playing accompaniment above or around the melody; and (iii) pedal playing the
bass line on a Flûte 8' (or perhaps coupled to Grand orgue Bourdon 16'
in later examples). There was some variety in such registrations: Bédos de
Celles, for instance, did not like 16' manual stops in accompaniments. On the
other hand, the Tierces were so characteristic of French organs that many
combinations were possible: a right-hand Cornet line on the Grand orgue,
for instance, could be accompanied in dialogue by a left hand Jeu de tierce
registration on the Positif. From D’Anglebert (1689) onwards, Quatuors
and Trios had been played using three different colours including pedal:
indeed, the chief purpose of the pedal was ‘pour pouvoir jouer les trios’
(according to Joyeuse’s contract at Auch in 1688) and to play 8' and 16' cantus
firmus in pieces built on a plainchant. The biggest drain on wind supply and
narrow channels must have been the slower, sustained music written for concert
de flûtes and fonds d’orgue registrations, comprising all available
Montres, Prestants, open Flûtes and Bourdons. Such sounds became fashionable
around the middle of the 18th century; but whatever the combination, no
organist in the provinces need have been in doubt about how the Parisian
composers expected their pieces to sound (see also Registration,
§I, 5).
The
splendid French organ at the eve of the Revolution (1789) may well have been
far superior to the music written for it, as were the Dutch organ of 1700 and
the English organ of 1850; but it is the very decadence of the music that best
draws out the extravagant contrasts, brilliant reeds, round flutes, echoes, big
choruses and immense colour potential available on such extant late instruments
as those at St Maximin-en-Var (J.-E. Isnard, 1773) and Poitiers Cathedral
(F.-H. Clicquot, 1787–90). The French organ received a serious setback when the
Revolution disrupted life in the cities. It was ripe for development at the
very moment when Clicquot’s sons became soldiers; but not until Cavaillé-Coll's
organ for St Denis, completed in 1841, did Poitiers have a worthy successor.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
8. The English organ.
Evidence
for the late medieval organ in the British Isles is extremely sketchy, partly
because of the protracted period of religious and political instability that
lasted from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 until the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, which wiped out a huge mass of material, and partly because
the small instruments that were characteristic of this period warranted little
in the way of extravagant description or fame. There is some evidence of
connections with the European mainland. Despite Henry VIII’s leanings towards
Italian culture, those connections (at least in organ building) seem to exist
in greatest number and importance with Flanders. Most significant were the
appearances in England of Flemish organ builders such as Michiel Langhedul at
Salisbury Cathedral in 1530 and Jasper Blancart in London (1566–82), both from
families of craftsmen well known on the Continent.
The
nature of the organs associated with the great age of Tudor church music
remained completely obscure until the late 20th century, when a number of
significant finds were made. There may have been isolated large organs in
Britain, such as the one built by Laurence Playssher for Exeter Cathedral in
1513 (for which bills survive), but all the remaining evidence suggests that
the standard instrument used to accompany the choral liturgy was small. This
evidence consists of large numbers of inventory records made after the
Dissolution, a couple of early contracts, and, since 1995, two fragmentary
remains of early 16th-century instruments preserved by chance. The most
important of these, the ‘Wetheringsett fragment’ (an entire organ soundboard of
about 1520 preserved as a door in a farm building in Suffolk fig.38),
indicates the type of instrument typical of the school (Table 15), its size and scope directly confirmed by contemporary
contracts at All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, London (Antony Duddyngton,
1519–20), and Holy Trinity, Coventry (John Howe and John Clynmowe, 1526). In
large buildings instruments of this type seem usually to have been multiplied
in number, but not in size. At Durham Cathedral before the Dissolution,
according to one account, there were five organs in various parts of the
building, of which at least one had pipes of wood, each with its specific role
in the liturgy and in the cycle of the church year. The largest instruments of
this period may have been based on a full-compass Diapason of 10' pitch, though
the Principal 5' was still regarded as the unison. The use of a long chromatic
keyboard is characteristic of English instruments; the provision of the low
accidentals, at a time when mean-tone tuning was probably universal, may be
explained by the English love of ornamentation in keyboard music.
From
around 1570 there is widespread evidence from all parts of the British Isles
that, as a result of Puritan opposition, organs were removed and destroyed.
With the revival of a High Church party in the early 17th century, led by
William Laud, organs were returned to the cathedrals and collegiate churches,
but not, it seems, to the parishes. The great majority of these new
instruments, like the Worcester Cathedral organ of 1613 (Table 16), were built by members of the Dallam family. Many were ‘double
organs’, i.e. of two manuals, for which the genre of organ music that became
known as ‘double Voluntary’ was developed.
The
Civil War of 1642 onwards brought an end to this activity, and organs across
the land were again dismantled. The Catholic Dallam family sought refuge in
Brittany, where they continued to ply their trade, adapting completely to the
local style. After the Restoration in 1660, organs were restored or newly built
at first on exactly the same pattern as before the war. However, new foreign
influences soon promoted the arrival of a new style, and a further wave of
rebuilding and new commissions. The post-Restoration English organ was partly
the result of rivalry between two organ-building factions. In the aftermath of
the Fire of London in 1666 the city was opened to all craftsmen in order to
speed the rebuilding. One who came was Bernard Smith (c1630–1708), an
organ builder then resident in the Netherlands (although probably German in
origin), later to become known in affectionate recognition as ‘Father’ Smith.
He established himself and gained a royal connection in the early 1670s, much
to the chagrin of his rivals, the remaining members of the Dallam family and
their in-laws the Harrises. Smith and Renatus Harris (c1652–1724) made a
public exhibition of their rivalry in 1683–8, both building new organs for the
Temple Church in London, a contest that became known as the ‘Battle of the
Organs’. Smith's instrument (Table
17) was
judged the better; Harris’s organ was removed.
Smith
went on to build the organ for Wren’s new St Paul’s Cathedral, completed in
1697. This also had three manuals, the Great organ descending to low C',
16' pitch. Pull-down pedals to the Great organ were added in 1720. The split
keys, used by Smith at the Temple and at Durham Cathedral (1686), allowed for
some remoter keys to be used without any compromise to the mean-tone tuning.
Despite
Smith’s success, Harris was ultimately just as busy. His own instruments (e.g.
that for St Bride’s, Fleet Street; Table 18) showed some influence from the
Dallam-Harris clan’s period of exile in France, and, given the continental
background of these rival builders, the question might be asked as to why they
did not introduce the conventional European C-compass or even
independent Pedal organs. In fact Smith was working in the Netherlands at a
time when the independent Pedal was only just becoming a feature of the largest
new organs, and the depth of Harris’s debt to France was surely tempered by the
fact that he was only eight years old when the family returned to England in
1660.
In
the end it was the Harris style that succeeded into the 18th century, through
the work of Renatus’s son John Harris and associated craftsmen such as Richard
Bridge and John Byfield (i) and (ii). The standard three-manual instrument of
the period, with its long-compass Great organ and (now) Choir organ (disposed
as a Chair in some cathedral and collegiate instruments, but otherwise normally
placed behind the Great), was enlivened by the conversion of the old
short-compass Echo (where the pipes were entombed in a box of some kind) into
an expressive Swell organ by fitting a movable front (operated by a pedal at
the console) on to the box enclosing the pipes. The first example of this was
introduced by the two Abraham Jordans, father and son, in their instrument at
St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge, in 1712 (and may have been derived by them
from earlier Iberian examples). Even the most fully developed large instruments
followed this established pattern, simply supplying stops of familiar name and
type in more extravagant numbers. In the instruments of Bridge (Table 19 and fig.39) and the Byfields a
superficial resemblance to the French type remains, right down to the
occasional use of wide principal scales for the mutation stops. However, it is
clear that English national taste exercised itself vigorously in excluding any
blatant sounds or gross pitches, the emphasis being rather on sweetness,
delicacy, and the accuracy of the imitative registers (Trumpet, Hautboy, French
Horn, Bassoon, Vox humana and Flute). The extempore players of the 18th
century, performing voluntaries perhaps slightly more complex than those which
survive in printed form for the large semi-amateur market, would have exploited
these imitative effects to the full. The Swell divisions, originally fitted
with sliding sash fronts, but by 1800 with ‘Venetian’ shutters after the
pattern of the familiar window blind, enhanced the expressivity of these
effects.
Registration
followed conventional patterns. Solo stops (the reeds, Cornet and Flute) might
be heard on their own. Otherwise the combinations referred to most frequently
are ‘Diapasons’ (Open Diapason plus Stopped Diapason, used for slow
introductory movements) and ‘Full Organ’ (all Great organ stops except the
Cornet). The latter combination would be given an agreeable nasal twang by the
Trumpets and Clarions, and by the provision of third-sounding Tierce ranks in
the mixtures in addition to the usual unisons and Quints. During the 18th
century organs such as this became universal in cathedrals, collegiate
churches, and the parish churches of wealthier towns. In the cathedrals and
colleges they accompanied the choir; in the parish churches they accompanied
the congregation in singing metrical versions of the psalms and were used for
extempore voluntaries before, during and after the service.
The
market for new organs in the 18th century was vigorous and competitive,
encouraging indigenous and immigrant craftsmen, including the Swiss-born John
Snetzler (1710–85), who settled in London around 1740 and adapted completely to
the local style. Considerable demand was also developing for small instruments
for secular use. There had been a tradition of chamber organs in England since
early times (see Chamber organ and Positive), and several examples of
small organs, often with pipes entirely of wood, survive from the second half
of the 17th century. There was a considerable revival of interest in the second
half of the 18th century contemporary with (and perhaps because of) the great
popularity of Handel, who seems regularly to have used small or even portable
organs when playing continuo and for the performance of organ concertos as
interludes to larger works.
Later
18th-century builders, notably members of the England family and Samuel Green,
continued to refine the basic recipe, adding only the Dulciana (a delicate
string-toned stop first used in Britain by Snetzler) to the range of available voices,
and never exceeding the size of instrument established by their immediate
forebears. The only expansion in range came in the occasional provision of
pull-down pedals to the Great organ, in larger and later examples operating a
single rank of unison Pedal pipes also.
The
national taste for subtlety and delicacy meant that English organs gradually
became softer and prettier in sound as the century progressed. The importance
of the art of voicing had been demonstrated by the rivalry of Smith and Harris.
The Englands and Samuel Green became obsessed with tonal beauty. When Green
built a new organ for Salisbury Cathedral in 1792 (Table 20), the building was closed to visitors for two weeks so that
he could attend to the tuning and voicing in near silence. Green also provided
an organ for the Handel Commemoration festival of 1784, an enormous event held
at the west end of Westminster Abbey. Hoping to address such new demands,
Green’s successors attempted to build much larger organs in the years
immediately following 1800, but still adhered to the insular recipe of the
English classical organ type, until at last abandoning it in the 1840s in
favour of the ‘German system’ of uniform C-compass keyboards and independent
pedal organ.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
9. The Baroque organ in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.
The
organ of the Iberian peninsula has many special characteristics. Yet Baroque
organs of Spain and Portugal differ in detail from area to area, and while the
visual parts of such instruments were indigenous and individual, their musical
characteristics are founded in common European traditions. In 1500 Spanish
organs stood at much the same point as those of northern France, the
Netherlands and northern Germany, having separable stops of varying colours and
pitches, though being more likely to have but a single keyboard. The influences
were Flemish rather than Italian – a Pedro Flamench (‘Peter the Fleming’) was
at work in Barcelona in 1540 – and even the term ‘Fleutes’ for Principals (a
later term was Flautado) was Flemish. Principals and Mixtures (Mixtura,
Forniment, Simbalet) were the stop-changes or mutaciones available on
the new big organs of 1550, as they had been earlier in the north, although
positives were already showing an array of slider-stops, including regals,
reeds and wooden flues. Evidently Flemish builders brought Chimney Flutes and
Quintadenas with them, and by the 1550s new large organs of splendid
proportions could be expected to have large-scaled reed stops. Often these
reeds had colourful names: Trompetas naturals a la tudesca (‘German or Dutch
trumpet stops with natural-length resonators’), Clarins de mar (‘trumpets of
the sea’, as used for naval signals) or Clarins de galera, molt sonoroses
(‘gallery trumpets, very sonorous’) at Lérida in 1554. Although none of these
was horizontal, the terms are evocative and probably played their part in the
later evolution of the remarkable Iberian reed stops.
Just
as Flemish singers were called to Felipe II’s court chapel in Madrid, so
Flemish organ builders were commissioned (notably members of the Brebos
family), putting into practice their up-to-date ideas at El Escorial. The
Brebos organ had a large Hoofdwerk of two chests and big flue and reed
choruses, as well as flute mutations; the pedal was similarly a large modern
department. But the only other manual was a Brustwerk (though one of 12
stops), and indeed Chair organs were never to become important in Spanish organ
building, although the Cadireta (both interior and exterior) was later
to become a common secondary division. Barcelona seems to have been a centre
for northern European builders, but registrations left at the monastery of Sant
Joan de les Abadesses in 1613 show the stops to have been used in a traditional
or old-fashioned way, and during the 17th century emphasis shifted south and
west.
Regals
may have been the first reed stops to be placed horizontally in Iberian organs
(in the manner later known by the French term En chamade), but in 1659 the builder
Echevarría placed a full-length Trumpet (Clarin) horizontally in the façade of
his organ in Alcalá de Henares, boasting that he was the first to do this.
Placing reeds horizontally in the case front was convenient for sound
(penetrating in big churches where the organ did not face the congregation),
accessibility (for quick tuning), reliability (gathering little dust), economy
(replacing cathedral trumpeters) and appearance (fig.40).
But the documents rarely specify whether reeds were horizontal or not, just as
documents before the end of the 18th century rarely specify whether or not
‘Eco’ chests or interior Trumpets and Cornets were placed in a box. Reeds were
plentiful: in addition to the Clarins (‘mounted like cannons’ in the cornice),
Echevarría’s organ contained Trompetas reales (‘of which there can be three
kinds’), Dulzainas, Orlos (resembling ‘the guitar and harpsichord’ (zitara y
clavicordio)), Trompeta mayor (‘a stop found in few other organs’),
Bajoncillos (‘also newly invented’), Voz humanas and Angeles o Serafines
(angel statues blowing trumpets). By 1750 a large organ would have a huge
battery of reeds, vertical and horizontal, many kinds of chorus, large Swell
departments and even a pedal rank or two. The well-known organ of Granada (fig.41) can be taken as an example; its stop-list is given inTable 21. No large Spanish organ can be called fully ‘typical’. As
in Italy during the next century, the larger the organ, the greater the variety
of solo stops; the large organ of Toledo (1796), however, shows no advance on
the concept of smaller organs built nearly a century earlier.
A
few registration guides for Spanish Baroque organs have been found. One, for an
instrument made at Segovia Cathedral about 1770, suggests the few staple
requirements organists made of these extravagant creations. They comprise
French-style ‘dialogues’ (two-part pieces with mutation stops or reeds in each
hand), regal solos (e.g. Dulzaina in either hand), half-stops for each hand on
the same manual, echo effects and manual contrasts for two- or three-part
music, flutes contrasted with reeds (perhaps for use in homophonic music),
inner vertical reeds with outer horizontal trumpets, cornets and reeds 8', 4'
or 8', 2' combined. Because organs of this period contained many halved stops (medio
registro), the right hand could produce a line lower than that of the left
hand, or one very much higher, and this feature characterizes much of the music
of the time. The Echo box is also mentioned, not for swelling but to mute the
effect of certain registrations. Pedals are ignored.
Over
the whole period, the bellows of the Iberian organ were usually multifold and
operated by hand. Wind pressure was low (c50–60 mm), though up to 90 mm
on larger instruments. The chests were always slider-chests, usually divided
into bass and treble, either between B and C (usual in the south)
or C and C (usual in the north). As in French organs, the
pallets are directly above the keys (suspended action). The chest layout is
often very complicated, each group of stops set on channelled-off subsidiary
chests, terraced at different heights, easy to tune and reach, and often some
way removed from the pallet. Neither bellows nor trunks and channels allow the
families of stops to be combined, but the rigidity of registration enabled
builders to include helpful accessories like knee-operated ‘shifting movements’
to aid stop-changes. Secondary divisions are often placed on the floor of the
main case (Cadireta interior) and operated by a sticker action; if there
is a Chair organ (Cadireta exterior), the pallets are below and directly
in line with the lower keyboard, and the channels pass below the closely placed
organist’s seat. A middle manual may operate pallets of a pair of chests placed
in the rear case-front of the organ, facing the side aisle. There are no manual
couplers. Pedal keys are short, sometimes mushroom-shaped, usually encompassing
eight or ten notes, as in Italian organs; there may be a rank of wooden pipes
but most pedals are pulldowns, presumably for organ points and cadences. The
hinged lid of the Echo box – known to contain a Cornet by about 1675 but including
reeds by about 1710 – was raised by a pulley and rope operated by a pedal-lever
that needed to be kept down if the lid was to remain open.
The
scaling of the Principal is often narrow, the tone restrained; flutes are
gentle, and Cornets expansive but thinner than the French. The quiet flutes
contrast greatly with the reeds, which were designed to fill the spaces of a
large Spanish church outside the immediate intimacy of the quire or coro
over which the organ looms. Reeds and regals, and divided stops in general,
encouraged solo music, and Correa de Arauxo’s Libro de tientos y discursos
(1626) shows a matured technique of left- or right-hand solos, a technique
similar in effect to other 17th-century dialogue music such as the English
double voluntary and certain French pieces (Basse de trompette). The
reeds also played chords, not only for the celebrated batallas
(battle-pieces) but also for imposing intradas on feast days.
At
Zaragoza (extant case dated 1443; fig.42) organs were
already placed between the pillars of the quire of the church. It was probably
this position that encouraged large flat façades bearing little resemblance to
the inner construction of the organ itself, indeed often giving it the
appearance of having more chest levels than it has. The amount of empty space
within a Spanish organ absorbs strong partials in the plenum and helps
to produce the mild quality of the flue choruses.
No
account of the Iberian type of organ would be complete without some mention of
its manifestations in the New World. Imported organs, at first small, are
recorded in Mexico not long after the Conquest, before the midpoint of the 16th
century; by the end of the 17th century there are numerous records of organs
being both built and played by native Mexicans who had been taught by Spanish
priests. In 1624 it was recorded that ‘no Augustinian church lacked an organ’,
and that promising youths from each village were being sent to Mexico City at
community expense to study music and organ playing. From this period to the
late 19th century virtually all organs in Mexico were locally built. One
notable exception is the large Epistle organ in Mexico City Cathedral, built in
1693 by Jorge de Sesma of Spain and first used in 1695. Its main manual has
over 30 divided stops, with smaller Cadereta and Positivo
divisions playable from the secondary manual. In 1734 José Nassarre, a Mexican
who had already constructed a sizable organ in Guadalajara Cathedral, enlarged
the Cadereta, and the following year he completed an organ of similar
size on the Gospel side of the quire, which had an additional 27-note Recitativo
enclosed in an expression box. Both organs have survived neglect and fire, and
were restored in 1978 by the Flentrop firm. Many Mexican builders of the 17th
century are anonymous, but in 1738 the first of several generations of Castros
established a workshop in Puebla, and significant work of this family survives
in the area. In 1786 Manuel Dávila was advertising that he built organs tuned
in equal temperament, and in the early 19th century José Antonio Sanchez and
Manuel Suárez were active in the Taxco area. Even at the end of the 19th
century, Mexican-built organs were conservative in nature, generally following
the 18th-century Iberian pattern of a single-manual instrument with treble and
bass stops, housed in ornate casework often of considerable artistic
distinction. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the decline of the
Mexican organ-building school and increased importation of German, Italian and,
to a lesser extent, American and French instruments. Many native Mexican organs
were allowed to go to ruin, but since the restoration of the Mexico City
Cathedral organs funds have been made available through the Patrimonio and
private foundations to make possible the restoration of a number of significant
instruments. Although Mexican organs became well documented and studied in the
final decades of the 20th century, little is still known about those elsewhere
in Latin America other than that significant numbers of older organs have been
reported, especially in Peru.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
10. The 18th-century Italian organ.
The
essentials of the Brescian classical organ were established by 1575 at the
latest: large, shallow cases (somewhat altar-like in shape, open-spaced above
the pipes), with one chest at the level of the case pipes (spring-chest,
mortised with well-spaced channels often of equal size), and multifold bellows
and low wind pressure. The compass would rise to a'' or c''',
with all but case pipes of metal with a high lead content (thick-walled,
principals relatively narrow in the bass, flutes wider with smaller mouths) and
completely separate ranks (the upper of which break back an octave at regular
intervals). The tuning would be some form of mean-tone temperament, but the
general pitch level would vary from organ to organ (‘come si vuole’, as
Antegnati remarked), as indeed it did throughout Europe. Sometimes there was an
octave or so of pedal pulldowns (short keys sloping up slightly; ‘pedali a
leggio’), and occasionally after about 1600 with thin-walled wooden Pedal
Principals. Registration was standardized, and each combination suggested to
the player a certain modal style to be played at a certain moment of the Mass
(e.g. ‘Voce umana’ for the Elevation), as set forth by Banchieri (L’organo
suonarino, 1605) and others.
Italian
builders and organists remained faithful to these ideas, modifying them
gradually but leaving them recognizable even in the large organs of the 1850s.
Yet it could be that historians have overemphasized the Brescian organ, for
each city or region had its own version of the general plan. The Flemish
builder Vincenzo Quemar had already introduced stopped pipes (Flute 22/3'),
Chimney Flute (2'), conical flute (12/3'), reeds (Tromboni 8') and regals (Voce
umana 4') at Orvieto Cathedral by 1600, as well as a Tremulant and an aviary of
toy stops. Less than a century later, another German (the Silesian Eugen
Casparini) was introducing Mixtures and even Cornets in organs of the Tyrol, as
well as confirming the trend towards the German-French C–c''' compass,
and the Fleming Willem Hermans had a strong influence in Tuscany. But indirect
Italian influences appear to have been strong elsewhere early in the 17th
century, notably in Provence and Jesuit Poland (conventual churches). Second
manuals remained the exception, and the one made by the Dalmatian builder Pietro
Nacchini for
S Antonio, Padua, in 1743–9 presented a character little different from that of
S Maria in Aracoeli, Rome, in 1587: I Ripieno, Voce umana, two flutes, Tierce,
regal; II Ripieno, Voce umana, one flute, Tierce, regal; Pedal 16'. As builders
began collecting the upper Ripieno ranks on to one slider, a Mixture resulted
that was not so different from a French Fourniture cymbalisée. A
particular taste grew during the 18th century for Tierce or (as they were
called) Cornetto ranks, but these had already been included in some two-manual
registrations written down in Rome in 1666. Moreover, during the 18th century
large, experimental organs were built on special commission, spreading new
ideas from Bergamo to Sicily. Toy stops remained an important element in
Italian organs. Although rivalry with the fine organs ‘at Marseilles, Trent and
Hamburg’ may have been the motive behind the five-manual organ at S Stefano dei
Cavalieri, Pisa (Azzolino Bernardino Della Ciaia, 1733–7), and elsewhere, the
result was peculiarly unlike any of them. The 1730s may have seen a parting of
the ways when builders throughout Europe were developing techniques beyond
musical requirements; but the five-manual, three-console, 55-stop organ at
Catania, Sicily (Duomo del Piano, 1755), though admired and even copied in the
next century, was little more than an accumulation of several classical Italian
organs, collected together, and it was decidedly atypical. The effect of
Spanish rule on the Kingdom of Naples has yet to be explored from the point of
view of organ building, but it seems doubtful whether Spanish influences ever
went further east than the Balearics.
A
characteristic and influential organ type of the later 18th century was the
Venetian, brought to fruition by Nacchini and his pupil and successor Gaetano
Callido. The Callido firm built hundreds of single-manual organs and many with
two manuals (the pipes of the second being enclosed in an expression box from
about 1785), all of excellent workmanship and summing up many of the 17th- and
18th-century trends, discarding the more extravagant elements, giving their
organs a velvety, vocal tone far removed from Antegnati; indeed, in their
wide-scaled Principals they influenced many a so-called Italienisch
Prinzipal in modern German organs. The stop-list of an instrument by Callido
is given inTable 22; for ease of tuning, the
regal (Tromboncini) stops were placed in front, standing vertically before the
Principale (as they did in other Italian organs of the period). Registrations
provided by Callido elsewhere show orchestral imitations to have been important
to organists of the period; there is no subtle play of two manuals, and in
general swell shutters seem to have been used either quite open or quite closed,
rather than expressively.
Research
by Umberto Pineschi during the last two decades of the 20th century into the
important Tuscan school and the influence of Willem Hermans thereon, together
with the work of the state-sponsored restoration workshops at the Palazzo Pitti
in Florence, has added to the knowledge of the Italian organ and to the
preservation of its heritage.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
11. The organ of J.S. Bach.
In
many ways the organs of Bach’s main area of activity, Thuringia, Weimar and
Leipzig, showed the same kind of influences as his music: a basic German
traditionalism tempered with French colour and Italian fluency. Neither the organ
nor the music was as local in origin or as independent of other regional ideas
as was usually the case elsewhere, even in the mid-18th century. Bach himself
is known to have been well acquainted with organ music of many countries and
periods, as were such contemporaries as J.G. Walther; later colleagues,
however, seem in some respects to have had less wide knowledge. C.P.E. Bach’s
remark that his father registered stops ‘in his own manner’, ‘astounding’ other
organists, might conceivably refer to either a French or a 17th-century north
German approach to stop-combination, one not known to players of the younger
generation, who thought that ‘the art died with him’; however, one must be
careful not to read too much into this remark. On the other hand, J.S. Bach is
said to have complained that Gottfried Silbermann’s mixtures were ‘over-weak’,
with ‘not enough sharp penetration’, which might suggest that he did not
appreciate that Silbermann’s French plein jeu was different in function
from a north German organo pleno, being one of the many colours rather
than a total chorus. Moreover, the period in which Bach worked was one of a
changing aesthetic for organs, when the large west-end organ became
increasingly associated with congregational hymn singing, requiring big chests,
large bellows capacity, many 8' stops (including those of string tone), a
powerful 16' pedal tone for ‘gravity’ and a range of sound characterized more
by extremes of loud and soft than by a full array of equal, piquant colours.
Apart
from the qualities of his music, then, the position of Bach in organ history is
important, and can serve to show some of the currents affecting the flow of
German organ music. In the course of two centuries, the area between Hanover
and Breslau produced great builders (the Fritzsche and Compenius families,
Casparini, Silbermann, Joachim Wagner, Engler, Hildebrandt, Trost and Schulze)
and some even more influential theorists (Praetorius, Werckmeister, Adlung,
Agricola, Marpurg, Sorge, Knecht, Seidel and Töpfer). Its composers included
many who travelled to hear and see great organ traditions elsewhere (for
example Bach, who went to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude and to Hamburg to prove his
ability on a Schnitger organ) or who settled down in another part of Germany and
formed schools of keyboard playing around them (Froberger, Pachelbel, C.P.E.
Bach). Many details of the stop-lists of J.S. Bach’s organs at Arnstadt
(1703–7), Mühlhausen (1707–8) and Weimar (1708–17) remain unclear, as do larger
matters of registration and tonal effect; but fine restorations during the 20th
century of organs by Trost and other builders contemporary with Bach, along
with the increased accessibility of Thuringia and Saxony since 1989, has helped
considerably in the understanding of these matters and in the dispelling of
many Orgelbewegung misconceptions. The Arnstadt organ (Table
23) can be taken as typical, one known by the Pachelbel school as well
as Bach’s family. The particular kind of second manual on this instrument, the
pedal department, and the range of 8' manual colours had long been traditional
in this part of Germany, and in style the Weimar court chapel organ followed
much the same patterns.
|
TABLE 23
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bonifaciuskirche,
Arnstadt
|
|
|
|
J.F.Wender,
1703
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hauptwerk
(Oberwerk)
|
|
Brustwerk
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quintadena*
|
?16
|
|
|
Stillgedackt
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
Prinzipal
|
8
|
|
|
Hohlflöte**
(g-d''')
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
Viola
da gamba
|
8
|
|
|
Prinzipal
|
4
|
|
|
|
|
Gemshorn*
|
8
|
|
|
Nachthorn
|
4
|
|
|
|
|
Grobgedackt
|
8
|
|
|
Quinte
|
2
|
2/3
|
|
|
|
Quinte*
(open)
|
5
|
1/3
|
|
Spitzflöte
|
2
|
|
|
|
|
Oktave
|
4
|
|
|
Sesquialtera
|
?II
|
|
|
|
|
Oktave
|
2
|
|
|
Mixtur
|
IV
|
|
|
|
|
Mixtur
|
IV
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Zimbel
|
III
|
|
Pedal
|
|
|
|
|
|
Trompete
|
8
|
|
|
Sub-Bass
|
16
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Violon
Bass
|
16
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Prinzipal
Bass
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posaune
|
16
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Compass:
CDE-d'-d'''
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Couplers:
Hauptwerk to Pedal; (? Brustwerk to Pedal, Brustwerk
|
|
|
|
to
Hauptwerk);
(? Hauptwerk to Pedal coupler stop later addition)
|
|
|
Two
tuned Zimbelsterne (Glockenaccord, ?1703)
|
|
|
|
|
Tremulant
(Hauptwerk)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
*
pitch length uncertain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
**
compass and manual uncertain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Larger
church organs began to allow for new attitudes towards the plenum. When
Bach was a student in Lüneburg in 1700 or visited Lübeck in 1706 organists
there would not have ‘mixed the families’ of organ stops by drawing more than
one rank of any given pitch even on the larger organs. As Werckmeister had
written in 1698, organists should not draw two stops of the same pitch, because
wind-supply and tuning problems would prevent them from being fully in tune
together; but by 1721, shortly after Bach’s visit to Hamburg, Mattheson was
suggesting an organo pleno of all stops except reeds – Principals,
Bourdons, Salicionals, Flutes, Quintatöne, Octaves, Fifths, Mixtures, Tierce,
Sesquialteras etc. The significance of any remark made by Mattheson, or its
precise meaning, is often a matter of conjecture, but after the midpoint of the
century Adlung and Agricola both seem to have supported the idea of mixed
stops. Adlung thought that good modern bellows ought to allow an organist to
draw Manual Prinzipal 8' + Gedackt 8' + Gemshorn 8' + Rohrflöte 8' with Pedal
Contrabass 32' + Posaune 32' + Sub-Bass 16' + Violon 16' + Posaune 16' + Oktave
8' + Gedackt 8'; and composers such as Gronau drew Prinzipal 8' + Flute 8' +
Oktave 4' + Flute 4' + Salicet 4' + Trompete 8' + Oboe 8' to bring out the
melody of an organ chorale. Thus, during Bach’s lifetime, ideas about what
constituted Full organ were in the process of changing, as were ideas about the
number, kind and use of solo stops and combinations, as illustrated in
Kauffmann’s Harmonische Seelenlust of 1733–6.
In
Lüneburg, Lübeck and Hamburg Bach would have heard organs with Rückpositive,
but after about 1710 such divisions were rare in new instruments of his own
area and further south; some cities had not known them since about 1650. The Rückpositiv
at Mühlhausen already had a stop-list (8.8.4.4.2.2.11/3.?II.III) quite
different from the bright, colourful manual of Dutch and French organs, and,
where gallery space was sufficient, builders preferred to hold such
second-manual chests within the Great case, usually above the Great. The
resulting Oberwerk was thus different in origin from that of Niehoff and
Schnitger. At the same time pedals became progressively less able to provide
solo colour for cantus firmus music, itself a dying genre; and organs took on a
stereotyped character that varied only if the builder was sensitive to
different voicing and scalings demanded by different church acoustics.
The
privileged organ builder to the court of Saxony was Gottfried Silbermann, a
native of Saxony who was apprenticed to his elder brother Andreas in Alsace and
returned to make the friendship of such composers as Kuhnau and Bach.
Silbermann’s early organ in Freiberg Cathedral, Lower Saxony (1710–14; now
restored), already demonstrated many of these developments Table 24). Here was not a mass of clumsy auxiliary stops but a
unique blend of Saxon and Alsatian-French elements, full of well-thought-out
balance between the three manuals, and implying a mode of registration needing
to be learnt carefully by the organist. Silbermann’s voicing is strong,
particularly of the Principals; his smaller village organs have great power and
energy. Wind pressure (as in Joachim Wagner’s organs) was c94 mm
(manuals) and c104 mm (pedals) in later organs, about 10 mm higher than
that of good large organs of about 1700.
There
is little direct connection between any of Bach’s organ music and such
instruments as that at Freiberg; but were the Trio Sonatas, for instance, known
to the organist of such a church, he may well have drawn for lively movements
the combination of stops noted by the local priest as having been recommended
for Silbermann’s Fraureuth organ (1739–42) for jeu de tierce en dialogue
(called Tertien-Zug zweystimmig): right hand Prinzipal 8' + Rohrflöte 8'
+ Oktave 4' + Quinte 22/3' + Prinzipal 2' + Tierce 13/5'; left hand Gedackt 8'
+ Rohrflöte 4' + Nasard 22/3' + Oktave 2' + Quinte 11/3' + Sifflöte 1'; and
Pedal Sub-Bass 16' + Posaune 16'. Given a free choice, as he may have been in
the design for Hildebrandt’s large organ at St Wenzel, Naumburg (1743–6;
restored in the 1990s), Bach might well have chosen to combine the features of
several organ types: three manuals including Rückpositiv, 53 stops
including Cornet and solo pedal stops, and each manual designed as an entity
with its own auxiliary stops (Viola, Fugara, Gamba, Unda maris, Weitpfeife,
Spillflöte etc.). As in all organs frequently played by Bach, Naumburg had
several string-toned stops, either narrow cylindrical or conical, and various
sources, including Bach himself, suggest that they were used not only in
chorale preludes, but in continuo work. Tierce ranks, alone or as constituents
of the Sesquialtera-Cornet, were indispensable for solo melodic lines in an
organ chorale. Manual reeds were never numerous (even at Naumburg they
accounted for less than 10% of the manual stops) and were, except Vox humana
and Krummhorn, for chorus purposes, although pedal reeds at 16', 8' or both are
found even in organs of moderate size. The Mixtures at Naumburg were more in
the bright German tradition than Silbermann’s pleins jeux, and the pedal
reeds (32', 16', 8', 4') had something of Silbermann’s élan. A contemporary
critic of one of Hildebrandt’s organs in Dresden thought its tone dull and
heavy, owing to increased wind pressure, higher cut-ups, and new voicing
methods in general which spoilt the Praetorian ‘Lieblichkeit der Harmonie’. But
such factors were characteristic of the new mode of the 1730s and 1740s in
general, and ‘gravity’ in an organ was praised by Bach and others.
In
view of the cross-currents in German organ design from 1700 to 1750, it is not
surprising that Bach should have left only a few registrations, and those only
of a general nature. The published Schübler chorale preludes (c1746)
make it clear whether the pedal is a 16' quasi-continuo bass line or a 4'
cantus firmus melody line, but they do not specify colour. The manual Prinzipal
8' and pedal Trompete 8' registered in the autograph manuscript of the Orgelbüchlein
prelude bwv600 are there as much to indicate that the
canonic voices are to sound an octave apart as to suggest actual stops to be
drawn. For a concerto or a prelude and fugue it is rarely clear on whose
authority the manuals (and particularly the manual changes) have been specified
in the manuscript copies. The subject is thus open to many solutions and
suggestions. But on no single organ that Bach is known to have played would all
his organ music have sounded at its best or been given a registration suitable
to its carefully conceived style and genre.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
12. Splendours of Europe, 1650–1800.
Between
1725 and 1750 a large number of important organs were built: the great organs
of Haarlem, Gouda, Weingarten, Herzogenburg, Naumburg, Dresden, Breslau,
Potsdam, Uppsala, Catania, Pisa, Tours, Paris (Notre Dame), Granada and Braga.
All these and many other organs of their type were designed both to fill their
churches with big sound and to tickle the ear with delicate effects. Neither
purpose was known to the 16th-century builder. The very tendency to build
organs exclusively at the west end of the church pinpoints this move towards
extremes of sound, for apart from the large conventual churches, and larger
French parish churches, the new west-end organ was the only instrument in the
building, especially in Protestant countries, where the need for a smaller
auxiliary organ in the liturgy had largely disappeared and choirs, if any,
occupied the west gallery. The generation of builders who produced the even
bigger, later organs of the 18th century (Toledo,
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Hamburg Michaeliskirche, Rostock Marienkirche,
Arnhem, Nijmegen, Amorbach, St Florian and Oliwa) or theorists who planned yet
bigger ones (Vogt, B1719, and Bédos de Celles, B1766–78) were mostly seeking to
exploit the same extremes.
Earlier,
however, characteristic national developments had frequently resulted in organs
which, though conceived within classical limits and not, as it were, stepping
outside idiomatic, traditional usage, nonetheless had greater potential than
their composers seem to have been aware of, although improvisation was widely
practised, an art of which we have little concrete knowledge in this period.
Thus the problem with organs of 1650 to 1750 is to know for certain what they
were meant to play and how they were meant to sound, whereas the problem with
organs of 1750 to 1850 is that the music for which they were built, often with
great ingenuity and unsurpassed technical skill, may be difficult to admire.
Two
good examples of the northern organ about 1650 are at Klosterneuburg and
Alkmaar; both retain many features of their originals in spite of extensive
rebuilding. Much is still unknown, however, of the detail of the originals, and
it is necessary to rely on the stop-lists, given in Table 25. At Klosterneuburg neither the Brustwerk nor even
the Rückpositiv competes with the main chest (Hauptwerk and
Pedal), either in sound or in appearance. The Hauptwerk dominates the
ensemble, in the true 16th-century tradition of central Europe; perhaps it, not
the pedal, was originally meant to take the 16' pipes in the case. The
instrument should be seen not so much as a three-manual organ but as a group of
three independent organs: Hauptwerk for postludes etc., Rückpositiv
for interludes, solos and major accompaniments, Brustwerk for continuo.
It is uncertain whether the organ originally had manual reeds, other than the
Regal; but mutations are also few, and colours were obtained by a variety of 8'
and 4' ranks. 8' colour stops were becoming very popular throughout the area
Vienna–Ulm–Prague–Vienna, and on paper the main chests of such organs often
appear misleadingly large. 14 out of 28 stops at the Týn Church, Prague (J.H.
Mundt, 1671–3), were on the Hauptwerk,
16.8.8.8.8.8.4.4.22/3.2.11/3.1.VI.IV, but four of the 8' stops were colour
changes, not chorus ranks. Salicional 8', Viola 8' and similar stops were
characteristic of late 17th-century Habsburg Europe; Salicet 4', Fugara 4' and
Dulciana 4' were common by the early 18th century; and reeds, except a pedal
rank or two, gradually disappeared. Theorists like the Cistercian writer Vogt
(B1719) emphasized 8' colour stops; and for such registration rules as those
given by J.B. Samber (Manuductio ad organum, i, Salzburg, 1704), the
conical Viola 8' was useful in many varied combinations: continuo playing,
Viola 8'; fantasias, Viola 8' + Flöte 4'; fugues, Viola 8' + Mixtur III;
versets, Viola 8' + Zimbel II.
Soon
after the organ at Klosterneuburg, organ cases in the area became divided into
a kind of Habsburg equivalent of the Werkprinzip design, with one case
for the Hauptwerk, one for the Pedal and one for an Echo chest
(Waldhausen, 1677). Such division led over the years to a rigorously applied
design followed by most Austrian organs of the mid-18th century, with a
half-case to one side of the west-end gallery (Hauptwerk), a second
half-case to the other (Pedal) and a Rückpositiv in front, the total
gallery being spacious enough to accommodate a considerable choir and orchestra
for the Mass on feast days. By 1740 or so, the keyboards would be placed (in
the form of a detached console) in a commanding position on the gallery floor,
and the various parts of the case strewn around the west-end windows, as in the
large monastery organs of Ochsenhausen, near Biberach, or Weingarten. In theory
such an arrangement might encourage idiomatic, two-chorus organ music of the
north German type, but in practice it did not.
Little
is known about the music played on the great series of Dutch organs built
between the death of Sweelinck (1621) and the vogue for Bach’s music two centuries
later. But the array of mutations and flute and reed colours on the
Laurentskerk instrument at Alkmaar would have made possible an immense variety
in the settings of, and variations on, psalm tunes (probably improvised, as
they are today). In the 1685 rebuild the Hauptwerk chest had to be
lowered (fig.43), perhaps because by then the organist
wished to be able to accompany the congregation during hymns (but such
accompaniment was then still new). It is clear how the Alkmaar organ developed
from the Brabant organ of Niehoff with its limited pedal, big Hauptwerk
chorus, 8' Rückpositiv used for solo effects, and a quasi-Oberwerk
(here placed below the main chest, however) with stops found on the main manual
of other European organs. According to John Evelyn’s diary, such Dutch organs
were used ‘only for show and to recreate the people before and after their
Devotions, while the Burgomasters were walking and conferring about their
affairs’. By association, then, the organs were secular, often indeed owned by
the town council, who saw such magnificent creations as objects of rivalry.
Hence the building of the organ at St Bavo, Haarlem, by Christian Müller
(1735–8) is to be seen as a sign of competition with Zwolle (Grote Kerk; new
organ by Schnitger’s sons, 1718–21), Alkmaar (rebuilt 1723–6), Amsterdam (Oude
Kerk; Christian Vater, 1724–6), Gouda (Jean Moreau, 1733–6) and elsewhere.
Moreau was from the south; but Müller, Vater and F.C. Schnitger were German,
and from then the Dutch organ was dominated by German builders who imported new
ideas (big pedals from Hamburg, heavy voicing from Westphalia), added them to
Dutch features, and produced large, powerful instruments, but unfortunately
often without either German brilliance or French éclat (thin reed trebles and a
Cornet designed to outline the psalm-tune melody rather than to function in a grand
jeu). Marcussen mistakenly tried to ‘correct’ the organ at Haarlem in 1961
with new pedal Mixtures and a new Great Mixture which attempted to convert the
16' to an 8' chorus and which was reversed in the 1980s. Although such tonal
matters are subjective, the cases themselves can be more clearly seen to have
lost their native Dutch characteristics, particularly the well-featured,
classical designs of the 17th century, and to have begun to sprawl. It is true
that, at Haarlem, Müller and his architect kept the traditional vertical
emphasis and other essential details in the arrangement of towers and flats;
but even there the classical pediment surmounting the best old Dutch cases gave
way to an unstructural, Baroque coat-of-arms (fig.44).
Although
the condition of the organs at Weingarten and Haarlem is nothing like as
authentic as their fame leads admirers to assume, they do serve on paper (Table 26) as useful examples of their ‘schools’, being at once both
traditional and exceptional, both formative and unapproachably ‘ideal’. The
details of the Weingarten organ – the bells, the cherrywood stops, the ivory
pipes, the doubled ranks, the undulating stops, the big Mixtures, the complex
action – require a book to themselves, and it could be that a first-rate
restoration of the instrument would fill out its tone. Nevertheless, the
principles behind its dispensing of organ colours can be seen, and Gabler’s
little quire organ in the same church contained an even clearer indication of
his passion for 8' and 4' colour stops. Some writers have described the
west-end organ as a ‘Rococo-Gothic conception’, but it is more like a southern
European grotto organ. Three echo-like divisions (Oberwerk, Unterwerk,
Kronpositiv) are bound to lead to a mocking of true organ tone, however
logical an extension it may have been of current ideas in south Germany as a
whole. Only the two Rückpositive offer well-balanced effects in the
idiomatic north German manner; yet to an 18th-century organist visiting
Weingarten after Salzburg Cathedral (organ by J.C. Egedacher, 1703–6) such Rückpositive
must have seemed conservative and slightly puzzling. The original mechanical
action must have been very troublesome to make, since even in this sprawling
and unique case (fig.45) only eight of all the case
pipes do not speak; clearly the detached console was the only practical
arrangement. The influence of the whole instrument was wide and long-lasting;
theory books (e.g. HawkinsH; Bédos de Celles, B1766–78) gave it
notoriety, and it held a significant position between the colourful Renaissance
organ of south Germany and the large factory organs of the 1830s.
Swabia
also saw a remarkably good compromise organ during the 1760s: the larger
instrument at Ottobeuren, built by K.J. Riepp (1761–8), incorporated French
elements (learnt by its builder in Burgundy) and German ones (learnt in the
vicinity of Lake Constance). Most major organs in both parish and conventual
churches in Switzerland, Württemberg and Bavaria had such a mingling of organ
cultures as to create distinct styles of their own; but the one at Ottobeuren
was a simple amalgam. All the classical French registrations were possible on
it, but so were German pedal music and hymn variations, from the evidence of
its stop-list.
Such
composite schemes were curiously rare in the 18th century. It was more
characteristic of organ building in general that even adjacent areas (e.g.
Carinthia and Veneto, or Saxony and Bohemia) had totally different organs, as
if builders of one area or religious denomination were thoroughly opposed to the
ideals of their neighbours. Some of the major religious orders, particularly
the Cistercian and Augustinian, had something of an international style
crossing political frontiers, but even this kind of uniformity was not
conspicuous. It was regional style that carried the day, giving the organ at
Klosterneuburg, for example, great influence over the one built nearby a
century later by a foreign builder well versed in other organ types
(Augustinerstift, Herzogenburg; J. Henke, 1747–52). It may well have been such
provincialism, however, that helped to produce the good, conservative designs
(Amorbach; Rot an der Rot), the late flowers of Baroque organ art that were
able to resist the extremes of fashion.
The
large organs of the late 18th century were individually distinctive, keeping
regional characteristics despite the availability to organists of many printed
sources of music from other countries. The Michaeliskirche in Hamburg had a
70-stop, three-manual organ by J.G. Hildebrandt (son of Silbermann’s pupil Zacharias
Hildebrandt); although he took with him many Saxon colours (Cornet, Unda maris,
Chalumeau etc.) and followed contemporary ideas common to many regions (no Rückpositiv,
thickening Quints etc), the instrument remained a Hamburg organ, more complete and
comprehensive than an organ could have been anywhere else. The massive case
(for which Burney did not care) has an appearance that anticipated the
19th-century; the stop-list (Table
27) is
typical of a large organ, but many writers who heard the instrument commented
on its ‘noble power’, described by Burney as ‘more striking by its force and
the richness of the harmony than by a clear and distinct melody’. Yet the organ
was no mere sacrifice to fashion, which was then rather geared to imitations of
orchestral families, of wind concertos, and the like. Theorists like Hess and
Knecht encouraged particular imitations of string stops and in general helped
to deceive organists into thinking they could duplicate orchestral effects. So
did G.J. Vogler, who typifies the less reputable side of late 18th-century
organ playing, and whose bizarre organ-concert programmes sometimes proved
irresistible to popular audiences in large cities from London to Vienna.
Vogler’sSimplification system, however, has received more attention
than it merits historically, for the development of the organ would probably
have been little different without him. More important was the impasse brought
about at the end of the century by the technical perfection of the late Baroque
organ. Quite apart from the Napoleonic disruption, the organ historian must
feel that the multiplied colour stops of St Florian and Oliwa monastic churches
(1770s), the reeds of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Poitiers and Toledo, and
the choruses of Hamburg and Rostock parish churches, all pushed the classical
organ as far as it would go. A total rethinking was necessary early in the next
century.
Organ, §V: 1450–1800
13. Organs in the Americas.
The
first organs in the Americas were brought from Spain to Central America by
Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in the mid-16th century. During the 17th
century the use of organs – both imported and locally built – was widespread
throughout Spanish colonial America: 17 small organs are reported as being in
use in 1630 in what is now New Mexico. (See §V, 9, above.) By the early 19th
century small organs were used in most mission outposts, including some in
present-day California. In the northern French colonies, there was a church
organ at Quebec City as early as 1657, and between 1698 and 1705 a two-manual
organ was imported for Notre Dame, Montreal.
The
first documented use of an organ in a church in the British or German colonies
of the eastern seaboard dates from 1703. A small German religious colony had
settled near Philadelphia in 1694, apparently bringing with it a small positive
organ, and this was lent in 1703 for use at a Lutheran ordination ceremony in
the ‘Old Swede’s’ Church, Philadelphia. In 1713 a four-stop chamber organ of
the ‘Father’ Smith school was placed in King’s Chapel, Boston; it was mentioned
as early as 1708 in connection with its original owner, Thomas Brattle, by the
diarist Samuel Sewall, and it may have been imported before 1700.
English
organs, including some significant examples of the work of Bridge, Jordan,
Green, England and Snetzler, continued to be imported in increasing numbers to
the eastern coastal colonies during the rest of the 18th century. The first
person known to have built an organ in the colonies was Johann Gottlob Klemm, a
Saxon who emigrated in 1733 and who built several organs, the largest of them a
three-manual instrument completed for Trinity Church, New York, in 1741. His
work was carried on by his apprentice, David Tannenberg, who built more than 40
organs between 1758 and his death in 1804, many for Moravian churches in a
small area of Pennsylvania (fig.46). His largest
instrument, however, was built in 1790 for Zion Lutheran Church in
Philadelphia. Other German-born builders, notably Philip Feyring, were active
around Philadelphia during the late 18th century.
Tannenberg’s
work reflected the influence of the central German school, as transmitted by
Klemm, but he also kept pace with newer European developments and was familiar
with the writings of the theorist G.A. Sorge. Following in his footsteps were
Conrad Doll and several generations of the Krauss and Dieffenbach families,
who, culturally removed from the urban mainstream of East Coast organ building,
continued to produce small organs in the ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ tradition for
rural churches well past 1850.
Puritan
(Calvinist) objections to the use of instruments in worship prevailed
throughout the northern colonies until the last decade of the 18th century, so
that most of the early church organs were built for the Anglicans, Lutherans
and Moravians. There is also evidence for a number of domestic chamber organs
in this period. Most organs (of all types) were still imported, but after the
mid-18th century a few American-built instruments began to appear in the
colonies north of Pennsylvania.
The
first true organ builder in Boston was Thomas Johnston, who, beginning about
1753, built a small number of church and chamber organs modelled after imported
English instruments. Among his followers were Josiah Leavitt and Henry Pratt,
both of whom built several small church and chamber organs, primarily for rural
churches west and north of Boston. The prejudice against instruments began to
break down in churches of the Puritan tradition by the 1790s, creating a new
demand for church organs that was largely met by American builders.
These
early New England builders were essentially self-taught and supported
themselves only partly through organ building. New York and Philadelphia,
however, attracted some English-trained builders during the final years of the
18th century. One of the earliest to arrive was Charles Tawse, who in 1786
advertised himself as a builder of ‘finger and barrel organs’ in New York. He
later moved to Philadelphia, where he was joined in 1795 by John Lowe, trained
in the workshop of Gray of London. The most notable emigrant, however, was John
Geib, who shortly after his arrival in New York around 1798 built several
substantial church organs, most of them for New York, although some went to
other cities including Providence, Rhode Island.
Organ
VI. Some developments, 1800–1930
1. General influences c1800.
2. 19th-century
technical advances.
3. Some influential
organs.
4. Electricity and the
organ.
5. The organ in the
early 20th century.
Organ, §VI: Some
developments 1800–1930
1. General influences c1800.
A
significant amount of rethinking did not occur until well into the first half
of the 19th century. In some countries, notably Italy, England, the USA, the
Netherlands and Scandinavia, no significant change in direction was evident
until the second third of the century; the chief difference between an average
organ of 1790 and 1840 in these countries was that the latter was bigger, and
the builder had probably explored further the simple colour stops, Swell boxes
and pedal departments. But colour stops were by nature foreign to Scandinavian
organs, pedals to English and American, and Swell boxes to Dutch. In other
countries, notably France, Spain, Austria, central and southern Germany and
their neighbours (Bohemia, Poland etc.), events outside music not only caused
organ building to stagnate in the late 18th century but ultimately gave to the
revival of organs in the 1830s an impetus towards new techniques.
In
Austria the reforms of church music undertaken by Joseph II during the 1780s
encouraged simple organs in parish churches – instruments contrasting hugely
with the large monastic creations of St Florian (1770) and Heiligenkreuz
(1802). In countries occupied by the French in the wake of the Revolution, such
as the Netherlands, Spain, south Germany, Austria, Prussia, Poland and Moravia,
church services were often suspended. Only here and there were organs
destroyed; more physical damage was done in France itself, where the Revolution
was followed by a scarcity of funds and then, after 1815, an equally harmful
overreaction: from 1792 a church may have been closed to Christian use but its
organ was just as useful for ‘awakening and inspiring a holy love of the
Fatherland’, as the new département administrators knew. But in southern
Germany and Austria it was the dissolution of the monasteries (particularly
after 1803) that changed organ tradition. In Spain and Portugal the organ
suffered an eclipse, only partial in some areas but severely evident in others,
taken in the wake of Wellington’s and Napoleon’s armies and by the
reappropriation of church funds in 1830. Further north, Denmark kept its organ
traditions largely undisturbed, but Sweden produced some advanced ideas in the
1820s, not least as a result of cultural ties with Saxony and central Germany.
Some
of the important influences on organs and their music at the end of the 18th
century were more directly musical. One was the theory of difference tones (see
Difference tone), quite familiar to theorists since Tartini. Vogler’s ideas were
based in part on the observation that the exploitation of harmonics might
enable builders to dispense with large pipes, the combination of 16', 102/3'
and 62/5' for instance, producing a 32' effect. But the idea is essentially
naive, and Vogler must have had other assets to justify the respect with which
he was held in Sweden and Salzburg.
A
second major influence, or a symptom of the new emphases, was the idea
propounded by J.H. Knecht (1795) and others that the organ was a kind of
one-man orchestra, its three manuals having an orchestral spectrum of strings,
brass and woodwind. To this end, Vogler’s specially made travelling organ, the
Orchestrion (see Orchestrion (1)), was hawked all over Europe
during the 1790s. There was of course nothing new either in stops imitating
string instruments or in regarding the organ as a ‘compendium of all instruments
whatsoever’ (Mersenne, 1636–7); nor were organ transcriptions new, being as old
as written-down organ music itself. But by 1800 the orchestra itself was
heavier, more stratified and conventionalized, and, most significantly, more
expressive than it was in 1600, and imitations of it would therefore be further
removed from the nature of the organ as then known.
A
third factor was the general assumption that the hundreds of new parish church
organs of average size required by about 1820 were to be built chiefly for the
sake of accompanying the congregation, for which unison pitches, especially 8'
stops, were the most useful. This may have been partly because mutations were
less carefully made in a period of quickly built organs, partly because
intelligent theorists like Wilke despised Voglerian claims about harmonic
stops, and partly because Mixtures were difficult to justify in theory. Some of
the ill-repute of Mixtures in the period may also have been due to their
all-too-common Tierce rank (particularly ill-suited to equal temperament, which
was coming into use in this period in all countries save England and the USA,
where it was not accepted until the 1850s). Such an organ as that at
Karlskrona, Sweden (P.Z. Strand, 1827), might have got its characteristic
specification, whatever its voicing, in reaction to poorly made mutations and
Mixtures too often met with at the time: ..\Frames/F922883.html
A
further influence on the design of organs soon after 1820 was the more
international scope of the repertory available to an average organist. In
England, for example, such firms as Boosey imported an immense amount of German
organ music of all kinds during the first few decades of the century, including
a translation of Rinck’s popular tutor, Praktische Orgel-Schule (Eng.
trans., 1825). These imports reached their culmination in the international
Bach revival. Bach sonatas and other major works (‘Grand Preludes and Fugues’)
were available shortly after 1800. Partly in response to this, many older
English and French organs, and some Italian and Spanish, were being altered by
1840: pedals added, short-compass manuals completed, second choruses added. The
result, however, was not that national organ types lost their identity but that
they kept it in a less overt and certainly less charming manner. No doubt this
situation was in part due to the ‘organ ethos’ of the period: a general
anti-Baroque view of organs as sombre, solemn, ecclesiastical and
ecclesiological objects whose music (as can be seen from Vincent Novello’s
travel diaries) was expected to be more ‘elevated’ than the galanteries
of the previous generation. But it prompted organists of different national
schools to suppose that their organ alone was the best for Bach; countless
English organists, for example, have resisted the idea that Bach did not write
for the Swell pedal.
Apart
from the details produced by such factors, several general observations can be
made. There were strangely few magnificent organs built anywhere between 1800
and 1825, and the new big instruments of 1825–50 show a bigger break with the
past than those of any other period in organ history. Casework as well underwent
extreme changes in design and ornamental detail. While it is probably true that
in 1830 churches spent less on their organs than they did in 1730, the later
organs were in fact larger. The sounds the new organs on the Continent were
expected to produce accorded with the sobriety and gloom of the post-Revolution
church, although the organist had a more variegated repertory to choose from
than at any previous period. Few great organ builders stand out between 1800
and 1825, and major practical and theoretical developments were left to the
next generation. Some conservative areas, however, kept their traditions: the Brustwerk
of 1898 at St Anders, Copenhagen, must be regarded as a survival rather than a
revival.
In
the USA, particularly in Boston and New York, a native school of builders was
rapidly developing in the early 19th century to meet the demands of the many
new churches in the expanding cities and prospering rural areas. These
builders, notably Goodrich and Appleton in Boston, and Erben and Hall in New
York, worked in the refined style inherited from 18th-century England and may
be said to have brought it to its final fruition. Attractive as their
instruments often were, both visually and tonally, their musical use rarely
transcended the needs of a fairly simple church service, and the music of Bach
was almost certainly not attempted by American organists until the second half
of the century. By the 1850s the effect of continental developments, both tonal
and mechanical, was being felt, and large factories (such as that of E. &
G.G. Hook in Boston) began replacing the small workshops.
Organ, §VI: Some
developments 1800–1930
2. 19th-century technical advances.
Audsley’s
monument to the Romantic organ, The Art of Organ-Building (B1905), shows
that the organ builder of about 1900 had a vast array of pipework to choose
from; he also had many types of chest, action, bellows, gadgets and case
designs at his disposal. On the whole Audsley was describing a high-quality
instrument, but the profusion of elements he described affected the smallest
and cheapest builder. Similarly, the organist’s repertory was in theory
immense, although in practice quite restricted, save in the case of the
recitalist. It was towards these two positions of technical and musical
profusion, of embarrassing choice for both builder and player, that the organ
gradually moved during the 19th century.
Different
areas of Europe exercised major influence at different periods, and often an
individual builder advanced concepts or techniques without which the overall
development would have been different. Publicity for a new idea became
increasingly easy (particularly from such concourses as the Great Exhibition at
London, 1851, and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876); builders
travelled far to view developments, published (and read) papers or became
associated with well-known theorists, and began to take commissions farther
from home than they had been used to doing. New and rare stops were introduced
into such foreign organs, perhaps sometimes for ostentation (e.g. Schulze’s
three-sided and cylindrical wooden pipes at Doncaster, 1862). An advanced organ
of 1825 anywhere in Europe would at any rate have features gathered from
various sources: from changing taste (multiple string stops), theory book
notions of harmonics, quick factory methods, foreign influences (e.g. English
Swells) and new visual ideas. 40 years later the amalgam was yet richer, and
large organs produced in the factories of Walcker, Sauer, Willis, Hill and
Cavaillé-Coll were taken all over the world.
Thus
the developments about 1825 in central Germany had an influence throughout
Europe, not least because English and French organs of the period were
particularly susceptible to new ideas. The theorists Wolfram (B1815), Seidel
(B1843) and above all Töpfer (B1833, B1843, B1855) were better known in
Hamburg, Paris and London than Praetorius had been. Töpfer’s new scientific
description of the techniques of building (with tables and technical details
for pipe-scales, wind-chambers, pallets, bellows, action etc.) were immensely
useful to every new builder. His ratio for pipe-scales (Normalmensur,
known in English as Normal Scale or Diapason Norm) was a theoretical model, not
honed to the particular conditions of any church or local tradition; but it was
adopted by builders of cheaper, commercial organs. Better builders such as J.F.
Schulze also found it useful, and in itself it is not far removed from what had
been customary in central Germany.
Töpfer’s
calculation was that the area of the cross-section of a Principal pipe was
√8 multiplied by the area of the cross-section of a pipe an octave
higher. Pipe diameters therefore halved at the 17th inclusive pipe (i.e. eight
whole tones above), as they had for many an organ before Töpfer (see §III, 1,
above). Such a simple constant was convenient at the workbench, as were
Töpfer’s other formulae for calculating the wind consumption and the height of
the pipe mouth. Meanwhile the improved bellows and reservoirs of his period not
only allowed copious wind and constant pressure but encouraged builders to
experiment with higher pressure for the pipes or with pipes scaled to either
extreme. Since organists now demanded to be able to play with thicker registrations,
these other formulae were at least as important as constant scalings.
Many
of the experiments were short-lived. Free reeds were popular in central Germany
and Alsace from about 1780 to 1850 but not often elsewhere, although Gray and
Davidson used 32' free reeds at the Crystal Palace (1857) and Leeds Town Hall
(1859), and they were sporadically used as a novelty stop in large American
organs as late as the 1870s. New materials, such as the cast-iron case and zinc
pipes at Hohenofen (1818), became associated with poorer instruments once the
novelty had worn off, and only zinc, useful for larger pipes, has stood the
test of time. Solo manuals were reserved for the largest instruments, and
double pedal-boards were used by Walcker in a few of his largest organs, but
octave couplers and detached consoles never lost popularity once they had
gained it soon after 1830. In England, Swell boxes were constantly improved,
most often with a view to reducing the closed box to a true pp (Hodges
of Bristol, 1824), and their influence soon spread to France. In Germany, J.
Wilke wrote major articles during the 1820s in the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung listing experimental devices for producing Swell effects such as
triple touch, operating couplers or bringing on more stops as the key was
depressed; lowered wind pressure brought about by a net curtain in the
wind-trunk (Vogler); ‘roof swells’, devices for raising the lid of Swell boxes;
and ‘door swells’ or ‘jalousie swells’, the English systems of (horizontal)
Venetian shutters, perhaps encasing a complete organ. For most of the century,
the Swell box mechanism remained simple: horizontal shutters were controlled by
a wooden or metal foot-lever to the right of the pedal keys, which had to be
notched into position if the box was to remain open. With such pedals, gradual
crescendo or diminuendo was impractical, and had to await the development of
vertical balanced shutters towards the end of the century. Only occasionally
were other systems experimented with, such as Bryceson’s hydraulic system of
about 1865 in which water was communicated along a lead pipe from the pedal to
the Swell mechanism, but remote control of the Swell shutters did not become
practical until the development of pneumatic mechanisms, and even then the
French continued to favour a mechanical connection.
The
resulting organ of about 1840 was usually a compromise between old and new. At
Halberstadt Cathedral, for example, J.F. Schulze built a four-manual organ in
which three manuals and pedal were of the large, standard classical type
familiar in the later 18th century, and couplers and accessories were
conventional, even to a Zimbelstern; but the fourth manual, its purpose very
unclassical, played new stops in a high Echo chest: ..\Frames/F922884.html
Such
Echo organs were a luxury, like apse organs in a few English cathedrals a
century later. More popular in the advanced organ of 1850 were the Solo
organ, often
on higher wind pressure, and the full Swell organ with its characteristic 16'
reed and bright Mixture (Henry Willis, 1855). In Germany, Swells of the distant
Echowerk type remained popular with builders such as König (St
Maximilian, Düsseldorf, 1855).
It
was E.F. Walcker who is said to have invented (or improved) the cone-chest (Kegellade,
see fig.9), which he patented in 1842. Cavaillé-Coll, Willis and
other great builders rejected it, as did American builders after a brief
experimental attempt by the avant-garde Boston builder Simmons in his organ for
Harvard University (1859). In America, cone-chests were briefly attempted a
decade later (again unsuccessfully, owing to the adverse effects of the
climate) by the immigrant Moritz Baumgarten, who had trained with Walcker. But
Walcker’s output was immense, and certainly the boom in north European organ
building meant that the more systematic a builder’s concepts (and hence his
workshop), the bigger part he could play in providing organs for the hundreds
of new parish churches of that period. Metal-planing machines, for examples,
were drawn by Töpfer and manufactured by Walcker; such machine tools provided
pipe metal of great precision and uniformity, obviating all capricious and
‘imperfect’ elements in pipe manufacture. The Walcker firm moved to Ludwigsburg
in 1820 and was able from there to command a vast area of central Europe, and
eventually to export worldwide. Its organ for the Paulskirche, Frankfurt
(1827–33), was highly influential, with its 74 stops on three manuals and two
pedal-boards; but it too was a compromise. The 14-stop Swell was a large Echo
organ, with free reeds and Dulcianas; the action was mechanical, the chests
slider-chests, the couplers standard. However, the Swell mechanism was
balanced, and once the free reeds were replaced by long-resonator reed stops,
the specification became standard. Indeed, the whole Walcker style had great
influence, from the Rhine to the Black Sea. But in 1849 (Ulm Minster) and 1863
(Music Hall, Boston, USA), Walcker monster organs still had not outgrown
compromise; more thoroughly modern designs were achieved by builders less set
in their ways, such as A.W. Gottschalg whose large organ for Cologne Cathedral
was influenced by Cavaillé-Coll. The influence of the Walcker instrument in
Boston on American organ building, already well established in its own conventions,
has been much overrated. The cone-chest had already been tried and rejected,
Americans continued to develop their own scaling and voicing systems (although
influenced by Töpfer and other theorists and by general European trends), and
the only real novelty, the free-reed stops, enjoyed but limited vogue. The
importation of the Walcker organ was, in truth, an aberration, for in the
period in which it was built the major American builders could and did produce
large, well-engineered and tonally sophisticated Romantic organs for large
churches, cathedrals and concert halls (Mechanics Hall, Worcester,
Massachusetts: Hook, 1864).
In
France much important work was done during the 1820s and 1830s before
Cavaillé-Coll began to dominate the scene. The Englishman John Abbey went to
France (at the instigation of Erard) to work in the late 1820s, taking with him
the improved English horizontal bellows, Venetian Swell, balanced action and
refined voicing, and rebuilding organs from Reims to Caen. His Swell at Amiens
in 1833, for example, resembled a typical English Echo organ of 1750:
8.8.4.V.8.8. Further east, Daublaine & Callinet came under the Walcker
influence with their free reeds, double pedal-boards and general specifications
in a few large organs, but essentially Callinet and his fellow-Alsatian Stiehr
remained conservative. Their small and average-size church organs retained the
basic classical physical and tonal layout in the mid-19th century, but with
some suppression of upperwork and introduction of Gambas and Harmonic Flutes,
and with the use of free reeds with resonators, primarily in the Pedal. By 1841
Cavaillé-Coll was making overblowing stops, both flue and reed. His new scheme
that year for the organ of St Denis is discussed in §3 below.
High
pressure was applied to reeds in England by the late 1830s, the first
well-known example being Hill’s Tuba mirabilis at Birmingham Town Hall (1840).
But although by 1855 Hopkins could write that ‘stops of this kind are now made
by nearly all the English organ-builders’, no real technical details are known
of these early stops. On the analogy of wood and brass wind-instrument playing
in general, treble pipes in the reed ranks were also put on higher pressure in
larger organs from the organ of St Denis onwards. This of itself was a major
advance, as can be readily seen by comparing a Trumpet at St Sulpice with one
at Haarlem. For centuries French builders had appreciated that reed trebles
needed ‘boosting’ if the splendid bass was not to peter out above g' or
so: hence one of the functions of the mounted Cornet in the 18th century.
Cavaillé-Coll’s overblowing double-length flue and reed pipes were thus new not
in principle but in character. A Flûte harmonique or Trompette harmonique is so
made for bigger, rounder tone and, unlike the narrow-scaled overblowing flutes
of the 17th century, always requires strong, copious wind. The formation of
nodes in overblowing flue pipes is helped by a small hole piercing the pipe
rather less than halfway along from the mouth, the exact position affecting the
overtone content of the pipe. In reeds, the hole is not necessary. The tone of
neither flue nor reed harmonic pipes blends idiomatically with the Principal
chorus; 17th-century builders therefore reserved such flutes for solo colour.
Reed and flue harmonic stops show the desire felt in the 1840s for smooth reeds
that stay in tune, and precisely voiced flue stops with no initial ‘chiff’ (a
puff of wind articulating the start of each note) or articulation. Full- or
double-length resonators gave smoothness to the reeds, while in flue pipes the
chiff was eliminated by a heavier nicking of the languid, by ‘ears and beard’
(see §III, 1, above) and by roller-beards (dowels, circular in section, placed
between the ears near the windway), all aiding prompt, smooth speech.
Further
technical advances made between 1825 and 1845 concern the action. Many
19th-century builders were ingenious with purely mechanical devices for such
accessories as double Venetian swells (H. Willis, Gloucester Cathedral, 1847),
stop-combinations (Ladegast, Sauer, Roosevelt), crescendo pedals (Haas) and
various couplers. Improved bellows-with-reservoir, greater application of two
or even more wind pressures in an organ, improved slider-chests (and eventually
cone-chests) were all at the skilled builder’s disposal by 1845. So was the
‘Barker lever’ or mechanical-pneumatic action (see fig.8). By 1833, Booth in England and Hamilton
in Scotland had constructed such actions. C.S. Barker worked on power
pneumatics and compressed air, offering an apparatus to York Minster (1833),
Birmingham Town Hall (1834–5) and, in France, to Cavaillé-Coll (1837). The
pneumatic principle could also be applied to sliders and to such accessories as
‘thumb-pistons’ (H. Willis, 1851). Barker’s French patent was taken out in
1839, and he applied his action to the organ under construction at St Denis by
Cavaillé-Coll, whose high-pressure stops were indeed said to have been
unplayable without this key-action. It was probably also in France that the
first fully pneumatic action was made, in which all the tracker’s backfalls,
squares, rollers etc. were replaced by one pneumatic tube from key to pallet.
The system is accredited to P.-A. Moitessier (1845), and was later modified
with a partly mechanical action (Fermis, 1866) and adopted by such major
builders as Willis (the divided organ at St Paul’s Cathedral, 1872). Although
Walcker applied this so-called tubular-pneumatic action to his cone-chests in
1889, the action gained only a minor success outside England (and, to some
extent, the USA) because the action was sluggish when the keys were too far
removed from the chests, although it was used extensively in Australia and New
Zealand until well into the 20th century. As for the chests themselves,
English, American and French builders preferred improved slider-chests to
barless chests, often modifying the larger pallets with a secondary mechanism
allowing them to be opened without undue key-pressure (Willis patent dated
1861, etc.). Audsley was witness to much American activity in designing
‘pneumatic chests’ in the late 19th century. Around the turn of the century,
American builders such as Estey developed a reliable tubular-pneumatic action
using ventil-chests, which they employed quite extensively, as did Möller and
some of the Midwestern builders, and Steere obtained the rights to the system
developed by the German builder Weigle. But other builders, such as Hook &
Hastings, Hutchings and, in Canada, Casavant, went almost directly from
Barker-machine mechanical to electro-pneumatic actions.
Electric
actions were devised during the same period in England (Wilkinson 1826,
Gauntlett 1852, Goundry 1863) and France (Du Moncel, Barker, Stein & fils),
but these early experiments were incapable of reliable practical application.
Electro-pneumatic action (see fig.11) overcomes the difficulty of directly
opening a pallet by electro-magnets in that the magnet opens instead the
smaller valve of a pneumatic motor which then opens the pallet. One such system
is usually accredited to Albert Peschard (c1860); as a result of his
work Barker took out a patent in 1868, and in turn licensed Bryceson to build
such an action in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (1868). According to Hopkins,
an electrification for the organ at Gloucester Cathedral for the Three Choirs
Festival of 1868 allowed the keyboards to be placed nearer the conductor, far
from the pipes, an obvious and updated version of the ‘long movements’ of the
tracker-action organ used in the 1784 Commemoration of Handel in Westminster
Abbey. A decade or more before the end of the century Walcker in Germany,
Merklin in France, Roosevelt in the USA, Casavant in Canada and Willis in
England were all producing reliable electric actions which allowed them to
build detached consoles some way away from the organs high up at the west end
or in a triforium gallery of the quire. The stop mechanism could also be
operated electrically (Bryceson patent, 1868). Particularly in the USA, many
electric actions and individual pipe-valve chests (‘barless’ chests) were
patented and improved during the 1890s, becoming a norm shortly after 1900,
some 25 years before the Willis firm, for example, turned exclusively to
electro-pneumatic action. During the first half of the 20th century, most
important organ builders throughout the world devised one or other type of
electro-pneumatic action (see Whitworth, B1930). Clearly electric systems could
serve accessories such as stop-combinations (whereby a button or switch of some
kind could bring on pre-selected stops), or Swell pedals operating shutters
around part or all of the pipework. Much of the ingenuity exercised on such
accessories belongs to the early 20th century rather than the 19th.
Organ, §VI: Some
developments 1800–1930
3. Some influential organs.
Reference
has already been made to Walcker’s organ for the Paulskirche, Frankfurt, and
Schulze’s for Halberstadt Cathedral. Walcker’s habitual scheme was close to
such later 18th-century organs as that at the Michaeliskirche, Hamburg, with a
large, heavy Great organ (often 32') and a Pedal booming and powerful yet
removed from true chorus purposes. Other German firms such as Schulze and
Ladegast seem often to have made a brighter sound, with large-scale Mixtures
and a tonal chorus brash yet recognizably in a tradition. Schulze’s influence
in England was considerable as his large, full-sounding Diapasons caught the
taste of the time and influenced the work of builders such as Lewis for some
decades after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Even his little colour stop, the
narrow-scaled Lieblich Gedackt, became standard in English organs for the next
100 years. Such builders had a high standard of workmanship and the mass of
‘good solid pipework’ of foundational pitches in an influential organ like
Sauer’s for the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, was seen as a great advance on earlier
organs with their greater percentage of higher-pitched stops. The craftsmanship
and materials in a major Cavaillé-Coll organ are immensely impressive, as are
the spaciousness (allowing pipes ‘room to speak’) and complicated actions and
the careful planning of several chest levels. The drawings of the various
elevations, tiers and cross-sections of the St Sulpice organ, for example, are
witness to one of the great engineering masterpieces of the 19th century.
The
St Denis organ has a well-known position in organ history, and its restoration
in 1987–8 enabled players and builders to evaluate it for the youthful
masterpiece that it is. The casework had already been designed when several
builders tendered for the work, and Cavaillé-Coll’s two plans of 1833 and 1841
show the great changes in organ building during that crucial decade. Flutes and
mutations were reduced, overblowing stops were introduced, string stops added
harmonic complexity, Barker’s action allowed new arrangements of the chests,
and the wind supply was increased and improved. Despite its ancestry in Bédos
de Celles’ scheme for a large 32' organ, the instrument at St Denis (Table 28) was a great step along the 19th-century path. The Bombarde
and Pedal departments became an ideal for hundreds of French or French-inspired
organs over the next century or so; the scaling throughout became wider than
classical French, and the voicing, as well as the wind pressure, stronger. It
is not always clear how Cavaillé-Coll intended his organs to be registered, but
since such stops as the Flûte harmonique are simply new versions of the
auxiliary 8' ranks drawn in old fonds d’orgue combinations, it is likely
that he expected them to be used in choruses as well as solos (an interesting
characteristic of the Flûte harmonique is that the upper range has a stronger,
smoother character than the lower octaves, and one can play both solo and
accompaniment on the same stop). Much the same could be said for the string
stops (with tuning-slots at the top of the pipe) and the thick, stopped
Bourdons. Nicking of languids was generally severe, at least in later organs of
this builder; this, added to the slots cut into even the smallest Mixture
pipes, aided smooth, constant tone. Conical and narrow-scaled stopped pipes
were not conspicuous, and Cavaillé-Coll’s spectrum of pipe forms was not
particularly great. The foundation stops (jeux de fonds) of one manual
were placed on one wind-chest, the reeds and (sometimes) flute mutations (jeux
de combinaison) were placed on another. Each chest could have its own wind
pressure and each could be controlled by a valve (‘ventil’) that admitted wind
only when required, thus allowing a registration to be prepared in advance, but
not brought on until needed. The Grand orgue was never underbuilt in
relation to the Swell, as it often was in England, nor did the reeds lose their
brilliance. Feeder and reservoir bellows were generous, and the pneumatic
action somewhat cumbersome in the space it took. As with Schulze organs,
soundboards were ample in size for the boldly treated pipework. But neither
electric actions nor general crescendo gadgets were found on Cavaillé-Coll’s
organs; indeed, he is recorded as saying that he could see no advantage in the
use of electricity. (His showroom is illustrated in Cavaillé-Coll,
Aristide.)
In
Italy, Serassi, like his French and English colleagues, ‘extended’ local
traditions and made many quite large and impressive-sounding organs of a
curious Venetian compromise. The main manual would control 20 or more stops,
including 16' or even 32' Principale and flutes and Violas of 8' and 4'; most
chorus stops were divided; the highest ranks were collected into Mixtures; and
solo and chorus reeds were strong in tone. One or two subsidiary manuals, of
six to ten halved stops often in a Swell box, provided echo effects but no true
chorus. The compass was long (frequently from C'); the pedal organ had
six to eight bass stops; and there were many accessories, both sounding (bells,
thunder, drum) and mechanical (composition pedals, couplers, including octave
and suboctave). Some flamboyant music was written for organs of this type, by
V.A. Petrali, Giacomo Davide and others.
In
Spain, organ building came to something of a standstill; with the exception of
a two-rank Voz celeste, the stop-list of Pedro Roques’s 1870 organ for Cadiz
Cathedral could have been written a century or more earlier. The farther cities
of eastern Europe were completely conquered by central German and Bohemian
organ building, organ repertory and organ players by the 19th century. The
outposts of German organ art in east Prussia and Silesia had long known large
instruments (both Protestant and Roman Catholic) and the new techniques led to
wide dissemination of ideas. Occasionally a builder would try something new,
such as Buchholz’s solo organ: 16.8.8.8.8.8.4, in the ‘Black’ Church (1839) at
Kronstadt (now Braşov, Romania); but on the whole builders were more
anxious to improve action, accessories, bellows and chests of the more
conventional organs.
In
many ways the country best able to develop its organ was England, where a new
awareness of foreign designs and repertory coincided with favourable economic
conditions and the growing popularity of organs in secular concert halls and
large nonconformist churches. While much work remains to be done on the
position of the organ in France and Italy during the period 1830–50, the
general picture of the English organ is clear enough. During the 1820s, the
Choir organ was superseded by the Swell as the major secondary division; pedals
came to be regarded as normal (though at first only with a rank or two of
large-scaled wooden pipes); the compass generally remained at G'; and
organists did as well as they could with the newly favoured music of J.S. Bach
– Das wohltemperirte Clavier being as much played as the true organ
music. Much of the newness of the British organ before Henry Willis’s
influential instrument for the 1851 Exhibition has been accredited to the
friendship between H.J. Gauntlett, the composer and organist, and William Hill,
organ builder and former partner in the firm of Elliot. About 1833 Gauntlett
visited Haarlem, apparently on the advice of Samuel Wesley, and there are
various hints throughout Gauntlett’s career as an adviser on organs that such
instruments were in his mind. His personal library too shows him to have been a
good example of the outward-looking early Victorian musician. Of the dozen or
so organs built by Hill under Gauntlett’s influence, the one at Great George
Street Chapel, Liverpool (1841), was the most indicative of things to come.
Like Hopkins, Gauntlett knew enough German organ music to see the C
compass as most useful for manuals, while S.S. Wesley favoured G'
compass even on the new Willis masterpiece of St George’s Hall, Liverpool. Much
the same reason lay behind Gauntlett’s scheme for the pedal departments of
larger organs, for example the one at Christ Church, Newgate Street, London (a
1690 Harris instrument extensively rebuilt by Hill 1827–38); such a scheme (Table 29) presupposed ‘continental scaling’ and not the large
open-wood pedal scales described by Hopkins as more than twice too large.
Cavaillé-Coll visited Hill’s workshops in 1844, as he did others
at that period, and the influence they may have had on each other deserves
closer study. The French, German and Italian stop names of many Hill-Gauntlett
organs suggest at least paper knowledge of and interest in foreign organs; as
late as 1871, Willis’s new organ for the Royal Albert Hall can be related
closely to Cavaillé-Coll’s for St Sulpice. Hill’s Liverpool organ was a
compromise between traditional English and new continental styles, with a
16-stop Swell (including 16' reed), a small Choir organ of flutes, a
high-pressure Tuba played from the Swell, six couplers, five composition
pedals, and a complete compass of C–d'–f'''. Hill also designed a new
kind of pallet that slid open and admitted high-pressure wind without increasing
the touch-resistance. Neither he nor Gauntlett felt obliged to give up the
long-established tradition of combining many international features: their
organ at St Olave, Southwark (1846), for instance, was almost Serassian in its
big Great and its solo Swell. It was left to Willis’s organ for St George’s
Hall, Liverpool (1855), to establish fully the ‘first modern British organ’ (Table 30), which remained an ideal throughout the British Empire at
its apogee. Less opulent instruments by Willis and the builders he influenced
would merely have had fewer choices of 8' and 4' colour. Large though such
organs were, their priority was not necessarily traditional organ repertory;
rather they encouraged even further the age-old regard for large organs per
se, useful for transcriptions of orchestral and vocal music and impressive
as engineering projects with such innovations as inclined stop-jambs, pneumatic
thumb-pistons, concave and radiating pedal-board (perfected by Willis soon
after 1851 but not adopted in America until the 1890s, and even later on the
continent), Barker levers to each department, varied wind pressures, new
wind-raising devices, pneumatic couplers and a Swell pedal. The Swell alone was
a good example of the general attitude. Of the ‘double Venetian front’ at
Gloucester Cathedral (1847), Willis himself observed that ‘the pianissimo was
simply astounding’ but gave no reason why he thought this a desirable aim.
The old-fashioned unequal temperament at Liverpool, applied on the
advice of S.S. Wesley, was changed in 1867 (although the old G' compass
was not changed to C until 1898). The wind pressure of the solo reeds
was raised to 48·5 cm in the bass and 62 cm in the treble. Along with greater
power went the demand for apparatus to control it. In 1857 Willis had patented
a crescendo pedal – a foot-lever rotating a cylinder that activated pneumatic
motors at the ends of the sliders. There were many other such devices,
including one by Walcker (copied briefly by Hook & Hastings), in which a
horizontal sliding metal bar was substituted for the foot-lever. In later
organs, Willis took his schemes to a logical end by ousting the Choir organ for
a Solo organ in certain three-manual instruments (e.g. Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford, 1877); already at Gloucester (1847) the Swell had been made nearly
three times as large as the Choir.
It is clear from the lists of specifications given by Hopkins and
Rimbault, as it is in earlier lists by Seidel, Hamilton and others, that each
major firm about 1850 had its hallmarks. Each introduced into many organs a
characteristic stop (e.g. Hill’s Octave Clarion 2') or principle of construction
or occasional foible (e.g. Cavaillé-Coll’s Septième ranks); each had its own
patented action, chest and wind-raising device; and each had a known attitude
towards such major developments as harmonic reeds, either exploiting or
rejecting them. Major German organs built about 1860 were in general either
less inventive or more traditional than in England and France, and this
difference was reflected in those organs of the USA and the British Empire that
followed the foreign models favoured by their respective builders. St George’s
Hall, Liverpool, had the ideal town-hall organ, a far cry from such modest
concert organs as Elliot’s in the Hanover Square Rooms, London (1804, 12
stops). It was the secular organ (Exeter Hall, London, and Birmingham Town
Hall, both 1849) that first saw the application of the pneumatic lever to key
action and one of Hill’s secular organs in London (the Panopticon, 1853) that
first had pneumatically operated sliders, as well as higher pressure for treble
pipes and a reversible crescendo pedal pushing out the organ stops one by one.
The Solo organ or fourth manual, whether enclosed (Leeds, 1859) or not, also
had its origins in the town-hall organ. The emphasis behind such contemporary
designs as, say, Willis’s organ for St Paul’s Cathedral (1872) and Hill’s for
Melbourne Town Hall (1870) reflects their contrasting ecclesiastical and
secular natures: one would expect the latter to have bigger Solo manuals,
smaller Choir manuals, perhaps a bigger compass, and certainly a larger array
of unusual tone-effects.
It was the crescendo and diminuendo of a British town-hall organ
(Glasgow; T.C. Lewis, 1877) that led Hans von Bülow to write to the local
newspaper and claim never to have ‘met with an organ so good in Germany’.
Indeed, by comparison the German organ may well have seemed a dreary
instrument, with little ability to blend or offer the organist much delight in
its tone, touch or expressive musical potential. It can hardly be assumed,
however, that the tone of new German organs did not occasionally delight;
organists may well have liked the sounds produced by Schulze’s highly
differentiated voicing in a small two-manual like that at Etzelbech (1869).
Such an organ (Table 31) was utterly typical in its
day, although in some ways Schulze was old-fashioned (e.g. with his diagonal
bellows at Doncaster, 1862).
Much German organ music of the late 19th century was written for a
large, sombre-voiced instrument which depended for effect more on weight and
dynamic extremes than on the sort of colour provided by, for instance,
Cavaillé-Coll’s Bombarde manual or Willis’s Swell. Indeed, the very size and
gravity of such instruments is their chief musical attribute, and Liszt,
Reubke, Reger and others capitalized impressively on these qualities.
Specifications were often much more classical in appearance than their voicing
and general tone justify. Extremes of timbre in the form of harmonic reed
choruses were not much favoured, and it is not always easy to see exactly why a
German organ, even in its various neo-classical guises, needed a third or
fourth manual. The large instrument in Magdeburg Cathedral (Table 32), built by the firm of Reubke, expresses the potential
sought by such composers as its scion Julius Reubke (1834–58). Walcker’s organ
of 1886 for the Stephansdom, Vienna, was even less systematic, with an ordinary
Pedal but a huge Great organ manual of 35 stops strewn over the west end, and
two further manuals, yet only one stop was in a Swell box. Similarly, not until
1857 at Ulm did Walcker use the Barker lever and not until 1890 a fully
pneumatic action. A lack of inventiveness was also evident in the stop-lists
themselves: Sauer’s two organs in Leipzig both with about 60 stops (the
Peterskirche, 1885, and the Thomaskirche, 1889) had almost identical
specifications, both full of heavy 8' stops. Such were the instruments played
by Reger and Straube, and for which registrations were fairly standardized.
Thus 8' ranks were mixed freely, according to choice, but a 4' stop aided their
blend, particularly a wide 4' above a narrow 8'. An organ that cannot provide
an accompaniment of Gedackt 8' + Voix céleste 8' + Spitzflöte 4' voiced on late
19th-century principles cannot provide the sounds intended by Reger in his
quieter movements.
For such music it is also vital to be able to change stops
quickly. Accessories became a priority, and by 1900 a German organ of 12
speaking stops could have as many as 12 ‘aids’. This was in addition to the
Swell, which by then usually took the form of a cylinder rolled by the foot (Walze)
and operating horizontal shutters. Other aids were the manual coupler, pedal
coupler, octave and suboctave couplers, several pre-set combinations (labelled p,
mf, pp etc.), one or more free combinations (set as required),
General Crescendo (likewise operated by a foot cylinder or Rollschweller)
and so on. But it is a mistake to assume that such composers as Reger
necessarily required a General Crescendo or fixed combinations. The free
combination, which requires good precision work on the builder’s part, is more
useful, whether mechanical or pneumatic. Similarly, the high-pressure reeds and
large-mouth flues (called Seraphon) made by Weigle between 1890 and 1940 needed
careful engineering, ‘hard’ though the tone undeniably sounded even at the time
(as is shown by Schweitzer’s opinion of the Stuttgart Liederhalle organ built
in 1894–5).
Although the best of the 19th-century organs may now deserve the
status of historical monuments, little musical sense can be made of such mature
Romantic organs as Weigle’s at Lauterbach (1906), whose stop-list is given in Table 33. Such organs were not so much ‘Romantic’ as perversions of
a legitimate ideal current from Gabler to Walcker; it is hard to see them being
fashionable again. Weigle’s Stuttgart organ was criticized by Audsley (B1905)
for making ‘absolutely no attempt to place at the disposal of the virtuoso
the ready means of producing complicated orchestral effects or of massing
special tone-colours’, which indeed was a high priority with performers of the
day, who praised builders such as E.M. Skinner for providing such means.
As an example of a true Romantic organ close to the music of a
lively, century-long tradition, Ladegast’s organ for Merseburg Cathedral
(completed 1855 in a classical case by Thayssner), for which Liszt wrote his
Prelude and Fugue on B–A–C–H, would serve, although it is of interest that this
large organ possesses no enclosed divisions, nor playing aids beyond a few
couplers and Sperrventile; so would Cavaillé-Coll’s for Ste Clotilde,
Paris, where César Franck was organist from 1859 to 1890, and which he could
yet describe as ‘an orchestra’: The superiority of Cavaillé-Coll’s voicing,
particularly of the reeds, would have given Franck a more musical instrument
than Weigle’s at Lauterbach. The several 8' stops are there for variety, and
registrations still more or less followed traditional ideas of plein jeu,
grand jeu, fonds d’orgue etc., for which the pédales de
combinaison were essential. In general the principles behind the
specification at Ste Clotilde were quite different from those of Weigle, and
exercised a subtle influence on the repertory from Franck to Messiaen. French
builders remained faithful to slider-chests in both practice and theory (cf J.
Guédon: Nouveau manuel, 1903), and eschewed dull, foundational reed
stops.
As an example of fin de siècle development beyond the
demands of organ music, the Great organ manual of Walcker’s Paulskirche organ,
Frankfurt (1827), can be compared with its rebuild by the same firm 72 years
later. The stop-list alone makes clear the change of taste and the manner in
which the revision destroyed the early 19th-century monument: ..\Frames/F922886.html
From the mid-19th century organs in the USA broke from the older
English pattern with increasing use of European innovations (often demanded by
organists who had studied in Europe). Gambas and Harmonic Flutes (the latter
usually at 4' pitch) assumed a permanent place in the stop-lists of even small
organs, and Solo divisions and high-pressure or harmonic-length reeds appeared
in larger ones. The Barker machine was commonly used in large organs from about
1860 onwards, and early experiments (Roosevelt, 1869) were made with electric
actions. Immigrant builders, mainly from Germany, began to do significant work
in the Midwest (Pfeffer, Kilgen, Koehnken etc.) but appear not to have had
significant influence on the large eastern builders. Little distinction was
made between church and secular organs: Hook’s large organs in Mechanics Hall,
Worcester, Massachusetts (1864), and Immaculate Conception Church, Boston
(1863), were very similar in size, stop-list and voicing, and were indeed
expected to play much the same repertory, yet by the time Hook & Hastings’s
70-stop organ was built for Boston’s Holy Cross Cathedral in 1875, a distinct
type of American Romantic organ had emerged, different in many respects from
those of England and the Continent.
Organ, §VI: Some
developments 1800–1930
4. Electricity and the organ.
The instruments of Robert Hope-Jones and his lesser imitators are
considered the most extreme of a highly experimental period, both tonally and
mechanically. In the latter they broke new ground, but in tonal matters they
extend the principles behind such organs as that at Lauterbach by omitting all
ranks above a wide flute 2', resulting in such schemes as the following for the
Great organ manual at Worcester Cathedral (1896): 16.8.8.8.8.8.4.4.2.16.8 plus
ten couplers to Great and seven composition keys. The tone was characterized by
a corresponding smoothing out of acoustic ‘interest’ and a princely
indifference to traditional chorus-blending; yet the 1904 instrument at St
John’s, Newfoundland, was described in a contemporary account as having
‘wonderfully powerful and delightfully neat tone’. Ignored by French and German
organ historians, Hope-Jones built few instruments himself and had only limited
business success in Britain and the USA; but his influence was significant in
the early decades of the 20th century.
During the 25 years from 1889 to 1914 Hope-Jones contributed two
major innovations: to key-action (electric, with stop-switches for
registration, ‘double touch’ for keys and accessories), and to pipework and
specification (large harmonic Trombas, very narrow Trumpets, heavy-pressure
Diapasons with ‘leathered’ lips – i.e. with thin leather glued round the edge
of the lip to reduce brightness, very narrow and keen-sounding string stops and
wide-scaled open flutes). His diaphone pipe of 1893 was itself a new departure
(see
fig.21).
Though no doubt more effective as a foghorn (an earlier version was accepted as
such by the Canadian government, and diaphones were used as lighthouse
fog-signals as late as the 1960s by the US Coast Guard), the diaphone is a good
guide to the tone required by some musicians about 1900. Hope-Jones’s actions
were too finely designed for organs (they were more effective in telephone
exchanges), but the period was one of experiment in electrical technology and
his contributions are important. So many devices or facilities, such as those
enabling the organist to ‘prepare’ stops which remained silent until required,
or to open Swell shutters one by one, were made much easier with electricity;
so was ‘borrowing’ stops, still disapproved of by Audsley (B1905) but in
principle leading to ‘unit-chests’, ‘extension organs’ and other systems using
one rank of pipes for several purposes. Hope-Jones thus typifies a movement
that led to such extraordinary achievements for their time as the stadium organ
in Chicago (Barton, 1929) where 44 ranks of pipes and various percussion
effects produced an organ of six manuals (hanging in lofts above an auditorium
of 25,000 seats) controlled by a movable console of 884 stop-controls and
accessories, and blown by pressures of 40 to 140 cm, the latter for the
diaphones. The extension organ of 1938 in the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, was
more modest and typical (Table 34).
Electricity has been used to replace key-pallet action (see fig.11), operate stop-mechanisms and
accessories (couplers, combinations, tremulant, Swell shutters etc.), drive a
motor for raising the wind and replace older chest types. The design of such
mechanisms requires great skill and was perfected only during the 20th century.
Certain sophisticated gadgets like Willis’s ‘infinite speed and gradation
Swell’ (where the amount by which the pedal is pushed forward is a measure of
the speed at which the shutters open) date from the 1930s. In 1905 Audsley was
still justifying the ‘incomplete’ nature of his discussion of electro-pneumatic
actions by ‘the tentative state of that branch of organ construction at this
time’. By then, however, knowledge of such actions was advanced enough for E.M.
Skinner’s system to be applied at St Bartholomew, New York, to a console
playing two organs, one at each end of the church. Skinner was perhaps
America’s most innovatory designer of actions; his ‘pitman chest’ (see below),
still widely used in the USA, was first developed during his employment with
Hutchings in the 1890s and was a radical departure from other systems then in
use which were, with the exception of Austin’s equally original ‘Universal Air
Chest’, largely electrified adaptations of the older slider-, ventil-, or
cone-chests.
Perhaps the most radical application of electricity to organ
building was that enabling any key to be connected to any pipe: as in other
forms of individual note-valve chests, each pipe stands over its own individual
valve on the so-called unit-chest, but through the use of switching mechanisms
such unit-chests can be used for one or more stops of an organ. A 2' pipe could
be c' of a nominal 8' stop, c of a 4' stop, F of a 22/3'
stop, etc., and the row of pipes ‘extended’ to allow complete compass at all
levels. The principle of ‘extension’ was known to Praetorius for a little table
positive, and Marcussen applied it to six of his Hauptwerk stops at
Siseby in 1819; an ‘extension organ’ is merely one taking the idea of such
‘duplexed ranks’ to a logical conclusion. Electric actions made such systems
much easier to use. That the idea is basically inimical to true organ tone,
since no consistently scaled rank will serve two purposes, did not escape the
attention of the better builders. At Wolverhampton, for example, the principle
is applied very discreetly, and builders such as Skinner and Austin avoided it
almost entirely except in the Pedal department. But extended ranks cannot
provide as much power and variety as their stop-knobs promise, and some
builders compensated by coarsening the tonal quality of the pipes concerned:
the pressure was raised, languids sharp-angled, upper lips leathered, scaling
enlarged or narrowed excessively, perhaps with a double languid (drawing in air
from outside) or double mouth (two sides of a square pipe provided with a
mouth, as in the Doppelflöte of the late 18th century and the 19th),
reed-tongues ‘weighted’ to encourage stronger foundational tone, cheaper metal
used, and sometimes (in the pedals) a diaphone resorted to. Many of the
orchestral colours imitated by builders and recommended by influential writers
were themselves ephemeral (e.g. the euphonium). New chests, particularly the
Anglo-American pitman chest (E.M. Skinner), were devised in which the key and
drawstop had equal access to the valve below the pipe, sounding it only when
both were activated – a rather ingenious and efficient system that has stood
the test of time.
Builders of the period 1840–1940 often disagreed with one
another’s taste in details. Hope-Jones’s diaphones were not made (or were only
briefly employed) by most builders, nor Cavaillé-Coll’s type of slotted reed
pipes outside France, nor English leathered Diapasons beyond a certain period
in England and the USA, nor the unit-chest by most of the better builders of
church organs. The origin of many voicing techniques, such as leathering the
lips of flue pipes and weighting reed-tongues with brass or lead, is obscure;
so many had their origins in earlier periods that only the extremes of various
kinds (high pressure, diaphone pipes, electro-pneumatic action etc.) can be
dated from the late 19th century. It was these extremes that led to the Cinema
organ about
1911. A large-looking Wurlitzer organ of this period contained only a few ranks
of pipes voiced to either extreme and ‘extended’ to provide many stops
available at every pitch on every manual: a reductio ad absurdum of the
principle of ‘floating’ chests. With its percussion traps and effects and
omnipresent tremulants, its high-pressure pipework enclosed in grille-fronted
chambers, its movable console operating electric actions and swell shutters,
the cinema organ can be seen not only following on from the ‘serious’ organs of
Hope-Jones, Compton, Pendlebury, Franklin Lloyd and others, but as an updated
version of Vogler’s orchestrion. Again it was not the church organ but the
secular that demonstrated an idea taken to its logical end.
Organ, §VI: Some
developments 1800–1930
5. The organ in the early 20th century.
The early decades of the 20th century saw more than one short-lived
phenomenon. The heyday of the cinema organ lasted only until the introduction
of soundtracks to moving pictures around 1930 (and a little later in Britain).
Many such organs were ultimately removed from cinemas, some destroyed, and
others moved to churches (where they were eventually found to be so
inappropriate that they were replaced); but in the second half of the century
some that survived in situ were restored, and, in America, others have
been rebuilt and installed in ‘pizza and beer’ restaurants, where they continue
their intended mission of providing entertainment. Another such development was
the domestic self-playing organ (see Player organ), created by manufacturers
such as Welte & Söhn of Freiburg and the Aeolian Company of New York, who
each adapted their already successful electro-pneumatic roll-playing mechanisms
for the Reproducing piano to the pipe organ. As seen from
surviving player-roll libraries, the greater part of the repertory of these
instruments consisted of orchestral and operatic transcriptions, and their
tonal resources were geared to this music. However, legitimate organ music was
also recorded, and some of these rolls now have considerable historical
interest in that they preserve the performances of some notable
turn-of-the-century organ virtuosos. The player organ enjoyed a worldwide
market until a combination of the Depression and new fashions such as the radio
and the gramophone set it into a near terminal decline in the 1930s.
The ‘post-Romantic’ organ of the early 20th century has been
criticized on numerous counts, most of them to a greater or lesser extent
legitimate. At its most mediocre, it was the ‘factory organ’ that roused the
ire of Albert Schweitzer (B1906; see §VII, 1, below); it was also this organ
that, sinking ever deeper into its makers’ and players’ preoccupations with the
imitation of orchestral sounds, vast ranges of dynamic expression, and
ingenious console gadgetry, threatened for a time to make a large part of the
corpus of organ literature from Scheidt to Franck either obsolete or
unintelligible. What is perhaps surprising is that at no other time in history
has the organ been so ubiquitous: organs of all sizes were to be found not only
in churches, chapels, cathedrals and concert halls, but also in auditoriums,
cinemas, residences, hospitals, museums, hotels, spas, restaurants, ballrooms,
skating-rinks, department stores and schools of all kinds. According to
statistics from the US Census Bureau, more organs were built in that country in
1927 than in any year before or since. Eight years later, this figure had
dropped to its lowest point before World War II (which interrupted organ
building everywhere). The pattern was similar in Europe.
At its worst, the organ of this period was dull and uninspired,
most of the small to medium-size instruments being virtually mass-produced and
only shop-voiced. The use of extension and unification principles was rampant,
resulting in a thinness and blandness of sound in the majority of smaller
church organs. Some unfortunate architectural trends were also promulgated in
this period. Since electric action removed all limitations from the placement
of the console and the layout of the pipes, more and more organs were divided
and placed in sound-smothering chambers that were often deep and without
adequate openings, and the consoles (as well as Echo divisions with little
historical connection) could be located almost anywhere, even at the opposite
end of the church from the pipes. What such placements of organs may have
gained in visual and physical convenience, they suffered from in musical
inconvenience, and, once established, this fashion – perhaps most greatly
abused in English-speaking countries – has been unfortunately difficult to
reverse.
At its best, however, the early 20th-century organ was a triumph
of technology and the possessor of sometimes surprisingly impressive musical
qualities when allowed to do what it was designed for. A virtuoso cinema
organist playing a good Wurlitzer, Barton or Compton can bring life and drama
to a silent film; a suavely voiced Aeolian or Welte playing from a well-made
orchestral roll can delight all but the most hardened purist. Similarly, in
some of the larger ‘symphonic’ instruments, most often located in secular
concert halls, one can discern the qualities that attracted such
extraordinarily gifted and internationally recognized recitalists as Eddy,
Guilmant, Courboin, Lemare, Cunningham and Farnam. Marcel Dupré was inspired to
compose his monumental Symphonie-Passion (1924) while improvising on the
monster organ in Philadelphia’s Wanamaker store in 1921, later stating that he
‘played in a state of exaltation that [he had] seldom known’. Such builders as
Skinner, Kimball, Casavant, Willis, Harrison, Mutin or Steinmeyer could produce
large instruments which could not only flood with sound a large building –
whether a reverberant European cathedral or a dry American concert hall – but
also perform transcriptions to perfection and do some justice to much of the
legitimate organ literature, as well as serve as a foil to an orchestra or an
accompaniment to a choir. When certain conservative and knowledgeable advisers
(George Dixon in England, Emerson Richards in the USA, etc.) were involved, the
stop-lists, at least on paper, could appear quite balanced. What were lacking
were smaller instruments well enough designed and voiced to live up to the
expectations generated by the large organs, and this lack may have been one of
the many factors which helped to give impetus to the forthcoming Organ Reform
movement.
Organ
VII. The Organ Revival, 1930–70
‘Organ Revival’ is a term used increasingly often as an English
equivalent to Orgelbewegung (coined about 1930 as a simplified form of
Gurlitt’s Orgel-Erneuerungsbewegung proposed at the Freiburg congress,
B1926). The movement was concerned with ‘reviving’ some of the ‘historic
principles’ of the organ, because it was thought in German musicological
circles of the 1920s that the ‘true purpose and nature’ of the organ had
‘declined’ and required ‘regeneration’. Although such words were much used in
Germany, considerable activity also occurred in other countries, notably the
Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland.
During the 1920s, not least in the light of current political
movements, many aspects of German cultural life were re-examined, and before
1933 there were more or less formulated movements in folk music, youth music,
church music, and the music of particular composers (e.g. the Schützbewegung).
These movements had certain aims or assumptions in common, for their followers:
(i)
reacted negatively to a previous period. In the Orgelbewegung this was
done in the form of a protest against the thick, loud sonorities of the
orchestral organ, the factory organ, the ‘expressive’ or symphonic organ, the
organ as an engineered machine rather than an apparatus or ‘tool of music’. As
such, reacting against late 19th-century organ ideals is equivalent to reacting
against late 19th-century music, and insufficient explanation has been given
for why an organ of Sauer is less worthy of revival than, say, Wagner’s Parsifal.
(ii)
assumed that criteria could be determined. In 1906 Schweitzer’s test for an
organ, ‘the best and sole’ standard, was its fitness for playing J.S. Bach’s
music. Unfortunately, that ideal in the 1820s had already deflected the French
and English organs from the better features of their native paths; and it is not
per se a reliable criterion, since not only do opinions differ as to the
‘nature of Bach’s organ’ but the composer himself played organs of quite
opposing aims. To the reformers, the ‘Bach organ’ was more a generic term,
merely signifying instruments built and voiced ‘in the Baroque manner’.
Schweitzer’s rallying-cry was perhaps not to be taken too literally, although
several builders in Alsace and south Germany met under its banner and adopted
stop-lists (if nothing else) conducive to Bach registration. The resulting
‘Alsatian Organ Reform’ has been seen as the precursor of the Organ Revival.
(iii)
attempted in general to lead to standardization. Schweitzer’s views expressed
at the Vienna Congress of the IMS in 1909 and at the Third Organ Conference at Freiberg,
Lower Saxony in 1927 aimed at a general return to old ideals. Although in 1909
it may have been reasonable to equate tonschön with alt, a
blanket equation of the two leads to over-uniformity and a kind of lazy norm
often to be heard as simple anonymity in the tone of hundreds of neo-Baroque
organs built in Germany and elsewhere since the mid-1930s.
1. Early indications.
2. German developments
in the 1920s.
3. Old organs.
4. Scandinavian and
Dutch organs.
5. The Organ Revival
in the USA.
6. England, France and
Italy.
7. Some German
developments since World War II.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
1. Early indications.
Schweitzer’s book J.S. Bach, le musicien-poète (1905) and
his pamphlet Deutsche und französische Orgelbaukunst (B1906) were highly
formative, and still influential in some quarters at the end of the 20th
century. A precursor in the workings of the Alsatian Organ Reform has been seen
in Emil Rupp, for whom Walcker built a ‘reformed organ’ at St Paul, Strasbourg,
in 1907. But equally indicative of the inevitable change in direction were
works of more general musical scholarship. For example, Guilmant’s series of
old French organ music (begun in 1901 under the title Archives des Maîtres de
l’Orgue) was much in advance of Karl Straube’s ‘editions’ of old German
composers (1904) with their anachronistic expression marks and improbable
registrations. Also important was the pioneering work in the interpretation of
old music published by Arnold Dolmetsch and others. Dolmetsch no doubt owed
much to a favourable musical climate in England where Charles Salaman, Carl
Engel and A.J. Hipkins had already reintroduced the harpsichord to public
music-making. But, as in France and Germany, renewed interest in harpsichords
did not necessarily lead to enlightenment with regard to organs. Nevertheless
what Dolmetsch wrote in 1915 reflected his views over the past decades and
summed up the situation admirably for anyone wishing to heed them:
Church
organs had that power based on sweetness which constitutes majesty. The change
came on, and for the sake of louder tone, pressure of wind was doubled and
trebled. The same pressure acting on the valves which let the wind into the
pipes made them too heavy for the fingers to move through the keys. A machine
was then invented which did the work at second hand [and] the music of the
organ dragged on after the player’s fingers as best it could. Personal touch,
which did so much for phrasing and expression, was destroyed.
Then fashion decreed that the organ should be an imitation of the orchestra. …
The organist, if he is clever, can give a chromo-lithograph of the Meistersinger
Prelude; but he has not the right tone with which to play a chorale, if his
organ is up-to-date. Modern compositions are intended for this machine, and all
is well with them; but it is a revelation to hear Handel’s or Bach’s music on a
well-preserved old organ.
There
is nothing here about ‘the Baroque organ’, and the word was only later taken
over from art historians to evoke an organ type more imaginary than real.
In England practice did not reflect enlightened theory. The ideas
of organ advisers like Thomas Casson (1842–1910) and, during a particularly
critical period, George Dixon (1870–1950) kept early 20th-century organs from
the worst excesses; but they were still only insular compromises. As with so
many English writers of the period 1875–1975, their emphasis on stop-lists and
imaginary ‘ideal organs’ was not basic enough to lead to radical rethinking.
Factions in organ building are common, and in France the polarization of
conservative ‘Romanticists’ versus German-influenced ‘Reformers’ meant that a
modern organ could have one of two totally opposed characters depending on what
the builder and his adviser favoured. But in England, many organists had only a
compromise instrument of mixed lineage going back to William Hill and taking in
a few non-establishment influences from Hope-Jones on one hand and later
continental ‘reform’ builders such as D.A. Flentrop on the other. Grove5
(‘Organ’) gives the specifications of several such organs, often built well and
at great expense. Until the 1930s the situation in the USA was much the same as
in England, although Willis’s influence on Ernest Skinner prompted him to
reintroduce the Great principal chorus in some of his organs in the 1920s. The
increasing interest in Bach’s music (as shown in the popularity of W. Lynnwood
Farnam’s recitals of the complete organ works of Bach in 1929) was an early
sign of coming change.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
2. German developments in the 1920s.
A practical step was taken in 1921 when Oscar Walcker, with the
collaboration of Wilibald Gurlitt, designed and built the Freiburg
Praetorius-Orgel, inaugrated by Karl Straube. This was the first attempt at
reconstructing the tonal character of a so-called Baroque organ according to some
of the details given by Praetorius in De organographia (Syntagma
musicum, ii).
Compromises were evident: suitable casework was not made, the
stop-list was modified, the pipes were placed not on a slider-chest but a
‘stop-channel chest’, wind was supplied by an electric blower and the action
was electro-pneumatic. Nonetheless, the organ was significant, not least in the
publicity it gained during the organ conference held at Freiburg in 1926 before
600 members. The instrument was destroyed in 1944, and a second, less
compromising one was made in 1954–5. The change in approach indicates clearly
how German organ thinking had developed over 30 or so years: Gurlitt was still
the adviser, but the organ was built by Walcker-Mayer with the collaboration of
acoustic and technical experts (Lottermoser, E.K. Rössler) and closely modelled
on the first specification in Praetorius’s De organographia, with data
taken from extant pipework by Praetorius’s friend Esaias Compenius, and with
mean-tone tuning, a slider-chest, mechanical action and a thorough Werkprinzip
structure; the stop-lists is given in Table 35. Were a
third ‘Praetorius’ organ to be built, one could expect that all compromises
away from his specification would be dropped and an early 17th-century casework
and wind system incorporated, being integral parts of the total
sound-production.
|
TABLE 35
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Freiburg
University, ‘Praetorius’ organ II
|
|
|
W.
Walcker-Mayer, 1954–5
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oberwerk
|
|
Rückpositiv
|
|
|
|
|
Principal
|
8
|
|
Principal
|
4
|
|
|
Gedackt
|
8
|
|
Quintadena
|
8
|
|
|
Oktave
|
4
|
|
Hohlflöte
|
4
|
|
|
Gemshorn
|
4
|
|
Nachthorn
(wood)
|
4
|
|
|
Gedackt
(wood)
|
4
|
|
Blockflöte
|
2
|
|
|
Nasat
|
22/3
|
|
Oktave
|
2
|
|
|
Scharfquinta
|
4
(?11/3)
|
|
Quinta
|
11/3
|
|
|
Superoktave
|
2
|
|
Zimbel
|
|
|
|
Mixtur
III
|
2
|
|
Schalmei
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Brustpositiv
|
|
Pedal
|
|
|
|
|
Krummhorn
(wood)
|
8
|
|
Untersatz
(open wood)
|
16
|
|
|
Quintetz
|
11/3
(?4)
|
|
Posaune
(Sordun)
|
16
|
|
|
Zimbel
|
II
|
|
Dolcan
|
8
|
|
|
Sifflöte
|
1
|
|
Bauerflötlein
|
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
Singend
Cornet
|
2
|
|
Zimbelstern
|
|
|
Tremulants
(Oberwerk, Rückpositiv)
|
|
|
Couplers:
Rückpositiv to Oberwerk; Oberwerk to Pedal;
|
|
|
|
Rückpositiv to Pedal
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Although both Schweitzer’s and Gurlitt’s views were directed
towards certain music – that of J.S. Bach on the one hand and that of Scheidt
and Schütz on the other – results were seen only gradually in organ building.
After Rupp and Walcker visited Mutin, Cavaillé-Coll’s successor, one or two
organs were built with the express purpose of combining the musical potential
of the German and French organ. One such instrument was at the Reinoldikirche,
Dortmund, inaugrated in 1909 by Schweitzer and attracting the attention of
Reger, for whom a festival was held at Dortmund in 1910. The dual
polyphonic-homophonic nature of Reger’s mature style would in theory gain much
from the character of an Alsatian Reform organ. The type of eclecticism aimed
at in such organs was considerably ahead of its time and not fully understood;
but it led to giant organs such as that at Passau Cathedral (Steinmeyer, 1930;
208 stops) in which one section serves as a ‘German Romantic organ’, another
has a ‘French character’ (reeds, Cornet), and yet another provides a ‘Baroque
department’. While in north Germany such firms as Ott and Kemper remained closer
to a single orderly tradition, the influence of Steinmeyer was wide, and a
harbinger of things to come.
Yet returning to full Werkprinzip design was also only
gradual. Like the 1921 Praetorius-Orgel, the influential organ of the
Marienkirche, Göttingen (Furtwängler & Hammer, 1925), was a compromise with
pneumatic action, but in its specification and scalings, prepared by Christhard
Mahrenholz, it pointed the way to future development:
Less recognized is the broader Swiss approach, as expressed in Jacque
Hanschin’s paper in Tagung für deutsche Orgelkunst: Freiburg, Lower Saxony,
1927, and Kuhn’s French-influenced Rückpositiv at Berne Minster
(1930). The ‘Hindemith organ’ – that thought ideal for the performance of his
sonatas – was itself a mean between extremes, and in fact revelatory of the
real meaning of the movement to many, including ‘neo-Baroque’ composers such as
Distler and Pepping. But important work was begun on technical aspects of organ
building, and a climate of opinion was being created with regard to acoustics (Akustische
Zeitschrift, 1936; AMf, 1939), slider-chest and their influence on
tone (H.H. Jahnn: Der Einfluss der Schleifenwindlade, 1931), pallets (ZI,
1933), casework (W. Supper: Architekt und Orgelbau, 1934) and scaling
(Mahrenholz, C1938). In Italy questions concerning old organs had been
discussed for many years (e.g. Musica sacra, 1901–3), and even large
electric organs like that in the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra (Rome,
1933) had never shaken off certain traditional features. But in France
technical achievement lagged behind historical research: the documents and
archives published by Raugel and Dufourcq led to the discovery of many old
organs, as a result of which almost all were rebuilt over the next few decades,
and many altered beyond recognition in an effort to make them suitable for
German Baroque music.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
3. Old organs.
The position of surviving old organs in the Organ Reform was a
difficult one. Important though the Schnitger organ in the Jacobikirche,
Hamburg, or the Lübeck Totentanzorgel were to a writer like H.H. Jahnn (Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft: Kongress I: Leipzig 1925), or the Silbermann in
Freiberg, Lower Saxony, to E. Flade (Tagung für deutsche Orgelkunst III:
Freiberg, Lower Saxony, 1927), in practice they were, obviously, not
suitable for all the organ repertory. They would not allow, for instance, the
gradual crescendo demanded by Reger and obtained on one manual by piling up
three or four 8' stops before the first 4' was added. Oversimplified claims
were often made – for instance, that ventil-chests are by nature ‘bad’. It is
probably true that, compass apart, an organ of 1700 is in certain respects more
versatile than one of 1900; but no valid doctrine can be formed on the basis of
such a generalization.
Nevertheless, the beauty of the Freiberg Cathedral Silbermann
organ was not questioned, and the publication in facsimile of treatises by
Werckmeister, Praetorius, Bédos de Celles, Mattheson, Adlung and Schlick
heightened interest in the few extant remains of organs they described. One
result, however, was that much-altered instruments were over-respected, and an
organ like that at Amorbach (1774–82) or the Totentanzorgel gave, over the
years, many misleading impressions, due, at least in part, to imperfect
analysis. Enlightened opinion may no longer claim that ‘it is the large
Schnitger organ that best corresponds to the demands made by J.S. Bach’s music’
(Klotz, D(i)1934), but it is still almost impossible to be sure what kind of
sound Schnitger was aiming at, since none of his instruments remain in wholly
unaltered condition.
As examples of ill-conceived restorations, many organs in England,
Ireland, France, Spain and Germany could be described, and as much damage was
done during the 30 years following World War II as at any other period. The
organ of Herzogenburg Abbey, Austria, can serve as an example. By 1964 most of
its original character had either survived or was fairly easily ascertainable;
but the ‘restoration’ of that year resulted in major changes based on
unhistorical or oversimplified concepts. The main chests were enlarged to give
a modern compass of C–f'–g''', thus discarding the original short
octaves, the incomplete (but characteristic) pedals and most of the original
chests; the action was discarded and newly made; manual and pedal Mixtures were
changed in content; new ranks and stops of a kind unsuitable to an Austrian
organ of 1749 were made; the instrument was revoiced throughout; and the
original detached console was discarded and replaced by a new oak console. This
organ would need a radical rebuild if it were ever again to give an organist
anything like a true impression of the instruments known to Mozart.
By 1971, however, certain builders were attempting closer
historical accuracy in their restorations, as is shown in a second Austrian
organ, that of the Hofkirche, Innsbruck (seeTable 8 and fig.34). Here
the original wind-trunk was preserved, the wind pressure ascertained and
voicing recovered; the original short C–a'' compass was restored (though
the keys perhaps date from the 18th century); the original pitch level (a'
= 445), case, chests etc. were restored; and the instrument was tuned in an
unequal temperament. Were the modern bellows to be replaced by one more
characteristic of the period, the organ would represent better the late
20th-century ideals of restoration.
Almost wholly overlooked until the 1960s, however, were many
noteworthy 19th-century organs in all countries. After World War II large
numbers of these continued to be ruthlessly rebuilt or electrified, or,
ironically, tonally ruined in misguided attempts to make them conform to
neo-Baroque ideals.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
4. Scandinavian and Dutch organs.
A more radical rethinking of the organ appears to have been
achieved in Scandinavia, but it is more likely that national organ types had
been less extremely developed there during the crucial period 1870–1910. It is
thus perhaps less a question of revival than of survival of old organ design.
On the whole the Swedish organ had become more ‘decadent’ than the Danish, but
interest in such things as mutations survived here and there. Naturally, German
ventil-chests were found in Scandinavia, and Theodor Frobenius, a German-born
builder who settled in Copenhagen, made the first Danish electric action. But
the ideas aired by the Alsatian Organ Reform soon became respected in Denmark.
Simpler than the organ at St Mary, Göttingen, yet put in a very
imposing contemporary case by builders alert to correct acoustical placing, was
the quire organ of the extraordinary Grundtvig Church, Copenhagen (1940), built
by Marcussen. In 1920 the head of this firm was Sybrand Zachariassen, who was
joined a little later by P.G. Andersen; by the late 1930s the firm was
producing almost nothing but mechanical-action organs and doing good formative
work in restoration (Sorø Cathedral, 1942). The Grundtvig Churh organ was quite
uneclectic ( Table 36).
In the same year (1940) a Rückpositiv was added by
Frobenius to the early 16th-century Hauptwerk from St Petri, Malmö, now
in Malmö Museum, showing that builders were aware of the practical convenience
of Werkprinzip elements. By 1944 the new organ of Jaegersborg, near
Copenhagen, had three uncompromising Werkprinzip manuals complete with a
Trumpet en chamade, so placed for power rather than for imitations of
Spanish tone. (This has remained true of Orgelbewegung reeds en
chamade.) Important too were the smaller organs made by the new builders
after the war, especially in view of the lacklustre quality of most small
organs built in the pre-war period. Flentrop’s eight-stop organ at Schoondijke
(1951) was in its way even more influential than his Werkprinzip organ
at Doetinchem (1952), which soon became a model for the design of Hauptwerk
+ Rückpositiv + Pedal towers. (The stop-lists of both are given inTable 37.) Open-toe voicing, mechanical action and encased
departments were by now standard among the younger builders, although the
importance of wind supply was still not understood. Such instruments went far
beyond the theories of the Orgelbewegung, and it is a mistake to regard
them as mere 17th- or 18th-century pastiche – they were in fact a new genre.
Frequently they serve as practical demonstration of intricate theory and
knowledge. Frobenius and Ingerslev’s paper on end correction, for example
(C1947), is the most important theoretical work by an organ builder in this
field since Cavaillé-Coll.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
5. The Organ Revival in the USA.
The main innovators of the early revival in USA were Walter
Holtkamp of Cleveland and G.D. Harrison, an Englishman working for the Skinner
Organ Co. In 1933 Holtkamp had been contracted to add a Rückpositiv to
the large Romantic organ of the Cleveland Museum of Art, but the slider-chest
had a multiple-valve system which was later abandoned in his work. Harrison’s
influence on tonal design was more important than the structural reforms; he
had applied low pressure to a fairly large organ contracted for at Groton
School in 1935, but structurally and mechanically it was otherwise no different
from other electro-pneumatic organs built by the firm. This organ, like the
slightly smaller but more coherent instrument built a year earlier for the
Church of the Advent in Boston, was one of the first attempts in the USA at a
large, classically influenced eclectic instrument, although its voicing hardly
follows classical principles and its general effect lacks articulation. More
successful, and certainly more influential, was the small, unencased,
two-manual organ built in 1937 as an experiment, and installed in the Germanic
(now Busch-Reisinger) Museum at Harvard University, which was heard by a vast
audience through the broadcasts and recordings of E. Power Biggs, an early
champion of the Reform movement. These and other isolated instruments of the
period testify to a growing interest in historic European principles among some
American organists and builders, Cavaillé-Coll and Silbermann being especially
admired. Such organs, for all their drawbacks of voicing, pitman chests and
electric action, possessed greater clarity than had been heard from American
organs for some decades, and they made their point musically. Partly because of
Holtkamp’s efforts, many of these organs were free-standing rather than
installed in the all-too-common chambers (fig.48), but the musical importance of casework
was as yet unrealized, and only low wind pressures and gentle voicing curbed
the tendency of ‘pipes-in-the-open’ to sound raw and unblending, especially in
acoustically dry surroundings.
Soon after World War II the reform movement revived with renewed
vigour. Academic and musicological writers leant heavily on 17th-century German
literature and indeed tried to create a more rational (if sometimes contrived)
language of organ terms (Bunjes, D(xv)1966). Organists and organ students,
especially American, became much influenced by the various historic organs of
France and Germany, although the relative inaccessibility of East German organs
until the late 1980s, notably those of Silbermann, affected American-European
organ design. European builders exported small but important organs to the USA
(Rieger about 1952, Flentrop in 1954), and Beckerath consolidated the trend by
building a 44-stop four-manual organ for Trinity Lutheran Church, Cleveland, in
1957. American firms were bound to be influenced by such instruments, and while
Flentrop secured many prestigious American contracts (e.g. St Mark’s Cathedral,
Seattle), and Beckerath went on to build several equally important organs in
Canada (e.g. St Joseph’s Oratory, Montreal), other builders like Charles Fisk of
Massachusetts and Casavant Frères of Quebec soon produced their own versions of
the new styles. Casavant’s organ of 1963 in Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova
Scotia (Table 38) is a typical small organ of
the kind inspired by such builders as Beckerath, and Fisk’s organ in Mt Calvary
Church, Baltimore, was influenced by Flentrop. From the point of view of the
Organ Revival, such instruments were far in advance of the huge unencased organs
made by the larger firms (e.g. Möller’s paired organs in the Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception, Washington DC, 1970), although it is fair to point out
that inventive and contemporary visual effects can often be achieved by a good
designer with unencased chests.
Many North American builders were willing to consult advisers who
had practical or theoretical knowledge of historic organ types of Europe; at
its best the collaboration is highly successful. Flentrop’s organ of 1958 for
the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard reflects a further element: the strength
of taste developed by players (in this instance E. Power Biggs) experienced in
European organs. In North America, Flentrop, Metzler, Beckerath, Ahrend &
Brunzema and others went on to build important instruments of great beauty, and
from the late 1960s other influences became evident, such as the French
elements in the stop-list and voicing at the Memorial Church, Harvard University
(C.B. Fisk, 1967), or the pseudo-Italian elements in the large electric-action
organ of the First Congregational Church, Los Angeles (Schlicker, 1969). It is
true that neither instrument demonstrates a thorough understanding of its
models, but such attempts were important stepping-stones towards stricter
historical copies – a trend also followed by American harpsichord makers in the
same period and one leading to less compromising organs (see §VIII below). The
specific influence of the German-orientated Orgelbewegung has waned
considerably in the USA and Canada since the 1970s; like the new organ
terminology sometimes attempted, it was too artificial a graft to bear much
fruit, and other, more attractive and more historically informed influences
have taken its place in the thinking of builders and players.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
6. England, France and Italy.
Although perceptive English organ enthusiasts such as Cecil
Clutton were praising European ‘reform’ organs in print by around 1950, it
seems to be true that the Organ Revival in England ‘really took root only with
the opening of the organ for the Royal Festival Hall, London, in 1954’ (Clutton
and Niland, D(xii)1963; fig.49). Despite careful planning by the
adviser (Ralph Downes) and meticulous workmanship by the builders (Harrison
& Harrison), the composite nature of the organ made it little more than a
quickly dated compromise. Its 103 stops give the impression of immense
adaptability, and the German flutes, Anglo-German chorus and French reeds allow
many types of organ music to be given reasonable performance; but the very size
(quite apart from the semi-unencased construction and the electro-pneumatic
action) make true sympathy with most musical styles impossible. Although
admired by many players in both England and the USA, the instrument has had
curiously few successors: new designs did not immediately appear, despite an
awareness of continental organs (e.g. the Organ Club’s visit to Frobenius in
1958) and the obvious qualities of tracker action (St Vedast-alias-Foster,
London, built in 1961 by Noel Mander, using an 18th-century case and much
antique pipework). J.W. Walker’s organ of 1959 in the Italian Church, London,
showed a rather confused scheme, but it helped to open the path to ‘Baroque’
influences: ..\Frames/F922887.html
As in America, imported organs (e.g. The Queen’s College, Oxford:
Frobenius, 1965) played their part in promulgating the new tonal and mechanical
ideals, which began to be taken up by such builders as Collins, Mander, and
Grant, Degens & Bradbeer (New College, Oxford, 1969). Later in the 20th
century some younger builders (e.g. Goetze & Gwynn, Drake and Collins)
found inspiration closer to home, particularly in 18th-century English organs.
The French organ has developed on rather similar lines,
‘neo-classical’ indicating a frenchified composite organ designed with both
Grigny and Bach, both Franck and Messiaen in mind. Most major French churches
have such organs, many made by Gonzalez with the advice of Norbert Dufourcq, a
collaboration which also unfortunately engineered the rebuilding of many intact
classical and Romantic organs in a hybrid quasi-Germanic mould, with the stated
aim of making them better fitted for the playing of Bach. Since the late 1960s
closer imitations of old French styles have been attempted, for example the
partial copy of a Bédos de Celles organ (complete with low pitch) by J.-G.
Koenig at Sarre-Union (1968). In particular, the importance of the traditional
French classical form of ‘suspended’ action has been recognized and such
actions, notable for their sensitivity, have since successfully been made by
American, Dutch and German builders as well as the French. In both England and
France, ‘restoration’ of old organs had been, with a few significant exceptions
(Poitiers Cathedral, restored by Boisseau), as detrimental as in Germany. The
typically French classical 1693/1832 pedal department (Flutes 8' and 4' (C–e),
Trompette 8' and Clairon 4' (ravalement F'–e)) at Auch Cathedral was
altered in 1959 to a more ‘correct’ Reform stop-list (Principal 16', Sub-Bass
16', Bourdon 8', Flûte 8', Flûte 4', Bombarde 16', Trompette 8', Clairon 4').
Only towards the end of the 20th century did builders in England or France show
enlightened attitudes towards the subtler historical problems of pitch and
voicing. In France the journal Connaissance de l’orgue has helped
propagate sounder ideas, as have the British Institute of Organ Studies and the
Organ Yearbook in England, and the Organ Historical Society in the USA.
In Italy the late 1960s saw a movement towards a kind of modified Werkprinzip
organ but with characteristic Italian choruses and even at times Italian reeds.
The organ at S Maria Assunta (B. Formentelli, 1967–8) has a grand’organo
of 8.4.2.11/3.1.2/3.½.1/3 + 1/4.8.4.22/3.2.13/5.8.4, the last of them reeds.
Large three-manual organs such as that at the Chiesa dei Servi, Bologna
(Tamburini), united an Italian chorus, German mutations, Spanish Trumpet,
Italian compass, mechanical action and general Werkprinzip relationships
between the manuals. Other larger firms such as Ruffatti, on the other hand,
seem to have been strongly affected by the ‘American classic’ movement, and,
while they have produced some smaller mechanical-action organs, have
concentrated more on large multi-purpose electric-action instruments, many of
them built for export. Smaller organs too have attempted comprehensiveness; the
instrument at S Severino, Bologna (G. Zanin & Figlio, 1968), has the
following scheme: Apart from some restoration work by builders such as Amezua,
and a few modern positive organs, the Iberian peninsula has been only slightly
affected by the organ reform.
Organ, §VII: The Organ
Revival 1930–70
7. Some German developments since World War II.
An important factor in postwar Germany was the prominence and high
standard of many new and small firms, while the older and larger ones faded
into the background. The appointment of organ advisers for each of the
districts of Germany encouraged smaller builders as it also encouraged local
variety and enterprise. From the early 1950s Beckerath of Hamburg and the two
Schuke firms of Berlin (East and West) produced organs of strong character,
often influenced by old instruments they had rebuilt (Schnitger organs rebuilt
by Beckerath, Joachim Wagner organs by Alexander Schuke); as noted above,
Beckerath also exported instruments to the USA and, in 1970, a smaller example
to Britain (Clare College, Cambridge). Ahrend and his former partner Brunzema
(pupils of Paul Ott) continued the trend towards strong-toned organs, omitting
most mutations and relying on highly coloured flue and reed stops (usually made
of hammered metal); old instruments restored by the firm (e.g. at Westerhusen)
have a natural, unforced but startlingly powerful, breathy tone. The organ at
Westerhusen, like Metzler’s restoration at Nieuw Scheemda, Führer’s at
Hohenkirchen and Ahrend’s in Stade, is a revelation of the musical colour open
to a 17th-century organist of Friesland and Groningen, and these instruments
have exercised an increasingly positive influence on the work of other north
German builders as well as Americans such as John Brombaugh, Taylor & Boody
and P.B. Fritts. The stop-lists seem nondescript; an example by Ahrend &
Brunzema (Bremen-Oberneuland, 1966) is: ..\Frames/F922889.htmlBut the sound is far from
nondescript, and the idiosyncratic tone of such instruments is well removed
from the top-heavy neo-Baroque anonymity typical of so many organs of the
1950s.
Before 1973 German builders rarely developed good designs for
organ cases, relying on simple geometric Bauhaus-influenced shapes that are
pleasing but repetitive and often careless. Some imagination has been shown
here and there in designing a sinuous front with ‘modern’ motifs (Marktkirche,
Hanover; Beckerath, 1954, fig.50) and the square or
rectangular box sometimes conforms with its surroundings (Gedächtniskirche,
Berlin; Schuke, 1962). Non-German builders more often tend to look at old
models, as witness the influence of the Perpignan organ-case on that at Linz
Cathedral (Marcussen and Andersen, 1968). Swells, either as enclosed Oberwerk
or enclosed Brustwerk, were fairly common in Germany, but it is often
not possible to view them as anything more than ambiguous in nature and limited
in conviction, although they were seen as an acceptable compromise in America.
Standard German practice in making mechanical action has done little but good,
and German builders are correct to point out that ‘organ music (such as
Ligeti’s Volumina) with its note-clusters, requires mechanical action. …
The cluster technique shows complex flutter beats; the foreign nature of
untempered, non-harmonic sound-elements can be produced only by mechanical
action and its associated voicing’ (ISO Information, viii, 1972, p.45).
On the other hand, the widespread use of Schwimmer wind regulators,
producing an inflexible and often jittery wind response, cannot in any way be
regarded as a positive influence.
Organ
VIII. The organ at the close of the 20th century
During the last three decades of the 20th century such terms as
‘Organ Reform’ and ‘neo-Baroque’ ceased to be truly applicable. The original
thrust of these movements was as much anti-Romantic as it was pro-Baroque. From
the bottom-heavy, widely expressive, remote-controlled ‘symphonic’ organ of the
1920s (lacking a coherent chorus and deriving its colour from a variety of
unison reeds, flutes and strings), to the top-heavy, inexpressive, mechanically
controlled ‘neo-Baroque’ organ of the 1950s (with dogmatically dictated
choruses, no strings, and deriving its colour from mutations and antique reed
forms), the pendulum of taste in the organ world has swung between extremes
unmatched in any other musical area save possibly that of popular music. There
have always been exceptions, of course. The French made gestures in the
neo-classic direction, but could never entirely shake off the influence of the
Romantic organ on their music. Builders in the ‘American classic’ style,
encouraged by the work of some of the more conservative English builders,
strove, if somewhat haphazardly, to amalgamate elements of several periods into
a multi-purpose instrument that had influence as far away as Italy. Only in Germany
and northern Europe did the neo-Baroque aesthetic hold almost total sway at the
mid-century, but the influence on the composers of those countries, and on
organ building in other countries, was considerable
During the late 1960s and early 70s, a new spirit of inquiry began
challenging some of the dogmas of the Reform movement while taking a closer
look at the historic instruments that purported to be its models. Why, for
instance, did a well-preserved 17th- or 18th-century Principal pipe speak with a
full ‘bloom’ and just the smallest amount of ‘chiff’ when its neo-Baroque
counterpart coughed prominently before settling into a rather thin and sizzly
tone? Both had similar scales and cut-ups, open toe-holes and a seeming absence
of nicking, but on closer inspection the historic pipe was found to have not
the chisel-edged languid of the modern pipe but one with its leading edge
blunted rather roughly with a counterface, and it had a more open windway; even
closer inspection revealed details of metal composition (trace elements) and
treatment (hammering or scraping) which had gone unnoticed or unheeded before.
During the 1970s builders such as Wolff in Canada, Brombaugh, Fisk, Noack,
Bedient, and Taylor & Boody in the USA, and Ahrend in Germany began experimenting
with principals and flutes made more closely to historical models. Reeds soon
followed, as analysis of various historical shallot forms (including French
styles and those faced with leather), tongue brass, and tongue curvatures
revealed why using standardized shallots and modern tongue materials such as
phosphor-bronze did not produce a desired result. The results of these
inquiries found favour with many organists concerned with the requirements and
interpretation of various schools of organ literature.
If the historical research of the Reform movement in the 1930s
concentrated at first on stop-lists and scales, by the 1950s, as understanding
of traditional instruments developed, the value of mechanical action and
free-standing casework was recognized. In 1968 an article by Charles Fisk
concerning wind supply was published in The Diapason which generated
considerable controversy internationally over most of the succeeding decade.
When this had finally died down, the role of flexible wind supply, with all
that it implies relative to the size and form of bellows and wind-trunks (and
even tremulants), had been accepted along with pipe metal composition and
non-equal temperaments (Werckmeister, Kirnberger, Chaumont, Vallotti, Young,
Fisk, van Biezen) among the last major pieces in the puzzle of the
‘historically informed’ organ, and many builders abandoned the inflexible
modern Schwimmer system of wind regulation (see §II, 11(iii, v), above),
that had been so much a part of the neo-Baroque organ. By the 1980s builders on
the Continent (Ahrend, Flentrop, Riel, Garnier, Führer, Metzler) and in America
(Fisk, Noack, Brombaugh, Bedient, Moore, Fritts, Taylor & Boody) were
building organs where the wind could optionally be raised either manually or
electrically. In 1981 instruments built in the 17th-century north European
style by Fisk (Wellesley College, Massachusetts; fig.52)
and Brombaugh (Oberlin College, Ohio) helped to confirm the validity not only
of flexible wind but of mean-tone tuning and sub-semitones (split keys) in the
performance of music of that period.
The early Organ Reform school concentrated on its interpretation
of one particular style of organ, that of the north German Baroque. By the end
of the 20th century organists and organ builders had come to a deeper
understanding not only of that particular model, but of myriad other styles.
Foremost among these were the French classical (Clicquot) and Romantic
(Cavaillé-Coll) styles, and by the 1990s a number of organs wholly or largely
patterned on both were being built; in the Netherlands, the Van den Heuvel firm
specialized not in classical Dutch but Romantic French instruments. The organs
of Silbermann and other central German builders also began to find emulators:
Fisk and Bozeman each built a Silbermann copy in the 1980s, as did Ahrend
(Jesuit church, Porrentruy, Switzerland, 1985). The south German work of Riepp
has inspired at least one new instrument by Hubert Sandtner (St Andreas,
Babenhausen, 1987). The unification of Germany in 1989 and the restoration in
the same period of important 18th-century organs such as those in Altenburg
(Trost) and Naumburg (Hildebrandt) focussed attention on the typical central
German organ, resulting in instruments such as that built by Noack for Christ
the King Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas (1995). A few builders made smaller
organs in the Italian (Wilhelm, Hradetzky, Tsuji) and Iberian (Rosales,
Harrold) styles during the 1990s.
In the 1980s and 90s England and America witnessed a re-evaluation
of a national heritage overlooked during many years of seeking inspiration from
the Continent. Although the Mander firm played an important part in the
preservation of numerous 18th- and 19th-century English organs during the
postwar years, the influence of these instruments did not really begin to be
strongly felt in the firm’s new work until the 1980s (Pembroke College,
Cambridge, 1980), when other English builders such as Martin Renshaw, William
Drake, and Goetze & Gwynn likewise began to concentrate on models from the
Restoration and Georgian periods; in 1989 Mander built an organ for St
Andrew’s, Holborn, London, largely based on early Victorian models. In the USA
many 19th-century organs have been sympathetically restored, and 18th- and
19th-century American builders such as Tannenberg, Erben, Appleton and Hook
have had both visual and tonal influence on work by Andover, Bozeman, Dobson,
Fisk, Moore and Noack, while renewed interest in organs of the early 20th
century led Schoenstein to build organs in the Skinner style (e.g. St Paul’s
Church, Washington DC, 1996). As ‘neo-Baroque’ organs also became regarded as
‘historic’, the whole gamut of organ history became open to emulation.
The proliferation of these exercises in emulating so many earlier
styles led inevitably to differences in opinion among organists, and perhaps
indirectly to situations where two very different organs co-exist in certain
large buildings, especially in the USA. An increasing number of builders (also
probably in North America at first) began cautiously combining various styles
to create a new kind of ‘historically informed’ eclectic instrument. One of the
first examples was Fisk’s large 1979 instrument for the House of Hope Church,
St Paul. Its Brustwerk division is a virtual copy of a similar
17th-century division in Lüneburg, and the Rückpositiv is also largely
German, with a hint of classical French. The Great, Swell and Pedal divisions
are, however, carefully chosen eclectic mixtures of 18th- and 19th-century
German and French styles (including both German and French Trumpets). Music
from several periods and places can be played stylistically on this organ, but
players must have a clear understanding of the registrational needs of any
particular piece, as also with Brombaugh’s similar 1986 instrument at Southern
Adventist University, Collegedale, Tennessee. A 1985 Fisk (Mt Holyoke College,
Massachusetts) blended German and Italian Baroque elements; a very different
blending of 18th-century German, 19th-century French and 20th-century American
elements characterizes Manuel Rosales’s 1987 organ in Trinity Church, Portland,
Oregon; and Mander’s large organ at St Ignatius Loyola, New York (1992),
successfully melds classical elements with later French and English colours.
Such instruments succeed, not because they purport to play all music
indiscriminately (they do not), but because they are carefully designed and
large enough to do ample justice to more than one school or period.
In the 1990s this kind of historically informed eclecticism
proliferated not only in the USA but in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Germany and even the former hotbed of neo-Baroque design, Scandinavia. That
decade also saw a renewal of interest in concert hall organs which led to the
restoration of older ones (the town halls at Birmingham, West Bromwich and
Sydney; City Hall, Portland, Maine) and to the building of new ones largely in
the new eclectic style (Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, Texas; Fisk, 1991).
Mechanical key action became the choice of many of the younger builders and
some of the older ones, but in the larger instruments of all builders the stop
and combination actions were almost universally electric or electro-pneumatic,
and often equipped with solid-state memory systems, MIDI capability, or both.
Small organs of excellent quality (usually all-mechanical) were being built,
but tended to differ tonally from similarly sized instruments of the 1950s and
60s in that they more often included an 8' Principal on the main (or only)
manual, tended to have a smaller proportion of Pedal stops to manual stops,
and, if they had an enclosed division, it was more likely to be a proper
interior Swell rather than simply a Brustwerk with shutters. Casework of
organs of all sizes tended to be classical in proportion and decoration, but a
few younger builders, such as the Austrian Caspar Clatter-Götz, remained
committed to exploring more contemporary visual designs.
Organ-building firms became greater in number but smaller in size.
In the USA two of the largest firms (Aeolian-Skinner and Möller) closed after
1970, and the only remaining firms of comparable size were Schantz, Reuter,
Austin and Wicks, all makers of electric-action organs; in England the large
Hill, Norman & Beard firm closed in the 1990s. Large European firms such as
Klais, Schuke and Ruffatti diversified, offering organs in many styles, sizes
and action types, and east European builders such as Jehmlich and Rieger-Kloss
began to compete for export trade. Other older firms retrenched, including
Willis, Walker, and Harrison in England, Walcker in Germany, Casavant in Canada
and Rieger in Austria. Medium-size firms (30–40 employees) began to execute the
large and prestigious contracts that would once have been the province of the
larger factories, and some important instruments were commissioned from even
smaller and younger firms, such as Fritts in the USA, Wolff and Letourneau in
Canada and Jones in Ireland.
The last decades of the 20th century also saw the growth of
organ-building establishments outside Europe and the Americas. Despite a large
number of imports, mainly British, organs have been built since the middle of
the 19th century in Australia and New Zealand by builders such as Fincham,
Hobday, Richardson, Fuller, Dodds, Jones, Pogson and South Island, but it was
not until Ronald Sharp built a mammoth five-manual organ in 1979 for the new
Sydney Opera House that an Australian-born organ builder gained prominence. A
Western-inspired organ culture also took root in Asia. Ever since the 19th
century small numbers of organs have been exported to Hong Kong, Korea and
China, but Japan emerged as the major Asian organ centre. During the final
three decades of the 20th century a large number of organs of all sizes,
chiefly all-mechanical or with mechanical key action, were exported by European
and North American builders to Japanese colleges, concert halls, private
houses, Christian churches and Buddhist temples. Organ playing began to be
taught in many colleges and conservatories, organ recitals were well attended,
and an active Japan Organ Society founded a scholarly journal. Excellent organs
began to be constructed in Japan by several native builders, among whom Hiroshi
Tsuji and Tetsuo Kusakari were the earliest to establish workshops.
Late 20th-century developments in organ research and design did
much to further understanding of the repertory of all times and places. But the
‘historically informed’ organ also attracted the attention of a growing number
of composers who, unlike many in the previous generation, were more interested
in exploring its potential as a musical medium than in treating it as a
sound-effects machine. Other trends, however, were more disturbing to some and
challenging to others, especially the encroachments of electronic technology.
Solid-state switching gained widespread acceptance in larger organs as a
compact and reliable alternative to all-electric or electro-pneumatic systems,
and computerized ‘memory’ in combination actions was welcomed with enthusiasm
by organists. MIDI can be applied to most organs, even those with mechanical
key action, and offers access to synthesizer effects for some kinds of
contemporary music, as well as playback options (in which it is simply
duplicating the function of the early 20th-century roll-players). More
controversial to many players and builders has been the incorporation of
electronically produced tone into otherwise traditional organs, although some
builders had already been doing this in order to add 32' Pedal tone in
situations where finances or space precluded using real pipes. By the end of
the century, however, whole divisions were being added electronically: an organ
might have one or two divisions of (mostly) pipes, a second or third of
electronic tone-generators, and a Pedal division combining both. The greatest
appeal of such frankly hybrid instruments is to smaller churches with limited
space and funds, although a few larger ones have been manufactured.
Developments such as this have, predictably, encouraged polarization between
the proponents of historically influenced traditional organs on the one hand,
and those who regard organs more from a technological and commercial standpoint
on the other. However, the long history of the organs tells us that this ‘large
wind instrument’ (as the builder Metzler has described it) has faced many other
cultural and technological challenges in past centuries, and all that is
certain is that yet more intriguing chapters in its continuing saga will open
as the future unfolds.
Organ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
a: bibliographies
b: construction
c: organ pipes:
scaling, voicing and tuning
d: history
Organ: Bibliography
a: bibliographies
J.W. Warman: The Organ:
Writings and Other Utterances on its Structure, History, Procural, Capabilities,
etc. (London, 1898–1904)
J.H. Burn: ‘Bibliography of the Organ’, Dictionary of Organs and Organists, ed. F.W.
Thonsby (London, 1912, 2/1921)
R. Fallou and N. Dufourcq: Essai d’une
bibliographie de l’histoire de l’orgue en France
(Paris, 1929)
B. Weigl: Handbuch der
Orgelliteratur (Leipzig, 1931)
G.A.C. de Graaf: Literatuur
over het orgel (Amsterdam, 1957)
B. Matthews: Index to The
Organ [1921–1970] (Bournemouth, 1970)
W.M. Liebenow: Rank on
Rank: a Bibliography of the History and Construction of Organs (Minneapolis, 1973)
R. Reuter: Bibliographie
der Orgel (Kassel, 1973)
U. Czubatinski: Bibliographie
zur Geschichte der Orgel in Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin,
1993)
F. Friedrich: Orgelbau in
Thüringen: Bibliographie (Kleinblittersdorf, 1994)
F. Friedrich: Orgelbau in
Sachsen: Bibliographie (Kleinblittersdorf, 1995)
Organ: Bibliography
b: construction
MersenneHU;
PraetoriusSM, ii; VirdungMG
A. Schlick: Spiegel der
Orgelmacher und Organisten (Speyer, 1511/R); ed. E. Flade (Mainz, 1932); Eng. trans. in Bibliotheca
organologica, cxiii (Buren, 1980)
C. Antegnati: L’arte
organica (Brescia, 1608/R); ed. R. Lunelli (Mainz, 1938, 2/1958)
A. Werckmeister: Orgel-Probe (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1681, 2/1698/R as Erweiterte
und verbesserte Orgel-Probe, 5/1783; Eng. trans., 1976)
J.P. Bendeler: Organopoeia (Frankfurt and Leipzig, c1690/R, 2/1739 as Orgel-Bau-Kunst, oder Unterweisung)
P.M. Vogt: Conclave
thesauri magnae artis musicae (Prague, 1719)
F. Bédos de
Celles:
L’art du facteur d’orgues (Paris, 1766–78/R; Eng. trans., 1977); ed. C.
Mahrenholz (Kassel, 1934–6, 2/1963–6)
J. Adlung: Musica
mechanica organoedi, ed. J.L. Albrecht (Berlin, 1768/R); ed. C. Mahrenholz (Kassel, 1931)
J.S. Halle: Die Kunst
des Orgelbaues, theoretisch und praktisch (Brandenburg,
1779/R)
F.-H. Clicquot: Théorie-pratique
de la facture de l’orgue (MS, 1789; facs. with appx, Kassel and New York, 1968; Eng. and Ger. trans., 1985)
G.C.F. Schlimbach: Ueber die
Structur, Erhaltung, Stimmung, Prüfung etc. der Orgel
(Leipzig, 1801/R)
J. van Heurn: De
orgelmaaker (Dordrecht, 1804–5/R)
J.C. Wolfram: Anleitung
zur Kenntniss, Beurtheilung und Erhaltung der Orgeln
(Gotha, 1815/R)
G. Serassi: Sugli
organi: lettere a G.S. Mayr, P. Bontichi e C. Bigatti
(Bergamo, 1816/R)
T. Faulkner: Designs for
Organs: the Organ Builder’s Assistant (London, 1823, 2/1838)
J. Wilke and F. Kaufmann: ‘Ueber die Crescendo- und Diminuendo-Züge an Orgeln’, AMZ, xxv (1823), 113–22
J.G. Töpfer: Die
Orgelbau-Kunst (Weimar, 1833, suppl. 1834)
C. Kützing: Theoretisch-praktisches
Handbuch der Orgelbaukunst (Berne, 1836, 2/1843)
J. Done: A Complete
Treatise on the Organ (London, 1837)
J.A. Hamilton: Catechism of
the Organ (London, 1842, enlarged 3/1865/R)
J.J. Seidel: Die Orgel
und ihr Bau (Breslau, 1843/R, enlarged 4/1887 by B. Kothe; Eng. trans., 1852/R)
J.G. Töpfer: Die Orgel (Erfurt, 1843, 2/1862)
M.-P. Hamel: Nouveau
manuel complet du facteur d’orgues (Paris, 1849, 2/1903)
J.G. Töpfer: Lehrbuch der
Orgelbaukunst (Weimar, 1855, rev. 3/1936–9 and
later edns by P. Smets)
J.G. Heinrich: Orgellehre:
Structur und Erhaltung der Orgel (Glogau, 1861)
A. Le D. de
Pontécoulant: Organographie: essai sur la facture
instrumentale, art, industrie et commerce (Paris, 1861/R)
F.H. Sutton: Church
Organs: their Position and Construction (London, 1872, 3/1883)
M. Tafall y
Miguel:
Arte completo del constructor de órganos, o sea guía manual del
organero (Santiago, 1872–6)
W.H. Clarke: An Outline
of the Structu re of the Pipe Organ (Boston, 1877)
W.E. Dickson: Practical
Organ-Building (London, 1881, 2/1882)
C.A. Edwards: Organs and
Organ Building (London, 1881)
T. Casson: The Modern
Organ (Denbigh, 1883)
J. Merklin: Notice sur
l’électricité appliquée aux grandes orgues (Lyons, 1887)
M. Wicks: Organ
Building for Amateurs (London, 1887, 2/1898/R)
F.E. Robertson: A Practical
Treatise on Organ-Building (London, 1897/R)
J.W. Hinton: Organ
Construction (London, 1900, 3/1910/R)
G.A. Audsley: The Art of
Organ-Building (New York, 1905/R)
T. Casson: Lecture … on
the Pedal Organ: its History, Design and Control
(London, 1905)
O.C. Faust: A Treatise
on the Construction, Repairing, and Tuning of the Organ
(Boston, 1905, 3/1949)
A. Schweitzer: Deutsche und
französische Orgelbaukunst und Orgelkunst (Leipzig, 1906, 2/1927)
W.E. Ehrenhofer: Taschenbuch
des Orgelbau-Revisors (Graz and Vienna, 1909/R)
C.F. Lewis: Improvements
in and relating to Pneumatic Organs (Bristol, 1910)
W. and T. Lewis: Modern Organ
Building (London, 1911/R, 3/1939/R)
J. Broadhouse: The Organ
Viewed from Within (London, 1914/R)
E.M. Skinner: The Modern
Organ (New York, 1917, 6/1945)
J. Matthews: The
Restoration of Organs (London, 1918, 3/1936/R)
G.A. Audsley: The Organ of
the Twentieth Century (New York, 1919/R)
H.F. Milne: How to Build
a Small Two-Manual Chamber Pipe Organ (London, 1925/R)
Deutsche
Orgelkunst [I]: Freiburg
1926
T. Telman: Het orgel:
een hand- en leerboek der orgelbouwkunst (Enschede, 1926, 3/1929)
E. Rupp: Die
Entwicklungsgeschichte der Orgelbaukunst (Einsiedeln, 1929/R)
R. Whitworth: The Electric
Organ (London, 1930, enlarged 3/1948/R)
G. Le Cerf and E.-R. Labande, eds.: Instruments
de musique du XVe siècle: les traités d’Henri-Arnaut de Zwolle et de divers
anonymes (Paris, 1932/R)
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W. Kaufmann: Der
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(Mainz, 1935, 3/1949)
P. de Bree: Moderne
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W. Ellerhorst: Handbuch der
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H. Klotz: Das Buch von
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A. Rougier: Initiation à
la facture d’orgue (Lyons, 1946)
W. Adelung: Einführung
in den Orgelbau (Leipzig, 1955, 2/1972, enlarged 1991)
M. Lange: Kleine
Orgelkunde: Bau und Funktion der Orgel (Kassel, 1955)
P.G. Andersen: Orgelbogen (Copenhagen, 1956;
Eng. trans., 1969)
J.E. Blanton: The Organ in
Church Design (Albany, TX, 1957)
H. Grabner: Die Kunst
des Orgelbaues (Berlin, 1958)
K. Bormann: Orgel- und
Spieluhrenbau (Zürich, 1968)
C.B. Fisk: ‘The Organ’s Breath of Life: Some Thoughts about Wind Supply’, The Diapason,
lx/10 (1968–9), 18–19
L. Aubeux: L’orgue: sa
facture (Angers, 1971)
K. Bormann: Heimorgelbau (Berlin, 1972)
A.J. Gierveld: Inleiding
tot de orgelbouw (Zaandam, 1979, 4/1983)
G. Huybens, ed.: Complete
Theoretical Works of A. Cavaillé-Coll (Buren, 1979) [facs.]
E.M. and R.H. Skinner: The
Composition of the Organ (Ann Arbor, 1981)
P.V. Picerno: ‘Antonio Barcotti’s “Regula e breve raccordo”: a Translation and
Commentary’, Organ Yearbook, xvi (1985), 47–70
P. Williams: ‘Considerations in the Designing of a House-Organ’, The Organbuilder,
iii (1985), 2–5
H.G. Klais: ‘Organ-Building between Reconstruction and New Construction’, JBIOS, xii (1988), 31–50
A. Reichling: ‘Problems in the Preservation and Restoration of Organs’, JBIOS, xii (1988), 4–12
E. Lieb: Der Bau von
Haus- und Übungsorgeln in Theorie und Praxis
(Frankfurt, 1991)
P.-M. Guérity: ‘Réflexions et observations sur les souffleries’,
ISO Yearbook (1992), 64–91
J. Schmidt: ‘Organ Case Design’, ISO
Yearbook (1993), 6–15
U. Pape, ed.: Restaurierung
pneumatischer Orgeln (Berlin, 1995)
M. Jurine: Barker
Machines in the 19th Century French Organ (Leuven, 1997)
J. Jongepier: Toegang tot
het orgel (Utrecht, 1998)
M. Kares: Kleinorgeln:
Geschichte – Typen – Technik (Karlsruhe, 1998)
R.E. Coleberd: ‘The Economics of Pipe Organ Building’, The Diapason, xc/1 (1999), 14–17
Organ: Bibliography
c: organ pipes: scaling, voicing and tuning
G.A. Sorge: Anweisung
zur Stimmung und Temperatur sowohl der Orgelwerke, als auch anderer Instrumente
sonderlich des Claviers (Hamburg, 1744)
G.A. Sorge: Die geheim
gehaltene Kunst von Mensuration von Orgel-Pfeiffen (MS,
c1760); ed. and Eng. trans.
in Bibliotheca organologica, xxxiii (Buren, 1977)
B. Asioli: Osservazioni
sul temperamento proprio degl’istromenti stabili
(Milan, 1816)
R. Willis: ‘On the Vowel Sounds, and on Reed Organ-Pipes’,
Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, iii (1830), 231–68;
pubd separately (Cambridge, 1829)
B. Flight: Flight’s
Practical Tuner for the Organ or the Pianoforte
(London, 1830, 3/c1880)
E. Gripon: Recherches
sur les tuyaux d’orgue à cheminée (Angers, 1864)
R. Gerhardt: Die
Rohrflöte, ein Pfeifenregister der Orgel (Halle, 1884)
W. Brockmann: Beobachten
an Orgelpfeifen (Berlin, 1886)
W.C.L. van Schaik: Ueber die
Tonerregung in Labialpfeifen (Rotterdam, 1891)
T. Elliston: Organs and
Tuning (London, 1894, enlarged 3/1898,
repr. with addenda 1903, 1911, 1916, 1924)
A. Cavaillé-Coll: Etudes
expérimentales sur les tuyaux d’orgues (Paris, 1895) [paper presented at the Académie des sciences,
24 Feb 1840, suppl., 23 Jan 1860]
H. Smith: Modern Organ
Tuning: the How and Why? (London, 1902)
W.H. Boyle: The Art of
Pipe Organ Tuning (Syracuse, NY, 1916)
H.H. Jahnn: ‘Die Orgel und die Mixtur ihres Klanges’, Kleine Veröffentlichungen der Glaubensgemeinde Ugrino, iv (Klecken Kreis Harburg, 1922), 37–68
A. Hemstock: On Tuning
the Organ (London, 1924)
N. Bonavia-Hunt: ‘The Art of Reed Voicing’, The Organ, ix (1929–30), 101–8
N.A. Bonavia-Hunt: Modern
Studies in Organ Tone (London, 1933)
C. Mahrenholz: Die
Berechnung der Orgelpfeifen-Mensuren vom Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des 19.
Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1938/R, 2/1968; Eng.
trans., 1975)
N. Frobenius and F. Ingerslev: Some
Measurements of the End-Corrections and Acoustic Spectra of Cylindrical Open
Flue Organ Pipes (Copenhagen, 1947)
N.A. Bonavia-Hunt and H.W. Homer: The Organ
Reed (New York, 1950)
J. Backus and T.C. Hundley: ‘Wall Vibrations in Flue Organ Pipes and their Effect on Tone’, JASA, xxxix (1966), 936–45
W. Lottermoser and J. Meyer: Orgelakustik
in Einzeldarstellungen (Frankfurt, 1966, 2/1983)
J. Goebel: Theorie und
Praxis des Orgelpfeifenklanges (Frankfurt, 1967, 2/1975)
K.-J. Sachs: Mensura
fistularum: die Mensurierung der Orgelpfeifen im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1970–80)
H.D. Blanchard: ‘Pipe Scales and Scale Data’, The Tracker, xxiii/2 (1978–9), 13–17
A.C.N. Mackenzie
of Ord:
‘The Well-Tuned Organ’, JBIOS, iii (1979), 46–72
W. Kluge: ‘Die statische Festigkeit von Orgelpfeifen’, Acta organologica, xiv (1980), 251–62
L.G. Monette and C. Stevens: Organ Tonal
Finishing and Fine Tuning (Baton Rouge, LA, 1981)
A. Reichling: ‘Zink als Material für Orgelpfeifen in Geschichte und Gegenwart’, Beitrag zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der
Orgel, ed. H.G. Klais (Bonn, 1983), 67–139
H. Greunke: ‘The Structural Stability of Lead-Tin Alloys Used in Organpipes’, Organ Yearbook, xv
(1984), 108–14
B. Owen: ‘Pitch and Tuning in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century American Organs’, Organ Yearbook, xv
(1984), 54–9
C. Padgham: The
Well-Tempered Organ (Oxford, 1987)
K. Wegschneider and H. Schütz: Orgeltemperatur:
ein Beitrag zum Problem der Rekonstruktion historischer Stimmungsarten bei
Orgelrestaurierungen (Michaelstein, 1988)
C. Kent: ‘Tuning & Temperament and the British Organ 1750–1850’, JBIOS, xiv (1990), 21–34
P. Chéron: ‘French Reeds’, ISO
Yearbook (1991), 65–115
D. Frostick: ‘English Romantic Reeds’, ISO Yearbook (1992), 92–107
L.G. Monette: The Art of
Organ Voicing (Kalamazoo, MI, 1992)
H.L. and W.P. Huestis: ‘Scaling Organ Pipes – with a Computer’, The Diapason, lxxxiv/7 (1993), 11–13
P. Pelto: ‘Four Voicing Techniques: Analysing the Perception of Sound’, Organ Yearbook,
xxv (1995), 101–22
Organ: Bibliography
d: history
(i) General
(ii) Africa
(iii) Australia
(iv) Austria
(v) Baltic States
(Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)
(vi) Belgium
(vii) Canada
(viii) China
(ix) Croatia
(x)
Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Slovakia
(xi) Denmark
(xii) England,
Ireland, Scotland, Wales
(xiii) Finland
(xiv) France
(xv) Germany
(xvi) Hungary
(xvii) Israel
(xviii) Italy
(xix) Japan
(xx) Mexico
(xxi) Netherlands
(xxii) New Zealand
(xxiii) Norway
(xxiv) Philippines
(xxv) Poland
(xxvi) Portugal
(xxvii) Romania
(xxviii) Russia/USSR
(xxix) Slovenia
(xxx) South and
Central America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela)
(xxxi) Spain
(xxxii) Sweden
(xxxiii) Switzerland
(xxxiv) Turkey
(xxxv) USA
(xxxvi) West Indies
Organ: Bibliography
(i) General
HawkinsH
Hopkins-RimbaultO
WilliamsNH
A.A. Hülphers: Historisk
afhandling om musik och instrumenter (Västerås, 1773/R)
J. Norbury: The Box of
Whistles (London, 1877)
D. Buck: The
Influence of the Organ in History (London, 1882/R)
A.G. Hill: The
Organ-Cases and Organs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London, 1883–91/R)
C.F.A. Williams: The Story of
the Organ (London, 1903/R, 2/1916)
H. Degering: Die Orgel:
ihre Erfindung und ihre Geschichte bis zur Karolingerzeit (Münster, 1905)
G.C. Bedwell: The
Evolution of the Organ (London, 1907)
J.I. Wedgwood: Some
Continental Organs and their Makers (London, 1910)
G.L. Miller: The Recent
Revolution in Organ Building (New York, 1913/R)
M.E. Bossi: Storia
dell’organo (Milan, 1919)
L. de Bondt and R. Lyr: Histoire de
l’orgue (Brussels, 1924)
G. Frotscher: Die Orgel (Leipzig, 1927)
C.W. Pearce: The
Evolution of the Pedal Organ (London, 1927)
K.G. Fellerer: Orgel und
Orgelmusik: ihre Geschichte (Augsburg, 1929)
H.G. Farmer: The Organ of
the Ancients from Eastern Sources, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic (London, 1931)
A. Cellier and H. Bachelin: L’orgue: ses
éléments, son histoire, son esthétique (Paris, 1933)
H. Klotz: Über die
Orgelkunst der Gotik, der Renaissance und des Barock
(Kassel, 1934, 3/1986)
F.W. Galpin: A Textbook
of European Musical Instruments (London, 1937, 3/1956/R)
W. Apel: ‘The Early History of the Organ’, Speculum, xxiii (1948), 191–216
W.L. Sumner: The Organ:
its Evolution, Principles of Construction and Use
(London, 1952, enlarged 4/1973)
W. Haacke: Orgeln in
aller Welt (Königstein, 1953)
S. dalla
Libera:
L’organo (Milan, 1956)
J. Perrot: L’orgue de
ses origines hellénistiques à la fin du XIIIe siècle
(Paris, 1965; Eng. trans.,
abridged, 1971)
P. Hardouin: ‘De l’orgue de Pépin à l’orgue médiéval’, RdM, iii (1966), 21–54
H. and H.J. Norman: The Organ
Today (London, 1966, 2/1980)
P. Williams: The European
Organ 1450–1850 (London, 1966)
H.H. Eggebrecht: Die
Orgelbewegung (Stuttgart, 1967)
G. Frotscher: Orgeln (Karlsruhe, 1968)
P. Hardouin, P. Williams and H. Klotz: ‘Pour une histoire du plein-jeu’, Renaissance de l’orgue, no.1 (1968), 21–4; no.2 (1969), 6–11; no.3 (1969),
3–9; no.4 (1969), 6–8; nos.5–6 (1970), 31–4; no.7 (1970), 9–11; no.8 (1970),
17–20; Connaissance de l’orgue, no.1 (1971), 4–7; nos.2–3 (1971),
6–11; no.4 (1971), 8–13
W. Walcker-Mayer: Die römische
Orgel von Aquincum (Stuttgart, 1970; Eng. trans., 1972)
L. Elvin: Organ
Blowing: its History and Development (Lincoln, 1971)
N. Meeùs: La naissance
de l’octave courte et ses différentes formes au 16e siècle (diss., U. of Leuven, 1971)
Orgel und
Orgelspiel im 16. Jahrhundert: Innsbruck 1977
D.R. Bruch: The Early
Development of Organ Pedals in Northern Europe (diss.,
U. of Kansas, 1979)
M.I. Wilson: Organ Cases
of Western Europe (London, 1979)
F. Brouwer: Orgelbewegung
und Orgelgegenbewegung (Utrecht, 1981)
H.G. Klais, ed.: Beiträge zur
Geschichte und Ästhetik der Orgel (Bonn, 1983)
B. Sonnaillon: King of
Instruments: a History of the Organ (New York, 1985)
C. Wolff, ed.: Orgel,
Orgelmusik und Orgelspiel: Festschrift Michael Schneider zum 75. Geburtstag (Kassel, 1985)
K. Marshall: Iconographical
Evidence for the Late-Medieval Organ in French, Flemish and English Manuscripts (New York, 1989)
P. Williams: The Organ in
Western Culture, 750–1250 (Cambridge, 1993)
U. and U. Rüge: Berühmte
Orgeln in Europa (Munich, 1994)
A. Reichling, ed.: Aspekte der
Orgelbewegung (Berlin, 1995)
Organ: Bibliography
(ii) Africa
M.G. Hallowes: ‘Organs in Africa’, The
Organ, vii (1927–8), 115–22
Z.C. Codner: ‘The Organs of the Groote Kerk, Cape Town’, The Organ, xxxix (1959–60), 93–8
J.L. Dixon: ‘Organs in Uganda’, The
Organ, lv (1975–6), 30–40
J.L. Dixon: ‘Some Organs in Kenya’, The
Organ, lv (1975–6), 137–45
A. Troskie: Pyporgels in
Suid-Afrika (Pretoria, 1992)
Organ: Bibliography
(iii) Australia
H. Snow: ‘The Organs at Melbourne Town Hall’, The Organ, ix (1929–30), 26–35
E.N. Matthews: Colonial
Organs and Organ Builders (Melbourne, 1969)
J.R. Maidment: Gazetteer of
Victorian Pipe Organs (Melbourne, 1970)
J.R. Maidment: Gazetteer of
Tasmanian Pipe Organs (Melbourne, 1971)
J.R. Elms: Gazetteer of
West Australian Pipe Organs (Melbourne, 1972)
B.A. Clark and J.M. Johnson: Pipe Organs
of Tasmania: a Brief History (Hobart, 1974, 2/1981)
B. Naylor: Gazetteer of
South Australian Pipe Organs (Melbourne, 1974)
J.R. Maidment: ‘Imported Organs in Australia: a 150-Year Tradition’, Organ Yearbook, vi
(1975), 64–86
G. Cox: Gazetteer of
Queensland Pipe Organs (Melbourne, 1976)
G. Cox: ‘Nineteenth-Century English Organs in Queensland, Australia’, The Organ, lv (1976–7), 64–73
D. Kinsela: ‘The Restoration of the Organ in Sydney Town Hall’, JBIOS, ii (1978), 87–102
J. Stiller: ‘Historic Organs of South Australia’, OHTA News, iv/2 (1980), 15–40
G.D. Rushworth: Historic
Organs of New South Wales (Sydney, 1988)
J. Maidment: ‘Australia’s Multi-Cultural Organ Heritage’, JBIOS, xiii (1989), 79–86
J. Grant, ed.: The Organs
and Organists of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne
(Melbourne, 1991)
M. Brightman: The Organ
and Organists of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Toowoomba
(Toowoomba, 1995)
B. Owen: ‘Organ Preservation “Down Under”’, The Tracker, xxxix/3 (1995), 18–23
M. Lutz: The Work
Praises the Man: Organbuilders in the Barossa Valley
(Nariootpa, 1996)
B. Jefferson: Steve
Laurie, Organ Builder: his Life and Works (Somers, 1998)
Organ: Bibliography
(iv) Austria
R. Quoika: Die
Altösterreichische Orgel (Kassel, 1953)
O. Eberstaller: Orgeln und
Orgelbauer in Österreich (Graz, 1955)
R. Quoika: Altösterreichische
Hornwerke: ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Orgelbaukunst (Berlin, 1959)
K. Schütz: Der Wiener
Orgelbau in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts
(Vienna, 1969)
G. Bozeman: ‘The Haydn Organs of Eisenstadt’, Art of the Organ, i (1971), no.1, pp.39–48; no.2, pp.33–40; no.3, pp.41–5
H. Haselböck: Barocker
Orgelschatz in Niederösterreich (Vienna, 1972)
A. Forer: Orgeln in
Österreich (Vienna and Munich, 1973, 2/1983)
E. Krauss: Die Orgeln
Innsbrucks (Innsbruck, 1977)
E. Krauss: ‘Orgeln der Renaissancezeit in Tirol’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor Maarten Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 399–418
A. Forer: Orgeln in
Österreich (Vienna, 1983)
R.G. Frieberger: Der Orgelbau
in Oberösterreich im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert
(Innsbruck, 1984)
H. Nadler: Orgelbau in
Vorarlberg und Liechtenstein (Dornbirn, 1987)
G. Lade: Orgeln in
Wien (Vienna, 1990)
P. Tenhaef: ‘Neue Hinweise zu den Salzburger Domorgeln- und Emporen im 17.
Jahrhundert’, Acta organologica, xxiii (1992), 113–22
Organ: Bibliography
(v) Baltic States (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)
L.I. Royzman: Organnaya
kul'tura Estonii (Moscow, 1960)
C.R. Whitney: ‘Riga Cathedral’s Walcker Organ’, American Organist, xv/1 (1981), 46 only
I. Grauzdina: Tukstos
melem ergeles spele (Riga, 1987)
A. Uibo and J. Kuuskemaa, eds.: Historische
estnische Kirchenorgeln (Lilienthal, 1994)
A. McCrea: ‘Toward a History of Organ-Building in the Baltic States’, Organ Yearbook,
xxv (1995), 1–32
Organ: Bibliography
(vi) Belgium
E.G.J. Gregoir: Historique
de la facture et des facteurs d’orgue (Antwerp, 1865/R)
J. Kreps: ‘De Belgische orgelmakers, 13e tot 19e eeuw’, Musica sacra [Bruges], xxxix (1932), 231
G. Moortgat: Oude orgels
in Vlaanderen (Antwerp, 1964–5)
J.-P. Félix: Inventaire
des orgues de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1969, 2/1994)
‘Het
Rococo-orgel in Vlaanderen’, Vlaanderen, xxi (1972) [organ
issue]
G. Potvlieghe: Het
historisch orgel in Vlaanderen (Brussels, 1974)
J.-P. Félix: Les orgues
historiques de Flône (Brussels, 1978)
J.-P. Félix: Mélange
d’organologie (Brussels, 1979–97)
J. Ferrard: Orgues du
Brabant wallon (Brussels, 1981)
G. Persoons: De orgels en
de organisten van de Onze Lieve Vrouwkerk te Antwerpen van 1500 tot 1650 (Brussels, 1981)
J.-P. Félix and G. Huybens: Leuvense
orgelgids (Lok, 1985)
L. Lannoo and P. Peeters: Orgeln in
der alten Grafschaft Flandern (Berlin, 1985)
M. Haine and N. Meeùs: Dictionnaire
des facteurs d’instruments de musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles du 9e siècle à
nos jours (Liège, 1986)
K. D’Hooghe: ‘Aspecten van het orgelonderricht in Vlaanderen’,
Orgelkunst, x/1 (1987), 7–19
J. Lambrechts-Douillez: Orgelbouwers
te Antwerpen in de 16de eeuw (Antwerp, 1987)
G. Spiessens: ‘Antwerpse documenten over orgelbouwer Jean-Baptiste Forceville’, Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments
Bulletin, xv (1987), 125–49
A. Fauconnier: ‘The Restoration of the 1692 Peter Goltfuss Organ in the Begijnhofkerk,
Leuven’, Organ Yearbook, xix (1988), 38–52
A. Fauconnier and P. Roose: Orgels van
Vlaanderen (Brussels, 1991)
J. Lambrechts-Douillez: Orgels in
Antwerpse kerken (Antwerp, 1991)
G. Duquesne, J.-P. Felix and L. Kerremans: L’orgue
monumental de l’église Saint-Servais à Schaerbeek
(Brussels, 1993)
L. Lannoo and K. D’Hooghe: West-Vlaamse
orgelklanken (Bruges, 1997)
E. Mairlot: Orgues en
Wallonie et à Bruxelles (Lyons, 1997)
Organ: Bibliography
(vii) Canada
C. Chapais: ‘La construction des orgues par les Canadiens français’, Congrès de la langue française au Canada
II: Quebec 1937, 547–56
D. Mackey: The Organ in
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal (London, 1950)
The Organs of
Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, B.C., 1856–1958 (Victoria,
BC, 1958)
H. Kallmann: ‘From the Archives: Organs and Organ Players in Canada’, Canadian Music Journal, iii/3 (1958–9), 41–8
A. Bouchard: ‘Evolution de la facture d’orgue au Canada entre 1960 et 1975’, Organ Yearbook, ix
(1978), 70–82
H.D. McKellar: ‘Canadians and their Organs, 1660–1815’, American Organist, xii/6 (1978), 44–7
P. Grandmaison: ‘Les orgues de la Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal’, American Organist,
xviii/12 (1984), 78–80
H.D. McKellar: ‘A History of the Two Elliot Organs in Québec Cathedral’, The Tracker, xxx/3
(1985–6), 29–33
E. Morin: Le livre
d’orgue de Montréal (Paris, 1988)
K.J. Raudsepp: Organs of
Montreal, i (Quebec, 1993)
E. Hanbury: ‘The Organnes of the New Founde Lande’, American Organist, xxxi/5 (1997), 60–65
J.B. Hartman: The Organ in
Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB, 1997)
K. Raudsepp: ‘The Warrens’, The
Tracker, xli/1 (1999)
Organ: Bibliography
(viii) China
D.F. Urrows: ‘China, Churches, and Organs’, American Organist, xxvii (1993), no.4, pp.54–9; no.7, pp.50–55; no.12,
pp.58–62
J. Welch: ‘China Update: an Organ Tour of Taiwan and Mainland China’, The Diapason,
lxxxiv/8 (1993), 14–15
Organ: Bibliography
(ix) Croatia
L. Saban: ‘The Organs of Ivan Juraj Eisl in Croatia’, Organ Yearbook, iii (1972), 41–51
J. Meder and N. Vranic: Orgulje u
Hrvatskoj [Organs in Croatia] (Zagreb, 1992)
Organ: Bibliography
(x) Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Slovakia
V. Němec: Pražské
varhany [Prague organs] (Prague, 1944)
R. Quoika: Der Orgelbau
in Böhmen und Mähren (Mainz, 1966)
J. Bate: ‘Developments in Czechoslovakia’, Organists Review, lx (1975), 15–17
J. Sehnal: Varhanáři
na Moravě 1500–1800 [Organ makers in Moravia]
(Brno, 1979)
J. Sehnal: ‘Die Orgeln der Olmützer Kathedrale’, Acta organologica, xv (1981), 37–75
O. Gergelyi and K. Wurm: Historické
organy na Slovensku/Historische Orgeln in der Slowakei
(Bratislava, 1982)
O. Gergelyi and K. Wurm: ‘Historische Orgeln und Gehäuse in der Ostslowakei’, Acta organologica,
xxii (1991), 13–104
D. Hollick: ‘Organs in the New Czech Republic’, Choir & Organ, iii/3 (1995), 10–14
Z. Fridrich and K. Fridrichová: ‘The Restoration of the Baroque Organ in the Cathedral of the Virgin
Mary in the Snow, Olomouc’, The
Diapason, lxxxvii/6 (1996), 12–14
P. Czerný: ‘Orgels en orgelmakers in Praag: een historisch oversicht’, Het orgel, xciii/3
(1997), 17–28
Organ: Bibliography
(xi) Denmark
A. Hammerich: Et historisk
orgel paa Frederiksborg slot (Copenhagen, 1897/R)
J. Foss: Kirkorglar i
Danmark (Copenhagen, 1909)
J. Foss: Forslag til
orgel-dispositionen (Copenhagen, 1910)
J. Wörsching: Die
Compenius-Orgel auf Schloss Frederiksborg (Mainz, 1946)
N. Friis: Orgelbygning
i Danmark: Renaissance, Barok og Rokoko (Copenhagen, 1949, 2/1971)
M. Manthorpe: ‘Some Organs in Denmark’, The Organ, xxxv (1955–6), 92–8
J. Johnsen: Organister
og orgler i Agder Bispedømme (Trykkeri, 1962)
N. Friis: Helsingør
Domkirke: Sct. Olai kirkes orgel, 1559–1969 (Elsinore, 1969)
M. Kjersgaard: Renaissance-orglet
i Dronning Dorotheas Kapel på Sønderborg Slot (Valby, 1976)
O. Olesen: ‘The New Organ Revival in Denmark’, JBIOS, iii (1979), 46–55
A. Nørfelt: ‘Orgelbyggerne Frederik og Emil Nielsen’, Dansk orgelårbog, (1981–2), 35–59
P.K. Frandsen, S. Prip and C. Røllum-Larsen, eds.: Dansk
orgelkultur (Copenhagen, 1997)
Organ: Bibliography
(xii) England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales
BicknellH
J. Sutton: A Short
Account of Organs Built in England from the Reign of King Charles the Second to
the Present Time (London, 1847/R)
J. Baron: Scudamore
Organs (London, 1858)
E.F. Rimbault: The Early
English Organ Builders and their Works (London, 1865/R)
E.J. Hopkins: ‘The English Medieval Church Organ’, Archaeological Journal, xlv (1888), 120–57, 423–40; pubd separately (Exeter,
1888)
A.P. Purey-Cust: Organs and
Organists of York Minster (York, 1899)
F.W. Galpin: Old English
Instruments of Music (London, 1910/R, rev. 4/1965/R
by T. Dart)
A. Freeman: ‘Records of British Organ-Builders, 940–1660’, Dictionary of Organs and Organists (London, 1912, 2/1921), 7–72
C.W. Pearce: Notes on
English Organs of the Period 1800–1810 (London, 1912)
A. Freeman: English
Organ-Cases (London, 1921)
A. Freeman: ‘Records of British Organ Builders, Second Series’, MO, xlv (1921–2), 874–5, 963, 1058–9; xlvi (1922–3),
53–4, 153, 257–8, 462, 561–2, 665–6, 859, 958, 1051, 1154; xlvii (1923–4), 63,
175, 284–5, 505, 608, 714–15, 811, 915–16, 1010, 1101, 1203–4; xlviii (1924–5),
61, 172–3, 288, 399, 508–9, 616, 729, 835, 935–6, 1033, 1128–9, 1228–9; xlix
(1925–6), 61–2, 278–80
J. Perkins: The Organs
and Bells of Westminster Abbey (London, 1937)
N.A. Bonavia-Hunt: The Modern
British Organ (London, 1947)
L.S. Barnard: The Organs
of Bangor Cathedral (Bedford, 1955)
H.J. Steele: English
Organs and Organ Music from 1500 to 1650 (diss., U. of
Cambridge, 1959)
B.J. Maslen: ‘The Earliest English Organ Pedals’, MT, ci (1960), 578–9, 717–18; cii (1961), 107–9, 248–9
B. Matthews: The Organs
and Organists of Salisbury Cathedral (Salisbury, 1961, 4/1989)
W. Shewring: ‘Quel che fu l’organo per gli inglesi’, L’organo, iii (1962), 59–75
C. Clutton and A. Niland: The British
Organ (London, 1963, 2/1982)
P. Williams: English
Organ Music and the English Organ under the First Four Georges (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1963)
R.L. Henley: The Snetzler
Organ in St. Peter’s Church, Drogheda (Drogheda, 1965)
M. Wilson: The English
Chamber Organ: History and Development, 1650–1850
(Oxford, 1968)
C. Eden: Organs Past
and Present in Durham Cathedral (Durham, 1970)
J.T. Fesperman: A Snetzler
Chamber Organ of 1761 (Washington DC, 1970)
J. Uhlworm: Beziehungen
zwischen Chorgestühl und Orgelprospekt in England vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur
Gegenwart (Berlin, 1973)
J.B. Clark: Transposition
in Seventeenth Century English Organ Accompaniments and the Transposing Organ (Detroit, 1974)
D. Dawe: ‘The Mysterious Pyke, Organ Builder’, MT, cxv (1974), 68–70
J. McKinnon: ‘The 10th Century Organ at Winchester’, Organ Yearbook, v (1974), 4–19
J.P. Rowntree and J.F. Brennan: The
Classical Organ in Britain (Oxford, 1975–9)
W. Shaw: The
Organists and Organs of Hereford Cathedral (Hereford, 1976, 2/1988)
N. Thistlethwaite: ‘E pur si muove: English Organ-Building 1820–1851’, Organ Yearbook,
vii (1976), 101–24
P.R.W. Blewett and H.C. Thompson: Antony
Duddington, Organ-Maker: the Duddyngton Manuscripts at All Hallows-by-the-Tower (South Croydon, 1977)
N. Thistlethwaite: ‘Organo pneumatico’, JBIOS, ii (1978), 31–62
N. Temperley: ‘Organs in English Parish Churches 1660–1830’, Organ Yearbook, x (1979), 83–100
B. Owen: ‘The Evidence for Trompes in the 16th-Century English Organ’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor
Maarten Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 489–98
R. Pacey: The Organs
of Oxford (Oxford, 1980)
S. Bicknell: ‘English Organ-Building 1642–1685’, JBIOS, v (1981), 5–32
V. Butcher: The Organs
and Music of Worcester Cathedral (Worcester, 1981)
W. Barry: ‘The Keyboard Instruments of King Henry VIII’, Organ Yearbook, xii (1982), 31–45
R. Francis and P. Klein: The Organs
and Organists of Ludlow Parish Church (Ludlow, 1982)
J. Boeringer: Organa
britannica: Organs in Great Britain 1660–1860 (London
and Lewisburg, PA, 1983–9)
R. Downes: Baroque
Tricks: Adventures with Organ Builders (Oxford, 1983)
N. Thistlethwaite: The Organs
of Cambridge (Oxford, 1983)
M. Gillingham: ‘Sources of Form and Decoration in Old English Organ Cases’, The Organbuilder,
ii (1984), 10–13
J. Norman: The Organs
of Britain: an Appreciation and Gazetteer (Newton
Abbot, 1984)
N. Thistlethwaite: A History of
the Birmingham Town Hall Organ (Birmingham, 1984)
S. Bicknell: ‘The Organ in Britain Before 1600’, JBIOS, ix (1985), 28–41
D. Gwynn: ‘Organ Pitch in 17th Century England’, JBIOS, ix (1985), 65–78
C. Clutton: ‘The British School of Organ Building Considered in its Historical
Context’, The Organ Club Diamond
Jubilee (London, 1986), 53–66
L. Elvin: Family
Enterprise: the Story of some North Country Organ Builders (Lincoln, 1986)
S. Jeans: ‘The English Chaire Organ from its Origins to the Civil War’, The Organ, lxv (1986), 49–55
B. Owen: ‘Towards a Definition of the English Renaissance Organ’, Early Keyboard Studies Newsletter, iii (1986), 1–7
M. Forsyth-Grant: Twenty-One
Years of Organ-Building (Oxford, 1987)
W. Stegtmeyer: Die
englische Kirchenorgel (Münster, 1987)
B. Owen: ‘The Early Seventeenth-Century Organ in St. Nicholas, Stanford-on-Avon’, Organ Yearbook,
xix (1988), 5–30
N. Plumley and J. Lees: The Organs
and Organists of Chichester Cathedral (Chichester, 1988)
P. Hale: The Organs
of Rochester Cathedral (Rochester, 1989)
R. Williamson: The Organs
of Cheltenham, 1791–1989 (Cheltenham, 1989)
A. Barnes: Historic
Organs in Historic Places: the Eighteenth-Century Chamber Organ in Kedleston
Hall, Derbyshire (Atherstone, 1990)
D. Gwynn: ‘The Development of Bellows Systems in British Organs c.990–1790’, JBIOS, xiv (1990), 35–47
N. Thistlethwaite: The Making
of the Victorian Organ (Cambridge, 1990)
W.H. Grindle: The Organ
and Music of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Dublin, 1991)
R. Hird and J. Lancelot: Durham
Cathedral Organs (Durham, 1991)
J. Inglis: ‘The Builders of Scotland’s Organs: a Survey’, JBIOS, xv (1991), 50–58
J. Inglis: The Organ in
Scotland Before 1700 (Schagen, 1991)
C. Kent: ‘The Harris Organ of Bristol Cathedral: Some Recent Investigations’, Organ Yearbook,
xxii (1991), 69–95
D.A. Stewart: Organs in
Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1991)
R. Tomkins: Organs of
Derby Cathedral (Derby, 1991)
R. Williamson: The Organs
of Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cirencester from the XVth Century (Cheltenham, 1991)
J. Harper: ‘The Origins of the Historic Organ at Stanford-on-Avon’, Organ Yearbook,
xxiii (1992–3), 37–69
A. Abbott and J. Whittle: The Organs
and Organists of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham
(Nottingham, 1993)
D. Gwynn: ‘The Development of English Key Actions up to 1800’, JBIOS, xvii (1993), 18–31
G. Verloop: ‘Een orgelreis naar Scotland’, De mixtuur, no.74 (1993), 714–41
G. Sumner: ‘The French Influence in High Victorian Lancashire’, JBIOS, xviii (1994), 108–25
T. Easton and S. Bicknell: ‘Two Pre-Reformation Organ Soundboards’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, xxxviii (1995),
268–95
L. Elvin: Pipes and
Actions: Some Organ Builders in the Midlands and Beyond
(Lincoln, 1995)
D. Gwynn: ‘The Development of English Reeds from Robert Dallam to John Gray’, JBIOS, xix (1995), 123–41
R. Tomkins: Pipe Organs
in Churches and Chapels of the Derbyshire Derwent and Ecclesbourne Valleys (Cromford, 1995)
De Gwynn: ‘Two English Pre-Reformation Sound boards’, Organ Yearbook, xxvi (1996), 1–27
P. Hale: ‘Englische Kathedralorgeln’, Ars organi, xliv/2 (1996), 67–88
P. Hale: The Organs
of Southwell Minster (Southwell, 1996)
A. Mumford and D. Simpson: The Organs
of St. Mary’s Parish Church, Twickenham (Twickenham, 1996)
N.M. Plumley: The Organs
of the City of London (Oxford, 1996)
N. Thistlethwaite, ed.: Fanfare for
an Organ-Builder: Essays Presented to Noel Mander
(Oxford, 1996)
B. Owen: ‘A Payer of Organs and a Voyall’, The Tracker, xli/2 (1997), 4–11
R. Pacey and M. Popkin: The Organs
of Oxford (Oxford, 1997)
R. Tomkins: Historic
Organs in Derbyshire (Cromford, 1998)
Organ: Bibliography
(xiii) Finland
P. Pelto: Urkujen
käyttäjän käskijira (Helsinki, 1989)
‘Urkujenrakennus
Suomessa (Organbuilding in Finland)’, ISO News, i (1991), 24–5,
28–33
J. Martikainen: Orglar i
Finland från tiden 1600–1800 (Helsinki, 1997)
Organ: Bibliography
(xiv) France
J.-B. Labat: Les orgues
monumentales de la facture ancienne et de la facture moderne (Bordeaux, 1877)
L. Bony: Une
excursion dans l’orgue (Paris, 1892)
A. Jacquot: Essai de
répertoire des artistes Lorrains: les facteurs d’orgues et de claveçins
Lorrains (Paris, 1910)
A. Cellier: L’orgue
moderne (Paris, 1913/R)
W. Goodrich: The Organ in
France (Boston, 1917/R)
A. Gastoué: L’orgue en
France, de l’antiquité au début de la période classique
(Paris, 1921)
F.B. Stiven: In the Organ
Lofts of Paris (Boston, 1923)
F. Raugel: Recherches
sur quelques maîtres de l’ancienne facture d’orgue française (Paris, 1924)
P. de Fleury: Dictionnaire
biographique des facteurs d’orgues nés ou ayant travaillé en France (Paris, 1926)
F. Raugel: Les grandes
orgues des églises de Paris et du département de la Seine (Paris, 1927)
F. Raugel: Les anciens
buffets d’orgues du département de Seine-et-Marne
(Paris, 1928, 2/1972)
P. Brunold: Le grand
orgue de St. Gervais à Paris (Paris, 1934)
N. Dufourcq: Documents
inédits relatifs à l’orgue français (Paris, 1934–5)
N. Dufourcq: Esquisse
d’une histoire de l’orgue en France du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1935)
F.X. Mathias: Les orgues
de la cathédrale de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, 1937)
E. Martinot: Orgues et
organistes des églises du diocèse de Troyes (Troyes, 1939)
P. Hardouin: Le grand
orgue de Saint Gervais à Paris (Paris, 1949, 3/1975)
J. Fellot: L’orgue classique
français (Paris, 1963, 2/1993)
P. Meyer-Siat: Die
Callinet-Orgel zu Masevaux (Mulhouse, 1963)
P. Sicard: Les orgues
du diocèse de Bayonne (Lyons, 1963)
F. Douglass: The Language
of the Classical French Organ (New Haven, CT, 1969, rev. 1995)
N. Dufourcq: Le livre de
l’orgue français, 1589–1789 (Paris, 1969–82)
J. Martinod: Répertoire
des travaux des facteurs d’orgues (Paris, 1970–76)
C. Noisette
de Crauzat: ‘Les orgues de la
cathédrale de Bayeux’, Art de
Basse-Normandie, lix (1972), 8–37
P.J. Hardouin: Le grand
orgue de Notre-Dame de Paris (Tours, 1973)
O. Mischiati and L.F. Tagliavini, eds.: ‘Un anonimo trattato francese d’arte organaria del XVIII secolo’, L’organo, xi (1973), 3–98
J.M. Dieuaide: Le grand
orgue Cavaillé-Coll de la cathédrale de Luçon (Luçon, 1974)
J.-M. Baffert: ‘Les orgues de Lyon du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle’, Cahiers et mémoires de l’orgue, no.1 (1974–5); see also L’orgue, no.214 (1990), 10–14
K. Lueders: ‘Amours, délices et grandes orgues’, Music: the AGO and RCCO Magazine, ix (1975), no.10, pp.26–31; no.12, pp.34–8; x (1976), no.4, pp.34–8; no.5, pp.34–7; no.9,
pp.42–5
G. Cantagrel and H. Halbreich: Le livre
d’or de l’orgue français (Paris, 1976)
J. Happel: ‘Les orgues en Alsace au XVIe siècle’, Cahiers et mémoires de l’orgue, nos.15–16 (1976) [whole issue]
‘L’orgue
français’, ReM, nos.295–6 (1977) [whole
issue]
L. Souberbielle: Le plein-jeu
de l’orgue français à l’époque classique (1660–1740), i
(Montoire-sur-le-Loir, 1977)
[incl. facs. of J. Sauveur: Application des sons harmoniques à la
composition des jeux d’orgues, Paris, 1704]
J. Guillou: L’orgue:
souvenir et avenir (Paris, 1978)
P. Salies and others,
eds.: L’orgue de l’insigne Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse (Toulouse, 1979)
P. Hardouin: ‘Les grandes orgues de la Basilique de St. Denis en France’, Connaissance de l’orgue (1979–80) [special
issue]
C.-W. Lindow: Historic
Organs in France (Delaware, OH, 1980) [Eng. trans. of orig. Fr. MS]
P.-Y. Asselin: ‘Le tempérament en France au XVIIIe siècle’, L’orgue à notre époque: Montreal 1981, 45–69
M. Cocheril: Les orgues
de Bretagne (Rennes, 1981)
D. Fuller: ‘Zenith and Nadir: the Organ versus its Music in Late 18th-Century
France’, L’orgue à notre époque:
Montreal 1981, 129–48
G. Klein: ‘Le grand orgue de St. Sulpice’, Flûte harmonique, no.20 (1981) [whole issue]
Fédération
francophone des amis de l’orgue: 1984– [series of annual congresses,
each devoted to a region of France]
S. May: ‘St-Michel, Bordeaux Reconsidered’, Organ Yearbook, xv (1984), 13–20
R. Davy: Les grandes
orgues de l’abbatiale St. Etienne de Caen (Schwarzach, 1985)
H. Steinhaus: ‘Orgues à Toulouse et dans la région’, ISO Information, no.25 (1985), 31–64
P. Meyer-Siat and others: Orgues en
Alsace (Strasbourg, 1985–6)
C. Noisette
de Crauzat: L’orgue français (Paris,
1986)
R. Saorgin, R. and X. Sant: Les orgues
historiques du pays niçois (Briel-sur-Roya, 1986)
T.G. Spelle: ‘The Organ of Transition in France (1785–1835)’,
American Organist, xxi/4 (1987), 68–70
J. Burg: ‘Charles-Marie Widor und Louis Vierne in ihrer Begegnung mit dem
Orgelbau’, Acta organologica, xx (1988), 319–61
Orgues de
l’Ile-de-France (Paris, 1988–99)
Orgues en
Aquitaine (Aix-en-Provence, 1988–9)
F. Sabatier, ed.: Pour une
histoire des orgues de France pendant la Révolution 1789–1802 (Paris, 1989)
Orgues de
Normandie (Paris, 1990)
J. Fellot: L’orgue
classique français (Aix-en-Provence, 1991)
P. van Dijk: Orgels in de
Elzas: orgelcultuur tussen Frankrijk en Duitsland
(Kampen, 1992)
M. Le Moël, ed.: Les orgues
de Paris (Paris, 1992)
D. Roth and G. Lade: Die
Cavaillé-Coll-Mutin-Orgel der Basilika Sacré-Coeur in Paris (Langen bei Bregenz, 1992) [rev. trans. of D. Roth: Le grand orgue du Sacré-Coeur de
Montmartre à Paris, 1985]
J. Eschbach: ‘St. Sulpice Restored’, American
Organist, xxviii/1 (1994), 56–60
N.R. Fairbank: ‘The Romantic Organ in France and its Influence on 19th-Century French
Literature’, American Organist, xxviii/6 (1994), 75–7
P.-M. Guéritey: Le grand
orgue de la cathédrale St.-Bénigne de Dijon, 1745–1995
(Dijon, 1995)
M. Cocheril and J. Ourvois: Orgues en
Bretagne (Lyons, 1996)
G. Lade: Die Orgel
der Kathedrale Notre-Dame in Paris (Lochau, 1997)
Organ: Bibliography
(xv) Germany
A. Werckmeister: Organum
gruningense redivivum, oder Kurtze Beschreibung des in der grüningischen
Schlos-Kirchen berühmten Orgel-Wercks (Quedlinburg and
Aschersleben, 1705); ed. P. Smets
(Mainz, 1932)
J.H. Biermann: Organographia
hildesiensis specialis (Hildesheim, 1738); ed. E. Palandt (Kassel, 1930)
C.G. Meyer: Sammlung
einiger Nachrichten von berühmten Orgel-Werken in Teutschland (Breslau, 1757)
J. Massmann: Die
Orgelbauten des Grossherzogthums Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
i: Die Orgelbauten der Residenzstatdt Schwerin (Wismar, 1875/R)
G. Bohnert: Die
Ludwigsburger Orgelbauindustrie in hundertjähriger Entwicklung (diss., U. of Heidelberg, 1920)
L. Burgemeister: Der Orgelbau
in Schlesien (Strasbourg, 1925, rev. 2/1973 by J.
Hermann, D.G. Busch and R. Walter)
P. Smets, ed.: Orgeldispositionen (Kassel, 1931)
W. Haacke: Die
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Orgelbaus im Lande Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Wolfenbüttel, 1935)
F. Blume: Michael
Praetorius und Esaias Compenius: Orgeln Verdingnis
(Wolfenbüttel, 1936)
G. Fock: ‘Hamburgs Anteil am Orgelbau im niederdeutschen Kulturgebeit’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für hamburgische
Geschichte, xxviii (1939), 289–373
G. Frotscher: Deutsche
Orgeldispositionen aus fünf Jahrhunderten
(Wolfenbüttel, 1939)
I. Rücker: Die deutsche
Orgel am Oberrhein um 1500 (Freiburg, 1940)
W. Supper and H. Meyer: Barockorgeln
in Oberschwaben (Kassel, 1941)
Der Barock,
seine Orgeln und seine Musik in Oberschwaben: Ochsenhausen 1951
W. David: Johann
Sebastian Bachs Orgeln (Berlin, 1951)
U. Dähnert: Die Orgeln
Gottfried Silbermanns in Mitteldeutschland (Leipzig, 1953/R)
P. Rubardt: Die
Silbermannorgeln in Rötha (Leipzig, 1953)
T. Peine: Der Orgelbau
in Frankfurt am Main und Umgebung von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt, 1956)
W.L. Sumner: ‘The Organ of Bach’, HMYB, viii (1956), 14–135
W. Kaufmann: Die Orgeln
des alten Herzogtums Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1962)
K.M. Fruth: Die deutsche
Orgelbewegung und ihre Einflüsse an die heutige Orgelklangwelt (Ludwigsburg, 1964)
W. Metzler: Romantischer
Orgelbau in Deutschland (Ludwigsburg, 1965)
R. Reuter: Orgeln in
Westfalen (Kassel, 1965)
K. Bormann: ‘Die gotische Orgel von Bartenstein’, Ars organi, xxix (1966), 989–1009
K. Bormann: Die gotische
Orgel zu Halberstadt (Berlin, 1966)
P. Bunjes: The
Praetorius Organ (St Louis, 1966)
F. Bösken: Quellen und
Forschungen zur Orgelgeschichte des Mittelrheins, i: Mainz und Vororte (Mainz, 1967)
K.-L. Schuke: ‘Deutsche Orgellandschaft zwischen Elbe, Stralsund, und Görlitz’, Acta organologica,
i (1967), 28–37
W. Kaufmann: Die Orgeln Ostfrieslands:
Orgeltopographie (Aurich, 1968)
G. Vedder: Der Orgelbau
in den Kreisen Iserlohn und Unna vor 1800 (Cologne, 1970)
W. Adelung: Orgeln der
Gegenwart (Kassel, 1972)
E. Schäfer: Laudatio
organi: eine Orgelfahrt (Leipzig, 1972, 7/1992)
U. Pape: Die Orgeln
der Stadt Wolfenbüttel (Berlin, 1973)
O. Schumann: Orgelbau im
Herzogtum Schleswig vor 1800 (Munich, 1973)
U. Pape: ‘Philipp Furtwängler (1800–1867)’, ISO Information, no.11 (1974), 777–98
G. Beer: Orgelbau
Ibach Barmen ( 1794–1904) (Cologne, 1975)
W. Schlepphorst: Der Orgelbau
im westlichen Niedersachsen (Kassel, 1975)
Frühromantischer
Orgelbau in Niedersachsen: Hildesheim 1976
B. Billeter: ‘Albert Schweitzer und sein Orgelbauer’, Acta organologica, xi (1977), 173–225
H. Winter and C. Edskes: Orgelstudien, ii: Cappel
(Hamburg, 1977); i: Stade (Hamburg, 1979)
G. Brenninger: Orgeln in
Altbayern (Munich, 1978, 2/1982)
H.J. Busch: ‘Zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt: zu Orgelbau, Orgelspiel und
Orgelkomposition in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert’, Mundus organorum: Festschrift Walter Supper,
ed. A. Reichling (Berlin, 1978),
63–91
Die kleine
Orgel in St. Jakobi zu Lübeck (Lübeck, 1978)
C.H. Edskes: ‘Der Orgelbau im Ems-Dollart-Gebiet in Gotik und Renaissance’, Ostfriesland, ii (1978), 29
U. Pape: Der Orgeln
der Kreises Fulda ausser Kernstadt Fulda (Berlin, 1978)
U. Pape and others: Monographien
historischer Orgeln, i: Geversdorf
und Altenhagen (Berlin, 1978); iii: Hohenkirchen
(Berlin, 1980); iv: Cadenberge (Berlin, 1984)
H.M. Balz and R. Menger: Alte Orgeln
in Hessen-Nassau (Berlin, 1979)
U. Dähnert: ‘Geschichte der Schlosskirchen-Orgel in Altenburg’, Organ Yearbook, x
(1979), 48–62
U. Dähnert: Historische
Orgeln in Sachsen: ein Orgelinventar (Frankfurt, 1980)
J.S. Hettrick: ‘The German Organ of the Early Renaissance’, The Diapason, lxxi/11 (1980), 1, 6–8
G. Seggermann and W. Weidenbach: Denkmalorgeln
zwischen Weser und Ems (Berlin, 1980)
B. Sulzmann: Historische
Orgeln in Baden, 1690–1890 (Munich, 1980)
W. Hüttel: ‘Zwei Meisterwerke der sächsisch-thüringischen Orgelbaukunst im 18.
Jahrhundert’, Acta organologica, xv (1981), 76–87
H. Vogel: Kleine
Orgelkunde (Wilhelmshaven, 1981)
O.G. Blarr and T. Kersken: Orgelstadt
Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, 1982)
P. Golon: Historische
Orgeln in Landkreis Stade (Stade, 1983)
W. Kalipp: Die
westfälische Orgelbauerfamilie Vorenweg-Kersting ( 1784–1879) (Kassel, 1984)
G.K. Ommer: Neue Orgeln
im Ruhrgebiet (Duisburg, 1984)
W. Renkewitz and J. Janca: Geschichte
der Orgelbaukunst in Ost- und Westpreussen von 1333 bis 1944 (Würzburg, 1984–)
W. Walcker-Meyer and R. Raue: ‘German Organ Building in the Nineteenth Century’, JBIOS, viii (1984), 82–95
H.H. Wickel: Auswärtige
Orgelbauer in Westfalen (Kassel, 1984)
H.D. Blanchard: The Bach
Organ Book (Delaware, OH, 1985)
W. Haacke and R. Jaehn: ‘Paul Schmidt und Mecklenburgs Orgelbau im 18. Jahrhundert’, Acta organologica,
xviii (1985), 44–265
S. Jeans: ‘August Wilhelm Bach und sein Lehrbuch für Orgel’, Orgel, Orgelmusik, und Orgelspiel:
Festschrift Michael Schneider zum 75. Geburtstag
(Kassel, 1985), 65–77
Orgellandschaft
Rheinland: Steinfeld 1986
G. Brenninger: Orgeln in
Schwaben (Munich, 1986)
H. Fischer: Die Orgeln
des Landkreises Bad Kissingen (Bad Kissingen, 1986)
G.B. Stauffer and E. May, eds.: J.S. Bach as
Organist: his Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices (London and Bloomington, IN, 1986)
H. Völkl, W. Rehfeldt and G. Rehm: Orgeln in
Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1986)
S. Jeans: ‘The Organ Builders J.S. and C.A. Buchholz of Berlin’, Organists Review,
lxxii (1987), 207–10
K.J. Snyder: ‘Buxtehude’s Organs’, American
Organist, xxi/5 (1987), 75–80
F. Jakob: ‘Die Gabler-Orgel zu Weingarten’, Organ Yearbook, xix (1988), 67–79
W. Bergelt: Die Mark
Brandenburg: eine wiederentdeckte Orgellandschaft (Berlin,
1989)
B.H. Bonkhoff: Denkmalorgeln
in der Pfalz (Speyer, 1990)
B. Schwarz, ed.: 500 Jahre
Orgeln in Berliner evangelischen Kirchen (Berlin, 1991)
L. Edwards: ‘The Thuringian Organ, 1702–1720’, Organ Yearbook, xxii (1991), 119–50
F. Friedrich: Orgeln in
Altenburg (Altenburg, 1991)
K. Lueders: ‘German Organbuilding in Europe’, ISO Yearbook (1991), 126–47
H. Fischer and T. Wohnhaas: Die
Augsburger Domorgeln (Sigmaringen, 1992)
K. Könner: Der
süddeutsche Orgelprospekt des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen,
1992)
H.J. Busch: ‘Die Orgeln Mendelssohns, Liszts und Brahms’, International Organ Academy: Göteborg 1994,
235–49
H. Fischer and T. Wohnhaas: Lexikon
süddeutscher Orgelbauer (Wilhelmshaven, 1994)
F.-H. Gress: Die Orgeln
der Frauenkirche zu Dresden (Freiburg, 1994)
F. Oehme: Handbuch
über die Orgelwerke in der Kreishauptmannschaft Leipzig, 1905 (Berlin, 1994)
K. Döhring: Der Orgelbau
in Kreis Warendorf (Warendorf, 1995)
F. Friedrich and D. Albrecht: Orgeln im
Altenburger Land (Altenburg, 1995)
H. Haupt: Orgeln in
Ost- und Südthüringen (Leipzig, 1995)
W. Manecke and J. Mayr: Historische
Orgeln in Oberschwaben (Regensburg, 1995)
R. Nickles: Orgelinventar
der Krummhörn und der Stadt Emden (Bremen, 1995)
H. Reinitzer, ed.: Die Arp
Schnitger-Orgel der Hauptkirche St. Jacobi in Hamburg
(Hamburg, 1995)
H. Reuter, ed.: Barocke
Orgelkunst in Westfalen (Soest, 1995)
H. Vogel, R. Ruge and R. Noah: Orgellandschaft
Ostfriesland (Norden, 1995, 2/1997)
D. Prost: Stralsunds
Orgeln (Lauffen, 1996)
M.G. Kaufmann: Orgel und
Nationalsozialismus: die Ideologische Vereinnahmung des Instrument im ‘Dritten
Reich’ (Kleinblittersdorf, 1997)
G. Seggermann: Die Orgeln
in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1997)
H. Vogel, G. Lade and N. Borger-Keweloh: Orgeln in
Niedersachsen (Bremen, 1997)
K.-H. Göttert and E. Isenberg: Orgelführer
Deutschland (Kassel, 1998)
K.-H. Göttert and E. Isenberg: Orgeln in
Köln: ein Rundgang zu 70 Instrumenten (Köln, 1998)
U. Pape and W. Topp: Orgeln und
Orgelbauer in Bremen (Berlin, 1998)
Organ: Bibliography
(xvi) Hungary
L. Zolnay: ‘Ungarische Orgelbauer und Organisten im 14.–16. Jahrhundert’, SMH, xiv (1972), 385–400
K. Szigeti: Régi magyar
orgonák: Köszeg [An old Hungarian organ: Köszeg]
(Budapest, 1974)
E.L. Szonntagh: ‘Is the Pipe Organ Discovered at Aquincum a Water Organ?’ Scientific Honeyweller, ii/4 (1981), 54–60
K. Szigeti: ‘Az orgonaépités története Magyarországon Budavár elestéig, 1541-ig’, [The history of organ building in Hungary up to the fall of the
Castle of Buda in 1541], Magyar zenetörténeti
tanulmányok Zoltán Kodály, ed. F. Bónis (Budapest, 1977), 263–86
K. Szigeti: ‘Das Wirken österreichischer Orgelbauer in Ungarn’, Organa austriaca,
iii (1982), 133–58
I. David: Műemlék
organák Erdélyben [Listed organs in Transylvania]
(Budapest, 1996)
F. Metz: ‘Orgelbau im Banat’, Ars
organi, xlv/3 (1997), 150–72
Organ: Bibliography
(xvii) Israel
‘Jerusalem is
Blest with Organ Music’, The Diapason, xxv/11 (1933–4), 9–10
L. Jacobs, W. Oberlinger and P.M. Scholl: Die neue
Oberlinger-Orgel in der Basilika der Dormition-Abbey in Jerusalem (Windesheim, 1982)
B.L. Leach: ‘Organs of Israel’, American
Organist, xxv/4 (1991), 62–4
Organ: Bibliography
(xviii) Italy
A. Angelucci: Notizie
sugli organi italiani (Turin, 1865)
A. Bonuzzi: Saggio di
una storia dell’arte organaria in Italia nei tempi moderni (Milan, 1889/R)
D. di
Pasquale:
L’organo in Sicilia dal sec. XIII al sec. XX (Palermo, 1929/R)
R. Lunelli: Organari
stranieri in Italia (Rome, 1938)
W. Shewring: ‘Notes on the Organ in Italy’, The Organ, xxx (1950–51), 42–51, 124–38
L. Salamina: Organina
tradizionale italiana (Lodi, 1952)
C. Moretti: L’organo
italiano (Milan, 1955, 2/1973)
W. Shewring: ‘Organs in Italy: Brescia and Verona’, The Organ, xxxv (1955–6), 161–70
R. Lunelli: Der Orgelbau
in Italien in seinen Meisterwerken vom 14. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Mainz, 1956)
R. Lunelli: Die
Orgelwerke von S. Petronio zu Bologna (Mainz, 1956)
R. Lunelli: L’arte
organaria del Rinascimento in Roma e gli organi di S. Pietro in Vaticano, dalle
origini a tutto il periodo fresco baldiano (Florence, 1958)
C. Triani: Organari
bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1958)
L.F. Tagliavini: ‘Mezzo secolo di storia organaria’, L’organo, i (1960), 70
S. dalla
Libera:
L’arte degli organi a Venezia (Venice, 1962)
L.F. Tagliavini: ‘Nuove vie dell’arte organaria italiana’, L’organo, iii/3 (1962), 77–113
S. dalla
Libera:
L’arte degli organi nel Veneto: la diocesi di Céneda (Venice, 1966)
E. Girardi: Gli organi
della città di Verona (Alba, 1968)
O. Mischiati: L’organo
della chiesa del Carmine di Lugo di Romagna (Bologna, 1968)
F. de Angelis: Organi e
organisti de S. Maria in Aracoeli (Rome, 1969)
G. Radole: L’arte
organaria in Istria (Bologna, 1969)
G. Radole: L’arte
organaria a Trieste (Bologna, 1975)
U. Pineschi: ‘L’organo della pieve di Lizzano Pistoiese’, L’organo, xv (1977), 3–39
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Gabrieli and the Organ’, Organ Yearbook, viii (1977), 2–19
O. Mischiati: L’organo di
Santa Maria di Campagna a Piacenza (Piacenza, 1980)
S. Romano: L’arte
organaria a Napoli dalla origini al secolo XIX (Naples,
1980)
M. Bruschi and P.P. Donati: L’organo
della chiesa di Treppio (Pistoia, 1981)
O. Mischiati: L’organo
della cattedrale di Feltre (Bologna, 1981)
F. Baggiani: Gli organi
nella cattedrale di Pistoia (Pisa, 1984)
O. Mischiati: L’organo
Serassi della chiesa di S. Liborio a Colorno e il suo restauro (Parma, 1985)
M. Manzin: La
tradizione organaria nel territorio varesino (Gavirate,
1987)
P. van Dijk: Historische
orgels in Noord-Italie (Hilversum, 1988)
K. Sadko: Gli organi
storici della provincia di Pistoia (Pisa, 1988)
G.D. Zaccaria: Organi e
organari in Sicilia dal ’400 al ’900 (Palermo, 1988)
F. Baggiani, A. Picchi and M. Tarrini: La riforma
dell’organo italiano (Pisa, 1990)
C. Loizzo: Organi e
organari in Calabria (dal XVII al XX secolo) (Cosenza, 1990)
C. Giovannini: Antichi
organi italiani: la provincia di Modena (Modena, 1991)
M. Bernard: ‘Zwischen Tradition und Modernismus: die norditalienische Orgel zur
Zeit der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert’, Acta organologica, xxiii (1992), 9–48
E. Martinelli: Gli antichi
organi di terra d’Otranto (Lecce, 1992)
G. Giacomelli and E. Settesoldi: Gli organi
di S. Maria del Fiore di Firenze (Florence, 1993)
O. Mischiati and S. Beretta: Organi
antichi del sottoceneri (Lugano, 1993)
M. Tarrini: La fabbrica
d’organi di William George Trice a Genova (1881–1897)
(Savona, 1993)
G. Battistelli and others: Organi e
cantorie nelle chiese di Roma (Rome, 1994)
R. Giorgetti: Antichi
organi del Chianti (Chianti, 1994)
M. Cantini and R. Giorgetti: Antichi
organi del Mugello (Florence, 1995)
A. Cesana: Gli organi
in Valsassina (Barzio, 1995)
M. Manzin: Arte
organaria nella cattedrale di Cremona (Cremona, 1995)
P. Peretti and M. Canti: Organi
storici delle Marche: gli strumenti restaurati, 1974–1992 (Fiesole, 1995)
Organ: Bibliography
(xix) Japan
B. Owen: ‘The Organ in Japan’, The
Diapason, lxviii/9 (1976–7), 1, 12–14
L.F. Tagliavini: ‘L’organo in Giappone’, L’organo, xv (1977), 127–33
J. Kaneko: ‘The Dawn of Japanese Organ History 1868–1947’,
Organ-kenkyu, viii (1980), 61–74
Organs in
Japan, i–ii (Tokyo, 1985–92); iii (forthcoming) [pubn of
Japan Association of Organists]
H. Tsuji: ‘Italian Style Organs in Japan’, Informazione organistica, i/1 (1989), 17–22
R. Akai: ‘Aspects of the Organ History in Meiji Era’, Organ-kenkyu, xviii (1990), 1–17
D.A. Skerman: ‘Three Pipe Organs in Hiroshima’, Organ Club Journal (1992), no.5, pp.88–90
Organ: Bibliography
(xx) Mexico
D.W. Hinshaw: ‘Four Centuries of Mexican Organs’, Music, iii (1969)
J.T. Fesperman: ‘Two Important Mexican Organs’, The Organ, xlix (1969–70), 179–83
J.E. Blanton: ‘The Valenciana Organ’, Art
of the Organ, ii/4 (1972), 31–50
J.T. Fesperman and D.W. Hinshaw: ‘New Light on America’s Oldest Organs’, Organ Yearbook, iii (1972), 52–63
J. Velazco: ‘Organos barrocos mexicanos’, Anales del Instituto de investigaciones estéticas, no.44 (1975), 83–102
J. Fesperman: Organs in
Mexico (Raleigh, NC, 1980)
D.A. Flentrop: ‘De orgels in de kathedraal van Mexico-City’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor Maarten Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 189–245; Eng. trans. pubd separately (Washington DC, 1986)
M. Drewes: ‘The Organs of the Cathedral of Mexico City’, Organ Yearbook, xiii (1982), 123–30
E. Castro
Morales, ed.: Música y angeles: los organos de la Catedral de
Mexico (Mexico City, 1983)
M. Drewes: ‘Further Notes on Mexican Organs of the 18th and 19th Centuries’, Organ Yearbook,
xiv (1983), 23–43
S. Tattershall: ‘Organ Restoration in Mexico’, The Diapason, lxxiv/1 (1983), 8–9
J. Fesperman: ‘The Mexican Legacy of Organs’, MT, cxxv (1984), 107–9
S. Tattershall: ‘The Organs of Mexico City Cathedral’, The Tracker, xxi/1 (1987), 4–10
M. Drewes: ‘The Positive at San Jerónimo’, Organ Yearbook, xix (1988), 31–7
Voces del
arte: inventario de organos tubulares (Mexico City, 1989)
M.T. Suárez: La caja de
órgano en Nueva España durante el Barroco (Mexico City,
1991)
G. Bovet: ‘Les orgues au Mexique’, Tribune de l’orgue, xlv (1993), no.2, pp.18–23; no.3, pp.20–24; no.4,
pp.5–11; xlvi (1994), no.2, pp.3–12; no.3, pp.3–11; no.4, pp.9–17; xlvii
(1995), no.1, pp.10–17; no.2, pp.12–19; no.3, pp.3–10; no.4, pp.19–23
J. Gastellou and G. Mauléon: Catalogo de
organos tubulares historicos del Estado de Puebla
(Puebla, 1997)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxi) Netherlands
Beschryving
van het groot en uttmuntend orgel, in de St. Jans Kerk te Gouda (Gouda, 1764/R)
J. Hess: Dispositien
der merkwaardigste kerk-orgelen, welken in de zeven Verëenigde provincien als
mede in Duytsland en elders aangetroffen worden (Gouda,
1774/R)
J. Radeker: Korte
beschryving van het beroemde en prachtige orgel in de groote of St. Bavoos-kerk
te Haerlem (Haarlem, 1775/R)
N.A. Knock: Dispositien
der merckwaardigste kerk-orgelen, welken in de provincie Friesland, Groningen
en elders aangetroffen worden (Groningen, 1788/R)
J. Hess: Dispositien
van kerk-orgelen, welken in Nederland worden aangetroffen (MS, c1815);
ed. J.W. Enschedé (Amsterdam, 1906)
M.H. van ’t
Kruijs:
Verzameling van disposities der verschillende orgels in
Nederland (Rotterdam, 1885/R)
F. van der
Mueren:
Het orgel in de Nederlanden (Brussels
and Amsterdam, 1931)
H. Schouten: Onze oude
orgels (Baarn, 1939)
M.A. Vente: Bouwstoffen
tot de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse orgel in de 16de eeuw (Amsterdam, 1942)
A. Bouman: Orgels in
Nederland (Amsterdam, 1944, 3/1956)
H. Schouten: Nederlandsche
orgels en organisten (The Hague, 1944)
B. Bijtelaar: Het orgel
van de Oude Kerk te Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1953/R)
M.A. Vente: Proeve van
een repertorium van de archivalia betrekking hebbende op het Nederlandse orgel
en zijn makers tot omstreeks 1630 (Brussels, 1956)
M.A. Vente: Die
Brabanter Orgel: zur Geschichte der Orgelkunst in Belgien und Holland im
Zeitalter der Gotik und der Renaissance (Amsterdam, 1958, enlarged 2/1963)
P.H. Kriek and H.S.J. Zandt: Organum
novum: orgelbeweging in Nederland sedert 1945 (Sneek, 1964, rev. 1981 by P.H. Kriek as Organum novum redivivum)
M. Seijbel: Orgels in
Overijssel (Sneek, 1965)
M. Hoving: Het orgel in
Nederland (Amsterdam, 1966)
G. Quaedvlieg: Maastricht
orgelstad (Maastricht, 1968)
J. Jongepier: Frieslands
orgelpracht (Sneek, 1970)
F. Peeters and M.A. Vente: De
orgelkunst in de Nederlanden van de 16de tot de 18de eeuw (Antwerp, 1971; Eng.
trans., 1971)
M.A. Vente: Vijf eeuwen
Zwolse orgels 1447–1971 (Amsterdam, 1971)
J.H. Kluiver: Historische
orgels in Zeeland (Sneek, 1972–6)
M. Seijbel: Zes eeuwen
Veluwse orgels (Zaltbommel, 1975)
M.A. Vente: Orgels en
organisten van de Dom te Utrecht van de 14e eeuw tot heden (Utrecht, 1975)
A.C.M. Luteijn: De orgelpijp
uit (Baarn, 1976)
A.J. Gierveld: Het
Nederlandse huisorgel in de 17de en 18de eeuw (Utrecht,
1977) [summaries in Eng., Ger.]
J. Jongepier and others: Langs
Nederlandse orgels (Baarn, 1977–9)
G. Verloop: Small Organs
in Holland (Schagen, 1978)
K. Bolt: De historie
en samenstelling van het Haarlemse Müller-Orgel
(Amsterdam, 1979/R)
T. Brouwer: Sleutelstad
– orgelstad (Zutphen, 1979)
L. van Dijck: ‘’s-Hertogenbosch, orgelstad in de 16e eeuw’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor Maarten Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 117–29
J.W.P. Peeters and others: 250 jaars
orgelmakers Vermeulen (1730–1980) (Weert, 1980)
B. Wisgerhof: Orgeln in
den Niederlanden (Kassel, 1981, 2/1992)
A.J. Gierveld: 250 jaar
Hinsz-orgel te Leens (1733–1983) (n.p., n.d.)
A.J. Gierveld: Antieke
nederlandse huisorgels uit het bezit van Dirk Andries Flentrop/The Flentrop
Collection of Antique Dutch Chamber Organs (Raleigh,
NC, 1983)
M. Seijbel: Orgels rond
het IJsselmeer (Houten, 1984)
J. Jongepier: Het van
Hagerbeer/Schnitger-orgel in de Grote- of St. Laurenskerk te Alkmaar (Alkmaar, 1987)
H. van
Nieuwkoop: Haarlemse orgelkunst van 1400 tot heden (Utrecht, 1988)
M.A. Vente: Utrechtse
orgelhistorische verkenningen (Utrecht, 1989)
J. Jongepier and K. Walton: ‘The Restoration of Historic Organs in the Netherlands’, JBIOS, xv (1991), 80–89
P. van Dijk: Orgels in de
stad Utrecht (Utrecht, 1992)
J. Jongepier: Orgelbouwers
in Friesland (Leeuwarden, 1992)
J. Brouwer and others: Het
Groninger orgelbezit van Adorp tot Zijldijk (Groningen,
1994–8)
J. van Biezen: Het
Nederlandse orgel in de Renaissance en de Barok
(Utrecht, 1995)
W.D. van der
Kleij and W.H. Zwart: Orgels en
organisten in Kampen (Kampen, 1995)
S. Tuinstra: ‘Groningen, Province of Organs’, Organ Yearbook, xxv (1995), 49–100
J. Jongepier, H. Nieuwkoop and W. Poot: Orgels in
Noord-Holland (Schorl, 1996)
J. de Bloeme: De
geschiedenis van de Waalse Kerk en haar orgels (Alphen
aan den Rijn, 1997)
A.J. Gierveld and W.R.C. Adriaansz: Het
Garrels-orgel in de Oude-Katholieke Kerk in Den Haag
(The Hague, 1997)
Het
historische orgel in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1997–)
H. Donga and P. van Dijk: Monumentale
orgels van Luthers Amsterdam (Zoetermeer, 1998)
C. van Gestel: Luisterrijk:
Nederlandse kerkorgels in beeld (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1998)
W.J. Cevaal, ed.: Een Hollands
stadsorgel uit de Gouden Eeuw: het Van Hagerbeer-orgel in de Pieterskerk te
Leiden (Zutphen, 1999)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxii) New Zealand
A. Mainwaring: ‘Some Organs in New Zealand’, MO, xxi (1897–8), 609 only, 750–51; xxii (1898–9), 111–12
J.E. Stiller: ‘Summary Report of Pipe Organs Documented in New Zealand, September
1981 – March 1982’, OHTA News, vii (1983), no.2,
pp.3–14; no.3; pp.10–20; no.4, pp.10–21; viii (1984), no.1, pp.26–32
B. Matthews: ‘Organs in Far Away Places’, The Organ, lxiv (1985), 82–7
M. Cox: ‘A Heritage in Perspective: a Study of New Zealand’s Historic Pipe
Organs’, JBIOS, x (1986), 88
R.G. Newton: Organa
cantuariensia: Organs in Canterbury, New Zealand, 1850–1885 (Christchurch, 1992)
Gazetteer of
New Zealand Pipe Organs (Christchurch, 1996–7)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxiii) Norway
J. Sjögren: Orgelverken
i Västerås stift: en historisk översikt 1952
(Stockholm, 1952)
T. Gamble: ‘The Organs of Arendal, Norway’, The Organ, lxiv (1985), 28–37
S.J. Kolnes: Norsk orgelkultur (Oslo, 1987)
S.J. Kolnes: Norsk
orgelregister, 1328–1992 (Førdesfjorden, 1993)
P.A. Kjeldsberg, ed.: Barokkorgelet
i Nidarosdomen/Die Barockorgel im Dom zu Trondheim
(Trondheim, 1995)
R. Morgan: ‘The Organ in Norway’, American
Organist, xxix/12 (1995), 59–61
G. Seggermann: ‘Hollenbach-Orgeln in Norwegen’, Ars organi, xlv/1 (1997), 20–25
Organ: Bibliography
(xxiv) Philippines
H.G. Klais and H. Steinhaus: The Bamboo
Organ in the Catholic Parish Church of St. Joseph at Las Piñas (Delaware, OH, 1977)
H.G. Klais: ‘Philippinische Orgeln aus dem 18. und 19. Jahrhundert’, Acta organologica,
xiii (1979), 75–123
Organ: Bibliography
(xxv) Poland
L. Burgemeister: Der Orgelbau
in Schlesien (Strasbourg, 1925)
M. Odyniec: Organy
oliwskie (Gdańsk, 1958)
T. Gablenz: ‘Organ Building in Poland’, The Diapason, liii (1961–2), no.6, pp.8–9, 28–9; no.7, pp.36–7
J. Golos: ‘Note di storia organaria polacca’, L’organo, v (1964–7), 31–62
J. Golos and E. Smulikowska: Polske
organy i muzyka organowa (Warsaw, 1972; Eng. trans., 1993, as
The Polish Organ)
J. Golos: ‘Portable Organs in Poland’, Organ Yearbook, iii (1972), 36–40
M.-L. Jaquet: ‘Quelques aperçus de la vie organistique en Pologne’, L’orgue, no.156 (1975), 97–100
J. Golos: ‘An Historical Survey of Organ-Building in Poland until 1900’, The Diapason,
lxvii/5 (1975–6), 1, 3–5
J. Golos: ‘Some Rare Technical Features Found in the Historical Organs of Poland’, Organ Yearbook, x
(1979), 34–47
R. Perucki: ‘The Organs of the Church of the Virgin Mary, Gdańsk, Poland’, The Diapason,
lxxviii/8 (1987), 12–15
H.H. Eggebrecht, ed.: Die Orgel in
Ostdeutschland und in Polen (Kleinblittersdorf, 1993)
E. Smulikowska: Organ-Cases
in Poland as Works of Art (Warsaw, 1993)
W.J. Wyrembelski: ‘A Survey of Organ Building and Organ Music in Poland’, Reflections 1947–1997 (Ann Arbor, 1997),
79–96
Organ: Bibliography
(xxvi) Portugal
M.A. Vente and W. Kok: ‘Organs in Spain and Portugal’, The Organ, xxxiv (1954–5), 193–9; xxxv (1955–6),
57–65, 136–42; xxxvi (1956–7),
155–64, 203; xxxvii (1957–8),
37–43
C. de Azevedo: Baroque
Organ-Cases of Portugal (Amsterdam, 1972)
L.A.E. Pereira: ‘A organaria portuguesa no secolo XVIII’, Bracara Augusta, xxviii (1974), 492–504
G. Doderer: Orgelmusik
und Orgelbau im Portugal des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing,
1978)
L.A. Esteves
Pereira:
‘Two More Arp Schnitgers in Portugal?’, Organ Yearbook,
xiv (1983), 17–22
W.D. Jordan: ‘The Renaissance Organ of Evora Cathedral: New Facts concerning its
Origin and Construction’, Organ
Yearbook, xiv (1983), 5–16
M. Valença: O órgão do
Bom Jesus, Braga (Braga, 1985)
W.D. Jordan: ‘The Organ in Portugal’, The Organ, lxv (1986), 163–85
M. Valença: O órgão na
história e na arte (Braga, 1987)
M. Valença: A arte
organística em Portugal (c. 1326–1750) (Braga, 1990)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxvii) Romania
K. Szigeti: Régi magyar
orgonák: Szeged (Budapest, 1982)
J.-M. Cicchero: ‘Organs and Organbuilders in Transylvania, Rumenia’, ISO News, no.5 (1993), 28–32
U. Pape: Die
Buchholz-Orgel in der Stadtkirche zu Kronstadt (Berlin,
1998)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxviii) Russia/USSR
B. Matthews: ‘A History of the Organ in Russia’, The Organ, lii (1972–3), 76–81; liii (1973–4),
11–18
L. Royzman: Organ v
istorii russkoy muzïkal'noy kul'turï [The organ in the
history of Russian musical culture] (Moscow, 1979)
H.H. Eggebrecht, ed.: Orgelbau und
Orgelmusik in Russland (Kleinblittersdorf, 1991)
A. Fiseiskyi: ‘Die Geschichte der Orgel in Russland und der Sowjetunion’, Österreichisches Orgelforum (1992), no.1,
pp.295–300
M. Velimirović: ‘The First Organ Builder in Russia’, Literary and Musical Notes: a Festschrift for Wm.A. Little, ed. G.C. Orth (Berne, 1995)
W. Lindner: Neuzeitliche
Orgeln in Russland und der GuS (Lilienthal, 1996)
J. Sotov: ‘Russischer Orgelbau kurz vor der Jahrtausendwende’, Ars organi, xliv/4
(1996), 204–11
P. Kravchun and V. Shlyapnikov: Organs of
St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (Moscow, 1998)
S. Roberts: ‘An American Organist in Russia’, American Organist, xxxiii (1999), no.2, pp.55–8; no.6, pp.62–5
Organ: Bibliography
(xxix) Slovenia
M. Bizjak and E. Skulj: Orgle na
Slovenskem (Ljubljana, 1985; Eng. and Ger. trans., 1985)
E. Skulj: Orgle v
Ljubljani (Celje, 1994)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxx) South and Central America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela)
R. Stevenson: ‘Cathedral Organs in the Capitals of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile’, The Organ, xli (1961–2), 48–52
M. Castillo
Didier and G. Bourligueux: L’orgue au
Chili (Paris, 1978)
M. Castillo
Didier:
Caracas y el instrumento rey (Caracas, 1979)
J. Welch: ‘The Organ in Brazil’, American
Organist, xviii/12 (1984), 54–9
A. Bonet
Correa:
‘Tres cajas de órganos en Guatemala’, Estudios del Reino de Guatemala: homenaje
al profesor S.D. Markman, ed. D. Kinkead (Seville, 1985), 195–201
G. Bovet: ‘Tampering with Historical Instruments: Three Brazilian Examples’, American Organist,
xxii/3 (1988), 59 only
S.S. Budelli and M. Tarrini: ‘Un organo italiano a Canelones, Uruguay’, Informazione organistica, i/1 (1989), 7–9; ii/1 (1990), 16–18
M. Castillo
Didier:
100 anos del organo Cavaillé-Coll: parroquia de San José (Caracas, 1989)
E.G. Rimoldi and C.A. Lalli
Aliaga:
‘Il Serassi della chiesa di Montserrat
di Buenos Aires, Argentina’, Informazione
organistica, i/1 (1989), 4–6
H. van Gemert: Organos
históricos del Perú/Historic Organs of Peru (Hillbrow,
South Africa, c1990)
U. Pineschi: ‘Fasti e nefasti di un monumento’, Informazione organistica, ii/3 (1990), 15–20
E.G. Rimoldi and C.A. Lalli
Aliaga:
‘Un organo Locatelli a Mar del Plata,
Argentina’, Informazione
organistica, ii/2 (1990), 11–14
J.M. Brown: The Organ in
Brazil: a Cultural and Musical Perpsective (diss.,
Northwestern U., 1993)
M.P. Juárez: Censo y
estudio de los órganos de la República Argentina
(Buenos Aires, 1996)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxi) Spain
A. Merklin: Aus Spaniens
altem Orgelbau (Mainz, 1939)
F. Baldelló: ‘Organos y organeros en Barcelona (siglos XIII–XIX)’, AnM, i (1946), 195–237
J.M. Madurell: ‘Documentos para la historia del órgano en España’, AnM, ii (1947), 203–16
D. Shanks: The
Evolution of the Organ … in the Major Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches of
Spain from the 15th Century to the Present (diss., U.
of Oxford, 1958)
R. Reuter: Organos
españoles (Madrid, 1963)
R.G. de Amezua
y Noriega: Perspectivas para la historia del órgano español (Madrid, 1970)
J. Wyly: ‘17th Century Spanish Trumpets by the Echevarrías’, Art of the Organ,
ii/4 (1972), 7–25
J. Wyly: ‘Historical Notes on Spanish Façade Trumpets’, Organ Yearbook, viii (1977), 41–55
G.A.C. de Graaf: ‘The Gothic Organ in the Chapel of St. Bartholomew in Salamanca’, ISO Information,
no.22 (1982), 9
A. Howell: ‘Organos, organeros, and organistas of Spain
during the Scarlatti Years’, American
Organist, xix/10 (1985), 91–7
R. Reuter: Orgeln in
Spanien (Kassel, 1986)
J.-M. García
Llovera:
De organo vetere hispanico (St
Ottilien, 1987)
L. Jambou, ed.: Compendio de
el arte de organaría (Madrid, 1987)
L. Jambou: Evolución
del órgano español: siglos XVI–XVIII (Oviedo, 1988)
Els orgues de
Catalunya (Barcelona, 1990)
A. Marco
Martinez:
El órgano histórico en la provincia de Guadalajara (Guadalajara, 1990)
J.G. Lopez and A. Orleans, eds.: Organos
históricos restaurados, Monasterio de Veruela, 21 May –
25 Aug 1991 (Zaragoza, 1991)
[exhibition catalogue]
G. Albarracin: Los órganos
de la Catedral de Almería: 500 años de historia
(Almería, 1992)
J.E. Ayarra
Jarne:
History of the Organ in Seville Cathedral, City and Province (Omaha, NE, 1992)
M. Salaberria
Salaberria: Bizkaiko organuak/Organos de Bizkaia (Bizkaia, 1992)
A. Cea Galan and I. Chia
Trigos:
Organos en la provincia de Cádiz
(Granada, 1995)
J.A. de la Lama: El órgano
barrocco español (Valladolid, 1995)
E. Landart: Les orgues
Cavaillé-Coll en Gipuzkoa et leur répertoire (Paris, 1995)
J. Ruiz
Jiménez:
Organería en la diócesis de Granada (1492–1625) (Granada, 1995)
S. Platt: ‘Contemporary Organ Design in Spain’, JBIOS, xx (1996), 126–41
J.M. Azkue, E. Elizondo and J.M. Zapirain: Gipuzkoako
organoak/Organos de Gipuzkoa (San Sebastián, 1998)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxii) Sweden
C.F. Hennerberg: Die
swedischen Orgeln des Mittelalters (Vienna, 1909)
A. Freeman: ‘Swedish Organs and Organ Builders, 1200–1861’,
The Organ, x (1930–31), 20–26
B. Wester: Gotisk
resning i svenska orglar (Stockholm, 1936)
B. Wester: Stora
Kopparbergs kyrkas orgel (Stockholm, 1942)
B. Khylberg: ‘Orgelbyggarefamiljen Cahman, Hülphers, och orgeln i
Trefaldighetskyrkan i Kristianstad’, STMf, xxvii (1945), 61–75
B. Wester: ‘Orgeln i Leufsta Bruks Kyrka’, Orgel, ii/1–2 (1963), 5–26
E. Erici: Inventarium
över bevarade äldre kyrkorglar i Sverige (Stockholm, 1965)
E. Krauss: ‘Alte Orgeln in Schweden’, Musik und Gottesdienst, xxv/1 (1971), 6–13
S.L. Carlsson: Sveriges
kyrkorglar (Lund, 1973)
M. Kjersgaard and N.F. Beerstahl: Bjurumsorgeln (Skara, 1973)
D. Edholm: Orgelbyggare
i Sverige 1600–1900 och deras verk (Stockholm, 1985)
M. Kjersgaard: ‘Technical Aspects of Swedish Organ-Building during the Middle Ages’, ISO Information,
no.27 (1987), 5–118; no.29 (1988), 29–30
D.W. Edholm: Stockholm
orgelstaden: historia och nutid (Stockholm, 1997)
I.L. Hultkvist: ‘The Organ in Malmö Museum’, American Organist, xxxii/2 (1998), 79–84
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxiii) Switzerland
A. Jacques: Les orgues
d’Yverdon (Yverdon, 1923)
J. Handschin: ‘Die Orgelbewegung in der Schweiz’, Tagung für deutsche Orgelkunst III: Freiberg, Lower Saxony, 1927, 166–21
W. Hardmeyer: Einführung
in die schweizerische Orgelbaukunst (Zürich, 1947, 3/1975 as Orgelbaukunst in der Schweiz)
F. Munger: Schweizer
Orgeln von der Gotik bis zur Gegenwart (Berne, 1961)
F. Jakob: Der Orgelbau
im Kanton Zürich von seinen Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berne, 1969–71)
Die Orgeln in
der Klosterkirche Muri (Muri, 1970)
F. Jakob: ‘Introduction to Swiss Organ-Building’, ISO Information, no.7 (1971), 463–70
H. Gugger, D. Hegg and H. Schmocker: Die
bernischen Orgeln: die Wiedereinführung der Orgel in den reformierten Kirchen
des Kantons Bern bis 1900 (Berne, 1977–8)
F. Jakob: ‘Der Hausorgel in der Schweiz’, Visitatio organorum: feestbundel voor Maarten Albert Vente, ed. A. Dunning (Buren, 1980), 368–78
C. Schweizer: Orgeln in
der Region Nidwalden und Engelberg vom 13. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Lucerne, 1983)
R. Walter: Die Orgeln
des Doms zu Arlesheim (Arlesheim, 1983)
A. Lanini: Gli organi
della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, 1986–9)
F. Jakob: Die Orgel
der Pfarrkirche St. Valentin und Dionysius zu Kiedrich im Rheingau (Mannedorf, 1989)
F. Jakob and others: Die Valeria
Orgel: ein gotisches Werk in der Burgkirche zu Sitten/Sion (Zürich, 1991)
J. Grünenfelder: Die Orgeln
im Kanton Zug (Zug, 1994)
F. Jakob and W. Lippuner: Orgellandschaft
Graubünden (Chur, 1994)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxiv) Turkey
S. Mayes: An Organ for
the Sultan (London, 1956)
G. Gandolfo: ‘Un organo italiano a Istanbul’, Informazione organistica, viii/1 (1996), 16–17
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxv) USA
‘Organ-Building
in New-England’, New-England Magazine, vi (1834), 205–15
The Great
Organ in the Boston Music Hall (Boston, 1865)
H.K. Oliver: ‘An Account of the First Organs in America’, Organist’s Quarterly Journal and Review, ii/1
(1875), 4
G.W. Nichols, ed.: The
Cincinnati Organ (Cincinnati, 1878)
S.H. Hooker: ‘Joseph Alley’s Enharmonic Organ’, Music, xi (1897), 677
J.W. Jordan: ‘Early Colonial Organ-Builders of Pennsylvania’,
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, xxii (1898), 231–3
Church Music
and Musical Life in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century, ii
(Philadelphia, 1927/R)
W.H. Barnes: The
Contemporary American Organ (New York, 1930, 9/1971)
E.W. Flint: The Newberry
Memorial Organ at Yale University: a Study in the History of American Organ
Building (New Haven, CT, 1930)
W.K. Covell: The Organs
of Trinity Church, Newport, R.I. (London, 1935)
C.M. Ayars: Contributions
to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston, 1640 to 1936 (New York, 1937/R)
C.G. Vardell: Organs in
the Wilderness (Winston-Salem, NC, 1944/R)
M.K.D. Babcock: Organs and
Organ Builders of Christ Church, Boston, 1736–1945
(Boston, 1946)
E.W. Flint: The Great
Organ in the Methuen Memorial Music Hall (Methuen, MA, 1950)
T.W. Dean: The Organ in
Eighteenth Century English Colonial America (diss., U.
of Southern California, 1960)
J. Fesperman: ‘Music and Organs at “The Old North”, Then and Now’, Organ Institute Quarterly, x/3 (1962–3), 15–28
B. Owen: The Organs
and Music of King’s Chapel, 1713–1964 (Boston, 1965, enlarged 2/1991)
W.H. Armstrong: Organs for
America (Philadelphia, 1967)
V.C. Dieffenbach: The
Dieffenbach Organ Builders (Elizabethtown, PA, 1967)
T.S. Eader: ‘Baltimore Organs and Organ Building’, Maryland Historical Magazine, lxv/3 (1970), 263–82
J.R. Sharp: Tonal Design
of the American Organ, 1910–1969 (diss., Michigan State
U., 1970)
W.J. Conner: ‘Pipe Scaling in Hook Organs, 1849–1895’, The Diapason, lxii/10 (1970–71), 18, 26–9
W.J. Beasley: The Organ in
America as Portrayed in Dwight’s Journal of Music
(diss., U. of Southern California, 1971)
B. Owen: ‘A Salem Chamber Organ’, Essex Institute Historical Collections, cx/2
(1974), 111–19
J. Fesperman: Two Essays
on Organ Design (Raleigh, NC, 1975)
O. Ochse: The History
of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington, IN, 1975)
A. Robinson, ed.: The
Bicentennial Tracker (Wilmington, OH, 1976)
J. Ogasapian: Organ
Building in New York City, 1700–1900 (Braintree, MA, 1977)
J.O. Wilkes: Pipe Organs
of Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, 1977, 4/1995)
V. Brown: ‘Carl Barckhoff and the Barckhoff Church Organ Company’, The Tracker,
xxii/4 (1978), 1
U. Pape: The Tracker
Organ Revival in America/Die Orgelbewegung in Amerika
(Berlin, 1978)
B. Owen: ‘Colonial Organs’, JBIOS, iii (1979), 92
B. Owen: The Organ in
New England (Raleigh, NC, 1979)
J. Fesperman: Flentrop in
America (Raleigh, NC, 1982)
U. Pape, ed.: Organs in
America (Berlin, 1982–4)
B. Owen: ‘Early Organs and Organ Building in Newburyport’,
Essex Institute Historical Collections, cxxi/3 (1985), 172–95
B. Owen: ‘Eighteenth-Century Organs and Organ Building in New England’, Music in Colonial Massachusetts 1630–1820:
Boston 1973, 655–714
F. Noack and R. Jones: ‘The Organ in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Mass’,
JBIOS, x (1986), 43–52
B. Owen: ‘Joseph Alley and Richard Pike Morss: Early Organbuilders of
Newburyport’, The Tracker, xxxi/1 (1987), 31–9
S.L. Pinel: Old Organs
of Princeton (Harrisville, NH, 1989)
R.J. Brunner: That
Ingenious Business: Pennsylvania German Organ Builders
(Birdsboro, PA, 1990)
C. Callahan, ed.: The American
Classic Organ: a History in Letters (Richmond, VA, 1990)
G.D. Frank: A German
Organ Builder on the Texas Frontier: the Life and Work of Johann Traugott
Wandke (Harrisville, NH, 1990)
B. Owen: The Mormon
Tabernacle Organ: an American Classic (Salt Lake City, 1990)
D.H. Fox: A Guide to
North American Organbuilders (Richmond, VA, 1991)
M. Kares: Das deutsche
Element in amerikanischen Orgelbau (diss., U. of
Marburg, 1991)
L. Edwards, ed.: The
Historical Organ in America (Easthampton, MA, 1992)
C. Johnson: Catalogue of
Pipe Organs in Georgia (Atlanta, GA, 1992)
K. Herman: The Historic
Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park (San Diego, 1993)
S.L. Pinel: ‘Thomas and William Robjohn: a Study in Innovative Organ Building’, JAMIS, xix (1993), 65–104
The Wanamaker
Grand Organ (Philadelphia, 1996)
L. Garrett: ‘American Organ Reform in Retrospect’, American Organist, xxxi (1997), no.6, pp.58–65; no.8, pp.72–8
D. Dahl: ‘The Tracker Organ Revival in the Pacific Northwest’, The Tracker,
xlii/2 (1998), 13–23
R. Biswanger: Music in the
Marketplace: the Story of Philadelphia’s Historic Wanamaker Organ (Philadelphia, 1999)
Organ: Bibliography
(xxxvi) West Indies
G. Hudson: ‘The Organs and Organists of the Cathedral Church of St. Michael,
Barbados’, The Organ, xxix (1949–50),
169–79
G.P.J. Walker: Strings and
Pipe (St Kitts, 1987)
G. Bozeman: ‘The Booth Organ in St. George’s Church, Basseterre, St. Kitts’, The Tracker, xl/2
(1996), 15–19
For further bibliography see entries on types of organ and
on individual builders.
