Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
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Instrument Biography: The Church Organ
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Note: A LOT has been written on the subject of organs. In order to make a more digestible article, I’ve split out
Portative and Positive Organs into separate articles, along with short pieces on harmoniums (reed organs), regal
organs (pump organs) and electric organs. You may find that some basic information is repeated in each for the
purposes of clarity.
The organ is an instrument of one or more rows (called ranks) of multiple pipes, organized by the quality of sounds
they produce (called divisions), each played with its own keyboard. The keyboards are called manuals when played
with the hands and pedals when played with the feet. Organs can be played by a single player with both hands and
both feet, or by two or more players.
Pipe organs use wind moving through pipes to produce sounds. The wind is moved by bellows, water, steam, or
electricity. Most organs have pipes of some sort although some reed organs don’t. After some introductory remarks,
this blog addresses the large church organs that add fabulousness to any ordinary cathedral.
There are many varieties of organs. The one you think of right away is probably at or near the top of this list. But organ
development has been hot and heavy for two full millenniums, so be prepared to learn about some new types. These
are some of the larger categories:
Church organs are the largest and grandest organs with as many as four or five manual keyboards and a pedal
keyboard. Pipes can fill a whole cathedral wall and the individual pipes can be from a few inches high to many
feet high. Pipes are made from reeds, wood, metal, precious metal, and semi-precious stone.
Positive organs are small organs, meant to be portable. The pipes are contained in a box the size of a large
trunk, and they have only one or two manuals. Positives are usually in two pieces (the pipes and the keyboard)
to facilitate being moved.
Portative organs are not only portable, it’s possible to play one while walking. About the size of a peanut
vendor’s box, they hang from one shoulder. The player pumps the bellows with one hand and plays a single
keyboard with the other.
Regal organs are portable in much the same way that positive organs are—they can be pushed around, and
they had a limited number of keyboards and pipes. In the 16
th
century, the resonance pipes were removed and
the regal became a beating-reed organ, which is the ancestor of the harmonium and other squeezeboxes. The
regal’s sound was characterized as “snarling” and loud.
A chamber organ is small, often with only one manual, and sometimes without separate pipes for the pedals.
These are for small rooms, and are confined to chamber organ repertoire, as they’re too quiet for larger halls.
Music from before Beethoven could be played on a chamber organ, just as it might have been on a piano or
harpsichord, and it’s occasionally considered preferable to a harpsichord for continuo playing because it can
sustain tones. (The harpsichord is a plucked instrument, so the decay of sound begins immediately.)
Reed organs are also called harmoniums. They’re quite small and are a relative of the accordion in that the box
containing the keyboard also contains the bellows. Concertinas, shruti boxes, and accordions are all reed organs.
It’s also (vaguely) the ancestor of the harmonica, which sometimes gets called the mouth organ.
Theater organs are large and ornate, like church organs, but have a different variety of sounds, such as
percussion and special effects, suitable for accompanying silent movies and ball games. They are smaller than
church organs, but use higher wind pressures to provide the variety of tone and more volume with fewer pipes.
Electric organs have sound produced by electricity instead of a bellows and the sounds are digitally altered to
produce the various divisions. Some have pipes and others simply produce the sound through speakers.
Mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and orchestrion (that’s a fancy term for a music box).
These are controlled by mechanical means, such as pinned barrels or book music (like a player piano). Small
barrel organs dispense with the organist altogether by being wound up like a toy, and bigger barrel organs are
powered by a crank that’s turned by an organ grinder or by an electric motor. Barrel organs are mechanical
organs made famous by organ grinders. There are also orchestra organs, fairground organs, band organs, Dutch
street organs, and dance organs that use a piano roll player or other mechanical means instead of a keyboard
to play a prepared song.
Steam organs, or calliopes, were invented in the 19
th
century. They have a loud and clean sound, and are
usually used outdoors. Many were built on wheeled platforms, making them portable.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart probably meant the church organ when he called the organ the “king of instruments.”
The church organ is the grandest of the musical instruments in size and scope and has existed in its current form since
the 14
th
century. Like the clock, it was considered one of the most complex manmade mechanical creations before the
Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a single short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000
pipes. A large modern organ usually has three or four manual keyboards with five octaves each (five octaves is 61
notes), and a 2.5 octave (32-note) pedal keyboard.
Really grand organs have pipes as large as 64’ (foot here means sonic foot, which is not exactly the same, but nearly,
as an English foot). Church organs with pipes like that have an extremely diverse range of sounds. In fact, that’s the
most distinctive feature of an organ; the range and quality of sounds goes from barely audible to hair-blown-back
almost intolerably loud, from sounding like grass blowing in the breeze to a locomotive passing through your living
room.
Because of the multiple keyboards, the organ has a polyphonic effect built right into it—all of the keyboards can be
played at the same time as the others, if you can get your friends to join you on the bench. In addition, the sounds of
each keyboard can be mixed and interspersed with the others, creating the effect of a whole orchestra from a single
instrument.
Most organs in Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Asia can be found in Christian churches and Jewish synagogues,
with some in concert halls and private homes. The harmonium is a staple of Indian music, especially as part of the
Hindu and Sikh celebrations. Muslims do not include music in their worship services.
Organs are also used for concerts and recitals. In the early 20
th
century, symphonic organs flourished in secular venues
in the US and the UK, designed to replace symphony orchestras by playing transcriptions of orchestral pieces. Using
organs in concert with symphonies fell out of favor in the 20
th
century as a reformation movement took hold (called
the Orgelbewegung, and having a particular interest in historically accurate focus on performance) and builders began
to look to historical models for inspiration rather than creating something new.
The earliest specifically instrumental music notation was for organ, probably because, since Carolingian times, an
organist was likely to be musically literate—meaning that they could attach a letter name (see Odo of Cluny) or
solmization (see Guido d’Arezzo) to specific notes. The small amount of instrumental music that survives from the 13
th
and 14
th
century seems to be monophonic dances, with notation resembling that of vocal music. Keyboard sources,
unlike vocal music, use a variety of types of score and tablature to document two or more parts for the convenience of
a single player.
Organ History
The key element of the organ dates back to Ctesibius of Alexandria (flourished 285-222 BCE), who is credited with
inventing the hydraulis. The hydraulis used water to affect the air pressure in a tube and if that’s sounding familiar,
that’s because it’s also the system on which pneumatics are based. The panpipe is also an ancestor of the organ, as it
toyed with various lengths of pipe and the effect of blowing air across or through them.
Ctesibius’ interest in the hydraulis had more to do with making music than with lifting things up. His organ used the
same principle as the bagpipe, with its bellows and multiple pipes, most shaped like a flue, which were the precursors
of the recorder’s fipple (a blog on recorders is in the works). Air was pumped into a cylinder that was half full of water.
The cylinder had a hemispherical container inside it that forced the air to flow around it and, conveniently, kept debris
in the water from gunking up the pipe. The water acted much as later versions’ wind-reservoir would, holding the air
pressure steady. The pipes attached to a connecting tube that released the air into the appropriate pipe when a simple
set of keys was depressed. Later instruments offered a series of pipes using this same system in various tunings that
could be accessed by a series of plugs (called stops) on the side of the instrument.
The organ found its way to Rome in about 50 CE. It was used in theatrical performances and at gladiatorial contests,
possibly with horns and tubas. It was probably a domestic instrument as well. There are mosaics showing
portatives—then called a hydraulis—from the 1
st
and 2
nd
centuries CE in the Tripoli Museum.
The hydraulis’ popularity waned and 1000 years later, when the hydraulis was brought into France from Byzantium, it
was an unknown novelty. Sadly, by then, it was also missing its most important part, the water compressor.
The earliest surviving organ is from the 3
rd
century CE, and was found at Aquincum near Budapest. It had been
presented by the Guild of Weavers to Alexander Severus in 228 CE. It’s a small domestic organ with four ranks of 13
flue-pipes, three stopped ranks, one open rank, and 13 sliders with keys. The largest pipe is about 13 inches long.
In the 7
th
century in the Christian world, Pope Vitalian is credited with introducing the much-evolved bellows organ to
the Catholic church service. It served as support for singers, both as a foundation by playing lower notes than could be
sung and to offer timbre options in the higher registers. It’s ideally suited to accompany singing, whether by a
congregation, a choir, cantor, or other soloists. Many church services still include organ accompaniment as well as a
solo repertoire, often as a prelude at the beginning of the service and a postlude at the conclusion.
By the 8
th
century, the organ was no longer associated with gladiators and combat and had assumed a prominent
place in the liturgy of the Catholic church. It soon also became a secular and recital instrument. In that same century
in the Middle East, a notable singer called ‘Ulaiya al-Mausilki played an “urgan rumi” which was a Byzantine or Roman
version of the organ.
The organ was introduced to France through Constantinople in the latter half of the 8
th
century and the simultaneous
sound of different notes on the organ by two players might have inspired imitation with the beginning of sung
polyphony, organum (chant with a second voice—see? It might have gotten its name from the organ!), and conductus
(which didn’t really pop up until the 12
th
century, but is two or three voices, usually in the form of chant, and used to
musically conduct the holy books from the back of the church to the front during Mass). Early organs were preserved
in Italy, Spain, and England and can be seen in museums there.
The decisive stimulus to the development of the organ came from Byzantium through Franconia, during the reigns of
Pepin and Charlemagne in the 8
th
and 9
th
centuries.
In the 9
th
century, an automatic flute player, which was possibly hydro-powered, was a mechanical organ made by the
Banu Musa brothers, Islamic scholars in Baghdad who wrote a book called “The Book of Ingenious Devices” that
reported on automatic and mechanical devices of the time. Look these guys up—they’re the stuff fiction is made of!
One was a highwayman and the other was an astrophysicist (or the 9
th
century version of such a thing).
By then, the organ started taking the form that you might recognize today, Instead of complicated water and air
pumps, the new instrument used a bellows that could be worked by hands or feet. By the end of the 9
th
century,
Franconian organ building was so highly esteemed that Pope John VIII summoned a master from there to come and
build an organ for him in Rome.
The largest instrument of the Middle Ages of any kind was an organ built in the 10
th
century—in 980 CE, an instrument
was installed at Winchester Cathedral in England that possessed 400 pipes, 26 bellows, and two manuals, each
furnished with 20 sliders (stops). A single one of those sliders could cause 10 pipes to sound simultaneously.
In the 12
th
century, substantial design improvements were made. Even monastic churches had early organs by 1100
and by 1300, they were common in cathedrals as well. Proper keys were invented, but they were so heavy and stiff
that it took a clenched fist to depress them, like a carillon’s keys.
Organ tablature (written music, but not on the staff) was probably invented in the late 13
th
century. The earliest organ
tablature known is from the early 14
th
century, and is called the Robertsbridge fragment. In this British fragment, all 12
keys of the octave are already required (remember, music was predominantly modal (see The History of Music
Notation and Musical Modes, Part 1 (Church Modes) for more on this). There are questions about whether the
accidentals (sharps and flats that are not part of the key signature) are written in by the original documenter or by a
later hand.
The organ of the church of Notre Dame de Valiere, in Sion Switzerland had 4’ pipes in the 14th century, and lower
pipes had been added since it was originally built. There were three high ranks, their metal cast in sand, dating from
around 1390. It was probably used to play the Faenza Codex in the 15
th
century. By then, larger organs were commonly
placed in churches in at least a semi-permanent position near the singers and with the bellows operated by a second
person (positive organs).
Until around 1400, the organ had a single keyboard with a range of one to three octaves, the keys were large and
cumbersome or consisted of sliders that moved in and out, and there were no stops to allow the variety of color and
tone that we’re used to today. The sound was fixed, and a fairly loud mixture of several ranks of pipes. Pedals and a
second manual (on the positive) were added in Germany and the Netherlands in the late Middle Ages, the second
manual having its own pipe-work located behind the player (which is why it’s called Rūckpositive in German).
National preferences for organ building emerged during the Renaissance. German innovations included additional
manuals and interesting new tone colors. Italian and English organs remained simpler, often with a single manual and
a basic chorus of stops with only one or two individually distinctive colors. By the 16
th
century, distinctive regional
schools of organ building and compositional style had already emerged. Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) wrote the
richest source of knowledge about organs as part of Syntagma Musicum.
Praetorius gave specifications for an organ in “Syntagma Musicum” in 1618, some of which were built in the 20
th
century as part of the historically informed performance movement. There’s one at Harvard University and another at
the Westminster Choir School in Princeton New Jersey.
Protestant German countries used the organ as accompaniment to choral singing and paid particular attention to the
softer registers by using flue pipes. Roman Catholic countries used the organ as more of a solo instrument and favored
the sharper reed registers.
Around this same time (the early 16
th
century), the number of pipes within a register also increased, increasing the
range of the keyboards. As early as 1519, Anthony Doddington wrote of an English organ with a range of four octaves,
and in 1523, Pietro Aron wrote about a Venetian organ that also had a four-octave range. Germany didn’t expand the
range of their organs until the close of the 16
th
century.
Great pains were taken in Italy to develop the manuals, but the pedals lagged behind. Vincenzo Galilei (c1520-1591)
speaks of the pedals disapprovingly, and his is the only Italian mention of pedals. But in Germany, where polyphony
was king, the pedals were an essential part.
The organ was particularly well-suited to polyphonic music by the 17
th
century. By then, it had clearly distinguishable
registers that didn’t merge into one another, although dynamic contrasts were still limited and could be achieved only
within very restricted limits—neither thunder nor whispers. Crescendos and decrescendos were impossible. The tone
was clear and unromantic, as the taste of the late Renaissance for unemotional and classic art demanded.
During the late 17
th
century and the first half of the 18
th
, the organ was modified to produce more expression, and to
have a more flexible and variable tone. Things like tremolo, string registers, Vox Humana, couplers and transmissions,
swell, and equal temperament were invented. (See the structure section for more on these topics.)
During the Baroque period (1600-1750), the organ became increasingly important as vocal accompaniment and as a
participant in orchestral music. During this era, organs were used to provide continuo (where the bass line or chords
were left to the creative powers of the player but the other lines were written out. Other continuo instruments were
harpsichord, lute, theorbo and chitaronne).
Organ music enjoyed a golden age in the Lutheran areas of Germany between 1650 and 1750. It was greatly aided by
famous (and reportedly astonishing) organists such as Dieterich Buxtehude (c1637-1707), several members of the
Bach family, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), and a tradition that had been established earlier by Jan Pieterszoon
Sweelinck (1562-1621) and Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654).
German organ builders drew on elements of French and Dutch organs just as German composers drew on the musical
styles of Italy, France, and northern lands. The best known builders were Arp Schnitger (1648-1718) and Gottfried
Silbermann (1683-1753). They adopted the Dutch practice of dividing the pipes into a main group and subsidiary
groups, each with its own keyboard and the pipes having a particular character and function.
The main group, the Hauptwerk, sits high above the player. Other groups include the Rūckpositive that was mounted
on the outside of the choir balcony rail behind the player’s back, the Brustwerk that was directly above the music rack
in front of the player, and the Oberwerk that was high above the Hauptwerk. The pedal organ had pipes that were
arranged symmetrically on the sides of the Hauptwerk. Only the largest German organs had all of these components.
Even a modest two-manual instrument could create a great variety of sounds combining variously voiced principal,
flute, and reed pipes as well as mixtures, in which pipes sounding upper harmonics add brilliance to the fundamental
tone.
The early 18
th
century was musically focused on dynamic range, and even the somewhat unsuited organ was affected.
The organ had grown less appreciated during the Classical period (1730-1820) because it was regarded as too rigid and
lifeless, so a contrivance was made to vary the volume. Both portative and positive organ styles gradually disappeared
during the second half of the 18
th
century, and only the great church organ remained in general use.
Abt Vogler (1749-1814), a German organist of some renown, replaced the large and expensive pipes of the church
organ with smaller ones, which produced the deepest low note by sounding only part of the harmonics of the note
(the octave and the twelfth). He got rid of any registers that he didn’t think were essential and enclosed the rest in a
chamber that could be closed with the Venetian Swell that had been invented by Burkat Shudi in 1769. Vogler also
rearranged the pipes and introduced “free” reeds, borrowed from the Chinese mouth-organ (that also later became
part of the harmonium). Vogler’s efforts made the organ less expensive and easier to manufacture, repair, and
maintain, and in addition, made the tones clearer, which suited the tastes of the Classical period. But they also made
the instrument sound thin and ordinary. The early Romantic period opposed his reforms and they soon disappeared.
The 18
th
century in the New World meant an effort to adhere to Old World sentiment and aesthetics. Anglican
churches in large cities presented music that differed little from their English cousins. French Canadian and Spanish
colonies emulated the Catholic music of France and Spain. They used organs and choirs of men and boys, just as they
had in the Old World. Two groups were especially notable regarding these efforts: the Puritans of New England and
the Moravians of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The Puritans were Calvinists and their music centered on metrical
psalm singing—congregations were taught to read music, not to depend on rote learning like in the Catholic tradition.
The Moravians embellished their church services with concerted arias and motets using organs, strings, and other
instruments.
The Reform movement in Judaism during the early 19
th
century brought many Protestant-style practices into the
synagogue, one of which included singing congregational hymns (often borrowing melodies from Lutheran hymns) and
introducing organs and choirs. The first influential composer of the movement was Solomon Salzer (1804-1890), who
was a Reform cantor at a synagogue in Vienna. He updated traditional chants and wrote service music in modern
styles for soloists and for the choir. He also commissioned music from other composers, including Franz Schubert’s
(1797-1828) choral setting of Psalm 92 (written in 1828) that used the Hebrew text.
Soap operas popularized organ music when they were created for the radio in the 1930s and later for television in the
1970s. They played in the background to enhance the mood and performed the theme songs before and after the
show. In the early 1970s, the organ was phased out in favor of full-blown orchestral music, which, more recently, have
been replaced with pop-style compositions.
Sporting events, particularly in the US and Canada, often have organs punctuating occurrences during the games,
especially baseball and ice hockey. The Chicago Cubs were the first to use an organ before, during, and after games at
Wrigley Field in 1941. Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, hired the first full-time organist (Gladys Gooding)
in 1942. The trend caught on. In the 1990s, several teams replaced their organist with recorded music and sound
effects, but many fans appreciate the presence of a live organist, considering it traditional. In an ultra-modern move,
the organist for the Atlanta Braves uses his Twitter account to take requests from fans during games at Turner Field.
Pipe organs continue to be common in church services and electronic organs are available for those with a lower
budget. And as the repertoire developed for the pipe organ and affected its development, church and concert organs
became increasingly similar.
But pipe organs are not limited to classical or traditional uses. Rock music has been known to employ church organs
and occasionally synthesizers that sound like pipe organs. The artists record in cathedrals, and enjoy the lovely slow
decay (like a long echo) that is to be found in such huge buildings.
Organ Structure
Predecessors to the organ include panpipes, pan flutes, syrinx (the reeds out of which panpipes are made), and the
ney (an end-blown flute, like a recorder). The aulos, an ancient double reed instrument with two pipes is where we get
the the word hydra-aulis (water aerophone).
The hydraulis was a piped instrument, where levels of water determined the note played. The concept of the pipe,
sounded by air maintained at a fairly stable pressure by weight of water, could be stopped or unstopped by a
mechanical device rather than by finger holes. It was played with a series of sliders that were pulled out and pushed in
to affect the water levels (and therefore the amount of air movement).
Next, they made it easier to move the slides by creating keys that could be pressed and returned to the original
stopping position by springs. The spring mechanism was first mentioned in Hero of Alexandria’s “Pneumatics” in the
1
st
century CE. His contemporary, Vitruvius (c80-c15 BCE) describes a more complicated instrument with double
pumps and four, six, or eight canals that admitted or denied wind to a separate rank of pipes. Early images often
depict a bagpipe rather than an organ to illustrate the principles on which this pneumatic system was based.
The earliest image of a keyboard is in a 7-inch high terracotta model of an organ with its player from the 2
nd
century
CE, found at Carthage. It had 18 broad keys that play three ranks of 18 pipes each. Two of these three ranks are flue
pipes, built on the flute principle, and the balance are reeds. The player would have used both hands, his left hand for
changing the drone note, and his right for playing the melody. This idea of playing against a drone wasn’t new; Roman
philosopher Seneca (c4 BCE-65 CE) makes reference to consonance on stringed instruments in the 1
st
century CE. (This
is an indication of simultaneous differing sounds rather than any kind of polyphony.)
Older organs had two to four manuals, but modern instruments might have five or six, depending on what the
instrument was used for.
The Great organ used in cathedrals operates the greatest number of registers and the largest stops.
The pipes of the keyboard on the Choir organ were usually situated behind the player.
The Solo organ has stops specifically designed for playing solos.
The Echo organ has soft-toned stops that are at some distance from the majority of the other pipes.
The pipes of the Swell organ are enclosed in a wooden box that can be opened and shut by means of a “Venetian
swell,” producing a crescendo (getting gradually louder) and decrescendo (getting gradually quieter).
The solo, echo, and choir organs are often fitted into swell boxes with shutters. Some instruments also have a tuba
organ with stops that are played by unusually high wind pressure.
Toward the middle of the 19
th
century, the double-touch keyboard was invented in England. These are especially
sensitive keys that produce the normal amount of sound when barely touched and get super loud with a firmer
pressure.
Older organs sometimes had two levels of pedals, but this was thought to be both uncomfortable and unnecessary.
Combination pistons make a single tier sufficient, and the player can prepare combinations of registers in advance so
they’re all activated with a single touch. In the 19
th
century, J.F. Schultz made the pedals slightly concave on the organ
in St. Peter’s church in Harrogate (England), making it easier to reach the highest and lowest notes.
A crescendo pedal was added in the 19
th
century. This is a pedal that, when depressed, sets a cylinder spinning that
activates additional stops and makes the sound louder.
Since the 16
th
century, pipe organs have used various materials for the pipes, each with a different timbre and volume.
Pipes are distributed into ranks (rows) and controlled by the use of hand stops or combination pistons on the console
(near the keyboard).
A clever invention is called “unification,” where an extension is added to a pipe. Instead of one pipe per key for each
pitch, the higher octaves (and some lower octaves) are achieved by adding 12 pipes (one octave) to the top or bottom
of a specific rank. In a church organ, for every 61 keys on a single keyboard, there are 183 pipes (three times 61). In a
theater organ, there might be only 85 pipes (61 plus two octaves of 12 each). Unification gives the smaller instrument
the capability of a much larger sound that is thicker and more homogenous than a classically designed organ. They
often rely on something called tremulant, which varies the air pressure passing through the pipe, lending a wavering
to the sound much like human breath does in singing or playing a wind instrument. It provides a complexity of sound
greater than that usually found on a classical organ. Unification also allows pipe ranks to be played from more than
one keyboard (rather than one key per pipe).
Organs of the middle ages required a lot of wind. As late as the 14
th
century, there could be as many as 24 bellows,
operated in pairs by the feet of the bellows workers, with one player to each pair of bellows. The enormous organ at
Winchester Cathedral (England) was one of these.
In Germany in 1667, Christian Förner (1609-1678) invented the wind gauge, which is a manometer-like device, making
it possible to measure the pressure of the air inside the bellows.
In older organs, there were many folds of leather in the bellows, but in the middle of the 16
th
century, a new kind of
bellows was introduced that was made of wood with only a single fold of leather. This simple and stronger
construction made a more regular supply of wind possible and a more equal tone. The wind still reached the interior
of the organ in puffs, which was remedied by drawing the air into a reservoir (like a bagpipe’s) before it was conveyed
to the pipes.
This reservoir of air was called a wind chest. Air pumped from bellows passed through conduits into the wind-chest
and from there into the soundboard. The soundboard contained a number of grooves for each individual pipe that
affected volume. Spring soundboards had a special valve fitted into the grooves to interrupt or admit wind. But this
was complicated and expensive.
The tremolo device was invented around 1600. It operated in the wind-channel, giving the notes a tremulous,
plaintive tone.
Around the end of the 17
th
century, they invented a slider soundboard, which was more efficient than the spring
soundboards. Slider soundboards had grooves underlying all the pipes that were specific to a particular key on the
keyboard. The sliders working across the grooves are pierced with holes, admitting the wind to the pipes or cutting it
off, depending on its position. The solid portions of the sliders closed the pipes. When the register was to be included,
the slider was pulled out until the holes were situated at the bottom of the pipes so that the wind could enter
unimpeded when the key was depressed. The slider was less likely to break than the spring version, and was
universally adopted during the Baroque period.
At the beginning of the 19
th
century, bellows were still operated by manpower. As the century unfolded, steam,
hydraulic power, gas, and electricity were used to provide the necessary wind. To even out the wind, the single feeder
was the outer part of the bellows to improve this situation and they were improved further by the pneumatic lever
that was invented in 1832 by Charles Spackman Barker (1804-1879) and used for the first time in 1841 by the famous
French organ maker Aristide Cavaille-Coll (1811-1899) for the organ of St. Denis, in Paris France.
With the pneumatic lever, the depression of a key opened the valve of a small auxiliary bellows, which opened the
valve on the pipe. In 1867, Henry Willis (1821-1901) constructed tubular pneumatic keyboard action in which the wind
activating the tiny auxiliary bellows was led through tubes of sometimes considerable length. The tubular pneumatic
action was used successfully in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England in 1874.
Almost simultaneously with this device, the electro-pneumatic action was invented in 1868 by Charles Spackman
Barker (1804-1879), which was an attempt to operate the pneumatic lever using electricity instead of air. This system
was improved by Schmöle & Mols of Philadelphia, USA, a system that was put into the organ at Paris’ famous
Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1890. Even more recently, all-electric organ actions have been built.
Stops were invented around 1500. These are sliding pulls that alter the length or width of the associated pipe or its
flue and affected the quality of the sound, making it louder or softer. They could also make the pipes sound like
various instruments, such as flutes, strings, bassoons, and so on. As far back as Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750),
little bells were affixed to the organ along with other things that imitated percussion instruments, like the triangle,
xylophone, timpani, and drums—even cuckoo birds!
Organs of the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries have devices for controlling the wind pressure. Aristide Cavaille-Coll (1811-1899),
the same man who used the pneumatic levers at St. Denis in Paris) introduced over-blowing flue pipes, such as the
Flute-Harmonique, which sounds a harmonic instead of a fundamental note. (Notes are actually an accumulation of
sounds. The note you intend to play is called the fundamental, and the higher—and lower—sounds that make it up
are called overtones and harmonics. The other sounds that comprise a note are the ones that sound prettiest when
you play them too, as it happens.)
The church organ had a huge number of registers—scales—from enormous 32’ pipes to tiny 1’ pipes. Each register was
named for how long the pipes were, and the longer pipes produced lower notes. The most important register of the
organ is called the Open Diapason (“diapason” means full and rich sound from the full range of the instrument) which
were powerful mid-range flue-pipes, usually in 8’.
In an effort to create new registers, the pipes changed shape. One way to save both space and materials was closing
the 8’ and 16’ stopped registers at the top and using only half the length of open pipes to achieve the same pitch. Even
though they weren’t quite as bright in tone color as the open pipes, they’ve been quite popular. There are also half-
stopped pipes with a narrow tube inserted at the top for the wind to exit through. And there were pipes with an
inverted conical bore that tapered toward the top. Reed pipes include powerful 16’ trombone in the 16
th
century.
String registers came about because of the increased interest in stringed instruments in the 17
th
century. The narrow
flue pipes had colorful names like viola da gamba or violin.
Couplers that connected individual keyboards and their pipets meant that they extended the range of the organ (and
the harpsichord) downward, adding low notes until they almost exceed the ability of humans to hear them. Andreas
Werckmeister (1645-1706) declared that the introduction of equal temperament (a particular kind of tuning) was
urgently needed, and began modifying individual notes on the “well-tempered” organs of the day.
The organ continued to undergo extensive changes in the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries. It now has more volume all by itself
than an entire orchestra.
Notation
Because the organ has both manual and pedal keyboards, organ music is notated on three staves. The music on the
manuals is laid out like music for other keyboard instruments on two connected staves, and the pedals are notated on
the lowest staff, or sometimes, to save space, added to the bottom of the second staff. The latter was how it was
done in the early days.
Because music racks are often built quite low to preserve sightlines over the console, organ music is usually published
in oblong or landscape format.
The Name
The name “organ” comes from the Greek organon, meaning instrument or tool.
The name Regal comes from “regulare,” because it was meant to regulate the singing in churches.
In Germany, the Rūckpositive is the name for the positive, because the pipes are behind the player.
The portative is called the organetto in Italy.
Organ Builders
You can’t really talk about organs without talking about the builders, who are a special hybrid of obsessed engineers
and extreme musicians.
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Organ Players
Again, there are too many to name, so I’ll tell the stories of just a handful.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) might be the most famous composer of all time. But what you might not
realize is that he was also a seriously fierce organist. He was so obsessed with learning all he could that, at age
20, without the permission of his employer, he walked 250 miles to hear Dieterich Buxtehude play in Lūbeck.
He stayed there for several months, absorbing what he could from the great master, before returning to fulfill his
duties. If he hadn’t been so talented and working for a pittance, he would surely have been fired. Bach would go
on to write 225 cantatas, 225 works for other keyboards, 225 organ works, 150 canons and fugues, 100 choral
works, 40 pieces for chamber groups, 30 pieces for full orchestra, and five lute pieces. Bach was married twice
and had seven children with his first wife and 13 with his second wife, only nine of whom survived into
adulthood and outlived him. Five were significant musicians themselves.
Dieterich Buxtehude (c1637-1707) was a German-Danish composer and organist whose works compose the
core of the organ repertoire. Sadly, much of his music is lost or was poorly documented, but he wrote over 112
cantatas, about 100 organ works, 100 choral works, 50 chorale preludes, 50 works for harpsichord, 40 chorale
settings, 25 chamber music pieces, 19 preludes, 14 trio sonatas, a dozen wedding, liturgical, and canon works, a
handful of miscellaneous pieces, and another two dozen pieces that may have been falsely attributed to him.
Gilles de Bins (c1400-1460), known as Binchois (biography to come), was a chorister and organist in France for
three decades. He spent time working for William Pole, earl of Suffolk, who was in France with the English
occupying forces. He also joined the chapel of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy sometime around 1427, and
served at court until his retirement in 1453. His involvement with English musicians affected the French music
that he wrote.
Cesar Franck (1822-1890) was a Belgian who came to study at the Paris Conservatoire and became a professor
of organ there in 1871. His improvisatory style expanded on the repertoire of Bach and the French Baroque, and
in the end, the design of the organ adapted to accommodate it as well. This style included lyrical themes,
contrapuntal development, and orchestral color. He reportedly had huge hands that could easily span 12 white
notes on the keyboard (most people can reach eight), which may have affected his style. He only wrote 12
pieces for the organ (he was into improvisation), but was considered the best organ composer after Bach.
Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814) was a German who wandered all over Germany and England, and whose fame
spread far beyond those boundaries. He opened three music schools and made a lot of excellent musicians into
professionals. He also did some work on changing the design of the organ. The super famous English poet
Robert Browning wrote a poem to him.
Sources:
“Musical Instruments; Their History in Western Culture from the Stone Age to the Present Day,” by Karl
Geiringer, translated by Bernard Miall. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1949.
“A Dictionary of Early Music; From the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford
University Press, New York, 1981.
“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.
“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton &
Company, New York, 2010.
“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1992.
“Early Medieval Music up to 1300,” edited by Dom Anselm Hughes. Oxford University Press, London, 1954.
Organ Composers
There are so many composers, it’s impossible to list them all. I have dispensed with my usual courtesy of supplying
dates and some sort of comment, but I have instead provided links to articles about these fine folks.