Organ building

“ The Hope-Jones method seems to be to construct the box and its shutters (in laminated form) of brick, cement or other inert and non-porous material, and to substitute for the felt usually employed at the joints his patented "sound trap." This latter is so interesting and of such import in the history of organ building that we append, on the next page, illustrations and descriptions of the device.
If a man should stand at one end of the closed passage (C) he will be able to converse with a friend at the other end of the passage (D) . ”

“ Fifty years ago it was common to find the number of ranks of mixtures in an organ largely exceed the total number of foundation stops. Mixtures were inserted in the pedal departments of all large organs. Organists of the time do not seem to have objected and many of the leading players strongly opposed Hope-Jones when he came out as the champion of their abolition. ”

“ PERCUSSION STOPS.
This class of stop is also now finding its way into organs more generally than heretofore. Resonating gongs giving, when skillfully used, effects closely resembling a harp have been introduced freely by the Aeolian Company in its house organs, and there seems no possible objection to such introduction. ”

“ Your patience, research and experiment have done more than any other one agency to make the modern organ tone what it is. I think your invention of the leathered lip will mean as much to organ tone as the Barker pneumatic lever did to organ action, and will be as far-reaching in its effect. ”

“ Robert Hope-Jones. * * * The researches in the realm of organ tone by Mr. Hope-Jones and others who are continually striving for excellence and the use of an increased and more varied wind-pressure (ranging from 3 to 25 inches) all combine to produce greater variety and superiority in the quality of organ tone than has ever existed before."
Elliston in his book on Organ Construction devotes considerable space to a description of the organs built by Hope-Jones in England and Scotland, and says: "The Hope-Jones system embraces many novelties in tone and mechanism." ”

“ No tubular-pneumatic action is entirely satisfactory when the distance between the keys and the organ is great. This is often due to a law of nature rather than to imperfection of design or workmanship. ”

“ It is an admirable makeshift where a builder is cramped for room.
Organ pipes are divided into three families—Flues, Reeds and Diaphones. The flues are subdivided into Diapasons, Flutes, and Strings, and we now proceed to consider each of these groups separately.
DIAPASONS.
The pipes usually seen in the front of an organ belong to the Great organ Open Diapason, long regarded as the foundation tone of the instrument. The Open Diapason may vary in size (or scale) from 9 inches diameter at CC to 3 inches. The average size is about 6 inches. ”

“ It will be seen that a skilful organist, with a knowledge of these tones, can produce effects from small organs not available to the ordinary player.
Reverting once more to our Flute, whose tube is shortened by lifting the fingers from the holes, it is not generally known that this can be done with an organ pipe; the writer has met with instances of it in England. The two lowest pipes of the Pedal Open Diapason were each made to give two notes by affixing a pneumatic valve near the top of the pipe. ”

“ It is generally thought amongst the more advanced of the builders and organists qualified to judge, that the tubular-pneumatic action will sooner or later be entirely abandoned in favor of the electro-pneumatic action. ”

“ On placing one end of it fitted with a socket into one of the holes in the wind-chest (in place of a pipe) and admitting the wind from the bellows the water is forced up the tube, and the difference between the level of the surface of the water in the two legs of the tube is measured in inches. Thus, we always talk of the pressure of wind in an organ as being so many inches.
[4] The organ in Great Homer Street Wesleyan Chapel, Liverpool, England, had manuals extending down to CCC. It was built for a man who could not play the pedals and thus obtained 16 ft. tone from the keys. ”

“ The general character of tertiary manifestations may be stated as follows: They attack by preference the tissues derived from the mesoblastic layer of the embryo—the cellular tissue, bones, muscles, and viscera. They are often localised to one particular tissue or organ, such, for example, as the subcutaneous cellular tissue, the bones, or the liver, and they are rarely symmetrical. They are usually aggressive and persistent, with little tendency to natural cure, and they may be dangerous to life, because of the destructive changes produced in such organs as the brain or the larynx. ”

“ Swell to Great Unison. Chancel Tubas to Great. Swell to Great Super-octave. Chancel Tubas to Great. Solo to Swell. COUPLERS--MECHANICAL Tuba Organ to Pedal. Great Organ to Pedal. Solo Organ to Pedal. Choir Organ to Pedal. Swell Organ to Pedal. Six Pistons operate on the whole Organ. About forty Adjustable Pistons and Composition Pedals.
The mechanism is entirely new. The quarter dome portion of the organ is playable by electric agency; the rest being entirely pneumatic. There are one hundred draw-stops. The most novel features are the new Altar and Tuba organs. ”

“ This newly-developed connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue that have been less compressed than the part that separates them. ”

“ He laid down the general morphological principle that the fundamental organs have essentially the shape of tubular cavities, as appears in the first form of the central organ of the nervous system, in the two muscular and osseous tubes which form the walls of the body, and in the intestinal canal; and he followed out with admirable clearness the steps by which from these fundamental systems the other organs arise secondarily, such as the organs of sense, the glands, lungs, heart, vascular glands, Wolffian bodies, kidneys and generative organs. ”

“ If so, we will begin and say the great cerebral system of arteries supply the brain of which it gives quality of all fluids and electric and magnetic forces, which must be generated in the brain. Then a question arises, if the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, lymphatics, kidneys and all parts of the body depend upon the brain for power, what do they give in return? If they give back anything it must be of the kind of the organ from whence it comes; thus a kidney cannot give liver nor spleen. Each must help to keep up the universal harmony by furnishing its mite of its own kind. ”

“ All modern surgeons admit the inutility of applications made in this way, and now confine them to the most sub-cutaneous organs. Perhaps hereafter we shall be sufficiently acquainted with the degree of vitality of each organ, to know when the cellular texture can be the means of communication of medicinal effects, between two contiguous organs, with different structure and properties, and when it is a barrier which stops the communication of these effects. At present we go almost always groping in the dark. ”

“ From all that I have said, it is evident that in the organs whose capillary system contains in part blood, and in part different fluids, the proportion of the first to the others is infinitely variable; that a thousand causes in a state of health, as in that of disease, by bringing to the organ more or less blood, can fill more or less its capillary system. ”

“ First, other congeries of glands occupy but a particular part of the system, or constitute a particular organ, as the liver, or kidneys; but those glands, which secrete the mucus, and perspirable matter, which are called capillaries, are of very great extent; they receive the blood from the arteries, separate from it the mucus, which lines every cell, and covers every cavity of body; and the perspirable matter, which softens and lubricates the whole surface of the skin, and the more extensive surface of the air-vessels, which compose the lungs. ”

“ The appearances left in the body are increased density and firmness of the whole brain or a part of it,—flattening of the convolutions on their outer surface, so that their grooves are almost obliterated and the investing membrane uncommonly dry,—unusual emptiness of the blood-vessels of the brain and its membranes,—and a protrusion of the brain upwards on removal of the skull-cap, as if the organ were too large for its containing cavity. ”

“ Each organ has the shape of a biconvex lens, sunk to about half its thickness in the skin. The inner half is formed of radially-arranged gland tubes filled with small granular cells, and converging towards the centre of the organ. Into the connective-tissue walls of the tubes extend blood-vessels and nerves. External to the gland tubes there is a layer of long slender cells arranged perpendicularly to the surface, and more externally still a layer of ganglion cells. There is evidence that these organs multiply by division. ”

“ It is curious to notice how our body is wrapped in membrane. On the outside, is the skin protecting from exterior injury, and, on the inside, is the mucous membrane reaching from the lips to the innermost air cell of the lungs. Every organ is enveloped in its membrane. Every bone has its sheath. Every socket is lined. Even the separate fibers of muscles have their covering tissue. The brain and the spinal cord are triply wrapped, while the eye is only a membranous globe filled with fluid. ”

“ Wherefore, if the leaping point together with the veins and blood, which are all conspicuous as one single organ at the first beginning of the embryo, be accepted as the heart (the parenchyma of which is superadded to the vesicle later in the formation of the embryo) , it is manifest that, accepted in this sense, that is, as an organ composed of parenchyma, ventricles, auricles, and blood, the heart in animals is in very truth, as Aristotle would have it, the principal and first generated part of the body ”

“ Each organ is to every other as an excreting organ. In other words, to insure perfect health, every tissue, bone, nerve, tendon, or muscle should take from the blood certain materials and return to it certain others. To do this every organ must or ought to have its period of activity and of rest, so as to keep the vital fluid in a proper state to nourish every other part. ”

“ There is a large amount of reciprocity among the tissues; in the case of paired organs the loss of one can be made good by increased activity of the remaining, and certain of the organs are so nearly alike in function that a loss can be compensated for by an increase or modification of the function of a nearly related organ. The various internal parts are connected by means of a close meshwork of interlacing fibrils, the connective tissue, support and strength being given by the various bones. Everywhere enclosing all living cells and penetrating into the densest of the tissues there is fluid. ”

“ The walls of the organ are composed almost entirely of a soft, tender parenchyma, formed, for the most part, of vascular ramifications, the trunks of which, three or four in number, communicate with the interior of the branchial heart, through the peduncle. The walls of these trunks and of the peduncle are composed of stout, tough membrane. The cavity of the appendage does not communicate with that of the heart, but opens, as we have seen, externally, or into the chamber within which the organ is placed, so that the fluid surrounding it will bathe its inner as well as its outer surface. ”

“ Let us not, however, exaggerate this independence of the textures of the organs in diseases, lest experience should contradict us. We shall see that the cellular system is oftentimes a medium of communication, not only from one texture to another in the same organ, but from one organ to a neighbouring one. ”

“ The evolution of a special pumping organ, the heart, associated with the aeration of the body fluids in the gills, led to the perfection of the efficient system of circulation which is found, in the vertebrata.
The blood is to be regarded as alive in as strict a sense as any other- component of the living body. It is a tissue consisting of mobile elements—the blood corpuscles—and a plasma—a colloidal albuminous fluid which is analogous to the more solid intercellular material of other tissues. ”

“ It may be imagined, from what has now been said, that the generative systems, considered under the relation of organs, forming a common and uniform base for all, ought to be sooner developed than others; and this, observation proves. While there is hardly an outline of the others81 in the first months of the fœtus, these predominate in a remarkable manner. The nerves, and their centre, which is the brain, the arteries, the veins and their central organ, which is the heart, the cellular texture, the exhalants and the absorbents, exhibit this phenomenon in a striking degree. ”

“ As the body is composed of individual organs, and each organ of separate tissues, so each tissue is made up of minute cells. Each cell is a little world by itself, too small to be seen by the naked eye, but open to the microscope. It has its own form and constitution as much as a special organ in the body. It absorbs from the blood such food as suits its purposes. Moreover, the number of cells in an organ is as constant as the number of organs. As the organs expand with the growth of the body, so the cells of each tissue enlarge, but shrink again with age and the decline of life. ”

“ As every organ is nourished, and as the mechanism of nutrition is uniform, it follows that these two systems belong to all the organs. After them the cellular system is the most generally found. Where there are no blood vessels, it is sometimes met with, and it always exists where these vessels are. Next to this, the arteries and veins are spread to the greatest number of parts. Oftentimes no nerve is discoverable, where they penetrate, as in the aponeuroses, the fibrous membranes, &c. ”