Organ (musical instrument)

“ It is this synthesis which the "decadent" poets or musicians have, in late years, striven to revive.
The superb rhythm of the pedal when the organ responds to the choir [5] should emphasize the text, sustain it in outbursts of exaltation, and not vulgarize it by a continual and unintelligent abuse.
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The organ is a wind instrument; it requires opportunity to take breath. Like the literary sentence, the musical phrase has its commas, its periods, its paragraphs. As a speaker changes his intonation, so must the organ vary its "designs." ”

“ No two of these instruments are precisely alike. The organ is only a theme with innumerable variations, determined by the place in which it is to be installed, by the amount of money at the builder’s disposal, by his inventiveness, and, often, by his personal whims. As a result time is required for the organist to learn his instrument thoroughly. After this he is as free as the fish in the sea, and his only preoccupation is the music. Then, to play freely with the colors on his vast palette, there is but one way—he must plunge boldly into improvisation. ”

“ For most households the old cottage organ is a more practicable instrument than the "concert grand" often found in a small parlor, where its piercing notes, especially in combination with operatic singing, are so confined that tones and overtones, which should assist each other, mingle in jarring confusion. Indeed, when the parlor is large and high, a genuine pipe-organ built in a recess and harmonizing in finish with the woodwork of the room is not only the finest decoration possible, but the most appropriate musical instrument. ”

“ By different processes the touch of the organ was made as delicate as that of the piano.
For some years the Swiss organ-makers have been inventing new facilities which make the organist a sort of magician. The manifold resources of the marvellous instrument are at his command, obedient to his slightest wish.
These resources are prodigious. The compass of the organ far surpasses that of all the instruments of the orchestra. The violin notes alone reach the same height, but with little carrying power. ”

“ So we see how one invention led to another until the organ became an instrument of almost unlimited possibilities, and how keyed instruments had shown the composers how to develop music along new lines. By the end of the 16th century, organ compositions and organ-playing had made rapid progress all over Europe, and you will recall the great organists in all the churches and cathedrals in the Netherlands, in England, Italy, France, Spain, and even in Germany which up to this time had not been on the “musical map.” ”

“ Hand Organ, from the Nuremberg Chronicle.We wonder how many, out of the thousands to whom the tones of the organ are so familiar, ever give more than a passing thought to it, or reflect on the science and skill that have been lavished on it, from the time of the reed-pipes of the ancients up till now, when it has become the most gigantic and complex musical instrument of modern times. ”

“ But before the audacious conception of this instrument ever entered the imagination of man, before he had ever drawn a musical sound from pipe or string, the chambers where the royal harmonies of his grandest vocal mechanism were to find worthy reception were shaped in his own marvellous structure. The organ of hearing was finished by its Divine Builder while yet the morning stars sang together, and the voices of the young creation joined in their first choral symphony. We have seen how the mechanism of the artificial organ takes on the likeness of life ”

“ Finally, there is in the labyrinth an organ, discovered426 by the Marchese Corti, which is to all appearance a musical instrument, with its chords so stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit them to the nerve-filaments which traverse the organ. Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3,000 strings76 has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world and rendering it fit for reception by the brain. ”

“ The dimensions of this Positive Organ, including the stand, are—height, 6 feet 4 inches; width, 2 feet 6 inches; and depth, 1 foot 4 inches. The paintings inside the doors are, to the left, St. Cecilia playing upon a positive organ, while three angels sing and a fourth blows the bellows; to the right, a warrior crowned with laurel is in the attitude of listening; outside the doors there are panels with paintings of a woman playing on an instrument of the viol kind, and another playing a flute. ”

“ There can be no finality in organ building. Whilst the violin fascinates by its perfection, the organ does so no less by its almost infinite possibilities, and modern science is fast transforming it into a highly sensitive instrument. ”

“ For whatever reason, none of these contrivances have hitherto met with general acceptance, and "organ-pianos" are as yet merely curiosities. But an instrument of this kind is now on exhibition in Paris, which appears to be of practical value, and for which there is already a good demand. There is a brief description of this "organ-piano" in Nature, from which we take the following particulars: In this instrument the "organ" or prolonged sounds are produced by a succession of extremely rapid hammer-blows. ”

“ The organ, as a keyed instrument, has all the main points of technique [Pg 38] in common with the piano. All the varied forms of scales, arpeggios, &c., together with the necessary independence of finger requisite to play in the legato style, should first be learned upon the piano, where, by the way, it can be more speedily acquired. Pupils who, having accomplished this, proceed to the study of the organ, can at once begin with the peculiarities and characteristic difficulties of the instrument, and as far as the pedal is concerned, will make far more rapid progress if fair manual players. ”

“ Consequently, the title of the performer on this instrument, in the eleventh century, was not that of organ-player, but organ-beater, the keys being struck by the fist, which was protected by a heavy glove. There was, it must be remembered, but one rank of pipes, and these could seldom, if ever, have been in tune, from the fact that they had no means of regulating the wind pressure; while in organs of later date, and at the present day, an even wind is secured principally by weights placed upon the bellows, and the creation of a reservoir of compressed air. ”

“ Even the untrained will find some interest in the timbre of the notes and the qualities of sound emitted with the pulling of different stops. The lingering sounds and the novelty of playing an organ which is no longer a commonplace in the home, are great incentives to playing. Instruction on the organ, which has a smaller keyboard and slower manipulation than the piano, is pleasant and simple. For combined upper and lower extremity disabilities, the organ is an excellent instrument. Every hospital music department should own one. ”

“ All the musical instruments in the world, from the penny whistle to the grand piano, are but poor imitations of the human music box. The bellows, of course, of the human pipe organ are the lungs; while the tongue furnishes the stops; and the throat, mouth, and nose, the resonance, or sounding, chambers. ”

“ Turning from the rules of the past to the custom of the present, it is found that 'an organ' of to-day sometimes consists really of as many as five separate and distinct organs—Great, Swell, Choir, Solo, and Pedal; but all being enclosed in one case, or at any rate brought under the control of one performer, they are spoken of collectively as constituting a single instrument. ”

“ Inasmuch as no other kind of music so closely resembles the human voice, we can fancy ourselves communing with the thoughts and feelings of the human soul. We naturally compare the organ to man's vocal apparatus. The organ has a bellows, we have lungs; in the organ is a "sound-board" the trachea performs the same function; the vibrating tongue of the organ has its counterpart in our vocal cords; and the pharynx and the mouth answer to the resonating cavities of the organ. Yet the natural instrument is immensely superior to the artificial one. ”

“ How often we hear the remark that contrapuntal treatment is best suited to the organ! True; but how many reflect that the organ, so to speak, first dictated counterpoint to the world? An influence, which (the free forms being derived from the stricter) is carried clear down into the realm of Italian opera, i.e., when it is good of its kind. Is not, then, this influence, which the organ has indisputably exerted upon not merely its own literature, but the musical literature at large, an all-sufficient proof of its right to the royal title? ”

“ While the power, compass, and variety of organ tone, as well as the mechanism of the instrument, made steady progress throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the science of harmony in the largest sense kept even pace with it, and, perhaps, received even a [Pg 27] greater relative development. Meantime, the orchestral instruments of the day had received a fair share of improvement. The harpsichord had been invented, and sufficiently perfected to be worthy of the powers of such a master as Sebastian Bach. ”

“ Of course the Romish ceremonial, the universally dominant religion in France, gives much opportunity for display of this kind. To judge any of these varieties of organ-playing, it will be seen that the standpoint of use to which the instrument is to be put must be carefully borne in mind. Although this school is by no means devoid of excellencies, it is not to be recommended to the American student who is seeking a solid foundation in organ-playing. ”

“ A switch is furnished so that when desired the stops and expression levers may be cut off and left to be operated by hand. The Hope-Jones Tracker Bar has no less than ten lines of holes--it is, of course, correspondingly wide.
We look for a great development in the direction of organs played by mechanical means.
The piano player has done a very great deal to popularize the pianoforte and in the same way it is believed that the automatic player will do a very great deal to popularize the organ. ”

“ In the case of the organ, the pressure with which the keys are struck does not need to be recorded or reproduced, but instead of this, we have to operate the various stops or registers and the various swell shades if we would obtain a faithful reproduction mechanically of the piece of music played by an artist on the organ. ”

“ Within Festival Hall is one of the half-dozen greatest organs in the world. It has more than 7,000 pipes. The heaviest of them weigh as much as 1,200 pounds apiece. Though mere size is not the essential quality of a fine instrument, it is hard to ignore the real immensity of this. The echo organ alone is larger than most pipe organs. ”

“ A representation of the instrument, of this date, is still existing in York Cathedral; beneath the great niche over the west window, of which there is an organ carved in the pediment; the pipes appear without a case, and it has a single row of keys on which an angel is playing from a music-book held by two small boys or choristers below, while another is behind blowing the organ with a pair of common bellows. ”

“ The reason of this is to be found, partly in the extremely conservative character of their organ-builders, almost a national trait, and still more in the fact that but little use would be found for a swell organ outside solo playing. With us, nearly the reverse is true, the swell being most indispensable in accompanying choirs as here constituted. Notwithstanding this neglect of what seems to us an indispensable addition to the instrument, the glory of the invention and perfection of the organ justly belongs to Germany. ”

“ The process became inverted, and music began to affect the organ, rather than the organ it. To this we owe the vast improvements in the construction of the instrument, the many additions of new qualities of tone, and numberless new inventions of value still going on in our day, with a rapidity difficult to keep pace with. To fairly appreciate this past or present relation of things, it becomes necessary to take a hasty and necessarily superficial glance backward at the origin of the organ,—its invention and development. ”

“ In 1907 the Hope-Jones Organ Co., Elmira, N. Y., commenced the construction of organs containing all these and other English improvements (Ocean Grove, N. J.; Buffalo Cathedral, N. Y.; New Orleans, La., etc.) .
The influence of the work already done by the aforenamed pioneers in this country is being manifested in a general improvement in organ tone and mechanism throughout the United States.
Musical men, hearing the new tones and musical effects now produced, realize for the first time the grandeur and refinement and amazing variety of musical effects that the organ is capable of yielding ”

“ The [198] sound is clear, deep, and sonorous, nothing at all like the dull and thick tone of the ordinary double–bass. The fingering is done by means of mechanism connected with keys at the lower end of the finger–board, which the performer, standing on a stool, easily reaches with the left hand, while with the right he draws a big bow across the strings. The use of this instrument must be reserved for the grander effects of harmony. It is like the sub–bass of the organ. ”

“ It would, however, be an interesting subject to trace this development down to Chopin, Liszt, and the modern Titans of the piano, showing how gradually the mutual treatment of piano and organ disappeared and what was substituted in their place. It could, however, only be satisfactorily done by musical examples.
Meanwhile the orchestra blossomed into a new significance. To us moderns who read its history, or look back into the scores which antedate this time, it does not seem so much a period to be described, as that of progress, as that of a veritable new birth itself, a new creation. ”