Piano organ

“ Mozart's organ and violin-playing created quite as much astonishment as his performances on the clavier:—
When I told Herr Stein that I should like to play upon his organ (in the Barfüsserkirche) , for that I had a passion for the organ, he was greatly astonished, and said: "What! a man like you, a clavier-player, willing to play on an instrument which has no douceur, no expression; which allows of neither piano nor forte, but goes on always the same!" "All that has nothing to do with it. To my mind, the organ is the king of all instruments." ”

“ 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. ”

“ But your interest will be in the tune rather than in the sound. You can’t limit the piano to the tunes that can be played upon it. You don’t treat a violin that way, nor an organ. And of course you can register a piano almost as fully as an organ with the “stops” that are in the ends of your fingers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One thing you should know is, that organs are not tempered as finely as pianos, nor is there the pains taken to secure perfect unisons. In fact, you can hardly find a perfect unison in an organ of modern make, much less, a correct temperament. Finding a tone that is so far out as to be very disagreeable, adjust it between the octave below and the octave above, try it in the proper chords and equalize it in the best possible way ”

“ Perhaps even our organ, which is an ancient invention, will not escape the critical censure of a coming age. And there can be little doubt that much remains yet to be known in the manufacture of musical instruments. It may be said with much reason that the only perfect instruments now in use are the violin, the violincello, the double-bass, the tenor, and one or two others. On these any tone of which their compass is capable can be produced in every possible variety of execution. The piano forte, delightful as are its powers, cannot produce a gliding sound from one note to the other ”

“ Nowhere can we find more evident signs of this time of experiment, this gradually leaving old landmarks and seeking a new form of expression, than in the works of Bach himself.
In the "Well-Tempered Clavier" we find preludes and fugues impossible to properly interpret on any other instrument except the piano, placed side by side with those whose real significance can only be developed upon the organ. In a portion of the pieces written especially for the organ, we find, on the other hand, passages which to modern ears are only fit for and tolerable on the piano. ”

“ Regularly educated performers on the piano-forte and organ have appeared here from Europe, some of whom have displayed their skill, in concerto playing, and in the difficulties of unmeaning execution. The full organ has therefore been put in constant requisition ; and the more loud, harsh, and noisy the instrument, the greater, of course, has been its effect. Solo stops, and consequently fine voicing, have thus, for the moment, lost their importance and due estimation. ”

“ The symphony piano, an invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very poor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary tendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd of instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of feet. ”

“ The vibrations of a piano string, on the contrary, are at their maximum only during the moment in which it is struck by the hammer operated by pressing the key, and from that moment gradually decrease, giving forth a sound constantly fainter and fainter. Once the key is struck, the player's control over the mechanism ceases, and he has no choice but either to wait passively for silence or to strike another key. For this reason the broad, poising melodies and the slow-moving, deliberate harmonies of the choral and organ schools are ineffective on the piano. ”

“ The idea with which we desire to impress the student by the foregoing remarks is, that while the piano is a superior instrument, and the art of tuning the piano is a much deeper study from the general tuner's [Pg 180] standpoint than that of doing the various things the tuner is called to do on the organ, he should not consider the reed organ of minor importance, or slight the organ when called upon to put it in order. The fact is, persons having organs in their homes cherish them as much as others do their pianos, and there is no reason why they should not have as good service. ”

“ Nearly all the old instruments were like that, even the organ was once a little instrument, and when it grew big our wise forefathers gave it to God in the cathedrals, where it befits Him to be everything. But if you sit at the piano, it is the piano, the mechanism, that is the important thing, and nothing of you means anything but your fingers and your intellect. ”

“ The charge for hire is about 10s. per week. There is a choice of all the latest popular operatic and music-hall tunes, and generally all the tunes are changed every six months, though some tunes, like "The Lost Chord" and "The Village Blacksmith," are seldom taken off the barrels. A piano-organ, if taken care of and protected from the wet, will last ten or twelve years. A new tune, if not very florid, can be put in for 9s. or 10s.
"The monkey organ-man."
The monkey organ-man with the old-fashioned discordant barrel-organ is an old stager—the original "organ-grinder." ”

“ Much of it applies with almost greater force to the organ than to the piano. Extemporising on the organ will frequently become an aimless, barless, rhythmless wandering among the keys to which no change of stops can give any interest. So much oratorio music is now sung in churches and in other places, where on account of the expense or from other reasons, an orchestra is unattainable, that the organ is often called upon, to supply the place of a full band. ”

“ We do better now, but I look upon caseless organs, with their rows of painted pipes, as something horrid. A good piano always has a good case; we do not dream of buying, or the vendor of selling, a first-class instrument in a paltry one; and why a really well-built and good-toned organ is put into a plain deal varnished case, like a common cheap schoolroom piano, is a puzzle to me. ”

“ The necessary mechanical noises which accompany the production of tone in a piano may be largely eliminated if that should prove desirable. The acoustical engineer can now point out dozens of features in the piano which might be improved in future construction based upon analysis of the output in sound. In the same manner the organ, the king of instruments, if it is to maintain its pre-eminence in competition with substitutes, demands improvements in the light of new facilities. The more complicated the instrument, the more possibilities there are for improvement. ”

“ One great point in favor of the organ is, that it is capable of continuing any tone or chord for any length of time, without diminution, while in the piano, the bass tones may be continued for considerable time, the middle tones a shorter length of time, and the extreme high tones of the treble have but the slightest duration; every tone in the piano gradually grows weaker from the instant of its sounding until it fades into silence. ”

“ It will be impossible to give anything more than general instruction in organ work, as the difference in construction is so pronounced. Pianos are built practically on the same plan, and when the construction of one is learned, the tuner will find little difficulty in others of the same type; but it seems that every organ manufacturer has his own hobbies as to the best means of securing results ”

“ Do not forget that for centuries England has been a country of organists; without doubt organ playing has had some effect on the piano touch. Some schools of piano playing advise lifting the fingers high above the keys, with a view to producing greater power; but I think the tone thus produced is often of a somewhat harsh and disagreeable quality. Then, too, high lifting interferes with smoothness and velocity. For myself I advocate keeping the fingers close to the keyboard, and pressing the keys, which gives the tone a warmer and more elastic quality. ”

“ Even a large piano which has seen its best days does not seem to be altogether a cumberer of the ground where another equally bulky piece of furniture would be unendurable. But unless some member of the family has decided musical ability, the best use of a piano or organ in a home is to sustain the uncertain voices in singing. Home singing is almost a necessity even where no one sings very well. ”

“ Automatic Players are attached to many pipe organs. They, for the most part, consist of ordinary piano players so arranged that they operate the keys, or the mechanism attached to the keys, of an organ.
This is a very poor plan, and the resulting effect is thoroughly mechanical and unsatisfactory. Only one keyboard is played upon at a time as a rule, and neither the stops nor the pedals, nor the expression levers are operated at all. ”

“ We have now to look to something slightly resembling the principle of the violin or of the organ, in order to secure the additional sostenuto effect for which we are searching. Having to deal with a piano in practically its existing form, we obviously require to take special account of the fact that the note is begun by percussion, and that any attempt to bring a solid substance into contact with the wire while still vibrating, with the object of continuing its motion, is likely to produce more or less of a jarring effect. ”

“ In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must continue to be, the real "King of Instruments," there is a good deal of make-believe. A long note—or two notes tied in a certain method—is intended to be played as a continued sound, like the note of an organ; whereas there is no piano in existence which will produce anything even approximately approaching to that effect. The characteristic of the piano as an instrument is percussion, producing, at the moment of striking the note, a loud sound which almost immediately dies away and leaves but a faint vibration. ”

“ It remains for the organ-builders of the twentieth century to attack the problem of curing its defects by methods going more directly to the root of the difficulty than any hitherto attempted.
As contrasted with the pianoforte, the organ is extremely deficient in that power which the conductor of an orchestra loves to exercise—facility in accentuating and in subduing at will the work of each individual performer. For all practical purposes the ten fingers of a piano-player are the ten players in an orchestra ”

“ Their use is so generally felt, that in addition to those attached to the Great Organ stops, there are usually two or three provided for the Swell of organs of even average size. In instruments that have a Pedal Organ of fair dimensions, the Great Organ composition pedals usually do, or at any rate should, act also on those of the Pedal, 'in proportion'; particularly where the latter has any Mutation, Mixture, or 16-feet Reed stops. In such cases a 'Piano Pedal' for reducing the Pedal Organ so that it may be available for use with the Swell or Choir, is very desirable. ”