Playing a Church Organ

By Marmaduke C. Conway

"Out of a lifetime's experience of playing church organs, Dr. Conway speaks in this book to all, from the youngest novice to the experienced expert - about his job. It is the perfect handbook for the organist at whatever level of achievement - authoritative, comprehensive and simple. Everything is here, from the story of the origin of the organ to the best of the latest voluntaries. Not least of the merits of this work is that it will save the aspiring organist much unnecessary expenditure on music that is less than the best. For in the appendices will found suggested anthems and voluntaries for every Sunday of the church year, with helpful remarks and all the necessary information, such as compose, publisher, grade, etc. It is the book that the novice can read and appreciate and the expert will read with profit." Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Origin of the Organ The "Inside" of an Organ The Console Organ Registration The Church Organist Degrees and Diplomas The Position and Importance of the Organist in a Simple Service The Organist in Relation to the Choir The Choice of Music On Acquiring an Organ Organ Recitals Electronics Organs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446545188

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Origin of the organ—Flutes on a box of wind—First attempt at a scale of pipes—Traditional association of the organ with divine worship—Blowing by forge bellows—The Hydraulus—More pipes—Sliders—First keyboards—Keys for the feet—Portative and positif organs—First improvements in blowing—The first large organ—Two rows of keys—Short octaves—Old system of tuning.

IT IS doubtful if more than a small percentage of those who see and hear the organs in our churches and halls give even a passing thought to the history and development of what is unquestionably the greatest and most complex of all musical instruments. They know that it can be very powerful in tone, greedy in the space it requires, and withal expensive; but very few have any idea of the amount of skill and energy that has been expended on it, not only in recent times, but in past ages, in order to make possible the marvellous instruments which exist today.

It is a far cry from the cheap flute or penny whistle blown by human breath to the modern four-manual organ containing several thousands of pipes and a mass of complicated mechanism. The ancestry of the organ, however, carries us back to these modest beginnings and to very early, if not actually Biblical, times.

It is obvious that an ordinary flute or whistle can only be melodic, that is to say, it can only sound one note at a time. It might be just possible for a dexterous performer to manipulate two instruments at once (Stainer’s organ primer contains an illustration reproduced from an Egyptian monument showing this being done) and thus produce two simultaneous sounds, but this was the most possible. Men very soon discovered that the pitch of an ordinary cylindrical pipe depended on its length, and that the longer and larger the pipe the deeper the sound produced, and vice versa. The first step, therefore, was to obtain a series of pipes sufficient in number to produce a definite scale or series of sounds, and to place them on an airtight box of wind supplied with holes corresponding to the feet of the pipes. The pipes could then be sounded or silenced at will by means of small wooden levers operating pallets or pieces of wood placed under the foot of each pipe. These pallets, when pulled down, admitted wind to the corresponding pipe and thus caused it to sound.

Music in some form has been associated with divine worship from the earliest times, but the sustained sounds of wind instruments are not only best for supporting voices, but they have a fixity of tone which in itself is the most fitting for the musical expression of the creeds and unchanging truths for which the Church has always stood. Thus it is that the development of the organ has largely been fostered under the influence of the Church, although at certain times and places it has been frowned upon by the ecclesiastical authorities. Nevertheless the instrument always has been, and on the whole still is, regarded chiefly as an appanage of divine worship.

Wind instruments, in the nature of things, are useless without a more or less continuous supply of air, under pressure, however light. Therefore in even the most primitive type of organ, consisting of a few pipes only, the question of blowing could never be lost sight of. This at first took the form of two or more ordinary forge bellows working alternately, and thus keeping the box of wind, or wind-chest as we shall henceforth call it, supplied to some extent. No doubt the wind supply was often very unsteady, producing a corresponding fluctuation in the tone of the pipes. This was not necessarily the case, however, as is shown by the action of the feeders of a harmonium today when the expression stop is drawn and a competent player is at the keys. In these days of mechanical blowing it is interesting to recall that water power was ingeniously applied to compress the air in the wind-chest in the most ancient form of organ known. This was called the Hydraulus, and dates back some 250 years B.C. The pressure supplied is said to have been sufficient to produce very powerful tones from the pipes, and such instruments were often used at gladiatorial contests and other secular events. This caused the early Christians to look askance at the organ for some time, but when they did countenance the instrument the first organs used are said to have been of this type.

The next step was to add to the one rank of pipes already in use. This was done tentatively at first, and more freely later. Any increase, however, at once made necessary a further mechanical development. Unless full organ was to be in use throughout, means had to be devised by which any or all the ranks of pipes could be silenced, if necessary. This difficulty was surmounted by introducing thin strips of wood perforated with holes corresponding with the feet of the pipes and called sliders. These could be moved by means of handles, so that the holes in the slider no longer corresponded with the pipes over them, and thus shut off the wind or admitted it as required, apart from the action of the pallets operated by the levers in front of the instrument. Here we have the origin of the familiar word stop in connection with an organ—the sliders stopping the pipes from sounding. This plan has been used in organ construction ever since.

In the very early days, when organ playing was confined to slow-moving and melodic (that is to say, one note only sounding at a time) work, no regular keyboard was necessary. The player manipulated the levers in front of the instrument already mentioned, or even used a hand to silence a pipe sounding when not required. So primitive an arrangement was soon found impossible when organs and the music played on them began to develop, and the earliest type of regular keyboard appeared about the end of the eleventh century. This, of course, was clumsy in the extreme. The keys were so large and heavy in action that they sometimes required the weight of the entire hand to move them. Nevertheless they marked a stage in the control of the instrument and were the origin of the beautifully finished keyboards found today.

Many people are under the impression that our modern major-minor and chromatic scales have been in use since the early days of music. This is not so, as reference to any history of music will show. Broadly speaking, the white notes only of a modern keyboard were in use in early times and under the scale system of the period. Nor had the note C the special pre-eminence it would probably enjoy under similar limitations today. It may be stated, therefore, that the earliest organ keyboards would provide only such notes as would commonly be wanted in the old modes, as they were called, used in the service of the church, and perhaps not all of these. In the early ages all church music was conceived as for voices unaccompanied, and it was only the necessity for occasional support of a mass of voices singing in unison that brought the organ into church at all. Congregational support demanded the provision of deeper and more powerful tones, and the instruments made gradually increased in size and musical range. Large pipes called for more wind and stronger keys and offered more resistance to the player. The German invention of pedals, or keys for the feet, was one of the most important developments in the history of the organ. Like the keys for the hand, the pedals at first were few in number, not exceeding an octave in compass, and confined to the naturals only. For some time their use was restricted to long holding notes, and the corresponding manual keys were attached—or coupled to them, as organists would say—by means of cords. Independent pedal pipes of larger scale than those for the manual appeared about the same time, and were later destined to give to the organ that depth and majesty of tone which is one of its chief characteristics today.

Strangely enough, the advantages offered by means of the pedals were very tardily recognised, and outside German-speaking countries pedals did not appear until much later. France began to adopt them in the early seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that they were at all generally found in this country. Even then they were very rudimentary contrivances, often consisting of little more than an octave of pull-downs.

Until the advent of pedals and large pipes, the small organs were usually of two classes: portative organs, which could be, and often were, carried about in processions, etc.; and positif organs, which presumably were in position and not movable. A very small type of portative organ was known as a regal, possessing only one set of pipes or, more strictly, of reeds—a class of tone of which we shall speak later. In these small portative organs it was possible for the player to manipulate the bellows with one hand and the keys with the other. Old prints, however, more often show two people at work, a blower