It’s not entirely incorrect to describe the pipe organ as ‘just a big box of whistles’ but that obscures the fascinating mechanisms that turn a box of whistles into a musical instrument.
Let’s start with the whistles. A pipe organ makes sound by pushing air through pipes. Pipes may be made of wood or metal. There are two categories of pipes in an organ (although every firm pronouncement of ‘every’ or ‘none’ has exceptions). The majority of the pipes are called flue pipes. They work much as blowing across a bottle produces a sound – a vibrating sheet of air is alternately pulled into and pushed out of a resonating tube.
The length of the pipe determines pitch. Width and shape (square, tapered, cylindrical) determine tone. Fine tuning the tone is fiddly and beyond the scope of this article, but comes down to wind pressure, mouth width and height, and the gap between the moth and the languid (the horizontal bar in the image above). Flue pipes may be ‘stopped,’ which is to say ‘plugged.’ Stopped pipes sound at a pitch twice their length; a convenience for longer pipes, possibly affecting the tone.
The other type of pipe comprises the reeds. These produce sound by vibrating a reed, typically a brass ‘tongue,’ against a tube, called the shallot, which has a rounded or tapered opening through which the raw sound passes to the resonator.
The reed and shallot are contained in a boot, so-called, and are adjusted for pitch by a tuning wire which controls the length of the reed which is permitted to vibrate. You can see Matthias Havinga adjusting the tuning of a reed pipe at ~2:30 in the video which Scruffy kindly shared.
Unlike the flue pipes, reed pipe pitch is controlled (almost) entirely by the length and shape and curve of the vibrating reed. Tone is shaped primarily by the pipe. Unlike the labial pipes, reed pipes are rarely the length shown on the stops. Reed pipes are often oddly shaped, as also seen in the Havinga video.
Now the complexity: Each specific tone class (that is, consistent tone varying only in pitch) produced by an organ requires its own pipe (or pipes, see ‘mixtures’ below) per keyboard key or pedalboard pedal. In a modern organ, that’s almost always 61 keys. Older organs often have 54. Pedalboards typically have 32, older 30, sometimes fewer. Now consider that an organ may have as few as 6-8, or as many as 29 (or more), stops per manual, and pedal, e.g. the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the world’s largest mechanical action pipe organ. Yikes!
We’re going to restrict ourselves to mechanical action organs here. Pipes sit in rows on windchests. Each key is connected to a pallet, a spring loaded lever, held closed, that opens when the key or pedal is pressed. Like this, but with a column of pipes lined up behind (to the right of) the single one shown:
But… that implies all pipes associated with a given key or pedal will sound when the key or pedal is pressed. And yes, that’s how the first organs worked. Creative minds came up with the notion of sliders, which can be pulled to line up a hole under a specific set of pipes, or pushed to shift the hole away from the foot holes to stop that set from sounding. Again, there’s a good shot of Havinga pulling a stop in the video linked above. An organ stop is a mechanism to turn on or off a specific set of pipes. A set of single pipes is called a rank.
Mechanical stop action uses the same mechanisms as key action, although more robust, requiring more force and greater range of motion.
Stops are labeled with the name of the rank and the length, nominal, of the longest pipe in the rank. So, for example, 8′ Diapason, 4′ Principal, 16′ Trumpet, and so on. 8′ pipes represent ‘standard pitch’, 4′ sound an octave higher, 16′ sound an octave lower. The longest pipe will be on the low C key or pedal. The commonest pipe lengths/pitches run from 32′ to 1′, although there are vanishingly rare 64′ stops for really chest rattling lows to 1/2′ stops, or shorter (see the Sydney stop list for examples) for ear-piercing shrillness.
Now, if you look at the stops on an organ console, you’ll find two deviations from what I’ve just described. What the heck is a Quint 2 2/3? Or a Mixtur VI?
Fractional pipe lengths represent harmonics relative to the 8′ pipes, or to 16′ and/or 32′ in the pedals, known collectively as mutations. Never intended to be drawn alone, only in combination with a whole-number pipe, they add or reinforce harmonics and thus color the sound.
Mixtures, identified by Roman numerals, are multiple ranks, denoted by the Roman numeral, of high pitch, drawn as one, to add brilliance to the ensemble. To the best of my knowledge, there are no reed mutations or mixtures.
A full organ chorus is at least 16, 8, 4, 2; or 8, 4, 2; or 32, 16, 8, 4 and a mixture, generally III or IV, plus mutations. Reeds are often drawn as well, for an even more powerful chorus. You will sometimes see a mixture labeled IV-VI, which indicates that the number of pipes varies as you move up or down the keyboard.
Pipe ranks are given a variety of different names, representing smaller tonal differences and/or national origin influences. The stereotypical classical organ sound is provided by the Principals (Diapasons, Principals, Montres, etc). The ‘lighter’ but more variable in tone organ sound is from the Flutes (Bourdon, Rohrflöte, Chimney Flute, etc.). There are also Strings (Gamba being common), more astringent than flutes or principals, and orchestral imitative stops (more rare).
Reeds don’t really come in families, other than the Trumpets (Posaune, Trumpet, Trumpette, Clarion, Clarine, etc.). Trumpets en Chamade are mounted horizontally, projecting from the organ facade, and are brilliant and loud, but hopefully never shrill. A good Trumpet en Chamade chorus should part your hair but not pierce your ears. They crown a full organ chorus of all manuals coupled or provide a triumphant melody line above a principal chorus.
To be continued, with the action!
Greetings all!
Evening.
Just got back, so I haven’t gotten to the actual content yet.
Thanks, and no worries. I’m multi-tasking around various apps; I should be here for another hour or more.
That is quite an article. Thanks for the illustrations.
What is labeled ‘tone valve in the final ill is actually called the pallet. I refer to it as such throughout. Can’t believe I didn’t see that until just now.
It happens, there’s always something that slips through to publication.
No kidding! The things Tonio & I found at the last minute. Smdh. (Why isn’t there a ‘rolls eyes’ emoji?)
Here. That’s what they say it is, in any event.
Somehow seeing some of how the sausage is made makes it even more otherworldly to me.
What until part 2 when I try to detail out the mechanics of it all.
Same time, same Bat Channel, next Monday!
Same. Truly amazing.
Good thing it’s in Oz. If it was here, they’d be trying to get Lizzo to play it.
The Sydney Opera House organ is a masterpiece. I have one recording of it and it’s stunning.
It was plagued with difficulties and delays in its construction, but large organs can be like that.
https://archive.is/zx4DN/616514e9c5b5583b51aba581913a5291381fae48.webp
NSFW warning?
That’s not suitable for anywhere.
How about a Weight Watchers meeting?
I’m trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of actually playing one as the human operator. It doesn’t sound easy.
It’s a bit more difficult than the piano, but there’s “only” 2 feet to manage in addition to the hands. Generally one learns right hand, then left hand, then pedals, then rh + pedals, then the whole magilla. But there are nearly as many teaching approaches as there are teachers ;-\
That’s a wonderful use of Yiddish.
Basically, you’d have to know a regular piano keyboard, know where all the tone stops and pedals are. And then be able to navigate them.
I’d have to agree with your summation.
Yeah. Students are, I think, well advised to minimize the number of different instruments they play on until they’ve achieved a certain level of mastery. Stop layouts are roughly standardized, which helps a bit. But the layout differs considerably between stop knobs and stop tabs (switches).
Stop knobs tend to be arranged vertically by tonal family, so all the principals, from low to high pitch, then all the flutes, then the strings and ‘other’, then the reeds. Stop tabs tend to be in pitch order, period, with the reeds again typically separated out at the end. Additionally, reed stops usually have red lettering rather than the black used for all the others.
Yep, that’s about right. I’ve crawled around inside a few, assisted in the construction/restoration of one and served as a church organist/assistant to the lunatic that was building and restoring one. And somehow putting it in his house.
Hey, good to see you commenting!
We had a German exchange student living with us in 1985 who played organ.
He was… odd.
Organists certainly can be. I once participated in an interview with Virgil Fox. Oh, my /George Takei style
E. Power Biggs was pretty normal by all accounts. His biography was interesting, as he moved through the eras of live performance, radio, and recordings.
True, dis. My teacher/co-conspirator in building restoring one was certainly eccentric in a mostly delightful way. I’m not too hateful usually. Stan Kann, master of the mighty pipe organ in the Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis was flamboyant and an unabashed self-promoter but I remember him as a nice guy from the time I met him as a kid.
Virgil Fox AND E. Power Biggs!!
/faints
The Liberace and Arthur Rubenstein of the pipe organ world. ;-\
That is NOT how a Penthouse Letter is supposed to go!
Super cool! I have wondered what went into there, mostly since I found out there is one down the street from me!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Presbyterian_Church_and_Rectory_(Albany,_Oregon)
They have been raising money to restore it and getting working for around a decade, but some things like this are happening around town in the last few years, so I have faith.
There’s the down side of pipe organs. They obviously (can) have a very long life, but they need periodic maintenance of the wind supply, wind chests, action (tracker, electric, pneumatic, or electro-pneumatic). Let that slip and things start to degrade. The longer maintenance is delayed, the worse it gets, and it’s not a linear relationship.
Complicated. Yet cool and beautiful sounding.
This list puts the Wanamaker Organ as larger than the Sydney Opera House organ, though the wiki pages for the two organs indicates the Sydney one is bigger.
I don’t believe the Wanamaker is mechanical action, though. It does boast one more keyboard. There’s an organ in Germany with 2 pedal boards, which breaks my mind.
Interesting.
Very. It has apparently been replaced, but here’s some info and a very scary picture:
Two pedalboards.
The Wanamaker is not mechanical. They’re constantly rebuilding the thing as I think it has somewhere around thirty thousand pipes.
My son’s played it several times now.
Oh, very cool! Congrats to him!
If it winds up being possible, I’d greatly appreciate a copy of him performing the Bach a minor fugue. TPTB can give you my email & we can work something out, if it’s do-abortion at all.
Also, thank you very much indeed for introducing me to the performances of Matthias Havinga. His a minor is a bit fast, but glorious. His Gigue Fugue performance is *way* too fast, but technically excellent. I’m still pondering his interpretation of the F major toccata. I have trouble hearing anyone’s but Biggs on the 4 antiphonal organs in Freiburg. That one brings tears to my eyes every time I play it. The surround mix is, as all of Andrew Kazdin’s work was, spectacular.
Last but not least, thanks for helping to motivate these 2 articles. I owe you.
we can work something out, if it’s do-abortion at all.
Gotta love auto-correct.
Oy. ‘do-able’. Sigh. Proofreading is my nemesis, even more than the thrice accursed auto-correct. Sorry!
And thanks Ted for catching it and pointing it out.
I thought I had missed some cool-kid expression.
OT LOL
Slay, queen!
Fantastic. More please!
I had no idea that there were different types of organs. I’ve been in many old churches and just sort of admire the pipe layouts.
https://www.youtube.com/live/ebG2POkoHgU?feature=share
Speech Tucker gave last Saturday. Not a bit I disagree with. I doubt it had anything to do with his firing. That seems to have come from the top with some help of an unpleasant woman who complained about him – as if the help used to be allowed to complain about the highest rated show on TV.
I’m 48-houring this. I’ve seen multiple theories already, none of which have anything to do with each other.
Very wise.
I strongly suspect the firing is purely due to the Dominion settlement.
I’m liking the theory I saw that ditching Tucker makes it easier to sell the outfit i.e. turn it into another CNN or MSNBC.
Who knows? They were looking for a pretext to move him and his inconvenient opinions down the road anyway. Anti war, anti security state, and anti law enforcement abuse won’t cut it at Fox for long.
Well that’s a lot of information I didn’t realize I needed to know!
Thanks, SK! Looking forward to the mechanics.
I think you will be amazed. Or at least a bit appalled. Mad geniuses they were, those first organ builders.
I walked through the organ bays of 1st Baptist Church Arlington, TX with one of the maintenance men once. Huge. Amazing.
I expected far more organ puns by now. Like “Do you prefer big organs or smaller ones?” Or “you discuss the first organ, but can you talk about the Firsting Organ?”
So you find the maintenance man huge and amazing.
Whatever floats your boat.
So, RJ likes big organs, he cannot lie.
We other libertarians might deny.
After reading about labial pipes, I had nothing.
This is so complicated. Thanks for sharing with us.
By the way, musical instruments are best visually with flowers. I prefer tulips on my organ.
As R.J. Sighs in relieved satisfaction 😉
I Am Pleased.
Thanks SK. Great intro!
A large part of playing the organ is setting the registrations. One has to consider the music, the emotion, the space, even the number of people in the space as they can absorb the sound.
And God forbid the church puts the console at the other end of the sanctuary from the choir creating a half second delay between the organ and the vocalists. It’s a remarkably complicated instrument that depends on so many factors to sound good.
Amen to that! Organists laugh at midi folk who whine about single or very low double digit delays.
Registration is a fine art. Bad registration can ruin an otherwise excellent performance.
Trumpets en Chamade originated in Spain. Here’s The Emperor’s Organ in Toledo Spain.
Some Spanish organ music featuring the Trumpets en Chamade.
Both Spain and Italy have Organ traditions that differ from each other and the French/Dutch/Germanic schools that created the “standard” Western organ look and sound.
Wow. That’s spectacular!
And almost 500 years old.
Yup. Amazing stuff. The Spanish positively excelled at reed voices of all sorts. They also got a bit carried away with mixtures. I’m aware of one of 26 ranks!
The other interesting thing the Spanish did far more than the other schools or traditions — they split the keyboard(s) into bass and treble “halves” with independent stops drawable for each half.
Their pedal divisions, OTOH, were pretty darn minimal.
Wonderful piece.
There’s a whole slew of Batalla pieces; check them out if you liked this one. The Tientos also are generally good & interesting. Spanish organ music is to French/Dutch/Germanic organ music as Mexican food is to German food.
Great article! Mahalo.
I had the luck one afternoon in to hear the big organ playing in Berlin Dom as we walked pass.
The doors were open so my Eagle and Half Eagle and I had a chance to sit in the pews and listen to a practice session for almost an hour with only a few other people around.
Magical.
I heard some play in… some Dom. Frankfurt?
It was amazing wherever it was.
Blargh. I meant Köln.
Thank you!
Found an article on First Baptist pipe organ. Original one replaced in 2017.
https://www.marshallandogletree.com/opus13
Oooooh!!!! Lovely! You don’t often see a 32′ principal on the Great! I’ll have to dig through the full specification and ponder. If you hear of any recordings made on this instrument, please let me know!
My bad — the Bourdon is a flute category, not a principal. But it’s still exceedingly unusual to see a 32′ stop on the manuals rather than the pedals.
Labial pipes, eh? You sure you aren’t making that up?
AKA flue pipes. So called (labial) because of the mouth, tongue (languid), etc. Tonio and I tried eliminating ‘labial’ in favor of ‘flue’, but this one slipped past me.
/now stop that sniggering you lot, this is high culture!
lol
Found a cool site that lets you search pipe organs.
I found entries for a couple of Catholic churches I attended.
Basilica of St Mary: https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/38756
Our Lady of Grace:
https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/39256
The Pipe Organ Database is awesome. Sometimes a bit spotty, but an excellent place to start for the details on specific organs or organs in specific churches.
And with that, dear friends, I must bow out for the night. My nighttime meds are busy turning me into a pumpkin. I’ll be back on tomorrow between 5 & 6.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Awww! I just now told TT this had posted, so I’m hoping he’ll read it and pipe up (😄) with some comments.
He did, hurrah!
(and somehow I eluded the narrowed gaze! 😁)
(-.-)
^(^
(*)
(Dammit! SO close! 😒)
(And good morning, U!)
Good Morning.
What do you think of the organ in SLC Tabernacle?
Perhaps I’ve only heard bad recordings of it, but I’m not impressed.
Tucker Carlson isn’t a major Firster, but he is a third rate one. The persecution against my great people continues at a record pace. The time for action is now.
What’s better than roses on your piano?
Tulips on your organ?
Bingo.
RedLetterMedia has officially signed off on Picard season 3. There are still some fan holdouts, but the general consensus seems to be they did good. Dead franchises can’t be resurrected. They can also give you a false glimmer of hope showing you that they can get it right before continuing down the same disastrous course they were on before.
Just watch it in isolate if you like that kind of stuff and don’t worry about the next of the franchise sucking which it probably will. Then again, I haven’t been a big Star Trek fan since the nuclear wessels days so it’s easy for me to not care too much.
I saw their reviews of every part of the series except the final episodes. I’m grateful to them for saving me a lot of time and aggravation.
ehhhhh to many logic errors for me to watch.
Thank you SK. I love the pipe organ sound but had no idea of all of this. Looking forward to part 2.
You’re most welcome, it was my pleasure. Sharing our obsessions is part of what makes us Glibs 🙂
Said without snark, you go girl!
https://twitchy.com/aaronw-313234/2023/04/24/the-black-womens-caucus-statement-against-gender-ideology-is-pure-fire/
Someone is looking for a disability retirement.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/24/aaron-rodgers-report-trade-new-york-jets/
Changing the engine on a fundamentally flawed airframe isn’t going to do much good. After all, the Jets are still the Jets.
It’s good to be a Jet!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c9z33lasnkU&pp=ygUhd2hlbiB5b3UncmUgYSBqZXQgd2VzdCBzaWRlIHN0b3J5
Kinda like being a Cobra looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNzNeGw8Fmo
https://youtu.be/2wDJrKGDlR8
‘Nuff said.
Unless…
https://youtu.be/nVoFLM_BDgs
One of the finest pieces of logic wrapped in musical form any member of the human race has ever produced.
#EvilLairMusic
No, that would be this.
Allegedly Bach wrote this while still young, and used it as a test piece for organs. One of his many side-gigs was as a ‘consultant’ who played a major role in approving organs as suitable per the contract with the builder.
Oh, you mean the Gyruss music.
Bach Organ Favorites* was one of my earliest CD purchases; still works dandy. I must have bought it for the Little Fugue.
*EPB on the Flentrop Organ in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard
EPB introduced thousands to the beauty and joy of the pipe organ on that instrument. He did a radio broadcast series there and many superb recordings.
He also captured the sound of many historic organs in Europe. Sadly, most of those never made it to CD.
My big bro had something similar that I taped off him in HS. (He was a music teacher.)
Good morning, you weirdos.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvIBOlyAViU
🎶🎶 👍👍
Mornin’ Sean and the rest of you early birds.
Good morning, Shirley, Sean, and Stinky!
Shirley, I am in awe of your expertise on this subject. I am reminded of why, after half-hearted attempts to learn to play piano and guitar, I’ve pretty much stuck with singing and drumming/percussion.
\blush/ Thank you!
And thanks for getting TT to participate!
Mornin’, that is a terrific article!
An old college buddy who introduced me to all kinds of music you’d never hear on commercial radio was a huge fan of E. Power Biggs, but for reasons unknown did not care for Virgil Fox. I thought they were both terrific.
There was a bitter rivalry between the two, evinced more by their fans than the gentlemen themselves. Fox favored ‘loose’ interpretations and liberally salted his own flamboyance into various works, to say nothing of his over-the-top performance. Fox was a ‘modernist’, Biggs was a ‘traditionalist.’ Nowhere was this more apparent than in the internecine struggles between the electrifiers and the mechanicalists.
Also, Fox was a bitch, Biggs was a gentleman ;->
None of which should take away from either’s undisputed mastery of the instrument.
Too bad the commies want to take away your big box of whistles.
Interesting article, SK. Looking forward to the next piece.
Oh, just swell. Apparently Ol’ Puddin’ Cup has formally announced his intention to run for re-election. 🙄 (Not going to link to the local news outlet’s story about it. I don’t want to worsen my mood so early in the day.)
At 6am DC time. With a recorded video which opened with Jan 6 footage.
I can’t bring myself to watch. Did they at least skip the creepy Nazi set design this time?
I just read a summary. I, too, have no plan to watch.
Of course it had Jan. 6 footage, that was the biggest existential threat to this nation since the South’s high watermark at Gettysburg. If it wasn’t for Biden, the Democratic Congress, and the good men, women, transgenders, otherkin, and furries at the FBI we’d all be getting forced at gunpoint to wear MAGA hats by now.
By run you mean hide in the basement again? I already saw the DNC won’t risk a primary debate.
What a joke.
I ain’t laughing.
Mornin’, reprobates.
My uncle passed yesterday afternoon. Last member of his generation on my side of the family, I guess that makes me the patriarch? I’ll be heading down to FL in two weeks to pay my respects. I hope my cousins can put aside their differences for a little while…
My condolences on your loss, and sympathy for dealing with fractious family.
Thanks.
I’m sorry, ‘patzie! ::sends e-hug::
A patriarch has limited moral authority over cousins and thier offspring. At an event like this you will find the family now has multiple patriarchates.
I’m sorry about your uncle.
Sorry GP, my condolences.
Sorry 🙁
Shirley, I just remembered, but the writer Mathew Crawford had something about pipe organ building in his book The World Beyond Your Head, Mind you, it is about building and not about playing, but it is pretty interesting, and he relates it to the loss of attention span in Western Culture.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Distraction/dp/0374535914/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+world+beyond+your+head+by+matthew+crawford&qid=1682423796&sprefix=world+beyond+your+%2Caps%2C1013&sr=8-1
‘Patzer, sorry to hear of your loss.
Thanks for the reference!
Cool article, I love ridiculous mechanical contraptions. Are you/were you involved with the organ shop on Lake Lansing Rd? We’re locals, should get together sometime.
No, I wasn’t aware of it. You can reach me at my initials (at) chaosacres with the com extension.
The real ridiculous/marvelous hits next week 😉
And thank you!