HOME | Contents | tonal ensemble | manageability | pedal organs | extension & borrowing | electricity | ‘electrophones’ | their future | top
Most
improvements in the organ have been made with a view to rendering the
instrument easier to handle, the question of pipe voicing being in some ways
stabilised.
In every generation there are, as one would expect, voicers who by
general consent obtain results which defy analysis, and our own age is no
different from others in this matter.
Lovely tone-creations are being made by
modern builders which are worthy to rank beside those of Harris and Smith, or
'Father' Willis.
Tonally, however, the best builders have been preoccupied in
producing timbres which are not only good in themselves but which make for a
pleasant ensemble.
Gauntlett, a pioneer, working in collaboration with the
builder Hill, did important work in extending the manual compass down to C and
adding doubles and mixtures, about which there is still much controversy on
acoustical grounds;
this collaboration of player and builder has always been a
useful feature of English organ building.
Henry Willis (genius enough to be
called by the church musicians' favourite term of approbation, 'Father' Willis)
was perhaps pre-eminently successful in solving this question of the balance
between the tone colour of individual ranks and the requirements of the
ensemble.
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On
the recommendation of the Royal College of Organists, London, standard
measurements were adopted by all reputable firms for the console so that knees
no longer knocked against the under edge of the manuals and one was no longer
called upon to pedal underneath oneself, as it were.
Foot pistons were made to
reduplicate and supplement the finger pistons, the pistons themselves were
made readily adjustable with regard to the stops drawn;
balanced swell pedals
which would stay in any desired position and which were placed centrally over
the pedal board soon became standard on all important instruments.
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The
most far-reaching improvement, which has had much effect on the technique of
pedalling, was the making of radiating-concave boards with keys of standard
width, their edges smooth and their surface with the right degree of 'slide' in
them.
Pedal playing was revolutionised;
from. being a rough and ready,
uncertain toe and toe business which made for bustling work in scale passages
it has become a matter of each foot providing six points of contact with the
key—right, left and centre of toe and heel.
Organists are, however, slow to
adopt new methods and not only has no 'fingering' notation been devised for the
new system but every existing tutor starts off by teaching the old toe and toe
method first and relearning the new later.
[See 'Systematic Organ Pedal Technique,' R. Goss Custard (Stainer
and Bell) for an outline of one modem method, and 'The Science of Organ
Pedalling,' H. F. Ellingford and E. G. Meers (Office of Musical Opinion, 1928) for a full exposition of the subject.]
Continental organists still use for the most
part the old system because their instruments almost invariably have the old
straight boards;
for the same reason many of their recitalists have an
assistant to manage their stops, a necessity at the consoles of many French
organs where the jambs are often quite out of reach.
But if English organs have
improved their pedal boards, the pedal organs themselves, except in very large
instruments, still lag far behind those of the continent in the variety of
stops provided, so that the pedal couplers have almost always to be drawn.
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Increasing
costs and the prevalent poverty of many churches have forced builders to
experiment, chiefly on smaller organs, with 'extension' and 'borrowing'.
By
'borrowing' the same stop is made available on more than one manual so that on
small instruments the player of soft voluntaries can, for example, get more
simultaneous tone colours.
It is hardly necessary on an organ of more than,
say, twenty stops, though even here it enables one to use two stops on the
Great in simultaneous contrast, supposing one is 'borrowed' on to the Choir.
By
'extension' one rank of pipes is made to provide sixteen-, eight-, four-, and
two-foot tone played from the same key, thus saving space and expense.
It has
many advocates for and against, but the question of expense usually overrides
acoustical considerations, though many argue that the method is desirable on
acoustical grounds.
It should be noted that for accompanying the congregations
in hymn-singing a good full-bodied diapason running right down to the bottom
note is indispensable;
if the provision of such a stop costs a large
proportion of the available outlay, then borrowing with or without extension
will provide the means of satisfying the second raison d'Stre of an
organ—the player's voluntaries.
Naturally, in a borrowed or extension organ
the full organ cannot give the rich chorus tone of a straight instrument.
The
enclosure of the whole organ in swell boxes would of course supply additional
variety but take the 'bite' off the fortissimo.
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As
far back as the middle of last century Gauntlett was advocating the use of
electrical contact between key and pallet.
By this means, he argued, the
console could be placed in any convenient position.
A scheme which came to
nothing was suggested whereby eight different organs placed in various parts of
the Crystal Palace could be played from manuals set up in the central nave.
Organists, as instrumentalists have ever done, set their faces against such newfangled
ideas, though Barker in 1868 took out a patent for an electric system and
Bryceson managed to apply it to a few instruments.
The real objection then was
that electric power was not easy to come by. Willis, taking advantage perhaps
of this, fitted to St Paul's organ in 1874 a device which achieved much the
same result, tubular-pneumatic action;
this enabled him to transmit
wind-pressure through flexible tubing over appreciable distances.
His scheme
has since been adopted in all large organs and in many smaller instruments.
It
was reliable and not only enabled the builder to place his pipes where he
wanted them but allowed the player clearly to hear the result of his efforts by
removing the console from the pipes.
Now
that electric power is almost universally available the organ is rapidly
becoming electrified.
The advantages are many, the most useful of which is
remote control, though full use is not always made of it.
An octave or two of
keys set in the choir of cathedrals for giving the chord when the anthem is
unaccompanied has yet to appear;
all large churches might with advantage have
two consoles placed at different ends of the building for nave services,
accompanied processions and so forth.
The electric organ can be built on the
spare part principle where broken and worn parts are easily replaceable, the
action can be accessible and visible under glass dust-covers, and takes up incredibly
little space.
Hope-Jones' invention of double touch has been little exploited
in church organs, yet its advantages are obvious.
Stop-tabs arranged as a
keyboard above the manuals (they might well be reduplicated at the sides and
between the manuals) have divided loyalty from players.
Electric systems of
blowing more and more supplant the old hand-, water-, and gas-driven methods,
the most efficient being the rotary fan which maintains a constant
wind-pressure.
A minor difficulty has been the electrical transmission over
long distances of a graduated crescendo, but the problem bids fair to have been
successfully solved.
The application of electric power to the organ has in fact
transformed the mechanism and made the instrument less unwieldy, less extravagant
of space, less costly in repair bills.
It must always be remembered that an
'organ' is not just the mechanism and pipes;
the building in which it is
erected is acoustically part of it and the player is playing the building as
much as the pipes.
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Recent
experiments in radio have resulted in the invention of the 'electronic' organ,
the various types of which may be classed together as 'electrophones'.
In all
these instruments the tone emanates from a loud-speaker diaphragm.
By various
means, which need not be described, an electric current is made and broken at a
given frequency per second: these electrical impulses set up a vibration of
equal frequency in the loud-speaker diaphragm (after being amplified) which
gives off a pure note with few or no harmonics.
Different timbres are then
built up artificially to resemble the various types of organ stop, though it
has not been found possible as yet to use enough artificial harmonics—which
produce the different tone colours—to copy exactly a given pipe.
Even if it
becomes an economic possibility to do so, no diaphragm has yet been used which
has a wide enough range of frequencies to which it will vibrate:
no doubt the
making of such a diaphragm (or set of diaphragms) will be merely a matter of
time and experiment.
These new instruments are as yet in their infancy, and
their distinctive tone has not been too favourably received;
its chief
characteristics are an unusual suddenness or click in the 'coming on' of the
tone and a kind of colourless purity with no 'edge' or 'drive', resembling the
faded notes of a tuning fork.
With the use of more harmonics this pure but dull
tone should disappear, but history shows that instruments best improve when
they cease to ape other instruments and develop their own characteristics.
In
fact, electrophones will claim serious attention when they stop imitating or
claiming to be organs and boldly become themselves.
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It is
unlikely that they will replace organs which have had an uninterrupted run in
accompanying the church service for a thousand years or more.
Like the piano
and harmonium—and the regals before them—they may become useful substitutes
with a character all their own.
In other words a future in some musical milieu
for the electrophone is no doubt assured, but its place in church is as yet a
matter of experiment.
All that dare be said is that, like the piano and
harmonium, the electrophone is portable, cheap (though not cheap enough) to buy
and run;
it needs no tuning, but it might need replacement of burnt-out or
broken valves.
Its tone is pleasant enough up to the mezzo forte but at
the fortissimo it seldom pleases the musician.
It is, in fact, in the
form we have it today, essentially a quiet instrument:
the present size of its
sound producer ensures that.
It has solved many problems including the
accompaniment of nave services and processions in cathedrals, portability and
the utilisation of restricted space;
one may even hope that a cheap practising
model with earphones may one day become a useful part of the equipment of every
organist.
The technique of writing for it as a solo instrument has scarcely yet
been tackled.
Given half a century of development it may yet prove useful in
church;
one must always remember that Bach had little good to say of the pianos
at Potsdam.
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