The organ is the earliest known of all mechanically operated musical instruments and not, as is sometimes stated, one of the earliest musical instruments. The first known organ dates from the 3rd century BC. This was a hydraulos, with a clever system of maintaining wind pressure by incorporating a water cistern in the wind reservoir; when the wind pressure sank, the water level rose to maintain it.

The story of two thousand years of development, from the small hydraulos to mammoth instruments with thousands of pipes, a multitude of timbres and inbuilt gale force winds, cannot be encompassed in anything less than a major work in several volumes. In almost every century and every country the construction and timbres of the organ were enriched by a process of evolution which was exploited by both composers and performers. As early as the 14th century the organ was called the King of instruments, and in the late 19th century was described as ‘the most perfect musical instrument that the ingenuity of man has hitherto devised.’

Until the 18th century the organ had been a major instrument for the expression of polyphonic music, which required a transparent texture so that separate parts could be clearly heard. Many churches in Britain and Europe still possess small 18th century organs with voices of silvery sweetness which are perfect for music of many strands, and a considerable number of larger organs of that period also still survive and are treasured for the information they provide about construction in their time, as well as the authentic timbre of contemporaneous music.

Automatic or barrel organs were also popular in the 18th century and these were skilfully constructed by some of the greatest organ builders. Barrel organs consist of a barrel turned by hand which bristles with pins; when the barrel is turned each pin makes a pipe speak. The pinning of barrels was done in such a manner that the tunes, their harmonies and the ornamentation were accurately consistent with the style of the period when, in many cases, churches preferred a barrel organ to some fumbling part-time human organist. A book published in 1775, and recently republished in facsimile, called La Tonotéchnie on l’ Art de Noter les Cylindres, by Father Joseph Engramelle, describes the detailed care given to the pinning of barrels and the method used to ensure the correct tempo of the music. The music of a barrel organ is therefore among the most valuable sources of information about the authentic performance of hymns and popular music of the time.

Many large organs built in the 20th century incorporate features from early instruments, so that organists have at their disposal the timbres suitable for an historically wide range of music.

In the middle of the i8th century, when the piano began to replace the harpsichord, the symphony orchestra began to replace the organ. Celebrated composers wrote little for the organ at this time and, in the case at least of Beethoven and Mozart, only in their youth. In the Toth century the volume that some organs could produce was equal to, and sometimes greater than, that of the orchestra, and could drown it. Major composers preferred over a hundred musicians to over a hundred stops, and when they combined organ and orchestra they were inclined to use the former going full blast or, to use the correct technical term, full organ.

Holst in The Planets, Mahler in two of his symphonies, SaintSaens, Richard Strauss and Respighi have all included the organ in orchestral scores, making the interesting assumption that the halls in which the works were to be performed would be furnished with an organ — which all the new ones of the affluent late Victorian period were. And if composers did not wholeheartedly agree with Berlioz, who wrote that orchestra and organ together produced a ‘detestable effect,’ they none the less scored for it sparingly. The effectiveness of the organ from the point of view of the audience is not so much the sound itself nor the physical impact of the sound (it can set the seats and those sitting in them a-tremble) but the fact that all the sound comes from a different position in the hall, from above the orchestra, adding another spatial dimension to the music. Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra is among the most recent orchestral works to include the organ.

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dodoHome Theater, Music Equipments, Piano, Popular Music3 Aug, 2008