Instruments - Part 19

 Organ

Today's post is about the organ.  Whoops, not that organ, much as we love it.

This kind of organ.

In popular culture, the organ has acquired certain associations.  The church, of course.

But Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor has also become the signature music of mad scientists (Captain Nemo plays it in his submarine in the 1954 movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and horror movies, like the scene above from The Phantom of the Opera, 1925.

Monty Python's Flying Circus had a naked organist who popped up from time to time.

The organ in its current form emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages.  Above is part of the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, 1432, showing Adam and Eve and an organ player.

(Disclosure: in the original altarpiece, there are more panels between Adam and the organist, which I edited out to bring Adam into the picture.)

Unlike a piano, an organ has multiple keyboards.  Why does it need more than one?

Each keyboard has a set of stops.  A stop is a knob that you pull on (above).

Let me rephrase that.  When you pull out an organ stop, it connects that keyboard to a set of organ pipes.  A large organ has many different sets of pipes, and these pipes are constructed to sound different.  Some pipes are more mellow, some are more piercing, some try to imitate instruments like a trumpet or oboe.  So, the organist can connect different keyboards to pipes that produce different sounds.

This is the origin of the phrase "to pull out all the stops," meaning to make a great effort.  If an organist pulls out all the stops, then each note is playing though many pipes at once, producing a blast of sound.

The organ also has a set of foot pedals arranged like a keyboard with black and white notes, played by the organist using a "heel and toe" technique (above).  Organists use both hands and both feet, as well as pulling on their knobs.

An organist may practice for hours to perfect his organ performance.

Now, what about those organ pipes?  Oops, not those ones (above) – that's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona.

These ones.  Organ pipes produce sound by pumping air through them.  The longer the pipe, the lower the pitch of the note.  Size queens might appreciate the 32-foot organ pipe (above),  that plays a C an octave below the lowest C on the piano.  Its pitch (16 cycles per second) is so low that it's below the range of human hearing.  You can't hear it, but you can feel it.  But then, being able to feel the organ is what it's all about, isn't it?