Everything about Organ Music totally explained
The
organ (from
Greek όργανον – organon, "organ, instrument, tool") is a
keyboard instrument played using one or more
manuals and a
pedalboard. It uses wind moving through metal or wood pipes to produce sound, which remains constant while a key is depressed. Its sounds, which vary widely in timbre and volume, are divided according to ranks and controlled by the use of
stops. The keyboard isn't
expressive and doesn't affect
dynamics. Organs vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are located primarily in churches, concert halls, and homes. The organ is one of the oldest
musical instruments in the
Western musical tradition, and carries a rich history connected with
Christian liturgy and civic ceremony.
The term "organ" may be applied to a variety of instruments which don't have all of the traits listed above. The most well-known and original type of organ is the
pipe organ which is used in many church services and classical music concerts. Another prevalent type is the
electronic organ or digital organ, which
does not have pipes and generates its
electronically-produced sound through one or more
loudspeakers; these are often intended to be replacements for pipe organs but are also performed on in genres ranging from rock to jazz. In the 20th century some builders have decided to "electronically enhance" an existing pipe organ, this usually results in a poorly balanced instrument. In addition there are many other instruments that also may be considered organs, and these are used in many different ways. Organs are performed upon by
organists and are built and maintained by
organ builders.
Pipe organs
pipe organ is the grandest
musical instrument in size and scope, and has been around in its current form since the 14th century (though other designs, such as the
hydraulic organ, were already used in
Antiquity). Along with the
clock, it was considered one of the most complex man-made creations before the
Industrial Revolution. Organs (the "pipe" designation is generally assumed) range in size from a single short keyboard to huge instruments which can have over 10,000
pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four
manuals with five octaves (61 notes) each, with a two-and-a-half octave (32-note)
pedalboard.
Often, it's referred as the "King of instruments". Indeed, the pipe organ has the most extense frequency response and widest dynamic range of all musical instruments conceived by man. Some of the biggest instruments have 64-feet pipes (a foot here means "sonic-foot", a measure quite close to the English measurement unit), and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is the ability to range from the slightest sound to the most powerful, "pleine-jeu" impressive sonic discharge, which can be sustained in time indefinitely by the organist. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphonic orchestras. Another interesting feature lies in its intrinsic "
polyphony" approach: each set of pipes can be played simultaneously with others, and the sound gets truly mixed and interspersed only when they reached the environment, not in the instrument itself (this is the main difference with digital organs, where the sound comes from loudspeakers which plays the resultant electric waveform of several tones being played).
Church organs
The principal purpose of most organs in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand is to play in Christian and Reform Jewish religious services. An organ used for this purpose is generally called a church organ. The introduction of church organs is traditionally attributed to
Pope Vitalian in the seventh century. Due to its ability to simultaneously provide a musical foundation below the vocal register, support in the vocal register, and increased brightness above the vocal register, the organ is ideally suited to accompany
human voices, whether a
congregation, a
choir or a cantor or soloist. Most services also include solo
organ repertoire for independent performance rather than by way of accompaniment, often as a prelude at the beginning the service and a postlude at the conclusion of the service.
Today this organ may be a
pipe organ (see above), a digital or
electronic organ which generates the sound with
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips or a combination of pipes and electronics. It may be called a church organ or classical organ to differentiate it from the
theatre organ, which is a distinctly different instrument. However, as classical
organ repertoire was developed for the pipe organ and in turn influenced its development, the line between a church and a concert organ is hard to draw.
Organs are also used to give recital concerts, called
organ recitals. In the early twentieth century,
symphonic organs flourished in secular venues in the
U.S. and
UK, designed to replace symphony orchestras by playing transcriptions of orchestral pieces. Symphonic and orchestral organs largely fell out of favor as the Orgelbewegung (Organ Reform Movement) took hold in the middle of the twentieth century and organ builders began to look to historical models for inspiration in constructing new instruments. Today, modern builders construct organs in a variety of styles and for both secular and sacred applications.
Chamber organs
A chamber organ is a small pipe organ, often with only one manual, and sometimes without separate pedal pipes, that's placed in a small room, that this diminutive organ can fill with sound. It is often confined to chamber organ repertoire, as often, the organs have too little voice capabilities to rival the grand pipe organs in the performance of the classics. The sound and touch are unique unto the instrument, sounding nothing like a large organ with few stops drawn out, but rather much more intimate. They are usually tracker instruments, although the modern builders are often building electropneumatic chamber organs.
Theatre organs
The
theatre organ or cinema organ was designed to accompany
silent movies. Like a symphonic organ, it's made to replace an orchestra. However, it includes many more gadgets, such as percussions and special effects, to provide a more complete array of options to the theatre organist. Theatre organs tend not to take nearly as much space as standard organs, relying on
extension and higher wind pressures to produce a greater variety of tone and larger volume of sound from fewer pipes. This extension is called "unification", meaning that instead of one pipe for each key at all pitches, the higher octaves of pitch (and in some cases, lower octaves) are achieved by merely adding 12 pipes (one octave) to the top and/or bottom of a given division. Since there are sixty-one keys on an organ manual, a classical or concert organ will have, for
diapason stops at 8', 4' and 2' pitch, a total of 183 pipes (61 times 3). The same chorus of diapasons on a theatre organ will have only 85 pipes, or 61 plus 12, plus 12. Some ranks, such as the
Tibia Clausa, with up to 97 pipes, allow the organist to draw stops at 16', 8', 4', 2', and mutations from a single rank of pipes.
Unification gives a smaller instrument the capability of a much larger one, and works well for monophonic styles of playing (chordal, or chords with solo voice). The sound is, however, thicker and more homogenous than a classically-designed organ, and is very often reliant on the use of tremulant, which has a depth greater than that usually found on a classical organ. Unification also allows pipe ranks to be played from more than one manual and the pedals.
Electronic organs
Since the 1930s, pipeless electric instruments have been available to produce similar sounds and perform similar roles to pipe organs. Many of these have been bought both by houses of worship and other potential pipe organ customers, and also by many musicians both professional and amateur for whom a pipe organ wouldn't be a possibility. Far smaller and cheaper to buy than a corresponding pipe instrument, and in many cases portable, they've taken organ music into private homes and into dance bands and other new environments, and have almost completely replaced the reed organ.
Hammond organs
The Hammond organ was the first successful electric organ, released in the 1930s. It used mechanical, rotating tonewheels to produce the sound waveforms. Its system of drawbars allowed for setting volumes for specific sounds, and provided vibrato-like effects. The drawbars allow the player to choose volume levels of 1-8 for each of the members of the harmonic series starting from 16'. By emphasizing certain harmonics from the overtone series, desired sounds (such as 'brass' or 'string') can be imitated. Generally, the older Hammond drawbar organs had only preamplifiers and were connected to an externalty amplified speaker. The Leslie speaker became the most popular, which is a rotating type speaker. The three most popular models of Hammond organs were the B-3, the C-3, and A-100. Inside all three models, the tone generators, drawbars, & keyboards were identical. The B-3 cabinet stood on 4 legs, the C-3 was an enclosed "church" model and the A100 series had built in amplifiers & speakers.
Though originally produced to replace organs in the church, the Hammond organ, more specifically the B-3, became popular in
jazz, particularly
soul jazz, and in
gospel music. Since these were the roots of
rock and roll, the Hammond organ became a part of the rock and roll sound. It was widely used in rock and popular music during the 1960s and 1970s by bands like
Pink Floyd and
Deep Purple. Its popularity resurged in pop music around 2000, in part due to the availability of
clonewheel organs that were light enough for one person to carry.
Larrit Residence organs
Certain households, such as the infamous Larrit Residence have had organs built into their houses. The reason this isn't done by more people is that organs are hard instruments to maintain. Generally those who get their own can attend to their own organ if necessary.
Other organs
Frequency divider organs used
oscillators instead of mechanical parts to make sound. These were even cheaper and more portable than the Hammond. They featured an ability to bend pitches.
In the 1940s until the 1970s, small organs were sold that simplified traditional
organ stops. These instruments can be considered the predecessor to modern portable
keyboards, as they included one-touch chords, rhythm and accompaniment devices, and other electronically assisted gadgets.
Lowrey was the leading manufacturer of this type of organs in the smaller (spinet) instruments, with
Conn-Selmer and
Rodgers dominating the larger instrument market, although the larger models were movable but were not considered portable.
Conn and others also made electronic organs that used separate oscillators for each note, giving them a richer sound, closer to a pipe organ, due to the slight imperfections in tuning, by not using precise division.
In the '60s and '70s, a type of simple, portable electronic organ called the
combo organ was popular, especially with pop and rock bands, and was a signature sound in the pop music of the period, such as
The Doors,
Led Zeppelin, and
Iron Butterfly. The most popular combo organs were manufactured by
Farfisa and
Vox.
The bamboo organ called
Bambuso sonoro is an experimental
custom-made instrument designed by Hans van Koolwijk. The instrument has 100 flutes made of bamboo.
Digital organs
The development of the
integrated circuit enabled another revolution in electronic keyboard instruments.
Electronic organs sold since the 1980s utilize
sampling to produce the sound.
Also available are hybrids, incorporating a few ranks of pipes to produce some sounds, and using digital samples for other sounds and to resolve borrowing collisions. Major manufacturers include
Allen (who built the first digital organs), Walker, Marshall & Ogletree,
Makin Organs,
Wyvern Organs, Phoenix, and
Rodgers who built the first hybrid instruments starting in 1972 and for decades has built more organs with pipes than any other manufacturer.
Reed organs
The
reed organ was the other main type of organ before the development of electronic organs. It generated its sounds using reeds similar to those of a
piano accordion. Smaller, cheaper and more portable than the corresponding pipe instrument, these were widely used in smaller churches and in private homes, but their volume and tonal range was extremely limited, and they were generally limited to one or two manuals, pedalboards being extremely rare.
A development of the reed organ was the
chord organ, which provided chord buttons for the left hand, again similar to a piano accordion in concept. A few chord organs were later built using frequency divider technology.
Hydraulophone
A newly invented instrument, the
hydraulophone, is a pipe organ that uses incompressible fluid (water) rather than compressible fluid (air). The
organ console resembles a flute, and is played by insertion of fingers into one or more "mouths" of the instrument. This allows for very subtle changes in sound pitch, volume, texture, and timbre, giving rise to an ability to play the organ very expressively. In this way the hydraulophone combines the expressivity of the tin flute (where you can cover up the finger holes halfway, or change the sound in other subtle ways) with the polyphony of the organ.
Because these organs run on water, they are, in a sense, self-cleaning, and are thus useful as outdoor pipe organs. The largest such pipe organ is the main architectural centerpiece out in front of the Ontario Science Centre, and is open to the public 24 hours a day.
Organ music
Classical music
See the main article at organ repertoire for details on specific countries and styles.
The organ has had an important place in
classical music throughout its history.
Antonio de Cabezón,
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and
Girolamo Frescobaldi were three of the most important composers and teachers before 1650. Influenced by these composers, the North German school then rose to prominence with notable composers including
Dieterich Buxtehude and especially
Johann Sebastian Bach, considered by many to have achieved the height of organ composition. During this time, the French Classical school also flourished.
After Bach, the organ's prominence gradually lost ground to the
piano.
Felix Mendelssohn,
A.P.F. Boëly, and
César Franck led a resurgence in the mid-1800s, leading a
Romantic movement that would be carried further by
Max Reger,
Charles-Marie Widor,
Louis Vierne, and others. In the 20th century, composers such as
Marcel Dupré and
Olivier Messiaen added significant contributions to the organ repertoire. Organ music continues to be composed.
Because the organ has both manuals and pedals, most organ music is notated on three
staves. The music played on the manuals is laid out like music for other keyboard instruments on the top two staves, and the music for the pedals is notated on the third stave or sometimes added to the bottom of the second stave to save room. To aid the eye in reading so many staves at once, the
bar lines are broken between the lowest two staves. For convenience sake, the larger number of staves often contributes to the music being often published in landscape format rather than the more commonly used portrait format.
Soap operas
From their creation on radio in the 1930s to the times of television in the early 1970s,
soap operas were perhaps the biggest users of organ music. Day in and day out, the melodramatic serials utilized the instrument in the background of scenes and in their opening and closing theme songs. Some of the best-known soap organists included
Charles Paul,
John Gart, and
Paul Barranco. In the early 1970s, the organ was phased out in favor of more dramatic, full-blown
orchestras, which in turn were replaced with more modern
pop-style compositions.
Popular music
Church-style pipe organs are very rarely used in
popular music. In some cases, groups have sought out the sound of the pipe organ, such as
Tangerine Dream,and Arrogant Worms which used combined the distinctive sounds of electronic
synthesizers and pipe organs when it recorded both music
albums and
videos in several
cathedrals in Europe.
Rick Wakeman of British
progressive rock group
Yes also used pipe organ to excellent effect in a number of the group's albums (including "
Close to the Edge" and "
Going for the One"). Wakeman has also used pipe organ in his solo pieces such as "Jane Seymour" from
The Six Wives Of Henry VIII and "Judas Iscariot" from
Criminal Record. Even more recently, he's recorded an entire album of organ pieces – "Rick Wakeman at
Lincoln Cathedral".
George Duke employed the pipe organ in a flamboyant manner in the piece "50/50" on the
Frank Zappa album
Over-Nite Sensation.
Dennis DeYoung of American
rock group
Styx used the pipe organ at
Chicago's
St. James Cathedral on the song "I'm O.K." on the group's 1978 album
Pieces of Eight. In 2000
Radiohead Frontman
Thom Yorke played the organ on the
Kid A album to great effect, most notably in "Motion Picture Soundtrack". More recently,
Arcade Fire have used a church organ on the songs "Intervention" and "My Body Is a Cage" on their newest album
Neon Bible.
Muse have also used a church organ on their album '
Origin of Symmetry' in the form of 'Megalomania', played by their frontman
Matt Bellamy. It has been performed live only once on a pipe organ, at the
Royal Albert Hall.
On the other hand,
electronic organs and electromechanical organs such as the
Hammond organ have an established role in a number of non-"Classical" genres, such as blues, jazz, gospel, and 1960s and 1970s rock music. Electronic and electromechanical organs were originally designed as lower-cost substitutes for pipe organs. Despite this intended role as a sacred music instrument, electronic and electromechanical organs' distinctive tone-often modified with electronic effects such as vibrato, rotating Leslie speakers, and overdrive-became an important part of the sound of popular music.
Billy Preston and
Iron Butterfly's
Doug Ingle have featured organ on popular recordings such as "
Let it Be" and "
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", respectively. Well-known rock bands using the Hammond organ include
Pink Floyd and
Deep Purple.
Recent performers of Popular organ music include
William Rowland of
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma who is noted for his compositions of "Piano Rags" which he plays on a Wurlitzer theatre organ in
Miami, Oklahoma;
George Wright (1920-1998) whose "Jealousie" and "Puttin on the Ritz" are some of the finest performances of this genre and
Virgil Fox (1912-1980), who bridged both the classical and religious areas of music with pop and so-called Heavy Organ concerts that he played on an electronic organ accompanied by a light show similar to those created in the 1960s for rock concerts.
Jimmy Smith was a famous jazz organist of the twentieth century.
The American Theatre Organ Society
ATOS has been instrumental in programs to preserve the instruments originally installed in theatres for accompaniment of silent movies. In addition to local chapter events they hold an annual convention each year, highlighting performers and instruments in a specific locale. These instruments feature the Tibia pipe family as their foundation stops and regular use of tremulants. They were usually equipped with mechanical percussion accessories, pianos, and other imitative sounds useful in creating movie sound accompaniments such as auto horns, doorbells, and bird whistles.
Jazz
The electronic organ, especially the Hammond B-3, has occupied a significant role in
jazz ever since
Jimmy Smith made it popular in the 1950s. It can function as a replacement for both piano and bass in the standard jazz combo.
Similar instruments
- Early instruments
- the Hydraulos, ancient Greek water-powered instrument (see water organ)
- the Magrepha, ancient Hebrew organ
- the portative organ, a small portable medieval instrument
- the positive organ, a somewhat larger though still portable medieval instrument
- Hand- or foot-powered instruments
- the accordion and concertina, in which the bellows is operated by the squeezing action of the instrumentalist;
- the Harmonium or parlor organ, a reed instrument usually with many stops and two foot-operated bellows which the instrumentalist operates alternately;
- the American Reed Organ is another foot bellow reed keyboard very similar to the Harmonium but it works on negative pressure rather than positive so it sucks air through the reeds;
- the melodeon, a reed instrument with an air reservoir and a foot operated bellows, popular in the USA in the mid-19th century;
- Entertainment instruments
- the barrel organ, made famous by the organ grinder in its portable form, and relatively invisible in its larger form because it was then often fitted out with keyboards to give the option for an entirely human performance
- the steam calliope, a pipe organ operated on steam rather than air;
- the fairground organ, a pipe organ which uses mechanical means instead of a keyboard to play a prepared song.
- various sorts of novelty instruments operating on the same principles
- Mouth-played instruments
Further Information
Get more info on 'Organ Music'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://organ__music.totallyexplained.com">Organ (music) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
