The Great Musical Machine: Origins of the Pipe Organ

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The Great Musical Machine: Origins of the Pipe Organ

Overview

The early history of European music is well entwined with the history of Christianity. At the very center of their mutual development stands the pipe organ. The organ and the music written for it reached a pinnacle of importance during the seventeenth century, but one must look to developments during the Middle Ages to understand how the organ came to be a part of the structure—literally—of the major Christian churches, and to appreciate its extraordinary mechanical complexity. The pipe organ was both the most important musical instrument and, along with the clock, the most complicated machine of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Background

The very name "organ" reveals the dual place of that instrument in the history of music and the history of technology. The term "organon" was first used by Plato (427?-347 b.c.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) to denote any kind of tool; only later did it come to refer specifically to the well-engineered assembly of pipes and bellows that make up the musical instrument known in English as the organ. The invention of the organ in antiquity is credited to Ctesibius, an Alexandrian engineer of the second century b.c. This instrument, and all the organs that followed, was characterized by four basic technological elements: 1) something to pressurize air, such as a lever- or pulley-operated pump; 2) a vessel in which to store air; 3) a mechanism such as a keyboard to control air flow; and 4) a series of different sized pipes across which the air can be directed to produce musical tones. Ctesibius's machine was praised in classical accounts for its impressive use of hydraulic principles, rather than for its musical qualities. However, two centuries after his invention, many references to organs and organ playing began to appear. Organs were a common feature in Roman life, providing music for the various spectacles of theatre, circuses, banquets, and other public events. While Ctesibius's organ and other early Roman instruments used water to maintain air pressure in the pipes, air bellows became more common than water systems sometime around the second century a.d. Some fragments of Roman organs have been recovered by archaeologists, but most of our evidence about them comes from textual descriptions and numerous artistic depictions.

There is no evidence of the existence of organs in western Europe from the fifth to the eighth centuries. The Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople, however, continued the secular use of Greco-Roman musical instruments, including the organ. The organ was re-introduced to the West in 757 when a Byzantine leader sent an organ as a diplomatic gift to Pepin, father of the great king Charlemagne (742-814). This organ, with an elaborate system of pipes, stops, and bellows, was celebrated as an engineering marvel, and was used for public rather than religious ceremony. Although the historical record is incomplete, it seems that by sometime in the ninth century, organs had become a common element in Western European musical culture.

Most of these early medieval organs were used in strictly secular settings. Small, simple organs that could be carried, known as "portative" organs, appear in many illustrations from medieval manuscripts—the portative organ was often used as a symbol in such illustrations to represent music quite generally. But these organs, which featured a small number of pipes and a hand-operated bellows, could play only a single melodic line and had a limited range of volume and pitch. They disappeared by the sixteenth century, replaced by more versatile instruments for performing ensembles and accompanying secular singers.

Larger organs, called "positive" organs, were still moveable but significantly more complicated in their construction, featuring multiple rows of pipes and a keyboard. They required two players, one to operate the bellows alone, and could perform polyphonic music. The bellows systems were quite complex and used an array of weights to control air pressure. While some positive organs were located in churches (instead of or in addition to a larger stationary organ), like the portatives they were used primarily for the performance of secular music. Existing music manuscripts suggest that by the fourteenth century, there was a thriving tradition of chamber music written for such keyboards.

How and when organs first came to be used in and accepted by the church remains one of the major mysteries in the history of Western music. The early Christians were opposed to the use of any musical instrument in church, and they took a particularly dim view of the organ because of its association with extravagance and luxury. Yet, by the thirteenth century, evidence shows that organs were being built for many European churches and cathedrals. Their first function may have been similar to that of bells, calling the faithful to worship but not used in the mass itself. Historians can only speculate about the construction, distribution, and function of organs between 750 and 1250. It is likely that the population growth, economic well-being, and expansion of craft skills that accompanied the rise of Charlemagne helped make the organ popular among churchmen as well as laymen. Monasteries in these centuries became important centers of culture and craftwork, and organs may well have flourished along with the growing musical tradition and technological skill in these religious communities. Despite the limitations of historical evidence about the earliest church organs, bits of surviving accounts suggest that during this period ample attention was beginning to be paid to the problems of organ construction, particularly theories of pipe design, and that large stationary organs had been built for churches in various places throughout Europe.

Impact

By 1450 the organ had assumed a prominent place in liturgical music. Organs evolved alongside musical notation, both serving to fix notes and the relations between them for the first time. Detailed technological accounts of organ design and construction—and a few surviving examples—indicate a sophisticated level of craftsmanship and engineering. Different countries and regions developed characteristic organ styles: some had multiple keyboards while others had only one, some had pedals and others did not. The mechanisms used to stop pipes varied considerably, as did the materials used throughout the organ. These organs differed in their sound and capabilities as well as their construction, but in general as organs became more complex, they were capable of producing a great volume as well as a wide variety of tone colors. These massive stationary organs built in Europe's largest cathedrals and abbey churches were imposing physically and aurally. These organs produced the loudest—and the lowest—sounds known to man, and their performance surely added profundity and drama to the religious service.

The repertoire of organ music is the largest and oldest found for any instrument. Almost all of this music was intended for performance in a church, either solo or to accompany choral or congregational singing. By the seventeenth century the organ reached its final form, and found its way to the center of the European musical culture. The most important organ composer was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Bach wrote extensively for the organ and was the first composer to fully exploit the organ's capacity for polyphony. The organ clearly inspired Bach, and his masterful compositions for organ strongly influenced the later evolution of all of Western music. After Bach's death in 1750 organ building entered a slow decline. While the organ retained its place in ecclesiastical music, it ceased to develop technologically and composers—increasingly employed in secular rather than religious posts—turned their interest to other instruments.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the installation of organs not only in churches, but in numerous other public venues. In a fascinating convergence of old and new technology, organs were used in early-twentieth-century cinemas to accompany silent films. Special theater organs were designed that could make colorful sounds not welcomed or needed in more conservative church organ compositions. The organ itself evolved in other ways. Most notably, electric substitutes for mechanical organs were popular for decades, both in smaller churches and in many American homes. By the end of the twentieth century, these electric organs were themselves being replaced by more sophisticated electronic synthesizers.

Organs in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were marvels of technological complexity, employing the highest craft and engineering knowledge to produce arrays of pipes, stops, keys, and bellows that could turn air into the most startling and awe-inspiring music. No cathedral was sufficiently majestic without a grand organ at its heart. Organs enriched the musical world of the church, and were carried without ecclesiastical concern into the new Protestant churches after the Reformation. The traditional pipe organ remains the loudest, largest, most mechanically complicated musical instrument, and its sound is both unmistakable and unforgettable.

LOREN BUTLER FEFFER