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Physical processes in organ pipes. Musical instrument organ

Physical processes in organ pipes. Musical instrument organ

24.04.2019

musical instrument . Large concert organs are larger than all other musical instruments.

Terminology

Indeed, even in inanimate objects there is this kind of ability (δύναμις), for example, in [musical] instruments (ἐν τοῖς ὀργάνοις); they say about one lyre that it is capable [of sounding], and about the other - that it is not, if it is dissonant (μὴ εὔφωνος).

That kind of people who deal in instruments spends all their labor on it, like, for example, a kifared, or one who demonstrates his craft on the organ and other musical instruments (organo ceterisque musicae instrumentis).
Fundamentals of Music, I.34

In Russian, the word "organ" by default means wind organ, but is also used in relation to other varieties, including electronic (analogue and digital), imitating the sound of an organ. Organs are:

The word "organ" is also usually qualified by reference to the organ builder (e.g. "Cavayé-Cohl Organ") or trademark ("Hammond Organ"). Some varieties of the organ have independent terms: antique hydraulics, portable, positive, regal, harmonium, hurdy-gurdy, etc.

Story

The organ is one of the oldest musical instruments. Its history goes back several thousand years. Hugo Riemann believed that the ancient Babylonian bagpipe (19th century BC) was the ancestor of the organ: “The fur was inflated through a pipe, and at the opposite end there was a body with pipes, which, no doubt, had tongues and several holes” . The germ of the organ can also be seen in the Pan flute, the Chinese sheng, and other similar instruments. It is believed that the organ (water organ, hydraulics) was invented by the Greek Ctesibius, who lived in Alexandria of Egypt in 285-222. BC e. The image of a similar tool is available on one coin or token from the time of Nero [ ] . Large organs appeared in the 4th century, more or less improved organs in the 7th and 8th centuries. Pope Vitalian is traditionally credited with introducing the organ into Catholic worship. In the 8th century, Byzantium was famous for its organs. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V Copronymus donated the organ to the Frankish king Pepin the Short in 757. Later, the Byzantine Empress Irina presented his son, Charlemagne, with an organ that sounded at the coronation of Charles. The organ was considered at that time a ceremonial attribute of the Byzantine, and then the Western European imperial power.

The art of building organs also developed in Italy, from where they were sent to France in the 9th century. This art later developed in Germany. The organ has been widespread in Western Europe since the 14th century. Medieval organs, in comparison with later ones, were of crude workmanship; a manual keyboard, for example, consisted of keys with a width of 5 to 7 cm, the distance between the keys reached one and a half cm. They hit the keys not with fingers, as they do now, but with fists. In the 15th century, the keys were reduced and the number of pipes increased.

The oldest example of a medieval organ with relatively complete mechanics (pipes have not been preserved) is considered to be an organ from Norrlanda (a church parish on the island of Gotland in Sweden). This tool is usually dated to 1370-1400, although some researchers doubt such an early dating. Currently, the Norrland organ is stored in the National Historical Museum in Stockholm.

In the period of the late Renaissance and in the Baroque era, organ building in Western Europe acquired an unprecedented scope. In Italy of the 16th-17th centuries, the most famous was the dynasty of organ builders Antegnati. In the last quarter of the 17th and early 18th centuries, about 150 organs were built or reconstructed by the legendary organ maker Arp Schnitger (1648-1719), who worked mainly in northern Germany and the Netherlands. An outstanding contribution to German organ building was made by the Silbermann dynasty, their main workshops were in Saxony and Alsace. The Zilbermans flourished in the 18th century.

Composers of the same period, who successfully wrote for the organ, often acted as consultants on tuning the instrument (A. Banchieri, G. Frescobaldi, J. S. Bach). The same function was performed by music theorists (N. Vicentino, M. Pretorius, I. G. Neidhardt), and some of them (such as A. Werkmeister) even acted as official experts in the “acceptance” of a new or restored instrument.

In the 19th century, thanks primarily to the work of the French organ master Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who set out to design organs in such a way that they could compete with the sound of an entire symphony orchestra with their powerful and rich sound, instruments of a previously unprecedented scale and power of sound began to appear. , which are sometimes called symphonic organs.

Many historical organs in continental Europe were destroyed during the Second World War - especially in Germany, as a result of the bombing of temples by the "allies". The oldest surviving German organs are in churches St. James in Lübeck(2nd half of the 15th century), St. Nicholas in Altenbruch, Valentine's Day in Kiedrich(both - the turn of the XV-XVI centuries).

Device

Remote controller

Remote organ ("spiltish" from German Spieltisch or organ department) - a remote control with all the tools necessary for an organist, the set of which is individual in each organ, but most have common ones: gaming - manuals And pedal keyboard(or simply "pedal") and timbre - switches registers. There may also be dynamic channels, various foot levers or buttons to turn on copula and switching combinations from register combination memory bank and a device for turning on the organ. At the console, on a bench, the organist sits during the performance.

Copula - a mechanism by which the included registers of one manual can sound when played on another manual or pedal. The organs always have copulas of manuals for the pedal and copulas for the main manual, and there are almost always copulas of weaker-sounding manuals for stronger ones. The copula is turned on/off by a special foot switch with a latch or a button.
Channel - a device with which you can adjust the volume of this manual by opening or closing the blinds in the box in which the pipes of this manual are located.
The register combination memory bank is a device in the form of buttons, available only in organs with an electric register tracture, which allows you to memorize register combinations, thereby simplifying register switching (changing the overall timbre) during performance.
Ready-made register combinations - a device in organs with a pneumatic register tracture that allows you to turn on a ready-made set of registers (usually p, mp, mf, f)
(from Italian Tutti - all) - the button for turning on all the registers and copulas of the organ.

Manuals

Organ manuals - keyboards for playing with hands

The first musical instruments with an organ pedal date back to the middle of the 15th century. :59-61 is the tablature of a German musician Adama of Ileborg(Adam Ileborgh, c. 1448) and the Buxheim Organ Book (c. 1470). Arnolt Schlick, in Spiegel der Orgelmacher (1511), already writes in detail about the pedal and appends his pieces, where it is used with great virtuosity. Among them, the unique treatment of the antiphon stands out. Ascendo ad Patrem meum for 10 voices, of which 4 are entrusted to pedals. The performance of this piece probably required some kind of special shoes, which allowed one foot to simultaneously press two keys at a distance of a third :223. In Italy, notes using the organ pedal appear much later - in the toccatas of Annibale Padovano (1604): 90-91.

Registers

Each row of pipes of a wind organ of the same timbre constitutes, as it were, a separate instrument and is called register. Each of the extendable or retractable drawbar knobs (or electronic switches) located on the organ console above the keyboards or on the sides of the music stand turns the corresponding row of organ pipes on or off. If drawbars are off, the organ will not sound when a key is pressed.

Each handle corresponds to the register and has its own name indicating the pitch of the largest pipe of this register - feet, traditionally denoted in feet in Principal. For example, the pipes of the Gedackt register are closed and sound an octave lower, so such a pipe of tone "to" subcontroctave is designated as 32", with an actual length of 16". Reed registers, whose pitch depends on the mass of the reed itself rather than on the height of the bell, are also indicated in feet, similar in length to the Principal register pipe in pitch.

The registers are grouped into families according to a number of unifying features - principals, flutes, gambas, aliquots, potions, etc. The main registers include all 32-, 16-, 8-, 4-, 2-, 1-foot registers, auxiliary (or overtone ) - aliquots and potions. Each pipe of the main register reproduces only one sound of the same pitch, strength and timbre. Aliquots reproduce an ordinal overtone to the main sound, mixtures give a chord, which consists of several (usually from 2 to a dozen, sometimes up to fifty) overtones to a given sound.

All registers for the device of pipes are divided into two groups:

Labial- registers with open or closed pipes without reeds. This group includes: flutes (wide-scale registers), principals and narrow-scale ones (German Streicher - “streichers” or strings), as well as overtone registers - aliquots and potions, in which each note has one or more (weaker) overtone overtones.
Reed- registers, in the pipes of which there is a tongue, when exposed to the supplied air, which produces a characteristic sound similar in timbre, depending on the name and design features of the register, with some wind orchestral musical instruments: oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, etc. Reed registers can be located not only vertically, but also horizontally - such registers make up a group that is from fr. chamade is called "shamad".

Connection of various types of registers:

ital. Organo pleno - labial and reed registers along with potion;
fr. Grand jeu - labial and reed without potions;
fr. Plein jeu - labial with potion.

The composer can indicate the name of the register and the size of the pipes in the notes above the place where this register should be applied. The choice of registers for the performance of a piece of music is called registration, and the included registers - register combination.

Since the registers in different organs of different countries and eras are not the same, they are usually not indicated in detail in the organ part: only the manual, the designation of pipes with or without reeds and the size of the pipes are written over one or another place in the organ part, and the rest is left to the discretion performer. Most of the musical organ repertoire does not have any author's designations regarding the registration of the work, so the composers and organists of previous eras had their own traditions and the art of combining different organ timbres was passed on orally from generation to generation.

Pipes

The register pipes sound different:

8-foot pipes sound in accordance with musical notation;
4- and 2-foot sounds one and two octaves higher, respectively;
16- and 32-footers sound one and two octaves lower, respectively;
The 64-foot labial pipes found in the largest organs in the world sound three octaves below the record, therefore, those actuated by the keys of the pedal and manual below the counter-octave already emit infrasound;
the labial tubes closed at the top sound an octave lower than the open ones.

A stimhorn is used to tune the organ's small open labial metal pipes. With this hammer-shaped tool, the open end of the pipe is rolled or flared. Larger open pipes are tuned by cutting a vertical piece of metal near or directly from the open end of the pipe, which is bent at one angle or another. Open wood pipes usually have a wood or metal adjuster that can be adjusted to allow the pipe to be tuned. Closed wood or metal pipes are adjusted by adjusting the plug or cap at the top end of the pipe.

Facade pipes of the organ can also play a decorative role. If the pipes do not sound, then they are called "decorative" or "blind" (eng. dummy pipes).

Traktura

An organ tractura is a system of transmission devices that functionally connects the controls on the organ's console with the organ's air-locking devices. The game tractor transmits the movement of the manual keys and the pedal to the valves of a particular pipe or group of pipes in a potion. The register tracture provides switching on or off of the whole register or a group of registers in response to pressing the toggle switch or moving the register handle.

Through the register tracture, the memory of the organ also acts - combinations of registers, pre-configured and embedded in the device of the organ - ready-made, fixed combinations. They can be named both by the combination of registers - Pleno, Plein Jeu, Gran Jeu, Tutti, and by the strength of sound - Piano, Mezzopiano, Mezzoforte, Forte. In addition to ready-made combinations, there are free combinations that allow the organist to select, memorize and change a set of registers in the organ's memory at his discretion. The function of memory is not available in all organs. It is absent in organs with a mechanical register tracture.

Mechanical

The mechanical tractura is a reference, authentic and the most common at the moment, allowing you to perform the widest range of works of all eras; mechanical tracture does not give the phenomenon of "delay" of sound and allows you to thoroughly feel the position and behavior of the air valve, which makes it possible for the best control of the instrument by the organist and the achievement of high performance technique. The key of the manual or pedal, when using a mechanical traction, is connected to the air valve by a system of light wooden or polymer rods (abstracts), rollers and levers; occasionally, in large old organs, a cable-block transmission was used. Since the movement of all these elements is carried out only by the effort of the organist, there are restrictions in the size and nature of the arrangement of the sounding elements of the organ. In giant organs (more than 100 registers), mechanical traction is either not used or supplemented by a Barker machine (pneumatic amplifier that helps to press the keys; such are the French organs of the early 20th century, for example, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris). The mechanical gaming is usually combined with the mechanical register tracture and windlad of the shleyflade system.

Pneumatic

Pneumatic tracture - the most common in romantic organs - from the end of the 19th century to the 20s of the 20th century; pressing the key opens a valve in the control air duct, the air supply to which opens the pneumatic valve of a particular pipe (when using windblade shleyflade, it is extremely rare) or a whole series of pipes of the same tone (windblade kegellade, characteristic of pneumatic traction). It allows building huge instruments in terms of the set of registers, as it has no power limitations of the mechanical tracture, however, it has the phenomenon of sound “delay”. This often makes it impossible to perform technically complex works, especially in “wet” church acoustics, given that the register delay time depends not only on the distance from the organ console, but also on its pipe size, the presence of relays in the tract, which accelerate the operation of the mechanics for due to the refreshment of the impulse, the design features of the pipe and the type of windlad used (almost always it is a kegellad, sometimes it is a membranenlad: it works to exhaust air, extremely fast response). In addition, the pneumatic tractor disconnects the keyboard with air valves, depriving the organist of the feeling of "feedback" and impairing control over the instrument. Pneumatic tracture of the organ is good for performing solo works of the Romantic period, difficult to play in an ensemble, and not always suitable for baroque and contemporary music. The most famous example of a historical instrument with a pneumatic traction is the organ of the Dome Cathedral in Riga.

Electrical

Electric tractor is a tractor widely used in the 20th century, with direct signal transmission from a key to an electromechanical valve opening-closing relay by means of a direct current pulse in an electrical circuit. Currently, more and more often replaced by mechanical. This is the only traktura that does not impose any restrictions on the number and location of the registers, as well as the placement of the organ console on the stage in the hall. Allows you to place groups of registers at different ends of the hall (for example, a huge organ of the Rufatti brothers company in the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, USA), control the organ from an unlimited number of additional consoles (the world's largest organ of the Broadwalk Concert Hall in Atlantic City has a record-breaking stationary pintish with seven manuals and a mobile one with five), play music for two and three organs on one organ, and also put the console in a convenient place in the orchestra, from which the conductor will be clearly visible (such as, for example, the Rieger-Kloss organ in the P. I. Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow). It allows you to connect several organs into a common system, and also provides a unique opportunity to record a performance with subsequent playback without the participation of an organist (one of the first to receive such an opportunity was the organ of Notre Dame Cathedral during the reconstruction of 1959). The disadvantage of the electric tracture, as well as the pneumatic one, is the break in the "feedback" of the organist's fingers and air valves. In addition, an electric tractor can delay the sound due to the response time of the electric valve relays, as well as the distribution switch (in modern organs, this device is electronic and, in combination with reliable fiber optic cables, does not delay; in instruments of the first half and middle of the 20th century it was often electromechanical). The electric tractor of the 20th century is not reliable [ ], and in terms of the complexity of the device and repair, weight and cost, it often surpasses mechanical and even pneumatic ones. When actuated, electromechanical relays often give additional "metallic" sounds - clicks and knocks, which, unlike similar "wooden" overtones of mechanical tracture, do not decorate the sound of the work at all. In some cases, the largest pipes of an otherwise completely mechanical organ (for example, in a new instrument from Hermann Eule in Belgorod) receive an electric valve, which is due to the need to preserve the area of the mechanical valve, and as a result, playing efforts, in the bass within acceptable limits. Noise can also be emitted by a register electric tractor when changing register combinations. An example of an acoustically excellent organ with a mechanical playing tracture and at the same time a rather noisy register tracture is the Swiss Kuhn organ in the Catholic Cathedral in Moscow.

Other

The largest organs in the world

Organ in the Church of Our Lady in Munich

The largest organ in Europe is the Great Organ of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, built by the German company Stenmayer & Co (1993). It has 5 manuals, 229 registers, 17,774 pipes. It is considered the fourth largest operating body in the world.

Until recently, the largest organ in the world with a completely mechanical playing tracture (without the use of electronic and pneumatic control) was the organ of the Cathedral of St. Trinity in Liepaja (4 manuals, 131 registers, more than 7 thousand pipes), however, in 1979, an organ with 5 manuals, 125 registers and about 10 thousand pipes was installed in the large concert hall of the Sydney Opera House performing arts center. Now it is considered the largest (with a mechanical traction).

In the 20th century, the Dutch physicist A. Fokker developed an instrument with several keyboards and an unusual setting, which was called

The organ is a musical instrument that is called the "king of music". The grandiosity of its sound is expressed in the emotional impact on the listener, which has no equal. In addition, the world's largest musical instrument is the organ, and it has the most advanced control system. Its height and length are equal to the size of the wall from the foundation to the roof in a large building - a temple or a concert hall.

The expressive resource of the organ allows you to create music for it with the widest scope of content: from reflections on God and the cosmos to subtle intimate reflections of the human soul.

The organ is a musical instrument with a history that is unique in its duration. Its age is about 28 centuries. Within the framework of one article, it is impossible to trace the great path of this instrument in art. We limited ourselves to a short outline of the genesis of the organ from ancient times to those centuries when it acquired the form and properties known to this day.

The historical predecessor of the organ is the Pan flute instrument that has come down to us (after the name of the one who created it, as mentioned in the myth). The appearance of the Pan flute is dated to the 7th century BC, but the real age is probably much older.

This is the name of a musical instrument consisting of reed tubes of different lengths placed vertically next to each other. Lateral surfaces, they are adjacent to each other, and across are united by a belt of strong matter or a wooden plank. The performer blows air from above through the holes of the tubes, and they sound - each at its own height. A real master of the game can use two or even three pipes at once to extract a simultaneous sound and get a two-part interval or, with special skill, a three-part chord.

The Pan flute embodies the eternal human desire for invention, especially in art, and the desire to improve the expressive possibilities of music. Before this instrument appeared on the historical stage, the oldest musicians had at their disposal more primitive longitudinal flutes - the simplest pipes with finger holes. Their technical capabilities were not great. On a longitudinal flute, it is impossible to simultaneously extract two or more sounds.

The following fact also speaks in favor of a more perfect sounding of Pan's flute. The method of blowing air into it is non-contact, the air jet is supplied by the lips from a certain distance, which creates a special timbre effect of mystical sound. All predecessors of the organ were brass, i.e. used the controlled living power of breathing to create. Subsequently, these features - polyphony and a ghostly fantastic "breathing" timbre - were inherited in the sound palette of the organ. They are the basis of the unique ability of organ sound - to introduce the listener into a trance.

From the advent of the Pan flute to the invention of the next predecessor of the organ, five centuries passed. During this time, connoisseurs of wind sound extraction have found a way to infinitely increase the limited time of human exhalation.

In the new instrument, air was supplied by means of leather bellows, similar to those used by a blacksmith to force air.

There was also an opportunity to automatically support two-voice and three-voice. One or two voices - the lower ones - without interruption pulled sounds, the pitch of which did not change. These sounds, called "bourdons" or "faubourdons", were extracted without the participation of the voice, directly from the bellows through the holes open in them, and were something of a background. Later they will receive the name "organ point".

The first voice, thanks to the already known method of closing holes on a separate “flute-like” insert in bellows, got the opportunity to play quite diverse and even virtuoso melodies. The performer blew air into the insert with his lips. Unlike bourdons, the melody was extracted by contact. Therefore, there was no touch of mysticism in it - it was taken over by bourdon echoes.

This instrument gained great popularity, especially in folk art, as well as among itinerant musicians, and became known as the bagpipe. Thanks to her invention, the future organ sound acquired an almost unlimited length. While the performer pumps air with bellows, the sound is not interrupted.

Thus, three of the four future sound properties of the “king of instruments” appeared: polyphony, mystical uniqueness of timbre and absolute length.

Starting from the 2nd century BC. constructions appear that are increasingly approaching the image of an organ. For air injection, the Greek inventor Ktesebius creates a hydraulic drive. This allows you to increase the power of sound and supply the nascent colossus instrument with rather long sounding pipes. To the ear, the hydraulic organ becomes loud and sharp. With such properties of sound, it is widely used in mass performances (race races, circus shows, mysteries) among the Greeks and Romans. With the advent of early Christianity, the idea of blowing air with bellows returned again: the sound from this mechanism was more lively and “human”.

In fact, at this stage, the main features of the organ sound can be considered formed: a polyphonic texture, an imperiously attention-grabbing timbre, an unprecedented length and a special power suitable for attracting a large mass of people.

The next 7 centuries were decisive for the organ in the sense that it became interested in its capabilities, and then firmly "appropriated" them and developed the Christian church. The organ was destined to become the instrument of mass preaching, as it remains to this day. To this end, his transformations moved along two channels.

First. The physical dimensions and acoustic abilities of the instrument have reached incredible levels. In accordance with the growth and development of temple architecture, the aspect of architectural and musical progressed rapidly. The organ began to be built into the wall of the temple, and its thunderous sound subdued and shook the imagination of the parishioners.

The number of organ pipes now made of wood and metal reached several thousand. The timbres of the organ acquired the widest emotional range - from the likeness of the Voice of God to the quiet revelations of religious individuality.

The possibilities of sound, previously acquired on the historical path, were needed in church life. The polyphony of the organ allowed the increasingly complex music to reflect the multifaceted interweaving of spiritual practice. The length and intensity of the tone exalted the aspect of living breathing, which brought the very nature of organ sound closer to the experiences of the destiny of human life.

From this stage, the organ is a musical instrument of great persuasive power.

The second direction in the development of the instrument followed the path of strengthening its virtuoso capabilities.

To manage a thousandth arsenal of pipes, a fundamentally new mechanism was needed, enabling the performer to cope with this untold wealth. History itself prompted the right decision: the idea of keyboard coordination of the entire array of sounds was perfectly adapted to the device of the “king of music”. From now on, the organ is a keyboard-wind instrument.

The control of the giant was concentrated on a special console, which combined the colossal possibilities of clavier technique and the ingenious inventions of organ masters. In front of the organist were now placed in a stepped order - one above the other - from two to seven keyboards. At the bottom, near the floor under your feet, there was a large pedal keyboard for extracting low tones. It was played with the feet. Thus, the organist's technique required great skill. The performer's seat was a long bench placed on top of the pedal keyboard.

The combination of pipes was controlled by a register mechanism. Near the keyboards were special buttons or handles, each of which actuated tens, hundreds and even thousands of pipes at the same time. So that the organist would not be distracted by switching registers, he had an assistant - usually a student who was supposed to understand the basics of playing the organ.

The organ begins its victorious march in the world artistic culture. By the 17th century, he reached his peak and unprecedented heights in music. After the perpetuation of organ art in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatness of this instrument remains unsurpassed to this day. Today the organ is a musical instrument of recent history.

ORGAN (from Greek - a tool, instrument) - a wind keyboard musical instrument. The organ is one of the most majestic musical instruments. It is like a whole orchestra.

The history of the organ dates back to ancient times. The oldest type of organ is hydraulics, its invention is attributed to the ancient Greek mechanic Ctesibius (Alexandria). The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantium used the organ to perform secular music. Brought from Byzantium to Western European countries, the organ was introduced in the 7th century. to the Catholic Church to accompany the choir during worship.

The design of the organ has changed a lot over the centuries. It wasn't always this big. In the early Middle Ages, there were small portable organs (portables). They had only one keyboard and one row of pipes (from eight to fifteen), so their sound was monotonous. There were even hand organs - if desired, they were hung around the neck.On small instruments, plays of a secular nature were usually performed. During the Renaissance, the design of the instrument was improved, and its sound improved.

By the end of the XIV century. the organ already had two or three manual keyboards, almost modern in appearance. The Dutch organist Louis van Walbeke (died 1318) invented a special keyboard for the feet - the pedal. Numerous improvements in the design of the organ turned it, starting from the 14th century, into the richest virtuoso solo instrument. The most intensive distribution of the organ in Europe occurred in the 16-18 centuries. The heyday of organ music also belongs to this era.

The organ is made up of

a set of pipes (wooden and metal) of different sizes

pneumatic system (air blower and air ducts) enclosed in a common housing

departments of management.

In addition to manual (manual) and foot (pedal) keyboards, the handles of various levers are concentrated on the control chair, which serve to connect keyboards to each other, turn on registers and devices that amplify and weaken the sound.

The organ has:

1-5 manuals (each 48 to 77 keys)

1 pedal (typically 32 keys)

some modern organs sometimes add a 2nd pedal.

The number of pipes in an organ sometimes reaches several thousand. Each trumpet produces only one sound of a certain pitch, timbre and volume. A group of pipes of the same timbre, but with different pitches is called register.

The total number of registers in the organ (from 1 to 150 or more) depends on the size of the instrument. The number of pipes in the register usually corresponds to the number of keys in the manual. Each register has its own characteristic timbre and is activated by the corresponding lever or button, which indicates the name of the register and the length of pipes (for example, Principal 16 1 ).

The organ pipe produces a sound of the same pitch, unchanging timbre and strength. To achieve the effects of amplifying and attenuating sound, various devices are usually used. The most common are: a gain box that adjusts the volume of the sound by opening (more or less), the blinds, turning additional groups of pipes on or off. Some organ systems have both devices.

Pipes of different manuals can be turned on simultaneously with the help of special levers - copulations; connection (using copulations) of all manuals and pedals, as well as the inclusion of registers.

Music for the organ is written on three staves, usually without registering.

In all organs until the end of the 19th century. the transfer (tractura) from the keys to the pipes, as well as the inclusion of other devices, was carried out with the help of cords (abstracts), and the air was pumped with bellows, depending on the size of the organ, by one or more workers. An organ with such a tracture is called a mechanical organ. In the 20th century organs with pneumatic and electro-pneumatic traction are introduced, in which air is forced by fans operating from an electric motor. Recently, electrified (with electric traction) and electric organs have appeared.

The organist sits at the so-calledplaying table. In front of it are handles, buttons and levers forregister management. There are several manuals on the table (from lat. manus - "hand") - keyboards for manual playing; at the bottom is the pedalboard.

Register The organs of the organ are turned on and off with the help of certain keys. When you press the key, special valves open through which air enters the pipes. The valves, in turn, are placed in special "air boxes" - vindals, on which the pipes of the organ stand.

Pipes, windals, air valves, and other mechanisms are usually enclosed in the body of the organ. Its façade, called the avenue, is also filled with pipes, but some or even all of them may have a purely decorative purpose (in which case the pipes are not connected to the instrument's mechanisms).

The largest type of musical instrument.

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Subtitles

Terminology

Indeed, even in inanimate objects there is this kind of ability (δύναμις), for example, in [musical] instruments (ἐν τοῖς ὀργάνοις); they say about one lyre that it is capable [of sounding], and about the other - that it is not, if it is dissonant (μὴ εὔφωνος).

That kind of people who deal in instruments spends all their labor on it, like, for example, a kifared, or one who demonstrates his craft on the organ and other musical instruments (organo ceterisque musicae instrumentis).
Fundamentals of Music, I.34

In Russian, the word "organ" by default means wind organ, but is also used in relation to other varieties, including electronic analog and digital, which imitate the sound of an organ. Organs are:

by device - wind, reed, electronic, analog, digital;
by functional affiliation - concert, church, theatrical, fair, salon, educational, etc .;
by disposition - baroque, French classical, romantic, symphonic, neo-baroque, modern;
by the number of manuals - one-manual, two-, three-, etc.

The word "organ" is also usually qualified by reference to the organ builder (e.g. "Cavaillé-Cohl Organ") or trademark ("Hammond Organ"). Some varieties of the organ have independent terms: antique hydraulics, portable, positive, regal, harmonium, hurdy-gurdy, etc.

Story

The organ is one of the oldest musical instruments. Its history goes back several thousand years. Hugo Riemann believed that the ancient Babylonian bagpipe (19th century BC) was the ancestor of the organ: “The fur was inflated through a pipe, and at the opposite end there was a body with pipes, which, no doubt, had tongues and several holes.” The germ of the organ can also be seen in the pan flute, the Chinese sheng, and other similar instruments. It is believed that the organ (water organ, hydraulics) was invented by the Greek Ctesibius, who lived in Alexandria Egyptian in 296-228. BC e. The image of a similar tool is available on one coin or token from the time of Nero. Large organs appeared in the 4th century, more or less improved organs in the 7th and 8th centuries. Pope Vitalian is traditionally credited with introducing the organ into Catholic worship. In the 8th century, Byzantium was famous for its organs. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V Kopronym in 757 presented the organ to the Frankish king Pepin the Short. Later, the Byzantine Empress Irina presented his son, Charles the Great, with an organ that sounded at the coronation of Charles. The organ was considered at that time a ceremonial attribute of the Byzantine, and then the Western European imperial power.

In the 19th century, thanks primarily to the work of the French organ master Aristide Cavaille-Coll, who set out to design organs in such a way that they could compete with the sound of a whole symphony orchestra with their powerful and rich sound, instruments of a previously unprecedented scale and power of sound began to appear. , which are sometimes called symphonic organs.

Device

Remote controller

Copula - a mechanism by which the included registers of one manual can sound when played on another manual or pedal. The organs always have copulas of manuals for the pedal and copulas for the main manual, and there are almost always copulas of weaker-sounding manuals for stronger ones. The copula is turned on/off by a special foot switch with a latch or a button.
Channel - a device with which you can adjust the volume of this manual by opening or closing the blinds in the box in which the pipes of this manual are located.
The register combination memory bank is a device in the form of buttons, available only in organs with an electric register tracture, which allows you to memorize register combinations, thereby simplifying register switching (changing the overall timbre) during performance.
Ready-made register combinations - a device in organs with a pneumatic register tracture that allows you to turn on a ready-made set of registers (usually p, mp, mf, f)
(from Italian Tutti - all) - the button for turning on all the registers and copulas of the organ.

Manuals

The first musical instruments with an organ pedal date back to the middle of the 15th century. - this is the tablature of the German musician Adam from Åleborg (English) Russian(Adam Ileborgh, c. 1448) and the Buxheim Organ Book (c. 1470). Arnolt Schlick in Spiegel der Orgelmacher (1511) already writes in detail about the pedal and appends his pieces, where it is used with great virtuosity. Among them, the unique treatment of the antiphon stands out. Ascendo ad Patrem meum for 10 voices, of which 4 are entrusted to pedals. The performance of this piece probably required some kind of special shoes, which allowed one foot to simultaneously press two keys at a distance of a third. In Italy, notes using the organ pedal appear much later - in the toccatas of Annibale Padovano (1604).

Registers

All registers for the device of pipes are divided into two groups:

Labial- registers with open or closed pipes without reeds. This group includes: flutes (wide-scale registers), principals and narrow-scale ones (German Streicher - “streichers” or strings), as well as overtone registers - aliquots and potions, in which each note has one or more (weaker) overtone overtones.
Reed- registers, in the pipes of which there is a tongue, when exposed to the supplied air, which produces a characteristic sound similar in timbre, depending on the name and design features of the register, with some wind orchestral musical instruments: oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, etc. Reed registers can be located not only vertically, but also horizontally - such registers make up a group that is from fr. chamade is called "shamad".

Connection of various types of registers:

ital. Organo pleno - labial and reed registers along with potion;
fr. Grand jeu - labial and reed without potions;
fr. Plein jeu - labial with potion.

The composer can indicate the name of the register and the size of the pipes in the notes above the place where this register should be applied. The choice of registers for the performance of a musical work is called registration, and the included registers - register combination.

Pipes

The register pipes sound different:

8-foot pipes sound in accordance with musical notation;
4- and 2-foot sounds one and two octaves higher, respectively;
16- and 32-footers sound one and two octaves lower, respectively;
The 64-foot labial pipes found in the largest organs in the world sound three octaves below the record, therefore, those actuated by the keys of the pedal and manual below the counter-octave already emit infrasound;
the labial tubes closed at the top sound an octave lower than the open ones.

Facade pipes of the organ can also play a decorative role. If the pipes do not sound, then they are called "decorative" or "blind" (eng. dummy pipes).

Traktura

Mechanical

The mechanical tractura is a reference, authentic and the most common at the moment, allowing you to perform the widest range of works of all eras; mechanical tracture does not give the phenomenon of "delay" of sound and allows you to thoroughly feel the position and behavior of the air valve, which makes it possible for the best control of the instrument by the organist and the achievement of high performance technique. The key of the manual or pedal, when using a mechanical traction, is connected to the air valve by a system of light wooden or polymer rods (abstracts), rollers and levers; occasionally, in large old organs, a cable-block transmission was used. Since the movement of all these elements is carried out only by the effort of the organist, there are restrictions in the size and nature of the arrangement of the sounding elements of the organ. In giant organs (more than 100 registers), mechanical traction is either not used or supplemented by a Barker machine (a pneumatic amplifier that helps to press the keys; such are the French organs of the early 20th century, for example, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris). The mechanical gaming is usually combined with the mechanical register tracture and windlad of the shleyflade system.

Pneumatic

Electrical

Electric tractor is a tractor widely used in the 20th century, with direct signal transmission from a key to an electromechanical valve opening-closing relay by means of a direct current pulse in an electrical circuit. Currently, more and more often replaced by mechanical. This is the only traktura that does not impose any restrictions on the number and location of the registers, as well as the placement of the organ console on the stage in the hall. It allows you to place groups of registers at different ends of the hall, control the organ from an unlimited number of additional consoles, play music for two and three organs on one organ, and also put the console in a convenient place in the orchestra, from which the conductor will be clearly visible. It allows you to connect several organs into a common system, and also provides a unique opportunity to record a performance with subsequent playback without the participation of an organist. The disadvantage of the electric tracture, as well as the pneumatic one, is the break in the "feedback" of the organist's fingers and air valves. In addition, an electric tractor can delay the sound due to the response time of the electric valve relays, as well as the distribution switch (in modern organs, this device is electronic and does not give a delay; in instruments of the first half and the middle of the 20th century, it was often electromechanical). When actuated, electromechanical relays often give additional "metallic" sounds - clicks and knocks, which, unlike similar "wooden" overtones of mechanical tracture, do not decorate the sound of the work at all. In some cases, the largest pipes of an otherwise completely mechanical organ (for example, in a new instrument from Hermann Eule in Belgorod) receive an electric valve, which is due to the need to preserve the area of the mechanical valve, and as a result, playing efforts, in the bass within acceptable limits. Noise can also be emitted by a register electric tractor when changing register combinations. An example of an acoustically excellent organ with a mechanical playing tracture and at the same time a rather noisy register tracture is the Swiss Kuhn organ in the Catholic Cathedral in Moscow.

Other

The largest organs in the world

The largest organ in Europe is the Great Organ of the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Passau (Germany), built by the German company Stenmayer & Co. It has 5 manuals, 229 registers, 17,774 pipes. It is considered the fourth largest operating body in the world.

The main organ of the Cathedral in Kaliningrad (4 manuals, 90 registers, about 6.5 thousand pipes) is the largest organ in Russia.

Experimental Bodies

Organs of original design and tuning have been developed since the second half of the 16th century, such as, for example, the archiorgan of the Italian music theorist and composer N. Vicentino. However, such bodies have not received wide distribution. Today they are exhibited as historical artifacts in museums of musical instruments along with other experimental instruments of the past.

When the inconspicuous beige-painted door opened, only a few wooden steps caught my eye out of the darkness. Immediately behind the door, a powerful wooden box resembling a ventilation box goes up. “Careful, this is an organ pipe, 32 feet, bass flute register,” my guide warned. "Wait, I'll turn on the light." I patiently wait, anticipating one of the most interesting excursions in my life. In front of me is the entrance to the organ. This is the only musical instrument you can go inside

A funny instrument is a harmonica with unusual trumpets for this instrument. But almost exactly the same design can be found in any large organ (like the one shown in the picture on the right) - this is how “reed” organ pipes are arranged

The sound of three thousand trumpets. General scheme The diagram shows a simplified diagram of an organ with a mechanical tracture. Photographs showing individual components and devices of the instrument were taken inside the organ of the Great Hall of the Moscow State Conservatory. The diagram does not show the bellows, which maintains constant pressure in the windlad, and the Barker levers (they are in the pictures). Also missing is a pedal (foot keyboard)

The body is over a hundred years old. It stands in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the very famous hall, from the walls of which portraits of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven are looking at you ... However, all that is open to the viewer's eye is the organist's console turned to the hall with its back side and a slightly artsy wooden " Prospect" with vertical metal pipes. Watching the facade of the organ, the uninitiated will not understand how and why this unique instrument plays. To reveal its secrets, you will have to approach the issue from a different angle. Literally.

Natalya Vladimirovna Malina, the curator of the organ, teacher, musician and organ master, kindly agreed to become my guide. “You can only move forward in the organ,” she explains sternly to me. This requirement has nothing to do with mysticism and superstition: simply, moving backward or sideways, an inexperienced person can step on one of the organ pipes or touch it. And there are thousands of pipes.

The main principle of the organ, which distinguishes it from most wind instruments: one pipe - one note. Pan's flute can be considered an ancient ancestor of the organ. This instrument, which has existed since time immemorial in different parts of the world, consists of several hollow reeds of different lengths tied together. If you blow at an angle at the mouth of the shortest one, a thin high-pitched sound will be heard. Longer reeds sound lower.

Unlike an ordinary flute, you cannot change the pitch of an individual tube, so Pan's flute can play exactly as many notes as there are reeds in it. To make the instrument produce very low sounds, it is necessary to include tubes of great length and large diameter in its composition. It is possible to make many Pan flutes with pipes of different materials and different diameters, and then they will blow the same notes with different timbres. But playing all these instruments at the same time will not work - you cannot hold them in your hands, and there will not be enough breath for giant "reeds". But if we put all our flutes vertically, provide each individual tube with an air inlet valve, come up with a mechanism that would give us the ability to control all the valves from the keyboard, and, finally, create a design for pumping air with its subsequent distribution, we have just get an organ.

On an old ship

Pipes in organs are made of two materials: wood and metal. Wooden pipes used to extract bass sounds have a square section. Metal pipes are usually smaller, cylindrical or conical in shape and are usually made from an alloy of tin and lead. If there is more tin, the pipe is louder, if there is more lead, the extracted sound is more deaf, “cotton”.

The alloy of tin and lead is very soft, which is why organ pipes are easily deformed. If a large metal pipe is laid on its side, after a while it will acquire an oval section under its own weight, which will inevitably affect its ability to extract sound. Moving inside the organ of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, I try to touch only the wooden parts. If you step on a pipe or awkwardly grab it, the organ master will have new troubles: the pipe will have to be “healed” - straightened, or even soldered.

The organ I am inside is far from being the largest in the world and even in Russia. In terms of size and number of pipes, it is inferior to the organs of the Moscow House of Music, the Cathedral in Kaliningrad and the Concert Hall. Tchaikovsky. The main record holders are overseas: for example, the instrument installed in the Atlantic City Convention Hall (USA) has more than 33,000 pipes. In the organ of the Great Hall of the Conservatory, there are ten times fewer pipes, “only” 3136, but even this significant number cannot be placed compactly on one plane. The organ inside is several tiers on which pipes are installed in rows. For the organ master's access to the pipes, a narrow passage in the form of a plank platform was made on each tier. The tiers are interconnected by stairs, in which the role of the steps is performed by ordinary crossbeams. Inside the organ is crowded, and movement between tiers requires a certain dexterity.

“My experience is that,” says Natalya Vladimirovna Malina, “it is best for an organ master to be thin and light in weight. It is difficult for a person with other dimensions to work here without damaging the instrument. Recently, an electrician - a heavyset man - was changing a light bulb over an organ, stumbled and broke a couple of planks from the plank roof. There were no casualties or injuries, but the fallen planks damaged 30 organ pipes.”

Mentally estimating that a pair of organ masters of ideal proportions would easily fit in my body, I cautiously glance at the flimsy-looking stairs leading to the upper tiers. “Don't worry,” Natalya Vladimirovna reassures me, “just go forward and repeat the movements after me. The structure is strong, it will withstand you.

Whistle and reed

We climb to the upper tier of the organ, from where a view of the Great Hall from the top point, which is inaccessible to a simple visitor to the conservatory, opens up. On the stage below, where the rehearsal of the string ensemble has just ended, little men walk around with violins and violas. Natalya Vladimirovna shows me the Spanish registers near the chimney. Unlike other pipes, they are not vertical, but horizontal. Forming a kind of visor over the organ, they blow directly into the hall. The creator of the organ of the Great Hall, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, came from a Franco-Spanish family of organ masters. Hence the Pyrenean traditions in the instrument on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow.

By the way, about Spanish registers and registers in general. "Register" is one of the key concepts in the design of the organ. This is a series of organ pipes of a certain diameter, forming a chromatic scale according to the keys of their keyboard or part of it.

Depending on the scale of the pipes included in their composition (the scale is the ratio of the pipe parameters that are most important for the character and sound quality), the registers give a sound with a different timbre color. Carried away by comparisons with the Pan flute, I almost missed one subtlety: the fact is that not all organ pipes (like the reeds of an old flute) are aerophones. An aerophone is a wind instrument in which the sound is formed as a result of the vibrations of a column of air. These include flute, trumpet, tuba, horn. But the saxophone, oboe, harmonica are in the group of idiophones, that is, "self-sounding". It is not the air that oscillates here, but the tongue streamlined by the flow of air. Air pressure and elastic force, counteracting, cause the reed to tremble and spread sound waves, which are amplified by the bell of the instrument as a resonator.

Most of the pipes in the organ are aerophones. They are called labial, or whistling. Idiophone pipes constitute a special group of registers and are called reed pipes.

How many hands does an organist have?

But how does a musician manage to make all these thousands of pipes - wooden and metal, whistle and reed, open and closed - dozens or hundreds of registers ... sound at the right time? To understand this, let's go down for a while from the upper tier of the organ and go to the pulpit, or the organist's console. The uninitiated at the sight of this device is trembling as before the dashboard of a modern airliner. Several manual keyboards - manuals (there may be five or even seven!), One foot plus some other mysterious pedals. There are also many exhaust levers with inscriptions on the handles. What is this all for?

Of course, the organist has only two hands, and he will not be able to play all the manuals at the same time (there are three of them in the organ of the Great Hall, which is also quite a lot). Several manual keyboards are needed in order to mechanically and functionally separate groups of registers, just as in a computer one physical hard drive is divided into several virtual ones. So, for example, the first manual of the Great Hall organ controls the pipes of a group (the German term is Werk) of registers called the Grand Orgue. It includes 14 registers. The second manual (Positif Expressif) is also responsible for 14 registers. The third keyboard - Recit expressif - 12 registers. Finally, the 32-key footswitch, or "pedal", works with ten bass registers.

Arguing from the point of view of a layman, even 14 registers for one keyboard is somehow too much. After all, by pressing one key, the organist is able to make 14 pipes sound at once in different registers (actually more because of registers like mixtura). And if you need to play a note in just one register or in a few selected ones? For this purpose, the exhaust levers located to the right and left of the manuals are actually used. Pulling out the lever with the name of the register written on the handle, the musician opens a kind of damper that opens the air to the pipes of a certain register.

So, in order to play the desired note in the desired register, you need to select the manual or pedal keyboard that controls this register, pull out the lever corresponding to this register and press the desired key.

Powerful breath

The final part of our tour is dedicated to the air. The very air that makes the organ sound. Together with Natalya Vladimirovna, we go down to the floor below and find ourselves in a spacious technical room, where there is nothing from the solemn mood of the Great Hall. Concrete floors, whitewashed walls, arched timber support structures, air ducts and an electric motor. In the first decade of the organ's existence, calcante rockers worked hard here. Four healthy men stood in a row, grabbed with both hands a stick threaded into a steel ring on the counter, and alternately, with one foot or the other, pressed on the levers that inflated the fur. The shift was scheduled for two hours. If the concert or rehearsal lasted longer, the tired rockers were replaced by fresh reinforcements.

Old furs, four in number, have survived to this day. According to Natalya Vladimirovna, there is a legend around the conservatory that once they tried to replace the work of rockers with horse power. For this, a special mechanism was allegedly even created. However, along with the air, the smell of horse manure rose into the Great Hall, and the founder of the Russian organ school A.F. Gedike, taking the first chord, moved his nose in displeasure and said: “It stinks!”

Whether this legend is true or not, in 1913 the electric motor finally replaced muscle strength. With the help of a pulley, he spun the shaft, which in turn set the bellows in motion through the crank mechanism. Subsequently, this scheme was also abandoned, and today an electric fan pumps air into the organ.

In the organ, the forced air enters the so-called magazine bellows, each of which is connected to one of the 12 windlads. Windlada is a compressed air tank that looks like a wooden box, on which, in fact, rows of pipes are installed. On one windlad, several registers are usually placed. Large pipes, which do not have enough space on the windlad, are installed to the side, and an air duct in the form of a metal tube connects them to the windlad.

The windlads of the organ of the Great Hall (the “loopflade” design) are divided into two main parts. In the lower part, with the help of magazine fur, constant pressure is maintained. The top is divided by airtight partitions into so-called tone channels. All pipes of different registers, controlled by one key of the manual or pedal, have an output to the tone channel. Each tone channel is connected to the bottom of the windlad by a hole closed by a spring-loaded valve. When a key is pressed through the tracture, the movement is transmitted to the valve, it opens, and the compressed air enters upward into the tone channel. All pipes that have access to this channel, in theory, should start to sound, but ... this, as a rule, does not happen. The fact is that so-called loops pass through the entire upper part of the windlad - dampers with holes located perpendicular to the tone channels and having two positions. In one of them, the loops completely cover all the pipes of a given register in all tone channels. In the other, the register is open, and its pipes begin to sound as soon as, after pressing a key, air enters the corresponding tone channel. The control of the loops, as you might guess, is carried out by levers on the remote control through the register path. Simply put, the keys allow all pipes to sound in their tone channels, and the loops determine the favorites.

We thank the leadership of the Moscow State Conservatory and Natalya Vladimirovna Malina for their help in preparing this article.