No musical instrument can compare with the organ in terms of power, timbre, range, tonality and majesty of sound. Like many musical instruments, the structure of the organ has been constantly improved through the efforts of many generations of skilled craftsmen who slowly accumulated experience and knowledge. By the end of the XVII century. the organ basically acquired its modern form. The two most prominent physicists of the 19th century. Hermann von Helmholtz and Lord Rayleigh put forward opposing theories explaining the main mechanism for the formation of sounds in organ pipes, but due to the lack of necessary instruments and instruments, their dispute was never resolved.
With the advent of oscilloscopes and other modern instruments, it became possible to study in detail the mechanism of action of an organ. It turned out that both the Helmholtz theory and the Rayleigh theory are valid for certain values of pressure under which air is forced into the organ pipe.
Further in the article, the results of studies will be presented, which in many respects do not coincide with the explanation of the mechanism of action of the organ given in textbooks. Pipes carved from reeds or other hollow-stemmed plants were probably the first wind instruments. They make sounds if you blow across the open end of the tube, or blow into the tube, vibrating with your lips, or, pinching the end of the tube, blow in air, causing its walls to vibrate. The development of these three types of simple wind instruments led to the creation of the modern flute, trumpet and clarinet, from which the musician can produce sounds in a fairly large range of frequencies. In parallel, such instruments were created in which each tube was intended to sound on one particular note.
The simplest of these instruments is the flute (or "Pan's flute"), which usually has about 20 pipes of various lengths, closed at one end and making sounds when blown across the other, open end.
The largest and most complex instrument of this type is the organ, containing up to 10,000 pipes, controlled by the organist using a complex system of mechanical gears.
The organ dates back to ancient times. Clay figurines depicting musicians playing an instrument made of many bellows pipes were made in Alexandria as early as the 2nd century BC. BC. By the X century. the organ begins to be used in Christian churches, and treatises written by monks on the structure of organs appear in Europe. According to legend, a large organ built in the X century. for Winchester Cathedral in England, had 400 metal pipes, 26 bellows and two keyboards with 40 keys, where each key controlled ten pipes.
Over the following centuries, the device of the organ was improved mechanically and musically, and already in 1429 an organ with 2500 pipes was built in Amiens Cathedral. Germany towards the end of the 17th century. organs have already acquired their modern form. The terms used to describe the structure of the organ reflect their origin from tubular wind instruments into which air was blown by the mouth. The tubes of the organ are open from above, and from below they have a narrowed conical shape. Across the flattened part, above the cone, passes the "mouth" of the pipe (section). A “tongue” (horizontal rib) is placed inside the tube, so that a “labial opening” (narrow gap) is formed between it and the lower “lip”. Air is forced into the pipe by large bellows and enters its cone-shaped base under a pressure of 500 to 1000 pascals (5 to 10 cm of water). When, when the corresponding pedal and key are pressed, the air enters the tube, it rushes upward, forming a wide flat jet as it exits the labial fissure. A jet of air passes across the slot of the "mouth" and, hitting the upper lip, interacts with the air column in the pipe itself; as a result, stable vibrations are created, which make the pipe “speak”.
During the construction of the organ, special attention is paid to ensuring that the air flows in the pipes are completely turbulent, which is achieved with the help of small cuts along the edge of the tongue. Surprisingly, unlike laminar flow, turbulent flow is stable and can be reproduced. The fully turbulent flow gradually mixes with the surrounding air. The expansion and deceleration process is relatively simple. The curve depicting the change in the flow velocity depending on the distance from the central plane of its section has the form of an inverted parabola, the top of which corresponds to the maximum value of the velocity. The flow width increases in proportion to the distance from the labial fissure. The kinetic energy of the flow remains unchanged, so the decrease in its speed is proportional to the square root of the distance from the gap. This dependence is confirmed by both calculations and experimental results (taking into account a small transition region near the labial gap). In an already excited and sounding organ pipe, the air flow enters from the labial slit into an intense sound field in the pipe slot. The air movement associated with the generation of sounds is directed through the slot and therefore perpendicular to the plane of the flow.
In the XIX and early XX centuries. large organs were built with all sorts of electromechanical and electropneumatic devices, but recently preference has again been given to mechanical transmissions from keys and pedals, and complex electronic devices are used to simultaneously switch combinations of registers while playing the organ. The key control is carried out mechanically, but it is duplicated by an electrical transmission to which you can connect. In this way, the organist's performance can be recorded in an encoded digital form, which can then be used for automatic playback on the organ of the original performance. The control of registers and their combinations is carried out using electric or electro-pneumatic devices and microprocessors with memory, which allows you to widely vary the control program. Thus, the magnificent rich sound of the majestic organ is created by a combination of the most advanced achievements of modern technology and traditional techniques and principles that have been used by masters of the past for many centuries.
http://planete-zemlya.r
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
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 look 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 to me sternly. 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 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 heavy 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 them (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 on 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 - shutters 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 the 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.
Alexey Nadezhin: “The organ is the largest and most complex musical instrument. In fact, the organ is a whole brass band, and each of its registers is a separate musical instrument with its own sound.
The largest organ in Russia is installed in the Svetlanov Hall of the Moscow International House of Music. I was lucky to see him from a side from which very few people have seen him.
This organ was made in 2004 in Germany by a consortium of companies Glatter Gotz and Klais, considered the flagships of organ building. The organ was designed specifically for the Moscow International House of Music. The organ has 84 registers (in a conventional organ the number of registers rarely exceeds 60) and more than six thousand pipes. Each register is a separate musical instrument with its own sound.
The height of the organ is 15 meters, weight - 30 tons, cost - two and a half million euros. 
Pavel Nikolaevich Kravchun, Associate Professor of the Department of Acoustics at Moscow State University, told me about how the organ works. 
The organ has five keyboards - four hand and one foot. Surprisingly, the foot keyboard is quite complete and some simple pieces can be played with one foot. Each manual (manual keyboard) has 61 keys. To the right and to the left are the register turn-on knobs. 
Although the organ looks completely traditional and analog, it is actually partly controlled by a computer, which primarily remembers presets - sets of registers. They are switched by buttons on the ends of the manuals. 
Presets are stored on a regular 1.44″ floppy disk. Of course, disk drives are almost never used in computer technology, but here it works properly. 
It was a discovery for me to learn that every organist is an improviser, because the notes either do not indicate the set of registers at all or indicate general wishes. In all organs, only the basic set of registers is common, and their number and tone can vary greatly. Only the best performers can quickly adapt to the huge range of registers of the Svetlanov Hall organ and use its capabilities to the fullest.
In addition to handles, the organ has foot-operated levers and pedals. Levers enable and disable various computer-controlled functions. For example, the combination of keyboards and the effect of the increase, controlled by a rotating pedal-roller, as the rotation of which additional registers are connected and the sound becomes richer and more powerful.
To improve the sound of the organ (and other instruments at the same time), the Constellation electronic system was installed in the hall, including many microphones and mini-columns-monitors on stage, lowered from the ceiling on cables using motors and many microphones and speakers in the hall. This is not a sound amplification system, when it is turned on, the sound in the hall does not become louder, it becomes more uniform (spectators in the side and far places begin to hear the music as well as the audience in the stalls), in addition, reverberation can be added to improve the perception of music. 
The air with which the organ sounds is supplied by three powerful but very quiet fans. 
For its uniform supply, ordinary bricks are used. They press the furs. When the fans are turned on, the bellows inflate and the weight of the bricks provides the necessary air pressure. 
Air is supplied to the organ through wooden pipes. Surprisingly, most of the shutters that make the pipes sound are controlled purely mechanically - by rods, some of which are more than ten meters long. When many registers are connected to the keyboard, it can be very difficult for the organist to push the keys. Of course, the organ has an electric amplification system, when turned on, the keys are pressed easily, but high-class organists of the old school always play without amplification - after all, this is the only way to change intonations by changing the speed and force of pressing the keys. Without amplification, the organ is a purely analog instrument, with amplification it is digital: each pipe can only sound or be silent.
This is what the rods from the keyboards to the pipes look like. They are wooden, since wood is the least susceptible to thermal expansion. 
You can go inside the organ and even climb through a small "fire" escape along its floors. There is very little space inside, so it is difficult to feel the scale of the structure from the photographs, but still I will try to show you what I saw. 
Pipes differ in height, thickness and shape. 
Some of the pipes are wooden, some are metal, made of tin-lead alloy. 
Before each big concert, the organ is tuned anew. The setup process takes several hours. For adjustment, the ends of the smallest pipes are slightly flared or rolled with a special tool; larger pipes have an adjusting rod. 
Larger trumpets have a cut tab that can be twisted and twisted slightly to adjust the tone. 
The largest pipes emit infrasound from 8 Hz, the smallest - ultrasound. 
A unique feature of the MMDM organ is the presence of horizontal pipes facing the hall. 
I took the previous shot from a small balcony, which can be accessed from inside the organ. It is used to adjust horizontal pipes. View of the auditorium from this balcony. 
A small number of pipes have only an electric drive. 
And the organ also has two sound-visual registers or “special effects”. These are “bells” - the ringing of seven bells in a row and “birds” - the chirping of birds, which occurs due to air and distilled water. Pavel Nikolaevich demonstrates how the "bells" work. 
An amazing and very complex tool! The Constellation system goes into parking mode, and that's the end of the story about the largest musical instrument in our country. 
This keyboard wind instrument, according to the figurative characteristics of V. V. Stasov, “... is especially characteristic of the embodiment in musical images and forms of the aspirations of our spirit to the colossal and infinitely majestic; he alone has those amazing sounds, those thunders, that majestic voice speaking as if from eternity, whose expression is impossible for any other instrument, any orchestra.
On the stage of the concert hall you see the facade of the organ with a part of the pipes. Hundreds of them are located behind its facade, arranged in tiers up and down, to the right and to the left, going in rows into the depths of a vast room. Some pipes are horizontal, others are vertical, and some are even hung on hooks. In modern organs, the number of pipes reaches 30,000. The largest ones are more than 10 m high, the smallest - 10 mm. In addition, the organ has an air pumping mechanism - bellows and air ducts; the pulpit where the organist sits and where the instrument control system is concentrated.
The sound of the organ is impressive. The giant instrument has many different timbres. It's like a whole orchestra. Indeed, the range of the organ exceeds that of all instruments in the orchestra. This or that coloring of the sound depends on the device of the pipes. A set of pipes of a single timbre is called a register. Their number in large instruments reaches 200. But the main thing is that the combination of several registers gives rise to a new sound coloring, a new timbre, not similar to the original one. The organ has several (from 2 to 7) manual keyboards - manuals, located in a terrace-like manner. By timbre coloration, register composition, they differ from each other. A special keyboard is a foot pedal. It has 32 keys for playing with toe and heel. It is traditional to use the pedal as the lowest voice - bass, but sometimes it also serves as one of the middle voices. There are also levers for turning on the registers at the department. Usually one or two assistants help the performer, they switch registers. The latest instruments use a "memory" device, thanks to which you can pre-select a certain combination of registers and at the right time, by pressing a button, make them sound.
Organs have always been built for a specific room. The masters provided for all its features, acoustics, dimensions, etc. Therefore, there are no two identical instruments in the world, each is a unique creation of the master. One of the best is the organ of the Dome Cathedral in Riga.
Music for the organ is recorded on three staves. Two of them fix the batch of manuals, one - for the pedal. The notes do not indicate the registration of the work: the performer himself looks for the most expressive techniques to reveal the artistic image of the work. Thus, the organist becomes, as it were, a co-author of the composer in instrumentation (registration) of the work. The organ allows you to draw a sound, a chord for an arbitrarily long time with a constant volume. This peculiarity of his acquired its artistic expression in the appearance of the organ point technique: with a constant sound in the bass, melody and harmony develop. Musicians on any instrument create dynamic nuances within each musical phrase. The color of the sound of the organ is unchanged regardless of the strength of the strike on the key, so the performers use special techniques to depict the beginning and end of phrases, the logic of the structure within the phrase itself. The ability to combine different timbres at the same time led to the composition of works for the organ of a predominantly polyphonic warehouse (see Polyphony).
The organ has been known since ancient times. The manufacture of the first organ is attributed to Ctesibius, a mechanic from Alexandria, who lived in the 3rd century BC. BC e. It was a water organ - hydraulics. The pressure of the water column ensured the uniformity of the pressure of the air entering the sounding pipes. Later, an organ was invented in which air was supplied to the pipes with the help of bellows. Before the advent of the electric drive, special workers, called calcane, pumped air into the pipes. In the Middle Ages, along with large organs, there were also small ones - regalia and portable ones (from the Latin "porto" - "I carry"). Gradually, the instrument improved and by the 16th century. acquired an almost modern look.
Many composers have written music for the organ. Organ art reached its peak at the end of the 17th - the first half of the 18th century. in the work of such composers as J. Pachelbel, D. Buxtehude, D. Frescobaldi, G. F. Handel, J. S. Bach. Bach created works unsurpassed in depth and perfection. In Russia, M. I. Glinka paid considerable attention to the organ. He perfectly played this instrument, made arrangements for him of various works.
In our country, the organ can be heard in the concert halls of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Riga, Tallinn, Gorky, Vilnius and many other cities. Soviet and foreign organists perform works not only by old masters, but also by Soviet composers.
Electric organs are being built now. However, the principle of operation of these instruments is different: the sound arises due to electric generators of various designs (see Electric musical instruments).
Which sounds with the help of pipes (metal, wooden, without reeds and with reeds) of various timbres, into which air is blown with the help of bellows.
Organ playing is carried out using several keyboards for hands (manuals) and a pedal keyboard.
In terms of sound richness and abundance of musical means, the organ ranks first among all instruments and is sometimes called the “king of instruments”. Due to its expressiveness, it has long been the property of the church.
A person who plays music on an organ is called organist.
Soldiers of the Third Reich called the Soviet multiple launch rocket systems BM-13 "Stalin's organ" because of the sound made by the tail of the missiles.
History of the organ
The embryo of the organ can be seen in, as well as in. It is believed that the organ (hydraulos; also hydraulikon, hydraulis - “water organ”) was invented by the Greek Ktesibius, who lived in Alexandria of Egypt 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 (666) introduced the organ into the Catholic Church. In the 8th century, Byzantium was famous for its organs.
The art of building organs also developed in Italy, from where they were sent to France in the 9th century. Later this art developed in Germany. The organ began to receive the greatest and widespread distribution in the XIV century. In the 14th century, a pedal appeared in the organ, that is, a keyboard for the feet.
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.
Organ device
Improved organs reached a huge number of pipes and tubes; for example, the organ in Paris in the church of St. Sulpice has 7 thousand pipes and tubes. In the organ there are pipes and tubes of the following sizes: at 1 foot, notes sound three octaves higher than written, at 2 feet, notes sound two octaves higher than written, at 4 feet, notes sound an octave higher than written, at 8 feet, notes sound as they are written, at 16 feet - notes sound an octave below written, at 32 feet - notes sound two octaves below written. Closing the pipe from above leads to a decrease in the emitted sounds by an octave. Not all organs have large tubes.
There are from 1 to 7 keyboards in the organ (usually 2-4); they are called manuals. Although each organ keyboard has a volume of 4-5 octaves, thanks to the pipes sounding two octaves below or three octaves above the written notes, the volume of a large organ has 9.5 octaves. Each set of pipes of the same timbre is, as it were, a separate instrument and is called register.
Each of the retractable or retractable buttons or registers (located above the keyboard or on the sides of the instrument) actuates a corresponding row of tubes. Each button or register has its own name and a corresponding inscription, indicating the length of the largest pipe of this register. 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 registering.) Registers in the organs are from 2 to 300 (most often found from 8 to 60).
All registers fall into two categories:
- Registers with pipes without reeds(labial registers). This category includes registers of open flutes, registers of closed flutes (bourdons), registers of overtones (potions), in which each note has several (weaker) harmonic overtones.
- Registers with pipes with reeds(reed registers). The combination of registers of both categories together with a potion is called plein jeu.
The keyboards or manuals are located in the terraced organs, one above the other. In addition to them, there is also a pedal keyboard (from 5 to 32 keys), mainly for low sounds. The part for the hands is written on two staves - in the keys and as for. The pedal part is often written separately on the same staff. The pedal keyboard, simply called the "pedal", is played with both feet, using the heel and toe alternately (until the 19th century, only the toe). An organ without a pedal is called positive, a small portable organ is called portable.
Manuals in organs have names that depend on the location of the pipes in the organ.
- The main manual (having the loudest registers) - in the German tradition is called Hauptwerk(French Grand orgue, Grand clavier) and is located closest to the performer, or on the second row;
- The second most important and loud manual in the German tradition is called Oberwerk(louder version) or Positive(light version) (fr. Рositif), if the pipes of this manual are located ABOVE the pipes of Hauptwerk, or Ruckpositiv, if the pipes of this manual are located separately from the rest of the pipes of the organ and are installed behind the back of the organist; The Oberwerk and Positiv keys on the game console are located one level above the Hauptwerk keys, and the Ruckpositiv keys are one level below the Hauptwerk keys, thereby reproducing the architectural structure of the instrument.
- The manual, the pipes of which are located inside a kind of box, which has vertical shutters in the front part of the blinds in the German tradition are called Schwellwerk(fr. Recit (expressif). Schwellwerk can be located both at the very top of the organ (more common), and on the same level as the Hauptwerk. Schwellwerka keys are located on the game console at a higher level than Hauptwerk, Oberwerk, Positiv, Ruckpositive.
- Existing types of manuals: Hinterwerk(pipes are located at the back of the organ), Brustwerk(pipes are located directly above the organist's seat), Solowerk(solo registers, very loud trumpets arranged in a separate group), Choir etc.
The following devices serve as relief for the players and a means for amplifying or attenuating sonority:
copula- a mechanism by which two keyboards are connected, with the registers advanced on them acting simultaneously. The copula enables the player on one manual to use the extended registers of another.
4 footrests above pedal board(Pеdale de combinaison, Tritte), each of which acts on a certain combination of registers.
Blinds- a device consisting of doors that close and open the entire room with pipes of different registers, as a result of which the sound is strengthened or weakened. Doors are set in motion by a footboard (channel).
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. The rest of the details are provided to the performer.
The organ is often combined with the orchestra and singing in oratorios, cantatas, psalms, and also in opera.
There are also electric (electronic) organs, for example, Hammond.
Composers who composed organ music
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Adam Reinken
Johann Pachelbel
Dietrich Buxtehude
Girolamo Frescobaldi
Johann Jakob Froberger
Georg Friedrich Handel
Siegfried Karg-Elert
Henry Purcell
Max Reger
Vincent Lübeck
Johann Ludwig Krebs
Matthias Weckman
Domenico Zipoli
Cesar Frank
Video: Organ on video + sound
Thanks to these videos, you can get acquainted with the instrument, watch the real game on it, listen to its sound, feel the specifics of the technique:
Sale of tools: where to buy/order?
The encyclopedia does not yet contain information on where to buy or order this instrument. You can change it!
