Organ musical instrument who made. Organ - musical instrument

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. It's the only one musical instrument, which can be entered

funny tool - harmonica with bells unusual 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 windlid, 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 organ pipes or hurt her. And there are thousands of pipes.

Main principle the work 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, you will hear a thin alt. 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. You can make many Pan flutes with pipes from 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 key concepts in organ structure. 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 - tens or hundreds of registers ... sound in 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.

ORGAN, keyboard-wind musical instrument, the largest and most complex of existing tools. A huge modern organ consists, as it were, of three or more organs, and the performer can control all of them at the same time. Each of the organs that make up such a "large organ" has its own registers (sets of pipes) and its own keyboard (manual). Pipes lined up in rows are located in the internal premises (chambers) of the organ; part of the pipes may be visible, but in principle all pipes are hidden behind a façade (avenue) consisting partly of decorative pipes. The organist sits at the so-called. with a spire (pulpit), in front of it are the keyboards (manuals) of the organ, arranged in terraces one above the other, and under the feet is a pedal keyboard.

Each of the organs included in big organ", has its own purpose and name; among the most common are the “main” (German Hauptwerk), “upper”, or “Oberwerk” (German Oberwerk), “ruckpositive” (Rückpositiv), as well as a set of pedal registers. The "main" organ is the largest and contains the main registers of the instrument. "Rukpositive" is similar to "Main", but smaller and softer, and also contains some special solo registers. The "upper" organ adds new solo and onomatopoeic timbres to the ensemble; connected to the pedal are pipes that produce low sounds to enhance the bass lines.

The pipes of some of these organs, especially the "upper" and "ruckpositive", are placed inside semi-closed shutters-chambers, which can be closed or opened with the help of the so-called. channel, resulting in the creation of crescendo and diminuendo effects that are not available on an organ without this mechanism.

In modern organs, air is forced into the pipes by an electric motor; through wooden air ducts, air from the bellows enters the windlads - a system of wooden boxes with holes in the top cover. Organ pipes are reinforced with their "legs" in these holes. From the windlad, air under pressure enters one or another pipe.

Since each pipe is able to reproduce the sound of one pitch and one timbre, a standard five-octave manual requires a set of at least 61 pipes. In general, an organ can have from several hundred to many thousands of tubes. A group of pipes producing sounds of the same timbre is called a register. When the organist turns on the register on the spike (using a button or lever located on the side of the manuals or above them), air is allowed to enter all the pipes of this register. Thus, the performer can choose any register he needs or any combination of registers.

There are different types of pipes that create a variety of sound effects. Pipes are made of tin, lead, copper and various alloys (mainly lead and tin), in some cases wood is also used. The length of the pipes can be from 9.8 m to 2.54 cm or less; the diameter varies depending on the pitch and timbre of the sound. Organ pipes are divided into two groups according to the method of sound production (labial and reed) and into four groups according to timbres. In labial tubes, sound is produced as a result of the impact of an air jet on the lower and upper lip"mouth" (labium) - a cut in the lower part of the pipe; in reed pipes, the source of sound is a metal tongue vibrating under the pressure of an air jet. The main families of registers (timbres) are principals, flutes, gambas and reeds. Principals are the foundation of all organ sounding; flute registers sound calmer, softer and to some extent resemble orchestral flutes in timbre; gambas (strings) are more piercing and sharper than flutes; the timbre of the reeds is metallic, imitating the timbres of orchestral wind instruments. Some organs, especially theater organs, also have percussive timbres, such as imitation cymbals and drums. Finally, many registers are built in such a way that their pipes do not give the main sound, but its transposition by an octave higher or lower, and in the case of the so-called. mixtures and aliquots - not even one sound, as well as overtones to the main tone (aliquots reproduce one overtone, mixtures - up to seven overtones).

The organ is an ancient instrument. Its distant predecessors were, apparently, the bagpipes and Pan's flute. In the 3rd century BC. a water organ appeared - hydraulics; its invention is attributed to the master Ctesibius of Alexandria. The hydraulics was a powerful tool in which the necessary pressure of the air entering the pipes was maintained by a column of water. Gidravlos was used by the Greeks and Romans at hippodromes, in circuses, and also to accompany pagan mysteries. The sound of the hydraulics was unusually strong and piercing. In the first centuries of Christianity, the water pump was replaced by air bellows, which made it possible to increase the size of the pipes and their number in the organ.

Already in the middle of the 5th c. organs were built in Spanish churches, but since the instrument still sounded very loud, it was used only on major holidays. By the 11th century large organs were built throughout Europe; An organ built in 980 in Winchester (England) was known for its extraordinary size. Gradually, the keys were replaced by clumsy large "plates"; the range of the instrument has become wider, the registers have become more diverse. At the same time, a small portable organ - portable and a miniature stationary organ - positive came into wide use.

17th–18th centuries - "golden age" of organ building and organ performance. The organs of this time were distinguished by their beauty and variety of sound; exceptional timbre clarity, transparency made them excellent instruments for performance polyphonic music. Almost all the great organ composers wrote for the "baroque organ", which was more common than the organs of previous and subsequent periods. Romanticism of the 19th century, with its desire for expressive orchestral sound, had a dubious effect on organ building and organ music; the craftsmen tried to create instruments that were an "orchestra for one performer", but as a result, the matter was reduced to a weak imitation of an orchestra. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries many new timbres appeared in the organ, and significant improvements were made in the design of the instrument. The trend towards ever larger organs culminated in the massive 33,112-pipe organ in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This instrument has two pulpits, one of which has seven keyboards. Despite this, in the 20th century. organists and organ builders realized the need to return to simpler and more convenient instrument types.

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 with instruments spends all their labor on it, like, for example, 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. Image similar instrument is available on one coin or token from the time of Nero [ ] . Organs large sizes 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. 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. ubiquitous distribution in Western Europe organ received since the XIV 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. The Norrland organ is currently kept at 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 XVIII centuries, about 150 organs were created 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 maker Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who set out to design organs in such a way that they could compete with the sound of the whole symphony orchestra, 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. 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 tablature 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 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 knob 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".

Compound various kinds 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 registers in different bodies different countries and epochs are not the same, then in the organ part they are usually not indicated in detail: 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 of the 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 play and 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

Mechanical tracture - reference, authentic and the most common on this 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 - with late XIX century to the 20s of the XX 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 makes it often technically impossible to perform complex works, especially in “wet” church acoustics, given that the delay time of the sound of the register depends not only on the distance from the remote control of the organ, but also on its size of pipes, the presence of relays in the tract, which accelerate the operation of the mechanics due to the refreshment of the impulse, design features pipes and the type of windlad used (almost always it is a kegellad, sometimes it is a membranenlad: it works to release air, extremely fast response). In addition, the pneumatic tracture disconnects the keyboard from the 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 give a delay; in the instruments of the first half and the 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 in the rest of a 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 the largest musical instrument, unique human creation. There are no two identical organs in the world.

The giant organ has many different timbres. This is achieved by using hundreds of metal pipes of various sizes, through which air is blown, and the pipes begin to hum, or "sing". Moreover, the organ allows you to pull the sound for an arbitrarily long time with a constant volume.

Pipes are located horizontally and vertically, some are suspended on hooks. In modern organs, their number reaches 30 thousand! The largest pipes have a height of over 10 m, and the smallest - 1 cm.

The management system of an organ is called a chair. It is a complex mechanism controlled by the organist. The organ has several (from 2 to 7) manual keyboards (manuals), consisting of keys, like on a piano. Previously, the organ was played not with fingers, but with fists. There is also a foot keyboard or just a pedal with up to 32 keys.

Usually the performer is assisted by one or two assistants. They switch registers, the combination of which generates a new timbre, not similar to the original one. The body can replace whole orchestra, because its range exceeds that of all instruments in the orchestra.

The organ has been known since ancient times. The creator of the organ is considered to be the Greek mechanic Ctesibius, who lived in Alexandria in 296-228. BC e. He invented the water organ, the hydraulics.

Now most often the organ is used in worship. Some churches and cathedrals host concerts or organ services. In addition, there are organs installed in concert halls. The largest organ in the world is located in the American city of Philadelphia, in the McCases department store. Its weight is 287 tons.

Music for the organ was written by many composers, but he revealed its capabilities as a virtuoso performer and created works unsurpassed in depth as a genius composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

In Russia, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka paid considerable attention to organ art.

It is almost impossible to learn how to play the organ on your own. It requires a lot of musical experience. Training on the organ begins in schools, if you have the skills to play the piano. But it is possible to master this instrument well by continuing your studies at the conservatory.

MYSTERY

That tool from a long time ago

Decorated the cathedral.

Decorate and play

The whole orchestra replaces

How is the organ aslan wrote on May 12th, 2017

On June 17, 1981, the hand of a musician, the outstanding organist Harry Grodberg, touched the keys for the first time, who performed Bach's toccatas, preludes, fantasies and fugues for Tomsk residents.

Since then, dozens of well-known organists have given concerts in Tomsk, and German organ masters have never ceased to be surprised how in the city, where the temperature difference between winter and summer is 80 degrees, the instrument is still playing.

Child of the GDR

The organ of the Tomsk Philharmonic was born in 1981 in the East German city of Frankfurt an der Oder, at the W.Sauer Orgelbau organ building company.

At a normal working pace, the construction of an organ takes about a year, and this process includes several stages. First, the masters examine concert hall, determine its acoustic characteristics and draw up a project for the future instrument. Then the specialists return to their native factory, make individual elements of the organ and assemble a single instrument from them. In the assembly shop of the factory, it is tested for the first time and the shortcomings are corrected. If the organ sounds as it should, it is again taken apart in parts and sent to the customer.

In Tomsk, all the installation procedures took only six months - due to the fact that the process went without overlays, shortcomings and other inhibitory factors. In January 1981, Sauer specialists arrived in Tomsk for the first time, and in June of the same year the organ was already giving concerts.

Internal composition

By the standards of specialists, the Tomsk organ can be called medium in weight and size - a ten-ton instrument can hold about two thousand pipes of various lengths and shapes. Like five hundred years ago, they are made by hand. Wooden pipes, as a rule, are made in the form of a parallelepiped. The shapes of metal pipes can be more intricate: cylindrical, reverse conical, and even combined. Metal pipes are made from an alloy of tin and lead in different proportions, and for wooden ones, pine is usually used.

It is these characteristics - length, shape and material - that affect the timbre of the sound of an individual pipe.

Pipes inside the organ are in rows: from the highest to the lowest. Each row of pipes can play individually, or you can combine them. On the side of the keyboard on the vertical panels of the organ there are buttons, by pressing which the organist controls this process. All pipes of the Tomsk organ are sounding, and only one of them on the front side of the instrument was created in decorative purposes and doesn't make any sound.

WITH reverse side the organ looks like a three-story Gothic castle. On the ground floor of this castle is the mechanical part of the instrument, which through the system of rods transmits the work of the organist's fingers to the pipes. On the second floor, pipes are installed that are connected with the keys of the lower keyboard, and on the third floor - pipes of the upper keyboard.

The Tomsk organ has a mechanical system for connecting keys and pipes, which means that pressing a key and the appearance of sound occurs almost instantly, without any delay.

Above the performing chair there are blinds, or in other words a channel, which hide the second floor of organ pipes from the viewer. With the help of a special pedal, the organist controls the position of the blinds and thereby influences the strength of the sound.

Caring hand of the master

The organ, like any other musical instrument, is very dependent on the climate, and the Siberian weather creates many problems in caring for it. Inside the tool, special air conditioners, sensors and humidifiers are installed that maintain a certain temperature and humidity. The colder and drier the air, the shorter the organ pipes become, and vice versa - with warm and humid air, the pipes lengthen. Therefore, a musical instrument requires constant monitoring.

Only two people take care of the Tomsk organ - organist Dmitry Ushakov and his assistant Ekaterina Mastenitsa.

The main means of dealing with dust inside the body is an ordinary Soviet vacuum cleaner. To search for it, a whole action was organized - they were looking for exactly one that would have a blowing system, because it is easier to blow dust from the organ, bypassing all the tubes, onto the stage and only then collect it with a vacuum cleaner.

“Dirt in the organ must be removed where it is and when it gets in the way,” says Dmitry Ushakov. “If we decide now to remove all the dust from the organ, we will have to completely re-tune it, and this whole procedure will take about a month, and we have concerts.

Most often, facade pipes are cleaned - they are in plain sight, so fingerprints of curious people often remain on them. Dmitry prepares a mixture for cleaning facade elements himself, from ammonia and tooth powder.

Sound reconstruction

Major cleaning and tuning of the organ is done once a year: usually in the summer, when there are relatively few concerts and it is not cold outside. But a little tweaking of the sound is required before each gig. The tuner has a special approach to each type of organ pipe. For some it is enough to close the cap, for others to twist the roller, and for the smallest tubes they use a special tool - a stimmhorn.

Setting up the body alone will not work. One person must press the keys, and the other must adjust the pipes while inside the instrument. In addition, the person pressing the keys controls the tuning process.

First overhaul the Tomsk organ survived relatively long ago, 13 years ago, after the restoration of the organ hall and the removal of the organ from a special sarcophagus in which he spent 7 years. Experts from the Sauer company were invited to Tomsk, and they inspected the instrument. Then, in addition to internal renovation, the organ changed the color of the facade and acquired decorative grilles. And in 2012, the organ finally got "owners" - full-time organists Dmitry Ushakov and Maria Blazhevich.

Click the button to subscribe to How It's Made!

If you have a production or service that you want to tell our readers about, write to Aslan ( [email protected] ) and we will make the best report, which will be seen not only by readers of the community, but also by the site How it's done

Subscribe also to our groups in facebook, vkontakte,classmates, youtube and instagram, where the most interesting things from the community will be posted, plus a video on how it is done, arranged and working.

Click on the icon and subscribe!