TRANSFERENCE OF STOPS.
At the commencement of the period of which we are treating, the stops
belonging to the Swell organ could be drawn on that keyboard only;
similarly the stops on the Great, Choir and Pedal organs could be drawn
only on their respective keyboards. It is now becoming more and more
common to arrange for the transference of stops from one keyboard to
another.
If this plan be resorted to as an effort to make an insufficient number
of stops suffice for a large building, it is bound to end in
disappointment and cannot be too strongly condemned. On the other
hand, if an organ-builder first provides a number stops that furnish
sufficient variety of tonal quality and volume that is ample for the
building in which the instrument is situated, and then arranges for the
transference of a number of the stops to other manuals than their own,
he will be adding to the tonal resources of the instrument in a way
that is worthy of commendation. Many organs now constructed have their
tonal effects more than doubled through adoption of this principle.
It is difficult to say who first conceived the idea of transference of
stops, but authentic instances occurring in the sixteenth century can
be pointed out. During the last fifty years many builders have done
work in this direction, but without question the leadership in the
movement must be attributed to Hope-Jones. While others may have
suggested the same thing, he has worked the system out practically in a
hundred instances, and has forced upon the attention of the organ world
the artistic advantages of the plan.
His scheme of treating the organ as a single unit and rendering it
possible to draw any of the stops on any of the keyboards at any
(reasonable) pitch, was unfolded before the members of the Royal
College of Organists in London at a lecture he delivered on May 5, 1891.
When adopting this system in part, he would speak of "unifying" this,
that or the other stop, and this somewhat inapt phrase has now been
adopted by other builders and threatens to become general.
Extraordinary claims of expressiveness, flexibility and artistic
balance are made by those who preside at "unit (Hope-Jones) organs,"
but this style of instrument is revolutionary and has many opponents.
Few, however, can now be found who do not advocate utilization of the
principle to a greater or less degree in every organ. For instance,
who has not longed at times that the Swell Bourdon could be played by
the pedals? Or that the Choir Clarinet were also in the Swell?
Compton, of Nottingham, England, employs this plan of stop extension
and transference, or unifying of stops, in all the organs he builds.
As additional methods facilitating in some cases the transfer of stops
must be named the "double touch" and the "pizzicato touch." The
former, though practically introduced by Hope-Jones and found in most
of his organs built during the last fifteen years, was, we believe,
invented by a Frenchman and applied to reed organs. The pizzicato
touch is a Hope-Jones invention which, though publicly introduced
nearly twenty years since, did not meet with the recognition it
deserved until recently. The earliest example of this touch in the
United States is found in the organ at Hanson Place Baptist Church,
Brooklyn, N. Y., 1909.
In the French Mustel reed organ the first touch is operated by
depressing the keys about a sixteenth part of an inch. This produces a
soft sound. A louder and different tone is elicited upon pushing the
key further down. In the pipe organ the double touch is differently
arranged. The first touch is the ordinary touch. Upon exerting a much
heavier pressure upon the key it will suddenly fall into the second
touch (about one-eighth of an inch deep) and will then cause an
augmentation of the tone by making other pipes speak. The device is
generally employed in connection with the couplers and can be brought
into or out of action at the will of the organist. For instance, if
the performer be playing upon his Choir Organ Flute and draws the Oboe
stop on the Swell organ, he can (provided the double-touch action be
drawn), by pressing any key or keys more firmly, cause those particular
notes to speak on the Oboe, while the keys that he is pressing in the
ordinary way will sound only the Flute.
The pizzicato touch is also used mostly in connection with the
couplers. When playing upon a soft combination on the Great, the
organist may draw the Swell to Great "pizzicato" coupler. Whenever now
he depresses a Great key the Swell key will (in effect) descend with
it, but will be instantly liberated again, even though the organist
continue to hold his Great key. By means of this pizzicato touch (now
being fitted to all Hope-Jones organs built in this country) a great
variety of charming musical effects can be produced.
THE UNIT ORGAN.
The Unit organ in its entirety consists of a single instrument divided
into five tonal families, each family being placed in its own
independent Swell box. The families are as follows: "Foundation"--this
contains the Diapasons, Diaphones, Tibias, etc.; "woodwind"--this
contains Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets, etc.; "strings"--this contains the
Gambas, Viols d' Orchestre, Dulcianas, etc.; "brass"--this contains the
Trumpets, Cornopeans and Tubas; "percussion"--this contains the
Tympani, Gongs, Chimes, Glockenspiel, etc.
On each of the keyboards any of the stops, from the "foundation" group,
the "woodwind" group, the "string" group, the "brass" group and the
"percussion" group, may be drawn, and they may be drawn at 16 feet, at
8 feet, and, in some instances, at 4 feet, at 2 feet, at twelfth and at
tierce pitches.
Arranged in this way an organ becomes an entirely different instrument.
It is very flexible, for not only can the tones be altered by drawing
the various stops at different pitches, but the various groups may be
altered in power of tone independently of each other. At one moment
the foundation tone may entirely dominate, by moving the swell pedals
the strings may be made to come to the front while the foundation tone
disappears; then again the woodwind asserts itself whilst the string
tone is moderated, till the opening of the box containing the brass
allows that element to dominate. The variety of the tonal combinations
is practically endless.
The adoption of this principle also saves needless duplication of
stops. In the organ at St. George's Hall, England, there are on the
manuals 5 Open Diapasons, 4 Principals, 5 Fifteenths, 3 Clarinets, 2
Orchestral Oboes, 3 Trumpets, 3 Ophicleides, 3 Trombas, 6 Clarions, 4
Flutes, etc., etc. In the Hope-Jones Unit organ at Ocean Grove effects
equal to the above are obtained from only 6 stops. The organist of
Touro Synagogue, New Orleans, has expressed the opinion that his
ten-stop Unit organ is equal to an ordinary instrument with sixty stops.
SYMPATHY.
A strong reason against the duplication of pipes of similar tone in an
organ is that curious acoustical phenomenon, the _bête noir_ of the
organ-builder, known as _sympathy_, or interference of sound waves.
When two pipes of exactly the same pitch and scale are so placed that
the pulsations of air from the one pass into the other, if blown
separately the tone of each is clear; blown together there is
practically no sound heard, the waves of the one streaming into the
other, and a listener hears only the rushing of the air. That the
conditions which produce sound are all present may be demonstrated by
conveying a tube from the mouth of either of the pipes to a listener's
ear, when its tone will be distinctly heard. In other words, one sound
destroys the other. Helmholtz explains this phenomenon by saying that
"when two equal sound waves are in opposition the one nullifies the
effect of the other and the result is a straight line," that is, no
wave, no sound. "If a wave crest of a particular size and form
coincides with another exactly like it, the result will be a crest
double the height of each one" (that is, the sound will be augmented).
* * * "If a crest coincides with a trough the result will be that the
one will unify the other," and the sound will be destroyed.[1] That is
why in the old-style organs the builder, when he used more than one
Diapason, tried to avoid this sympathy by using pipes of different
scale, but even then the results were seldom satisfactory; the big
pipes seemed to swallow the little ones. In the big organ in Leeds
Town Hall, England, there was one pipe in the Principal which nobody
could tune. The tuner turned it every possible way in its socket
without avail, and at last succeeded by removing it from the socket and
mounting it on a block at a considerable distance from its proper
place, the wind being conveyed to it by a tube. This is only one
instance of what frequently occurred.
In the Hope-Jones organ the usual plan of putting all the C pipes on
one side of the organ and all the C# pipes on the other, is departed
from. The pipes are alternated and in this ingenious way sympathy is
largely avoided.
[1] Broadhouse: "Musical Acoustics," p. 261.