_For the Table Book._
A few particulars relative to organs, in addition to those at col. 260,
may be interesting to musical readers.
The instrument is of so great antiquity, that neither the time nor place
of invention, nor the name of the inventor, is identified; but that they
were used by the Greeks, and from them borrowed by the Latins, is
generally allowed. St. Jerome describes one that could be heard a mile
off; and says, that there was an organ at Jerusalem, which could be
heard at the Mount of Olives.
Organs are affirmed to have been first introduced into France in the
reign of Louis I., A. D. 815, and the construction and use of them
taught by an Italian priest, who learned the art at Constantinople. By
some, however, the introduction of them into that country is carried as
far back as Charlemagne, and by others still further.
The earliest mention of an organ, in the northern histories, is in the
annals of the year 757, when the emperor Constantine, surnamed
Copronymus, sent to Pepin of France, among other rich presents, a
“musical machine,” which the French writers describe to have been
composed of “pipes and large tubes of tin,” and to have imitated
sometimes the “roaring of thunder,” and, at others, the “warbling of a
flute.”
Bellarmine alleges, that organs were first used in churches about 660.
According to Bingham, they were not used till after the time of Thomas
Aquinas, about A. D. 1250. Gervas, the monk of Canterbury, who
flourished about 1200, says, they were in use about a hundred years
before his time. If his authority be good, it would countenance a
general opinion, that organs were common in the churches of Italy,
Germany, and England, about the tenth century.
_March_, 1827.
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