The Organ
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The organ has an immense repertoire spanning the centuries since its inceptions. This is partly a testimony to its tremendous versatility and partly a recognition of the fact that organs are a focal point of most concert halls, churches and other venues of musical performance.
Organs come in all shapes and sizes, from small portative models which can be carried around (if you have two hefty men available) to instruments of the scale of the Wanamaker organ whose console looks like an artists' impression of the flight deck of a spaceship with five manuals controlling 408 stops and nearly 29,000 individual pipes.
Most composers since the dawn of polyphony have composed for the organ, but the major part of the repertoire in current use starts a little before JS Bach. Indeed, Bach was first and foremost an organist, and he travelled many miles to meet and study under another famous organist and composer of his day, Dietrich Buxtehude.
It is one of the joys of organ music that we can still hear their compositions played on instruments which the masters themselves played. Organs are tremendously long-lived and, with careful maintenance, can last almost indefinitely.
The electronic organ was widely predicted to kill pipe organs for ever, but in fact organ building is in rude health. Most countries have their famous firms of builders, in the UK these include Harrison's and Willis, who between them seem to have built around half the great organs still in use.
Digital organs are becoming very good, and it is hard to tell the difference between an Allen digital and a pipe organ, but still most large commissions are wind-blown pipe organs - and there is a resurgence of the directly actuated "tracker" actions where no pneumatic or electric actuators are used in the playing action. This gives a more expressive sound, and many of the finest organists now
prefer not to play on electric or pneumatic actions.
An organ for your home is amazingly affordable. A good digital instrument might cost £7,000, a pipe organ maybe twice that (the same price as a family car, but it will outlast any car tenfold). Small organ firms will be happy to relocate and refurbish redundant church organs, many of which are still fine instruments - but out of fashion in the happy-clappy church of today. You can find a good organ builder at BIOS - Peter Collins, Kenneth Tickell and Saxon Aldred all make fine smaller instruments.
For a feast of organ-related stuff visit the International Organ Festival, where you might meet Thomas Trotter, Peter Hurford or even Marie-Claire Alain.
