THE DECLINE OF MIXTURES.
Fifty years ago it was common to find the number of ranks of mixtures in an organ largely exceed the total number of foundation stops. Mixtures were inserted in the pedal departments of all large organs. Organists of the time do not seem to have objected and many of the leading players strongly opposed Hope-Jones when he came out as the champion of their abolition. These stops greatly excited the ire of Berlioz, who declaims against them in his celebrated work on orchestration.
The tone of these old organs, when all the Mixture work is drawn, is well nigh ludicrous to modern ears, and it is hard to suppress a smile when reading the statements and arguments advanced in favor of the retention of Mixtures by well-known organists of the last generation. These mutation stops still have their place in large instruments, but it is no longer thought that they are necessary to support the singing of a congregation and that they should be voiced loudly. The decline of Mixture work has in itself entirely altered and very greatly improved the effect of organs when considered from a musical point of view. The tone is now bright and clear. Mr. James Wedgwood says:
"The tendency to exaggerate the 'upper work' of the organ reached a climax in the instrument built by Gabler, in 1750, for the Monastic Church at Weingarten, near Ravensburg. This organ comprised no less than ninety-five ranks of Mixture, including two stops of twenty-one and twenty ranks, respectively. Toward the close of the Eighteenth Century, the Abt Vögler (1749-1814) came forward with his 'Simplification System,' one feature of which consisted in the abolition of excessive Mixture work. The worthy Abbe, who was a capable theorist and a gifted player, and possessed of an eccentric and, therefore, attractive personality, secured many followers, who preached a crusade against Mixture work. The success of the movement can well be measured by the amount of apologetic literature it called forth, and by the fact that it stirred the theorists to ponder for themselves what really was the function of the Mixture. * * * The announcement by Mr. Hope-Jones at the beginning of the last decade of the past century of his complete discardment of all Mixture and mutation work may fairly be stated to have marked a distinct epoch in the history of the controversy."
It is indeed strange to find that this man, who did much to discourage the use of mixtures, has never quite abandoned their employment and is to-day the sole champion of double sets of mixture pipes, which he puts in his organs under the name of Mixture Celestes! However, these are very soft and are of course quite different in object and scope from the old-fashioned mixture—now happily extinct.