The use of this action renders it possible for the console (or keyboards, etc.) to be entirely detached from the organ, moved to a distance and connected with the organ by a cable fifty or one hundred feet or as many miles long. This arrangement may be seen, for example, in the College of the City of New York (built by the E. M. Skinner Co.), where the console is carried to the middle of the platform when a recital is to be given, and removed out of the way when the platform is wanted for other purposes.
As all the old mechanism—the backfalls, roller-boards and trackers—is now swept away, it is possible by placing the bellows in the cellar to utilize the inside of the organ for a choir-vestry, as was indeed done with the pioneer Hope-Jones organ at St. John's Church, Birkenhead.
DIVISION OF ORGANS.
Before the invention of pneumatic and electro-pneumatic action, organs were almost invariably constructed in a single mass. It was, it is true, possible to find instruments with tracker action that were divided and placed, say, half on either side of a chancel, but instances of the kind were rare and it was well nigh impossible for even a muscular organist to perform on such instruments.
The perfecting of tubular pneumatic and especially of electro-pneumatic action has lent wonderful flexibility to the organ and has allowed of instruments being introduced in buildings where it would otherwise have been impossible to locate an organ. Almost all leading builders have done work of this kind, but the Aeolian Company has been quickest to seize the advantage of division in adapting the pipe organ for use in private residences.
Sound reflectors have recently been introduced, and it seems likely that these will play an important part in organ construction in the future. So far they appear to be employed only by Hope-Jones and the firms with which he was associated. It has been discovered that sound waves may be collected, focussed or directed, much in the same way that light waves can. In the case of the Hope-Jones organ at Ocean Grove, N. J., the greatest part of the instrument has been placed in a basement constructed outside the original Auditorium. The sound waves are thrown upward and are directed into the Auditorium by means of parabolic reflectors constructed of cement lined with wood. The effect is entirely satisfactory. In Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio,[6] Hope-Jones arranged for the Tuba to stand in the basement at the distant end of the nave. Its tone is directed to a cement reflector and from that reflector is projected through a metal grid set in the floor, till, striking the roof of the nave, it is spread and fills the entire building with tone. In St. Luke's Church, Montclair, N. J., he adopted a somewhat similar plan in connection with the open 38-foot pedal pipes which are laid horizontally in the basement. We believe that the first time this principle was employed was in the case of the organ rebuilt by Hope-Jones in 1892 at the residence of Mr. J. Martin White, Balruddery, Dundee, Scotland.
OCTAVE COUPLERS.
In the days of mechanical action, couplers of any kind proved a source of trouble and added greatly to the weight of the touch. The natural result was that anything further than unison coupling was seldom attempted.
In some organs hardly any couplers at all were present.
In Schulze's great and celebrated organ in Doncaster, England, it was not possible to couple any of the manuals to the pedals, and (if we remember rightly) there were only two couplers in the whole instrument. Shortly after the introduction of pneumatic action, an organ with an occasional octave coupler, that is a coupler which depressed a key an octave higher or lower than the one originally struck, was sometimes met with.