Fig. 4.
We have a very charming Stopped Diapason made in this way, and with perforated stoppers, in one of our organs. It is of red cedar from Middle C to top; the lower part is of pine and of the ordinary construction. The mouths are in the proportion of two-sevenths of the width of each pipe. Inverted mouths are well suited, also, to the Clarabella and Hohl Flöte, two kindred stops which sometimes take the place of the Stopped Diapason in its upper octaves. The pipes are open, and have a hollow penetrating tone; Middle C is 2 feet long, and its block may be of the same size as that of the same note in our scale, namely, about 1⅜ by 1¾. The mouth about 2⁄7 of the width. These open pipes are tuned by means of shades, which are pieces of pipe metal let into a saw-cut made in the top edge of the back board. The shade must be as wide as the pipe, and ½ inch longer than its depth. The pipe is flattened by bending the shade over the open top, sharpened by raising it.
The German stop, the Doppel-flöte, which has two mouths opposite to each other, and of course two caps for each pipe, is seldom or never heard in this country. A few pipes which we have made as experiments hardly seem to repay us for the additional trouble and labour.
Trouble and labour were of little account, apparently, in the old days of English organ-building two centuries ago, if we may judge from the really marvellous specimens of patient pipe-making in wood which have come down to us. We ourselves have seen and played organs of exquisite sweetness and beauty by old Bernhard Schmidt (1660-1708), containing four or five stops in which every pipe was of oak, even up to the top note of a Fifteenth of 2 feet. Such an organ, built by Loosemore, 1664, the builder of the cathedral organ, is preserved, we believe, at Exeter. It has six stops, including a Twelfth, all made of wood. Modern life is too hasty and impetuous for such efforts. If any of our readers, however, should set themselves the task of making very small pipes in wood, we advise them to form the block and foot from one piece, and to follow the first method [(see p. 18)] in putting the minute contrivance together.
CHAPTER III.
THE SOUND-BOARD.
We may fairly assume that no one will embark upon the very serious business of building an organ, and that probably no one will read this book, who has not sufficient previous knowledge of the subject to understand what is meant by the expressions sound-board, wind-chest, pallets, sliders.