A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

ORGAN. The greatest of all instruments of music, consisting of pipes, or flutes, made vocal by wind, which is supplied by bellows, and acted on by keys touched by the hands and feet. The Latin word organum, means an instrument in general; (just as we now employ the word organ;) but in the course of time it was more specially applied, in a more limited sense, to instruments of music, and specially to that great vehicle of sound, which is in part a combination of many instruments, and is an orchestra in itself. The first organ was made by Ctesibius of Alexandria, about 200 years B. C., (as appears from Athenæus, iv. 75,) with pipes of bronze and lead, with keys, levers, and slides: the wind from a bellows, in which the pressure of water supplied the place of the weight now placed on the bellows. This sort of organ was called hydraulic; and continued in use so late as the ninth century. An epigram of Julian the Apostate, in the middle of the fourth century, describes it as played with the fingers, not with the fists, and as having copper pipes. (Brunck, Analecta ii. 403.) St. Augustine describes it as “grande, et inflata follibus.” It is also spoken of by Ammianus Marcellinus; and exactly described by Claudian, in the fourth century; and Cassiodorus (in the fifth century) defines it as a tower, made with various pipes, inflated by bellows, and played on by the fingers, and as having great sweetness and power. It was never used in the Greek Church. Its first ecclesiastical use in the West is a matter of obscurity. Bellarmine states, though on doubtful authority, that, in 660, Pope Vitalian introduced it into the church service at Rome. D. Rimbault, in his very interesting notes to Roger North’s Memoirs of Music, (p. 48,) says, that it was introduced into the English service by Theodore and Adrian, emissaries of Vitalian; and from a passage in the writings of Adhelm, bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, it appears that the external case was gilt, (“auratis capsis,”) and that the pipes were numerous: “maxima millenis organa flabris.” All ecclesiastical historians relate, that in 757 the Eastern emperor Constantine Copronymus sent an organ to Pepin, which was placed, as affirmed by M. Hamel, (Manuel des Facteurs des Orgues,) in a church at Compiegne. In 811, ambassadors from Constantinople brought two organs to Charlemagne. However, it is supposed that its use did not become generally known in France till 826, when a Venetian priest introduced what is supposed to be an hydraulic organ. In the same century, Walafred Strabo says, Louis le Debonnaire gave an organ to Aix la Chapelle. In 994, according to Petronius, there were organs at Erfurt and Magdeburg. In 951, Wulstan relates that Elphege, bishop of Winchester, gave an organ to Winchester with 400 pipes, 40 keys, and (if his meaning is clear) 26 pairs of bellows, played by two organists. (See Turner’s Anglo-Saxons, book ix. c. 9.) In the tenth century, Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, gave an organ to Malmesbury, described by William of Malmesbury as having copper pipes. At the same time an organ was given to Ramsey church, with copper pipes, “emitting a sweet melody and far-resounding peal,” played on feast days. (See Turner, as before.) In the twelfth century, an organ is mentioned in the abbey of Fécamp. And Gervas the monk, describing Canterbury cathedral as he knew it before the fire in 1172, says, that it had arches to carry organs.

The above notices suffice to show the error of Bingham’s statement, that organs were not used in churches till after Thomas Aquinas’ time in 1250. Aquinas merely specifies harps and psalteries, as not used, “which our Church does not assume, lest she should seem to judaize.” The south of France, as also the south of Italy, long retained Oriental customs in their churches; thus at Lyons organs were for a long time unemployed. Cardinal Caietan says, the organ was not used in the primitive Church, and gives this as a reason why it is not used in the pope’s chapel. A tenacious respect for antiquity seems to be the only reason which forbids its use in the Greek churches: since, in some branches of that communion, as in Russia, vocal harmony in the sacred offices is carried to great perfection. Hospinian, an ultra-Protestant writer, contends against the use of it, on the authority of St. Paul.

So strongly prejudiced were other writers of the ultra-Protestant school against organs that Newte, in his preface to Dodwell on Music, after mentioning the report of Balæus, that organs were introduced in the year 660, adds, “or rather that it may not want the mark of the beast of the Revelation, as the Magdeburg continuators say, 666.” It is difficult to understand the principle of the objection. The ordering of the instrumental as well as oral music in the temple was a matter, be it remembered, of Divine institution: thus in 2 Chron. xxix. 25. “And he set the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet: for so was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets.” To be consistent, all oral song, nay, the words of the sacred songs themselves, ought to be silenced also.

At the time of the Reformation, organs were considered as among the vilest remnants of Popery, by all the more enthusiastic partisans of Protestantism. And by those who carried out the principles of ultra-Protestantism to their legitimate extent at the great Rebellion, organs were so generally demolished, that scarcely an instrument could be found in England at the Restoration; and foreigners were brought over to play on some of those which were then erected. It is satisfactory to see such prejudices wearing away. We now find those whose horror at fasting, or at self-denials, or at turning to the east in prayer, or at preaching in a surplice, as the Prayer Book directs, or implies, or at bowing to the altar, or at preferring prayer to preaching, &c., is unfeigned, and who see in these observances nothing but Popery, nevertheless expending large sums of money to erect organs, which are now heard to sound in their very meeting-houses. We believe the Kirk of Scotland is alone consistent in this respect, and true to the principles of their ultra-Protestant forefathers; the members of that Establishment do not even yet tolerate what at the Reformation was called “a squeaking abomination.”

The organ in the Anglican Church had been the regular accompaniment of the choral service for some hundred years before the Reformation. It is still used in cathedrals, collegiate and royal churches and chapels, more frequently than abroad; where it is more employed for symphonies than for an accompaniment, and that in general only on Sundays, holy-days, and eves; whereas in regular English choirs it is used at least twice daily, accompanying the psalms, canticles, and anthems, and those parts of the service which are allowed by the rubric to be sung, including the responses and litanies on more solemn occasions. In ancient times (till the great Rebellion) organs were more common in the college chapels at the universities than now. The general introduction of organs into London parish churches, however, did not take place till after the Restoration. Their use appears never to have been very general, even in cathedrals, in Ireland; and in Scotland it is supposed that they were not introduced till the 15th century.

The phrase pair of organs occurs in many old books. It had its origin probably in the two stops which were common in the smaller mediæval organs: possibly, however, to the two organs, which in the middle ages, as now, entered into the construction of the larger instruments. These large organs consist in reality of three or four instruments, each having its separate sound-board and set of keys; viz. 1. The great organ, for choruses and louder passages: 2. The choir organ, softer than the former, used for the verse passages, &c., and the alternate chant of the psalms; generally placed in front of the great organ; not called from chair, as some suppose, (as being placed behind the organist’s chair,) but from the choir: as appears from Dugd. Mon. ed. 1830, ii. 103, “when in the 15th century the abbot of Croyland gave two organs to his church; the greater one being placed in the nave, the lesser in the choir.” 3. The swell, an English invention, formerly the third manual, played what was called the echo; which is still occasionally found abroad. 4. The pedal organ, or that which is played by the feet. Foreign organs have frequently four rows of manuals, and two of pedals.

It appears from Mr. Hamel’s work, already mentioned, that the organ of the middle ages was by no means so small as is commonly imagined by those who have been misled by ancient monuments and drawings. In the 16th century began the construction of those enormous machines, for which Germany is so renowned: and in consequence it became customary in the north of Europe to transfer the organ from one side of the choir to the chancel screen, (the worst position possible,) or the west end. The improvement of the organ has been progressively advancing ever since.

It may be considered consistent with the object of a Church Dictionary to conclude this long article with some observation on an objection often made to the employment in sacred music of what are wrongly called the imitative stops of the organ. In reality very few of its stops are imitative. The organ is properly a collection of several instruments, which a most complicated machinery enables the organist to play at the same time. The trumpet, the bassoon, and hautboy stops, for example, are each a set of real instruments of these names, differing from those usually so called, only in being inflated by a bellows, not by the mouth, and each giving but one note, and played on by keys. Thus when the psalmist calls on us to praise him with the sound of the trumpet, it is a literal response to his summons to accompany the voice with the stop of that name.

See Hamel, Manuel des Facteurs des Orgues, (comprehending Bedos’ great work;) and Roger North’s Memoirs of Music, edited by Rimbault, already referred to; Burney and Hawkins’s Histories of Music; and Burney’s Musical Tour.

The Organ mentioned in Scripture as the invention of Jubal, (Gen. iv. 21,) and in Job xxi. 12, and Ps. cl. 4, is in the Hebrew Huggab, meaning, as Parkhurst supposes, a fastening or joining together. It is supposed by Calmet (see Music) to have been like the ancient Pandean pipes, a set of unequal flutes played by the mouth. As used in Gen. iv. it seems to indicate wind instruments generally; but its form and capacity is altogether unknown.