CHAPTER IX.

TRANSFERENCE OF STOPS.

At the commencement of the period of which we are treating, the stops belonging to the Swell organ could be drawn on that keyboard only; similarly the stops on the Great, Choir and Pedal organs could be drawn only on their respective keyboards. It is now becoming more and more common to arrange for the transference of stops from one keyboard to another.

If this plan be resorted to as an effort to make an insufficient number of stops suffice for a large building, it is bound to end in disappointment and cannot be too strongly condemned. On the other hand, if an organ-builder first provides a number stops that furnish sufficient variety of tonal quality and volume that is ample for the building in which the instrument is situated, and then arranges for the transference of a number of the stops to other manuals than their own, he will be adding to the tonal resources of the instrument in a way that is worthy of commendation. Many organs now constructed have their tonal effects more than doubled through adoption of this principle.

It is difficult to say who first conceived the idea of transference of stops, but authentic instances occurring in the sixteenth century can be pointed out. During the last fifty years many builders have done work in this direction, but without question the leadership in the movement must be attributed to Hope-Jones. While others may have suggested the same thing, he has worked the system out practically in a hundred instances, and has forced upon the attention of the organ world the artistic advantages of the plan.

His scheme of treating the organ as a single unit and rendering it possible to draw any of the stops on any of the keyboards at any (reasonable) pitch, was unfolded before the members of the Royal College of Organists in London at a lecture he delivered on May 5, 1891.

When adopting this system in part, he would speak of "unifying" this, that or the other stop, and this somewhat inapt phrase has now been adopted by other builders and threatens to become general.

Extraordinary claims of expressiveness, flexibility and artistic balance are made by those who preside at "unit (Hope-Jones) organs," but this style of instrument is revolutionary and has many opponents. Few, however, can now be found who do not advocate utilization of the principle to a greater or less degree in every organ. For instance, who has not longed at times that the Swell Bourdon could be played by the pedals? Or that the Choir Clarinet were also in the Swell?

Compton, of Nottingham, England, employs this plan of stop extension and transference, or unifying of stops, in all the organs he builds.

As additional methods facilitating in some cases the transfer of stops must be named the "double touch" and the "pizzicato touch." The former, though practically introduced by Hope-Jones and found in most of his organs built during the last fifteen years, was, we believe, invented by a Frenchman and applied to reed organs. The pizzicato touch is a Hope-Jones invention which, though publicly introduced nearly twenty years since, did not meet with the recognition it deserved until recently. The earliest example of this touch in the United States is found in the organ at Hanson Place Baptist Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1909.

In the French Mustel reed organ the first touch is operated by depressing the keys about a sixteenth part of an inch. This produces a soft sound. A louder and different tone is elicited upon pushing the key further down. In the pipe organ the double touch is differently arranged. The first touch is the ordinary touch. Upon exerting a much heavier pressure upon the key it will suddenly fall into the second touch (about one-eighth of an inch deep) and will then cause an augmentation of the tone by making other pipes speak. The device is generally employed in connection with the couplers and can be brought into or out of action at the will of the organist. For instance, if the performer be playing upon his Choir Organ Flute and draws the Oboe stop on the Swell organ, he can (provided the double-touch action be drawn), by pressing any key or keys more firmly, cause those particular notes to speak on the Oboe, while the keys that he is pressing in the ordinary way will sound only the Flute.

The pizzicato touch is also used mostly in connection with the couplers. When playing upon a soft combination on the Great, the organist may draw the Swell to Great "pizzicato" coupler. Whenever now he depresses a Great key the Swell key will (in effect) descend with it, but will be instantly liberated again, even though the organist continue to hold his Great key. By means of this pizzicato touch (now being fitted to all Hope-Jones organs built in this country) a great variety of charming musical effects can be produced.

THE UNIT ORGAN.

The Unit organ in its entirety consists of a single instrument divided into five tonal families, each family being placed in its own independent Swell box. The families are as follows: "Foundation"--this contains the Diapasons, Diaphones, Tibias, etc.; "woodwind"--this contains Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets, etc.; "strings"--this contains the Gambas, Viols d' Orchestre, Dulcianas, etc.; "brass"--this contains the Trumpets, Cornopeans and Tubas; "percussion"--this contains the Tympani, Gongs, Chimes, Glockenspiel, etc.

On each of the keyboards any of the stops, from the "foundation" group, the "woodwind" group, the "string" group, the "brass" group and the "percussion" group, may be drawn, and they may be drawn at 16 feet, at 8 feet, and, in some instances, at 4 feet, at 2 feet, at twelfth and at tierce pitches.

Arranged in this way an organ becomes an entirely different instrument. It is very flexible, for not only can the tones be altered by drawing the various stops at different pitches, but the various groups may be altered in power of tone independently of each other. At one moment the foundation tone may entirely dominate, by moving the swell pedals the strings may be made to come to the front while the foundation tone disappears; then again the woodwind asserts itself whilst the string tone is moderated, till the opening of the box containing the brass allows that element to dominate. The variety of the tonal combinations is practically endless.

The adoption of this principle also saves needless duplication of stops. In the organ at St. George's Hall, England, there are on the manuals 5 Open Diapasons, 4 Principals, 5 Fifteenths, 3 Clarinets, 2 Orchestral Oboes, 3 Trumpets, 3 Ophicleides, 3 Trombas, 6 Clarions, 4 Flutes, etc., etc. In the Hope-Jones Unit organ at Ocean Grove effects equal to the above are obtained from only 6 stops. The organist of Touro Synagogue, New Orleans, has expressed the opinion that his ten-stop Unit organ is equal to an ordinary instrument with sixty stops.

SYMPATHY.

A strong reason against the duplication of pipes of similar tone in an organ is that curious acoustical phenomenon, the _bête noir_ of the organ-builder, known as _sympathy_, or interference of sound waves. When two pipes of exactly the same pitch and scale are so placed that the pulsations of air from the one pass into the other, if blown separately the tone of each is clear; blown together there is practically no sound heard, the waves of the one streaming into the other, and a listener hears only the rushing of the air. That the conditions which produce sound are all present may be demonstrated by conveying a tube from the mouth of either of the pipes to a listener's ear, when its tone will be distinctly heard. In other words, one sound destroys the other. Helmholtz explains this phenomenon by saying that "when two equal sound waves are in opposition the one nullifies the effect of the other and the result is a straight line," that is, no wave, no sound. "If a wave crest of a particular size and form coincides with another exactly like it, the result will be a crest double the height of each one" (that is, the sound will be augmented). * * * "If a crest coincides with a trough the result will be that the one will unify the other," and the sound will be destroyed.[1] That is why in the old-style organs the builder, when he used more than one Diapason, tried to avoid this sympathy by using pipes of different scale, but even then the results were seldom satisfactory; the big pipes seemed to swallow the little ones. In the big organ in Leeds Town Hall, England, there was one pipe in the Principal which nobody could tune. The tuner turned it every possible way in its socket without avail, and at last succeeded by removing it from the socket and mounting it on a block at a considerable distance from its proper place, the wind being conveyed to it by a tube. This is only one instance of what frequently occurred.

In the Hope-Jones organ the usual plan of putting all the C pipes on one side of the organ and all the C# pipes on the other, is departed from. The pipes are alternated and in this ingenious way sympathy is largely avoided.

[1] Broadhouse: "Musical Acoustics," p. 261.