How Well Do You Know Your Organ?

by Howard Zettervall

This article is reprinted from the June 1963 issue of the journal, The Organ Portfolio, published through June 2021 by The Lorenz Corporation.

In the midst of a few calm moments, it might be well to ask yourself this question — and answer honestly — before the normal church music frenzy begins again. When you are forced to get results quickly you draw a few knobs, tilt a few tabs and push a few pistons, as the case may be, and you don't take time to explore the resources and limitations of the instrument you are playing.

A good place to give yourself this quiz would be in your own home, away from the organ. Before you are tempted to take another look, get yourself a large blank sheet of paper and start reproducing what lay before you when you last sat on the organ bench. You are not interested in producing an artistic masterpiece, just a sketch of the stops, pistons, and gadgets, their relative locations, and everything that on them lies. Are you stuck already? From left to right, which come first, the Pedal stops or those for the Swell? If it is the Pedal, which comes first, the 16; or the 8', the loud or the soft, the Diapsaon or the Bourdon? What about the Couplers? Can you spell the stops correctly? If you aren't sure, take a few moments off sometime to look them up in a dictionary or [online], and you will impress your organ colleagues with your knowledge of the instrument. How have you fared so far? To find out, take your chart to the organ and compare your sketch with the instrument itself. Yes, everything is there, in the right place, spelled right, all the numerals, even the right colors if you were meticulously careful. Congratulations! You are on the road to becoming a good organist. By knowing where things are, you will be able to make your registration changes skillfully and quickly, and you will be less likely to bring on the Chimes when you are trying to add SW-to-GT, or to bring on some blaring Tuba when you are reaching for the softest stop on the organ.

Let's assume your score is perfect so far. Now the question is: What do all these things mean? What do these gadgets do? What is their function and purpose? For example, what happens when you depress Unison Off? For a truly frightening experience, use the Unison Off and the 16' and 4' couplers with a solo stop for a tender melodic passage, then quickly take off the couplers and add several stops for a rather full ensemble effect, as for a hymn. If you have forgotten to switch the Unison On, your ears will be greeted by one of the most deafening silences known to man, a silence perhaps broken only by the bass part your feet play in the pedals. One or two such harrowing experiences leave the organist with a very healthy respect for the power of this little switch, which can silence the voices of the mightiest stops.

Some organists seem to be rather afraid of the instrument. Every drawknob, tablet, piston, button, gauge, etc., was put there for some purpose, and if you don't know what the purpose is, don't be afraid to experiment in an attempt to discover what the purpose may be. Most organs have safety features built in, and nothing will blow up if you push something you have never pushed before. You may even discover that the gadget does indeed serve no useful purpose. Perhaps it was built into the console against the day when the organ would be expanded, and you are wasting your energies manipultaing levers which accomplish nothing at all. Or you may discover something which should work and doesn't, something which should be attended to by your serviceman on his next visit. Incidentally, he is usually a man from whom you can learn a great deal by asking about something that puzzles you. But don't pretend to know more about the mechanics of the instrument than you really do. He can quickly see through your little artifices.

And now we come to what is probably the most important question of all. Do you know what the stops really sound like? Forget for a moment the names with which they are tagged and concetrate on the sounds they produce. Stop names can be helpful, but they can also be highly misleading. How many different sounds does your organ really produce? On a "unifed" or "duplex" pipe organ you may fondly imagine that you have 30 different stops when in actual fact you have only a fraction of that number, everything else being duplications at different pitches or on different manuals, perhaps even with different names. On some electronic organs there may be only one, two, or three basic tone colors, and you are only deluding yourself when you tinker with many tablets, when only one or two would send the same signal to the speakers. Most of us are prone to believe everything we read or see, but a good organist must be a bit skeptical of what his eyes tell him about an organ; he must trust instead the judgment of his ears.

Article written June 1963

Copyright © 1963 by Lorenz Publishing Company