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Organ (music)

In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual.

Classification

Keyboard instrument

, which use air moving through pipes to produce sounds. The air is supplied by bellows, an electric motor or water. Since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials for pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. Increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electric additions;

Pipe organs

Non-piped organs

pump organs

, which include the barrel organ and Orchestrion. These are controlled by mechanical means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by an organ grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor.

Mechanical organs

pan flute, syrinx, and nai, etc., are considered as ancestor of the pipe organ.

Panpipes

an ancient double reed instrument with two pipes, is the origin of the word Hydr-aulis (water-aerophone).

Aulos

or parlor organ: a reed instrument, usually with several stops and two foot-operated bellows.

Harmonium

: similar to the Harmonium, but that works on negative pressure, sucking air through the reeds.

American reed organ

: a reed instrument with an air reservoir and a foot-operated bellows. It was popular in the US in the mid-19th century. (This is not to be confused with the diatonic button accordion which is also known as the melodeon.)

Melodeon

: made famous by organ grinders in its portable form, the larger form often equipped with keyboards for human performance

Barrel organ

: small, accordion-like instrument manufactured in New York in the late 1800s

Organette

Orchestrion

Mechanical organs include:


The wind can also be created by using pressurized steam instead of air. The steam organ, or calliope, was invented in the United States in the 19th century. Calliopes usually have very loud and clean sound. Calliopes are used as outdoors instruments, and many have been built on wheeled platforms.

List of organ builders

List of organ composers

List of organists

Residence organ

Street organ

Choosing a Church Organ in the 21st Century

(c. 1865). The Early English Organ Builders and their work . London: William Reeves.

Rimbault, Edward Francis

of the Boston Chapter, AGO. 45,000 items of organ music.

Organ Library

Music and organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris

 – Homepage of the National Pipe Organ Register of the British Institute of Organ Studies, with extensive information on and many audio samples of original instruments

npor.org.uk

 – The Society promotes a widespread musical and historical interest in American organbuilding through collection, preservation, and publication of historical information, and through recordings and public concerts.

The Organ Historical Society