Transcripts
1. An introduction: Hello, and welcome
to the Walker organ, built in 1956 here at St. Cumber's Church of Scotland
in the Center of London. And this course is
going to show you the various elements of
the organ from the stops, the manuals, the pedals, talking a little bit
about the bellows and the mechanics inside the organ, and also giving some
historical context about how these things have
changed over the years. The course might be
suitable for you if you are playing piano at a
fairly advanced level, but you want to
take your playing and transfer it onto the organ. Perhaps you have a local
church in need of an organist, or you particularly enjoy
organ music and want to learn a little bit more about
how the sound is produced, as Mozart termed it, the king of instruments
and originally, you know, imitating
the orchestra. So I hope that you find this course useful
and informative, and we're going to
discuss lots of elements in the
context of the course, and I hope that you enjoy
it. Thanks very much.
2. The manuals (keyboards): So part one, the manuals
or the keyboards. Similar to a piano, we have black and white
keys on the piano. Obviously, we have 88 keys. Here we have considerably fewer. We're missing those
upper and lower octaves. In the English organ, we call this middle
manual the Great. And it's usually used
for accompanying hymns and sort of bigger items, bigger, you know, chorales. We have the swell here. Usually
a more distant division. So the pipework is usually sort of higher and further away. So it can create a
more ethereal sound. But it also fills in the sort of missing orchestral textures. You often have some
reads like oboes, trumpets up here on the swell. And more often than not, it's what we call an
enclosed division, as in it's behind shutters that you can operate
with your foot. I'll show you in a minute to create crescendos and dmuendo. So we have the great sort of main manual, we
have the swell. But then down here, we have
what's called the choir, sometimes called the
positf in Europe. But the choir essentially is
a sort of smaller version of the great used to
accompany the choir, as you might expect,
so more gentle. But often you have
some solo voices here. On this particular
organ, we have a tuba. You know, very triumphant, so that often comes
out on Easter Day. But then we have some
quieter stops, as well. We have an oboe. And a clarinet. Quite gentle. So you have different
purposes with the choir. But Germani as a solo voice, but also to accompany the
choir. They're great. Let me give you an
example of that. So and with a few more stops. Quite a full, quite
a rich sound there. The swell, again, a
bit more distant. And with some kind of
exciting orchestral reads. Quite sort of full and rich. And this swell on
the Walker organ has a trumpet, an oboe. And a contra fagoto
like a basin. So quite a lot of variety there. Now, organs around
the world have different numbers of keyboards.
Some will just have one. So, too, I think
the biggest organ, is it the Wanamaker Hall in the US has I can't
remember seven or eight. Ridiculous, so you're
sort of, you know, up the top here playing
something and then down here. Generally, in the UK, most will have two as a minimum, but three just creates
more possibilities. And you're actually
able to join to couple these manuals together so we can do what's
called swell to grate. So, as we're playing the grate, we draw a stop over here, and we can actually
link the two keyboards or the two manuals together. The thing about organ
keys is they're sprung. On the piano, you know, you press a key down and the hammer actually
hits the string. Here, we're simply pushing the key down, and on this organ, a signal is going into the pipework to
activate the sound. But the thing about
the key distinction if you're pardon the pun
between the organ and the piano is no matter
how hard you press, you always get the
same volume of sound. So it's no good pressing
the keys harder. You don't get any more sound. In order to effect that, you have to pull more stops out. So, yeah, we have the manuals, the great, the swell,
and the choir.
3. The mechanics : So that's all very well.
We have our manuals, we have our keyboards, and
we're creating our sound. But before we get to that point, how is the sound actually
created inside the organ? So a key element is the bellows, which is like a big sort
of accordion thing inside, a big sort of
canvas, full of air, and pumped in via a pump, and it's weighted on the top. And that creates the
pressure inside the bellows, which then forces the air
through to the pipe work. In fact, the pipes all sit in
what's called a soundboard, which is like a big bit of wood, lots of holes in where the
pipes poke out the top, and that's how the air
gets through to it. Back in the day, originally,
before electricity, somebody had to sit behind the organ pumping
pumping the organ, you know, the organ grinder
sat there at the back. These days, electricity
does the work for us and creates the air and
the pressure that we need to go through
to the pipes. Some organs have multiple
bellows depending on the size of the instruments. So just have one. And if you listen
very carefully, you might be able to hear the
the air, the bellows here. Naturally, there's going to be a bit of air sort of leaking out. You can't capture all of it. So sometimes you
do hear a bit of a hiss when the
organ is turned on. But yeah, that effectively creates the pressure
and the air required. And then when we go
to draw a stop out, that creates the connection
with the bellows there. So when we draw a stop, we are opening up that hole in the soundboard where the air can escape through and
into the pipe. And on the organ, we have lots and lots of
different types of stop. Originally, the
organ, I suppose, intended to sort of
imitate the orchestra. So you have stops
like a trumpet, as we mentioned. You
know, quite majestic. But then also you
have very gentle stops, known as strings. I create sort of soft
and quite ethereal, quite sort of floaty sound. You have something in
between called a diapason, which is quite a sort
of forthright stop. You know, it speaks
quite clearly. Quite sort of strong and loud. And then you have a flute. Quite sort of playful,
quite joyous. And the most important thing
about the stops is they have a little number
near underneath or above and it tells you
how long the pipe is. Essentially, the longer the
pipe, the deeper the sound. So a pipe that has
an eight means that the lowest note on that
stop is eight feet long. So imagine eight feet is quite I'm afraid I don't know
the American equivalent, but that is quite long, okay? So we also have 16 foot pipes. 16 foot of pipe is substantial. The deepest on this organ
is actually 32 foot. So imagine 32 feet of
pipe creates a very, very low very rumbly sound. I'll give you a demo, 32 foot. I'm not sure if you can
actually hear that, but essentially, it just
creates a sort of rumble. I have seen some organs
that have a 64 foot, incredibly deep, incredibly low. On the other hand, you have
very short pipes, very small. So you've got a two foot here. You can create very high
and very low sounds. The range of the
organ is extreme. The central thing to remember is anything that has an eight is an eight foot pipe it speaks at the same pitch as as if you
were playing on the piano. So for instance, middle C on the piano, I draw an eight foot. Sounds exactly the same pitch
as it would on the piano. I draw a four foot and we
get an octave above it. So Can you hear? So I'm holding the
eight foot down. I draw a four foot stop, get one octave above. So if I draw a two foot, I get another octave above that. If I draw a 16, I get an octave below. So the whole idea of the
organ is layering up these different octaves to
create sort of richer sound. So with the 168, the four, the two, the
chord sounds like this. Very rich, from the
very lowest to the very highest of sounds there. And Bach, I mean, you know, one of the sort of key
exponents of the organ, often uses this registration
called a Planum, which is an eight, a four, a two, and a mixture
to create the sound. And if somebody goes,
that is the organ sound. That's what I remember.
It's probably that 842 mixture together. Now, mixture is a stop
we haven't spoken about, and the mixture sort of we won't go into too
much detail about it, but it fills in the missing
notes, the sort of harmonics. So, for instance,
if you've got an eight and a four, you've
got an octave there. We've got sort of the
middle bit is missing, and it sort of fills
it and makes it just sound a little bit richer. If you don't have the
mixture, it just sounds very sort of exposed, I suppose, and sort of a
little bit plain, perhaps. And the beauty of the
organ is, you could play, like all the different
parts of the orchestra, so you can have an
accompaniment going on here. So you have some
chords, for instance. Well, you have a tune going
on in the right hand. So you can have accompaniment
and tune simultaneously. On the piano, you're more restricted because you're
playing all at the same um, all at the same keyboard there. And the pipes are made of
lots of different things. Often the pipes right at the
front of the case are metal. And because they're
sort of display pipes, inside, they vary. So are made from
wood, some are metal, and some have little sort
of vibrating reads in. I'll show you a
demonstration of that, perhaps the obo on the swell. So rather than just being
a sort of pipe as such, it has a little tongue that
vibrates very quickly, and that's how the
sound is created. If you think of an
actual orchestral obo, it's a double reded instrument, so two reads vibrating together.
But here, just the one. On English organs, that oboe is very sort of typical, quite soft, quite gentle, quite mellow, almost
the English Obo. If you go to France and Germany, the oboes kind of much
richer, much fuller. A lovely stop that happens
quite a lot on French, German organs is a Cromon, which is like a sort
of cross fusion between a clarinet
and a trumpet. It's quite sort of quite bolsi. It's quite a big
sound. Excuse me. We don't have anything
like that on this organ. What we do have is a Well,
we're talking of stops. We have a thing called
a tremulent and a tremulent it sort of makes the bellows waver
a bit, do, do, do, do. So imagine when somebody sings, they naturally
sing with vibrato. The voice sort of the pitch goes up and down while
they're on a note. To create sort of interest. And the tremulant does exactly the same
thing with the organ. And that was Stravinsky's
biggest complaint of the organ. He says, It's the instrument
that never breathes. So I think organ builders have sought to sort of make it more musical over the years. And this tremulint creates a lovely wavering.
Have a listen. So the sound is not just sort
of deadpan without that. It's quite It's very
subtle difference, but it just creates
that sort of, you know, musicality and interest there. So, in French organ music, the stop combination is
often lots and lots of eight foots drawn simultaneously and sort of coupled together. So you get this kind
of very rich sound. You know, to create
sort of very sonorous, and we call that the
font FONDS that's sort of all of the eight foots to create a sort of
really kind of rich, luxurious texture
that sort of mimics, like a Gothic cathedral
or something. So the organ is really,
really versatile from the very highest stuff to
the very lowest stuff, and then creating these
beautiful textures in between. Some of these
stocks are actually tuned at slightly lower pitches. For instance, this
one over here. And what that does, it sort of creates a wavering
sound. Let me demonstrate. So if I play a
normal chord, say, D major, then I add this
slightly out of tune stop. I'm not sure this microprame will pick much of
the difference, but if it's slightly tuned out, it creates a sort of ethereal maybe shimmering sort of sound. Do experiment with
those. And I, you know, often people's complain to the organ is it's too bloody
loud. You know, you hear it. And the thing is, actually, the quietest sounds, the string sounds and the
really gentle flutes that are mellow are actually
really some of the most interesting things. So experiment with the quieter sounds as well as the
louder stuff as well.
4. Footwork : Now, the role of
an organist's feet is often quite underrated. So I think this is where
most people struggle when they're transitioning from
piano onto the organ, because you've been used to
playing with your hands, your left hand plays the bass, your right hand plays the tune, the melody, and brings
it out at the top. And now all of a sudden, ah, my feet. I've got
to use my feet. And so we have this thing
called a pedal board down here, and it's effectively
um on the keyboards, it's these notes from very
low C up to on this organ, high G. Keyboards
some pedal boards rather stop at F, depending. And Baroque pedal boards
were often shorter, gave you a few notes. And back in Bach's day, the
pedals were much shorter. So there's a sort of
tradition, I suppose, of playing bach just using the toes rather than the heels, as well, which seems to
go in and out of vogue. But essentially, push the pedal down, and it gives you a note. Let me demonstrate
so for instance, middle C will be this one. Then in the middle
of the pedal board, that C is that one. And then the very lowest note on the pedal board is this one. So the pedals create
a really deep, rich and resonant sound world. And as I mentioned earlier, we have very, very low,
some of these pipes. We've got a 32 foot, 16 foot, and it creates this really kind of rumbly effect. Have a listen. It's almost like the whole
organ sort of lifting off. And there's different
thoughts about whether to wear shoes or whether
it's playing your bare feet. I personally play in socks. At the minute, I do have
some shoes somewhere, but they're long lost during a house move in
a cupboard somewhere. But you can get shoes, sort of dance shoes with
kind of very thin soles so that you can slide between the notes and you
can feel the keys. I think this is
where people find the pedals most difficult
when they first come to them because it's the coordination
between what's going on in the hands and what's going on in the feet that really
is a challenge. Um, and so a tip for
you if you're just starting out is to focus
on pedals with one hand. So pedals with left hand. And try and learn
your piece that way. Then pedals with right
hand and then slowly, slowly piece them together. But you can't rush the pedals. Everybody takes
time. It takes time. And you'll soon when
you start to play, you'll find you're
playing like this, you're constantly looking at the pedals going Where's
that? Where's that? Hey, well, you know, and then eventually you'll
your feet will start to do the job for you. Um, so, yeah, these are all the
different types of pedal stops. I mean, there are some reds here as well, so we've got Opheclide. Yeah. So that's quite a
rich, quite a big red. But that's got the tongue
inside it vibrating, so it's sort of Yeah,
that's one of the reasons. And actually, on this
organ, interestingly, two of the stops, the trombone and the trumpet are actually borrowed
from the grate. So there's stops
that both played by the feet and also by the hands
up on the grate as well. And sometimes you
have that stops are shared across different
across different manuals. And like the manuals, do you remember how you
can couple them together? You can join the
swell onto the grate. We can also get the pedals
to play the great, as well. So, for instance, if we've
got some great stops out, we can select great to pedal. And the stops are actually playing what's on the grate
without anything drawn. So you can couple that
together as well, which kind of makes the pedals sound a bit
more like the manual, so it's like one instrument. You know, it's quite a sort
of clever device there. So that's the pedals.
5. Playing aids : So often when I start
with a new student here, people go, What
are these buttons? You see all these
buttons under there? People are fascinated
by what these do, not the actual stops or
anything, but the buttons. It's a good question. So these
are called playing aids. And, you know, when
Bach was writing music, um, back in the day, he didn't have these
sort of buttons. He had somebody
standing next to him, probably a choir
boy or something pulling the stops out manually. But these buttons essentially capture different
combinations of stops. These ones are
called divisionals, and these eight here one, two, three, four, five, six, 78. They change the stops on
the grate on this manual. So one is a quiet combination.
Eight is allowed. Yeah. And then
everything in between is like getting louder
is a crescendo, so sort of graded. And it allows you while
you're playing to sort of change the combinations to
get louder or get quieter. So to create those changes of dynamic so that we're not just sat at one volume all the time. Can be helpful, you know, in a hymn, for instance,
you have a loud verse, and then you want to get a
bit quieter in the middle. And so that's that.
There's eight over here. I'm not sure if you can
see them, but they're red. And these are called generals. And these change not
just one manual. They can affect the stops
across the whole organ. So we push one of these,
and we could say, have a solo on the choir, an accompaniment on the great, an oboe on the swell, and then some pedal
notes, as well. So the generals affect
the whole organ. You've got another type
of playing aid here, which is called a coupler. And the couplers, I mentioned
this briefly earlier, but they allow you to join
together different manuals. So if you're playing
on the grate, you can actually link
it to the swell. So we can have both the grate and the swell playing
at the same time. And originally, this
was done mechanically. So when you press down the keys and keys were
pretty heavy back in the day, and then you had to have the weight of those keys
simultaneously as well, so the whole thing got
really, really, really heavy. Today, it's very light and
it's sort of electric action. So there's, you know, no extra weight or sort
of stress about that. It's sort of all done for you. Really, really, pretty
straightforward. So yeah, so we've got the couplers joining
the manuals together. We've got the divisionals that
operate on each keyboard. And then we've got the
generals over here. Some really modern and sort of fancy organs have this
thing called a sequencer, which is basically
a plus button. And you can set, say, 100 different combinations
of stops in your piece. And all you do is you sequence through them. You press
your plus button. This organ doesn't have it.
But often the plus is here, here, and it's on
the foot as well. So say you're playing
something really complicated with hands. And your foot's free. You
just press plus, plus. Add stops, add stops, add. So it just allows you to sort
of sequence to go through all those different types of
stops, you know, over time. And that's the thing that
really makes it musical, because if you just sit on one sort of sound
for a long time, it can get a bit a bit
wearing for the listener. So all these things
are just, you know, aids to make us play
more musically.
6. Expression pedals : Now, there's two other types of pedal called the
expression pedal, and these are sort of
romantic invention. These were not around
on Bach's organs. But essentially, the expression pedals allow you to crescendo to get louder
without changing the stops. So the swell and the choir are contained within two
chambers inside the organ, in the sort of
belly of the organ. And the swell is behind
these sort of shutters. Right? So, when the
shutters are closed, the sound is
deadened. It's less. You know, it's like a sort
of sound not sound proof, but a sort of chamber, you know, where the
sounds kept in. When I push forwards
with my pedal down here, I effectively open those doors
and allow the sound out. So I can actually
have lots of stops. Close the box, as we'd say, close the doors on the chamber, and gets a rumbly but
distant sort of sound. Yeah. But now, from
that sound soup, you can create a dramatic effect without sort of
overwhelming everybody. Now, as I push forward on the
pedal, here what happens. I can effect a crescendo. So effectively, you can be
playing along, playing along, and you can make the sound that little bit louder
as you're playing. So you can do, you know, you can play Mendelson Brahms, those sort of composers
that need you to grow through a phrase. We can do it with these pedals. I can be tricky
if you're playing the pedal notes and having to push the
expression pedal, as well. You know, that's part
of the challenge. So we're constantly
multitasking. As organists and
just making sure that your feet and your mind are in the right
place at the right time. But yeah, that's quite
a nice effect as well. So we call the choir
and the swell enclosed divisions as in they're
within that box, you know, within that room, and yeah, the grate we would call
unenclosed division. It's open, and that's
potentially why the grate is usually much louder because
there's no casing on it. Not the grate is right at
the front of the casework, you know, depending
on the organ design. Um, So, yeah, so we have
our two expression pedals. Before this is quite a
modern invention, actually. Before they look like
this, they were like little ratchet box things. It was like a lever,
and you'd sort of kick the lever to close
to close the box, and then you pushed some pedal It's a little bit, a
little bit confusing. But this has a weight on, so it sort of it doesn't move. You know, it stays open,
and it stays closed. So, you know, quite
a nice way to, um, sort of add expressive
potential to music. And again, meaning they're
not limited to a set dynamic. So you can crescendo in those two different methods
by adding more stops, creating more sound or by pushing forwards and
opening the swell. And I hope you agree, but that sound, we
call it full swell, you've got the all
the swell notes out. It's quite exciting.
And then we crescendo, and we can make it even more exciting and give
it even more potential.
7. In conclusion : So this has been
immense amounts of fun, and it's been a bit of
a whistle stop tour. I think the key thing
to remember is that every organ is just
totally different. Like, there's no two organs in the world that are the same. You could turn up to a piano, and it's probably more
likely to be similar. So you always need
to give yourself plenty of time when you go to a new church to acclimatize. But don't you know, people get worried by
the pedals and think, Oh, I've got to
play with my feet. How am I going to do this? You
can always play the organ, just manuals, just
the keyboards alone. So, you know, don't
be fearful of learning because you think you can't play. Still, give it a go. Can still, you know,
make the sound. I think the other
challenge for people is getting onto an organ, certainly in the UK here, churches are your best bet. Call the local church, call the vicar, say,
I'm an organ student. Can I come and practice?
Don't be afraid to do that. Call the local organist. You know, a strange
breed organist. We are I think we're
accepting of that. But equally, I think, you know, we want to share the joy of these instruments
with other people. So I think you'll
often find people are quite accommodating and allow
you to practice and even, you know, give you some
lessons, some tuition. Beyond that, you know,
home practice organs now have really taken off, so you can get some amazing
instruments designed by various companies helped VRC, for instance, they
go round and they sample record all the organs
from around the world, and then you can
play them at home on your own sort of
digital console. And it's not quite
the real thing, but it gives you such a wonderful world of
different sounds. Sin Supple in Paris or, you know, Hereford
Cathedral here in the UK, some of the finest organs
in the world we now have access to on home organs. So that's often
another consideration personally, living
here in London, we don't have space for
that sort of thing, so the church is often
the better option. But I would just say
give yourself, you know, plenty of time to acclimatize
to the new instruments. Don't rush yourself
with the pedals. These things will always just take that
little bit of time. So give yourself plenty of time, but, you know, more importantly, just enjoy the journey. I think one of the key
things for me you know, while it's not possible
to have lessons all the time on the organ, it kind of takes quite a bit of, you know, administration
to organize. Recording yourself in the
church as how the audience or congregation will hear
you is so important. So yeah, all I say is
make the most of it. I'll play a little bit of
organ now to finish off. My cameraman, I'm afraid,
has gone on holiday, so I'll have to I'm
going to manually move you around so you get a wonderful view of this church. This is St. Columba
Church of Scotland. And this is the start of the prelude BWV 546. Oh
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
