The Probert Encyclopaedia of Music

ORGAN

In music, an organ is a wind instrument containing numerous pipes of various dimensions and kinds, which are filled with wind from a bellows, and played upon by means of keys similar to those of a piano, and sometimes by foot keys or pedals.
Stainer described the history of the organ as 'nothing more than a narrative of the efforts made by men to bring under the control of one performer a large number of the instruments called flutes'. The particular sort of pipe or flute, the use of which led eventually to the construction of an organ, was the flute-d'bec or beak-flute that is, a pipe with a mouth-piece, which was placed against the lips to receive the breath of the player. The first step in organ building was to set several flutes
on end over a box of wind supplied by bellows. The contrivance known as Paris Pipes, a
graduated series of open pipes fixed together, may have furnished the idea for this. Early organs have not survived, but we know that the Romans had musical instruments similar to an organ and the keyboard was invented, in the 6th or 7th century, the early keys being so large and clumsy that
they had to be struck with the clenched fist. As late as the 12th century, the compass did not exceed
two octaves, usually without semitones.
An organ set up in Winchester Cathedral in 951 was the largest then known, having twenty-six pairs of bellows operated by seventy men. This instrument had ten keys, with forty pipes to each key. Gradually the keys approximated more to the modern form, though for long the sharps were white and the naturals black, the reverse of the present colours.
Early in the 15th century the important addition of pedals or keys for the feet was made. This now
essential feature of the organ progressed quickly in Germany, where it originated, but was slow in reaching England. Another important invention was the swell, the enclosing of a complete department in a box, the front of which is constructed on the Venetian-blind principle, so that the sound 'swells' out or diminishes under the control of a foot-pedal. The swell was first applied by Abraham Jordan to a London church organ in 1712.
Research Organ