Keyboard wind musical instrument organ: device and description

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

When mentioning such epithets as greatness, grandiosity, power and monumentality, associations with something voluminous and impressive are involuntarily born in the head.

In the world of music, all the qualities described above are combined in one of the oldest instruments - the organ.

Introduction

Organ is a keyboard wind musical instrument that rightfully bears the title of the king of music. It is the world's largest musical instrument of all existing at the moment. The leader in size is located in the American city of Boardwalk and consists of 33 thousand pipes, the weight of which reaches 287 tons. The construction of such a titan lasted as much as 4 years.

Interesting fact: in the world it is impossible to find two exactly the same organs. Each of them is a special and unique work of art.

Musical instrument organ: description and history

At first glance, it may seem that the instrument has close ties to keyboards - piano and grand piano, but in fact everything is much more interesting:the "embryos" of the organ are considered to be the ancient bagpipes and Pan's flute.

The first organ was invented by the ancient Greek innovator Ctesibius (285-222 BC). This tool was called "hydravlos" - "water". The device of the organ included the obligatory presence of liquid. Thanks to the water in the external storage, the air pressure from the pump in the metal chamber was kept constant. Hydraulics consisted of 3 or 4 registers, each of which had from 7 to 18 pipes.

Organs of large dimensions appear in the IV century. And more advanced forms of a musical instrument even later - in the 7th-8th centuries.

The creation of organs began in Italy, then the art appeared in France and Germany. Since the 14th century, the instrument has spread throughout Western Europe.

The organ of the Middle Ages was much cruder: the manual keyboard was up to 7 cm wide, which had to be hit with fists. However, in the 15th century, the situation changed when they made some changes: they reduced the volume of keys and increased the number of pipes.

In the late Renaissance and Baroque era, the organ gained unprecedented popularity. Musical geniuses such as Bach, Pretorius, Banchieri, Vicentino, Frescobaldi, Neidhardt and others created for this instrument.

A huge contribution to the existence and development of the modern organ should be attributed to the work of the French master Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He got the idea to make a whole orchestra out of one musical instrument and was able to realizeher into life. Now there is a separate type of organ - symphonic, which in terms of its timbre characteristics can surpass entire groups of musical instruments.

Device

Due to the scale dimensions of the instrument, it has a very complex structure with various elements: console, manuals, pedal keyboard, registers with switches, pipes, etc.

Remote control

The console, or organ pulpit, is a place equipped with all the tools necessary for the performer: game manuals, a pedal and register switches. May also have channels, leg levers, copula activation buttons, etc.

• Copula - a device that allows you to play the registers of one hand keyboard while playing on another.
• Channel - a mechanism, the essence of which is to adjust the dynamics by opening or closing the door of a box that stores the pipes of a manual keyboard.

Manuals

Manuals are called keyboards, which are played with hands, which makes the organ look like a piano and grand piano in appearance. Their number can reach up to seven units, but on average the number varies from two to four.

Modern manuals have a range from a note to a major octave and go up to the third s alt. They are located one above the other, and their numbering in the form of Latin numerals goes according to the principle from bottom to top. Each of the manuals has a number of its own registers.

Register - a system of pipes of the same timbre, located in the wind part of the organ

However, a number of registers may not have their ownmanual keyboard. In this case, it will attach to any manual when the proper capules are activated.

Pedal keyboard

The keyboard, or pedal, is another very interesting device in the organ. The set of keys varies from 5 to 32 units, including their own rows of pipes (registers) of predominantly low timbres (from to a large octave to G or F first).

The pedal is played by pressing the keys with the heel or toe (the method depends on the fingering indicated in the notes). However, sound production with the back of the foot appeared relatively recently - until the 19th century, they played only with the toe.

Pedal keyboard can be of several types: straight and radial or sunken and straight.

The pedal part in the notes is indicated most often separately and is located under the part for the upper colleague (manual). The first recordings with a pedal keyboard date back to the middle of the 15th century.

Registers

This part of the organ device has a very important mission: when the registers are turned off, the keys of the instrument will not sound. The pipes are activated by electronic switches (register handles). They are located above the keyboard or on the sides of the music stand (music rest).

Each handle corresponds to its register and has an individual name, which indicates the height of the largest pipe of this register.

Registers are combined into groups: principal (has an organ timbre and is the main one), gambas, aliquots, flutes and others.

According to the arrangement of pipes, registers can be divided into two types: labial and reed.

The first type includes closed or open pipes with no tongues. Flutes, principals, potions and aliquots belong to it.

The second type, based on the name, includes the presence of a tongue, which, when exposed to air masses, creates an interesting sound similar to the timbres of wind instruments: oboe, clarinet, trumpet, bassoon, trombone and many others. The color of the sound will depend on the name and design of the register.

Reed registers can have not only a vertical structure, but also a horizontal one.

Pipes

Pipes in the device of the organ are wooden, metal and wood-metal of different lengths, shapes and diameters. The tool can include up to 10 thousand pipes. Most of the space is occupied by basses, whose height reaches 10 meters.

Traktura

Thanks to the tracture, the control mechanisms on the console are connected to the air-tight parts of the tool. Simply put, the tractura transfers the movement of the keys of an organ to the valves of one pipe or an entire group.

This mechanism can be of several types:

• mechanical;
• electric;
• electropneumatic;
• pneumatic;
• mixed.

Application

This massive instrument was previously only used for worship by the Catholic and Protestant churches.

Later, organ halls began to be built in Soviet buildings (for example, in the Moscow Conservatory or the State Chapel of St. Petersburg).

The organ is a universal instrument, as it is suitable both for solo performance of works, replacing the entire orchestra, and for accompaniment in combination with others: ensembles, vocalists and choir. Also, cantata-oratorio musical genres often cannot do without it.

Along with other keyboard instruments, the organ can act as a general-bass performer or, in other words, a digital bass - the lowest voice, on the basis of which the entire accompaniment is built later.