Audsley - The Art of Organ Building: A Comprehensive Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Teatise on the Tonal Appointment and Mechanical Construction of Concert-Room, Church, and Chamber Organs, Vol. 1

This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is an unabridged and corrected republication of the work first published by Dodd, Mead, and Company, New York, in 1905.

International Standard Book Number; 0-486-21314-5

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-18839/MN

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
21314507
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THE ART OF ORGAN-BUILDING

HAS not been given, and I gravely question if it ever will be given, to any one man to produce a complete treatise on the Science and Art of Organ-building. I certainly do not profess, in the present Work, to have approached within a reasonable distance of completeness. No one will know better than I myself know how poor my attempt has been to give even an outline of the various branches of the Art of Organ-building. If I have given some food for thought, some incentive to further investigation and experiment, and if I have done even a little to show the dignity, the importance, and the elevating tendency of the organ builders art, I shall be well repaid for all the study, time, and toil spent in the production of this treatise.

This Work is the third attempt I have made during the past twenty-five years to give to the world a treatise on organ construction and tonal appointment. In the first and second attempts I utterly failed to produce what I considered worthy of being printed. My third and present attempt I have ventured to submit to the organ-loving world, in the hopes of its proving a stimulus to some greater pen and pencil than mine. The Work has been a labor of love. It has been a source of enjoyment during the hours that could be stolen from an exacting profession, and the hours that could reasonably be added to those of each professional day. Such being the case, I can well ask the indulgence of the exacting critic, and the kind consideration of the learned reader.

In the opening Chapter a very faint outline of the History of the inception and development of the Organ is given. This Chapter is merely an introduction to the general subject of the treatise, and lays no claim to either originality or intrinsic value. This Chapter is supplemented by the brief historical notes which open certain subsequent Chapters, and which may be found interesting to the student of organ-building. An exhaustive History of the Organ has yet to be written, for nothing approaching it has appeared in any work in any language.

I have contributed a few new Chapters to the literature of the Organ, with the view of directing more attention to the tonal branch of organ appointment; and the very newness of these Chapters must be their excuse for all imperfections and shortcomings.

An attempt has been made to improve the popular and somewhat unsatisfactory English nomenclature of the Organ. With this aim I have abandoned the use of such common terms as sound-board, flue pipe, super-octave coupler, and others which are either incorrect or objectionable when applied to organ work. And for the first time, so far as my knowledge extends, in the literature of the Organ, a systematic attempt is made to give the names of the numerous organ stops in the different languages orthographically correct: and coupled with this essay, I have offered some suggestions for the formation of a systematic stop nomenclature, to do away with, if possible, the heterogeneous system, or want of system, which at present obtains in the stop-labeling of English and American Organs, not to speak of the flagrant inaccuracies which one sees on the draw-stop labels or name-plates, indicative of either carelessness or want of knowledge.

With the kind co-operation of Mr. Hermann Smith, of London, a gentleman who has gained a distinguished position as an investigator in matters relating to sound-production in musical instruments, I am able to lay before my readers a reasonable theory of the production of sound in organ pipesa theory widely different from those which have been propounded in the several learned works on acoustics. These theories are fully commented on in the Chapter on Acoustical Matters connected with Organ Pipes.

There has appeared during late years a disposition on the part of English and American organ builders, and others interested in organ matters, to underrate the value, from a tonal point of view, of the compound harmonic-corroborating stops. Some causes have obviously led to this view being held or expressed which it is unnecessary to go into here; but I enter a firm protest in my Chapter on the Compound Stops of the Organ against the abandonment of such important factors in tone-production; and I commend the contents of that Chapterthe logical supplement to the preceding Chapter on the Tonal Structure of the Organto the careful consideration of all true lovers of the Organ. More attention has been paid to the tonal appointment of Concert-room, Church, and Chamber instruments than has been considered necessary by any of the writers on the Organ up to the present time: but as the Organ has an extremely complex musical structure, in which science and art are intimately combined, more study, taste, and skill should be devoted to its development than is necessary in any other branch of organ construction. It is this belief that has induced me to devote so many pages to matters connected with the sound-producing and tone-controlling portions of the Organ, in which are presented the series of illustrations which go beyond everything of the kind to be found in all works on the Organ, hitherto issued, put together.

I trust that my descriptions of the several mechanical systems and appliances which have been and are being used in organ construction, aided by the fairly comprehensive series of illustrations, will be found intelligible by the student of the art of organ-building and the general reader, to whom my treatise is specially addressed. Much of interest and value has necessarily been omitted, partly through want of space, and partly through the want of co-operation on the part of certain organ builders who did not desire to have methods on which they lay great store submitted to public criticism. Perhaps, in some cases, this reserve was a wise one; but whether the builders gain anything by it or not is open to question. It is proper to add that in several cases I have had to depend for information on Patent Specifications, or on my own investigations, receiving no direct assistance from the patentees whose names have been mentioned.

Among all the Chapters contained in the Second Volume, that devoted to the Electro-pneumatic Action is certainly the most incomplete. Realizing the tentative state of that branch of organ construction at this time, I have simply aimed at giving a brief historical rsum and a bare outline of the principles on which all the better class of electro-pneumatic organ actions are constructed. It must be left to an abler pen than mine, and to a time when such actions leave nothing to be desired, to produce an exhaustive treatise on the subject.

In the more important works on organ-building in the English language large and valuable collections of Specifications of existing Organs are given; and numerous interesting Specifications are also to be found in the several well-known German and French works. Such being the case, I have considered it only necessary to append such Specifications to the present treatise as have been directly referred to in the text. By doing so I have been able to give ample space to the more important branches of my subject.