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55-484: When it was installed in 1890, the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ was the largest in the world, and it remained the largest concert organ built in the 19th century, boasting 5 manuals and 127 stops . It was described by Westminster Abbey's organist, Frederick Bridge , as "the finest organ ever built by an English organ builder". It remains the world's largest organ without any electric action components and

110-529: A coupler allows the pipes of one division to be played simultaneously from an alternative manual. For example, a coupler labelled "Swell to Great" allows the stops of the Swell division to be played by the Great manual. It is unnecessary to couple the pipes of a division to the manual of the same name (for example, coupling the Great division to the Great manual), because those stops play by default on that manual (though this

165-513: A Great division may look like this: The standard position for these columns of stops (assuming drawknobs are used) is for the Choir or Positive division to be on the outside of the player's right, with the Great nearer the center of the console and the music rest. On the left hand side, the Pedal division is on the outside, with the Swell to the inside. Other divisions can be placed on either side, depending on

220-418: A central axle. Different combinations of stops change the timbre of the instrument considerably. The selection of stops is called the registration. On modern organs, the registration can be changed instantaneously with the aid of a combination action , usually featuring pistons. Pistons are buttons that can be pressed by the organist to change registrations; they are generally found between the manuals or above

275-490: A ft=415 Hz, modern instruments at a ft=440 Hz, or Renaissance instruments at a ft=466 Hz. Modern organs are typically tuned in equal temperament , in which every semitone is 100  cents wide. Many organs that are built today following historical models are still tuned to historically-appropriate temperaments. The range (compass) of the keyboards on an organ has varied widely between different time periods and different nationalities. Portative organs may have

330-437: A full ensemble. The order in which the stops are activated is usually preset by the organ builder and the crescendo pedal serves as a quick way for the organist to get to a registration that will sound attractive at a given volume without choosing a particular registration, or simply to get to full organ. Most organs also have a piston and/or toe-stud labeled " Tutti " or " Sforzando " that activates full organ. A device called

385-442: A half octaves, from C to g ′ ). These ranges apply to the notes written on the page; depending on the registration, the actual range of the instrument may be much greater. On most organs, at least one division will be enclosed . On a two-manual (Great and Swell) organ, this will be the Swell division (from where the name comes); on larger organs often part, or all of, the Choir and Solo divisions will be enclosed as well. Enclosure

440-446: A horizontal row of stop tabs, a similar arrangement would be applied left to right rather than bottom to top. Among stops of the same pitch, louder stops are generally placed below softer ones (so an Open Diapason would be placed towards the bottom and a Dulciana towards the top), but this is less predictable since it depends on the exact stops available and the space available to arrange stop knobs. Thus, an example stop configuration for

495-431: A near horizontal position ("open"). Unlike a car accelerator pedal, a balanced expression pedal remains in whatever position it was last moved to. Historically, the enclosure was operated by the use of the ratchet swell lever , a spring-loaded lever that locks into two or three positions controlling the opening of the shutters. Many ratchet swell devices were replaced by the more advanced balanced pedal because it allows

550-541: A performer can produce the sounds of an entire orchestra through the use of all available manuals in conjunction with the pedalboard and the various registration controls. Despite the superficial resemblance to piano keyboards, organ manuals require a very different style of playing. Organ keys often require less force to depress than piano keys; however, the keys on mechanical instruments can be very heavy ( St Sulpice Paris , St Ouen Rouen , St Etienne Caen , etc.). When depressed, an organ key continues to sound its note at

605-566: A range of only an octave or two, while a few large organs, such as the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ , may have some manual keyboards approaching the size of a modern piano. German organs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries featured manual ranges from C to f ′ ′ ′ and pedal ranges from C to d ′ , though some organs only had manual ranges that extended down to F. Many French organs of this period had pedal ranges that went down to AA (though this ravalement applied only to

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660-413: A similar process. As a result, Sydney assembled a committee to compile a set of specifications for a Great Organ, which for power and versatility would be the world's largest and finest, call for tenders for both manufacture and installation, and select the successful tenders. The committee consisted of: Submissions were received from twelve companies, which were assessed on their perceived capacity to fill

715-489: A stop out (that is, turn on a stop) or push it in (turning off this stop); in contrast, Hammond organs typically have drawbars, so that the player can control how much of each " pipe rank " (e.g., 16 ft, 8 ft, 4 ft 2 ft, etc.) they wish to use. Synthesizers can program separate manuals to emulate sounds of various orchestral sections or instruments, using imitative digital sounds or sampling of real instruments, or using entirely synthesized sounds. On digital synthesizer instruments

770-635: A two- or three-manual harpsichord. (On instruments that have neither a pedalboard nor more than one hand-operated keyboard, the word "manual" is not a synonym for "keyboard".) Music written to be played only on the manuals (and not using the pedals) can be designated by the word manualiter (first attested in 1511, but particularly common in the 17th and 18th centuries). Organs and synthesizers can, and usually do, have more than one manual; most home instruments have two manuals, while most larger organs have two or three. Elaborate pipe organs and theater organs can have four or more manuals. The manuals are set into

825-584: Is a device that allows the sounds played on the pedals to be split, so the lower octave (principally that of the left foot) plays stops from the pedal division while the upper half (played by the right foot), plays stops from one of the manual divisions. The choice of manual is at the discretion of the performer, as is the 'split point' of the system. The system can be found on the organs of Gloucester Cathedral , having been added by Nicholson & Co (Worcester) Ltd / David Briggs and Truro Cathedral , having been added by Mander Organs / David Briggs , as well as on

880-507: Is called a Positif which means portable organ.) If it is included, the Solo manual is usually placed above the Swell. Some larger organs contain an Echo or Antiphonal division, usually controlled by a manual placed above the Solo. German and American organs generally use the same configuration of manuals as English organs. On French instruments, the main manual (the Grand Orgue) is at the bottom, with

935-408: Is done with super- and sub-couplers, see below). By using the couplers, the entire resources of an organ can be played simultaneously from one manual. On a mechanical-action organ, a coupler may connect one division's manual directly to the other, actually moving the keys of the first manual when the second is played. Some organs feature a device to add the octave above or below what is being played by

990-487: Is of international significance. Its Contra-Trombone is one of only two full-length 64' organ stops in the world. When Sydney's City Council decided to commission the organ, they called on a small group of experts to formulate a process for achieving a transparent and defensible decision on supplier and installer. In this they received generous support and advice from the Melbourne City Council, who had been through

1045-520: Is played with at least one keyboard , with configurations featuring from two to five keyboards being the most common. A keyboard to be played by the hands is called a manual (from the Latin manus , "hand"); an organ with four keyboards is said to have four manuals. Most organs also have a pedalboard , a large keyboard to be played by the feet. [Note that the keyboards are never actually referred to as "keyboards", but as "manuals" and "pedalboard", as

1100-414: Is that of dynamic control. Unlike the case of piano keys, the force with which the organist depresses the key has no relation to the note's resonance; instead, the organist controls the volume through use of the expression pedals . While the piano note, then, can only decay, the organ note may increase in volume or undergo other dynamic changes. Some modern electronic instruments allow for volume to vary with

1155-430: Is the term for the device that allows volume control ( crescendo and diminuendo ) for a manual without the addition or subtraction of stops. All the pipes for the division are surrounded by a box-like structure (often simply called the swell box ). One side of the box, usually that facing the console or the listener, will be constructed from vertical or horizontal palettes (wooden flaps) which can be opened or closed from

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1210-974: The organ console (or "keydesk"). The layout of a manual is roughly the same as a piano keyboard, with long, usually ivory or light-colored keys for the natural notes of the Western musical scale , and shorter, usually ebony or dark-colored keys for the five sharps and flats . A typical, full-size organ manual consists of five octaves , or 61 keys. Piano keyboards, by contrast, normally have 88 keys; some electric pianos and digital pianos have fewer keys, such as 61 or 73 keys. Some smaller electronic organs may have manuals of four octaves or less (25, 49, 44, or even 37 keys). Changes in registration through use of drawknobs, stop tabs, or other mechanisms to control organ stops allow such instruments to achieve an aggregate range well in excess of pianos and other keyboard instruments even with manuals of shorter pitch range and smaller size. On smaller electronic organs and synthesizers,

1265-606: The van den Heuvel organ at the Church of St. Eustache in Paris , have more than one console, enabling the organ to be played from several locations depending on the nature of the performance. Controls at the console called stops select which ranks of pipes are used. These controls are generally either draw knobs (or stop knobs), which engage the stops when pulled out from the console; stop tablets (or tilting tablets) which are hinged at their far end; or rocker-tablets, which rock up and down on

1320-517: The Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, Brustwerk and Oberwerk, while in Dutch, common divisions are Hoofdwerk, Rugwerk, Borstwerk and Bovenwerk. Finally, theatre organs are usually composed of Great, Accompaniment, Solo, Bombarde and Orchestral divisions. Organ builders choose different divisions to accommodate the type of music played, the space in which the organ is installed, as well as the desired character and tone of

1375-669: The Positif and the Récit above it. If there are more manuals, the Bombarde is usually above the Récit and the Grand Choeur is below the Grand Orgue or above the Bombarde. In addition to names, the manuals may be numbered with Roman numerals, starting from the bottom. Organists will frequently mark a part in their music with the number of the manual they intend to play it on, and this is sometimes seen in

1430-419: The amount of space available. Manual couplers and octave extensions are placed either within the stop knobs of the divisions that they control, or grouped together above the uppermost manual. The pistons, if present, are placed directly under the manual they control. To be more historically accurate, organs built along historical models will often use older schemes for organizing the keydesk controls. The organ

1485-459: The case may be.] The collection of ranks controlled by a particular manual is called a division . The names of the divisions of the organ vary geographically and stylistically. Common names for divisions are: Like the arrangement of stops, the keyboard divisions are also arranged in a common order. Taking the English names as an example, the main manual (the bottom manual on two-manual instruments or

1540-485: The case with Echo/Antiphonal and Orchestral divisions, and sometimes it is seen with Solo and Bombarde divisions. Although manuals are almost always horizontal, organs with three or more manuals may incline the uppermost manuals towards the organist to make them easier to reach. Many new chamber organs and harpsichords today feature transposing keyboards, which can slide up or down one or more semitones. This allows these instruments to be played with Baroque instruments at

1595-459: The committee throughout its deliberations. Negotiations with Hill and Son were conducted by Alexander Rea, who, as leader of a group of organists, drew up the specifications. Belgium's Auguste Wiegand , who would become Sydney's first City Organist, later blamed the group for certain shortcomings in its design, but was contradicted by Hill, who praised the "Corporation of Sydney, ... they left all details in our hands." Rea supervised installation of

1650-525: The company were approved, and a new requirement added: that the organist's console should be situated at ground level, despite the additional expense and complexity. Sharp dissented from the majority decision on the grounds that (1) the Hill organ was too large for the Centennial Hall, and (2) that it would be difficult and expensive to find an organist capable of matching its complexity. He was never confident of

1705-424: The console. This works in a similar fashion to a Venetian blind . When the box is 'open' it allows more sound to be heard than if it were 'closed'. The most common form of controlling the level of sound released from the enclosed box is by the use of a balanced expression pedal . This is usually placed above the centre of the pedalboard , rotating away from the organist from a near vertical position ("shut") to

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1760-536: The contract, personal experience of the companies' products, technical considerations in the submissions, and finally, price. The choice narrowed down to two: Gray and Davison and William Hill and Son . The ultimate selection of Hill and Son may have been a foregone conclusion despite their higher price, as they had supplied and installed instruments for the Town Halls of Adelaide and Melbourne , and also St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney . Several modifications suggested by

1815-451: The enclosure to be left at any point, without having to keep a foot on the lever. In addition, an organ may have a crescendo pedal , which would be found to the right of any expression pedals, and similarly balanced. Applying the crescendo pedal will incrementally activate the majority of the stops in the organ, starting with the softest stops and ending with the loudest, excluding only a handful of specialized stops that serve no purpose in

1870-429: The fingers. The "super-octave" adds the octave above, the "sub-octave" the octave below. These may be attached to one division only, for example "Swell octave" (the super is often assumed), or they may act as a coupler, for example "Swell octave to Great" which gives the effect while playing on the Great division of adding the Swell division an octave above what is being played. These can be used in conjunction with

1925-410: The force applied to the key and permit the organist to sustain the note and alter both its attack and decay in a variety of ways. For example, Hammond organs often have an expression pedal, which enables the performer to increase or decrease the volume of a note, chord, or passage. All of these variables mean that both the technique of organ playing and the resulting music are quite different from those of

1980-564: The instrument and tested the mechanism before the famous organist W. T. Best "opened" the organ in August 1890. When Best returned to England, Rea gave a number of recitals at the Town Hall, and supervised access to the huge instrument until the appointment of Wiegand as City Organist in 1891. In 1973, the Sydney Council authorized a major restoration program to address the mechanical problems that

2035-527: The instrument. Various other controls, such as stops, pistons, and registration presets are usually located adjacent to the manuals to allow the organist ready access to them while playing. This further increases the instrument's versatility, as a piston or other preset function can cause multiple stops to be pulled out or pushed in automatically. This is of particular benefit in pieces where a number of stops have to be pulled out or pushed in between sections. Devices known as couplers are sometimes available to link

2090-455: The key. The exception is some modern electronic instruments and relatively contemporary upgrades to theatre pipe organ consoles, which may have a knee lever which sustains the previous chords or notes. The knee lever enables an organist to hold a chord or note during a fermata or cadence , thus freeing their hands to turn a page in the sheet music, change stops, conduct a choir or orchestra, or shift hands to another manual. Another difference

2145-506: The manuals may span fewer octaves, and they may also be offset, with the lower one an octave to the left of the upper one. This arrangement encourages the organist to play the melody line on the upper manual while playing the harmony line, chords or bassline on the lower manual. On pipe organs each manual plays a specific subset of the organ's stops , and electric organs (e.g., Hammond organ ) can emulate this style of play. Hammond organs differ from pipe organs in that pipe organs can only pull

2200-440: The manuals, so that the stops (and pipes) normally played on one can be played from another. Organ console The pipe organ is played from an area called the console or keydesk , which holds the manuals (keyboards), pedals , and stop controls . In electric-action organs, the console is often movable. This allows for greater flexibility in placement of the console for various activities. Some very large organs, such as

2255-405: The middle manual on three-manual instruments) is traditionally called the Great, and the upper manual is called the Swell. If there is a third manual, it is usually the Choir and is placed below the Great. (The name "Choir" is a corruption of "Chair", as this division initially came from the practice of placing a smaller, self-contained, organ at the rear of the organist's bench. This is also why it

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2310-414: The organ had begun to experience. Managing the program was Roger H Pogson, whose employees worked for almost 10 years to restore the organ, close to its original form. Previous to this restoration, the organ had fallen into a state of disrepair; however, tuner of the organ in the 1960s, Ken Martin, a Noad employee, insists that, despite problems, the organ was always playable in some way. There were calls in

2365-421: The organist to record performances. It also allows an external keyboard to be plugged in, which assists in tuning and maintenance. The layout of an organ console is not standardized, but most organs follow historic conventions for the country and style of organ, so that the layout of stops and pistons is broadly predictable. The stops controlling each division (see Keyboards ) are grouped together. Within these,

2420-399: The original composition, typically in pieces written when organs were smaller and only had two or three manuals. It is also common to see couplers labeled as "II to I" (see Couplers below). In some cases, an organ contains more divisions than it does manuals. In these cases, the extra divisions are called floating divisions and are played by coupling them to another manual. Usually this is

2475-588: The pedalboard. In the latter case they are called toe studs or toe pistons (as opposed to thumb pistons). Most large organs have both preset and programmable pistons, with some of the couplers repeated for convenience as pistons and toe studs. Programmable pistons allow comprehensive and rapid control over changes in registration. Newer organs in the 2000s may have multiple levels of solid-state memory, allowing each piston to be programmed more than once. This allows more than one organist to store their own registrations. Many newer consoles also feature MIDI , which allows

2530-527: The piano. Nevertheless, the trained pianist may play a basic organ repertoire with little difficulty, although more advanced organ music will require specialized training and practice, as the musician has to learn to play on multiple manuals, set stops and other controls while performing, and play the pedal keyboard with the feet. One of the key types of electromechanical organs, the Hammond B-3 , has two manuals. Each manual has drawbars which are used to control

2585-473: The preceding decades to either rebuild the organ in a neo-classical style (this was the fashion at the time) or completely remove and replace it with a new instrument. The announcement that the Sydney Opera House being constructed would house a new, large, mechanical-action organ, greatly influenced the decision to restore the Hill and Son Organ. Sydney Town Hall today holds free organ recitals throughout

2640-540: The reeds, and may have only included the low AA, not AA-sharp or BB). French organs of the nineteenth century typically had manual ranges from C to g ′ ′ ′ and pedal ranges from C to f ′ ; in the twentieth century the manual range was extended to a ′ ′ ′ . The modern console specification recommended by the American Guild of Organists calls for manual keyboards with sixty-one notes (five octaves, from C to c ′ ′ ′ ′ ) and pedal keyboards with thirty-two notes (two and

2695-477: The registration for each manuals. Different manuals on pipe organs are usually used to play stops from a variety of divisions , which group together a series of different tones. Divisions are usually standardised within pipe organs belonging to certain regions; in the English school of organ building, common divisions include the Great, Swell, Choir, Solo and Echo, while French organs commonly include Grand Orgue, Positif, Récit and Echo. German organ divisions include

2750-412: The same volume until the organist releases the key, unlike a piano key, whose note gradually fades away as the string vibrations fade away. On the other hand, while the pianist may allow the piano notes to continue to sound for a few moments after lifting their hands from the keys by depressing the sustain pedal, most organs have no corresponding control; the note invariably ceases when the organist releases

2805-506: The standard eight foot coupler. The super-octave may be labelled, for example, Swell to Great 4 ft; in the same manner, the sub-octave may be labelled Choir to Great 16 ft. The inclusion of these couplers allows for greater registrational flexibility and color. Some literature (particularly romantic literature from France) calls explicitly for octaves aigües (super-couplers) to add brightness, or octaves graves (sub-couplers) to add gravity. Some organs feature extended ranks to accommodate

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2860-411: The standard arrangement is for the lowest sounding stops (32 ft or 16 ft) to be placed at the bottom of the columns, with the higher pitched stops placed above this, (8 ft 4 ft, 2 2 ⁄ 3 ft, 2 ft, etc.); the mixtures are placed above this (II, III, V, etc.). The stops controlling the reed ranks are placed collectively above these in the same order as above, often with the stop engraving in red. In

2915-537: The top and bottom octaves when the super- and sub-couplers are engaged (see the discussion under "Unification and extension"). In a similar vein are unison off couplers, which act to "turn off" the stops of a division on its own keyboard. For example, a coupler labelled "Great unison off" would keep the stops of the Great division from sounding, even if they were pulled. Unison off couplers can be used in combination with super- and sub-couplers to create complex registrations that would otherwise not be possible. In addition,

2970-405: The unison off couplers can be used with other couplers to change the order of the manuals at the console: engaging the Great to Choir and Choir to Great couplers along with the Great unison off and Choir unison off couplers would have the effect of moving the Great to the bottom manual and the Choir to the middle manual. Another form of coupler found on some large organs is the divided pedal . This

3025-478: The year. The Town Hall organ features 127 stops, distributed over 5 manuals and the pedalboard, as follows: Manual (music) The word " manual " is used instead of the word "keyboard" when referring to any hand-operated keyboard on a keyboard instrument that has a pedalboard (a keyboard on which notes are played with the feet), such as an organ; or when referring to one of the keyboards on an instrument that has more than one hand-operated keyboard, such as

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