By W. E. DICKSON, M.A. PRECENTOR OF ELY CATHEDRAL SECOND EDITION, REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS LONDON CROSBY LOCKWOOD AND CO. 7, STATIONERS' HALL COURT, LUDGATE HILL 1882 [ All rights reserved ] LONDON: PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD. ORGAN-BUILDING....

PLANT AND MATERIALS. We shall assume at once, and at the very outset, that our reader has the fixed purpose of producing an organ which shall be creditable to its builder, a source of pleasure to its players and their hearers, and an ornament to the room or building in which it is erected: in short, that he remembers the excellent maxim, "whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well," and will not be content with rough workmanship, inferior materials, and inharmonious results. Assuming th

THE STOPPED DIAPASON. Why do we begin by making a set of wooden pipes? For two reasons. First, because they will afford a trial of patience, and involve a great deal of good joinery. Second, because until they are made, or, at any rate, until we know their precise dimensions, we cannot plot out with accuracy the very important sound-board, which is to carry them and the other pipes which are to follow. Either of these reasons is, to our mind, sufficient, apart from the other; and we strongly rec

THE SOUND-BOARD. We may fairly assume that no one will embark upon the very serious business of building an organ, and that probably no one will read this book, who has not sufficient previous knowledge of the subject to understand what is meant by the expressions sound-board, wind-chest, pallets, sliders. It may be taken as certain, moreover, that the reader who takes up this book to assist him in the arduous work which he has undertaken, and in the hope (which we trust we shall not disappoint)

THE SOUND-BOARD. —( Continued. ) The time has come when we must decide what our five stops are to be, since the sizes and places of the holes must be in accordance with the quality and character of the pipes supplied by them. The Stopped Diapason we have already made; and in our organ it will be the chief or foundation stop of 8-feet tone. We shall assume that the second stop in the 8-feet pitch will be a metal Dulciana, or small open Diapason. The 4-feet stops will doubtless be a Principal (or

THE WIND-CHEST. The somewhat wearisome task of boring more than 250 holes in the sound-board being now assumed as accomplished, we may take the upper boards and sliders apart, and retouch the holes here and there, as required, with the hot iron. The apertures of the holes in the interior of the channels must be thus attended to, as the boring-bit may have occasionally torn the wood and left rough edges. Upon the faintest suspicion arising in your mind of any flaw or crack set up in any channel d

THE BELLOWS, TRUNKS, AND FRAME. After all our minute operations with small drills and fine wires, calling for a light hand and patient accuracy, we have to turn to work comparatively rough and coarse. The business of bellows-making presents no serious difficulty, and we hope we may pass rapidly over it. We shall have no reader who is not already familiar with the form of organ-bellows, which consist of three main boards, namely, the middle board, the top board or table, and the feeder, and of th

PLANTATION OF THE PIPES. We explained in a former page that it is well to plant all the pipes upon the sound-board before the pallets are fitted, because dust and chips are inseparable from the operation, and may be troublesome and mischievous if introduced into the grooves and conveyances. Some of our readers, therefore, having their stock of pipes by them, have perhaps already perused this chapter and acted upon its suggestions. It has been reserved, however, for this place in our work, in acc

THE ACTION. This important subject will be prefaced by a few definitions, superfluous, perhaps, for some readers, necessary for others. Backfall . A lever of any clean wood, ⅜ inch or less in thickness, 1 inch or 2 inches in width, and seldom more than 1 or 2 feet in length, turning upon a wire as its axis or fulcrum. Fig. 27. Bridge . Backfalls occur in sets, corresponding to the number of keys in a manual or of pallets in a wind-chest. They are arranged side by side in notches formed by taking

VOICING AND TUNING. The time has now come when we may bring our little organ into musical order, and reap some of the fruits of our toil. If the processes described in previous chapters have been steadily carried out, the instrument is now complete (so far as the manual only is concerned) with the exception of the draw-stop action, which we intentionally reserve, and the external case. We shall insert here, therefore, a few pages on voicing, the important and delicate operation by which the corr

THE DRAW-STOPS. We have provided no means as yet for bringing the sliders under the control of the player. The mechanism by which this will be effected must depend upon our plans for the case and book-board. Method 1. —As we have only five stops we may have resolved to arrange the knobs in a horizontal row above the key-board, and below the edge of the book. We shall soon see that this arrangement will result in much convenience and simplicity. The ends of the sliders project at each end 2 or 3

PEDALS. We have hitherto said nothing of pedals. What we shall now say will not occupy much of our remaining space. We have to fit our little organ with a set of pedals pulling down the bass keys of the manual, but commanding no separate pipes of their own. What is to be their compass? On this we have to remark that when an organ is intended for the practising of a student or professional musician, or for the performance by any player whatever of genuine organ music, the full compass of thirty n

TWO-MANUAL ORGANS. This treatise must not close without some reference to organ work of a more advanced kind than that which we have taken as the groundwork or medium of our hints on this subject. Some of our readers may very naturally wish to understand the construction of an organ with two or more manuals and a pedal with separate pipes; and this implies a description of coupling movements and of the swell-box and its appliances. In the first place, let us remark that as the swell-organ is a m

VILLAGE CHURCH ORGANS. Our labours have hitherto been exclusively directed towards the production, in private workshops and by young workmen, of small organs adapted for domestic use. That such organs should be of varied character, and that they should represent the differing musical tastes and unequal mechanical ingenuity and adroitness of their unprofessional or self-taught constructors, is the legitimate outcome of the circumstances assumed. The case of organs for churches must be regarded fr