OLDTIME PIPE ORGANS.

New Zealand Tablet, 26 September 1918, Page 10

OLDTIME PIPE ORGANS.

Various facts and fancies are afloat in regard to the introduction ot the pipe organ . into the service of the Christian Church (states the Are Maria). Some authorities place its first appearance in this capacity in the seventh century, but -there is historical mention ot its being in a convent chapel at Grado as early as ths year 586. The first authentic description of the ‘"‘queen of instruments,” as the pipe organ is rightfully called, is by the Venerable Bede, who died in the first half of the eighth century. It reads thus: “The organ is like a tower built with a variety of pipes, from which, by' the blast of a bellows, a very copious voice is obtained.” During the ninth and tenth centuries the use of the organ in the Church became almost general. The Bishop of Winchester, England, procured one "for his cathedral in 951. It was the largest organ then known, and, judging from the descriptions given of it by chroniclers of the time, must have been a rather clumsy flair compared with our handsome modern organ, with its numerous ease-giving mechanical contrivances. Some quaint Latin lines by a monk of the period present a sorrowful picture of the oldtime instrument and the tireless toilers l whose duty it was to ‘supply it with wind. They must have had a decidedly hard time of it.' Here is an English translation of the lines: Twelve pairs -of bellows, ranged in stately row. Are joined above, and fourteen more below.. These the full force of seventy men require, i Who ceaseless toil and , plenteously perspire ; ) Each aiding each, till all the wind be pressed Into the close confines of the incumbent chest, '.On which four hundred pipes in order rise ■ To bellow forth the blast that chest’ supplies. .No less mighty ■ were, the efforts '(ofg the organist. While the seventy men were ~ playing laborious leapfrog, so .to speak, in order to prepare for the . tones, he ' was compelled to lure these forth by the : constant and vigorous appliance of clenched ’ fists and, braced feet. We can imagine what the ; music he succeeded in ' prodncih.or must. lia.vfl been .... ■ - "ft - : r.‘~